24 replies to this topic

[Hanti]

Some thoughts about game balance in Shadow Hand scenario.
PR ver. 1.1 with Unofficial PR v1.1.2.
I played Galactic Empire on medium/hard.

1. MONEY
After a few turns (when my reserves dropped to zero) money never was a problem. I mostly had one hundred thousand in reserves with about 50.000 weekly income. I used only 50 points of population for merchant ships. Most income comes from mines and trade routes.

2. SHIPS
I tried to use starting fleet, but Sovereign SSD was just overkill to everything. It's super laser was recharging so fast that no ship could close to her in time to fire its turbolasers.
Then I started to use VSD and upgraded them to model IV. But I finished campaign with my VSD sitting back while my fighters did the job.
I tried 10-15 fighters as a main force and it was not enough. But groups of 20-30 fighters CAN and DID wipe out al/entire enemy fleets.
Example:
Rebels had 17 B-wings, 2 Y-wings, 4 R-22, 2 R-41, 3 X-wings, 62 Z-95 mark1, 1 ISD III, 7 Liberty MC 80, 4 Reef MC 80, 2 MC 40, 2 Ardent, 2 Dodonnas, 1 Dread, 10 EF76 Nebulons, 5 Quasars, 9 CR-90, 42 CT-11.
I had 2 Venators IV, 2 VSD II, 2 VSD III, 6 VSD IV and Fleet Commander plus 15 XM-6 Nova Wing and 7 XM-9 Nova Wing. Only Nova Wings and fighters from cruisers took part in battle. Capitals were idle all time.

ISD III was killed by ONE RUN with my Nova Wings, the rest ships couldn't stand longer either. I put all fighters on auto-fight (hunt on enemies) and only watched this battle. I lost 2 Nova squadrons. Rebels lost many ships and fled.

My point of view is that I realized I don't need to build any cap ship. So I started to build TIE Defenders and Skiprays Blastboats with the same effect.

Who needs ships if one can have fighters? Imagine that I can bring 96 squadrons to battle!
No cap ships fleet can match those fighters.

Maybe fighters should use more population (2 points or 3 points)? Or maybe cap ships should use less population (all ships 1 population?). But with present systems it is all about fighters.

3. PRICES
I decided not to build TIE Bombers, TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors and the like because I can get much better fighters with similar money and time.
Example: TIE Bombers costs 810, Xg Gunboat 675, Nova Wing 2025, Defender 1620, Interceptor 648, Avenger 1296, TIE Fighter 324.
Despite very cheap TIE Fighters, it's not and option as they lack hyper most the time and die too easily. If better fighters cost only few hundreds more I would prefer them instead.
Even 2025 for Nova Wings is fairly cheap price for their quality.
I could change my preferences only if better fighters would be costs 8-10 as much as cheaper ones or time needed to produce more advanced versions will be considerably longer (much longer).
The other strange thing is prices of upgraded models: all have the same price as earlier versions (Nova Wings 1 costs the same as Nova Wings 9). I would rather said more advanced models should be more expensive.

I will play the same campaign as Rebels to see how it is against Sovereign-powered fleet.

[Tropical Bob]

Things like Skiprays and the like are indeed incredibly powerful weapons on their own. However, you upgraded your ships, whereas it looks like the Rebels mostly did not. If you faced an equally upgraded force of ships like the Dodonna, Dreadnaught, and other ships with some heavy anti-fighter weaponry, it'll likely go much more differently.

Upgrades are very important. With them, you can essentially win with anything you want if your opponent does not.

[Stormhawk]

About 40 supply of A-Wings can take 96 supply of Defenders. The huge streams of concussion missiles and superior speed will just make that a slaughter. Upgraded Dodonna's have the hull strength to repel Nova wing attacks and do massive damage back with quad lasers. The fighter and transport threats are manageable. The Soverign is not. I am of the opinion that if equally matched humans played OSH, Empire would win very single time. The Soverign simply destroys every capital ship in any battle, especially considering it doubles as an interdictor. One can just fly Soverign to any planet that has a shipyard of consequence, destroy everything with the superlaser and retreat. It's simply unbeatable.

[Phoenix Rising]

OSH is probably the toughest campaign to balance, but the AI definitely researches and upgrades now.

[Zeta1127]

About 40 supply of A-Wings can take 96 supply of Defenders. The huge streams of concussion missiles and superior speed will just make that a slaughter. Upgraded Dodonna's have the hull strength to repel Nova wing attacks and do massive damage back with quad lasers. The fighter and transport threats are manageable. The Sovereign is not. I am of the opinion that if equally matched humans played OSH, Empire would win very single time. The Sovereign simply destroys every capital ship in any battle, especially considering it doubles as an interdictor. One can just fly Sovereign to any planet that has a shipyard of consequence, destroy everything with the superlaser and retreat. It's simply unbeatable.

Just think about if there was a proper Eclipse.

Edited by Zeta1127, 04 July 2011 - 06:09 PM.

[Stormhawk]

I really think the only way to balance Soverign is to make the superlaser cool-down much much longer. Maybe >2 minutes. It kills capital ships fast enough anyway with its 500 heavy turbolasers.

[Ghostrider]

I really think the only way to balance Soverign is to make the superlaser cool-down much much longer. Maybe >2 minutes. It kills capital ships fast enough anyway with its 500 heavy turbolasers.

Ok - but the Soverign is supposed to be hard to kill.

However, in the most recent phase of campaign testing (with a totally overhauled Operation Shadow Hand), one of our testers won the campaign as the New republic, despite facing World Devastators and Shadow Droids in addition to Soverign (and a mere handful of other ships ha ha haha!).

So I don't really think Sov needs to be balanced. It CAN be defeated.

