Right now I think the primary thing that needs tweaking is the battle cards. From the get-go they were pretty boring in their effects. Very much so compared to the cards in ES1 which had greater/lesser efffects or a malus depending on if they were countered or successfully countered the opposing card. 

Another part of the battle system that needs revisiting is the battle terrain aspect. Currently, I have had maybe one battle total in any of the special map nodes with battle effects (and that was 2 scouts). There is just no reason to fight in those areas because nothing is built or based there. That entire aspect of combat goes to waste and that is kind of sad because it was touted as a big part of the battle system. If we had situations where, for instance, short ranged fights were inevitable because of sensor interferance, that would be a reason to use short ranged fleets. But those effects would have to be centered on systems and not on asteroid fields or black holes etc. whose only use is to be captured by an influence ring for a bonus.

This is a bit far out of scope of the balance mod but, I think that those features like asteroid fields, dust nodes, black holes etc. which give large bonuses via influence capture, should be capturable by a fleet and provide their bonus to the nearest system of whichever faction has control of them. They would then be capturable by any other empire with the military strength to take them and fights would then start taking place where terrain is a factor as empires battled over ownership. Just a random thought.

@ Kynrael, did some more testing/analysis.

Gzar makes the best point and its so simple.

Opal laser is 7/14/7 equivelently dps at long medium and short ranges.

the beam, is 7/7/7 100% accross all ranges and its more expensive.

Which one would you chose?  They are like that accross the board

That essentially makes beams inferior to there laser counterparts in every aspect along the way.

The proper function for this is pretty simple, if you have a weapon thats 50% short 100 medium 50% long, the 7/14/7 is fine.  However, the base damage weapon needs to represent the median of that combination, so in this case 9/9/9 would be a happy median.  The actual number is close, its average, and I rounded down.  Always round down in dps math, otherwise you'll find a overpowered weapon again.  

The resource based weapons should be reasonable, not overpowered.  I would like to see a nerf to most of the resource based weapons, because it gives players who get lucky starts a tremendous advantage that is, in ever single multiplayer game I've played, not overcomable by white weapons.  This is the closest it is to being overcomable, because you can rush fighters and bombers to try to counter resource based weapons and use hte proper tactics to keep damage off your medium carriars.  

Kinetics, are currently, exactly where vanilla beams used to be.  Utterly useless.  There only purpose is fighter bomber missle defense, and in every case I've seen, lasers will kill you before they do.  They need to function accross all ranges.  the premise could be kinetics can't calculate movement of a enemy ship on the fly, and therefore can't predic evasion tactics of enemy ships, therefore they miss a lot at long, better at medium and solid at short.  A good place to start is 20/40/100 short to long.  Try it out, I bet that would make them much more effective.  Also I feel a portion of kinetics needs to be focused on the enemy ships, not sure how difficult it would be to split the damage priorities.  Like keep constant 30% on target and use the remaining dps to shoot down torpedos/fighters ect?  That one the way the engine works may be difficult. 

However, you've got a problem with kinetics now having multiple uses as shooting down both missles and fighters.  They prioritize, and in doing so, if the enemy is using any of the above, the kinetics are not doing damage to ships.  I like the idea of them being a high risk weapon, but in order to see them useful they need to be shooting at the longer ranges, not much, but a bit.  

Missles, they, with the kinetic buff, drop like flies.  They never hit targets, because of such the strong buff to kinetics at short range, there insane damage at incoming missles destroyes them without hesitation. ie one small kinetic per attack vessel is enough to keep all missles from impacting said ship throughout any battle.  An idea to fix this would be inherent missle evasion, a % will evade and get through a given number of times.  I know there is in the tooltip, but the buff to kinetics is having unwanted consequences on missles I believe.  

