My thoughts on current balance

[keith.lamothe]

My plasma siege! NOOOOOooooo......

Haha, yea, anything that gets that much good said about it is bound to get the bat   But on the bright side, the knowledge cost of unlocking II/III of them has been reduced by nearly half.

[TechSY730]

Yay, normalization of stats among the starship lines AND a more standardized, far saner knowledge costs for higher marks.
This balance work was sorely needed, and I am glad it is finally done.

I'll give you some feedback this evening, I hope.

[Diazo]

My plasma siege! NOOOOOooooo......

Haha, yea, anything that gets that much good said about it is bound to get the bat   But on the bright side, the knowledge cost of unlocking II/III of them has been reduced by nearly half.

That's the biggest reason I'm not really complaining.

At least for next game, can I get a refund on this one? 

With those K changes, it might actually be possible to have enough starships to do a homeworld assault without fleet ships support.

That's been my niggling worry all game, the homeworlds have enough high damage units that even starships would die pretty quick and I've relied on saturating them with so many targets they can't kill them fast enough in my past games.

(Except the Heavy Beam post, that thing is evil.)

Now with the lower K costs and higher HP, I'll have more starships present, and each starship will have more HP, when I make the HW assaults.

We'll see, that's all we can do.

Well, assuming I can survive that CPA somehow.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

At least for next game, can I get a refund on this one? 

Sure, it's in the mail, aboard Carrier #7

[Diazo]

At least for next game, can I get a refund on this one? 

Sure, it's in the mail, aboard Carrier #7

Well, I'll get it back as I die then. 

On my first attempt at it last night, I did kill carrier #7, just before my home command died.

On the patch notes, maybe note that the Bomber is named Heavy Bomber to clarify it can only hit large targets?

D.

[keith.lamothe]

On the patch notes, maybe note that the Bomber is named Heavy Bomber to clarify it can only hit large targets?

Oh, was that the reason that was asked for?

[TechSY730]

On the patch notes, maybe note that the Bomber is named Heavy Bomber to clarify it can only hit large targets?

Oh, was that the reason that was asked for?

Also, in the ship description/flavor text, if it isn't already there, can you make sure that it mentions the large target only limitation?

[Diazo]

On the patch notes, maybe note that the Bomber is named Heavy Bomber to clarify it can only hit large targets?

Oh, was that the reason that was asked for?

I think it was? (That was not my request originally.)

Great, what did I miss?

* Diazo goes back to re-read the thread.

Or are you just screwing with me? Hmmm...... 

D.

[Lancefighter]

I think the normalization of the knowledge costs will indeed go very far as to solving the problem.

The spire starships now should also be much better off, with the exception that I have no clue how well 'medium' does as a hull type overall. If its anywhere near as bad as heavy.. (speaking of, I thought we reduced bomber's bonus to heavy a while ago? is it by design it has the same bonus against heavy as it does ultraheavy?)

[Diazo]

I think the normalization of the knowledge costs will indeed go very far as to solving the problem.

The spire starships now should also be much better off, with the exception that I have no clue how well 'medium' does as a hull type overall. If its anywhere near as bad as heavy.. (speaking of, I thought we reduced bomber's bonus to heavy a while ago? is it by design it has the same bonus against heavy as it does ultraheavy?)

Fiddling with the bomber's bonuses was talked about as a band-aid fix to how dominant bombers currently are in one of the recent balance threads.

Nothing was actually done and it is kind of waiting on the attack multpliers/hull type re-work that we are hopeful will happen in the future.

(As I understand it, the hull-type rework is on the 'we want to do it, but it's a lot of work so we'll look at it later' list.)

D.

[Draco18s]

Lucky you did not hit a gravity effect going that deep.

Gravity guardians are scaredy cats.  I did have to micro around a few, but seriously, they're more likely to head towards player-space than engage a strike-force.

But what difficulty was that? Only 2000 ships seems low for 5 killed systems and the deep strike threat.

Might've been closer to 3000.  I don't recall the exact number.  Difficulty is 7 to 7.6, I don't recall.

[Hearteater]

On the patch notes, maybe note that the Bomber is named Heavy Bomber to clarify it can only hit large targets?

Oh, was that the reason that was asked for?

I asked for it because it differentiates it from Bomber Fleet ships and that was an issue I had as a new player.  It actually caused me some confusion for a game or two.  For some reason I saw that and thought there were Starship versions of all the triangle ships.  Besides, Heavy Bomber Starship sounds cool.

[Hearteater]

Almost forgot: Heavy Bomber Mantis issue that can be marked resolved.  And credit for the Heavy Bomber name should go to sol_ilya.  He's the first person I know of to suggest it.

[Mánagarmr]

My Leech ship :/ *pout* Overall, changes look good on paper. Will comment further once I've actually toyed with them in game.

[Martyn van Buren]

I haven't tried the new zenith and spire lines (though I should; I liked the zenith ship before it became its own line), but on the whole the only one I find dies too easily is the flagship.  I don't mind having to be careful about using plasma siege and bombers, since they are both quite good at a specialized thing, and I find leeches hold up quite well under fire.  But flagships seem like they really want to get thrown into a fleetball but seem to me to die rather quickly when you do so.  I think I'd favor increasing their armor a bit and switching their hull type from heavy to close combat.