Nebula battles balancing

[Cinth]

Hmm, methinks there needs to be a separate difficulty setting for the nebulae.  Because if I nerf the challenges (notably the anti-snowball mechanic of the enemy production increasing as it loses bases) there will be people like Cinth that just won't get a challenge from it.

He says that because I'm probably the ONLY one to complain about the severity of the RS nerf.  I'm all up for tweaking the spawn rates if it really needs to be done.  I'm not ok with balancing based on what players perceive as the reward mechanism in the nebula.  Just as an example: the reward from the RS scenario is based partly on how many enclaves survive.  The rest is dependent on the remaining combined health for the starbases.  Mourners is based on the max number of enemy ships you break out in one go.  Base vs Base do have a time component but it is fairly lax.   

[Toranth]

It isn't a requirement to level up before you start, it just helps you more than not doing that in the first place.  5 levels gives you MK II Missile, Laser and Shield Modules.

I think going in to your first scenario with unlocking Missiles is a disaster, at best a bogfest, waiting to happen.  I usually try for level 3 (Missile Mk II) or level 4 (shields Mk II) before I try any scenarios.

Hmm, methinks there needs to be a separate difficulty setting for the nebulae.  Because if I nerf the challenges (notably the anti-snowball mechanic of the enemy production increasing as it loses bases) there will be people like Cinth that just won't get a challenge from it.

I do like this idea, actually.  It'd be fun to turn some of these scenarios up to 11 and see exactly how nasty they can get.

He says that because I'm probably the ONLY one to complain about the severity of the RS nerf.  I'm all up for tweaking the spawn rates if it really needs to be done.  I'm not ok with balancing based on what players perceive as the reward mechanism in the nebula.  Just as an example: the reward from the RS scenario is based partly on how many enclaves survive.  The rest is dependent on the remaining combined health for the starbases.  Mourners is based on the max number of enemy ships you break out in one go.  Base vs Base do have a time component but it is fairly lax.

Actually, I agree with you.  I miss the skin-of-your-teeth variety of battle that the old RS encounter was.  The problem was that the there were two stated goals in the scenario: 1) Save as many Neinzul as possible, and 2) don't get wiped out.  But in actual play, before you can even get you Champion into range of the Ravenous Shadow, all but *maybe* one or two of the Enclaves were already destroyed.  If it was player failure causing them to die, that's one thing.  But when you are completely unable to do anything about it, that's just frustrating.

The speed and attack range nerfs were enough to give the Enclaves a better chance to escape.  I think the other nerfs were unneccessary.  Just expanding the allowed spawn area for the Enclaves would have been enough, in my opinion.

[Cinth]

I go all out and grab Laser Mk II so Lvl 5 for me.

RS pretty much only needed a speed nerf, and not really a big one. My standard play is 8 champs (I have done all of them with a single) and 4x RS to me was extremely fun.  Stated goals aside, the enclaves, to me, have always been a secondary objective.  Especially after the reward was shifted to include the starbases.

@Keith: If you add sliders are you going to "uncap" the rewards too   I'd like to see just how many Dyson Gats I can really earn now.

[orzelek]

I actually think that it's the rewards scaling thats a bit broken.

Take the mourners - you are single ships against the spawns. Allies that spawn have average lifetime of seeing enemies or your shield ending. Then jump in there in a battleship hull and tell me how to spawn more than one spawn and survive if you are one ship against 45-50 faster opponents/spawn that tend to go and target the star base instantly.
You are simply stuck with fighting spawn after spawn by design. Which basically means that you are guaranteed lowest possible reward.

The RS one is similarly based - when RS targets enclave it gets a fixation disorder. There is no way to prevent it from killing the enclave unless you kill him. And he is not easy one to kill. You can try some tricks but amount of enclaves you can save is very limited.

For me the "standard" scenarios - aka star base ones are quite well balanced. They might be actually to balanced at first - you have small hull, not so much fire power and your influence on battlefield is mostly limited to shielding stuff and not dieing. This leads to quite some of these taking very long time to finish. It gets better once you get larger hull/better modules since you can go and actually attack the bases.

I admit I didn't try the drone modules really. Two reasons for that:
1. Issues mentioned earlier - they can't be controlled at all. And their lifetime is quite often equal to your shield life time - it gets shorter further in scenarios you go. Shield is a static skill with no improvements with levels.
2. Usual rng stuff... not having any drones to chose from until quite late in scenarios.

[Cinth]

I actually think that it's the rewards scaling thats a bit broken.

Take the mourners - you are single ships against the spawns. Allies that spawn have average lifetime of seeing enemies or your shield ending. Then jump in there in a battleship hull and tell me how to spawn more than one spawn and survive if you are one ship against 45-50 faster opponents/spawn that tend to go and target the star base instantly.
You are simply stuck with fighting spawn after spawn by design. Which basically means that you are guaranteed lowest possible reward.

