So, I was just playing as the Empire, and notices their ships didn't have shields by default. What's your reasoning for this?

Originally posted by EverfreeSparkle:

So, I was just playing as the Empire, and notices their ships didn't have shields by default. What's your reasoning for this?

(According to Wookiepedia)

The Empire favored more and larger ships, even with cut corners. I interpreted this as sacrificing shields for more firepower or support capacity.

Meanwhile the Rebels prefered quality over quantity. Which I interpreted and implemented as having and prioritizing shields at the expense of maximum firepower and/or support capacity.

Basically, it was one of the primary ways in which I differentiated the two fleets - Especially when both fleets used the same base ship. The Empire version of a Venator's default design does not have shields, just armor but does have more support command and supply for an overall larger and powerful fleet. The Rebpulic version of a Venator's default design has shields and is a sturdier vessel on it's own, but it has less support command and supply so it's a smaller fleet overall.

Once you research shields (just 4 techs in), you could certainly add shields to the Emprie designs. The Rebels get them unlocked to start and instead get a Shield Mastery for ultimately better shields, to represent their emphasis on quality ships.

Makes sense.

I found a bug, or at least a slight oversite that you couldn't have really predicted. When you scan those depris fields and sometimes get the option to unlock anti-matter, it doesn't unlock zero-point energy for the ancients. So, you might want to change it so that it unlocks zero-point modules when playing as a race that unlocks them.

Not sure if it possible, but what about ships from the Sith Empire and Republic ships of the Old Republic Era? Just a suggestion.

The ships do looks nice.

Originally posted by dolynick:

Originally posted by EverfreeSparkle:

So, I was just playing as the Empire, and notices their ships didn't have shields by default. What's your reasoning for this?

(According to Wookiepedia)

The Empire favored more and larger ships, even with cut corners. I interpreted this as sacrificing shields for more firepower or support capacity.

Meanwhile the Rebels prefered quality over quantity. Which I interpreted and implemented as having and prioritizing shields at the expense of maximum firepower and/or support capacity.

Basically, it was one of the primary ways in which I differentiated the two fleets - Especially when both fleets used the same base ship. The Empire version of a Venator's default design does not have shields, just armor but does have more support command and supply for an overall larger and powerful fleet. The Rebpulic version of a Venator's default design has shields and is a sturdier vessel on it's own, but it has less support command and supply so it's a smaller fleet overall.

Once you research shields (just 4 techs in), you could certainly add shields to the Emprie designs. The Rebels get them unlocked to start and instead get a Shield Mastery for ultimately better shields, to represent their emphasis on quality ships.

In reality, though, they didn't cut corners quite like this. The Empire's version of 'cutting corners' was reusing ships they already had (Venators WITHOUT stripping down shields, ARC-170s and V-Wings before the TIE/ln became the standard, etc.) or designing cheaper, smaller ships (TIE starfighters being the only example I could think of),

Later on, though, some of their starfighters - first the Assault Gunboat, then the TIE Advanced, TIE Defender and Missile Boat, all of which were INTENDED for widespread use, though Zaarin prevented such use of everything except the Gunboat - were on equal terms or clearly superior to their Rebel equivalents. As for their starships, the Imperial-class, the mainstay of the Imperial Navy, was considered to be capable of defeating a single MC80 (its closest Rebel equivalent) without difficulty, only failing against two MC80s if the battle began at close enough range for the Imperial's superior firing range to be rendered moot. And that's not even going into things such as the Executor-class and its six or so (if memory serves) specimens.

Basically, Imperials not having shields on their early fighters is justified. Imperials not having shields on anything else except a Vengeance-class frigate (and you're unlikely to have any of those to begin with) is somewhat less justified.

are you ever going to add the cis confedercy of indepent systems becasue i would love my munficent frigates

Originally posted by Thempireswill:

are you ever going to add the cis confedercy of indepent systems becasue i would love my munficent frigates

As a separate shipset and faction? No plans on that right now.

