EotH 1.2 Balance Issues

[emp3ror86]

What I would like to ask from the mod team, is a GC Art of War without the Eoth faction. I'm not a HC gamer, I play for fun and that overpowered faction just totally ruins it.

[Zeron]

What makes them overpowered in your experience? I'm not quite sure what could possibly qualify them as overpowered.

[Corey]

Are you refering to battles with or without Thrawn and the other heroes, because the combat bonuses provided by the better commanders tend to greatly influence battles. Beyond that, it would probably be more productive to explain why you feel they're unbalanced, as otherwise we won't know how to fix it. Removing 1/3rd of the game is not a good solution to that problem, I'm afraid.

[emp3ror86]

I did not suggest to remove it, just a new GC scenario with all planets and factions but without the EoTH. So those who find challenge in it can play against it Eoth, those we feel it unfair can just skip it.

Problems:
chiss bombers, which launches a valley of rockets. And not even the disruptor field of an interdictor can jam them. A few bomber squadron destroyed a Golan and not even a half dozen TIE fighters and one Lancer-frigate could destroy at least one squadron.
Combat bonus: none of the imperial leaders have such effect. Or it would be better balanced if the leaders with that big bonus would not come with the strongest ships in the game. So the AI could not do that heroes rush, nor the player conquer half of the map just with the heroes of the Eoth. It's overkill the way it is now.

I'll continue it in the balance issues topic and still hoping for a GC scenario without Eoth...

[Corey]

I did not suggest to remove it, just a new GC scenario with all planets and factions but without the EoTH. So those who find challenge in it can play against it Eoth, those we feel it unfair can just skip it.

That isn't the point of the Art of War GC. There are already 5/8 GCs without EotH. If anything we'd make more scnearios with them in it.

Problems:
chiss bombers, which launches a valley of rockets. And not even the disruptor field of an interdictor can jam them. A few bomber squadron destroyed a Golan and not even a half dozen TIE fighters and one Lancer-frigate could destroy at least one squadron.
Combat bonus: none of the imperial leaders have such effect. Or it would be better balanced if the leaders with that big bonus would not come with the strongest ships in the game. So the AI could not do that heroes rush, nor the player conquer half of the map just with the heroes of the Eoth. It's overkill the way it is now.

For the bombers, which ones? Syca or Furion? And is this with the heroes or not, because once you add those into the equation you can't evaluate it the same way. The best hero they have is Thrawn, and there most definitely is an Imperial hero with similar bonuses: Thrawn. Pellaeon comes very close, Tierce's should be the exact same but I'm not sure if his is working. And Ackbar on the NR comes pretty damn close. The argument that they have the best ships in the game isn't true either. Stent has an Ascendancy, which is probably going to come off worse in a fight with an ISD at least half of the time.Thrawn and Niriz each have an ISD, which is (obviously), going to be equal with any IR ISDs, worse than Tectors, and worse than any of the ISD-killer NR ships. Parck has a VSD, which will lose to pretty much any capital ship in the mod except MC80's.

The only case where you can say an EotH hero has one of the most powerful ships in the game is Siath with the Battlehamer, since Phalanx's are probably tied with Imperial Tectors, but still miles (literally) behind the Executor, which the Empire gets for free with 2 heroes and the NR with one, the Eclipse which the Empire gets with Palpatine, and the Imperial Sovereigns.

If I were to make a list of the best base ships in the game, going by Imperial New Republic and Empire of the Hand:

1. Sovereign
2. Executor      
3. Phalanx
4. Tector
5. Nebula/Endurance/RSD/MC90
6. Imperial-I/II  
7. Ascendancy
8. MC80b
9. Chaf

Once you get to ground it's a bit less skewed, with MMTs, T4-Bs and Tank Droids all being in the same general area. So basically if we're going to remove the EotH from Art of War because you find them overpowered, we'd almost certainly have to remove the other two because of how many of the top ships belong to the Empire, and how versatile the NR gets by about Era 3-4. It all works out in the end. EotH does have unquestionable fighter superiority, overall, however Preybirds, Scimitars and K-Wings can more than hold their own against even the Scarsiss.

