Fallen Spire balance (+ other issues)

[Histidine]

In my time here, I’ve seen some complaints about the Fallen Spire ships making the regular fleet ships and starships completely obsolete (e.g. see discussion this, this and this). There are two ways this could be fixed:

Let FS buff common ships
The city hubs could give a galaxy-wide armor bonus, damage bonus, or something else like passive self-repair. Or just increase all ship caps.

Nerf FS ships
The obvious problem with this one is that the FS fleet needs to be strong to deal with the threats Fallen Spire throws at you. The exos, Mothership, etc. can simply be nerfed concurrently, but regular AI forces at the high AIP involved might become very dangerous.

We could get around this by reducing the planets the player needs to take in FS. The player needs a lot of planets because city hubs are so space-hungry, and because of the knowledge needed for top level modules and the Battleship/Dreadnought. Because a lot of the FS research requires the common turrets and forcefields, just reducing the K cost of the FS-exclusive techs won’t really help.

Some ideas to get around this:

• Reduce city hub space needed from 2 hops to 1.
• Let hubs generate knowledge like the Spire Archive does.

Other issues
Various other things I noticed:

• The first city shard is way, way harder than the others, owing to  you not having any FS ships (except the four frigates) with their wtfomg lances down an attacking column’s throat (the movement pattern of an exo/pursuit group flying through a wormhole). On my Diff 7 and 8 games, I don’t think I’ve ever survived it without a good serving of cheese (my current SOP is to get as many of them as possible on a planet adjacent to the homeworld, then drop an EMP Mk III on them). Could stand to be toned down a bit.
• The railcannons may be a bit too expensive (especially given that they just don’t work against a lot of MkV stuff).
• Make Refugee Outpost drop remains. Pretty please? Also, they could stand to generate their own forcefield (or ignore forcefields), else you need to cover them with human forcefields thereby greatly reducing the power of the otherwise awesome HBC Mk. IV equivalent.
• Still needs a “gone for good” message re: destroyed shards.

So, what do people think?

[Diazo]

I'm still working through my first game of FS so I do not have a lot  of experience with it, but my take on the complaints about FS rendering everything else obsolete is a good thing.

I say this for two reasons:

1) It makes for a different game. If you reduced the power of the FS ships down to being in line with other ships, they become just more ships in your fleet. Right now the fact that they are FS ships means something.

2) It does not really render your other ships obsolete, it just overshadows them. I have not reached that point yet, but I do not believe you can defend against the late game stuff that gets thrown at you with FS ships alone, you need your other units to survive.

Combine with the fact that FS is optional, I quite like where it is both balance-wise and thematically.

Also, when you say "first city shard" do you mean recovering the shard or building the first city?

I found recovering that shard relatively easy actually, but I am now at something like 15 failed attempts to build the first city. That's an issue with the starships though, not fallen spire. (Well, the AI being Speed Racer hurts too.)

Regardless, I actually like the fact that FS is so out there in terms of firepower, it pretty much makes for a completely different game when you enable it and that is a good thing. (In my opinion anyway.)

D.

[keith.lamothe]

FS units overshadowing other stuff is intentional.  The overall scenario (if pursued far enough) is full-scale-war vs the normal guerilla-war, and the main units on the battlefield have a similar scale difference.  Though as Diazo said, the normal units are overshadowed, not made totally obsolete/useless.  A really big pile of fleet ships (even just the mkIs) and turrets (mkIs plus what you unlock naturally while upgrading your capital ship modules) makes even FS exos hurt, and your capital ships and city defenses can't be everywhere at once.

Let FS buff common ships
The city hubs could give a galaxy-wide armor bonus, damage bonus, or something else like passive self-repair. Or just increase all ship caps.

I don't mind the idea of it buffing things, but having any kind of unlock/whatever actually modify the stats of existing ships mid-game is one of the core design no-no's of AIW.

Nerf FS ships

No

We could get around this by reducing the planets the player needs to take in FS.

One of the design goals of FS is that if you want to fully escalate you need to take a fairly large chunk of territory (specifically, more than you would normally be comfortable with).  It's supposed to be full-scale-war, not assisted-guerilla-warfare.  But you can get the latter by just sticking with the refugee outpost or maybe a single city.

The first city shard is way, way harder than the others

That's a fair point.  You do mean the "exos during first city's construction", right, not the actual shard recovery?  Or?

The railcannons may be a bit too expensive (especially given that they just don’t work against a lot of MkV stuff).

I'm happy to buff them (by reducing costs or whatever) if there's a consensus on this.  I'd thought they were in a pretty good place becuase I saw a lot of folks using them, though there've been some changes since then.

Make Refugee Outpost drop remains. Pretty please?

No, you lose the outpost, you lose the outpost

Also, they could stand to generate their own forcefield

That would make them very hard to defend, as anything directly targeting a forcefield hits that ff unless it's completely encapsulated by another ff.

(or ignore forcefields), else you need to cover them with human forcefields thereby greatly reducing the power of the otherwise awesome HBC Mk. IV equivalent.

Oh, right.  I could make them ignore the 75% damage reduction of an FF, so they get maximum coolness value out of those giant guns.

Still needs a “gone for good” message re: destroyed shards.

True.


There also needs to be more variety in the city-building phase, specifically not having shard recoveries be so very similar to each other.

[Faulty Logic]

The overall FS balance feels about right. It certainly is a different game, and the "stop at SRO, city1 or city2" options are good.

The first city shard is by far the hardest. Fix this by increasing the difficulty of the other recoveries, and a slight decrease to this one's difficulty.

The outpost should get the ability to shoot through forcefields, otherwise it doesn't really work defensively (to the point where defending your HW is harder rather than easier).

specifically not having shard recoveries be so very similar to each other

Yeah, it would be nice. I don't think this should be a priority, however.