Also, any time you limit a weapon to a single range, you've essentially nerfed it into uselessness do to how your battle cards function.  You can aviod long range, aviod short range, ect.  No weapon should be useful only at one, because its too easy to aviod.  Right now missles and kinetics are essentialy where beams were on release, realively useless.  The only purpose for a kinetic now is to offer defense incase your enemy is using bombers, incase.  which is also counterable by fighters, which IMO is a better choice, therefor negating the need for them almost completely.  My point to this is, with the use of ranges AND flotillas, you only need access to ONE tool to aviod a scenario that puts your ships at a disadvantage, instead your given two, flotilla selection and battle card range selection.  

If I had my way, I would have missles function at 100/50/20 Long to Short.  I would also buff there HP by the same % you buffed the flak damage by to offset that change and there damage.  Kinetics, include missles, and they are now the high risk high reward.  

I would also increase the base damage of the beam that does 100/100/100 and consider that your benchmark weapon.  You want every other weapon in the game to fall to the comparable beam as being much better one way, and worse in equality another.  Like tier 4 beam does (i know it doesn't just using this as a example)180DPS on 100/100/100.  The median, of all other weapons, needs to match this 180 consistant dps, so in this case missles at 100/50/20 would be 350DPS long / 160 medium / 40 short.  Therefore still keeping the median DPS of the weapon withing 1% of your base beam.  That way you can play the card that suites your setup, and your opponent will do the same.  As long as the median damage is close to the base damage, battle cards and tactics will be the supreme decider of a battle.  As long as the weapons are within that 1% mark and are fireing accross all ranges of your benchmark weapon IE the beams currently in the game, you'll have balanced weapons.

I do now feel that small ships serve a new function mid to late game, cannon fodder, so your big ships can survive to do two things, nuke from afar, or allow travel time for the bombers to get in and do the work.  Also the defensive battle cards are now much more useful than they were before, extremely important when using fighters and bombers, becasue there damage is directly related to how long you can keep that ship alive.  Also increasing the need for ships with antimatter targeters and adamandtium jammers!   Which adding usefulness to the tools your given is a good thing.  

However, medium ship ships struggle just due to the amount of guns a advanced small ship can bring to the table.  I get my choice of 5 or more for certain races, where the base medium ship doesn't offer that kind of versatility.  Even if the weapon itself is doing more damage than its small counterpart, its the veratility of all the slots available on the small ships that make them so strong.  You can have 1 kinetic, 1 missle, 3 resource beams, a intensifier, and your essentially completely defended against fighters and bombers and able to nuke with the best of them in numbers.  In a medium ship, you can't do this, only until you get to the tier 2 advance medium ships can you build them in this fashion.  To encourage multiple designs, the options need to be lowered on the small ships or greatly increased on the larger ships.  Just food for thought.  

So now the medium ships carry the bigger sticks to the battles than there small counter parts, which is good, major change since before.  But now veratility is the issue with medium ships.  The HP boost is giving them the survivability neccecary to do damage but the small ships are easier to design with protection in mind at a more affordable price due to versatility.  Ideas to fix this would be to open up more weapons slots on medium ships, except don't have them do double damage, give players the option to how they are built.  Or nerft how the small ships are build.  I shouldn't be able to chose a more creative weapons loadout on a small ship than a big ship right?

Sheilds are in a much better place.  I find a balance is nececarry until you discover which way your opponent is constructing his ships, then you balance your defenses accordingly.  Sheilds feel much more inline with armor now, which is a good indication that a balance is being reached.  Considering TRIPLING there effect and increasing the reload amount and phase was neccecary to achieve this should show as to how bad of a spot they were in.  So heres some more feedback :)

I do have a slight, vodyani ark rush.  The vodyani arks are HOLY to them, but they are being used to rush there opponents and no race can survive a ark rush.  On the first turn on fast you can put four endines on your ark, a laser weapon, and fly it around, by turn 10, you can be on top of your enemy.  In smaller galaxies and tighter play areas its even more pronounced.  I don't mind the funciton of being able to move arks, also they and the unfallen are the only race to be able to raze systems.  If a invasion occurs, you win, the system is destroyed, granted theres a number of turns to be passed before its completely destroyed, but this is a very large advantage because you don't pick up planets you don't want/can't use.  The culture of the vodyani just makes me feel like arks should not be able to be used as offensive weapons, maybe disabling the ability to put engines on them might be a quick fix?  That one im reaching for, but it is a problem im multiplayer.  

