Prerelease 3.028 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, munitions adjustments)

[quickstix]

B) create a support line of starships, has three tiers, tier 1 munitions boosts, tier 2 munitions boosts + speed boosts within a range, tier 3 gives munitions, speed and shield boosts(say 1k,3k,5k knowledge cost and 3 ship cap).

I like this idea. Support starships would be awesome. I find my regular fleets do enough damage to the enemy, so I find myself putting knowledge into supporting ships to augment my fleet (with the occasional Dreadnought or Cloak Starship as required).

Add a repair radius to it (and remove offensive weaponry for balance) and you've got Carriers.

My two cents.

[MaxAstro]

I like the idea of different ships applying different amounts of boosting and the boosts not stacking - I think that is the best and least micro-heavy solution that has been suggested thus far.  The arbitrary cap on max number of ships boosted is I think a bad idea overall.  With cloaker starships it's an important balance concern, but I think it encourages too much microing with attack boosting.

However, in such a case, I ~heavily~ disagree with munitions boosters being better at all levels than starships.  We can all agree on how powerful attack boosting is, so making munitions boosters the be-all end-all source of attack boosting seems like it would tend to unbalance things in their favor.  I agree that munitions boosters should be the best at attack boosting overall, but I don't think that attack boosting should be basically useless unless you happen to luck out with munitions boosters.  Given a choice, I would suggest a "weakest to strongest" boost level something along the lines of:

Light Starships -> Flagships -> Boosters Tech I -> Zenith Ships -> Boosters Tech II -> Spire Ships -> Boosters Tech III -> Core Ships -> Boosters Tech IV

That way with extensive starship research, a player can at least get munitions booster quality attack boosting for some of their ships, but someone who actually has munitions boosters and wants to devote the research to them can still easily surpass what most or all starships are capable of - not to mention being able to boost a larger number of fleets and at a lower resource cost than starships would be capable of.

Another reason for this suggested progression is it requires research devotion - I don't think munitions boosters should be the best attack boost in the game without even spending any knowledge on them.

A seperate line of support starships would be a decent idea IMO (as long as it follows a progression resembling the one above) however I am somewhat against it for the reason that taking attack boosting away from mainline starships both nerfs them and reduces their "flagship" flavor.  Plus adding a new line of starships just for the sake of taking attack boosting away from mainline ships ups the complexity of the game for (IMO) minimal gain.

[Black]

Starships should be better at boosting that munitions boosters because otherwise munitions boosters become the best bonus ship in the game, easily without a fight. They would be as dominant as Space Planes before they were rebalanced just because attack boosting is so powerful.

If Starship boost doesn't stack, then you would have to invest knowledge in them to get higher bonuses. You have to build them from a separate constructor, and starships are/will be a big economic investment. On the other hand munitions boosters are good ships on their own in addition to munitions boosting. In the new proposed model, I would usually invest in starships, unless I have munitions boosters in which case I would invest in them instead. This is a good role for a bonus ship.

[RCIX]

As it is, the only reason i build light starships is for their boosting power. if that is severely cut/nerfed, people will go straight for the more expensive/better flagships, ignoring the light starship. If it had more health and attack, it would be better worth the investment.

[keith.lamothe]

First let me summarize what I see as being the major problems:
Munitions boosters are either too powerful if they are the only major source of boosting, or useless if their function can be achieved by the fleet line.

But if the boosters are a lot better at it than the fleet line, both could have their place.  If the numbers are right.

Granularity is fine as long as precision isn't an issue.

Math precision?  Nope, not a problem here.

First, I'm really not really in favor of any ship cap on the number of boosts.  All that does is make swarm ships(which usually have smaller sizes and are easier to fit around starships) worse than more powerful ships with lower caps(would you rather have 250 beam frigates boosted or 250 laser gatlings?).

I meant a cap that would not be hit unless you were artificially cramming more ships into that, say, 2000 radius circle than would naturally fit there without collision.  So you couldn't micro-spam-force-stack ships onto the booster to get more total boosts.  We would err on the side of allowing that spam-stacking, but only to some degree instead of an arbitrary amount.

Making so that one ship overrides another ships boost would pretty much mean that people wouldn't bother with light starships again once they got any ships that give a better boost.

Yea, I'm not so sure about that part, and was thinking that maybe the top 2 boosts could apply, or something like that.  I'll probably go with straight-override at first since it's technically easier and people can have a chance to see if it really is a problem or if it's ok to have to space out their fleet ships and boosters a bit.

