Discussion about Different Playstyles

[Wingflier]

Yes they are, and I don't have a problem with bombers doing that much more damage then fighters against the targets they are supposed to do high damage to. (The fact that so many of the units in the game are ones the bomber gets a bonus against is getting into the hull type/attack multipliers discussion which is a different topic.)

It's not a different topic, it could be solved right now with my suggestion.

Increasing the Bomber's base damage by 25% and reducing their multipliers means that they still excel against some of the most important ships in the game, but it comes at a heavy (resource) cost.  Fighters, while not as specialized against the most important threats, are more all-purpose than Bombers.  They do 2.2x less to the important targets Bombers have.

See my comments about tweaking the fighter above for why I would be okay with moving the Swarmer attack bonus from the frigate to the fighter.

Once again, you're nerfing the Frigate to buff the Fighter.  Considering that the Bomber is the main problem here, this could not be a worse solution  if you tried.

Actually, I think this is the crux of our disagreement. You see bombers as overshadowing fighters. I see turrets as overshadowing fighters, not bombers.

This is because your perception of Fighters is flawed.

Your argument is basically this:  (I can sum up the 3 paragraphs in a few sentences)
Fighters are a defensive, throwaway role.  They are great meatshields.  Frigates are an escort role because they out-range their opponents.

Okay, the term "escort" and "defensive" are practically the same thing.  In your explanation of a Fighter's role, it exists to escort bombers or defend your fleet/base.  Frigates also escort your bombers and/or defend your fleet/base, it's just much better at it because it doesn't constantly die in the process and has bonuses against the most common types of swarmers.  Fighters are great against 1 type of ship - Bombers; the other 2 hull types are barely seen.

We will have to disagree here as well. 25% is a big difference to me.

Anything is a big difference to you because you seem to think the current system is fine.

See my comment in my opening section above about fighters currently lacking a focus. The current version of the game does not do a good job of it but in my opinion when attacking the bombers are there to kill that high-value target, the fighters are there to keep the bombers alive. So fighters escorting bombers keep coming up because that's how I feel the game should work.

I already explained this is my last post, you're just resistant to change.  If Fighters were the dominant unit and bombers had a very inferior/niche role (say of escorting Fighters to their target), I'm sure you'd be trying to keep that the same as well.

Except the fighters are not picking daisies, they are there keeping the bombers alive by killing the AI's fleet ships. Or they should be, I will admit that right now this does not quite work in the game due to how random the reinforcements are.

Right now bombers stand out like they do because they are the killers of the high-value targets, boosting fighter DPS so they become "bomber-lite" is making things further unbalanced in my view.

How is it?  Total fleet DPS stays about the same.  Bombers still do 2.2x extra damage to the important targets.  How are things becoming more imbalanced?  Things have actually become much MORE balanced in the triangle with that change.

Except that as envision them, because of their cheap resource cost and higher base DPS, fighters are there to serve as escorts and kill the AIs fleet ships to keep them off your other ships, I don't envision fighters alone as any sort of strike force.

In any other scenario (Neinzul ships, Swarmers, Melee Ships), cheap ships with high DPS are great as a strike force; yet in this scenario, for some reason, you disagree with the idea.  By making Bombers the only Triangle ship that's properly suited to strike forces, you make the game more slow-paced and boring because (at least early on), you have to spend so many resources to replace them.  Fighters can take out an important target without draining your whole economy.  The early game could be so much more interesting and active if Fighters didn't exist just to keep Bombers alive.

The thing is, the fighters design role is to kill the AIs fleet ships, the AI uses fleet ships as defenders of other units. Therefore the role of the fighter is to escort your bombers and kill the AIs fleet ships to allow your bombers through to kill whatever the AIs fleet units were defending.

I don't see how you can keep the fighter effective against the AIs fleet units (the escort role) and make it good at another role without getting into overpowered territory.

Newsflash, EVERY Triangle ship's role is to kill fleet ships.  In fact, the Bomber probably counters more fleetships than does the Fighter when you take into account the most popular bonuses.  Frigates are MUCH better than Fighters at killing fleetships, because they can do it from a long range, and they have the bonuses for 6 different types.  Even if you nerfed Frigates (this is a horrible idea) to buff Fighters so that they countered a different fleetship, they're still not doing that much damage.

