In a game where I played UE with the Community Balance mod on, I discovered that the neighbour Horatio empire was very peaceful compared to it's non modded counterpart. Also, once I signed a peace treaty with them I didn't see the Peace diplomacy icon in the diplomacy window when looking at Horatio.

In the midgame they were "sneaky", but didn't pursue any aggressive military action altough I had fairly small fleet. I can almost even peacefully convert their capital at the late game and they're not really that bothered.

I can send my save file if needed!

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay in replying!

First off, about a few comments I've read, quick disclaimer: I forgot to balance costs according to the new weapon values, so this is why some are off. This is something that we of course intend to fix. It isn't too broke, the cost / quality ratios aren't too wildly off, but they're definitely not optimal.

I've reread through all your feedback, and here's what I propose.

- First off, all weapons will have access to all ranges. This is to make battle tactics be viable whatever, remove the feeling of frustration that your ships can't fire at all on certain ranges, but still create some tension for high risk / high reward weapons.
This should make the kinetics less avoidable.

- To help the missiles, we will increase their middle accuracy. Missiles fired closer are less easy to flak, which should help out to fight with missiles against flotillas that have only 1 flakker ship.

- We will go through the Battle tactics to check if their effects and ranges make sense with the new balancing.

- We will improve the feedback on Fighters and Bombers (damage modifiers against ships), and try and find exactly why the Fighters are not countering Bombers efficiently enough (if you have any idea why, don't hesitate)

- A way of helping out the Medium Hunter could be to increase his currently bonus damage of +10% common with the small attack, to a new version of +25%. That could give him the extra punch to be a real danger to softer ships. What do you think?

We still need to find a way to counter small fleets. Any ideas (go crazy)?

Cheers,

We still need to find a way to counter small fleets. Any ideas (go crazy)?

Making squadrons focusing small ships in priority ?

Or a polyvalent battle tactic for squadrons that reverse their focus priority, making them focusing in priority little ships ? (exept for arks)

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

We still need to find a way to counter small fleets. Any ideas (go crazy)?

Making squadrons focusing small ships in priority ?

Or a polyvalent battle tactic for squadrons that reverse their focus priority, making them focusing in priority little ships ? (exept for arks)

We can't really make them focus small ships, as they're less efficient against those. And initially is the problem of fleets full of small ships, so targeting won't solve that.

A battle tactic is an interesting idea, but it doesn't really solve the systemic problem.

Thanks for your input though!

Everything there, seems perfect.  

As far as going crazy with ideas,, you asked for it.

On the hunters, they are already nerfed by the amount of utility, adding a damage bonus or a utility slot would be good, the premise of both is the same (add a intenifier without sacrificing weapons?)

+25% sounds about right,  also be very careful with this number, going from 10 to 25 % is quite a bit, and its very easy to move the dial in the opposite direction, sure that was discovered with beams in live just by adding 50% to medium range.

As for the small ship spam, they have too much utility/power, a nerft to damage would just push players to bigger ships never using them again.  Ideas would be spash damage on more weapons?  Or rather splash damage earlier in the tech tree, make the damage between white and resource weapons closer but give the resource weapons a mild aoe?  

The small ship the cost per construction should be a hair more than the equivelent.  So three attacks should cost more in construction than a single hunter in total.  

Idea number 2, INCREASE the cost of upgrading ships *********  This could pull players away from the small ships because they would not enjoy spending the dust/sacrifice of having to upgrade a multitude of ships.  I'm thinking like upgrades would be increased on attack ships and above class by Xflat+Whatgearyouveadded=newtotal.  By the time your designing a hunter you are usually accessing the first series of weapons that you can still be effectively using end game. 

With the 25% damage bonus on the hunter included in something like that it could be that easy.   It doesn't take much to tilt the meter in favor of one vs the other.  The coordinators are okay, I just worry about the strength of the two empires who have access to three weaponed coordinators.  

I can't wait for this to go live :D  

Ideas for gently moving off the uncounterable beam spam of the small fleet

1. The question may be in buffing the hunter may solve it.
2. Make the attackers easier to be targeted over protector/gaurdian counterparts unless your opponent is carrying a lensor of some type on a medium hull or larger
3. Spash damage broader and more feesable?  I have never played a game were I have had to even consider/think about this.
4. Cost of upgrading ships, if there was a fee per ship that increased in accordance with AP, because who wants to build a hull thats going to cost them a fortune to keep changing?
5. Battle tactic card something like % damage aviodance on small ships %damage gained on large ships?

Since we are on opposite hours living in the US you will probably wake up in the morning with thirty more posts from me on ideas I had through the gaming evening.  This is just a start, just trying to be careful with the suggestions too because we don't want as a player to become a rush to the larger ships either.  This is something very delicate.

How about allowing medium ships and above to equip MIRV type missiles? Essentially these would be a multi-warhead dispenser that allows a missile to split into smaller, more maneuverable warheads with a +% damage to small hulls, a +% avoidance against flak, but a malus to damage against larger hulls? So effectively, you have a weapon that is useful primarily against smaller ships and MUCH less so against larger ones? 

With bombers being much less useful against small ship hulls, this may be the equilizer needed. This is likely beyond the scope of of the balance mod though...

