Dominion overpowered

posted on June 26th, 2009, 10:53 am

I play most often as Federation or Klingons and i changed some little things at these races, for example the Akira fires at two targets with its torpedos, Defiant quantum torpedo does the same damage as Excelsior quantum torpedos, Neghvar pulse disruptors fire bursts and so on. So the Federation is a little bit stronger now.

Then i played some matches on a map versus the Dominion and always had a hard time to defeat them, sometimes they defeated me. Last game i changed the side on the same map, me as Dominion and the Hard AI as Federation. I had no problems to defeat the AI, it was really easy to kill it. So i think the Dominion is overpowered.

I choosed Breen as avatar and only built Bugships and Breen battleships. Later i built some V-13 battleships and some troopships, but thats all. My tactic was only to build some ships and kill the AI, no special tactics.

[Tyler]

posted on June 26th, 2009, 11:03 am

Last edited by Tyler on June 26th, 2009, 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

By 'Hard AI' for the Federation, do you mean Hard or Merciless?

posted on June 26th, 2009, 11:07 am

First, your Threadname should specify, that you think the Dominion AI is overpowered, not the dominion itself. Such a conclusion is only considerable if you played equal enemies, which means online partners of equal skills.

The AI of couse needs a lot of refits, but were not revisited too often yet. The AI is mustly just designed to fight you, but not outbalanced, as most players and in my opinion the mods too just consider it as tool to practice tactics. Therefore it is quite possible that the AIs are not at all equal at strength.

If you really want to see the strenghts and weaknesses of the dominion cone on and play us online!

posted on June 26th, 2009, 11:09 am

While the federation ships dont deliver a real punch the dominion war cruisers can get really strong. BUT the costs for these ships are balanced too.

So when you play with the federation ships, you should try to support your fleet with repair vessels and so on. The AI wont do that. The dominion got no repair vessels, so it is not includet in the avaible tactics. But the Federation got some, and the AI wont use it as YOU would do. You have to admit, that the AI is not thinking in the way you do.

The Federation can be stronger than the dominion if you produce your ships in an intelligent way.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 11:18 am

I played against a hard AI, version 3.07.

My style of playing is to rescue every ship i can, and not to waste a single life. I think my way of playing is very Federation like.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 11:22 am

The difficulty called 'Hard' in version 3.07 is AI medium with a new name.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 11:26 am

As i only play against AI opponents i have found that the Dominion normally do better than the other races.  Whether this is because of the AI or the race itself i cannot say.  I rarely play the Dom because i worry all the time about loosing my prototypes.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 11:28 am

Just keep the Prototypes locked in a deep, dark corner of the base where the enemy can't get to them...that's what I do.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 12:15 pm

It has proposed to give prototypes a larger role before. If I would be a founder (may they forgive the blasphemous thought) I'd put my prototypes in a extra-super-duper-armored hangar with spikes on it.

posted on June 27th, 2009, 4:27 pm

I would like to see that the prototypes get more powerful than they are now.

They do not really make any sense and will cost you slots, for example seen at the fighter-launcher. I dont want to waste the prototype when I only can build 5 of them.

Mixed tech could be a solution, but the mixed tech variant is weaker than the puretech-Variant. So... it bothers me a little bit.

posted on June 28th, 2009, 3:49 am

Yes prototypes should be more powerful yet have a lower sytem value in exchange...since they are a prototype things would go wrong.....

posted on June 28th, 2009, 4:16 am

Prototypes serve a fine purpose right now: a reserve fleet. Unlike the other factions, the Dominion gets ship instead of having to research building them

The Prototypes are testing beds: they don't get special weapons and they shouldn't be more powerful because you should have to protect them. It is a unique faction specific building style. Also, why would a prototype ever be more powerful than the mainstream unit? Does this happen in the realworld ever? Or for that matter... take the Xindi prototype weapon... was it more powerful than the real deal? Right. If anything, the protypes should have really crappy stats because they are full of problems that engineers are having to fix.

I don't know what you mean by the prototype taking up a slot though. It doesn't. If you build a protype B-5, then you can build 5 other B-5's... and since the limit of fighter carriers are 5... no slots are taken up clearly.

posted on June 28th, 2009, 4:49 am

Actually, yes.  Prototypes are fairly frequently beefier than the final product.  They usually include more features (have more glitches too, but that's beside the point) but the final product gets stuff stripped out.  Why?  Simple.  It's in order to bring production costs (be it monetary or material) to a managable level.

Remember, the inventor of a new war machine is trying to make the godmode machine most of the time.  The military just wants it to do the job they envision for it, and not eat their entire budget.

posted on June 28th, 2009, 6:56 am

Look at the defiant: it had so much power it practically blew itself apart when attempting to fly at first. It was only after a *lot* of tuning that it could run stable, and i'll bet you they scaled back the power generation on later models. So i see prototypes as "pathfinders" for the class; they help the ship designers settle on a set of features that works best with the chassis. In that light, i could see prototypes being high priced ships with more features and stats but a chance to randomly blow up, and you won't have to rebuild them if you lose them.

posted on June 28th, 2009, 2:46 pm

I hate to bring real life into play again buuuut:

Differences between a prototype and a production design
In general, prototypes will differ from the final production variant in three fundamental ways:

Prototypes are often constructed via non-production intent materials. Production materials may require manufacturing processes involving higher capital costs than what is practical for prototyping. Instead, engineers of prototyping specialists will attempt to substitute materials with properties that simulate the intended final material.

Prototypes are generally constructed via non-production intent manufacturing processes. Often expensive and time consuming unique tooling is required to fabricate a custom design. Prototypes will often compromise by using more flexible processes.

Prototypes are generally constructed from a design that has been developed to a lower level of fidelity than production intent. Final production designs often require extensive effort to capture high volume manufacturing detail. Such detail is generally unwarranted for prototypes as some refinement to the design is to be expected. Often prototypes are built using very limited engineering detail as compared to final production intent.

Our Beloved Wikipedia 

So where does it say that prototypes are better than the final product?

Prototypes are fairly frequently beefier than the final product.

Back this up preferably, as at least military prototypes are never "beefier" than the final product.
Do not confuse an invention with prototype, which is what you are doing I believe. The prototype is designed to simulate the final product, to see if the engineering principals behind the invention actually work together. They might indeed have a few features that are stripped out later on--but they are never more powerful than the final product because everything is proof of concept (thus materials are low-grade). In StarTrek though, it seems that the prototype  is a fully operational version of the final product, and is in fact equal to the final product. We witness this in the Galaxy class and the Defiant--after fine tuning is completed and the developers are satisfied that performance is good, all new production models incorporate these changes so thtat the new ships do not require such long term tuning.