Fighters in an AI wave should be a joke to defend as the wave is attacking your heavy defenses which fighters are weak against. Fighters are designed to kill fleet ships after all.

Right, because a huge wave of Fighters kills your whole Fleet am I right?  No, that's a joke.  You can take them out before the even get in range.  Aside from Bombers, which they have a 5x multiplier against, they aren't even a threat against your fleet.  Frigates are MUCH scarier against your fleet than are Fighters, because they're much harder to kill and aren't nearly as easy to kite/outrange.

Fighters in an AI Wave are a joke to both your turrets AND your fleet.

But okay, let's take what you say at face value.  Worst case scenario:  Fighters become overpowered.

1. Let's see, Bombers have been overpowered for over a year and it really hasn't affected the game that negatively.
2. It's in beta, so it can be changed or tweaked later.
3. Fighters (in waves) become an actual threat like Bombers and Frigates.
4. Fighters can exist in their own strike and raiding squads because they're powerful and cheap to replace.
5. Blobbing becomes less important since the main role of both Fighters and Frigates isn't just to defend your Bombers.
6. Raiding becomes much easier and less tedious since both Fighters and Bombers (defended by Frigates and Capital Ships) can be sent in their own squads to different parts of a planet.
7. Early game becomes much more active since you don't have to wait so long for your entire fleet to respawn - you can accomplish more with less.
8. You can intercept Bombers more easily because of the 25% speed disparity, meaning less chance of the AI overwhelming you with Bombers before you can react (Total DPS against Bombers is the exact same though).  Also prevents Bombers (and Bomber counterparts) from being the only kind of ship that can cause you to lose the game.
9. You actually have a reason to upgrade Fighters and Frigates past MKII.

So, even if we accept your notion that upgrading the Fighter's base damage by 50% (which is really all I'm doing, regardless of how much you want to call it a complete remake) is making them unbalanced, please explain how that's bad for the game.  In good game design, perfect balance shouldn't come before fun.  Not that I accept your theory that Fighters will become overpowered for one second - but even if I did, you still haven't convinced me it's a bad thing for the game.  Worst case scenario we just move the overpoweredness from Bombers to Fighters, maybe it's time for somebody else to get a turn anyway ;p

[Eternaly_Lost]

The issue really boils down to things like Hull type. I want something dead, it feels like 2 out of every 3 times I send a Bomber at it because that is what get the bonuses to it.

Those that I don't have to send a bomber at dies just fine to everything else, so I don't bother to look at them.

Rebalance the hull types of stuff and I think the triangle ships will suddenly rebalanced themselves properly. If everything had something the fighters was good against, we be talking about all this in trying to make the Frigates better.

[Diazo]

Okay.

We are not even in the same room on this issue.

Are Fighters the most underwhelming of the triangle ships at the moment? Yes.

Are they a broken and useless unit? No.

Are fighters the cheapest unit? Yes.

Even being underwhelming, are fighters worth their resource cost? Yes.

Are high mark fighters worth their K costs to unlock? Mk II: Yes. Mk III: Maybe, depends on game.

Playstyles differ of course but the Fighter is the first unit I build to cap at game start and I always keep them at cap because a Fighters role is to kill Fleet Ships. When the AI surprises me and I've got units unexpectedly running around my systems it is the Fighters that are going to kill it for me the fastest and cheapest. And if they can't kill what ever surprised me and die they are nice and cheap to replace and they have bought me time to muster a larger response.

And I'm fine with the fighters being underwhelming, this game has hundreds of units and most of those units will be average in direct combat.

Keep in mind the fighter is cheap, I like having a cheap unit that I don't mind sacrificing. If the fighter was brought up to the bombers level of effectiveness then it would have to get more expensive and I would lose that expendable unit I use to shield others.

Your other goal seems to be to reduce the spread in DPS between units but again this is something I don't see as needed. The reason attack multipliers are so big is because a unit attacking a target it gets a bonus against is supposed to be massively better then a unit without an attack bonus. Otherwise we would not see attack multipliers as high as they are. Changing the spread of attack multipliers and hull types game wide to rework the damage spread is another beast entirely. (Although it is something I am cautiously for, it is a discussion for another time.)