Currently the Republic/Rebels faction and shipset is serving as sort of a catch-all for that kind of stuff. It's more likely that, if a suitable ship model for the Munificient was handy, that I would simply add it to that.

I could see a faction of their own having merit though, since they are mainly a droid faction. The question is if they really require a radically different lifestyle from the norm or not. Mechanoid or Linked doesn't seem to suit them either, but that's just a very quick assessement on my part as I write this.

Originally posted by RyancupOne:

Its a little weird for the tie fighters to be in the fleet, maybe can you change the ship AI to brawler then add some supply stores?

Then it can be a actual "dog fighter" and do raids 24/7 and scatter all over the place :D

FYI, this was done a few updates ago. I didn't give them supply of their own though, so if you really want them to go out on their own, you may want to drop a few supply hexes on the designs.

Originally posted by dolynick:

Originally posted by Thempireswill:

are you ever going to add the cis confedercy of indepent systems becasue i would love my munficent frigates

As a separate shipset and faction? No plans on that right now.

Currently the Republic/Rebels faction and shipset is serving as sort of a catch-all for that kind of stuff. It's more likely that, if a suitable ship model for the Munificient was handy, that I would simply add it to that.

I could see a faction of their own having merit though, since they are mainly a droid faction. The question is if they really require a radically different lifestyle from the norm or not. Mechanoid or Linked doesn't seem to suit them either, but that's just a very quick assessement on my part as I write this.

They're in a weird spot - virtually all their military units are droids, but the civilians themselves are very much organic.

Still going through each of the races.

Currently only played fully through as Wraith and ancient, but thought I'd put my things down here:


Wraith:
Overall seemed mostly fine, just a few bits stuck out when playing as them:

BioElectric thing - Feels worthless in current state. 3 hexes of Bioelectric vs 1 Supply hex, 1 generator hex (any) and 1 weapon hex works out as adding more to the ship than what the buffs shipwide from the same 3 Bioelectic hexes give. 1 Weapon hex almost always adds a little bit more than 3% boost to ship damage, same with 1 supply hex being worth more than 6% less supply use(weapons) and 1 generator being worth more than 6% energy use (Weapons).


HiveShip Hull health decrease - I can see why it has a health decrease, also agree with it, however I felt it was a bit much perhaps 30% and not 50%?


Ancients:

Just feel strong across the board. Sure no support ship on their main hull, but yeah that things a beast. Get your tech rolling and your set for life. decreased maintence and build costs on them, ZPM's quite early to help make use of their heavy energy use. Nice weapons straight from the start that can kill both flagships and supports without much effort. Enemy fleets got om nom nomed more than normal.

General things:

Graviton condensor feels pathetic right now, planets have more health than some stars in base game, stars have more health than some blackholes in base game. Graviton condensor damage has not been touched though.


Flak Cannon is pretty pointless outside of maybe early game for Tau'ri, they have access to unlock Flak Battery which just stomps it in effectivess.

Strengths didn't seem to be to massively non reliable. Seemed to be a bit more varied and which higher strengths sooner. But still seemed to be an ok indication.

I believe youve done this since I've never ever seen the AI react in this way before so huge massive congrats. But the Gouald at least decided to try and stop me exploding their planet, pulled their fleets back to their homeworld to stop my planet exploder even the ones that were currently trying to fight my main fleet. So super congrats if you did make them do that. Or if not super congrats maybe symbiotes truly do make you smarter.


Nukes - Personal preference is to make them a cast ability if possible. This is due to just how they add a level of micro thats annoying in my mind. That of having to also remember to set the fleet to hold fire between fights, then only have them fire when in an actual usable range to make good use of the nuke and not have it miss, hit the corner end of the fleet (want it to hit one of the middles preferable or even right in the middle), not miss, not hit a lone support round a planet that your fighting another fleet near and all sorts of annoying things that come from it being autofire.

IllyiaSvara,

Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts. Some good, thought-out feedback from, as usual.

