Not sure what buff you gave the Tie/D Defender, but it's massively OP. 4 Tie Hunters + 3 Tie/Ln with a level 1 speed boost were destroyed by a SINGLE Tie/D Squadron. Insanely OP'd considering the Hunter is just a very minor amount weaker than the Defender by itself, 4 Squadrons should reap a Defender squadron mercilessly.
TIE Defender stat comparison:
Original: 1 slow rate-of-fire laser cannon, 2 inaccurate medium ion cannons, 30 concussion missiles
New: 4 dual-linked heavy laser cannons, 2 dual-linked medium ion cannons, 4 proton torpedoes , 4 concussion missiles
Maarek Stele 181st variant: 6 dual linked laser cannons, 8 proton torpedoes
I tested the new TIE Defender dozens of times against various opposition. It is no longer the missile assault platform it used to be, but more of a sophisticated air-dominance fighter with a limited amount of ordnance. In one-on-one combat it will utterly destroy squadron after squadron of bottom-barrel weaker fighters. The trick is, with very limited number of missiles it can't penetrate the shields of heavier fighters like X-Wings or Clawcraft. Try matching a squadron of Defenders against 2-3 X-Wing squadrons and the Defenders will get humiliated. The problem with TIE/Ln and TIE Hunter is that they both have weak hull, so they get destroyed by TIE Defender's heavy laser cannons and they lack the firepower to punch through its shields. Just a horrible stylistical match-up. I haven't done anything with TIE Hunters, so they suffer from the same problem as the original TIE Defenders in that their ion cannons are horribly inaccurate and they have only one slow rate-of-fire laser cannon.
Balancing the fighters so that they match up properly in head-to-head and 2-on-1 and 3-on-1 situations is a very time-consuming process, but only the TIE Hunter and the Trifoil have been left out of it. Not sure if I want to do anything to either of those except maybe changing Hunter's ion cannons to dual-linked. IIRC the Thrawn's Revenge team wanted to make the Hunters weaker than in universe to justify having them in large numbers for PA, and I like them as they are: super-fancy TIEs with little actual bark. Giving PA elite interceptor fighters in large numbers combined with their Venators and Skiprays would make them horribly OP in comparison to even the NR fighters.
The rest of the fighters are balanced more or less this way, may have forgotten some:
XJ X-Wings and Scarsiss are better than the rest. Furions maintain their missiles, but are significantly less manouverable, making them third-tier in h2h but still devastating from the distance.
A-Wing (higher intensity lasers, longer loading time), X-Wing (dual linked lasers), TIE Interceptor (higher intensity lasers, longer loading time) and the Clawcraft (slower; stronger shields and hull) are 100% equal in h2h, as in its 50-50 who wins. they are also almost equal in power against multiple TIE/Ln squadrons, but have highly varying performance vs. many second-tier fighters.
Howlrunners (stronger hull and shields, since higher agility has close to zero impact to performance), TIE Raptors (fewer missiles) and Preybirds (fewer missiles, other changes?) are somewhat equal.
TIE Droids (way worse agility, stronger hull?), Krsiss Interceptors (reduced number of pulses and agility) and TIE Hunters are somewhat equal.
TIE/Ln still sucks.
That's actually the fleet I said makes the Tector worthwhile. 
Arguably the most terrifying fleet you can face as the NR.
Topic: Balance & Flavor submod for Imperial Civil War 2.1 (Read 175790 times)