On top of this, the EotH starts every GC they're in except possibly Art of War Light at a huge disadvantage because they control one capital ship planet, 2-3 heavy frigate planets and 1/3rd as many units. If anything, they need beefing up.

ETA:

Kirov: honestly, only thing I could think playing against them: is this a joke? Seriously, that unit must be a joke. It is strong, it is fast, it is hard to destroy and comes in such numbers like a zerg horde.

Hard to destroy? It has less health than the AT-ST. Yes it's fast. It comes in squads of 3. AT-STs and T2-Bs come in squads of 4. Its lasers are the same as the T2-B, damage wise, and it's missiles are the same as the AAC while firing several times less often. If you're losing to these things, you must just be trying with infantry, because anything above that just tears them apart. It's probably going to get cut simply because it doesn't fit in with the rest of their units once they've been filled out enough to afford it, though.

[emp3ror86]

First and foremost I would like to express that I see and understand the amount of work you have put into the Eoth faction and that it is your work in question. If I sound disrecpectful or anything like that, it is due of my lack of knowledge of english langauge and it is not on purpose.
 
Art of War without Eoth: They are strong only until their army of heroes is destroyed, it's true. I finished 10+ AoW on hard. But they have everything from the beginning of Art of War, and can make life miserable for the other factions, especially the human one.

Bombers: Syca. As I saw it launches rockets and torpedos as well. Two squadron took out one hardpoint with one run on an ISDII. In the battle I show here with details only those managed to destroy the Lusankya. It's too much, I think.
With and without heroes.

The battle:
I managed to locate the eoth army of heroes and gathered everything I had and was close enough and attacked them.
Start:


And after:


How it went:
I had the advantage because the AI did nothing at the beginning. It did not attack me. I bought in all the ESDs to attack with bombers and take out its heroes.
The first hero who left the main forces was Siath with its Phalanx.
I sent 44 TIE FIghter and 33 TIE Bomber squadrons against it with the ESDs as baits to take the fire. I could take half of its shield down but the bombers could not really hurt it. After all the fighters were annihilated its hull was on 60-65%.
Then two ISDII with one Carrack could hardly take out one Ascendancy.
Then I started attacking, the ISDs took the fire from incoming ships while I sent the SSD to take out the heroes. I could take them out but then the Syca bomber swarms took out the SSD. After that it was just a massacre.

Powerful ships: Yes, the IR gets SSDs. One at two heroes. Eoth gets everything from the start. Big difference when it comes with Phalanxes when I hardly have enough money to build ISDs. If at least the heroes were divided into eras, the situation would be much more easier.

SSDs can be taken out far more easily than eoth fleets, especially with K-wings.

I'm going to provide more information and thoughts tomorrow, it's late here right now. If you can wait a day with the answer, then please give me some time to address everything properly.

One quick question:
Can you provide a table with hulls, shield powers, and damage ratios of each unit?

[Lucinator]

actually I find the EOTH very underpowered.  Their mazors and mega mazors do very little damage compared to turbo-lasers.  I easily win every battle I fight against them even with what should be inferior ships.

[Corey]

Emperor said to give him a day for the rest, he hasn't posted it yet but we'll keep waiting...

Megamaser base:
<Projectile_Damage>5.0</Projectile_Damage>

Turbolaser base:
<Projectile_Damage>5.0</Projectile_Damage>

[Lucinator]

yes the projectiles do the same damage but the turbolasers per"shot" send several projectiles in rapid sequence while the mazors don't

[Corey]

On average it's pretty much the same.

[Lucinator]

ok i guess, but every time I face EOTH I win and in one battle ive taken down 1 ascendancy class, one phalanx class, 4 carriers, one kariek, and Thrawn's clone, with three assault frigates, and 6 sacheen.  Seems a little off to me.

[emp3ror86]

I will post soon as I promised. I had an accident and I could not play or had time to play till this weekend.

