Base defense balances

posted on July 23rd, 2011, 3:08 am

This is just me but I think base defenses should be a more viable strategy in games. I would suggest making them cheaper but having a limit to how many you can have to prevent defense spamming. This would allow players to defend key points but not every point. This would make games funner and longer in my opinion by not being able to cripple your enemy so easily in early game. Thoughts?

posted on July 23rd, 2011, 7:08 am

I strongly disagree with your position. Defense is fine atm. Feds are still cery strong and should be nerved in one or another way but the others are fine.

posted on July 23rd, 2011, 1:20 pm

Well, defenses should be a more viable strategy in the early game, but putting a limit on the number of turrets you can build is a bit excessive.  Plus, even if turrets are made into a viable strategy, they should still need a fleet to back them up.  But I strongly disagree with the fleet cap.  I have a few ideas that should make building turrets a bit more viable for every faction if you want to hear them.

We already have fleet caps on 9 vessels (not counting mixed tech), one of which is only activated after refitting the vessel.  Plus we have a cap on at least 6 stations and many, many specials have caps.  The last thing we need is the turrets to be capped.  There are too many caps already.

posted on July 23rd, 2011, 6:15 pm

Actually, I wholeheartedly agree with this!

Ship caps can be a bit annoying, but the fact is many ships would be impossible to balance otherwise.  Think about it: if the BortaS wasn't capped, the only way to balance it would be to weaken its ability and double its price.  The devs want to avoid super-overpowered endgame fleets while still allowing early game effectiveness.

Not all turrets should be capped.  In fact hardly any of them should be capped.  But think about something like this:

Mijurial Romulans special unit: Experimental Disruptor turret.  Mijurial has used her contacts within the Romulan government to secure this experimental prototype of a next-generation Romulan weapon system.

A disruptor turret can be refitted into an Experimental turret.  The refit costs 30 supply and is capped at 1.  This increases the turret's defensive value by 10 and grants it the Experimental pulse from the Shrike, with a chance to disable weapons on a destroyer.  Additionally, you can research a special at the Research Institute that allows the turret to shut off its weapons and slowly recover special energy.

Now there is absolutely no way for Romulans to turtle with just one turret, but they could defend just ONE moon or expansion, which is very important for Mijurial whose supply costs keep her from producing as well.

Another thing you could do, for example, is put a limit on Mayson's experimental weapon turrets.  Say he only gets 2-3 of each, and then if he builds any more turrets they will have normal weapons instead.

Perhaps the borg could use a holding beam from their incubation centers, but only one center can use it at once.  They would "focus the collective" on that inc center and it gains some sort of defensive ability.  The point is to make it harder to slaughter a borg players's "incubation fields" without making "incubation conquest strategy" viable.

posted on July 23rd, 2011, 9:59 pm

In my opinion Fed base defenses are already extremely strong and the changes that you suggest would make the feds even more formidable. They are already formidable enough and raiding is what drives the game. However, I do believe that a cap on the turrets would be good. I am tired of playing FFAs where the fed player builds 50 torpedo turrets. I used to love FFAs but the torpedo turret spam is just too much. A cap of 15 for each type of turret (or something like that) would be greatly appreciated. Besides, caps would influence the player to have a mixed and balanced fleet of turrets .

posted on July 24th, 2011, 10:24 am

I don't think that any more units should be capped in order to maintain balance.  They should use build costs/time to do that.

EDIT:
I think that the torpedo turret's range should be long, not artillery.

posted on July 24th, 2011, 7:25 pm

I actually think defenses are fine as they are, for nearly every race.

Would be just nice to see additional options with them. Like a possibility to group Romulan turrets - building a few cloaked, set em on green alert, put them back on red for an aimbush.
Dominion has the small starbase aka Perimeter, and Borg get their territory redo anyways.

And for FFA: i've played a funny one vs Cyrax and a few others, guess what Cyrax did. He massed Bugs and Bomber and totally overrun my defenses (i was mayson Fed)... so much about turtling is an easy strategy.

posted on July 24th, 2011, 8:36 pm

I also played a couple FFA.  I built about a dozen or so turrets in the first one, but mostly ships.  Raiding was impossible until everyone had a massive fleet.  I believe I was the most aggressive player in that match, going in, destroying an expansion, then going back to base to defend my expansion that was under attack at the same time.  That wen't on for a while and I eventually took out my Romulan opponent except for his fleet which had cloaked, waiting for an opportunity to strike.  I went over and engaged a large Klingon fleet, then went back and fourth to defend my base and take out the Klingon expansion and base.  By the time I got back, I had lost my expansion and a good portion of my base, but the Klingon and remaining Romulan fleets were eventually destroyed.

