Starships - Are they too weak?

[CautiousChaos]

Hey folks,

Thought I'd start another discussion with a question.  I'm a fan of the larger capital starships because they're big and cool looking.  But they seem underpowered from an offensive perspective.  5 shorts per round doesn't appear to be much more powerful than having 5 strong bombers or space tanks.  Was this intentional (low offense, high defense) or is there a balance issue?  Who is really using starships?

-cc

[x4000]

Brief note -- while I will be interested in seeing what people think on this at the current stage, the reason behind their current power level is a balance level in itself.  In late alpha versions, some players were using thee spire starships to clean off multiple Mark III/IV planets with no support.

That was obviously overpowered, so they were nerfed a bit.  They still seemed a bit on the overpoweful side, so hence the addition of the Anti-Starship Arachnids, which really bring them down fast.  This makes it so that starships are still powerful, but require more attention since the anti-starships will take them out too quickly.  With the repair stations and space tugs in place, this might make the micromanagement less in this case, too.

We'll have to see, but Starship balance is definitely something I want to look at more.  They should be valuable, but not so valuable that everyone uses them all the time in place of all the other ships, and that's a hard line to walk.

[Admiral]

My first (major) game I built every single starship and had them as part of a max fleet.

The current (major) game I have no current intention of building starships. They took too many research points, take too long to build (one hour per!), and frankly I don't notice their absence whatsoever in my fleets. When I have everything else offensive researched, maybe then I'll try it out.

Alone, the offensive starships die quickly. In the fleet, I'm constantly worried that my light starships will die - but at least they build in 10 minutes. They don't move fast enough to get away if the going goes badly.

On the other hand, I love the scout starships, but the enemy kills them super quickly too. Anti-stealth at every wormhole and the fact that you can't send them to a sector with a pre-defined "go anywhere but hang out at the wormhole" ensures that they are almost always neatly dispatched unless you happen to get them out of the way quickly.

Is there any reason we can't switch to a planet without any ships there, even if we can't see anything? That might alleviate the problem.

Cheers!

[CautiousChaos]

I've noticed that if I have engineers by my starship creator they seem to pitch in (I see their lines dancing on the ship that is being created).  I don't know if this is intentional and/or if it has any effect. 

-c2

[x4000]

I've noticed that if I have engineers by my starship creator they seem to pitch in (I see their lines dancing on the ship that is being created).  I don't know if this is intentional and/or if it has any effect. 

-c2

You can assign engineers to assist starship constructors just like any other space dock, missile silo, etc.  With three engineers, the time to build is more than thirded.

[CautiousChaos]

OOOOoooooo, that's pretty cool.  Thanks for the tip!
-cc

[T-Bone Biggins]

Don't make it a problem like capital ships in Sins of a Solar Empire. If Starships become like Capital Ships in SOSE, then they are so powerful it's crazy wrong. Overpowering single ships makes it un-fun, so I prefer them a little nerfed. Finding a balance will be hard so be careful not to swing either way on too strong or too weak starships.

[Revenantus]

Researching up to the Spire Starship costs a total of 20000 Knowledge Points. Gaining access to Tech II, III and IV Fighters, Bombers and Cruisers costs 21000.

Arguably, if you were going to fight a single engagement, the smaller ships would be more useful because they are more powerful overall and would win an engagement against the starships. Whether this is true for equivalent resource cost I'm not entirely certain but I'm pretty confident that if the ship quotas were filled it would be the case, anyone else have any thoughts on this?

The difference is that the Starships can be repaired to full strength for free, so if you're careful with them they can be an excellent investment in the long term. In contrast, during an engagement you are virtually guaranteed to lose a number of smaller ships which will need to be rebuilt.

Personally I still think they are still just slightly too weak/expensive at the moment though.

On the other hand, I love the scout starships, but the enemy kills them super quickly too. Anti-stealth at every wormhole and the fact that you can't send them to a sector with a pre-defined "go anywhere but hang out at the wormhole" ensures that they are almost always neatly dispatched unless you happen to get them out of the way quickly.

Is there any reason we can't switch to a planet without any ships there, even if we can't see anything? That might alleviate the problem.

Since the addition of Wormhole Command Stations there are a number of situations in which I do not want ships to actually stop at wormholes, being able to view a 'greyed out' version of the system in which I can still set move orders but not see the enemy ships would be handy. Maybe if the player had been to the system previously the greyed out system would show ship ghosts at the last known enemy locations.

[Revenantus]

Advantages of Standard Ships;

- Can be split into smaller task forces.
- Can be deployed into battle more quickly due to individual's lower build times.
- Fleets have greater maximum strength when ship quotas are filled.
- Specialization (E.g. Bombers against forcefields, Cruisers against SF Command Posts).

Advantages of Capital Ships;

- Less vulnerable to Lightning Turrets.
- Greater survivability and easier to repair.
- Immune to Ion Cannons.

I'm having trouble deciding which type generally provides better value for resources in terms of strength. It seems to me that Starships provide fairly good returns in terms of amount of Metal spent, but don't appear to do as well when considering Crystal cost.

The Starships' survivability is such a huge advantage - by far it's my primary reason for building them. The 8k Knowledge point cost on the Zinth and Spire ships is rather painful though.

[Haagenti]

My first 40K or so research is spent on II/III Fighters, II/III Bombers, II/III Cruisers, II/III special ships, engineers, and some others (e.g. III forcefields if my Adv. Factory is very vulnerable, cloaking detectors if I get hit by a lot of cloaked ships, some turrets if needed) . By the time I have amassed that research, and have built up all of the fleet to go with it, 20K extra research for the Spire is simply too much for just a few ships. Especially if I can find some Adv.Research (which require another 7K a pop to fully build)

So I build the initial starships once I have nothing else to spend metal+crystal on, but that is about it for me. My suggestion would be to decrease the research for the higher level starships and up the metal/crystal cost and construction time even further. Or to increase the number of starships that can be built, so I get a bigger ROI.