For me, it comes back to the fact that the fighters role is to kill fleet ships and it is good at that role, it just never really comes up in the game.

When's the last time you were looking at a system and went "I need to kill that AI fleet ball in the AI system."? That is what you would use fighters for.

Instead, the two things you generally ask yourself are "How can I bait the AIs fleet ball into my own system for the turrets to kill?" or "How can I destroy that stationary, high-value target with a raid?". Neither of which the fighter is suited for.

The fact that the fighter does not get used as designed does not make the fighter a weak unit, it just means it never gets to show off its strengths.

Now, if you want to overhaul the fighter to change what its strengths are that is fine but remember that a fighter is one of the core units, the 'fighter' type bonus ships are generally kept in the same DPS range for balance reasons so buffing the fighters raw dps would end up carrying over and buffing the dps of a lot of the bonus units.

Having said that, math time.

This was the most recent listing of the changes you are proposing that I could find, are these still correct?

1. Buff Fighter raw damage by 50% [117,600 -> 176,400]
2. Buff Fighter speed from 76 -> 80.
3. Nerf Fighter multipliers by 33% [Medium 2.4 -> 1.6| Close-Combat 2.4 -> 1.6| Polycrystal 5 -> 3.3] - Damage against these hull types stays nearly the same.
4. Buff Bomber raw damage by 25% [78,400 -> 98,000]
5. Nerf Bomber multipliers against Heavy, Ultra-Heavy, Structural, Artillery, and Command-Grade by 33% [6 -> 4]
6. Nerf Bomber speed from 76 -> 62.

First, hull types.

Fighter has 2.4x bonus against: Armor Rotter, Blade Spawner, Paralyzer, Teleporting Leech, Carrier Guardian, Flak Guardian, Zombie Guardian, MLRS (Bonus Ship), Sentinel Frigate, Short Range Guard Post, Teleport Battle Station, Acid Sprayer, AutoBomb, Chameleon, Cockroach, Cutlass, Neinzul Viral Swarmer, Neinzul Melee Core Guard Post, Viral Shredder, Wasp, Youngling Nanoswarm.

Fighter has 5x bonus againts: Bomber, Maarauder Buzz Bomb, Tank, Youngling Tiger, Resistance Fighter/Bomber, Bomber Starship

Bomber has 6x bonus against: errr, 220 units? I'm not listing all those. Notably all but one or two of the guardians and guard posts are in this list however.

Okay, that discussion on revamping attack multipliers and hull/armor types across all units in the game should happen sooner rather then later, that is half the units in the game the bomber has a bonus against. (220 of 440 units), and pretty much all of the high value stationary stuff.

Now, there are going to be more AI fleet units defending a system the guard posts or guardians but that is still rather lop-sided.

Anyways, numbers. All numbers are for a Mk I cap, the x1 is the base damage, or x1 attack bonus.

In-Game:
Bomber x1: 78,400 DPS. Bomber x6: 470,400 DPS.
Fighter x1: 117,600 DPS. Fighter x2.4: 282,240 DPS. Fighter x5: 588,000

Wingflier's Proposal:
Bomber x1: 98,000 DPS. Bomber x4: 392,000 DPS.
Fighter x1: 176,400 DPS. Fighter x1.6: 282,240 DPS. Fighter x3.3: 582,120

And replies have been made, see my next post please.

D.

[Draco18s]

Just as a side note, I (or Keith/Chris) could whip up a really quick combat simulator, which would read ship attributes from an XML file and/or allow direct input, and then throw them at each other, and spit out win/loss ratios.

Keith could probably do it faster than myself, as a large chunk of that code already exists, and I'd be more limited and not have perfectly identical results to what happens in the game (I'd have to make assumptions).

From that we could tweak a ship or two--as proposed--and observe the fallout directly.

[Wingflier]

I'm kind of heartbroken I can't try it out for myself.  Literally all it would take is changing a few number values and I could observe how it turns out in an actual game.

