Author Topic: Units without triangle counters.  (Read 3080 times)

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Units without triangle counters.
« on: November 21, 2010, 12:39:29 pm »
I've noticed that there are some units without triangle counters, which are intensely annoying to face in any game. Countering them essentially relies on luck of the draw in bonus units, or simply throwing starships at them.   I don't really know if this is intended or not.

Electric Bombers: The most notorious owing to the 'strong fleet ships' issue.  However, even ignoring that, they hard-counter Bombers, which have a (small) bonus against Heavy. 

Units with Composite Armor: For example, the Z Beam Frigate. Composite armor is rare, but virtually nothing has bonuses against it. There isn't even a turret type. 

MLRS:  The principle counter to Medium armor is the Fighter. Unfortunately, MLRS groups tend to leave small smears where Fighter groups used to be.  MLRS are also hard as nails, with lots of hit points and tough armor. The only real bright spot is that their per shot damage is too low to hurt units with armor. The only effective counter I've found is Mk 2 Riot Starships, which can sit on a group and kill/permaslow them using tasers. To be honest the Riot Starship tactic is overpowered, but I've got nothing else that works on MLRS besides sitting there and bashing them for 15 minutes with starships and bombers.

Deflector Drones: Same as the Electric Bomber and MLRS, Deflector Drones hard-counter their triangle counter, the Missile Frigate. Deflector Drones have extremely low HP however, so they can be killed effectively by Fighters and Bombers. It's just kinda weird that your best counter to this unit isnt what the hull type bonuses lead you to believe. 

Offline Fleet

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2010, 01:36:43 pm »
Sounds like you have some good thoughts, you should consider posting in Mantis.

Offline Winter Born

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2010, 01:54:02 pm »
Moving to 4.0 and hull types was a big task. These are some of the balance issues to bring up on mantis. Look at the recent fighter tweeks.

Ty

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2010, 02:03:36 pm »
I'd rather put specific recommondations in matis and i dont have any here.

Offline Winter Born

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2010, 03:48:04 pm »
I'd rather put specific recommondations in matis and i dont have any here.

Ok makes sense

Offline unclean

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2010, 06:42:03 pm »
I attached a spreadsheet of triangle counters, at least according to whatever mysterious and possibly outdated method the game uses to generate it.

Fi=fighter and so on

Offline Fleet

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2010, 08:39:59 pm »
I think its enough you present a specific issue, and in that case the developers can consider a fix. If you were just saying "fighers are imba" than they might not be able to respond, but if you say "fighters are good against only 3 ship types" or "fighters are weak against this starship, and they are supposed to be strong" then they will happily address that. Specificity in the issue will more than make up for not having a particular fix in mind.

Offline x4000

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #7 on: November 22, 2010, 09:35:19 am »
This is something we'll be looking at, so no worries. But the composite thing is working generally as intended -- starship use is intended to be required nowadays.
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Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #8 on: November 22, 2010, 04:19:16 pm »
But starships dont actually counter composite. They just have good firepower against everything... So what I end up with is spending about 5 years to kill the Z Beam Frigates while they crawl around and blow up 9000 turrets.   8)

Offline x4000

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2010, 04:20:20 pm »
I think there is a starship that does... but if not, then perhaps that will be a specialization of one of them.  Hmm... maybe the fleet ship line (light, flagship, etc).
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Offline Ozymandiaz

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Re: Units without triangle counters.
« Reply #10 on: November 22, 2010, 05:50:37 pm »
fighters seem to be totally awesome against turrets now a days as well, not much left after a wave of them, unless you got insane amounts of defenses (like I do in on of my systems in my current game).
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