2 Steamrunners too powerful?

posted on June 14th, 2010, 9:27 pm

You're absolutely right, Gabe .

  The very nature of the Warp-in lends itself to people feeling that it's just a bit too ... unwieldy.  I think though that through very minor adjustments it's come a long way.  Through threads like this that say, "hey, getting 2 Steamies = dead expensive station 100% of the time, so let's make it so you can only get 1" is the right way to approach it

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on June 14th, 2010, 9:36 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on June 14th, 2010, 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In Fed on Fed play, whoever gets SFC first has a huge advantage. I know because I often build it half a minute too late  . Also I've noticed I can often forget about chassis level 2 since my warp in gives me the number of ships larger than Excel IIs and Intrepids I need (Akiras are nice, but Excel IIs finish off bases better, and hav never miss torp ability  .) Right now Feds are extremely reliant on SFC and it can give them a rather unfair advantage. Even one Steamrunner in your base mining can be a huge problem if you didn't pre-turret the base moon pair.

I think there should be a countdown after getting SFC before you can use it, like 40 seconds or something. Maybe also give you an alert that unidentified Federation ships are approaching at high warp whenever an enemy uses warp-ins. Maybe even state the location where they will arrive just after the alert.

posted on June 14th, 2010, 9:43 pm

I've always wondered if it's possible to randomize the number of ships that arrive; sometimes getting 1, sometimes 2, 3 being rarest. Why would a distress call always happen to reach the exact same number of ships every time?

Speaking of cooldown before use, is it possible to have the starting special energy different from the max? It works for crew and can be edited in map editor, so maybe it can be done in the odf entry?

posted on June 14th, 2010, 9:45 pm

@Tyler,  Yeah I'm pretty sure that if each slot also contained a "dummy" ODF where a "blank ship" or invisible product arrives then it could do exactly that.

  Could be interesting if sometimes you get 3, sometimes you get 1 .

posted on June 14th, 2010, 9:50 pm

I've always wondered if it's possible to randomize the number of ships that arrive; sometimes getting 1, sometimes 2, 3 being rarest. Why would a distress call always happen to reach the exact same number of ships every time?

Speaking of cooldown before use, is it possible to have the starting special energy different from the max? It works for crew and can be edited in map editor, so maybe it can be done in the odf entry?

And all the ships showing up at the same time within 20 seconds of the call (keep in mind it would have taken Voyager 80 years to get to Earth at about 80,000 LY, so thats about .114 LY per hour), with over a quarter chance of getting a specialized ship said to be rare. Man, Starfleet must have a bajillion ships just floating around.

I would love to see variable ship numbers, maybe 4 being the most since you would want it to average between 2 and 3 to justify the cost of building SFC.
I would also like some newer ships appear once in a while, like Intrepids or Akiras (but only max one per warp-in, don't want it to be too much like normal ship-building.)

A lower starting special energy would be nice. I just hope noone uses the Norway special on it. That can't work right???

posted on June 15th, 2010, 9:45 am

im pretty sure the norway cant alter the countdown of SFC, can the norway even target stations?

posted on June 15th, 2010, 10:33 am

Its about game dynamics. If you try to make everything canon, the game would be unbalanced as hell.

The SFC ist okay I think, you get other special station if you play another fraction. The klingon special station is a bit out of reach - i never used it. And the borg one is only avaible if you play the optimize-avatar. But well, the borg are strong, the klingons can spam, the rommies do stealth, the dominion does wreak havoc and the feds do... what feds do.

I think, its okay. And the steamrunner is okay. For its tiny defense value it MUST get a high offensive value. And even then it is weak against other ships.

Take the dominion, they have a bunch of anti-station ships, like the bomber.