FFAs aren't very popular because they take so long to complete and you are vulnerable to attack when raiding.  In that game I mentioned, I was also Mayson Federation.  In another FFA, I was Mayson Federation again, got overrun by another Federation player who got overrun by a Romulan player.  It was on a map that I designed to help prevent turtling.  Boy did I fail!

Anyways, so far, at least in FFA, turtling seems to have a 50:50 chance at giving you a win as long as you don't overdue it on the turrets and compromise ship production.  Try about 1 turret for every 5 ships.  I'll be trying it myself sometime and see how it works.  Since the turret production rate is so low, there should be sufficient resources if you have at least one expansion.

posted on July 24th, 2011, 11:08 pm

I don't think that any more units should be capped in order to maintain balance.  They should use build costs/time to do that.

EDIT:
I think that the torpedo turret's range should be long, not artillery.

Whats wrong with limiting the Fed to 20 torpedo turrets? Or even 30? I mean when are they actually going to have the res to do that other than an FFA. There is nothing worse than trying to destroy a wall of 50 torpedo turrets... 6 of them could kill a cube.

posted on July 25th, 2011, 12:11 am

It's a bias against fleet capping.  And the fact that just about everything that seems "unbalanced" is balanced using fleet caps.  To me, it just seems like the easy way out.

If the torpedo turret is so overpowered, then the techtree requirements should be increased and maybe increase the resource costs and upgrade time to make that unit.  That way, the economy becomes the cap.

Torpedo turret is 56/92/40 and requires the Eraudi Yard and 811/284/49 resources.
Phaser turret is 42/69/30 and requires the Antares Yard and 423/158/17 resources.
Pulse turret is 28/46/20 and requires 241/94/11 resources.

The torpedo turret is 33/33/33% stronger than the phaser turret and costs 92/80/188% more resources and 2 extra stations than the phaser turret.  So you're paying almost double to refit the frame into a torpedo turret than you would a phaser turret for only 33% higher values.  If I remember correctly, this should be balanced as 1 offensive value from a torpedo does more damage than 1 offensive value from a phaser.  27% more to be exact.  A phaser turret would only be 53 to deal the same amount of damage as the torpedo turret, so that extra cost is justified.  Except for maybe the supply cost, which is about double the ratio of the other resource increases.  Plus the turret gets a bonus vs short and medium-ranged targets.  A good balance would be to increase the Dilithium and Tritanium costs to be over 100% more than the phaser turret and closer to the supply cost ratio.  But not a fleet cap.

However, I do see why you would want a fleet cap, I just believe that a fleet cap is the wrong way to go.  For something like the warp-ins where you pay 800/600/75 for 3 ships for free that should cost about that much per ship, I'll go for, but not for a unit that you pay full price to get, such as the torpedo turrets.

PS:  My suggestions will make the torpedo turret cost 1218/455/49.  4-6 of them now matches the price of 1 cube.

posted on July 25th, 2011, 3:30 am

The thing is, like carrier ships the torpedo turret is only overpowered in massive numbers.  For one or two, they're actually pretty balanced.  Well okay, the defensive value is a bit high...

The devs could simply increase the footprint of platforms so turrets can't be built so close together.  This makes it harder to make a sheer wall of them but doesn't affect the placement of 2-3.  Just say that nearby structures interfere with their targeting scanners or something and that's why they need a footprint bigger than their model size.

posted on July 25th, 2011, 3:49 am

I really like that idea . TCR you can give me all of the statistics but theory vs reality is always going to lose to reality.

posted on July 25th, 2011, 9:37 am

Incoming wall of text... 

...
Torpedo turret is 56/92/40 and requires the Eraudi Yard and 811/284/49 resources.
Phaser turret is 42/69/30 and requires the Antares Yard and 423/158/17 resources.
Pulse turret is 28/46/20 and requires 241/94/11 resources.

Faulty math in my oppinion. You forgot the initial cost for a platform plus the increasing supply cost. So there's already some kind of "economy cap" in place.

