Questions Regarding Capital Ship Balance

[MaxL_1023]

From my experiences playing recently, I have run into a few issues. I am wondering if anyone else has also noticed the following:

1. Spread Fire seems to make Capital Ships 3 times stronger - as far as I can tell ships which have it will deal full damage to  three targets at once, with the weapon animations literally splitting into three identical streams.

2. Capital ships seem too strong compared to their supply cost. The largest capital ships (besides the Praetor, which is in a class of its own) cost about 16 supply, while most top-end cruisers cost 8. Since mid-end game fleets are limited more by supply than resources, there ends up being no reason to use anything except for capital ships. The boost from attaining higher levels, capital ship abilities and generally superior durability make them more powerful than the equivalent cost in frigates or cruisers.

3. Titans are not that durable - as one per fleet flagship units I would like to see them stronger (in terms of durability, not firepower) and perhaps more expensive.


I could just be crazy however, and if these are legitimate I suspect they are already being worked on.

[Helix345]

In the next update they will be implimenting frigate and cruiser lvl ups, along with fleet upkeep that is actually related to how many ships you have rather than what level your research is, which I believe should make it so that cruisers are more cost effective. Corey has said that he wants to make it so that the players don't have infinite credits endgame like they do now.

[Corey]

In the next update they will be implimenting frigate and cruiser lvl ups

Veterancy for smaller ships most likely won't be in 1.1, unfortunately. There's a crash issue associated with them somewhere that I haven't been able to sort out, partially because it only happens several hours into the game. Hopefully I'll be able to solve it.

1. Spread Fire seems to make Capital Ships 3 times stronger - as far as I can tell ships which have it will deal full damage to  three targets at once, with the weapon animations literally splitting into three identical streams.

Yeah, when we were doing 1.0 we didn't know exactly how it portioned out the damage with that. We've been making adjustments accordingly.

2. Capital ships seem too strong compared to their supply cost. The largest capital ships (besides the Praetor, which is in a class of its own) cost about 16 supply, while most top-end cruisers cost 8. Since mid-end game fleets are limited more by supply than resources, there ends up being no reason to use anything except for capital ships. The boost from attaining higher levels, capital ship abilities and generally superior durability make them more powerful than the equivalent cost in frigates or cruisers.

They're meant to be, partially as a way to make the AI actually able to build them. Once that bit is solved more effectively, we'll be able to raise the supply costs more (or before then, since we're
more concerned with multiplayer). Capital ships are more meant to be gated by the capital ship crews (which are being significantly reduced) as opposed to regular supply.

3. Titans are not that durable - as one per fleet flagship units I would like to see them stronger (in terms of durability, not firepower) and perhaps more expensive.

With titans we've always erred on the side of making them less powerful and scaling them up as we go (especially with abilities being added). If they're underpowered, that just makes them less useful If we start with them overpowered and everything else is fine, you get the same problem base Sins where titans are pretty much all that matter.

[tlmiller]

Also, if the Titans get to base Sins level, then the EoTH has an even bigger uphill battle in the end game, since they don't & won't have a Titan.

[MaxL_1023]

It understand the limitations of the AI - I was just wondering if anything like that had been noticed.

I was wondering about Titans mainly because a Tryhard difficulty AI sent one (an Executor) into 3 of my Golan IIIs  and a few frigates - the Golans won easily. Maybe Golans need to cost more, as the top level is stronger than most capital ships.

[Corey]

That's more Golans being super OP in 1.0 than anything, it's just their range is too short to notice most of the time.

[Mr.Puerto]

It understand the limitations of the AI - I was just wondering if anything like that had been noticed.

I was wondering about Titans mainly because a Tryhard difficulty AI sent one (an Executor) into 3 of my Golan IIIs  and a few frigates - the Golans won easily. Maybe Golans need to cost more, as the top level is stronger than most capital ships.

Don't worry, Golans have been changed, so three Golan threes won't be able to hold off a titan. Sucks for me since I really like to turtle, you can ask anyone who has played a testers game with me.