[yutpaeksi]

I love playing as EtoH, and they're not overpowered or underpowered. If anything, they're like the Protoss of Thrawn's Revenge. Their fighters and bombers are probably the best in the game, especially since their carriers spit out 6 (4 nsiss, 1 krsiss, and 1 scarsiss right?). On the flip side, the damn thing costs 4000 credits, which is quite a bit, more than twice as much as the Quasar Fire carriers, and more than MC80s, and just a little less than MC80Bs, and the EtoH doesn't have any cost reducing heroes. All of the EtoH ships are more expensive than their NR or IR counterparts, but they're also better in a lot of ways.

However, the economic advantage, or disadvantage, doesn't come into play when facing a similarly sized battle group. What I refer to is the population numbers for their ships. While Ascendency SDs (love them, btw) no longer have cloaking (I loved this, but THAT was definitely unbalanced), they're still much better than Vic Is and Vic IIs, and much better than Assault Frigates or MC40s, and yet they take 3 pop all the same. Not to mention they come with 3(or is it 4) fighter squadrons and one bomber squadron. The same thing applies to the EtoH's best ship (in my opinion): the Chaf frigates. These things deal crazy damage, love them, and yeah they also cost 4000 credits, but they take up TWO (2!) pop! I've contemplated making 20 of these and just jumping them around, blowing stuff up...No other ship can match the Chaf in terms of firepower with a pop of 2.  Then there's the Phalanx Battlehammer. Beautiful looking ship, and it brings with it more fighters and bombers, and outclasses most other capital ships except for the SSDs, and is still just 4 pop.

So yeah with the cost discrepancy, maybe I can afford an NR or IR battle group twice as big with ships that are slightly inferior, but since only 40 pop can be on the field at once, this greatly closes the numbers gap. Basically when playing as EtoH, you're right in that they're at a disadvantage at the beginning but once you nail down the economy, (and a lot of their initial planets in the GC have high mine values) matching them in a space battle pound (or pop) for pound is damn hard.

In a land battle, they're not nearly as invincible, and damn their land units cost a lot. And I don't think they have any ground commanders, is that correct? Aurek Seven and Shial don't seem to convey any bonuses.

Also, I saw in another post that you guys are working on another defense option (in place of Golans) for EtoH. I actually thought that not giving them Golans was unfair at first but it makes sense. They also lack a planetary weapon for space combat, like the hypervelocity and ion cannons, but again it makes sense. They should be forced to field defense fleets to protect their borders. Anyway, my point is, perhaps they SHOULDN'T have any sort of fixed defense, they should be forced to keep a lot of their fleet at home.

And finally, I'd like to thank you guys once again for the incredible work you've put in. Not only have you done a great job putting together solid representations of the NR and IR, but you filled out an incredible and unique third faction with beautiful and awesome units.

[Meyer]

Personally I think EOTH should have it's own ground-to-space weapon.

[Darth Stalin]

I'm currently playing Art of War Full campaign as IR and the EotH is now more a appin in the back, but still... hurting. I was lucky enough to spot their heores divided with quite small forces in different planets early in the game and attacked them with all available forces, one after another - i.e. Lusankya, some 4 ISDs, 4 VSDs, some Lancer frigates, cruisers, carracks, escort carriers (necessary to provide bunch of fighters and bombers) etc.
And IIRC most if not all EotH heroes are gone. Which is even better, Thrawn, Shial and Aurek Seven were all killed in Jomark ground battle, when they invaded me... unfrortunately I'd later lost Jomark under attack of a very powerful striking fleet, but... now I'm gathering forces to retake it (currently cleaning some central sectors around Byss, Nkllon and Kuat from NR and warlords, to secure the background and set up more mining/tax collector facilities). I've managed to build one Executor and I'm gathering money for another (weekly income some 18k credits... hopefully soon to increase to 20k). Also a good option is to dissolve VSD Is (the're too slow) and replace them with VSD IIs... as well as replace Carracks with other ships.
AFAIK I have to keep Jomark to get my "Thrawn's Era" hero without crashing the game (exception), so I'll first build second Executor, then capture N'zoth where I have a 100-pop fleet orbiting above (with Executor, 6 ISD IIs, 8 VSD IIs and dozens of carriers, cruisers and frigates) - I've fought over 20 battles in that plase... they just come and get slaughtered... to come again!
What I modified personally is to increase the tactical pop cap for each faction to 100 - yeah. it may cause some lag, but the battles are much more epic... and EotH is ever more dangerous due to swarms of its fighters etc. But I have a "cure" for that "disease" too - Lancer frigates with Strike cruisers.
And I don't think the EotH is "owerpowered" - the clue is to attack it where and when it's weaker - use your Probe Droids!

