48 replies to this topic

[evilbobthebob]

The weekend times sound best to me. Both myself and my brother should be available for 9am to 1pm GMT, which is 3pm to 7pm for you. We could probably start an hour earlier as well if that would be better for you guys. Week days sound a little more difficult, playing PR at 1am would be, uh, interesting

[Tropical Bob]

Looks like I'm out voted on the description front.

I certainly know what you're getting at, but as you play PR more, and get more familiar with what weapons and ships, and combinations thereof, the descriptions will be much better. Such as the difference between knowing which Transport has more proton torpedo launchers available, vs how often it launches (Admittedly, I still don't know the specifics of that). Some ship may have one more launcher than the Skipray, but may not launch nearly as quickly.

Tropical and shadow, what GMT times would you two be available for a 2v2 battle with myself and my brother? I know you're finding it difficult to find other players, and although my internet connection isn't the best, it's probably good enough. My brother isn't available as often as me, so if the time you choose is difficult for him, we can still probably have a 1v1v1 game. (Preferably without the CSA. One thing I've learned from these games is that the CSA is over powered. Even I can win using them.)

The CSA isn't really overpowered. They're just hard to counter early on. But if you survive the early game, you can pull through the late game. If you read over the game between me as the CSA and shadowrevan as the Empire, you'll see just how close he came to winning. And that's with me being somewhat of a more veteran player than him.

What's your assessment of the learning curve for PR? I imagine not so good because I'm always modding instead of writing documentation.

The learning curve is like a cliff. My first GC game, took me until week 70 to win a space battle. I chose the wrong planets to attack, and every where I went there were capital ships. Now I know that is not the case. I still don't know the use for the space tug.

The learning curve is definitely quite steep. As previously said, the mentioning of a special ability, such as Freighter income or Modular Taskforce Cruiser/Hajen-class Fleet Tender area repair, will definitely aid.

Also, Space Tugs have a very small version of the area repair. They might not be as effective as a Modular Taskforce Cruiser, but they're a lot more mobile, cheaper, build faster, and have a smaller Space Tactical population cost. They're also a lot further down the tech tree, which allows early game access.

[Phoenix Rising]

(Preferably without the CSA. One thing I've learned from these games is that the CSA is over powered. Even I can win using them.)

Wait - if you truly think they're overpowered, then I need to know how. Is it just the Vic?

Now if I had my choice, in the description would be special things about the unit. E.g. on a freighter mention that having them will increase income.

Broad game rules like that would be better for droid pop-ups.

One thing that I noticed with out most recent match with Tropical Bob, is that the y wing is very underpowered. A squadron of y wings is no where as good as a skipray. There is just no comparison.

Nevertheless:

BTL-S8 squadron
1800 shield points
1200 hull points
384 energy alpha vs. shields (288 turreted)
96 energy alpha vs. hull (0 turreted)
144 adjusted energy DPS (96 turreted)
1920 warhead alpha vs. starship hull
192 adjusted warhead vs. starship DPS

GAT-12p group
1332 shield points
576 hull points + jamming
262 energy alpha vs. shields (64 turreted)
64 energy alpha vs. hull (64 turreted)
98 adjusted energy DPS (32 turreted)
144 warhead alpha vs. starfighter hull
72 adjusted warhead vs. starfighter DPS
432 warhead alpha vs. starship hull
168 adjusted warhead vs. starship DPS

The Skipray group costs 50% more than the Y-wings, so the question is: are three Y-wing squadrons that much worse than two Skipray groups? Certainly the Y-wing is not as maneuverable or versatile as the Skipray, but as the stats point out, they have very different roles. Is it that there isn't a good counter for the Skipray or that it's better to micro?

Most TIE units are completely out classes as well, with exception to the later ones like the defender.

Due to... what? Build cost? Build time? Pop cost? Useless upgrades? Obviously I can't change the base stats, but I can tweak other areas.

Such as the difference between knowing which Transport has more proton torpedo launchers available, vs how often it launches (Admittedly, I still don't know the specifics of that). Some ship may have one more launcher than the Skipray, but may not launch nearly as quickly.

