wham1000 wrote:
What do u mean by "Rank"? Also are u in line when they say "Added a reduction on damage for weapon which are not firing during their range speciality: -50% damage"?

1. Each weapon has three different levels in the technology tree. I refer to these as rank given I can't recall another term.

2. A long range weapon only does normal damage in the long range phase. In the short and medium range phases, they do 50% of the normal damage. The same is true for other weapons at other ranges.

The short answer for strategy

You might want to re-read the OP, there was no question involved







Another thing that disheartens me immensly is that other weapon systems are not underpowered but flat out broken at least in my latest match.



Going all-out kinetic gets old pretty fast regardless how successfull it is. I still try to spice it up by mixing in other weapon systems but continously get disappointed by them. This may sound like an extreme example but actually it just happened 10 minutes ago.



One of my tanker designs using the rally point system to ge to its target system comes along a single scout of an enemy AI. Its almost all defense modules but I did have a few tonnes left over and filled em with LR missiles coming to an attack value of 100. The scout I battle has zero defense versus missiles. I have the Sheredy affinity so it sounds like a 100% kill.



Pressing auto no battle cards picked.



Picture my surprise when at the end of the battle after 3 rounds not only is the scout alive but I delivered ZERO damage according to the battle report.



I hope this is a one-time bug but will look at it more closely. I m not the math person but I observe and learn from experience.







P.S. you all might get tired of me rumbling on about so-called "old news" still its an ongoing problem so keeping the reminder to the devs alive that this needs fixing strikes me as necessary. Regardless....sorry to everybody who gets annoyed by my thread.

ShuShu62 wrote:
No need to apologize, your assumption is correct. Although your statements are not in sync with Thuvian's, and Fritz disagrees completely.

Actually, we are all agreeing that big ships focused on defense aren't optimal. It may be because we are rather loose with our language that this isn't being translated well, but none of us would endorse a "tank ship" strategy.

Yea, its interesting to analyze these things the first couple of times dev make drastic changes (50% is pretty drastic to me). After a while though, I can't help but think "man, not another drastic change". Yea, its getting pretty old to me, hahaha

Antera wrote:
I don't know when you started playing this game so my assumption may be off here. But this so called indestructible death dealer ship is something many of us have already experienced in a different patch. So to us, there really is nothing new. The game pretty much went from unbalanced in one way we've experienced before to unbalanced in another way we've experienced before.



I apologize if you actually play this game long enough to remember those prior patches.

No need to apologize, your assumption is correct. Although your statements are not in sync with Thuvian's, and Fritz disagrees completely.



I am slightly confident that it works against Endless difficulty Fritz, because I did it in game rather than in a spreadsheet, albeit against an endless A.I. rather than a human A.I.



Thuvian's response was that fire/retreat/and use troops would defeat the indestructible tank, which may work for him. His hit and run, hold no ground strategy works out for me much like it worked out for the Americans in Vietnam. My guess is that Thuvian is just so good that he overwhelms the AI early enough that it is never a fair fight and that he has won the game before ever reaching the tank phase.



My response to you Antera is that, my understanding of the earlier tank strategy was just to lock enemy fleets with your tanks. The tanks could not kill, but that didn't matter as they were pinning enemy primary fleets while your primary fleet went unopposed. In the new world, the tanks are also death dealers because of attack round timing so they either fight few rounds of combat (other retreats) or they fully repair each round so far less is needed for shielding and they can now bulk up on melee.



I am drawn to this topic more from fascination with tieing cause to effect I find it interesting how the simple decision to essentially reduce the rounds weapons fire in to one of three completely reshapes the battle land scape. My approach is more that of a physicist than a mathemeticain. Rather than deriving an optimal strategy and then proving it, I observe behaviors, form hypothesis and test them out. Both are 'Scientific'. The one draw back to the Mathematical approach, is that if your initial theory works as expected, you will never see any of the other possibilities.



One other point I failed to mention is the formation. In the old mechanism, I had 6 rounds to damage before their biggest hits, so I spread my fire to clean out as many as possible. Now... I have 1 round... so my targeting focuses fire either in nosebreaker and guillotine.



i find the prospect of seeing whether the tank beats the long Kinetics in the hands of a human player one I would like to try, although I fear my definciencies elsewhere might doom the tank from the outset, but I am willing to try and work out details of such a test if there is interest.

Ca_Putt wrote:
huh, I must have missed that - strange how you actually read These reports and miss stuff like that.

Don't feel bad lol I read every mechanic document twice and still have no idea what I just read

The short answer for strategy (to this long thread) is to spread defense (a little extra for kinetics), and to load up, almost completely, on long range kinetics. I do use armor as well. (Sheredyn custom race)



Game over round 1, even on higher difficulties.