So let'S say you go straight for turrets, then you need:
Torpedo turret 811/284/49 + 100/50/0 = 911/334/49 (initial cost)
After you bought your first supplies:    =  1061/484/0
2nd time:                                              =  1111/534/0
3rd time:                                              =  1151/574/0
and 4th + rest:                                  =    1201/624/0

Remember that Feds, in comparison to Dom or Borg, can't get supplies for "for free" in the long run, neither can Romulan or Klingon of course. Around every 5th turret you need to buy new supplies, and don't forget the initial supply drain for mining ships you definitely need.

The torpedo turret is 33/33/33% stronger than the phaser turret and costs 92/80/188% more resources and 2 extra stations than the phaser turret.  So you're paying almost double to refit
...
PS:  My suggestions will make the torpedo turret cost 1218/455/49.  4-6 of them now matches the price of 1 cube.

In your oppinion the Q-turret needs twice the ressources for only 33% more damage output
  - so why even bother building it?
And btw.: a Borg cube is a moving ship, with a lot of possible specials, smaller build time, which can easily destroy a fully upgraded starbase on it's own. While ANY defense structure, no matter which race, is only able to defend a specific area.
Point is: without a fleet, your turrets are useless in the long run.
Don't forget: while your enemy starts fortifying his base, you can capture the whole map.
And i'm pretty sure that half a dozen moon pairs can easily outbuild 1 moon pair. At that point of the game you just can't fail killing those turrets.



And last but not least: the overall game mechanics tend to make FFA games "campy". The moons never run out of ressources, so there's no urgent need to get of your base. There's no strategic point to conquer, neither is there any item to capture.
What FFA basically needs is a goal to reach, except of "not dying". Otherwise it ends up in people turtling or even sometimes building huge fleets for a loooong time period, till one of them is bored enough and finally moves out.




And overall @ "defense structures":
actually fleet ops is quite balanced with turrets, some just need to be a bit buffed somehow - like the Romulan ones (in my oppinion).
Try it yourself: 1v3 AI (Merciless) on Central Point. There you can easily see the power of turrets. They're supposed to deny an enemy a specific path, and that's what they're good at - it works this way in nearly every strategy game.
In FO multiplayer games (with humans) they can easily deny a flank / an expansion / enemy harassment, or make it at least VERY hard. Vs. AI they even grant an easy win.


just my 3248324 cents.

posted on July 25th, 2011, 10:03 am

For one or two, they're actually pretty balanced.  Well okay, the defensive value is a bit high...

high defence aside, i think 1 quantum turret is almost useless against most strats. it splits its fire onto 4 targets, which will easily give you time to cloak/retreat any of them with no sweat at all, and thats even if it can break down the shields of a ship with only 25% of its firepower. most times against quantum turrets you can just ignore them and kill the miners anyway, since it will scratch the shields of only a few of your ships. its only when you have 1 big target coming into range at a time, such as a sphere/cube, that the quantum directs its torps to one target and makes a difference.

risner's photon turret is much more useful. personally i think her turret should have split fire torps too, as 1 quantum is supposed to do more damage than 1 photon.

for mayson, phaser turrets are nearly half as cheap, and 2 of them will be much more of a problem than 1 quantum turret. as they hit hard and fast, making it harder to avoid a loss.

the torp turret (both quantum and photon) has its only main advantage of a stupidly high def, so it takes ages to kill, which could delay the enemy for ages if they dont have lots of torps to kill it.

The devs could simply increase the footprint of platforms so turrets can't be built so close together.  This makes it harder to make a sheer wall of them but doesn't affect the placement of 2-3.  Just say that nearby structures interfere with their targeting scanners or something and that's why they need a footprint bigger than their model size.

that's actually an interesting idea. would make the edges of turret walls/forests easier to attack, as the entire defensive field doesnt fire at you at the same time. the only time we saw turrets in canon they were placed at a distance greater than their own size from each other.

posted on July 25th, 2011, 11:13 pm

Faulty math in my oppinion. You forgot the initial cost for a platform plus the increasing supply cost. So there's already some kind of "economy cap" in place.

No, that was intentional.  I was just showing the refit costs.  The platform itself is already built, so we only need to see the relative costs to upgrade the platform, not build it.

high defence aside, i think 1 quantum turret is almost useless against most strats. it splits its fire onto 4 targets

Oh, I forgot to mention that.  I prefer the phaser turret for that very reason.

---

By the way, maybe the torpedo turret could be put into separate modes to select whether or not to split the fire based on what's coming.