General Roundup of balancing

posted on June 11th, 2012, 8:10 pm

Okay, now that I have played a lot against the AI (I know, its not the same against a human, BUT it is very good in order the check the balance of certain ships) I want to talk about some things I saw while playing.

Federation:
I like to play the Risner Avatar, because of those nice battleships she can wield. But here are some things I found odd:
The Avalon class wont get as strong as the other battleships for their costs. The officer ability is much too thin, while I like the phasers which makes it to a small "S-7 Defender". But in order to fit its role, the Avalon needs more fighters, while the officer rank should be something more powerful.

Souvie: Well, this is subjective, but I don't like its special and the officer ability of faster repairing hull will only take effect, if the hull is damaged - so if the ship is near death. I think its a somewhat useless ability.

The warp-ins are very powerful. I like the warp-ins, but this special ability is much stronger than those of other races, so I'd like to see a similar powerful ability for each other race. Not nerfing warp-ins, its fine after the supply-cost thing. Oh, and the Excelsior could need an officer ability. :-)

Klingons:

They level up in a less powerful way than the feds. Their stats only grow small, while the stats of ranked up fed-ships grow stronger. For some ships, I would like to see a stronger growth. They have much more buildings to build and don't get as strong as the other races in late game. So I think the Negh'var could get a boost. Also Martoks avatar bonus will never make the difference. A stronger boarding party wont give me anything - I'm not playing the Borg.
The klingon ships could use more torpedo-evading equipment to compensate for their weak defense. I'd like to see somethink like a dahar-master officer ability on birds-of-prey, so that they can evade even beam weapons. Easy to kill in the beginning, hard to kill with two gold bars. The klingon gameplay is focusing more on rankups, so it would be nice to see a real benefit out of them. Maybe even two additional abilities.

Romulans:
Costly ships for their power. In a raw game, the romulans will lose to the sheer mass of any other player, because they do not have the force to withstand the better cost/power difference to other players. While I still think, the sneaky gameplay should be a primary factor for the romulans, they should have something to counter a spamming dominion player who pulls out V-13 and S-7 all the way. The Tavara might be able to, but the real backbone should be the big D. Give the big D more defense and a defense ability ( I like the subspace bombardment, but 15% wont cut it, the special of the dominion will cut you offense in half followed by a pink beam of death)

I LOVE warbirds, they are the most beautiful ships (imho) and they deserve something really majestic. Like an officer ability of firing under cloak which will cost special energy or something neat like that.

It would also be nice, if the romulan constructor could cloak (but must decloak if it wants to build something). This could give the romulan player the ability to make sneaky actions, because he MUST do sneaky actions to survive.

Dominion:
Well, noting bad to say. They can spam more like the klingons for lower costs, but have a slower start. In late game, they are unstoppable through sheer mass.

Borg:
A little faster accumulation of collective connections would be nice. In late game, they must pump out ships like hell and they cant, because of the limited CCs. But maybe this gets better with the borg-space, so maybe they dont need many ships.

General:
I dont like hard limits, like the veteran caps. I wish a link to stations, like 10 Veteran slots for every outpost and such things.

posted on June 11th, 2012, 8:23 pm

General:
I dont like hard limits, like the veteran caps. I wish a link to stations, like 10 Veteran slots for every outpost and such things.

And the Devs feel the same way, which is why they removed the hard cap and added the various soft caps we currently have. Not sure how they define hard/soft caps, though; they don't seem too different except for the fact that only a few special ships are affected.

Getting 10 per Starbase could destroy balance by allowing you to build too many veterans, you might as well have a 'Buy Veteran Slots' next to the Supply button.

posted on June 11th, 2012, 9:57 pm

considering veterans, maybe expierience could be made in a way that it is gained slower when you have more ranked vessels and therefor by the time you have for example 10 vets you would have to kill a realy many ships for more vets?

posted on June 11th, 2012, 10:15 pm

Well, the Veteran cap is a rising flank for the winning team - the more you destroy, the better your ships get and a losing player will have it even harder after his fleet was destroyed - so yes, this could be a real problem. On the other side is this already in the game with the normal rankups, but only so thin, that it wont break the balance.

Buying vet-slots could be a good solution. Its like spending money for an additional ship OR upgrading a ship to veteran. With a link to the economy, everything will be good. And at this point, it would make sense to put them on a starbase - you spend also money on it instead of putting it into ships. Building a base will require resources so we have a more or less direct link to the economy.

Either way, a dynamic allocation of caps would make the game more interesting, not only for veteran caps but also for ship caps.