Medoc made a post about missile flakk mechanics is a post on the forum stating how it works.

huh, I must have missed that - strange how you actually read These reports and miss stuff like that.



Also probably because the dominance of Kinetics in later Versions I did not actually notice it in battle^^

Dreadnoughts with doubled hull stregnth, built in repair capabilities, and significant weapon shielding became unstoppable. Send one in... soak up all the long range damage and spend the next two phases repairing it while killing off any ships that failed to retreat before the dirt cheap melee ranged kinetics cleaned them out.

I cant imagine this working on higher difficulties because even on normal my fleet would be crippled using this tactic. You see the thing about tanking ships is that you cannot "taunt" the enemy forces forcing them to fire on you. While before the patch the AI liked to use Nosebreaker firing patterns making this a key strategy they dont anymore and if you use a fleet set-up of 1 tank + many glass cannons chances are that you will have 1 fleet with 1 tank only at the end of the battle. A simple "spread fire" will take out the other ships. Thats how I overcome tanking shields. By having more ships then he has and using that firing pattern to take out the low-defense ships.



As soon as you put more tanks into your fleet you reduce its offensive potential at the same time.



Also higher difficulty doesnt change the topic at all. Its correct that the AI will adapt faster and more efficient to your designs. For example if on normal the AI will still try to create defensive designs with almost equal defensive capabilities in all weapon types on serious+ he will change em completely to pure-deflectors upping his chances.



Still......long range kinetics are 4x more effective then loing range missiles and thats the problem.....

Ca_Putt wrote:
huh, since when does flak shoot down missiles directed at other ships? I always was of the impression, that it only defends against missiles that are targeted at the ship itself.

Ah, the good old days of vanilla A while back most of us requested that flak protect the entire fleet, to give function to screening ships.

Flak definitely defend the entire fleet. Test it a few times while working on HC mod.

Medoc made a post about missile flakk mechanics is a post on the forum stating how it works.

Long Range Kinetics increased damage from 2 to 3. However, outside their range they lose 50% damage. Don't take my word on it, go look at the files.

huh, since when does flak shoot down missiles directed at other ships? I always was of the impression, that it only defends against missiles that are targeted at the ship itself.

U say kinetic long range +50% damage? But 1.1.27 says that weapons out of their designed range loose 50% damage?

Sorry, but still not sure what are the differences in a long range battle between melee kinetics & long range kinetics? this evidently goes for all the weapons.

Thks,

Well there goes way too much time in a lost post.



Short Version:

Mechanics and Explanations are in forum. Check the math. The changes are marginal.

Indestructible ships should be more powerful now since damage was reduced since the last patch. Since that is not true, you should consider that you are mistaken they do work.

See how far you can get with little ships and no dreadnaughts. Don't compare fleet size, but fleet cost.

Use troops to take planets without siege.

2 Matches in so far and the biggest issue I had with the game recently was the kinetic-hell situation which annoyed me a great deal.



My first game on easy I started out with 2 ship designs. Long-range Kinetics and melee range Missiles.



Observation: kinetics still fire 4 times per segment while missiles fire once. Regardless of range.



Result: The -50% damage outside optimal range rule shows heavily and weapon system performance drops noticably in those segments. Covering all ranges gonna e come in handy from now on.



Conclusion: while missiles pack a lot more punch the issue here is that kinetic snipers can (theoretically) destroy 4 enemy ships in the long-range round while missile designs can not.





My second game on normal showed the deficit between weapon systems even more. This time I went with the melee range missiles.



Observation: it shows that as long as you have superior numbers melee range weaponry rocks simply because if "some" of your ships makes it to melee they gonna obliterate the enemy so my strategy was to use missiles to wipe my opponent out.



Result: due to missiles only firing once I took 2 pot-shots at my enemy during long and medium range hardly dealing any damage at all. In melee range it was a stand off between his kinetics and my missiles. We both had 9 ships per fleet. He destroyed me completely while I took out 5.



Conclusion: It seems that weapon systems outside their optimal range-setting are still highly underpowered and not competetive.





I ll play around with long-range kinetics and see how that goes but I got the feeling the "new" powerhouse is still kinetics....just a different range...which changes nothing.

I don't know when you started playing this game so my assumption may be off here. But this so called indestructible death dealer ship is something many of us have already experienced in a different patch. So to us, there really is nothing new. The game pretty much went from unbalanced in one way we've experienced before to unbalanced in another way we've experienced before.



