Cruiser Command

Here are problems players are currently having with the game

1) Battlecruisers die to fast, you spend 15-40 minutes building up, and you die within 30 seconds, even 10-20 seconds in the later stages of the game...

2) Battlecruisers v ships late game are INSANELY POWERFUL! yes, a battlecruiser should be able to 1v1 or even 1v5 any ship, but at the absurd and sheer power it can deal out with lasers (kinetic multi-tier is balanced, and single tier cant hit anything) and broadsides, its a fan, so your likely only to get hit by 1, even then broads are easy to dodge, but lasers? they are fast, and they hit very hard. In the early game, ships can deal with single burst, and even triple burst, but late game there is no chance at getting close to a battlecruiser to kill that miner.

~~ Those are the main problems that people i talked to have with it. For me...

3) There are 10 laser upgrades. Lasers have the unique situation of avoiding the change in removing scaling time to upgrades. Each upgrade gets longer and longer. While the first 5 are reasonable, it gets really boring and annoying fast. Its very expensive as well, but nothing else is as important, I will skip boost, wraith, corvette or even miner upgrades just to get laser upgrades.

4) Laser upgrades are the most cost-effective way to win in a game. And lasers are the one avenue where you can win without ANY support of other mechanics, I have even seen wins without broadsides, not that broadsides are powerful in their own right (but are very poor at dealing with small ships, unlike lasers. Which is fine) It is getting better now, as the new shield mechanics reward burst damage over sustained damage, but you can still simply overwhelm it with insane amounts of DPS from lasers+broadside.

So what do i propose? some major changes, when it comes to balance, many unexpected balancing issues occur, while i have no doubt there will need to be tweaking of numbers, the core concept needs to change.

-Reduce amount of laser upgrades from 10 to 5 (level 2 requires T1 3-4 Requires T2 and 3 T3 Requires) Remove scaling time, each laser upgrade will be 5 seconds. Decrease laser damage from 20% to 15% and increase broadsides from 10% to 20%. (lasers: 200% to 75% and broadsides remain the same *100%* though ultimately cheaper, and faster to upgrade) It should be broadsides dealing the real DPS, not the lasers, they should just be more of an anti-small small ship. not a 800 DPS machine which does even more hull damage then the single-target kinetics...at just 5 upgrades...

-Reduce shield regeneration per 5 from 1.25 to 1.0 (1 is cleaner and also makes shields more balanced vs weapons nerf, so offense still has a real chance to take down defense)

Its alright to have a "safe" method, but when it is also the "best" method things tend to get unfair. If laser dps does more damage at level 5 to hull then kinetics, then there is a problem (thats not even including broadsides,) or the fact that level 5 lasers almost less then tier 3 kinetics....T3 Kinetics 240 240 400 . 5 Lasers: 200 100 350 (though admittedly it also has added costs of penta and broadsides and two tiers, the advantages still outweigh the disadvantages by far!)

I'm just going to say that I think this is a horrible idea.. as right now lasers are almost never maxed, which is a good thing - it provides a buffer for one team to upgrade to superiority above the other team, and have that make an impact in the game - as far as skimping on small ship upgrades in favor of BC lasers.. that doesn't always work, since if your small ships are too underpowered, lasers or not, you won't be getting much minerals and the other team will have complete map control, thus allowing them to avoid you as their gather minerals faster - kerm? their BC doesn't even need to go there, if their wraiths can guard it while their miners mine it dry before the BC arrives

broadsides being bad vs small ships? that's OK, because like you mentioned, lasers are already great at that

late-game, lasers doing tons of damage to small ships? sounds OK, considering the amount of harass/dodging a small ship can do - it's a common strategy to have small ships dance around the enemy BC, draw fire, just to drain their energy cap - this would NOT be the case if the lasers truly were too powerful vs small ships

lasers being the most cost-effective? I disagree with you there - they may be the safest choice or most common choice, but certainly not the most cost-effective in terms of DPS vs the enemy BC (broadsides beats them I believe, you can win without laser upgrades and use destroyers, etc.)