[Wingflier]

Are high mark fighters worth their K costs to unlock? Mk II: Yes. Mk III: Maybe, depends on game.

You could win any (and every) game without unlocking Fighters past MK2.  In fact, you could probably win most games (on 9/9 and lower) without even building Fighters at all.  And on the difficulties higher than that, the only reason you NEED Fighters is to increase your Fleet's DPS, not because they are particularly useful or cost effective.

Could you even play a 7/7 game without using Bombers (or a Bomber Bonus Ship)?  Lol, good luck.

And I'm fine with the fighters being underwhelming, this game has hundreds of units and most of those units will be average in direct combat.

Yes, we understand that.  If you weren't fine with Fighters being underwhelming you wouldn't be arguing with me.

Keep in mind the fighter is cheap, I like having a cheap unit that I don't mind sacrificing. If the fighter was brought up to the bombers level of effectiveness then it would have to get more expensive and I would lose that expendable unit I use to shield others.

Once again, we're back to "This is my playstyle, and I don't want it to change".  The entire point of this thread, which was called "Discussion of Different Playstyles" was to make people open-minded that THEIR playstyle shouldn't be the ONLY playstyle in the game.  By buffing Fighters (without increasing their cost, I don't know where anybody said that), you can still use them as a cheap and expendable unit.  That's not what bothers you, what bothers you is that your overall playstyle has to change slightly.  This is unfair considering how many more options and playstyles buffing the Fighters open up.  You shouldn't deny players an entirely new playstyle just because you don't want to have to slightly modify your own.

For me, it comes back to the fact that the fighters role is to kill fleet ships and it is good at that role, it just never really comes up in the game.

I'm not convinced Fighters are particularly good at killing Fleet Ships.  They do 50% more damage than Bombers per cap, but about 5x less than Frigates against the most important types of Fleet Ships.  They only thing they really ARE good at doing is killing Bombers and soaking up damage (well not really, they die quickly to any Guardian or AoE attack) - and like I said, this shouldn't be their only role.

When's the last time you were looking at a system and went "I need to kill that AI fleet ball in the AI system."? That is what you would use fighters for.

According to your explanation, Fighters in this game are like handing somebody a wrench in a room full of nails and screws.  Then you say, "But if there were just more nuts and bolts, this would be useful!"

Okay, but there aren't nuts and bolts, so why in the world are we balancing them as if there are?  I'm balancing Fighters for the current state of the game.  You're trying to balance Fighters for a highly idealistic, non-existent scenario (by nerfing Frigates lol).

The fact that the fighter does not get used as designed does not make the fighter a weak unit, it just means it never gets to show off its strengths.

Refer to wrench in a world full of screws and nails scenario - I'm trying to hand the player a Screwdriver and you're saying, "But if we had nuts and bolts, this would be perfect!"

We get that, thanks.

Now, if you want to overhaul the fighter to change what its strengths are that is fine but remember that a fighter is one of the core units, the 'fighter' type bonus ships are generally kept in the same DPS range for balance reasons so buffing the fighters raw dps would end up carrying over and buffing the dps of a lot of the bonus units.

You're right.  And how often do we see the pure-Fighter bonus ships?  I mean Tachyon Microfighters, Raiders, and Laser Gatlings, these are in serious dangerous of becoming overpowered.  It's no surprise that these are some of the worst and most-underused bonus ship types in the game - because they are almost an exact replica of the Fighters (with some minor differences).

Once again, your argument seems to boil down to: I'm afraid that if we buff Fighters too much, they'll become overpowered. 

I addressed that in my last post.  Even if Fighters did become overpowered, I don't see how that would be a negative thing for the game. 

