I also stuck this on Mantis, but here are a few balance notes from my play this evening.
Inhibiting Tesla turrets and corvettes are terrifying. I lost multiple "Fleet with 4 planets worth of ships and tech" trying to take out a mark 2 planet with a bunch of tesla turrets. Is there any counter to them? I don't have anything tanky enough to get in close and survive a more than a few ships. There aren't enough starships, and fleetships just die by the capfull. PS once I captured the planet and then attacked another planet, the AI recaptured it from me and I had to fight the battle all over again.
If the AI has stacked gravity turrets, your ships can be reduced to 1 speed, which means that they are basically helpless to long range turrets on a planet. Perhaps the max slow from gravity should be capped? Or we need more units that have powerful engines.
Engineers would repair my drones even when the carrier had left for another planet, which seemed to limit the number of drones I could actually have in the battles. I vote that drones should not be repairable if their mother craft isn't on the planet.
Carrier starships only ever produce Mark 1 ships. I feel like carrier drones need to be upgraded or there's not much point.
I was playing on difficulty 5 with a few minor factions, all pretty much friendly. I managed to take 3 planets (so 70 AIP), then I was literally unable to make progress. After like 30 minutes of effort I took out the planet with the tesla turrets, then ran into either a Mark 4 planet with an ion cannon or a huge nest of gravity turrets that prevented my ships from getting in range. Possibly people who are better than I am at the game may be able to make progress from there?
There's a save game in
https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=20022 and a few non-balance related comments in there as well.
