Sovereign Class - Durability Issues

posted on March 11th, 2009, 5:23 pm

@ ray: Well, i think we´re going in circles here. You don´t want the defiant to be a godship, and i didn´t say it is weak, just that it has enough power ingame.

The Sovereiggn should have a better offensive value, but remember that it only has two weapons,even on maxed experience, where the defiant class has 4 weapons with max experience, that´s something to keep in mind.

But anyway, this thread is not about the defiant (and i fear there are some already or there will be  ), it´s about the sovie.

posted on March 11th, 2009, 5:26 pm

if you notice serpicus, thats because nobody had time to upgrade to later ships, (where you guys woulda killed us), and alos you made the mistake of attacking him, right when my ships were in his base, and he had just gotten warp in, and he had kligon help from me,

and these stats can help show you why in late game we woulda died

nevargh claas kligon ship is 679 dilithium, and 166 trilithium, and it is 50 offense 44 defense

soverign class 777 dilithium 231 tri, 36 offense 46 defense

and the defiant 679 dilithium, 209 tri 36 offense, 38 defese

so you see the fed late game sucks

idk why you guys got killed, you wernt very cordinated, it took one swift blow from us, and you died,(archaon is good)

borg is best in early strentgh, and fed is okay, i notice you guys also didnt use all your moons

not really.
the feds arent sovs. the descent is a fed final level ship that can compare to the negh.
plus the mods wanted to bring home klingon firepower effect as well as the klingon cheapness of ship construction. that's cool.
So I dont see the rationale of comparing dilithium cost of one race to that of another when drawing the conclusion of fleet strength.

The klings have other advantages and disadvantages to the feds. Specifically if i were to compare a vorcha to an excelsior.
so the varyiong of the fleets is essential in determining which fleet is better and which isnt.

i would be more concerned about cases when whole tech tree builds are slow or mired by resource collection delays.

The borg are pretty well rounded. Except for the damn beams and miners that get stuck between the moon and the mining station (which cant be placed)... which brings up the main contentions with the borg - miners that dont need stations, just mine by orbiting a moon and credit the amount to the supply pool after filling up. no need to rotate and jiggle and gyrate just to get from one moon to the station which no one can control to make sure it doesn't popup in any untoward place that blocks movement.

Feds are fine. If anything the torp turret may need a little more scrutiny.
Klings are fine.
Roms are fine and have good mix and match potential.
Borg are fine except for the issues above
Dominion - the neglected stepchildren of FO..  :crybaby:

posted on March 11th, 2009, 5:30 pm

  Indeed, the miners are the only annoying thing borg has. I hope the developers find a way fix that.

posted on March 11th, 2009, 5:35 pm

pathfinding for ships in general is also an issue at times.
nirvana 2, my cubes and only my cubes tend to jump over the asteroid belt when emerging from the woemhole at once with the rest of the fleet.
construction ships tend to freeze movement when placing structures close. they move in the direction of the object to be built, but dont move around any object in their path if the construction ship and the blocking object are near the destination where the structure is to be built.

On many an occasion assimilators and spheres get stuck in and around moons, just banging into and getting stuck at the moons, thereby causing the fleet to splinter and then get easily picked off.

So yeah there are a few issues that certainly need to be worked on for Borg movement, not just the miners and the mining station.

posted on March 11th, 2009, 6:01 pm

The reason the negh usually survives what the sov won't is simple.  Weapon Overload.  Faster kills = less damage taken.  Which, disturbingly, makes the Negh'var one of the most defensive of all ships because the weapon overload hits so hard that there are alot of ships that it will remove from a fight in the first shot.  If it takes the Neg 5 salvos of normal weapons to kill the next ship, that's 5 times it's not being hit by that first dead on.  The Sov, on the other hand, doesn't get to do that 'reduce the numbers right away' trick.

posted on March 11th, 2009, 9:08 pm

@ serpicus, wtf! no you cant copare the nevhar to the descent, the descent is not a ship that can be produced but twice!, for the costs of the feds ship, they should be alot better! heck the excelsior costs only 50 less then the nevargh,

the fed is supposed to be advanced and spend alot on reserch, it dowsent seem to reflect that, id be fine with the sovy, if there was a refit or upgrade system but there isnt

posted on March 11th, 2009, 9:16 pm

and the descent is completely cost free... 

posted on March 11th, 2009, 9:36 pm

see. so u have a better deal with the descent. So u really cant compare it to the negh... just not in the same direction you're going ray lol. 

posted on March 11th, 2009, 10:32 pm

optec, you of all people should know, that you can only get two descents, and they dont add up to nevargh,

all that the fleet ops team has said is that it adds up  to the balanc forumlas, well how can this be true!

when a defiant, and soverign cost more then a nevargm and a excelsior costs barley less then it, yet the soverign(which costs 100 more), is more then 14 points below in offense, and the nevargh, is only two points behind in defense, i thought kligon was the attacking race, and the fed was defending(save for the defiant)

and you guys can not tell me that the descent is supposed to be the soulution to the nevargh, oh yeah, 2 descents against a fleet of nevarghs, right....

now, it would be one thing if the phalanx was cheaper, and you could build more then 8 of them and they had better stats, but they dont,

and although i like the idea of having very good defense, thats not how it is now, feds need to be looked at

and so do kligons, i love there nevargh and how powerful it is, but they dont have much of special weapons,

but really, make the sovie a ship the feds can be proud off, or give us the promethius, or somthing else

and i dont see how you can say the fed has a better deal, yeah, by paying 900 dilithium to get 2 descents, and maybye 2 more once the first ones are destryoed, of course, that completely evens it out between the feds and kligons,

i thought that some of this was about bsalance, where is it?

posted on March 11th, 2009, 10:42 pm

Dear oh dear, I must've touched a nerve with this thread topic. All I orginally asked about was just a little defensive increase for the Sovereign - not a scrutiny of the whole balancing structure. 