It's really only the difference between alpha strike and damage per second, as illustrated above.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 28 January 2010 - 09:10 PM.

[evilbobthebob]

The CSA being overpowered is, in my opinion, due to three things:

1) The ability to get Victory-IV Class Star Destroyers at their Golan-I
2) The ability to provide enough income to do the above using freighters from the Golan-I
3) Firesprays.

If you watch the CSA replays between myself and my brother, you'll see that it's very easy for the CSA to either destroy their opponent early on with as many VSDs as they can build, or leave it until mid game by upgrading their X factory to build as many Firespray groups as possible. I wouldn't say that they are grossly overpowered. It just seems to me that if I can beat a much better RTS player using very simple tactics (e.g. build up income, build VSDs, game over) there is probably something a little unbalanced. I do believe a large part of it is due to the maps being too small. On much larger maps, the VSDs could be avoided and out manoeuvred by strike teams to take out the income stream that supports them. Countering Firesprays is a little more difficult, and mostly seems to require the use of DP20 gunships or other missile-equipped vessels. Interceptors don't seem to have the power to take them down, and medium fighters get taken down themselves.

[Tropical Bob]

Like PR said, that can probably be fixed by switching the Invincible and Victory on the tech tree.

And Firesprays aren't that good, really. Skiprays are better methinks. Firesprays just build more quickly. And it's never really good to counter Transports with Fighters. Other Transports, or anti-Fighter ships like a Dreadnaught are better off doing so. Transports usually cheese Fighters due to turreted lasers and concussion missiles.

[Phoenix Rising]

Consider the Victory moved to Level 1. Here's the new progression:

Dreadnaught -> Recusant -> Bulwark
Invincible -> Victory -> Venator -> Imperial

Also bumped the Imperial up to Level 3 (ca. 4-12 ABY), which is more accurate.

Freighter income will get nerfed in Skirmish, probably heavily.

Firesprays? Interesting. I did those upgrades only days before the release on little sleep, so that's probably something I could take another look at. Still, they're Level 2, so there should be plenty of available counters. They're sort of bomber/gunships; like a worse version of the Sentinel with torpedoes.

[evilbobthebob]

That sounds like it should fix the imbalance. As for the Firesprays, I suppose I'll have to try and counter them with some different units.

[Corsair114]

I'm pretty sure a squadron or two of fighters with concussion missiles would make pretty short work of Firesprays. So far my multiplayer experiences with 1.1 are limited, but have made one thing abundantly clear: Your first 10 ships should ALWAYS be your tier 0 freighter. They 'll take a second to do, but give you an unbeatable lead in income overanyone who doesn't do the same.

Empire can completely forgo go TIE Fighters and Lambdas at Tier 0 against the Rebels. TIE's are too fragile (imo) to be worth anything, even if you spam them. Lambdas are good at squishing fighters but, don't do anything against heavier ships (other than die). Now, if you're fighting CSA, it's possible that a you might encounter a cloud of Mankvims, in which case it might be worth while to get a few Lamba squads. Throw 'em into the fight, then use your Skiprays in slashing attacks (for the concussion missile pwnage), as well as to keep them mobile and ready to respond to any capital ships.


It's been my experience that anti-fighter weaponry , specifically laser weaponry, is generally ineffective against bombers and transports (when they're handled competently), as, in most instances, the ships aren't in range long enough to lose their shields. I regularly use DX-9's, Assault Gunboats, Skiprays, and ATR's against the likes of Dreadnoughts and Invincible classes to kill them, and provided I don't let them linger, they pretty much crush the competition with little or no casualties. Admittedly, I've not had a chance to use them on Lancers, but I'm fairly confident the outcome would be the same.