[Histidine]

Personally I don't mind the state of FS balance so much either, though I was curious how many people thought FS ships were dominating the game too much.

The first city shard is way, way harder than the others

That's a fair point.  You do mean the "exos during first city's construction", right, not the actual shard recovery?  Or?

The pursuit waves, actually. The city construction exo is also possibly too hard, but it's the shard chase that sticks out in my experience.

The railcannons may be a bit too expensive (especially given that they just don’t work against a lot of MkV stuff).

I'm happy to buff them (by reducing costs or whatever) if there's a consensus on this.  I'd thought they were in a pretty good place becuase I saw a lot of folks using them, though there've been some changes since then.

The opportunity cost from not having a HBC instead (for the bigger railcannons) is probably a liability in most fights where the enemy can actually challenge your Spire fleet, but I still like them. If nothing else, they make cleaning up stragglers much more convenient. You get two mark levels with one tech (spider turrets), too.
They just hurt the wallet a fair bit 

There also needs to be more variety in the city-building phase, specifically not having shard recoveries be so very similar to each other.

Couple of ideas for mixing it up:

• Third shard: The survey completes, but it's not a shard at all, it's a miniboss! (A golem with escort, for instance)
  Said miniboss comes for your territory killing things until it dies, dropping the shard which you can not transport back to your homeworld. The shard may or may not have the usual waves chasing it.
• Fifth shard: The shard spawns... on the AI team, which tries to transport it back to its homeworld and through the exo-galactic wormhole where you can't reach it. Stop the shard before it gets away! Once you "kill" the shard, you can put your own engines on it and take it back to your homeworld where it belongs.

(could swap the order, or move them around)

[Diazo]

Personally I don't mind the state of FS balance so much either, though I was curious how many people thought FS ships were dominating the game too much.

The first city shard is way, way harder than the others

That's a fair point.  You do mean the "exos during first city's construction", right, not the actual shard recovery?  Or?

The pursuit waves, actually. The city construction exo is also possibly too hard, but it's the shard chase that sticks out in my experience.

Interesting. I've had everyone telling me the 3rd shard (1st city shard) chase was absolutely horrendous. I then proceeded to fortify my empire to the max (running matter converters to support everything I had so much stuff built) and it was kind of a let-down as I get it on the first try without major issues. I lost quite a lot of units, but that was expected, the AI never got a shot off at the shard itself.

I then proceed to try and build the city and I am being flattened. I'm on something like save-scum #15 trying to build it.

I should not count 5 of those tries though, I upgraded to 6.011 and the Spire/Zenith SS Mk II only costing Mk I in terms of building the exo-wave? Ya, that wave does not even notice my defenses.

There also needs to be more variety in the city-building phase, specifically not having shard recoveries be so very similar to each other.

Couple of ideas for mixing it up:

• Third shard: The survey completes, but it's not a shard at all, it's a miniboss! (A golem with escort, for instance)
  Said miniboss comes for your territory killing things until it dies, dropping the shard which you can not transport back to your homeworld. The shard may or may not have the usual waves chasing it.
• Fifth shard: The shard spawns... on the AI team, which tries to transport it back to its homeworld and through the exo-galactic wormhole where you can't reach it. Stop the shard before it gets away! Once you "kill" the shard, you can put your own engines on it and take it back to your homeworld where it belongs.

(could swap the order, or move them around)

One thing is that the objectives can't move until the player starts the event. Your fifth shard idea, it spawns on the AI team..... on the far side of a gravity drill. The shard is gone because the player simply can't make it to the shard regardless of what he does.

Having said that, rather then a mini-boss, make it an "AI-Shard Hybrid" that has a funky weapon of some sort that the AI is developing that drops the shard when killed. Give this ship the "Can't Use Wormholes" limitation so it can't run away. This would be a pretty tough fight, but one the AI-Shard Hybrid dies and drops the shard, the chase waves would be correspondingly smaller as the AI has already spent its efforts to defend its prototype ship.

Or the first shard, make it a capturable adjacent to a human homeworld. Something like an "AI Research Facility". The chase waves would then turn into a one-time spawn like the first city build wave. The wave would also be small enough to be easily handled and would be an introduction to exo-waves will be coming as you progress down the fallen spire story. It also is something besides "yet another shard chase". As it is adjacent to the human homeworld, it was going to be captured anyway with how much territory Fallen Spire requires.

Having said all that, the fallen spire is in a pretty good place at the moment and not a priority for developer time.

D.

[TIE Viper]

Doing these scenarios for fallen spire would be awesome!

Having said that, rather then a mini-boss, make it an "AI-Shard Hybrid" that has a funky weapon of some sort that the AI is developing that drops the shard when killed. Give this ship the "Can't Use Wormholes" limitation so it can't run away. This would be a pretty tough fight, but one the AI-Shard Hybrid dies and drops the shard, the chase waves would be correspondingly smaller as the AI has already spent its efforts to defend its prototype ship.

Or the first shard, make it a capturable adjacent to a human homeworld. Something like an "AI Research Facility". The chase waves would then turn into a one-time spawn like the first city build wave. The wave would also be small enough to be easily handled and would be an introduction to exo-waves will be coming as you progress down the fallen spire story. It also is something besides "yet another shard chase". As it is adjacent to the human homeworld, it was going to be captured anyway with how much territory Fallen Spire requires.

Also, I don't think playing fallen spire makes the other ships obsolete.  I usually keep one fleet near home to defend against waves and use the spire fleet for expansion necessary combat.  And I've never played a fallen spire game that I didn't win with the alt condition that I didn't need both fleets when trying to kill the AI homeworld and they release, EVERYTHING.