I would be OK with adding more levels of upgrades to kinetics to keep up late-game

also, BC fights tend to get boring once both BC's run out of energy/weapons (which currently happens) - nerfing lasers would only make that happen faster/more often

slapshot wrote:I'm just going to say that I think this is a horrible idea.. as right now lasers are almost never maxed, which is a good thing - it provides a buffer for one team to upgrade to superiority above the other team, and have that make an impact in the game - as far as skimping on small ship upgrades in favor of BC lasers.. that doesn't always work, since if your small ships are too underpowered, lasers or not, you won't be getting much minerals and the other team will have complete map control, thus allowing them to avoid you as their gather minerals faster - kerm? their BC doesn't even need to go there, if their wraiths can guard it while their miners mine it dry before the BC arrives

Maxing lasers may not be the case for most games, however, you only need 5 to do serious amounts of DPS (400).
Skipping small ship upgrades may not always work because there are cases where the enemy be using evasion tactics, which i will add is much harder and takes far more teamwork then attacking.
And if you bring your BC kerm? usually at this point you have at least triples and a few laser upgrades, which 2-3 shot wraiths at that point, I cant give an exact number but i say most first kerm fights center around bringing your battlecruiser (one team or the other, or both, there is going to be a battlecruiser there) that just dominates other ships, and its usually way to early to deploy destroyers (effectively).

slapshot wrote:late-game, lasers doing tons of damage to small ships? sounds OK, considering the amount of harass/dodging a small ship can do - it's a common strategy to have small ships dance around the enemy BC, draw fire, just to drain their energy cap - this would NOT be the case if the lasers truly were too powerful vs small ships

It is not ok, lasers can one-two shot most ships at this point, are they dancing around the enemy BC? This used to be the case but the weapons AI just simply got better at killing targets and you dont see this as often, and BC v BC fights where are those ships? not jumping around the BC, they are sitting behind their own BC.

Dreadnought wrote:I would be OK with adding more levels of upgrades to kinetics to keep up late-game

Whats the point? kinetics in the later game are less effective anyways, and lasers outpace kinetics (IN HULL DAMAGE) at level 5, not to mention at about the same cost.

Dreadnought wrote:also, BC fights tend to get boring once both BC's run out of energy/weapons (which currently happens) - nerfing lasers would only make that happen faster/more often

I think it is far more interesting when both BCs are out of lasers, each team trying to scrap together whatever they can to do damage, including missiles, small ships, more upgrades and infiltrating , which doesnt happen as often (or at all) during full on fights, only after the energy has run out.

1) Broadsides will be buffed
2) shields will be nerfed.
and possibly 3) we can easily buff the energy use of weapons (from 100,300,800 to 75,200,400)

If the other team moves their small ships to kerm, and they keep your small ships away with superior upgrades, then 1-2 miners can mine most if not all the kerm before your BC shows up.. after which feel free to get the kerm

why would small ships not take cover when they can? they have to be moving in order to dodge shots, in which case the BC won't shoot at them (or fail horribly) - and no, ever since the flare hotkey, it's only been more small ships flying around the BC. Plus, due to the small ships not spending energy on running around, they can shoot more - it's not a question of if they can, but why would they bother when there is a better alternative?

serious amounts of DPS being 400? how much do broadsides do? what's the mineral cost of that 400 DPS? it's not cheap.. plus you probably want to include triples in that cost

the point for kinetics is make them catch up to lasers (in terms of hull damage atleast) in later levels.. plus you can't directly compare hull damage when kinetics do more bleed through, have longer range, and cause more debris than lasers

err.. id say all of the stuff you mentioned (missiles, small ships fighting, upgrades, and even to an extend infiltrating) already occurs even while both ships have energy.. or if not, it's due to there not being resources for upgrades or available small ships for combat.

basically picking kinetics out as weak and saying it's a reason to nerf everything else isn't a good starting point..

If BC's dont start heading to the kerm with 300 as soon as it starts forming that could be the case, but teams who want to get their BC there will often make it before enemy miners can snipe off more then a 100
Many times a ship is not taking cover because they are chasing and trying to kill retreating small ships, in the late game, even if you get to the outer edge of the range of lasers, you have to pull off, because even if a volley glances off of you, you take a lot of damage, and vulnerable to counter attacks (as well as more volleys hitting you the closer you get)

5 lasers = 200 100 350 + 75 220 for broadsides and penta (yes we can ignore triple). It may not be cheap, but its not that expensive either for the value they give.

