Idea for ablative armor change

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 5:14 pm

As I was saying on tunngle, I think the passives just need a rebalancing.  Right now the defensive passives are MUCH better than the offensive ones.

A 50% bonus to damage makes your damage 150%, or 3/2
A 50% reduction in damage makes their damage 50%, or 1/2.  Which means other damage is 2x as effective.

If a ship with an offense passive attacks a ship with a defense passive, they will do 3/2*1/2= 3/4 as much damage as usual.  Yet the defensive passive also has a LOWER penalty than the offensive one.  Why?

Now, for the high density shield generator, I think 50% reduction is fine.  There are very few long-range fleet ships, and the races that do have them also have short range available (feds have excel II's but also a ton of short range ships)

But Ablative armor is different.  Some races, for some periods of the game (feds early game, klingons early and late game) do the majority of their damage in short range and so I think the ablative plating passive needs to be brought in line with other passives.  If you want to match the effectiveness of the offensive passive, a 33% damage reduction would be in order.  However, this would probably require some tweaking to the other passives as well.  The most important thing is that the devs keep an eye out and keep tweaking it.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 5:22 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on July 23rd, 2010, 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually I think this will help make less confusion, either by reducing short-range counter passives to just one, or by at least removing the short-range countering on the Defiant so that I don't have to explain to new players every time the defiant is discussed that the passives negate each other but not completely.

I do think Ablative is currently a bit too strong, its weakness to long range is so little (especially considering the ships it's on do lots of damage, that 10% less pwnage is still lots of pwnage), High Density shield Generators is similar, but due to Monsoons being destroyers, S-7s being so late-game, Cehlaers being slow, and Ambassadors being rather rare it is very well balanced (tho Phaser platform vs. Ambassador is ridiculous.)
A little more weakness to long range might be all Ablative needs to be perfectly balanced, but I really think it would be fun and interesting to have at least one passive that reduces damage from beams.

I see I was Ninja'd, and I have to say I agree that the defnsive bonus is indeed far better than offensive bonus.

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 5:24 pm

There are plenty of counters to ablative armor units for all factions . All factions either have special abilities which circumvent the passive on structures, or additional units in the same tech level that are of different weapon ranges. Considering on how few units Ablative Armor is added (Vor'cha, Sovereign, Defiant, T-15), you should be easily able to amass several different classes of ships with medium, or long range weapons (not to mention several shorts which do increased damage to the weapon ranges of some Ablative Armor units) - not to mention units that deal increased damage to units with Ablative Armor. Although Ablative Armor is soft countered by all long ranged units, again, just relying on what is specifically countered by passives is not the end all.

This comes as a bit of a surprise as earlier, Nebula, you were complaining about Funnystuff's fleet decimating your pure fleet of Vor'cha. Seems he as Federation didn't have any trouble dealing with Ablative Armor

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 5:32 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on July 23rd, 2010, 5:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are plenty of counters to ablative armor units for all factions . All factions either have special abilities which circumvent the passive on structures, or additional units in the same tech level that are of different weapon ranges. Considering on how few units Ablative Armor is added (Vor'cha, Sovereign, Defiant, T-15), you should be easily able to amass several different classes of ships with medium, or long range weapons (not to mention several shorts which do increased damage to the weapon ranges of some Ablative Armor units) - not to mention units that deal increased damage to units with Ablative Armor. Although Ablative Armor is soft countered by all long ranged units, again, just relying on what is specifically countered by passives is not the end all.

This comes as a bit of a surprise as earlier, Nebula, you were complaining about Funnystuff's fleet decimating your pure fleet of Vor'cha. Seems he as Federation didn't have any trouble dealing with Ablative Armor

I just think Ablative is too hard a counter for short range and too softly countered by long. If even one quarter of your fleet is short ranged units and one quarter long then ablative armor will do excellent as you've lost one eighth of your firepower and the ablative spam has lost only 2.5% of its firepower.
I know counter passives are not the end-all, but ablative is on all around good units that have few other weakness (all but Sovereign are medium sized, so no particular weakness to pulse or torps, have to rely on range-based counter methods (trying to counter a Defiant based on range is a bad idea unless you have a great Shrike spam or something) or simply outproducing.)

I had a much smaller fleet than him was the reason, I also didn't Vorcha spam, I actually mixed Vorcha and Vutpa with a few LuSpets and a Qaw'Duj, later switching to just Vorcha/Qaw'Duj (Qaw'Duyj was an afterthought really, hoping that polaron field might stop somthing and it did work on a torp neb) production but by then I had too few numbers. His fleet was about three times the size of mine.

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 5:36 pm

Well, if you can't see those Ablative Armor units coming, you've made some major tactical blunders. All of those units are mid-late game with the exception of the T-15, and some gambles with the Vor'cha. The only one of those that can be made in numbers is the T-15, and every faction has many counters to long ranged units, not to mention units that aren't even affected strongly by it. Again, stop focusing on counters, medium range units will deal fine with those more expensive Ablative Armor units . Interesting how now we have several threads complaining about medium ranged units, and now we have threads complaining about anti-shorty abilities  . Everything must be unbalanced.

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 5:43 pm

I have no problem with anti-long abilties, short-ranged units, or long-ranged units. I don't think Ablative is extremely overpowered, just too hard a counter.

The medium-ranged units thread was mainly a complaint about lack of options for certain avatars, in that I don't like being forced into production of mainly one unit type.

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 5:49 pm

Well, like I keep on reiterating - it's not all about the passives. It's about unit efficiency too. Just because , for instance, Intrepids take less damage from V-13's doesn't mean you should spam Intrepids against them. The V-13 is several tech levels above an Intrepid and thus is more cost efficient. You're better off with Akiras there. This is why countering is not quite as simple as the passives make it out to be. This is the same notion with Ablative Armor units. It isn't all about the long range units or specific counters. It depends on your tech level and where you tech. I find it odd that we keep going from subject to subject will little agreement between them - you even posted in a 'reduce build time of Defiant thread" to further empower the ship, and that ship has TWO passives.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 5:52 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on July 23rd, 2010, 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I didn't want it empowered, it just made little sense that it took so long to build. I still would love to see the build time decrease, but with some kind of nerf to keep it from being too powerful.

EDIT: Only two responses (unless Boggz was saying he doesn't like it, hard to tell) about whether it's a good idea or not. I'd really like to get back to hearing what people think of the idea now that we've had a bit of an argument about game balance (not even the right board for that. )

posted on July 29th, 2010, 7:07 pm

You never know what you are against. If you set up your fleet against a certain enemy, you can gamble to build expensive units with passive abilities and then you encounter the enemy fleet, that will right out of the box counter your passives. Or you face units, where your passives are good against. Every race got counter-units. But you never know if you need it until you face them. When you build them when you face it, you are too late. If you are against a mixed fleet, then you have to micro.

I think it is by FAR more a thing of winnig/losing with a good resource management and good microing insted of just building counters. Your counters wont fit if your enemy will avoid you. Or if the enemy is sneaky and does hit and run, even at disadvantage. Or he will raid your mining while your units are in a battle with another fleet.

The passives give the game more spice, but they are not a primary element. I also think, that they are pretty good balanced. You may have a stronger defense, but that wont help you much in order to destroy other ships better. You can only hold on a little longer. But with the wrong strategy, it will be dust.

Today I noticed, that cubes will fall pretty fast if faced with breen battleships. But it wont help, if you only have one, or if that ship doesnt got enough support.