Tank Balance Revisited

[Spikey00]

Tank Balance - Revisited
I feel that Tanks are still somewhat unbalanced--now few units are able to hit them, as intended, but they don't have a hard counter anymore.  Observing a group of my units (including Tanks), they took far too long in destroying enemy Tanks, and I would like to see a few changes to them, yet again.

I believe a change could be tested on:
- Increasing unit HP but keeping shields at same value (or have them be incremented per tech, 20 000 => 25 000 => 30 000),
- Frigates (missiles) bonus against Tanks (negating shields).


The bonus shouldn't be too great--perhaps ~20 shots to destroy one tank for a T1 Frigate.

[I-KP]

Maybe not give Frigates the boost vs Tanks as that only recreates the problem they started off with: too slow and never reach a target.  You don't want to give the best long range Fleet ship the bonus vs Tanks.  Make Bombers the good stuff vs Tanks; makes sense logically as Bombers are meant to be the best vs fields/shields.

[Spikey00]

Whichever works--my initial ideology was mostly due to the idea of missile penetration of the shields.

[Vaos]

Bombers have a pretty good range at mk III/IV/Core (more than 4k!), so this could be a problem, just changing the distance where they die from 7k to 4+k.

Maybe you could make melee units very potent against them? But having one of the basic units strong against them seems pretty important or else the AI would stomp you with those.

[Spikey00]

Quite a dilemma for that idea--Tanks are geared for up-close combat, but melee is too; the melee ship would have to come in range, and therefore the Tank would be able to bear arms upon it.  Melee ignores shields, though...

[Vaos]

Melee ignores shields, though...

That's why melee units make sense as a counter. A little more resistance from the melee units to tank fire and it may work out.

[x4000]

Thanks are really meant to be very slow and powerful against most short and middle-range ships in particular.  I am pretty happy with the balance overall, this is what makes them a bit more of a unique ship.  There are counters, but if they have too strong of a "hard counter" they won't feel very tank-ish, right?

[Spikey00]

I was thinking about this, and I generally agreed with your statement--however, I will need to do some testing to see if long-ranged ships are better against them.