My preffered mix of ships:

4 TIE Avenger Squadrons (Primary Anti-fighter units, used for hit&fade attacks vs fighters and transports, as well as bomber intercept)
4 Assault Gunboat Squadrons (Primary attack units, anti-captital ship attack, secondary role in hunting bombers and squishy fighters)
4 Skipray Squadrons (Supports lead squadrons as necessary, as well as serving as escorts and moblie missile shields)
4 DX-9 Squadrons (or 2 DX-9, 2 ATR-6 or 4 ATR-6 when possible) (secondary attack unit, warp them in to flank and attack larger ships as well as space stations)
4 Acclamator-class star frigates (Big distractions, used to kill frigates, keep 'em mobile and don't have point-defense on overwatch as PD indiscriminately targets enemy warheads in range, you can use these to crush bomber offenses)
2 Victory-class cruisers (Bigger, nastier versions of ATR's, used more or less the same way, hyper them in on a flank and then position tham as necessary, press from other side w/ Acclamators)
1 Tector-class star destroyer (big damn gunship, be careful whe you deploy it, though don't worry overly much about bombers [use the skiprays and Acclamators to shield it from bomber assault).

More to come!

[Phoenix Rising]

Corsair, is this multiplayer against a human, or singleplayer against an AI? I'm not sure a human opponent would let you get away with 10 unescorted freighters to start the game.

I've always thought of the Lambda - or any transport with poor maneuverability and lots of fixed-forward guns - as being an anti-transport unit. Save your concussion missiles for Z-95s and Mankvims; I would deploy Lambdas against a Barloz or YV-666 threat (possibly even mixed with IPVs, which are much faster, but can't keep enemies in a dogfight like the shuttle). Has anyone else has success with them?

[evilbobthebob]

I find Lambdas to be rather effective against interceptors and medium fighters. They're also pretty good against transports. As for ten unescorted freighters: very easy to get away with. Park them next to your Golan or fighter factory. The opposing player is unlikely to be able to take them out very effectively, because of the healing effect of the space stations.

[Tropical Bob]

The Freighters also build quickly, so even if the other player leads a strike against them, such as shadowrevan did against me in a recent game, you can replace them very easily. The massive income boost provided cushions you to build a quick defense against the strike as well before you have to rebuild them. By the time an enemy can build enough to take them all out, you can probably have 14k+ credits in the bank.

One thing I also noticed recently: TIE Fighters are useless. With Lambdas only being 60 credits more expensive, with a slightly longer build rate,, tons more durable, and so much better against Fighters, forgo TIEs completely. The only time I use them is for a distraction, or to mass against the last two Transports of a player for the complete victory. The same goes for Mankvims. The build rate should be lowered a little, I think.

[Phoenix Rising]

Ah, yes. More reason to nerf unit income. I guess what I was trying to say was, how do you forfeit map control and still expect to win?

evilbobthebob - yeah, I've been worried about how well some transports are able to dogfight, especially now that they launch from ships. Is that a deterrent to using fighters for anyone? I could increase laser inaccuracy just a bit to make more shots miss the slimmest units.

One thing I have noticed about dogfighting, though, is that maneuverability matters. If you watch a single TIE/ln squadron on a Z-95 squadron, the TIEs will get off significantly more shots and manage to better evade the Headhunters' sights. I could scale all transport maneuverability slightly worse than fighters and bombers, but I'm not sure how I feel about messing with something so explicitly set. I guess the only good justification for that would be if we felt XW overly biased the stats in the first place, since probably all DPF ratings for transports are either straight from there, or derived from such a unit. Anyone able to weigh in on that?

The only niche I could manage for the TIE Fighter is their Power to Weapons ability (provided by the independent cannon generator). Ideally, you're supposed to swarm them at something and take it out with overwhelming fire (double fire rate for 15 seconds), but I'm not sure how well that works in practice. It's ironically pretty useful against frigates that have expended their Power to Shields ("they're going for the medical frigate").

[evilbobthebob]

It doesn't really deter me from using fighters, because it's rare that I specifically purchase fighters. My brother's tactics generally involve hitting hard with heavy ships, or hitting hard with as many light to medium ships as he can muster. This means that fighters tend to be rather useless to me because they can't take out the large ships and they get taken down by the lighter ships (by light, I mean transports, especially Firesprays). I tend to rely on the fighter complements of capital ships to take down any bombers.