[wraithdt]

Hi I'm new here but I also found the EotH to be quite powerful. I'm not willing to admit that they're overall OP but after a few encounters with them I found that they are a real challenge to defeat mostly because of they're superior starfighters (which caught me completely by surprise) an their tough-as-nails Phalanx Destroyers. Are their fighters really that superior to NR fighters because my fighters where cut to shreds which was quite shocking to me cuz I thought NR fighters were some of the best in the galaxy. I don't know the stats of the units so I'm making this suggestion based on my observations but maybe just to make gameplay a little more balance you could reduce the number of fighters that EotH carriers carry cuz right now they hit hard and fast, PLUS they swarm like bees which is a little too much IMO.

Regardless of whether you take my suggestions can you tell me how best to deal with EotH fighters. I found that the K-wing seem to fare very well against them despite their bomber role (a pleasant surprise) but I can't produce them in my current era which is era 2 (I assume they can be built in era 3). So in their absence what is the best answer against them?

Also I find the hardpoints on some of the EotH cap ships to be really tough to take out especially the ones on the Phalanxes. They're definitely "harder" then IR ones. Is this intentional?

I'm playing AoW Lite on Medium difficulty and I have to commend you guys for making such an awesome mod. Very enjoyable indeed!

Looking forward to future updates.

[yutpaeksi]

Hey wraithdt:

The Phalanx Battlehammers are tough, heavily armored and shielded, they're supposed to be. I often find myself having to rely on bombers or a capital ship with escorts to take one down. In terms of dealing with their starfighters, nsiss are manuverable but quite slow. You can send Corellian corvettes or lancer frigates to shred them. Krsiss clawcraft are faster but less manuverable and can be taken down by x-wings, e-wings, and TIE interceptors and TIE defenders. Scarsiss clawcraft I find to be even tougher and require brute force (outnumbering them, with support from fighter-killing corvettes and frigates). Syca and Furion bombers require you to dedicate a good amount of resources to kill, as they carry concussion missiles they can use against other starfighters. Luckily EtoH don't get that many (1 squadron per Ascendancy SD and Phalanx).

No fleet or ship combination is impossible to beat in the mod. Props to the mod team. If you scout well and are even willing to retreat at times after gathering some intel, you can put together battle groups and task forces that can take down most EtoH fleets.

The AI also isn't the smartest. It tends to spread its fighters out instead of sending them at you in a combined group. Again, group some anti-starfighter corvettes and frigates together and run them through starfighter clouds, you'll shred a lot of them. Once their fighters turn to target your corvettes and frigates, follow up with your own squadrons to clean up from behind.

[Lord Xizer]

I agree, also TIE Droid fighters and TIE Defenders certainly hold their own against EOTH ships. Lancers or Corellian gunships combined with some fighters to break up their formations work very well.

[wraithdt]

Thx for the tips guys. I've found that corellian corvettes and k-wings work well against EotH fighters. I've also learnt to conserve my fighters by preventing them from venturing too far into the enemy cap ship formations otherwise they'll just melt like butter. Those masers and missiles are the bane of my fighters or so it seems to me.

[Lord Xizer]

The EotH does have power but it balances this by being expensive to build units and they take longer. The heroes are the only real bulwark for them until later in the game, as the IR I have little trouble on any difficulty crushing them early on so I usually ignore them until they are more of a challenge( I also try and see if I can save the Warlords before they get killed by the Hapans and NR, NOW THAT is a real challenge in Art of War!) Also the EotH has much less territory than IR and NR and less resources to begin with. I think they are quite well balanced.