1. Let's see, Bombers have been overpowered for over a year and it really hasn't affected the game that negatively.
2. It's in beta, so it can be changed or tweaked later.
3. Fighters (in waves) become an actual threat like Bombers and Frigates.
4. Fighters can exist in their own strike and raiding squads because they're powerful and cheap to replace.
5. Blobbing becomes less important since the main role of both Fighters and Frigates isn't just to defend your Bombers.
6. Raiding becomes much easier and less tedious since both Fighters and Bombers (defended by Frigates and Capital Ships) can be sent in their own squads to different parts of a planet.
7. Early game becomes much more active since you don't have to wait so long for your entire fleet to respawn - you can accomplish more with less.
8. You can intercept Bombers more easily because of the 25% speed disparity, meaning less chance of the AI overwhelming you with Bombers before you can react (Total DPS against Bombers is the exact same though).  Also prevents Bombers (and Bomber counterparts) from being the only kind of ship that can cause you to lose the game.
9. You actually have a reason to upgrade Fighters and Frigates past MKII.
10. It opens up new playstyles for people who are sick of blobbing.

[TechSY730]

OK then; I think the discussions have reached the limits of what "theory balancing" and "theory fighting" can do, and now we need to see some of these in action.

Although making the game more moddable would be wonderful (not to be offensive, but this is 2012! Why are you still hardcoding the ship stats into the main library?!  ), I think some sort of combat simulator would be cool, or at least a standalone version of the reference tab. Sure, it couldn't replace real game testing, but it would be a great way to see obvious issues and try to see if changes have any obvious impact.

[Wingflier]

I never really had a problem with the game not being moddable before, but recently I've realized what a HUGE game this is (in terms of all the different aspects), and how difficult it is to just have 1 person doing all the balancing and changing.  Also, the community is split on a lot of issues, and in some cases I think nobody is right or wrong, it's just 2 different playstyles in question.

[Draco18s]

I never really had a problem with the game not being moddable before, but recently I've realized what a HUGE game this is (in terms of all the different aspects), and how difficult it is to just have 1 person doing all the balancing and changing.  Also, the community is split on a lot of issues, and in some cases I think nobody is right or wrong, it's just 2 different playstyles in question.

I can understand why there isn't modding in something like this,* but it would be nice if a few "respected individuals" would tweak some numbers and see how it goes and let Keith deal with actually updating the game.  I'd nominate myself, but I'm a poor choice: I don't play often enough.

*For one, imagine that someone tweaks some value and it makes their game "better."  Then 30 patches later, that change inversely effects their game and they report it as a bug.  What then?  It's not really a bug but they modified their game and Things Went Wrong, but they forgot they did it.

[Wingflier]

Heh, I would hope that if people modded their own personal game, they wouldn't be taking the latest beta updates.  In my opinion a mod should be based on the last stable verson, so things like this don't happen.  That's why when Keith was talking about "breaking" the modding tools every new beta version, I was flabbergasted.  What kind of quack modder modifies the continual beta updates?  They deserve to have the game fail on them.  Fixing the modding tools/mechanics once every major update (so what, once a year maybe?), doesn't seem like an unfair request.

[Draco18s]

What kind of quack modder modifies the continual beta updates?

You'd be surprised.

In any case, once a game has been modded, you can't really ever report bugs for it.  You have no way of knowing if your mod messed something up, and the developer is sure as hell not going to try and figure it out if it's only your mod or if it's the base game.

[Diazo]

Are high mark fighters worth their K costs to unlock? Mk II: Yes. Mk III: Maybe, depends on game.

You could win any (and every) game without unlocking Fighters past MK2.  In fact, you could probably win most games (on 9/9 and lower) without even building Fighters at all.  And on the difficulties higher than that, the only reason you NEED Fighters is to increase your Fleet's DPS, not because they are particularly useful or cost effective.

Could you even play a 7/7 game without using Bombers (or a Bomber Bonus Ship)?  Lol, good luck.

Thank you for dismissing the difficulty levels I play usually play on. I disagree with the statement of fighters being there to only increase DPS at these difficulties, the fighters are there to keep the other ships off my bombers back while the target is being killed.

If there were no ship caps, I would still take a mix of fighters and bombers on my attack runs into AI systems, fighters are a vastly more effective screen both in terms of killing enemy fleet ships and in terms of resource costs.

And yes, you can win games without building fighters, because turrets then fill their role of fleet ship killers, there is no equivalent that can fill the role of bomber.

And I'm fine with the fighters being underwhelming, this game has hundreds of units and most of those units will be average in direct combat.

