Slight changes on the Dominion faction

posted on October 6th, 2011, 1:16 pm

I haven't played that much lately, but according to my latest online experience I think the Dominion race could use some tweaking.

1. I'ts way too easy to retreat the dominion mining ships from an attack, so make them have 15 speed that would prevent malicious abusement of the mining mode changes.

2. Since bugships are way too powerful in the early game, and its so easy to micro them even in laggy games, it would be clever to reduce thier speed to 100 to compensate for thier vast 11 defense.

3. So many players abuse the very uncreative, and easy-to-execute strategy of "Large yard rush", so make the yard cost 200 supplies (in addition to is actual cost) that would give at least some chance to other factions to deal with it, because you need at least 2-3 spheres, and a third warpin to counter the second outcoming B-5 from the yard. Just a pesronal preference in addition: since jem hadar fighter pilots heavily suffer from drog abusement, they should occasionly turn aginst thier mothership to deduce thier accumulated agresssion when not it combat with other species.

4. The hyperspace artillery... maan... that thing is such a menace. I think using such a destructive weapon should come at lest with some drawbacks. A reasonable solution would be make it have a fail rate (approx 75% would be desirable). When it fails it would blow up and make the dominion player instantly loose 500 supplies. (should run into a negative value when he hasn't got that much)

Thanks for reading I hope the community an the developers would consider at least some of these changes to make the dominion gameplay more reasonable, fluid and balanced.

posted on October 6th, 2011, 1:36 pm

      Yikes.... that would ruin Dominion completely for me. The thing I like about the miner switch is game mechanics. You can micro your miners during battle. And it would make sense to me that the captain of that miner would be using some sort of trek technobable to delay enemy targeting sensors. Besides they can only do it once every 30 seconds.
      Now about the bugs. I do not know what qualifies them as "way too powerful". They are not over powered at all. The only chance you possibly have with them is their speed bonus. They die very quickly, and it is not so easy to micro them out of battle (Especially with lag). To me, this problem is more evident with the Feds. It is a lot easier to micro their monsoons and intrepids out of battle.
      Finally, the large yard. Pulling off a B-5 rush is a lot harder than it used to be according to a lot of players. The fighter ships are quite expensive supply wise now. I hardly ever do the large yard rush, but I would hate to have to pay 200 more supply for it when I finally chose to get to it. I mean Dominion players already do have a hard time making transitions between ships in the game, and this would make them kind of unplayable to me.
     

posted on October 6th, 2011, 1:44 pm

Have they moved april? Was there a memo I missed? Is mal paying people to do this?

posted on October 6th, 2011, 2:08 pm

How long has it been since you played?  One of your suggestions have already been implemented and the others would make the Dominion unplayable.

1)  It is not as easy to retreat Dominion miners as you think it is.  Measurements have already been taken into account to make sure that this cannot be abused.

2)  Who says that they're too powerful?  I consider a tripple-yard Saber rush (which requires only 1 expansion) even stronger than a bug rush.  Especially with the Saber's Hyper Impulse Drive active!  Very easy to achieve!

3)  The large yard rush is not an instant win and is a lot harder to pull off relative to other factions.  A 200 supply cost would be very unbalanced.  The Dominion are already the most supply-intensive faction out there, increasing it would spell doom for the Dominion.

4)  This is even more rediculus than your yard suggestion.  500 supply loss for the destruction of a single ship!?  Most players at most will have an average of 150 supply during the course of the game.  Assuming enough mining is in place to at least keep up with supply consumption.

posted on October 6th, 2011, 2:59 pm

Those are trully the worst most ill thought suggestions iv ever read.

The dominion need a major boost not a total nerf.

posted on October 6th, 2011, 5:31 pm

i am guessing someone got owned during online play.... cause why would you nerf dominion? It is already easy to beat them on AI merciless with them. Not to mention that playing online with them is just very difficult

posted on October 6th, 2011, 6:18 pm

puh. i almost missed the sarcasm.

posted on October 6th, 2011, 6:29 pm

I agree wholeheartedly with the OP, with one addition:

Since the Dominion is so good at getting ships out early, I suggest that they start with 2 constructors instead of a Starbase, and have to build it at the beginning of the game.  They don't need to start with any extra resources for it, they'll be fine.

good one :thumbsup:

posted on October 6th, 2011, 6:52 pm

4/8 Elim, nice one

posted on October 6th, 2011, 8:49 pm

You know Elim, I told you two months ago that you should open a thread and make suggestions for the Dominion since you where arguing about them getting nerfed too much. That's a very creative way you chose here .
I like the part with the "vast defense" of 11 

I hope the thread does what every good satire should do: starting a discussion.

posted on October 6th, 2011, 10:06 pm

Wait, this thread was made sarcastically!?  I wish I had known that before replying.

posted on October 6th, 2011, 10:38 pm

Wait, this thread was made sarcastically!?  I wish I had known that before replying.