If I have a really large map and two outposts, why not doubling the caps? The question is only: What makes a base a real base? Two mining stations, a yard and a research station? Or two yards, four mining stations and 4 research station + one additional outpost? I tend to think in terms of "the larger the city, the more troops I can support". But we do not have a "support station"or planets or... something that can be measured on that. :-/

posted on June 11th, 2012, 10:34 pm

They have a fixed number to prevent you from having too many because they're very powerful ships, buying more would mean you can have as many as you can afford. If you think they're bad now (where you can normally only get around 10 or so due to taking multiple slots each), how would you feel about someone having 50+ vets just because they have a lot more money than you?

However, an unused tooltip for the Klingon shipyards mentions building upgrades that increase veteran slots. They apparently have plans to work on veterans, at least for the Klingons.

posted on June 12th, 2012, 6:55 am

Federation:
I like to play the Risner Avatar, because of those nice battleships she can wield. But here are some things I found odd:
The Avalon class wont get as strong as the other battleships for their costs. The officer ability is much too thin, while I like the phasers which makes it to a small "S-7 Defender". But in order to fit its role, the Avalon needs more fighters, while the officer rank should be something more powerful.

Souvie: Well, this is subjective, but I don't like its special and the officer ability of faster repairing hull will only take effect, if the hull is damaged - so if the ship is near death. I think its a somewhat useless ability.

The avalon has been nerved pretty much, but I doudt whether it is really weak now, I only have the impression it could be a little too slow. For officer rank I have no clue since I only fight against Feds . The Sovvie special however I experienced as a real fleet killer.

Klingons:

They level up in a less powerful way than the feds. Their stats only grow small, while the stats of ranked up fed-ships grow stronger. For some ships, I would like to see a stronger growth. They have much more buildings to build and don't get as strong as the other races in late game. So I think the Negh'var could get a boost. Also Martoks avatar bonus will never make the difference. A stronger boarding party wont give me anything - I'm not playing the Borg.
The klingon ships could use more torpedo-evading equipment to compensate for their weak defense. I'd like to see somethink like a dahar-master officer ability on birds-of-prey, so that they can evade even beam weapons. Easy to kill in the beginning, hard to kill with two gold bars. The klingon gameplay is focusing more on rankups, so it would be nice to see a real benefit out of them. Maybe even two additional abilities.

Martoks avatar is used much more often than TaQ'Roja out of one reason: very cheap yards. That's a very useful ability in early and late game. But I admit that stronger boarding parties aren't really necessary in FO, since klingons have the smallest crews(which I dislike) they hardly start to board anything.

Romulans:
Costly ships for their power. In a raw game, the romulans will lose to the sheer mass of any other player, because they do not have the force to withstand the better cost/power difference to other players. While I still think, the sneaky gameplay should be a primary factor for the romulans, they should have something to counter a spamming dominion player who pulls out V-13 and S-7 all the way. The Tavara might be able to, but the real backbone should be the big D. Give the big D more defense and a defense ability ( I like the subspace bombardment, but 15% wont cut it, the special of the dominion will cut you offense in half followed by a pink beam of death)

I LOVE warbirds, they are the most beautiful ships (imho) and they deserve something really majestic. Like an officer ability of firing under cloak which will cost special energy or something neat like that.

Warbirds have been discussed quite often and I also think they may be a bit too supply heavy and are often too few to get the win. The Cehler lacks the firepower to get kills early on and is easily countered. The Norexan however is a very strong ship - but hard to get, you need a small yard and the Tal Shiar academy for her - a very high investment in a warbird strat, were you are usually lack ressources.

It would also be nice, if the romulan constructor could cloak (but must decloak if it wants to build something). This could give the romulan player the ability to make sneaky actions, because he MUST do sneaky actions to survive.

That's an interesting idea, but probably one would make it a timed special that consumes special energy.

Dominion:
Well, noting bad to say. They can spam more like the klingons for lower costs, but have a slower start. In late game, they are unstoppable through sheer mass.

Funnily the Dominion is the race considered by many as the weakest right now with many balance problems .

Borg:
A little faster accumulation of collective connections would be nice. In late game, they must pump out ships like hell and they cant, because of the limited CCs. But maybe this gets better with the borg-space, so maybe they dont need many ships.

Oh I think in late game they can pump out ships like hell, you need 3rd cc upgrade and some Inc centres, though.

Watch the reds!

posted on June 12th, 2012, 10:11 am

Speaking of Mogai Cloak, I think it was mentioned before that the removal was temporary. The idea of a cloaking Mogai may become reality soon.