Yes, we understand that.  If you weren't fine with Fighters being underwhelming you wouldn't be arguing with me.

Keep in mind the fighter is cheap, I like having a cheap unit that I don't mind sacrificing. If the fighter was brought up to the bombers level of effectiveness then it would have to get more expensive and I would lose that expendable unit I use to shield others.

Once again, we're back to "This is my playstyle, and I don't want it to change".  The entire point of this thread, which was called "Discussion of Different Playstyles" was to make people open-minded that THEIR playstyle shouldn't be the ONLY playstyle in the game.  By buffing Fighters (without increasing their cost, I don't know where anybody said that), you can still use them as a cheap and expendable unit.  That's not what bothers you, what bothers you is that your overall playstyle has to change slightly.  This is unfair considering how many more options and playstyles buffing the Fighters open up.  You shouldn't deny players an entirely new playstyle just because you don't want to have to slightly modify your own.

I'm not sure I follow, it would take me only a couple system captures to adjust to any changes. My main objection here is how I understand the games design. My current take on it is a high value target such as a guard post or a force field should not be killable if bombers are not present. That's what a rock-paper-scissors balance mechanic means. Changing the fighter so it's base dps is just under half of the bombers bonus DPS comes awfully close to breaking the balance mechanic in place. (Playtesting would be required to actually tell and this assumes I'm interpreting the what the devs are intending correctly.)

For me, it comes back to the fact that the fighters role is to kill fleet ships and it is good at that role, it just never really comes up in the game.

I'm not convinced Fighters are particularly good at killing Fleet Ships.  They do 50% more damage than Bombers per cap, but about 5x less than Frigates against the most important types of Fleet Ships.  They only thing they really ARE good at doing is killing Bombers and soaking up damage (well not really, they die quickly to any Guardian or AoE attack) - and like I said, this shouldn't be their only role.

And playstyle differences strike again, I don't send Frigates on attack runs because they are too slow, it's just fighters and bombers and I find the fighters kill fleet ships quite handily, one of the reasons I find Fighters are decent as they are.

When's the last time you were looking at a system and went "I need to kill that AI fleet ball in the AI system."? That is what you would use fighters for.

According to your explanation, Fighters in this game are like handing somebody a wrench in a room full of nails and screws.  Then you say, "But if there were just more nuts and bolts, this would be useful!"

Okay, but there aren't nuts and bolts, so why in the world are we balancing them as if there are?  I'm balancing Fighters for the current state of the game.  You're trying to balance Fighters for a highly idealistic, non-existent scenario (by nerfing Frigates lol).

Except there are lots of nuts and bolts, so many in fact that you don't bother with that manual wrench in your toolkit, you take them back to the powered wrench back at your workshop (turrets in your own system).

When I look at a system and see "400 Ship in system", maybe 50 (probably less) of those ships are units that bombers have a bonus against, those other 350 ships are going to be handled by my fighters (or more likely turrets).

I still want that manual wrench in my toolbox however so I have it available if I need it.

The fact that the fighter does not get used as designed does not make the fighter a weak unit, it just means it never gets to show off its strengths.

Refer to wrench in a world full of screws and nails scenario - I'm trying to hand the player a Screwdriver and you're saying, "But if we had nuts and bolts, this would be perfect!"

We get that, thanks.

But there are lots of nuts and bolts. Yes I could add a screwdriver to my wrench to turn it into a multitool, but then my stand-alone screwdriver will never get used.

This is why I'm objecting so strongly, you are effectively buffing fighter DPS by 50% without any counter-acting balance changes. So I see these changes making the fighter stronger at the expense of weakening the bomber and especially the frigate in comparison.

To clarify: The bomber is almost always attacking something it has bonus damage against, so its DPS stays roughly the same. The frigate has no changes so its DPS stays the same. The fighter is almost always attacking something is does not have bonus damage against, so its DPS is going to go up by roughly 50%.

Now, if you want to overhaul the fighter to change what its strengths are that is fine but remember that a fighter is one of the core units, the 'fighter' type bonus ships are generally kept in the same DPS range for balance reasons so buffing the fighters raw dps would end up carrying over and buffing the dps of a lot of the bonus units.

