Sovereign Class - Durability Issues

posted on April 6th, 2009, 5:41 pm

the current sov design is good. it may need a slight reworking of the textures to bring out more details and lines instead of the current ship-light overkill that kinda blurs out the other details with small specks of lighting.

but other than that the sovvie in-game is cool.

posted on April 6th, 2009, 5:42 pm

Speaking of the Sovereign, why did you switch from the P81 model?

posted on April 6th, 2009, 10:53 pm

To put it simply, the P81 model was probably a placeholder for the high-Res one Optec was working on. The High-Res one became the model that we have now.

posted on April 6th, 2009, 11:58 pm

actually Zeich made the Sovereign, not me We like the P81 model, but it somehow doesn't fit the Fleet Operations style, so we made our own

posted on May 28th, 2009, 11:34 pm

I know that some people have come to the conclusion that the Sov is underpowered and "can be fixed by swapping spec weapons", but I just want to show a comparison why the Feds get boned for their main battleship.


Take a look at the attached excel spreadsheet.  Arguably, the Sovvie loses to EVERY SINGLE OPPONENT SHIP of the same rank.  Arguably the Sov's can win using micro, but in a large scale engagement, they suck.  Also based on the unit costs, the Sovvie should have more bang for its buck.

Something must be done about this, and I hope the devs are aware of this.

/don't mean to beat a dead horse
//ignore hero ships -> I'm working on a modmod for "warping in flagship" for all races  Not sure if I'll ever get it done...
///not sure how some of the coding work, so higher ranked vessels might have incorrect DPS values
////Didn't put up Borg or Dominion battleships -> both races PWN everyone with their dreads.

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posted on May 29th, 2009, 12:06 am

"Didn't put up Borg or Dominion battleships -> both races PWN everyone with their dreads."

I think that above statement covers it. There is NO WAY you can compare one race's ship to another race's vessel. If you don't do it for Borg or Dominion, why are you doing it for Klingon, Romulan and Federation. You must make an overall comparison for balancing. The Sovereign fits its role, as does the Negh'var, Norexan, and D'deridex. The Sovereign is not the battleship you should be using for capital ship engagements. However, the Negh'var and Norexan are (well, the Norexan less so as it is armed with pulses). As it stands, the Federation relies on the Excelsior II for it's workhorse (Mayson), the Romulans rely on the Norexan (and usually the Klingons on the Vorcha and later Neghvar).

posted on May 29th, 2009, 2:55 am

don't mean to beat a dead horse

I don't think there's any horse left for you to beat, dead or undead at this point.  (Probably undead, since this topic keeps creeping out of its grave. )

Unfortunately you can't know the true dps calculations because only Optec knows them.  When I saw the 54.something on the Neghvar I realized that you were doing something similar to what I've posted before on the poor man's way to calculate dps, but it doesn't tell the whole story.  There are other things taken into account when dps calculations are made that Optec hasn't had time to post an explanation on, but he promised some day he will.

The Sovereign doesn't even have the lowest offense of the 3 vessels you compared it with.  If you take the base stats (without the free avatar bonuses) it beats the D'deridex, which only has 35 base offensive power.  Now let's add up the offensive, defensive, and system values for all these ships and total them.  D'deridex:  35/40/22 - total=97.  Norexan:  40/32/23 - total=95.  Negh'Var:  50/36/16 - total=102.  Sovereign:  36/46/18 - total=100

So now we see that all of these capital ships float near the 100 range in total stats when you compare them without their avatar bonuses. 

Also, the Sovereign's true power lies not so much in her conventional weapons.  Everybody seems to be stuck on the fact that distortion field only knocks out a ship's engines, but it does Area of Effect damage to ships as well, and immense damage to fast vessels like destroyers and cruisers.  Before, it was powerful.  You could take 8 sovs and blow up destroyers and heavily damage cruisers in one shot if you used their specials all at once.  Now distortion field has been beefed up and can take out destroyers with only about 4 sovs.  Maybe 6 for cruisers.  All without firing a phaser or torpedo.  It's also the only aoe ability that wasn't scaled back like the Norway's or Luspet's, or balanced by limited construction.  It does the same damage to every ship regardless of how many are in the blast range from what I've seen.

Arguably the Sov's can win using micro, but in a large scale engagement, they suck.  Also based on the unit costs, the Sovvie should have more bang for its buck.

Again, in a large fleet engagement, let's say 16 capital ships on each side and a whole swarm of cruisers and destroyers, you can send your Sovereigns right into the middle of their fleet, press "The Button", and watch as everything but their battleships are instantly dispatched to the abyss.  And their battleships are now heavily damaged as well.  At that point, those "weak" Sovereigns can mop up the remains along side the rest of the fleet, and you can call it a day.