Yeah, its hard to tell sarcasm in posts

[Elim]

posted on October 6th, 2011, 11:24 pm

Last edited by Elim on October 6th, 2011, 11:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wait, this thread was made sarcastically!?  I wish I had known that before replying.

Ha-ha, yeah it was.  :D Sorry about it, it's just basically a whining topic.  :blush:

Actually I don't have any problems with most of the changes of the latest patches. The HSA was really kinda frustrating for example, and the B-5's were really awful, especially when fighters were bugged, so no bad feelings about those things. BUT all the changes together, espacially the mining ship speed nerf take out all the characteristic advantates of the faction, that you could use to compensate of the lack of early game cloak detection, or the ability of massing out huge amount of ships like feds. (borg is a different story, imo most of the matchups vs borg are fucked up now, for example the do or die nature of the fast warpin  aginst borg)

So my problem is generally that the dominion lost all it's advantages wich made it unique, and able to compete aginst other races. Now it's basically like the federation, without the awesome turrets (...perimeters are super late game), awesome cloak detection (try to get it before the 20 minute mark in a game without fully saturated supply mining), and without the ability of warpin and mass up a fleet in the midgame (did you checked how much a kethracel facility costs and how much time it takes for it to pay off?)

I just don't know how to survive til the late midgame when the super-awesome stuff could kick in... A klingon player can now compete in numbers easily and he has cloak, a romulan can slow me down so much with harassment, that I can never really move out to counterattack without getting utterly crushed. A fed player can just sit back wait for his third warpin and steamroll, when I'm still trying to build up the economy that can support 2-3 yard production... (not thinking about middle yard S-2 spamming now, just straight up normal game without hardcore cheese) Borg.... not even worth to start talking about it, try to win a game aginst a quite standard "Oldtimepro" stlye agression...  a borg player don't even need to have his control skills to crush dominion. (not like it's so hard to micro 4-8 ships with 25-30+ defense aginst a disposable mass  of 11-20 defense ships  :whistling:  )

I know, I know most respected developers, and balance guru's, there are changes on the way... but I started  this topic (maybe not in the most polite way, but it was still funny to see the reactions  :lol: ) to collect some ideas, and maybe some of them will worth to think about. I would really like to see the game develop. I would really prefer to play this awesome game in my little free time that I have now to play videogames, but all the small giltches turn me away to play SC2 for example, wich somehow still comes with less frustration even if it sounds odd and silly for a such fast paced game .(and taking a look at the tunngle lobby recently or the FO teamspeak server, I'm not the only one  :( )

So the "real" 1. idea from me: before doing any fundamental changes (new yard, new ship classes or rebalance the old ones) try to lower the cost of the kethracel synthetizer. Make it possible to play around with builds that are based on the timing of the building of those things. It would certainly make the early gameplay more diversed, and would give something to survive til the midgame-early lategame, without having the annoying "op" feeling of some particular ship classes. I would suggest to make it cost similar to a normal mining station (~320 dil  ~180 trit) and make the supply miniers mine in a slower rate, like getting 10-15 supply in every turn insted of the actual 25.

Peace.  :thumbsup:

posted on October 7th, 2011, 3:21 am

In principal Im in agreement with Elim, Though Im not a dominion player. I do believe that having such high costs to get supply mining going at the expense of ship production just doesnt work. He has a good point about reducing the cost of the Synthesizer. 

Supply mining is supposed to be a boon of the dominion not a crutch. Raiding should still play the biggest role in beating any races production, the dominion shouldnt be tapping out in the early game because they ran out of supply and spent everything they had just to get supply mining going. Giving them the ability to get it going earlier while maintaining ship production seems a wise change. Id even be fine with supply purchases at the starbase going up per purchase or even going away completely given the right circumstances.

Im all for a lesser cost to the station and a lower supply per cargo ship, if it means dominion players can be more than 1 dimensional. Hell I would play them If I wasnt soo worried about prototypes and supplies and micro.

posted on October 7th, 2011, 6:00 am

Hmm, I agree that Dominion maybe needs a smoother curve between having no supply and having tons of supply.  Still, we don't want it to be too much like the Borg.

I know this is a bit rough, but what if the Ketracel Synthesizer didn't come with a miner?  This would reduce the cost, allow players to build it if they have no supply at all, and offer players the option of converting their existing miners over for a short time if they're desperate and don't want to build the extra worker yet.

This, along with small decreases in the synthesizer's cost, hitpoints, and supply mining speed would make it easier to set up emergency supply mining but it would be harder to set up and defend full-scale production.  Probably keep the build time the same, so that sniping just the synthesizer is a valid tactic to stall a Dominion player.

As for the Dominion ships, that feels like more of a faction redo than something I could think up small suggestions for.  I like that we're seeing a wider variety of Large yard ships now that the B5 is balanced, but their slow speed just makes them so hard to play.  I think if people recognized the sheer awesomeness of the C-17 when it's used with other ships, we'd see them having more fun as Dominion.  The C-11 needs some fixing though.