I apologize if you actually play this game long enough to remember those prior patches.

Oh... now guys. I am a little dissappointed by the expert responses here.



I had just won my Sophons Endless game before the patch... next up was Hisso Endless, night of the patch. A battle race when battle mechanics changed. My fleets were erased in no time, as the AI essentially followed Thuvian's advice except with Long Beams rather than long kinetic.



I immediately jumped to the forum to see if folks had already fleshed out the changes. They hadn't. So I decided to work out the impacts myself before returning to the forum. I must say, my reaction to the changes is that they fundamentally changed the way I approached combat rather than the meh... nothing new responses I see here.



The OP plays on a lower difficulty and I will concede that on any level that cannot beat you, what you do does not really matter. but the AI was having a VERY easy time beating the designs I was used to fielding.



Thuvian summarrized it as long range kinetic and retreat. Well, retreating from combat makes it hard to lay siege to a planet, so lets just leave that as a non-starter although it does seem a fairly accurate description of the AI strategy.



My first question was why was I losing so badly to these fleets. It became clear that the 50% reduction in none range is a real game changer. Before, the name of the game was picking off the enemy ships before they could level their kenetic overstocked guns at you in the final round. For me, I found the accurracy of the medium beams much more effective than melee ranged kinetic firing in the long phase. I still had melee ranged kinetics but that was for polishing off tattered fleets from the prior phases. But now, my medium beams and melee kinetics were doing nothing while the opposing long range beems were doing to me what I used to be doing to them.



i tested that hypothesis (quite effectively without a combat simultor, I might add). by changing my card strategy. I had been trying to catch the AI with its pants down on early phases. It was now clear that it was imperative to survive the first phase. Countering that offesne card with the defense card was the difference between surviving the battle into the second phase, and winning a battle without any fleet losses. It is not trivial.



Once I was able to start winning battles strictly on card play, the next step was to figure out the countering design. Since the key is now just to survive the long phase, the solution turned out to be much easier... and much more reliable. Dreadnoughts with doubled hull stregnth, built in repair capabilities, and significant weapon shielding became unstoppable. Send one in... soak up all the long range damage and spend the next two phases repairing it while killing off any ships that failed to retreat before the dirt cheap melee ranged kinetics cleaned them out. (I was hisso, so I had cheap bombers buzzing about too). In the prior version, A doubled hull self reparing ship could max out its kinetic deflectors and still not survive that final melee phase because

--- it had absorbed damage every round

--- the kinetic deflectors are the most expensive defense

--- the damage comes AFTER the last repair rather than before the first repair.

--- melee ranged melle is moi powerful





The game has changed from a never ending game of attrition where keeping ships alive as the levelled up the key to success to one of racing to the indestructible death dealer ship then win any way you want.



So, no, I don't think it is a change for the better... but it most certainly changed everything about combat for me.

What do u mean by "Rank"? Also are u in line when they say "Added a reduction on damage for weapon which are not firing during their range speciality: -50% damage"?

I'm pretty sure that someone has regularly complained about kinetic versus missile balance in the Harmony dev mod.



Also when they say they: "Divided damage done by bombers per 2", They actually doubled bomber damage instead of halving it (See: SpecialModule.xml). They also increased the firing rate of Point Defense systems from 3 to 5.



Weapon Changes in 1.1.27 from 1.1.15

Kinetic Long Range Rank 1, 2, & 3: +50% damage (2 to 3)

Kinetic Long Range Rank 1, 2, & 3: +50 accuracy (50% to 100%)



Missile Long Range Rank 1: +10 damage (390 to 400)

Missile Long Range Rank 1, 2, & 3: +50 accuracy (40% to 90%)



Laser Long Range Rank 1, 2, & 3: +50 accuracy (60% to 110%)

Laser Medium Range Rank 1: +23 damage (112 to 135)



What do u mean by "Rank"? Also are u in line when they say "Added a reduction on damage for weapon which are not firing during their range speciality: -50% damage"?

Slashman wrote:
Well I still personally think that the key to weapon 'balance' lies in differentiating the weapons with something more than just damage numbers.



Like secondary effects: Missiles do splash damage to adjacent targets even if they don't hit, kinetics push ships around so they target less effectively(but only do this well at close range), and lasers maybe doing burn damage over the course of combat from each successful hit. In a sense, give weapons other functions than just raw damage so that they will truly have different uses for different situations.



The raw numbers thing is just going to make combat more boring.