Tell me, when has going kinetics won a game since the new shield overhaul? Also i would like to point out that for Tier 3 240 240 400: single shot kinetics do 400 DPS only when the shields are below 30% for the 100% bleedthrough and only around 60 dps for shields, and multi-shot kinetics dont do 100% bleedthrough at 30% shields, which will always brings its hull DPS down (which was less then single in the first place) and only around 110 shield DPS. Not to mention that single-shot kinetics have a much shorter range then lasers and multi-shot...the tracking is so bad that only 2-3 of each volley will hit a small ship (buff tracking plz )

Yes other mechanics in the game are there, but they hardly matter compared to the cost/value of lasers, which i want to nerf.

I was picking out small ships, not kinetics as weak against lasers, though kinetics do apply.

Dreadnought wrote: Tell me, when has going kinetics won a game since the new shield overhaul?

Actually.. I remember a recent game involving me and Whyte where this happened (we were so kerm starved we couldn't get to t2.. so we maxed everything we could with no kerm, which ended up being kinetics)

slapshot wrote:the point for kinetics is make them catch up to lasers (in terms of hull damage atleast) in later levels.. plus you can't directly compare hull damage when kinetics do more bleed through, have longer range, and cause more debris than lasers

For the record, I don't think kinetics do more bleed through. The bleed through percentage is the same regardless of projectile. It's just that the bleed through damage (the part that hits the hull, not the shield) uses the hull damage (which kinetics has an initial higher amount of). I believe Dreadnought is correct in assuming that at higher laster upgrades, the laser upgrade is higher than even the max kinetics hull damage, which means that even when a big part of the damage is bleeding through (let's even assume all of it), then lasers still deal more damage than kinetics.

slapshot wrote:

Dreadnought wrote: Tell me, when has going kinetics won a game since the new shield overhaul?

Actually.. I remember a recent game involving me and Whyte where this happened (we were so kerm starved we couldn't get to t2.. so we maxed everything we could with no kerm, which ended up being kinetics)

1 game....
also did you have support of saber missiles? Because that is the only tactic i can think of where you can rush and take down an enemy team before they can properly react (by taking shields down with sabers and filling up the BC with debris, also now that debris has been nerfed, thats much less likely)

I would also like to bring up the fact that it would be better to have the main source of DPS should come from broadsides, now broadside DPS is rather tricky, because of how it has the fan shaped arc, so often you will have just 2-3 projectiles hitting the enemy BC, and if you get the arc and distance just right, you can get 4, which is still very difficult.
Lasers should be a supplement to broadsides, and a way of dealing with ships, but right now that is such a hard-counter its not even fun.

Another point is that level 10 lasers do 800 damage a volley...thats more then a merculite missile and = to yamato vs hull. while the new shields are less vulnerable to dps and more susceptible to burst damage, its hard to ignore the fact you can keep up a constant rate of fire with penta burst (10,000 weapon cap/800 penta power = around 125 shots. though it would be less due to addition of broadsides it turns out to be around 60 shots)...there are only a few times i have seen people stockpile that many missiles, let alone merculite missiles.

Lets also go back to just how boring having 10 laser upgrades is, Im always captaining, and i find that 10 upgrades is just to much, especially since they scale in time, even though its in the name of balance...its just...not fun (Example: Swarm Hosts )

I feel like this discussion needs a third opinion, given that both Dreadnought and Slapshot are at completely opposite sides of the argument, and we are not getting anywhere with any sort of compromise.

Slapshot, I will say that reducing the amount of laser upgrades from 10 to 5 and removing the scaling time is a good thing. It is more fun to be doing other things then spending ones time on the upgrades console. (weather we want to reduce the overall %X damage given is another discussion)

Dreadnought, while I agree that late game lasers do a great deal of damage against ships, and possibly may need a nerf in damage, what your proposing is to extreme, from 200% to 75%. Other ways we can nerf lasers is to simply reduce the speed of which lasers travel at, which will help make it more difficult to hit ships from farther out.

DinoChicken wrote: Slapshot, I will say that reducing the amount of laser upgrades from 10 to 5 and removing the scaling time is a good thing. It is more fun to be doing other things then spending ones time on the upgrades console.

never said I was against that (as long as the damage/total cost stays the same)..