Thanks for the changes, more feedback as more games are had!

@hera35 : what speed were you playing on where you achieved conquest by turn 149? I'd guess normal; if you were playing on fast, you'd have been just 1 turn away for the intended "score" victory - in terms of pace it's what we were aiming for :).

In normal however it's definitely too early, especially if you weren't specifically aiming for a conquest.

Do other people share the sentiment of thresholds being too low? At least for expert players?

jhell wrote:

@hera35 : what speed were you playing on where you achieved conquest by turn 149? I'd guess normal; if you were playing on fast, you'd have been just 1 turn away for the intended "score" victory - in terms of pace it's what we were aiming for :).

In normal however it's definitely too early, especially if you weren't specifically aiming for a conquest.

Do other people share the sentiment of thresholds being too low? At least for expert players?

I had no idea that you wanted the pacing to be slower than this. I haven't played a game where I haven't won before turn 160 in a long time. Last Cravers game, I won on turn 90 (Supremacy - but it was a really nice start). These are all on Endless difficulty, large galaxy, normal speed, 8 players. I usually win on either science or supremacy, the latter being the easiest to win, with conquest coming next - usually from making alliances with the next strongest player (unless they are Cravers). I gather the mod makes science victory harder (which is great, as the other final tier techs feel a little pointless when you could just get the victory techs) so maybe that's not an issue. I haven't won an economic victory for a few patches now, and only once won a wonder victory (again, around turn 160).

If you wanted to slow the pace down, then I think you might want to consider 1) Dramatically increasing the increased conquest caps for alliances (90% of the galaxy for a 4 way alliance wouldn't be unreasonable) and 2) Make capitals much harder to take. Not sure how to achieve the latter, but with most of the troop tech, upgrades, and the right minor faction assimilation, makes taking systems in a few turns really simple. I see Ghasnast got a nerf in that regard, but Tikanan swarming infantry is one of the most OP assimilations you can get. Maybe make it such that you have to hold the capital until you have full ownership in order for it to count?

@ridesdragons

Actually, only kinetics intercept missiles. Also, the X/X/X value isn't how much damage they do on impact (even if it directly impacts DPS), but is their accuracy. We can imagine that a close range a missile has problem locking down for X or Y reason, increasing the possibility of missing. (Not realistic yeah, but gameplay > realism :D )

@plutar

Thanks a lot about the additional feedback. The Small T2 & Medium T1 problem we'll have to mull over more to see what we can do to fix that. Maybe a reduction in cost... We'll have to investigate. Very good to hear about shields though!

Overall, from your feedback, I feel that not being able to shoot is extremely frustrating. Even poor accuracy would still keep the player on the edge ("Am I going to be hit? Am I going to hit?") instead of just praying that they get to close range fast enough for example. I'll try to take this into account for the second iteration of the G2G Balance Mod!

Thanks again for all your feedback!

Actually, we should be thanking you Kynrael. You guys really go above and beyond when addressing player concerns. Oh and Jhell as well. Thanks for taking the time to listen and make changes!

Dragar is correct, if you want a high risk weapon low sample size along with range %'s would really shake things up.  Like a nuke that goes off 1/2 the time fires twice during each battle phase.  That is my idea of a torpedo :)

Thanks for listening to all this.   BTW There are some serious bugs introduced in this G2G mod i hate to say.

Horatio can't colonize its own planets inside a system.   Hard to explain, but if you que a planet it just recycles in the cue.  Horatio also is still having issues even after the correction in the log I saw for ash and lava worlds.  

And yes Kynrael, in order to give medium ships more functionality and better use, it seems now its a issue of design.  

