Stellaris
[OUTDATED Please use BSW 3] BSW v2.5
Some thoughts on balance
Ships:
I feel like destroyers and cruisers could use a bit more evasion, because it's not really enough to have a substantial impact.
Also, I found myself really wanting to be able to use ranges that aren't maximum range, but longer than 80. Being able to put things at a range of 120 would be useful.

Spinal Weapons:
Arc emitter is stupidly overpowered, its penetration and tracking more than makes up for the slightly lower damage and range. It's at least as effective against large targets as other spinal weapons. I don't think there's any way to make this weapon balanced without totally reworking what it does. It could be interesting if they were the opposite of what they are now: Instead of having ultra-high accuracy, they have ultra-low accuracy (50% with no tracking?), struggling to hit anything smaller than a battleship and even with battleships usually missing. It makes sense, as it's hard to aim lightning. To compensate, it could have a very high fire rate.
There's also not really any reason not to use spinal weapons, their vastly higher damage and range more than makes up for the slightly lower accuracy and tracking. Maybe lowering their tracking and/or accuracy, or improving evasion of destroyers and cruisers would fix that?

Missiles:
I found myself wondering, is it even realistic for missiles to do any damage? One PD slot puts out so much damage that you'd need like, a dozen missile slots to overwhelm it. Also, missiles and PD systems aren't distinct enough. I reckon they should be changed as such:
-Normal missiles: Pretty much as they are now, but with no evasion and a slightly higher fire rate.
-Swarmer missiles: Slightly higher fire rate and evasion, reduced range and damage to compensate.
-Torpedoes: Far higher health, low accuracy and zero tracking/evasion, also a slightly reduced range. It shouldn't realistically be able to hit corvettes and should struggle to hit even destroyers, but it should take a lot more PD than normal to deal with especially if fired from close-up.

Point Defence:
It's kinda hard to give a ship a reasonable amount of PD, since sections that give you any PD slots usually give you multiple. I reckon PD systems should be able to do significant (but still weakened) damage to ships, balanced out by them being less effective.
Also, how come flak and PD were changed to have exactly the same stats? In vanilla, flak has higher tracking but lower damage, meaning it has less DPS against missiles but can pretty much entirely negate the evasion of fighters. I don't think the game makes any inherent distinction between PD and flak, and they're only distinguished by their stats.

Fighters:
Why was their evasion reduced? When you combine that with regular PD having the same tracking as flak, they get quickly destroyed by anything that has any PD.
I feel like the way missiles and fighters are balanced is so they're incredibly punishing to fleets with no PD, but rendered useless by a tiny amount of PD.

And lastly Plasma Launcher, it's just not distinct enough from lasers.
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BaBoFantasy  [δημιουργός] 19 Φεβ 2021, 0:20 
Thanks for your opinion. I'll consider your suggestion in upcoming update.
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από BaBoFantasy:
Thanks for your opinion. I'll consider your suggestion in upcoming update.
Oh, I should actually add a couple of things
It does seem like even against targets with PD, sometimes missiles can do a substantial amount of damage. But in the listings for how much damage different weapons are doing, spinal weapons will always be on top, and fighters will always be at a fraction of that; even if the ships with the spinal weapons are otherwise dedicated carriers.
BaBoFantasy  [δημιουργός] 20 Φεβ 2021, 8:35 
@Bellatrix
BSW 2.4 just updated with PD/FLAK discrimination, X slot nurf and many other balance changes. Please try!
Τελευταία επεξεργασία από BaBoFantasy; 20 Φεβ 2021, 8:36
Really enjoying your great work!
While playing, also multiplayer, I've tried to evaluate the AI ship designs a bit. What I found so far was, that they often use mixed designs that could lead into wrongfully chosen combat computers (battle distance) so you'll see missile cruisers with point defence but equipped with a single beam going straight into dogfight and got taken out. As for corvettes, well the early designs seem to follow vanilla options, what is not bad, while they learn after they manage to get higher developed hull parts. So far I did not see that they make use of the huge point-defense capacity of destroyers. It needs higher numbers in warship production to make the AI a real challenge. However, overall it is way better than any vanilla setup might get. - Just wanted to give a short response, you might probably want to consider for the future updates. Cheers!
@Bellatrix & @Kepos – I'm really enjoying this thread. I haven't had as much time to experiment with BSW as it sounds like you have. I'm curious: With the latest updates what's your impression of the balance of missiles/strike-craft/PD? I'm wondering if the nerfed evasion and number of strike-craft makes them uber vulnerable to pretty much all small weapons (b/c of the weapon's high tracking). And since there are so few strike craft, you kill a couple and you basically have taken out the entire offensive capability of a battleship carrier. In my mind you want strike-craft to deal out less damage in a go then missiles, but last a loooot longer than missiles. Death by many stings. Is this a dynamic you see happening, or does it play out in-game another way?

Anyone experiment with stinger missiles in the updates? Not sure if they were changed or not.

My impression in vanilla (NOT in BSW–haven't encountered stingers yet in BSW) is that stinger missiles haven't performed that well in the meta. They get through decently, sure, but don't deal enough damage in vanilla. I would love to see a stinger missile that takes the idea of "getting through" and dealing less damage to the extreme: high evasion and high tracking but low payload. Basically something impossible to stop except by massive PD barrage or massive strike-craft cover. I suspect that approach would offer an interesting strategic option that is missing. It's also realistic: missiles with a low-payload would presumably have low mass/momentum, and therefore be the most maneuverable things in the game: they could make hair-pin turns, accelerate at 100s to 1000s of Gs etc. In the real world, such missiles would be basically impossible to avoid (near 100% tracking) and almost impossible to hit except with the most accurate and high-tracking weapons (ie massive PD barrage). So the logic boiled down is: less payload = less mass = more maneuverability & smaller size = hard to hit and hard to avoid.
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