There are a few occasions where large numbers of fighters have been necessary. For example, a massive number of XG Star Wing sent at my fighter factory led me to counter with large numbers of E-Wings...which weren't very effective. I probably should have used some transports

If manoeuvrability statistics are all taken from one game, that worries me a little. A game can't be perfectly balanced, and although I can't comment on X-Wing (I've never played it, terrible I know), they probably got some things slightly wrong. I can't imagine transport manoeuvrability was foremost in the programmers' minds when they wrote up the unit statistics. Add in the upgrades you've given units like the Lambda, and balance is likely to go at least a little awry.

Edited by evilbobthebob, 31 January 2010 - 12:53 AM.

[Corsair114]

I really ought to clarify that that was from human Vs. Specifically against my brother via crossover cable. We played Courscant w/ default settings. I used my cash to build up a small fleet of Action IV(VI?) transports at the start of the match. I used my two starting squadrons to skirmish w/ him at a couple mining platforms. His Z-95X's killed them w/ ease, but bought me enough time to finish warping in my freighter fleet.

I built tfour Skipray squadrons, then started my Golan teching up. He came at me with a dreadnought, an MC40, and I think about four or five Y-Wing squadrons. The Skiprays were able to dampen and repel the attack (a little creative use of sensor jamming and a lot of advanced concussion missiles go a long ways against Y-Wings). The freshly respawned TIE's assisted in the defense, as well as the tough shields of the Golan (his force simply couldn't hurt it). I hit Tier 1 on the Golan and started up production of two CTF transports and a VSD, as well as queing up the tier one upgrade for the Fighter factory.

I mostly played a defensive game for this time while he focused on taking mines and throwing himself feebly at the Golan. As my TIEs returned for the third or fourth time, I sent the TIE's off to act as spotters for for a blitz of stormtrooper transports. The skiprays were able to fend off most of anything he (as the rebels) threw at me, including quite a few DP20 Gunships. While the Golan and its immediate surrounding area became the focal point of the fighting, I refreshed my Skiprays back to 4 squads or so, they'd taken some casualties. I also built two squadrons TIE Avengers after I hit tier 1 on the fighter factory. I used these, the Stormtrooper transports, and a Victory to blindside him, getting his fighter factory (lvl 2) and Golan II in one fell swoop, as he was completely incapable of keeping up in the cash race and was unable to reposition his units fast enough, or build them quick enough or in great enough quantity without a "resource fleet" that he was hamstrung in unit capacity.

Even mines+a smaller number of freighters would not have been enough for him to keep up with my income. Really, 10 is around the magic number, 8 can work. 5 or 4 would be the least I think you get realistically get away with and still be able to build up and deploy fast enough to keep up.

Minimizing or ignoring freighter income will, in versus, always leave you disadvantaged. After all, gaining the income lead is a much more powerful advantage then gaining the (in the early game, temporary) force advantage. It takes time to kill a Golan, less to kill a fighter factory. The small time you lose building transports is worth it for the gain in resources. Plus, in multiplayer, after a few minutes the whole map becomes revealed (making fog of war or control of sensor nodes irrelevent). With mines already significantly devalued to the point of obsolesence by freighters (and compounded by the high combat capabilities of the transports, enough to warrant fielding at least a handful), the only combat zones that end up being of merit on the map are "his base" and "my base."

Now, your changes to the income of transports and freighters vs mining facilities makes the latter far more strategically important, which should make them actually worth contesting. Really though, Phoenix, you and the team have a spectacularly well balanced mod, particularly when you consider the as-close-to-canon-as-possible nature of the mod.

[Tropical Bob]

I don't know if nerfing the Transports' maneuverability would help too much, as most of them have swiveled or turreted lasers anyway. Like the Lambdas, which have lasers in front, and then one in the back, unless I'm mistaken. I'm not really sure how to balance them more towards fighters though. Even swarming 14 or so TIE Fighter squadrons against two or three Barloz Transport groups took a noticeable amount of time. I think it's more that the shielding and armor of the Transports is just a little too effective against Fighter weaponry.