You're right.  And how often do we see the pure-Fighter bonus ships?  I mean Tachyon Microfighters, Raiders, and Laser Gatlings, these are in serious dangerous of becoming overpowered.  It's no surprise that these are some of the worst and most-underused bonus ship types in the game - because they are almost an exact replica of the Fighters (with some minor differences).

Once again, your argument seems to boil down to: I'm afraid that if we buff Fighters too much, they'll become overpowered. 

Pretty much, yes. This is the core of what we are arguing about at the moment. Fighters base DPS is already 150% that of a bomber, boosting the base dps of both fighters and bombers and taking the fighters base dps to 180% of that of a bomber sounds like we are getting into overpowered territory to me.

I addressed that in my last post.  Even if Fighters did become overpowered, I don't see how that would be a negative thing for the game. 

1. Let's see, Bombers have been overpowered for over a year and it really hasn't affected the game that negatively.

I will agree bombers get too many chances to shine at the moment. The answer is to change bombers (or unit armor types) for balance. I don't follow the logic of "Bombers are overpowered, let's buff fighters".

2. It's in beta, so it can be changed or tweaked later.

Very true, probably the best thing about Arcen.

3. Fighters (in waves) become an actual threat like Bombers and Frigates.

This is a good thing why? In the rock-paper-scissor balancing we have Fighters are supposed to get curbstomped by heavy defences, such as the ones players have in their systems.

4. Fighters can exist in their own strike and raiding squads because they're powerful and cheap to replace.

Right now there are no targets for fighters to do raids to strike at. Buffing fighters does not magically make high-value static targets weak to fighters. If there was something like a stationary enclave with a Medium hull that spawned waves of younglings, you would see a fighter only strike group I expect.

5. Blobbing becomes less important since the main role of both Fighters and Frigates isn't just to defend your Bombers.

The main role of fighters is supposed to be killing fleet ships, the reason you do this is to protect your other ships such as bombers.

6. Raiding becomes much easier and less tedious since both Fighters and Bombers (defended by Frigates and Capital Ships) can be sent in their own squads to different parts of a planet.

And why should Fighters be off on their own? Bombers are your heavy hitters, this sounds like you are turning the fighters into bombers-lite which I strongly think is a bad idea.

7. Early game becomes much more active since you don't have to wait so long for your entire fleet to respawn - you can accomplish more with less.

And why did you send you bombers in alone to get picked off? It is a strong theme in my games, when I sent a mixed fighter/bomber pack in I get a lot more ships return then if I sent the same number of only bombers. This is maybe the difficulty talking again but I have to escort my bombers with fighters, and the fighters pull their weight, or I don't get my target dead.

8. You can intercept Bombers more easily because of the 25% speed disparity, meaning less chance of the AI overwhelming you with Bombers before you can react (Total DPS against Bombers is the exact same though).  Also prevents Bombers (and Bomber counterparts) from being the only kind of ship that can cause you to lose the game.

I do support a slight (5% or so) speed increase for fighters. They are supposed to counter bombers so should be slightly faster then them. I also generally find these days it is threat that kills me, not waves, so a mixed group of ships is attacking my home command. (I loathe EMP guardians for the record.)

9. You actually have a reason to upgrade Fighters and Frigates past MKII.

As always, depends on your Knowledge situation. I've done games where I don't unlock Mk III bombers, I've done games where I unlock every fleet ship I have to Mk III.

10. It opens up new playstyles for people who are sick of blobbing.

And splitting your blob up half and half so each group is mixed is not viable?


Ergh. Way too much text.

I think the issue is we have different ideas of how the game should be balanced.

I am in favor of a pretty strict rock-paper-scissors setup where the rock can't beat paper without some external influence. You are more in favor of a balanced approach where units still have their specialties but they are not big enough that outside help is required to overcome the lack of one side of the balance triangle.

I'm going to leave it at that, we've both made our positions clear and we'll have to see what vision for the game the devs have.

D.