Yes this is something ES has always suffered from a lack of imagination and out of the box thinking regarding combat and events and yet the rest of the game is very creative and imaginative - weird. I would love to see weapons having secondary effects like beam lasers slicing through ships to hit ships behind them and meson weapons being able to shoot at ships in the rear because they can pass through the first row unimpeded. Also what about guns causing splash damage but lower direct damage at longer ranges like shotguns, and beam being very accurate.



They also really need to change back the idea of ranges suiting certain types of weapons. I loved the way missiles were great at long range and guns better at short. Now they are just really dull everything can to everything - whats the point in choosing anymore? Its just a mess now.

I'm pretty sure that someone has regularly complained about kinetic versus missile balance in the Harmony dev mod.



Also when they say they: "Divided damage done by bombers per 2", They actually doubled bomber damage instead of halving it (See: SpecialModule.xml). They also increased the firing rate of Point Defense systems from 3 to 5.



Weapon Changes in 1.1.27 from 1.1.15

Kinetic Long Range Rank 1, 2, & 3: +50% damage (2 to 3)

Kinetic Long Range Rank 1, 2, & 3: +50 accuracy (50% to 100%)



Missile Long Range Rank 1: +10 damage (390 to 400)

Missile Long Range Rank 1, 2, & 3: +50 accuracy (40% to 90%)



Laser Long Range Rank 1, 2, & 3: +50 accuracy (60% to 110%)

Laser Medium Range Rank 1: +23 damage (112 to 135)



Lots of changes in military power which changes nothing since military power isn't used for anything.

Long Range Kinetics got even better more damage 50% and higher accuracy (50%).

Short Range Kinetics are probably only 200% better than Missiles.

Damage increases to Missiles and Lasers is trivial.

Accuracy changes mean that long range weapons are better than they were, but they are heavily penalized outside of long range.

No changes to EvasionDisorientation (still 5%).

No changes to Hull Weakness.



Summary:

Range penalties mean that Long Range Weapons (i.e., Kinetics) + Retreat after the long range phase is the way to go.

Melee Kinetics are still pretty good.

Slashman wrote:
Well I still personally think that the key to weapon 'balance' lies in differentiating the weapons with something more than just damage numbers.



Like secondary effects: Missiles do splash damage to adjacent targets even if they don't hit, kinetics push ships around so they target less effectively(but only do this well at close range), and lasers maybe doing burn damage over the course of combat from each successful hit. In a sense, give weapons other functions than just raw damage so that they will truly have different uses for different situations.



The raw numbers thing is just going to make combat more boring.

I like them also. I have done the same in all of my table top RPG games to make combat more interesting. Anyone who has played Rifts with its plethora of weapon types but still uses D4's and D6's for everything with no unique effects for any of them know what I am talking about.

^^ I like that idea.

Well I still personally think that the key to weapon 'balance' lies in differentiating the weapons with something more than just damage numbers.



Like secondary effects: Missiles do splash damage to adjacent targets even if they don't hit, kinetics push ships around so they target less effectively(but only do this well at close range), and lasers maybe doing burn damage over the course of combat from each successful hit. In a sense, give weapons other functions than just raw damage so that they will truly have different uses for different situations.



The raw numbers thing is just going to make combat more boring.

Slashman wrote:
You guys are the VIPs. Aren't you supposed to point this stuff out to them? Or is it that they just don't listen?

Would just like to point out that these changes were present in the Help the Harmony dev mod, so anyone could have pointed it out, as several community members did.

Slashman wrote:
You guys are the VIPs. Aren't you supposed to point this stuff out to them? Or is it that they just don't listen?

Well, our wishlist is generally longer than anything they can handle and sometimes has elements they don't want to do or simply don't agree with. It's still their game.

Otherwise than that, balancing is largely not directly influenced by us, although there have been numerous suggestions. To me, in such a complex system, this resembles guesswork more than anything else. The cry for a combat simulator is as old as ES and without that my view is that we won't ever achieve anything remotely close to a "perfect" balancing. Even if it galls me to admit that.

Ail wrote:
Imho the damage per tonnage of missiles should be much higher in order to justify their use. Otherwise the utility of being able to target several different ships per turn and thus preventing the waste of massive amounts of damage is simply superior.

You guys are the VIPs. Aren't you supposed to point this stuff out to them? Or is it that they just don't listen?

Imho the damage per tonnage of missiles should be much higher in order to justify their use. Otherwise the utility of being able to target several different ships per turn and thus preventing the waste of massive amounts of damage is simply superior.

right now I m 50 turns into my second game and at war with 2 factions giving me ample opportunity to further test this out.



Long range kinetics routinely destroy enemy fleets in the long range segment alone no matter if the enemy has deflectors or not. Bigger hulls packing more weapon modules only become better here.