You mentioned the specials swap, which is something I proposed a long time back.  It sounded like a good idea at the time, but I'm glad they didn't do it.  Instead, they did something way better with my idea by making it a vetern ability.  I jokingly mentioned that those hotshot starfleet engineers wouldn't be taking a coffee break while their ship was damaged, and low and behold we now have "Starfleet Engineers", a passive that boosts repair rates on everything and lessens the time that sub-systems are disabled.  

On its own, it's a fine ship.  Backed up, buffed and supported with a mixed fleet and support ships, which is a core aspect of Federation game play (the other races do those things as well, but the Federation relies on it more), the ship becomes magnificent.    If the Sovereign was ever underpowered, it is no longer.

posted on May 29th, 2009, 10:50 pm

"On its own, it's a fine ship.  Backed up, buffed and supported with a mixed fleet and support ships, which is a core aspect of Federation game play (the other races do those things as well, but the Federation relies on it more), the ship becomes magnificent.    If the Sovereign was ever underpowered, it is no longer"

If it is a "Backed up, (and) buffed".  I will agree that the Feds' buff and support abilities far surpass any of the other races (Remoore's weapon buff = 40% damage buff for 60 s), but my main problem with this argument is that the Feds are essentially paying for a ship based on it's potential rather than its actual capability.

As for the "fine on it's own" - back when distortion wave damage was changed, did the Sov's weapons get increased/buffed to make up for the damage potential loss?  Currently, as it stands, the average damage done by the distortion wave is roughly 15 to 26 pts, based on the odf.  Which is like 2 phaser discharges.  And the damage potential loss becomes more aggravated as the ship increases in rank.  Now in a crowd (of 8 ships like you mentioned) the damage becomes compounded as AOE damage, but still 8*20 (average) = 160 damage to however many ships are within 400 range (AND the range is calculated between each individual ship - meaning that a fleet might take 30-70% of that depending on how you and your opponent are running your fleet formations/hotkeys), which is fairly terrible, considering the dps is based on energy recharge AND the damage output of 8 sovereigns is 14 (average) * 8 = 113 pts/s.  The damage potential for 8 Negh'Vars during the same time period is 21 * 8 = 168 dmg / s PLUS their special weapon.  Additionally, distortion wave is only in a large number of ships, and only becomes a viable tactic if you spam sovvies.  Spending 800/+ seconds of your yards on Sovereigns, as one of the posters implied, is better used on Excelsior II's rather than sovereigns.

Also also wik, my DPS stats are correct, at the very least for the Rank 1 vessels. My only confusion arises in some of the 'added damage' stats in the weapons for the R5/R6 negh'var and d'deridex, and the fact that the R5/R6 norexan looks like its not fully implemented yet (may just be my ignorance of how they are hard coded ) A simple test: modify a ship's ODF to have zero shield regen.  Use the editor and spawn that ship, as well as a sov, then tell a sov to attack the zero regen ship.  Look in the editor what the shields are at.

A Martok negh'var with 781 shields gets bashed down to ~707.5 pts with a single weapon cycle, meaning that the sov is doing 12.xx pts phaser damage + 61.xx pts of torpedo damage.  (Most of the other relevant stats in those weapon ODFs are for animation/sprite purposes, which is why I didn't list them).  The "seconds" stat, you might argue, is not correct, but I think that internally the game is consistent (see the game:speed options).

All dps can be calculated under the formula:

DAMAGE PTS / DELAY = DPS

Raw damage (as in how much aggregate damage a ship's shields will take under fire) can be taken as

DPS - SHIELD REGEN = RAW DAMAGE TAKEN

However, DPS from multiple ships must be added consecutively.

DPS1 + DPS2 + DPSx - SHIELD REGEN = RAW DAMAGE TAKEN

Consistently, for its price, the Sov comes out as behind in all of these statistics.

/Sorry mods if this is getting to nitty-gritty with the base stats, but this is a balance thread.  Tell me to shut up if you get tired of it.

posted on May 29th, 2009, 10:58 pm

One more thing - really one of the main reasons I take issue with the Sovvie is that the Feds' late game is god awful. 

The general consensus that I have read is that the Fed's Early is (too?) powerful, mid is middlingly ok to way powerful, and late is terrible. 

This may be an outgrowth of the fact that I play Risner more often than Mayson, but still, I find both avatars severely lacking in any non-officer useful late game ships.