[NickAragua]

Beyond the first part of the game (when you can knock over a planet using just fighters + some bulletproof fighters), I almost never use the traditional blob. For me, blobbing generally results in heavy losses, which I find hard to stomach. When I assault an AI planet, I generally do so by blowing up guard posts and command center with a small raiding group, then sending in the fighter blob to secure the beach head while the colony ship does its thing. Bombers get used to take out tough targets, such as fortresses. Targets which, if I might point out, are basically invulnerable to other types of craft.

At the same time, I can keep track of maybe two/three distinct groups of units at a time. Fighters + other units of comparable speed, Bombers and my raid starship group. I use frigates in a purely defense role, so they generally don't get a group. Any more and I start getting confused and press the wrong hotkey. and now I've got spider bots flying by a fortress.

So, if there is some sort of proposed bomber nerf, I wouldn't be in favor. As for a fighter buff, sure, great, but what would that accomplish? I don't generally think of fighters as underwhelming or useless.

Can we hear from someone else on this subject who doesn't routinely play 8 or 9 difficulty games?

[Wingflier]

I am in favor of a pretty strict rock-paper-scissors setup where the rock can't beat paper without some external influence. You are more in favor of a balanced approach where units still have their specialties but they are not big enough that outside help is required to overcome the lack of one side of the balance triangle.

Well I feel like right now it's Sledgehammer-Paper-Scissors.  I don't understand why you wouldn't nerf the Sledgehammer and buff the Paper.  You say you want balance in the Triangle but the only two ships you're in favor of changing are the Paper and the Scissors.  Yes, a redistribution of the hull types would be great, it's not going to happen for at least 3 months, probably longer.  I don't see what's so bad in the meantime about nerfing Bombers and buffing Fighters.  I'm not saying Fighters should become overpowered (I don't think they are in my iteration), but they shouldn't ONLY exist to escort Bombers everywhere like some kind of glorified butler.

Yes, they are cheap, but after the early game cost is hardly a factor anymore.  Once again, you're talking about all these mechanics in theory, I'm trying to balance for the current state of the game.  Hull types ARE a problem, resources are NOT a factor if you upgrade your harvesters (seems like most people do, the knowledge cost is well worth it), so what we are left with is a Fleet Ship that looks good on paper, but which performs in a very lackluster way.

There are several indicators of this:
1. Even on defense (in waves) the Fighter is not a threat to you.  Why shouldn't it be a threat to you?
2. Fighter counterpart ships (Laser Gatling, Tachyon Microfighter, Raider) are some of the worst in the game.  Coincidence?
3. Fighters are barely worth upgrading.  You could probably beat all but the hardest difficulties without building them at all.

I don't know what better indicators you need that this ship is not performing up to par.  I agree that the current resource and hull multiplier mechanics are the source of the problem, but those aren't going to be changed any time soon.  In lieu of that, I ask for a few number tweaks to put them on par with Bombers in terms usefulness.

[TechSY730]

Wait, Laser Gattlings one of the worst?
While I agree that they are no Z bombard or Spire maw, they are still quite useful.

And the argument that swarmer bonus is near worthless. That may be true for smaller battles among equal marks, it might not matter much. But what if you are facing a large number of Mk. III, Mk. IV, or Mk. V swarmers? Then I would start caring about who gets bonuses. (Similar argument with the close-combat)
However, due to the high cap, low individual health nature of most ships with swarmer hull, only ships with a high fire rate can really get much benefit out of bonuses to swarmer, which is why I think swarmer would be better on standard fighters (in all of the suggestions I have seen, fighters continue to have the highest fire rate of the triangle). Are swarmer and close-combat bonuses more situational. Yes. But when those situations arise, you will want it.
If you are afraid of missile frigates being nerfed too much by that (though I don't see how, missile frigates usually beat both fighters AND bombers in kill-to-death ratios in all of my games, and missisle frigates can't really take advantage of swarmer hull bonus due to their low rate of fire), we can find some other hull type bonus to give to frigates.

Also, medium is NOT a useless bonus to have either. For example, many of the spire fleet ships have medium armor, and I think we can agree that the spire fleet ships are pretty deadly.

Now do I think that the distribution of hull types needs work? Absolutely! But even as it is now, there really isn't a useless or even near useless hull type bonus to have.