Without the scaling in this one, all you would have to do is camp out at the base and eat the waves as they spawned.  There is no incentive to do more.  This scenario with BB hulls is one where slicer drones work really well (you can use drones to pop the prisons even).

The RS one is similarly based - when RS targets enclave it gets a fixation disorder. There is no way to prevent it from killing the enclave unless you kill him. And he is not easy one to kill. You can try some tricks but amount of enclaves you can save is very limited.

The RS is there because of the enclaves (thematically anyway).  The reward variation here isn't that large. Before the nerf I could get at most 5 enclaves, now 7-8.  Really, if you want enclaves, turn on the faction.

For me the "standard" scenarios - aka star base ones are quite well balanced. They might be actually to balanced at first - you have small hull, not so much fire power and your influence on battlefield is mostly limited to shielding stuff and not dieing. This leads to quite some of these taking very long time to finish. It gets better once you get larger hull/better modules since you can go and actually attack the bases.

These do scale up as you get larger hulls, but your firepower becomes much more noticeable. Using EER as an example, expect that one to take about 40 minutes or so (Keith's average time to complete during the AS beta, if I remember correctly). 

I admit I didn't try the drone modules really. Two reasons for that:
1. Issues mentioned earlier - they can't be controlled at all. And their lifetime is quite often equal to your shield life time - it gets shorter further in scenarios you go. Shield is a static skill with no improvements with levels.
2. Usual rng stuff... not having any drones to chose from until quite late in scenarios.

Drones can be selected and given orders.  Slicer drone targeting priority can be improved (I've complained about it several times). Drones (in scenarios) work best as a smoke screen.  They might get one shot, but they eat shots that could have been tanked by your ship or allies.  Sorrow's Fang Intimidators are always going to eat through drones though.

[orzelek]

I won't continue the quoting - will go with points:
1. Mourners - with current scaling what are you saying "all that you would have to do is is camp out at the base" is currently everything you are capable of doing (at least on second play through). With that size of waves you can't pop any prison or that 100 or so ships will pop you and star base.
2. Hmm you get enclaves from RS scenario? Good to know. I haven't noticed since I had bunch of them at my HW already.
3. Ordering drones around - thats excessive micro. They are short lived and constantly produced. For me they would need to take current order and targeting preferences from champion to be considered useful.

[Cinth]

1. Any nebula you do after 9 (with the duplicates enabled) is not intended to be balanced.  It is there as a bonus. Try at your own risk   The scenarios were balanced up to CA hulls. The 9th scenario where you unlock BBs is the official end.  10-15, while not specifically balanced, are completable in every incarnation (1-8 champs).  Everything I have mentioned in previous posts has been specifically geared to scenarios 1-9.

2. Yep, you can get a few.  I'm pretty sure that's the start of bringing back the friendly Enclaves mechanic.

3. TBH, I hate extensive micro.  I deal with the champs because it is an isolate section of the game and after I've completed the scenarios, they join the fleet.  If I need drones to target something specific, I click up all the ones available and give them a target.  So that's pause, double click, click, and resume.  There is also a keyboard shortcut that selects every mobile military unit.  You could use that also.  I don't consider that excessive micro for controlling drones.  Also, bomber drones make good strafing runs. 

[Wingflier]

Personally I think the scenarios are in a good place. No changes needed imo.

[Oralordos]

I think adding a nebula difficulty would be a good idea. As of right now, even on the lower difficulties, the nebulas are rather difficult.

[Cinth]

I think adding a nebula difficulty would be a good idea. As of right now, even on the lower difficulties, the nebulas are rather difficult.

Nebula difficulty isn't tied to AI difficulty (as far as I know). Max hull size unlocked and # of champs present.

[Oralordos]

Exactly. So if you are a new player trying things out as a champion, it is quite difficult.

[Bognor]

Hmm, methinks there needs to be a separate difficulty setting for the nebulae.

I'd like this.  I haven't yet had a chance to try AI War with the liddle person in my life, but I think it would be ideal if I could send him into nebulae at reduced difficulty.

[Cinth]

@Oralordos:  Whelp.... You could do as I did. 1/1 AIs until you are comfortable with everything.  Then find the difficulty of AI that you should be playing against. Or ask questions here on the forums. Lots of experienced players here that are willing to lend advice (for free even)

[Oralordos]

I've been around since the 4.0 days. I am reasonably good at it. The problem is the Liddle people and less strategic friends.

[Zeyi]

I have found the first nebula very tedious recently, I don't like he mechanic where they get stronger as they lose bases, it doesn't seem to make sense but I can deal with it. It just feels they require WAY too much attention to win in any reasonable time. Although it was a lot easier when I enabled two champions but that's something I wouldn't want to do every time.