Nominations for buff/nerf polls for Bonus Ship Types

[keith.lamothe]

We're still figuring out the particulars of our internal schedule for the actual release of 7.0/VotM but either way we're still in that "less than two weeks until release" timeframe.  So we've basically got some time where I can't really make fundamental or architectural changes to the game without risking a shaky (either in stability or balance) 7.0, but relatively simple changes like "how much health does ship X have?" are totally fair game.  And then there's fixes and polish on relatively recent or relatively critical stuff, of course, though from the sound of it most of that's been dealt with as of 6.042 (just gotta update the objectives tab and the tutorial, and check for other items I missed).

So let's see if we can identify the most-UP and most-OP bonus ship types (for player and/or AI use) and see if we can sand down some of those edges before the official.  Naturally we don't want to turn an "OP but fun" into a "balanced but boring" unit, and stuff like that, but there's generally something that can be done without running into that problem.

For this particular set of polls I'm only focusing on the bonus ship types, which means any type that gets unlocked based on your initial homeworld pick(s) and from Advanced Research Stations.

So please post your nominations for these four poll categories:

1) Bonus Ship Types That Need A Buff In Usefulness-To-The-Player
2) Bonus Ships Types That Need A Buff In Usefulness-To-The-AI
3) Bonus Ships Types That Need A Nerf In Usefulness-To-The-Player
4) Bonus Ships Types That Need A Nerf In Usefulness-To-The-AI


=== Important Note ===

I am a lazybusy programmer and I use regexes (text matching) to scan these threads to get a list of all the nominations, so please put each nomination on its own line with the string "*Nomination:" in front of it (no double-quotes) and indicate which category (or categories) you're nominating it for, so for example, my nomination:

*Nomination: Neinzul Firefly, Nerf for Player-side

And feel perfectly free to include as much discussion/explanation of these as you like, just separate from those lines so I don't miss them.


Thanks for the feedback

[chemical_art]

*Nomination: Zenith Hydra: Buff In Usefulness-To-The-Player

Self regen of minutes is not useful when repairs can make a unit fully repaired in seconds

Easy solution: Dramatically reduce the regen time (note: This would actually make hyrdras really annoying in AI hands though)

Hard solution: On death, make the hydra spawn offspring that self-attrition. (note: unique mechanic)

[keith.lamothe]

Hard solution: On death, make the hydra spawn offspring that self-attrition. (note: unique mechanic)

Been thinking about that this morning, and I think it would work fairly well in a somewhat different way: using the new Core Shredder Post's mechanic for gaining build points as it takes damage, have a hydra spawn one "hydra head" for every 1/(1+mark) of its max health taken in damage.  There'd just be the one mark of spawn, so the higher marks just spawn more.

I'd probably ALSO increase their regen rate to like 30-seconds-to-max, and:
- probably cut them from 128-cap (on high) to 64-cap, to mitigate cpu load from the spawns a bit
- probably cut the DPS maybe 20% because it's honestly rather good even just by itself right now; I'm quite open to input on whether that should be done, though.

[TIE Viper]

I like where this is going a lot!  This makes it match its style to its name quite well. 

[Wingflier]

Hard solution: On death, make the hydra spawn offspring that self-attrition. (note: unique mechanic)

Been thinking about that this morning, and I think it would work fairly well in a somewhat different way: using the new Core Shredder Post's mechanic for gaining build points as it takes damage, have a hydra spawn one "hydra head" for every 1/(1+mark) of its max health taken in damage.  There'd just be the one mark of spawn, so the higher marks just spawn more.

I'd probably ALSO increase their regen rate to like 30-seconds-to-max, and:
- probably cut them from 128-cap (on high) to 64-cap, to mitigate cpu load from the spawns a bit
- probably cut the DPS maybe 20% because it's honestly rather good even just by itself right now; I'm quite open to input on whether that should be done, though.

Ohhhh, I like this idea much more than what is currently in place. 

Maybe you could make the cap low...like 4 or 5, but make its real value come from "dying", so that it can "spawn" more heads. It would be a unit that you would *want* to die, for full effectiveness. Pretty neat I think.

[Tridus]

I'd prefer it not be at its best when dying (we have no lack of disposable ships already), but this design makes it get stronger as it takes damage and that's pretty cool.

[keith.lamothe]

I'd prefer it not be at its best when dying

Memories of the old-school WoW Paladin... not entirely justified ones, probably.

[Mick]

I'd prefer it not be at its best when dying

Memories of the old-school WoW Paladin... not entirely justified ones, probably.

I thought it was priests who had Improved Death.