[darke]

For the set of starships "Zinth" and "Spire":

Things that inspire more "must kill that now": Ion Cannons

Things that inspire more "I'm going to loose a lot of ships": A few dozen Tech III/IV ships under a Mk 3 forcefield.

Things that inspire more "Must change tactics now!": A wave of ships from a Special Forces base, or re-pop, heading towards a pack of vulnerable ships (science vessels, or a newly constructed command center).

A Zinth starship just popped out of nowhere on an almost cleared planet (came through from a wormhole as a wave? Really no idea I didn't see it until it hit my command center). What did I do? Lassoed a third of my nearby force and said "kill it". It went down pretty quickly. That really should not be the reaction (or the effect) of something described as "a mobile fortress".

Yes, I was hitting it with mostly Tech II/III and a couple of IV ships. Yes, it had no extra ships around it for some reason. Really though the reaction was, "I'm not going to save my command center, that sucks", not "panic!".

I killed at least one Spire starship earlier in the map just after I pushed through the wormhole. The only reason I noticed was that it was on a tiny slither of health left after I pushed my ships through the wormhole waited a little for them to clear things out a bit, then pushed them back to my planet to heal up. Maybe 10 seconds and there was a huge pack of ships around it.

Really, the reaction to seeing the AI fielding a couple of those starships should be to react like it's an Ion Cannon in the early game; take them down as fast as possible since you can't afford the loss of ships. And even then expect it to hurt. The AI should react in a similar way, if they see the starships appear of this calibre, they should probably hit them with everything they've got. Since otherwise they know you'll just retreat and repair, something the AI doesn't seem to do.

As it is, the Raid and Flagship starships feel like they're worth it. They're both pretty chunky so they'll survive really well. The Flagship is an excellent upgrade over the Light starship. The raid starship does feel like it needs a bit more something. Some sort of bonus damage to forcefields (or being able to shoot things underneath them), or some sort of bonus to being by itself. It ends up just being tossed in with a pack of regular ships otherwise, and it doesn't have a "use this for raids" feel to it. In fact given it's strong vs bombers, it currently looks like it's much more of a defense ship then an attacking/guerrilla warfare one.

The Leech starship just doesn't feel like it's worth the cost. It's essentially a slightly slower Raid starship, but it has the parasite ability, but it takes 3 times as long to build. Parasite is really nice when there's lots of those ships in your force, but when the parasites start to get too low a percentage, you just don't get them taking over many enemies. I haven't played with Leech enough to be confident, but it doesn't feel like it's worth the cost of 8000 knowledge for a small amount of essentially extra resources at the stage of the game you'd get them.

In fact even when I don't play parasites as starting ships, I don't get the leech starships, so there's obviously something wrong with them!

I'm inclined to think that Raid:Leech starships should mirror the Fighter:Parasite pattern. Leech should have less health then Raid (since raid is more hit-and-run-and-repair whereas Leech should be in a pack of ships), a bit more shielding and take only 5-10 minutes longer to build then the Raid, rather then 3 times as long.

Also the Leech should either be cheaper on the knowledge (since it's a lot more expensive to build), or not depend on the raid ship to build it (or honestly they both should be seperate and cost 6000 after the changes suggested above, since that way you'd have something of a decision to make ). The Flagship/Zinth/Spire upgrade path works conceptually, but the Raid/Leech one just seems odd.

[Nessic]

     Starships in this game are something I really wanted to love when i started playing this game, but the more i try and use them, and experiment with other tactics, The more I find them to be not worth the research points or the resources.

     In the early game, trying to build a light starship before taking your 2nd or third planet slows expansion down to a crawl, the 14k/24k cost can buy between 80-160 smaller ships(depending on what you have and are using), and those ships will be out the gate faster do more damage, and survive longer then a single light starship. After you've taken those planets, its still almost always never a good idea to build a light starship, they just die to fast if there being focused on, or don't do enough damage if there not.

    Flagships to me have the same problem, a single flagship is not worth 200 or so tier 1 ships. Theres no situation where I would rather have it over the lighter ships, and mixing them together has the same problem - 400 small ships, specialized so i can bring them against things like spec op based (and not take high loses) or forcefields (and not take forever), always seems to work better then 200 and 1 flagship.

    As for zenith and spire ships, well.. I never actually ever needed them to win, even in games where i researched them, In the end they just fell bye the wayside while i built huge fleets of smaller ships and tech IV stuff that i needed to get anyway.

    To me, starships should be something special, Something that really really improves the performance of a fleet its with. Maybe giving them sheilds that cover a small group of ships near them, and damage boosting as well (both only working when Its not moving). To make them into the true backbone of any fleet that includes them.

    Making them cheaper would work as well, but really.. it would be more boring that way.

    Another thought might be to make the later starships bigger- and maybe fire more, lighter shots. Really just a cosmetic change, But it would certainly be much more intimidating if you could see the ship itself laying waste to things- and not an icon-, on the zoomed out map^^.

[x4000]

Don't make it a problem like capital ships in Sins of a Solar Empire. If Starships become like Capital Ships in SOSE, then they are so powerful it's crazy wrong. Overpowering single ships makes it un-fun, so I prefer them a little nerfed. Finding a balance will be hard so be careful not to swing either way on too strong or too weak starships.

Totally with you there.  That's how it used to be, and it was definitely un-fun.  If people feel like bombers are perhaps a bit of a must-have item at present, I really don't want that to be the case with Starships.