Thanks

[Collic]

About the munitions boosting. I'm with (probably the majority here) in that I don't like the new caps, or at least they are far, far  too severe. A cap of 10 on a light starship is so trivially small simply removing the boosting entirely wouldnt really make much more of a difference.

I think keeping the previous boosting everything in range mechanic would be preferable along with, as others have said, reducing or eliminating the multipliers stacking. Perhaps all light starships could have no boost stacking, with the higher tier ships having a far smaller, incremental stacking of the overlapping boost effect (say 1.4, 1.8, 2 ) on up - with only the highest multiplier applying to affected ships.

Brain Wave !..

In fact, how about making the boost multipliers for overlapping ships dependant on another, lower teir ship being present in that overlap. To explain, in order to get (for example) a 1.4 boost from a flagship, that ship would need to be affected by a light starship for the effect to apply. That way in order to benefit from a higher boost you need those lower tier ships in your fleet to reap that benefit, and it will only be possible at certain points in a fleet. each type of different overlapping starship provides say, a .4 boost, which incrementally increases.

So if you have a group of ships with overlapping light starship coverage - a straight x1 (no stacking)
light starships and flagships - x.1.4
light star ships,flagships and zenith - x1.8
all of the above, with a  spire ( or maybe the spire is unaffected by boost stacking, and just has a higher base boost effect, of a similar amount) - x2

The stacking multiplier is just an example, but does it sound like a reasonable solution? It would mean mixed fleets would be desirable, and the lower tech ships would still be worth bringing along, it also still drastically reduces the power of munitions boosting for starships. Perhaps it's just far too complicated though.

I also like the idea that higher ships could provide an additional benefit to ship defence, accuracy/hit chance. Hit accuracy/chance would make sense since i don't believe there is currently a ship that does this. You could easily justify this as the (spire starship, for example) providing some form of assisted targeting to the smaller ships.

All i know is, at present the changes render fleet ships as something i can't see myself using, and of course munitions boosters aren't available in every game or to every player (or any game unless you use complex ship types, i believe). To put this in perspective, i haven't played that many games yet (new player), but so far, I have never had access to munitions boosters, and my first games were played without them even being available.


edit: I've just read through that, and it is indeed, far too complicated. i'll leave the post up though.

[Kjara]

I  honestly would hate losing all of my boost if I managed to lose all of my light starships to a dreadnought even though I have spires, zeniths and flagships still around.

I meant a cap that would not be hit unless you were artificially cramming more ships into that, say, 2000 radius circle than would naturally fit there without collision.  So you couldn't micro-spam-force-stack ships onto the booster to get more total boosts.  We would err on the side of allowing that spam-stacking, but only to some degree instead of an arbitrary amount.

My concern here is that some ships are bigger than others.  I can fit a heck of alot of tiny ships like laser gattlings around a group of starships.  Thus to not have an adverse effect on games where you have gattlings(and say unlock 2 or 3 more of the swarm type of ships) the limit would have to be so large that its generally meaningless in most cases.  I guess as a fallback its not a bad idea, but I'd really hate for it to be small enough to actually kick in when someone isn't doing those stacking type tricks with any unit mix.

Short version: I'm ok with it as long as it won't kick in any legit uses.

Yea, I'm not so sure about that part, and was thinking that maybe the top 2 boosts could apply, or something like that.  I'll probably go with straight-override at first since it's technically easier and people can have a chance to see if it really is a problem or if it's ok to have to space out their fleet ships and boosters a bit.

I mean even the top two counting just means that you still don't bother with light starships and have to invest in zeniths a bit sooner(if the extra boost is significant, if it isn't then you just don't bother with zeniths until way late if at all). I don't know, i just feel like this sort of idea lends to only really using the top x of the line. 

Really I still think the simplest solution no matter what else we do is to make each ship type either not stack with others of its same type, or only stack to a limited amount(in the case of boosters mostly, since making people want to have at least 2-3 boosters with each group isn't a bad idea, besides just having a few there for redundancy).  I'm not a huge fan of the only the best of * has an effect, as then you have no incentive to use the lower marks (esp if its a unique effect, you are very unlikely to have more than 4 reasonable combat groups at any point, and just the zeniths + spires will be enough to cover them).


What about the following:
Light starships lose boost completely(and get bit of a damage/hp boost themself)
Flagships give a unique .6
Zeniths give a unique 1
Spires give a unique 1.4
(with all fleetships you hit a 3x boost, or 4x damage)

mkI munitions give .2, can stack up to 4
mkII munitions give .4, can stack up to 3
mkIII munitions give .6, can stack up to 2
mkIV munitions give 1, can stack up to 1

And have a hard cap of 4x boost no matter what you do.
Thus just boosters(if you have mkIV) is enough to hit the cap, or flagships plus mkI-mkIII boosters is almost enough, but if you don't have boosters, you are going to be 1 boost level behind the max someone with boosters can get.