[evilbobthebob]

Well...eheh...I haven't actually faced Sovereign in that playthrough. In fact, I don't know where in the galaxy it was when I took Byss. I should probably load up the pre-win save and take a large fleet roving to find it.

[Stormhawk]

Well...eheh...I haven't actually faced Sovereign in that playthrough. In fact, I don't know where in the galaxy it was when I took Byss. I should probably load up the pre-win save and take a large fleet roving to find it.

So Soverign never struck at Kuat or Mon Calamari? Well, that's the weakness of the computer then. It doesn't recognize that it can deliver crippling blows with Soverign just by visiting each major NR bastion and blowing all the starbases and space colonies out of the sky.

[Phoenix Rising]

I really think the only way to balance Soverign is to make the superlaser cool-down much much longer. Maybe >2 minutes. It kills capital ships fast enough anyway with its 500 heavy turbolasers.

Cooldown is presently balanced such that the Sovereign more or less has equal firepower to the Executor in DPS.

[Hanti]

About Sovereign.

It's pretty powerful and that's ok. The balancing issue is that it can fire its super laser too often in battle.
Contrary to that in Alliance 2.3 mod Sovereign fires so slow that it cannot destroy fleet of 6-7 ISD attacking him.
So it's need to be set in the middle of both situations.

PS: Am pretty sure it can be killed anyway by tons of fighters and I am gonna do it.

[Ghostrider]

So Soverign never struck at Kuat or Mon Calamari? Well, that's the weakness of the computer then. It doesn't recognize that it can deliver crippling blows with Soverign just by visiting each major NR bastion and blowing all the starbases and space colonies out of the sky.

Can we script such behaviour?
What's actually possible with the AI on a monster like this?
Can Auto-Resolve accurately work with such massive AI Combat values?

Edited by Ghostrider, 05 July 2011 - 12:39 PM.

[Phoenix Rising]

Auto-resolve will work, but it's probably so powerful that the AI never needs it to destroy an opponent - force values are capped (as a multiplier on enemy force) so the AI doesn't deploy too many units on an offensive. Scripting probably isn't the answer. There are certain attack plans that don't kick in until higher difficulties, so there's a possibility it might attack with it on hard. Otherwise, a custom plan for handling dreadnaughts would do it.

[Stormhawk]

Cooldown is presently balanced such that the Sovereign more or less has equal firepower to the Executor in DPS.

The problem with matching Soverign to Executor is that the the latter has an blind spot, so it is possible to use capital ships against it with proper positioning. The superlaser does not, and picks all capital ships out of the sky is such short order that one simply cannot use anything corvette sized or larger against Soverign. Basically, if Soverign is beatable in OSH, the only possible winning strategy is build nothing but K-wings and hope Soverign doesn't get to your production bases before you can build 60+ squadrons. The other thing about Soverign is that everything with a gravity well generator is big enough to just get picked off by its superlaser, so you can't even trap it. It has the hull strength to survive any lightning bomber strike and the firepower to blast its way out of any trap.

[Decay]

Honestly, I think the main balance issue with the Sovereign is not its cooldown, but the fact that it can fire in any direction. I'm not a super canon buff or anything, but firing the super laser backwards to hit a ship seems unlikely, you should have to have a proper firing arc.

[Stormhawk]

Honestly, I think the main balance issue with the Sovereign is not its cooldown, but the fact that it can fire in any direction. I'm not a super canon buff or anything, but firing the super laser backwards to hit a ship seems unlikely, you should have to have a proper firing arc.

This is hard-coded into the engine, I think, so it can't be changed. I'm assuming Soverign's weapon is based on the partially completed Eclipse from the last Consortium mission? The cooldown is the most realistic think we can change to try to balance this monstrosity.

[Phoenix Rising]

I could simulate the superlaser as a projectile hardpoint - that would fix the omnidirectional ability fire cone.

[Stormhawk]

Really? That would be nice. I can already see in my head maneuvering cruisers to constantly stay in its rear arc to even avoid its turbolasers. Unfortunately, space stations cannot dodge, so they are still extremely vulnerable, but it would be much better than it is now.

Edited by Stormhawk, 06 July 2011 - 11:54 AM.

[Hanti]

Some thoughts about game balance in Shadow Hand scenario.
PR ver. 1.1 with Unofficial PR v1.1.2.
I played Galactic Empire on medium/hard.

(...)

I will play the same campaign as Rebels to see how it is against Sovereign-powered fleet.

Waiting for 1.2 I did this Rebel campaign. Initial battles were tough. Then my level 1 shipyards started to pouring out fighters. Many fighters. Then came Sovereign. She destroyed all she saw. Then came fighters. Lots of fighters. I throw at her something like 70 squadrons of Y and X wings. 24 of them died with her. Sovereign is dead

I only hope all those behemoths (Executor, Eclipse, Sovereign) would be less clumsy and SMALLER to actually see their health bar during battle.

[Stormhawk]

Waiting for 1.2 I did this Rebel campaign. Initial battles were tough. Then my level 1 shipyards started to pouring out fighters. Many fighters. Then came Sovereign. She destroyed all she saw. Then came fighters. Lots of fighters. I throw at her something like 70 squadrons of Y and X wings. 24 of them died with her. Sovereign is dead

I only hope all those behemoths (Executor, Eclipse, Sovereign) would be less clumsy and SMALLER to actually see their health bar during battle.

First of all, congratulations on taking her down, that must have required immense patience, especially using X and Y wings as opposed to E, B or K wings. However, I still maintain nothing like that would have worked against a human, only a computer. Any human would have simply retreated Soverign as soon as it hit half health, and there's nothing you can do, since even if you have an interdictor, it gets annihilated by the superlaser in 2 secs.