Lets run this scenario, I can build a attack ship with 4 resource lasers, any type, then add a white kinetic for fighter defense.  Now I've got a ship with a very powerful short range weapon, that can defend itself against missles/fighters, and has HIGH dps against large ships, not as high as a fully loaded medium ship, but very close.

That medium ship, I can have x3 lasers, x1 kinetic.  The problem is the kinetic is bigger, and the lasers are bigger, per the "double slot".  Now I've got a extra gun that isn't going to use, and this ship costs more to construct witha  higher resource cost and I lose versatility, as it is vunerable taking 100% damage from fighters and bombers.  If I want the DPS to be max, I would replace the kinetic opening up a vunerability.  On the small ship, its less DPS loss to me to defend against that vunerability.  So essentially, its like this

Medium ship Sophon empire as example

x3 double lasers, x1 double kinetic        x   3 command points,:::::        3 DPS weapons on all ranges, 1 DPS for defense.  But in the land of Medium ships, its actually x6 DPS weapons, x2 defense weapons, because of the double slots.

x3 attack ships:

4x lasers, x1 kinetic. x3, plus a intensifier. 

so to equal the command points, and counting double slots, the table runs like this

3 small ships have 12 lasers, 3 defense kinetic, and room for intensifier to increase damage

1 medium ship, has 6 lasers, 4 kinetics, and room for a intensifier.  

I would use the medium ship IF I could have a layout different than the described situation, but I cannot.  Its easier to build a all in one ship, for max dps and some defense as a  small ship.  Even though the medium ship, if fully loaded with yellow laser, offers higher dps, my vunerabilities increase, especially against somebody using bombers now.  

The coordinator ship, now has use, Fighters and Bombers, troop, ect.  Its only the medium attack tier 1 ship that is in a weird space.  And its for any empire, and it is worse among the empires where there coordinator has almost as many weapons as its medium attack equivelent (Voyd and UE).

Carriars, or large ships, suffer the same lack of functionality due to choices, however they carry a even bigger stick witht he x4 slots.  Also they have much more HP, they are in a good place.  Carriars in the state of the balance mod are a "Oh no, That is expensive and highly dangerous" which is good.  The have enough slot choices to allow for defense and attack functionality build in.  Becuase you can equip fighters and bombers, as defensive tools.  

So you see where my arguement/problem are, versatility.  The small ship I get more choices on, and it in command point numbers carrys a bigger stick to the battle.  Granted the crit numbers on medium ships because the weapons are bigger are larger does help, but I think this illistrates my point a bit, I hope :) that make sense?

Thanks for the work on this.

plutar wrote:

3 small ships have 12 lasers, 3 defense kinetic, and room for intensifier to increase damage

1 medium ship, has 6 lasers, 4 kinetics, and room for a intensifier.  

How are you fitting 5 weapons on a Sophon attacker which has 3 slots?

And to the one who said are we even playing the same game. I was refering to the situation with beams being at 0/50/100. They are OP to the extreme. This g2g mod directly addresses this. I believe you are refering to a time before the beams got medium range. 

And please excuse my spelling this is from a phone.

Thanks for finally changing propaganda to what I suggested 2 months ago. 

So why no extra law slots for dictatorship or autocracy like I suggested? What is the justification behind them not gaining any more law slots? 

Republic continues to stay untouched and the best political system. No one is going to ever switch to dictatorship even with this change. Republic is basically choose your favourite party and pay some dust every 20 turns for overpowered law effects that completely break the game. 

Sorry gzar your correct. I was thinking of the lumens tier 2 attack. But the anylisis still stands based on my fuzzy air math. Ill put together a SS of each design to illustrate the flexibility point this evening. With non air math. Gotta love air math, probably the gambler inside me.

plutar wrote:

Sorry gzar your correct. I was thinking of the lumens tier 2 attack. But the anylisis still stands based on my fuzzy air math. Ill put together a SS of each design to illustrate the flexibility point this evening. With non air math. Gotta love air math, probably the gambler inside me.

Is air math like air guitar? :-P