Edit: Of course everthing can be scaled by some factor if we want to have a smaller overall boost cap.  This was just setup to scale with the max boost of 4x.

[Collic]

I  honestly would hate losing all of my boost if I managed to lose all of my light starships to a dreadnought even though I have spires, zeniths and flagships still around.

You're right, that is problematic. I did just mean the stacking multipliers would be lost, not the boost effect entirely. You could get around that by just having the multiplier start at the lowest tier ship, so zeniths would get the bonus a flagship would get from overlapping starship coverage and so on (in your example). The lowest tier ship in a fleet would never provide more than a x1 boost, but each different starship a tech level higher that overlaps with it would benefit from the increased boost amount on a similar sliding scale to what I mentioned.

The mechanic is preserved but the max multiplier is just lower because you don't have each teir of star ship in 'the chain' available, you wouldn't need all of them, but you would have a greater benefit if you did.  You wouldn't lose all of the boost stacking, you just wouldn't hit the x2 in my example with spires, it would cap out at 1.8 instead.

So it would just be 1 type of starship overlapping coverage: x1 boost,
two types x1.4,
3 types overlapping x1.8
4 types x 2 etc

It's hard to explain, because its far too complicated in the first place!

Something along the lines of your suggestions is also a good way of approaching it. Having the ships not stack with others of the same type I definately agree with. Maybe instead of munitions boosting the light starships get a slightly different role entirely?

edit: I am reluctant to see light starships lose munitions boosting altogether thinking about it. As I've said, munition boosters aren't in every game; i think if they just didn't stack with each other it would already be a quite reasonable nerf to their power.

[Temper]

I think in terms of boosting in general it might be worthwhile to consider that every new boost can be less efficient, starting with the best boost being 100 percent, second best being fifty percent, third best being twenty five percent.

And the boosting would not start overlapping like that until every ship in the group was boosted.  Or maybe something, I'm just throwing stones, I guess.

[deMangler]

Thanks for the mouse-moving interface tweak. I love it!

dM

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for the mouse-moving interface tweak. I love it!

dM

I was wondering if the other changes had been posted

[I-KP]

Attack Boosting:-

(I know, I know.  Dead horse, flogging thereof.)

IMHO attack boosting should not...
-   ...reach x5 without having pretty much reached the end of the tech line on most if not all of the attack boosting options.  Obtaining x5 very easily at the very start is mental.
-   ...encourage ‘blobbing’.  Bad thing.  Veeery bad thing.
-   ...make the Light Starship redundant again (which is what kicked all of this off in the first place).
-   ...take away any Munitions Booster (ship) uniqueness or desirability. 

There is one mechanic that ticks all of those boxes and that’s the non-stacking mechanic.  Some might say why bother with Light Starships if their boost is going to be outclassed by any higher level Starship/Munitions Booster that’s present.  This is a valid concern but one that can be easily assuaged with careful balance of the boost range and boost cap numbers.  If the range is suitably small, i.e., not as massive as it is now, and the cap isn’t overly generous, all lesser grade boosters will still find a use in areas of the fleet that aren’t reached by any other boosting source.  Gods forbid, a mechanical advantage in actually not blobbing!  (And also a rather nifty way to get advantageous use out of KLs somewhat splendid Formation function.)  Who’d ‘ave thunk it.

Other people can wrangle over what the numbers should be until they’re blue in the face if they so wish – and they shall – but as long as the above four points are respected (from a play point of view) then at least this particular bunny will be happy. 

[keith.lamothe]

IMHO attack boosting should not...
-   ...reach x5 without having pretty much reached the end of the tech line on most if not all of the attack boosting options.  Obtaining x5 very easily at the very start is mental.
-   ...encourage ‘blobbing’.  Bad thing.  Veeery bad thing.
-   ...make the Light Starship redundant again (which is what kicked all of this off in the first place).
-   ...take away any Munitions Booster (ship) uniqueness or desirability.

