Just wanted to let y'all know about a change I just put in for 4.023:
* Since the introduction of armor, the different unit scales have provided pretty radically different balance between scaled-types (like a bomber) and non-scaled-types (like a flak guardian). This is due to the fact that 2x as many bombers each with 1/2 as much armor (high caps) are going to die way more than 2x faster against a flak guardian. Similarly, 1/2x as many bombers each with 2x as much armor (low caps) are going to have a much easier time surviving against the same unscaled flak guardian (even leaving aside the aoe aspect of that). We've now put in a fix that will make scaled ships always have the same effective armor against non-scaled ships, while maintaining their scaled armor ratings versus each other (since if we just stopped scaling armor at all then scaled ships would take a _lot_ longer go kill each other on some settings).
** PLEASE NOTE: this is basically going to make the balance a lot more like it was on High caps in terms of how fleet ships do against guardians. Namely, guardians will eat fleet ships for a midday snack. If it's found necessary we can adjust the actual armor ratings (or other stats) of fleet ships to compensate, but let's give this a try as-is.
Basically, themachineissentient was tearing his hair out because he would spend 20 minutes building a fleet and his bombers and missile frigates would basically die-on-contact with AI guardians. Actually they would usually die before they got in range. Well, normally this would be a matter of a few simple balance tweaks to try for something more pleasing... but in my testing I didn't see the problem. Turns out the difference between "normal" ship caps and "high" ship caps was pretty stark. 1/2 survivability on high is intended (and the hp scaling causes that), but it was more like 1/4 or 1/6.
I discovered that this was due to the armor rating being scaled with the caps. It does need to be (or else scaled-ship vs. scaled-ship gets a lot duller on lower caps), but I hadn't thought about it since armor was added after the cap scaling, and we had never scaled shield rating, etc.
Anyway, this change should maintain a much more consistent balance in the bomber vs flak guardian (and similar) case, but it may make everyone's life more painful for the next version since the balance will (I think) be closer to the getting-eaten-for-lunch scenario from high caps. I can fix this fairly simply by applying a 2x modifier in the right place, but I wanted to try this out before making any other sweeping changes.
So when 4.023 comes out be sure to let me know how much you hate it
I've attached a few screenshots from the reference screen after the fix; 1 for flak-guardian on high, 1 for artillery-guardian on high, and 1 for each of those on normal.
