[TM] Rattling the Saber

posted on March 8th, 2020, 1:35 am

Tryptic's Mod V3.8 is now under construction, and with all of the major, sweeping changes ot of the way I'm taking the time to really focus on the last couple of ships that still aren't in a good place. My attention has fallen on the Federation Saber.

Super early game ships have always been exceedingly hard to balance in armada since they can be killed so easily by every other ship in the game. Make them too expensive, and nobody will ever build them. Make them too cheap, and a swarm of them can be rushed out and overwhelm the enemy. The old bug spam and saber spam builds were good examples of this, although they tended to be weak in practice.

In TM, with its lower starting resources and higher income rates, rapid early expansion is a very powerful strategy. In order to balance this, several early game ships such as the Rhienn and the Ktinga get the RADE passive which allows them to deal +50% damage to miners and construction ships. The goal is to allow players to punish an opponent who expands immediately and doesn't build any defenses. For the Feds, the Saber is meant to fill this role.

Unfortunately, with 11 Offense and a long range beam weapon, it is difficult for the Saber to kill anything when it's in small numbers. It takes 3-4 Sabers to kill undefended miners quickly, and at least 6+ to kill miners with a repair yard nearby. Going up to Monsoons requires an investment of 800/400 in SF Engineering and Chassis 1, but if the game is properly balanced they should be building that tech anyway. I would like the Saber to remain a viable option even later in the game.

The previous cost of a Saber was 286 Di, compared to 310 for a Monsoon. However the combat strength of the Monsoon is double that of a Saber when you consider the speed, passive, and defense that allows it to escape and repair when a saber couldn't. After considering the options, I've opted to drastically lower the cost of the Saber.

This could cause a big problem if I don't nerf Saber Spam...but I realized that I already have nerfed it. Previously, a Saber spam build could get 3 Antares Yards and Starfleet Science using just the starting resources. The special is what makes Saber spam deadly since it raises their speed from 110 to 130. But in TM with lower starting resources and SF Science requiring SF engineering, you just can't get the special until way later in the game. A player who tries pure Saber spam will have to fight without the special, and 110 speed Sabers are extremely easy to kill.

In TM 3.8, the Saber will cost around 200 Di with a much shorter build time to match. I want to see a game state where building 3-4 Sabers early on is a viable strategy for any Federation player, and doesn't break the bank. At the same time, I am considering increasing the speed with the special active from 130 to 150 but limiting the ship to forward firing arc while it's active. This means that a cloud of pure sabers with their special active will never be a good idea, but a small squad of Sabers can pose a serious raiding threat throughout the entire game.

posted on March 8th, 2020, 12:02 pm

This sounds promising. As you have stated, one of the issues I have with the saber is it is really easy to defeat and expensive when other chaises become available in the mid-to-late game.

Keep up the good work, I play your mod extensively. I think I will start to produce some maps for it at some point in the next few weeks

posted on March 9th, 2020, 8:01 am

I'm just going to throw this in here instead of adding a second post, since it's relevant.

While working on 3.8, I've also decided to remove my RADE passive from the Borg Probe and greatly reduce the cost. I've been doing these price drops on a number of super-early game ships, and I think it shows a lot of promise.

The large reduction in starting resources that Tryptic's Mod has introduced has sweeping consequences. Certain ships like the Saber, Probe, Rhienn, and Brel were absolutely terrible against higher tech ships, despite costing up to 2/3 as much. I believe the starting resources played a big part of this: if these ships were made too cheap, a player could throw down 3 yards and spam them so quickly that they just overwhelm the enemy. Or, they could build a decent number of ships while still expanding with yards and turrets for defense.

With the lower starting resources, a player has to choose EITHER super-early game ships OR expansion/tech. The higher income curve means that building just 3-4 ships will seriously slow down a player's economic development. Those ships must be able to deal a serious amount of damage to the enemy in order to be worth the cost.

So I've been chopping prices left and right on ships that lose their effectiveness after the early game, allowing them to be rushed out to fight pretty easily. I've also been strongly buffing their special abilities, so they can become more useful later in the game: A probe with Regeneration, Rhienn with Phase Plates, Brel with Weapon Fatigue, or a Saber with Hyper Impulse Drive all gain a huge amount of strength, but the investment required to get those specials is much harder than it was before.