Yes, I agree very much with all of these.  The trickiest one seems to be not encouraging blobbing, even with the non-stacking mechanic.  The difference is that you'd just want to blob all your ships around your highest boosters, instead of blobbing enough boosters together to get good 5x (or whatever the max is) coverage.  It is my hope that players will have enough distinct "fronts" that they will simply not be able to keep all their active ships within boost range of a high-booster (which probably means nerfing boost range, though not too much).  Attack boosting should be powerful, but it seems like there is a problem if one can boost one's entire active fleet with nothing but fleet starships.  If you get munitions boosters it should be more prevalent, but even then...

Anyway, this is going to be a multi-iteration balancing process, and I hope y'all stay as enthusiastic about posting jeremiads against future implementations as you were this time around (though hopefully there will be less provocation of said response from y'all as we move forward)

[I-KP]

The trickiest one seems to be not encouraging blobbing, even with the non-stacking mechanic.  The difference is that you'd just want to blob all your ships around your highest boosters, instead of blobbing enough boosters together to get good 5x (or whatever the max is) coverage.  It is my hope that players will have enough distinct "fronts" that they will simply not be able to keep all their active ships within boost range of a high-booster (which probably means nerfing boost range, though not too much).

Exactly, and that's the cheese: coming up with the proper numbers (coverage and cap) that allow the Starships/Boosters to assist a goodly bunch but not too much so as to limit the frontage of a 'typical' 1,000-strong fleet for the lesser Starships to still be effective within.  One thing is clear though: the current range of several thousand is way too large and gobbles up far too much frontage; the result there can only be that the lesser Starships have no opportunity to be effective when non-stacking is in place and they simply won’t ever get built.  

I am generally of the opinion that boosting should be a highly localised effect (tho perhaps not quite as localised as it used to be - that seemed pretty much like touching distance only) and there is no rule that says every Fleet ship must be in receipt of a boost and I think perhaps recent exploratory buffs have fostered that unrealistic expectation.  Boosting should be a minority effect, not a majority (given a roughly typical count and distribution of Fleet assets).

Anyway, this is going to be a multi-iteration balancing process, and I hope y'all stay as enthusiastic about posting jeremiads against future implementations as you were this time around (though hopefully there will be less provocation of said response from y'all as we move forward)

“When armed with a stick all that one requires then is but something to poke with it.”
-- Me (just then).

[Goekhan]

-All munitions boosting ships now have a cap on the number of ships they can simultaneously boost:
Light Starship: 10 (range still 2000)
Flagship: 20 (range still 2000)
Zenith Starship: 40 (range 1000 -> 2000)
Spire Starship: 80 (range still 2000)
Core Starship: 100 (range still 2000)

Admittedly I haven't tried this in game yet, but that seems a little extreme.  Considering fleet sizes in this game, boosting 10 ships isn't even worth mentioning.  Also, this seems like it would tend to add micro - if your fleet of five light starships can only boost ten ships, you want them all boosting the same 10 ships generally.  Unless they automatically prefer to do that...

Also this seems like it makes munitions booster horribly overpowered - relatively speaking.  They are cheaper and with a much higher cap than starships - not to mention faster, I believe - but now they have the same range and a high enough cap that you can still easily x5 your entire fleet with them.  This actually seems backwards - starships should be the backbone of fleets and boost hundreds of ships, and munitions boosters should be the small support ships that boost a couple dozen at a time.

A freaking Spire Starship having half the max boost number of a tech I munitions booster is silly.  Attack boosting needed a nerf, but Starships did not, and this change heavily nerfs starships, to the point that attack boosting no longer even seems viable unless you are lucky enough to get munitions boosters (why would I slow my fleet down to 18 just to get a petty x2 on 50 ships?)

I agree on this. Starship "nerf" is a big impact. AI may have 2000+ ships on a planet, and you depend on your starship boosts to survive a wave that big / destroy AI presence on that planet.

This will only add a huge amount of micro - checking if your starships are alive, if not, build another one, get it in the same group. Or check your munitions boosters, and see if they're alive aswell, reinforce numbers if necessary.

On the other side, anyone having munitions booster will be benefiting MUCH from this - lots of ship groups, and you're macro-microing them most of the time. I don't like blobs aswell (that is the term, right?) but this is just nonsense.

And also, with those changes, if I don't have munitions booster, no starship type aside from light starship, and there's only one way that enemy can get through during a cross-planet attack, I don't see a way out. Especially if you're playing against tech AIs. As your fleet "combined strength" is nerfed, your fleet will mostly be obliterated.

And to be honest, I always researched & built other booster starships, but NOT because they have good damage or HP. They boosted my fleet, and if I lost one, others would keep the boost on 5x so that fleet damage will remain mostly intact.

No, I'm not going to install this patch, or any that has this change. my 0.02$