I disagree that the map is revealed too quickly though. There were quite a few matches I played against shadowrevan where the map wasn't revealed for quite a bit of the game.

[Corsair114]

Maybe it's just a personal bugaboo, then. I really dislike the auto-removal of fog of war that occurs, particularly on maps w/ sensor nodes as they cease to be of any importance.

[Phoenix Rising]

If manoeuvrability statistics are all taken from one game, that worries me a little.

Four games, technically, with stats refined each time. XWA had like 200 ships it in with mostly consistent and sensible ratings (which were, in turn, based on D6 - 2D maneuverability = 50 DPF), so our stats follow the same format. There probably isn't an issue with transport maneuverability (which I would argue was foremost on some designer's mind when you have to engage Lambda shuttles in an unshielded TIE Fighter your first mission), but I didn't want to exclude the possibility.

Now, your changes to the income of transports and freighters vs mining facilities makes the latter far more strategically important, which should make them actually worth contesting. Really though, Phoenix, you and the team have a spectacularly well balanced mod, particularly when you consider the as-close-to-canon-as-possible nature of the mod.

Thanks for the summary and praise. I imagine there's only tweaking to be done with space combat to get it virtually perfect, but that's the point of this thread. Transport and freighter income clearly need to be de-emphasized in Skirmish because those units don't cost any extra population like they do in GC. Not all the way, since income counts as part of their upgrades as much as weapons do on other ships, but enough where you can't spam CTF-8s to win.

I don't know if nerfing the Transports' maneuverability would help too much, as most of them have swiveled or turreted lasers anyway. Like the Lambdas, which have lasers in front, and then one in the back, unless I'm mistaken. I'm not really sure how to balance them more towards fighters though.

Yeah, I agree. I think playing with hardpoint inaccuracies will help, since more shots will miss fighters, whereas it's pretty hard to miss a Barloz, even if you're off by a few tenths of a degree. I'll make turreted lasers just a touch less accurate (they're not very accurate at all in ANH).

[evilbobthebob]

If manoeuvrability statistics are all taken from one game, that worries me a little.

Four games, technically, with stats refined each time. XWA had like 200 ships it in with mostly consistent and sensible ratings (which were, in turn, based on D6 - 2D maneuverability = 50 DPF), so our stats follow the same format. There probably isn't an issue with transport maneuverability (which I would argue was foremost on some designer's mind when you have to engage Lambda shuttles in an unshielded TIE Fighter your first mission), but I didn't want to exclude the possibility.

Ah, in that case the stats are probably fine. Changing accuracy does sound like the best solution then.

Also, I must be getting better at PR. I had quite a good game against shadowrevan, which ended with Ackbar and a couple of other Mon Cal cruisers wiping out his starbases. Admittedly, that took up about half the game

[Tropical Bob]

Modular Taskforce Cruisers vs. Hajen-class Fleet Tenders

MTC
Cost: 965.25
Build time: 30
Heal range: 2000
Heal amount: 2048
Interval: 5

Hajen
Cost: 1120
Build time: 18.75
Heal range: 1200
Heal amount: 512
Interval: 5

While the Hajen builds in nearly half the time, it is more expensive, and gets 25% of the MTC's heal amount, with less range, at the same interval. I assume this is due to the size of the MTC vs. the Hajen, but it leaves any non-Imperial player at a severe disadvantage. When an MTC enters the match, it is a battle-changing event. Let alone if the Imperial player gets a second one out before the first is destroyed. As more are fielded, it becomes exponentially harder to kill anything. Contrasted, the Hajens definitely turn the tide, but don't heal enough to actually become an unstoppable force. Evidenced clearly by battles at a Golan. If the Imperials gets two or three MTCs out, they can stall for an unbelievably long time. Three, and the station is unkillable, with the MTCs barely so. The Rebels can wield four Hajens, and barely stall.

Just my thoughts.

[evilbobthebob]

Hajens have the Protect ability. With that, they can protect each other and the station in a chain while still healing everything around them. I would say they're pretty balanced as is.