/rant

posted on May 29th, 2009, 11:05 pm

the sov is now fine.

It has the added durability. it has a decent weapons system.

No def ship is ever a stand-alone one man fighting machine - except the Defiant, and that too needed support.

The current fed style of having support ships to bring out the power of the battleships is in line with the fed doctrine.
Neghs were always more powerful than sovs. DS9s negh packed quite a punch.

I dont know why we keep comparing the sov to the negh. Each ship has its own unique stats based on the fed tech and gameplay requirements.
The fed as one correctly points out, it quite a ship when backed and "buffed" by the support ships.

that is what fed strat is about. that is what fed technical specialities are about. Just as romulans are there to fire from afar and refit their ships. the norexan is surely no match for a negh. but with its cloak and dagger doctrine it is pure Rommie.

The feds are well balanced at this time, and this restarting this thread is like a beating a dead horse.

There is no consensus on the fed end or early game - at least not amongst the players who actually know how to play the fed's style.
If we try to spam akiras and sovs only w/o any concern for remores or canaveral blackouts, then of course everything is not going to be 1 for 1. that is not RTS, that is Quake 3.

posted on May 29th, 2009, 11:07 pm

@  JK_Huysmans

So I would conclude from your reasoning that you should wipe your enemy out quickly and not let them gain enough ships to last until late game.  This goes for all raises of course

[JK_Huysmans]

posted on May 29th, 2009, 11:33 pm

Last edited by JK_Huysmans on May 29th, 2009, 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

@ Adm._Zaxxon

It is true that as a general strategy, wiping out your opponent early is preferable.

I guess I'm saying that specifically with the weakness of the Sovereign as a viable battleship compared to the other races, the Fed's strategy is dependent on the early game and lacks late game offensive power in what is assumed (at least I do) to be a main battleship role.

Oh, and @ serpicus

"Neghs were always more powerful than sovs. DS9s negh packed quite a punch."
Not once did we see a Sov vs neg engagement, let alone anywhere in Canon.  This argument is moot. 

"that is what fed strat is about. that is what fed technical specialities are about." I agree that is the fed's primary strategy, as current balance is.  However, I disagree that a ship's effectiveness should be so hugely dependent on micro on a large scale in large engagements that it renders the player unable to act effectively.  Also, see above comment about "paying for potential"

[Anonymous]

posted on May 30th, 2009, 1:31 am

Last edited by Anonymous on May 30th, 2009, 1:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

"Neghs were always more powerful than sovs. DS9s negh packed quite a punch."
Not once did we see a Sov vs neg engagement, let alone anywhere in Canon.  This argument is moot. 

"that is what fed strat is about. that is what fed technical specialities are about." I agree that is the fed's primary strategy, as current balance is.  However, I disagree that a ship's effectiveness should be so hugely dependent on micro on a large scale in large engagements that it renders the player unable to act effectively.  Also, see above comment about "paying for potential"

i.e in your opinion a norexan, a negh and a sov should all be equal.
and
all battleships should be mini-borg.

ok.  ::)

I have always agreed that a sov should start with at least 42 or 40 offense and that 36 is a bit too little. But I absolutely do not agree with rgular comparisons against the Negh.
Fed Sov offense needs to be at about 40-42. anything weaker is an insult to the class.

But the entire negh comparison is no reason to do so.

Bottom line - the sov is good. It's defense is good. It can be made more canon with a slight increase in firepower for the cost and status of it being a fed battleship. It is insulting that a fed battlecruiser is weaker than a vorcha (not a comparison based on cost or class, just a fact that the sov is an end of the line ship and is weaker than a kling second line ship is a bit disgraceful)

posted on May 30th, 2009, 6:08 am

The reason the Sovies offence is lower than a Vorcha is balancing. I think the FO team know that it should be stronger, but the game needs to be balanced as well.
Now about comparing the Sovie to Klingon ships. I find it kind of funny, everyone was (and some still are) that Klingons are unbalanced and far weaker than the other races but in the same breath you actually have the face to compare to their stats and say: "See they have bigger offence than our ships ---> buff our ships!"
No one actually takes into account the fact that Klingon defence and system values are absymal, thus making their staying power non-existant. Yeah its nice and dandy to have 50 offence, but with like 36 defence AND short range it kind of makes up for its power, dont you think so

Note that Im not trying to say that Klingons are unbalanced or anything like that, I just feel that Klingons gameplay is completely different than feds, thus comparing the stats of their ships is a stupid idea IMO. Its apples and oranges people, apples and oranges.

posted on May 30th, 2009, 6:15 am

wow did we really dredge up this thread????