I'm pretty sure civilian cloaks drain energy by default, anyway. Don't quote me on that, I normally prefer the Intel Centre.

posted on June 12th, 2012, 4:16 pm

The 3.2.6 incarnation of the Sovereign is a decent ship, but it rarely finds a place in a Fed lineup as (at least 1v1) games don't often reach chassis 3, and when they do the Defiant is usually the weapon of choice. I'm also in agreement that the engine disable special feels out of place on the ship. Not sure what I'd replace it with -- perhaps a phaser sweep that has a chance to briefly expose any cloaked vessels in weapon range, similar to what we see it doing in Nemesis -- but it's a moot point as we've been told that it has been extensively changed for the next version, to something more akin to a flagship.

posted on June 15th, 2012, 1:35 am

I agree with almost all of your observations, with a few notes. Most of the points you find inbalanced tend to occur in long games against the AI.

For example, it is much harder to get a veteran ship against a human as you generally work with smaller numbers and there is a great deal of give and take. I would like to see a slider that lets players modify experience gained so that they can have different settings vs AI than they do vs humans (requiring more xp to rank up vs AI).

Also, Klingon endgame ships do have less defense than other races, especially when they rank up, but remember they also have a very high tech cost which gives them very high power/cost ratio. In the current paradigm of small ships tanking for large ships, it's very good to have high offense on your big ships. The next patch will make big defensive ships useful as well.

The advantage of the Avalon is also more pronounced in human games because of fighter screening. Try attacking a lone starbase with 5 Avalons in your fleet, and you will realize that none of your ships are dying because all the primary-target weapons will attack the swarming fighters leaving the multitargeting shots to spread their damage ineffectively. In the right conditions, a squad of Avalons can mean a whole 5-10 seconds of enemy firepower wasted at the beginning of a battle. This force-multiplying effect is why the Avalon needs to have such low combat stats.

I love warbirds too, I have since I played my first game of Fleet Ops. Unfortunately the current lineup is too thin and divided, and the enemy can usually switch to a lineup that forces you to downgrade to small ships to counter him. Once again, the next patch goes a long way to help with this since torpedo damage is no longer based on size AND they've promised us a new warbird. Still, the devs' current thinking is that Warbirds should come into play against the small ships of other races and remain outgunned by other races' battleships.

posted on June 15th, 2012, 2:29 am

I LOVE warbirds, they are the most beautiful ships (imho) and they deserve something really majestic. Like an officer ability of firing under cloak which will cost special energy or something neat like that.

The Rheinn has this ability available to the base model and both refits.

Souvie: Well, this is subjective, but I don't like its special and the officer ability of faster repairing hull will only take effect, if the hull is damaged - so if the ship is near death. I think its a somewhat useless ability.

The speacial has been moved to the Seamrunner for the next version. //www.fleetops.net/news/item/209-on-the-run

Speaking of Mogai Cloak, I think it was mentioned before that the removal was temporary. The idea of a cloaking Mogai may become reality soon.

Really. I did not know that, glad you mentioned.

And I agree with what Tryptic said.

posted on June 15th, 2012, 6:16 am

The issue I have with the Avalon is its supply cost. You can get five E2s for the supply cost of two Avalons, and building a complete set of five will require multiple supply purchases if you're building from your Antares yard(s) as well. Feds can be comparatively easily supply-locked if they try to build them, especially if they're relying on warp-ins and a canny opponent gets some clear shots at the more vulnerable ones (E1, Centaur, Rhode Island).

posted on June 15th, 2012, 3:50 pm

That's true, their supply is really high. I think it also has to do with their not requiring any chassis research, which means that you could rush one out in like 8 minutes. Their pitiful speed makes this impractical against a good opponent, but it's a fun starting build for when you're just messing around.

posted on June 15th, 2012, 4:50 pm

Nope, I just tested that in-game -- Avalon requires Chassis 2. E2's don't require chassis research.

posted on July 27th, 2012, 2:59 pm

Yeah the klingons's don't have enough troops on their ships, I forget which ship has the troopship upgrade but that is kind of cool I just wish I could produce it straight from the shipyard

posted on July 27th, 2012, 7:45 pm

Yeah the klingons's don't have enough troops on their ships, I forget which ship has the troopship upgrade but that is kind of cool I just wish I could produce it straight from the shipyard

That would be the Vutpa'. Easily my favorite ship. Only drawback is that the Vorcha can be build sooner.