Totally agreed on Hissho being too powerful and there's already few good threads about the main issues.

Almost 1/5 of techs have turned into behemot's ones

That bothers me a bit as well. Maybe few of the more generic behemoth-only techs could be streamlined into existing techs because they're cluttering the entire tech tree for what is essentially one gameplay mechanic.

Also in regard to Behemoths in lore I was also really disappointed that they don't really play any actual role in the Hissho faction quest, story wise I mean. Neither do Concretes or the Fomorians, despite the intro showing a Hissho fighting the latter. Many missed opportunities.

And yeah the Behemoths being so common also makes the ship size advancement during a game all bonkers (though as Pluvinarch mentioned gameplay wise they have to be accessible to everyone). They're now the biggest ship type in the game, yet all factions can produce them much earlier than normal carriers or in some cases even medium-sized ships. This wouldn't be too troubling if like you said they were rare Endless discoveries (like the Hissho themselves get their Behemoth at the start), but the very early unlock quest means everyone is creating these mysterious mega-ships nearly from the word go. A far cry from Endless Legends' own mega units.

Perhaps the Behemoths could use a similar gradual size-advancement visual like the Vodyani arks currently do, meaning the basic Behemoths start out visually small (maybe medium or carrier sized) but gradually get bigger as the game goes on and players unlock new Behemoth tech, finally culminating in the huge designs like we have now.

The Hissho specific resource scavengers trait (fids from planetry mining probes) is incredibly strong in my personal experience. 

I haven't done enough testing to see which specific modules are best or just having one on a behemoth is ideal instead of maxing it out. Or if you could possibly win with a science victory or economic (I personally have economic victory off) with using the core cracker instead of the regular tier two mining probe, before the depletion points kick in. 

With a few tier 2 and 3 techs I got each mining probe (on slow, not sure if duration is affected) to provide 225% of a planet's yield to all planets in the home system for 50 turns(Not sure if the yield percentage is correct but it was for sure was above the regular planet yield). This was with the tier 2 long duration mining probes and not the core cracker which would have been much greater. With a 1 turn cooldown and a 5 max stock as well(I researched the +4 movement to behemoth speed tech which increased the speed from 2 to 6, could be suboptimal).

From here on, instead of colonizing planets, I sent probes on them with defending fleets to keep other colonizing ships at bay. The only 2 reason to colonize from here forth was to gain access to luxuries since those aren't mined and to prevent pirate lairs from spawning. And those you do not even need them to become colonies, since after one or two mining probes on  fertile planets ought to keep your capitol growining inspite of the -50% modifier. Since your capitol is the only place you need luxury resources and only 1 outpost will leach from there at a time. 

On a side note the fids from the probes does not convert into influence with the propaganda infinite contruction, while for the other infinite non-propaganda constructions it converts correctly. Making the flat +40 influence faction quest building rather useful and probably makes the +influence planetary specialization better than the Hissho unique since mining probes do not leech influence (from unique planets).

In short, mining probes with fids make each population in your capitol provide the output of multiple gas giants and it is optimal to have your other sytems be have 1 planet colonized at max with the rest being exploited by mining probes.

They may not appear the same but the Cultists are back and better than ever.

*Edit this is turn 55 on slow at serious difficulty(so around turn 37 on normal but probably 42 due to movement speed making all the difference with setting up the snowballing mining probes). 

The mining probe modules do stack with four tier 2 "slow" miners (not core crackers) the leeched planets add precisely 200% of the planet's based fids with 40 turn duration.

jhell wrote:

Hi,

A quick note about the Hisshos, the mining rate for mining modules is not supposed to stack. So while it is a strong mechanic, it wasn't intended to be that strong. It's still interesting to stack mining modules though to get increased cooldown and probe duration.

@SaintIndus: thanks for the feedback, if a lot of players feel this way we'll look into reducing the number of Behemoths you can field, although from previous feedback it didn't feel like it was too many.

I ment what they are TOO cheap for acient machines. And destroyer upgrade is too overpowerful and imbalanced. Core crackers are useless now!

What's the point of the Planet Crackers if you now have cheap System Crackers?

jhell wrote:

The planet crackers have a shorter cooldown and can still destroy planets inside a Citadel's shield.

But they still have to recharge and be on system's orbit too long. If they could recharge out of the system target, thats would make them much more dangerous. And thus modification of core crackers doesnt made system cracker expensive. I better build a few cheap begemots and make a cheap upgrade to destroy systems across the galaxy from my home system.

jhell wrote:

That's a good point, we'll see if it's feasible and not too powerful!

I think if the shot will definitely need to spend resources, the destroyer will be more balanced. At least 60 green and 60 purpule resourse

jhell wrote:

@SaintIndus: thanks for the feedback, if a lot of players feel this way we'll look into reducing the number of Behemoths you can field, although from previous feedback it didn't feel like it was too many.

It's too many. I'd also propose a sub-limit on certain specialisations, like the obliterator.

CyRob wrote:

I would say at the very minimum require at least a turn if not more of being on a system uninterrupted before being able to shoot. Otherwise, you could easily zip in a core cracker and blast a planet the moment the other empire does not have a fleet there, you could probably then even destroy a whole system even protected by a citadel by just doing that multiple times in one turn if you have more than one core cracker.

Wasn't it stealth changed to scale by game speed? I recall this as I looked into applying the speed modifier myself, and found the cracker at 1 turn. Cut that change from my mod and it's 2 turns on Fast, which I think is reasonable enough already.

I think it's more a case of the obliterator shot being too accessible.