Klingons always place emphasis on firewpower - this is reflected perfectly in FO on the Nevagh and it's special weapon. That's the way it should be. To compare the Sovereign with the Nevagh in terms of firepower simply isn't realistic - the Klingon ship should always be better in this regard. The same applies for the Descent, which as Optec pointed out earlier - is free.

The whole point of this topic isn't about trying to make every race's battleships equal to eachother - they all need their defining strengths and weaknesses. For example, the Nevagh has high offensive value at the expense (in my opinion) of durability. My trouble with the Sovereign is that it doesn't seem to be particularly strong in any particular area (e.g firepower or durability). I suppose you could argue that it may be an all-rounder, average but not excellent in any one area.

posted on March 11th, 2009, 10:47 pm

Two words: Fleet Operations.

You simply cannot compare one ship to another in a mod like FO, even if they are at the top of the tech tree. Try attacking a TacCube with an equal amount of Sovereigns, or Norexans, or Negh'vars etc in terms of resources, and you'll find that balance is done by way of a variety of ships (and in fact this type of resource balance is also not fair: see below). But I am certain that you know this. Also, you'll find that each race uses resources in a different manner. For instance, the Borg in fact gather higher amounts than the other races, with less miners... but they use the resources in greater abundance. You can't compare two species in terms of resource use without comparing resource gain (and cost of stations/research). Likewise, there is little to benefit by comparing one species's battleship to another for the aforementioned reasons. When Optec says that they work according to balance calculations, it is much more complex than you are leading us to believe Ray.

posted on March 11th, 2009, 11:11 pm

#1 how can you pople use the descent can take out a nevargh as your argument? you can only get TWO DESCENTS, and you can build as many nevarghs as you want

i did some testing and got these results

descent vs nevargh (no special weapons) nevargh looses, descents sheilds down, only 1/2 hull left

descent vs nevargh (special weapons) nevargh looses, descents sheilds down, between 1/2 and 3/4 hull left

nevargh vs sovy (no special weapons) sovy looses, nevargh, has full hull strenght, and a small red bar of sheilds

nevargh vs sovy (special weapons) sovy looses, nervargh has full hull, 1/4 of sheilds

y even test defiant? or excelsior, i bet a nevarg could take close to two of those, it way overpowerd the sovy, the whole point of this is please, look at it closer

the thing is #1 i want feds to be powerful, not spam

#2 as is, they cant spam, there ships, cost more, and do less, are less powerfull

so what exactly makes the feds so dang ewual on your minds?

[Optec]

posted on March 11th, 2009, 11:22 pm

Last edited by Optec on March 11th, 2009, 11:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

there is more calculated in vessels then their mere attributes. the formulas are quite complex, for example weapon range, crew, speed and many less obviouse parameters, like techtree costs, lineup positioning points, race focus points and the like.

but, to be hones, there was a small bug in the techtree function, causing several techtree parameters to be summed multiple times instead of once, making some ships (for example the neghvar) a bit cheaper then intended. its not much (dont expect the ship to cost 900 now) but its a bit, you will get these change in the next patch.

Deal with it. the Federation is not focused on offensive superbattleships and single-unit-mass production. Mix your fleets, use your special weapons, exspecially research your support ships and you will get a great performance. Thats the Federation gameplay style we decided to use for them and that wont change. The Klingons are probably the best race for "single shipclass production" although you will even get a better performance for them if you mix a little.

Oh and by the way, a Sovereign can kill a NeghVar without even being hit once if you just always fly away. Yes thats much micromanagement, but you get the feeling of what i spoke about. Balancing is not just about evening out firepower and shields (it was like that in beta1) but we soon found out that a real multiplayer oriented gamedesign requires much more information to be taken into account when designing units. Back those time designing a new unit (gameplay wise, not speaking about models or textures) took arround an hour. today it takes a week.. and even then you have to make testgames if you want to make a vessel thats not redundant (we try to make each vessel valuable, so that there is not just a better replacement of a unit)

posted on March 11th, 2009, 11:32 pm

Owned.

[Optec]

posted on March 11th, 2009, 11:36 pm

Last edited by Optec on March 11th, 2009, 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

this topic is not about "owning" anybody. i just want to give a closer view on what we think Federation gameplay style and balancing looks like and how gamedesign for Fleet Operations works

Please stay friendly and polite in the forums, although I see that balancing is a very emotional process. Sadly most often its the emotion "hate" at all those work for me just kidding, its nothing compared to modeling and texturing

but back on topic, we were talking about the Sovereign