[Wingflier]

Category 1 (human ships that need buffed):
1. Anti-armor ship - Really weak, really crappy damage, and armor isn't a big problem.
2. Raiders...just useless.
3. Chameleon - Gimmicky bomber balanced around a useless mechanic.
4. Electric Shuttle - Not bad but could probably use a slight DPS buff.
5. Snipers - DPS way too low to be effective. Completely inferior to Bombards and Sentinel Frigates.
6. Spider Bot - What do these even do? Like I get that they are supposed to stop "raids" with their anti-engine damage, but they are so weak health wise, and their range is so low...I just can't justify using these ever. Youngling Nanoswarm are much more effective for this duty, plus get reclaim.
7. Etherjets - too weak (health-wise) to be effective.
8. Armor Booster - obvious reasons.

[Wingflier]

I'd prefer it not be at its best when dying (we have no lack of disposable ships already), but this design makes it get stronger as it takes damage and that's pretty cool.

That's what I meant, I just wasn't very clear.

[keith.lamothe]

3. Chameleon - Gimmicky bomber balanced around a useless mechanic.

Actually it's a Gimmicky bomber balanced as if it didn't even have said useless mechanic

[Tridus]

I'd prefer it not be at its best when dying (we have no lack of disposable ships already), but this design makes it get stronger as it takes damage and that's pretty cool.

That's what I meant, I just wasn't very clear.

Ah cool. Yeah a unit like this that spawns "heads" as it takes damage and has regen would be really neat. You'd want it to get hit but stay alive so it keeps spawning more heads.

[TechSY730]

This is basically going to be a renomination of some stuff, but.

Need buff in usefulness to, well, everybody:
*Nomination: Etherjet: Too fragile individually, would gladly have the cap go down some in return for more individual health
*Nomination: Raptor: Basically, still mostly balanced according to 3.0 stats, making it almost worthless these days
*Nomination: Raider: Almost the same as above, but not quite as bad, but still really bad
*Nomination: Anti-armor ship: High armor piercing isn't very useful if neither the individual base damage or the cap base DPS are high, and the anti-armor most certainly does not have either, thus making it sort of pointless.

Needs buff in usefullness to everybody, but not quite as much:
*Nomination: Spire gravity ripper: Unless those things got buffed at some point to have multiple bullets per salvo, these need a buff. Single shot + low cap + gimmick that does best when spread out = not very useful ship. I wouldn't mind this as much if their base damage was good, but it is only meh. (Again, not sure if it already got buffed by a previous "buff poll" or not, if this sort of change already happened, then ignore this nomination)
*Nomination: Armor booster: Give it a minimum armor to boost to if the boostee's armor * multiplier < the min to boost to. This would help keep it useful in the current game where many ships don't have armor, until the armor rework can happen. (Non hardened forcefields will probably need to get armor boosting immunity if this change goes through)

Need buff in usefullness to humans:
*Nomination: Zenith Viral Shredder: The reproduce penalty per cap is a bit too sharp now. (Will link relevant mantis post with suggested alternate penalty calculations later)

Uncertain, need more info (thus, not really a nomination yet):
Grenade Launcher: As the flak explosion graphic basically doesn't draw on my machine for whatever reason, I can't really tell what these are like now. What is the explosion radius, and the max number of things hit per explosion?
Zenith Reprosessor: The bonus DPS of these things are insane, but how much money do these things really get in normal combat, given it can't "extract" money from a reclaim immune target
Tackle drone launcher and Spire blade spawner: Did the AI get the 1.5 "cost" thing for these things that the Lightning warhead launcher thingy got for a short stint? If not, it needs it due to the super-linear nature of usefulness per count that spawner ships tend to get. If they already have an inflated cost, then they are just fine as is now.

[keith.lamothe]

Raptor: Basically, still mostly balanced according to 3.0 stats

It's been completely rebalanced since after 4.0, I assure you.  The numbers were much worse before

Anti-armor ship: High armor piercing isn't very useful if the base damage per shot isn't high

How so?  Isn't high armor piercing actually more important if you have low base damage, as if you had high base damage you would be mostly overshadowing most target armor anyway?

[TechSY730]

Raptor: Basically, still mostly balanced according to 3.0 stats

It's been completely rebalanced since after 4.0, I assure you.  The numbers were much worse before

Correction then, it is still somewhat "behind" in terms of keeping up with the "inflation". How much so is hard to say.

Anti-armor ship: High armor piercing isn't very useful if the base damage per shot isn't high

How so?  Isn't high armor piercing actually more important if you have low base damage, as if you had high base damage you would be mostly overshadowing most target armor anyway?

I just realized that and edited my post above to reflect this case. However, the IIRC, anti-armor still fails the other condition where armor-piercing would be useful, if cap DPS is high even though individual base damage per shot may be low.