I love that idea slashman but I wonder how tough it would be to impliment?  That would really makie kinetic missles a high risk/reward deal.

With the changes in the mod already I think this is not as much of a problem as it is in live.  I find myself doing exactly what Dragar explained if my empire can afford it.  The shipspam deal also produces another problem that only a human could come up with.

Having your hanger filled with empty hulls, popping them out one at a time accumulating your opponents action points, to keep invasions from happening, also spamming your enemy with empty small ship hulls and blockading/sieging everything in sight.  Granted it is a stall tactic, I don't believe its in the spirit of the game, but it is a viable tactic lol...

I think the problem was inherently addressed when medium ships were given a HP boost.  The issue is not as bad ias it was that is defienetly true.  Hence my recommendations being very incremental.  The idea in the end is to have everything have a counter strategy.  So to win requires outhink with all the tools ingame being useful (IE all ship sizes).  Currently, I find myself using small ships as attack and accesorized glass cannons accompanied by repair/speed boost ships all small, to accent a carriar in the fleet, or something along those lines.  I'm not trying to say no to some kind of buff to the hunter ship, just certain races hunters lack the glass cannon feel and are underwhelming when compared to there coordinators (IE Vodyani/UE)

Kynrael wrote:

-  To help the missiles, we will increase their middle accuracy. Missiles  fired closer are less easy to flak, which should help out to fight with  missiles against flotillas that have only 1 flakker ship.

How does flak vs missiles work anyway? Does the value listed in the tooltip is per second damage vs missiles? Is it per phase? Does it fire at all ranges since the missile is launched?

Maybe Fighters could get a bonus vs small ships? Currently Fighters are inferior to Bombers in every respect, except for the fact that they're supposed to counter them (They don't atm). The Bombers deal bonus damage to larger ships, so maybe the fights could be the opposite? If you see your opponent spaming small ships you can try to counter with Fighters etc. 

A MIRV type of weapon only mountable on heavy slots for example could be a good solution to give a counter from Medium against small fleets. But yes, this goes beyond the scope of the balance mod right now; so maybe instead of a +25%, a +20% might be safer as you pointed out plutar.

@Gzar

Flaks fire continuously and independently from the kinetic weapon. So as soon as the missile gets in range of the flak, it is dealt the DPS per second and explodes once its life gets to zero.

We could add an additional short explication to flaks to clarify this in their tooltip.

@Kryto

That's an intriguing idea... I'll have to consider more in depth what kind of impact that could have.

Kryto wrote:

Maybe Fighters could get a bonus vs small ships? Currently Fighters are inferior to Bombers in every respect, except for the fact that they're supposed to counter them (They don't atm). The Bombers deal bonus damage to larger ships, so maybe the fights could be the opposite? If you see your opponent spaming small ships you can try to counter with Fighters etc. 

My only issue with this is that all it would take for the small ship spammer is a single Medium hull equipped with bombers to distract the incoming fighters and take their attention away from attacking small ships long enough for the small ships to get in their shots. That was kind of the reason for my MIRV suggestion, multiple small warheads with high evasion versus flak specifically targetting small ships as priority.

Slashman wrote:

Kryto wrote:

Maybe Fighters could get a bonus vs small ships? Currently Fighters are inferior to Bombers in every respect, except for the fact that they're supposed to counter them (They don't atm). The Bombers deal bonus damage to larger ships, so maybe the fights could be the opposite? If you see your opponent spaming small ships you can try to counter with Fighters etc. 

My only issue with this is that all it would take for the small ship spammer is a single Medium hull equipped with bombers to distract the incoming fighters and take their attention away from attacking small ships long enough for the small ships to get in their shots. That was kind of the reason for my MIRV suggestion, multiple small warheads with high evasion versus flak specifically targetting small ships as priority.

Fighters on the offense would still ignore the attacking bombers and target small ships straight away. But yeah, I can see that it might become a one choice strategy where everyone has to have 1 medium coordinator to slot fighters, and the rest of the fleet being small ships.

Yes, the MIRV is a good idea.

I worry about the addition of more stuff, instead of lets fix the problem using in-game mechanics we'll add something new as a bandaid to fix it, what other situations would a MIRV be applicable?  It just seems like a one off, one trick pony, like the planet killer.  Something that will never be used in any MP game.  I can see the MIRV ending up as something like that.  

Something simple, like a battle card adjustment, just tweaking the damage of the hunter is enough.  

I worry because of what happened with beams in live.  

I worry about adding stuff because the tooltips don't match what they should be doing.  Played a friend craver last night who was floored to find out fighters weren't countering bombers, got pissed off and quit because how the combat mechanics work are hidden inside some obscure forum post rather than follow what he thought was intuitive. 

Whatever gets changed just let it be intuitive, and make since.  

That strategy of  

"Fighters on the offense would still ignore the attacking bombers and target small ships straight away. But yeah, I can see that it might become a one choice strategy where everyone has to have 1 medium coordinator to slot fighters, and the rest of the fleet being small ships."

Kynrael

isn't so bad because at least its two ships.

IDK I think that if the hunter falls into place as a heavy hitter this problem will not be a problem.  

You could always just simply tweak damage values for bombers back to 100 % on small and medium and 150% on large.  That way bombers could counter small ships.  Less is more IMO so taking away the damage nerf they have on small? Could that do it?