Still going through each of the races.

Currently only played fully through as Wraith and ancient, but thought I'd put my things down here:

Well you started with the two that are the most unique so far. I've been trying to go through all the added factions and trying to give them all a more thematic vibe and some mechanics of their own when possible. The Atlanteans and the Wraith were the two most obvious ones, the others are requiring a little more thought. I have a few ideas, although I'm not sure how feasible they are yet, but I'm open to suggestions.

BioElectric thing - Feels worthless in current state. 3 hexes of Bioelectric vs 1 Supply hex, 1 generator hex (any) and 1 weapon hex works out as adding more to the ship than what the buffs shipwide from the same 3 Bioelectic hexes give. 1 Weapon hex almost always adds a little bit more than 3% boost to ship damage, same with 1 supply hex being worth more than 6% less supply use(weapons) and 1 generator being worth more than 6% energy use (Weapons).

Hmmm... Not quite sure what to say here. I have found them to be reasonably effective but I approached them from the direction that I had in mind when I designed them. Your assessment from another angle makes sense. The intention of the BioElectric Converter was to give them a way to grow in damage as the game progressed by being able to convert generators into Converters (although it usually takes sacrificing a few support and/or supply hexes first to get started before you can start dumping generator hexes). I purposely limited their starting damage for balance reasons (didn't want the offensively useable motherships to be even stronger in the early game) so I wanted to give them add-ins to negate those early cuts. I could certainly increase the damage buff though. Perhaps I was too conservative because I was concerned about them being too strong from the get go. Would +2 or 3% damage and something like -10% usage sound more palletable?

HiveShip Hull health decrease - I can see why it has a health decrease, also agree with it, however I felt it was a bit much perhaps 30% and not 50%?

My goal was to try and get them to be about as strong as a ship 1/4 the size for early balance reasons. Originally they were 100% health and DR and I found them to be way too strong in the late game (The AI, as well as it does work for them doesn't really seem to get anywhere near as strong as what I managed when playing them). The cuts to the current 50% HP was done as a balancing pass. I haven't really had a chance to seriously play them since then but they did seem to be more reasonably balanced now at that level. A slight increase is not out of the question if you really feel they are a bit too lightweight now.

Ancients:

Just feel strong across the board. Sure no support ship on their main hull, but yeah that things a beast. Get your tech rolling and your set for life. decreased maintence and build costs on them, ZPM's quite early to help make use of their heavy energy use. Nice weapons straight from the start that can kill both flagships and supports without much effort. Enemy fleets got om nom nomed more than normal.

Sigh... The Ancients. I confess, I'm partial to them. They are my favorites. I have made a few balancing passes on them already but I admit I haven't given in to making drastic cuts to them yet.

I have found that they have a relatively easy time in the very early game but don't seem too off in the early-mid stages of the game (I've lost fights against the AI as I should in some situations). They do seem to get a bit of runaway power as the game goes on. I suspect their research upgrades might be too powerful. I'm hesitant to cut their shields but that's also probably part of the late game issue, especially once ZPMs and Hardeners go into play.

A couple things I've been thinking about trying:
-Moving ZPMs farther into the tech tree. Probably at the end of one of the branches.
-Removing their x1.5 damage on the Warship hull (or at least reducing it to x1.25 or something).
-They get a build cost reduction from the hull but not a maintenance reduction. I may cut the reduction (it peaks at 50% so maybe 25% instead).
-I think Ancient Drones are their true power (intended) but they tend to just cut through everything they hit. They should be strong, as they are supposed to function somewhat as a flak battery replacement for dealing with supports but they do so a bit too easily and can also decimate an enemy flagship (especially if you use positioning to take advantage). Removing the x1.5 damage address this but I may also do another pass on the research upgrades.
-I don't really want to do this but I've been considering cutting the starting size of the Aurora, Destiny & Domivaitus in half. When I went and looked at what some of the other factions can get for fleet strength on a starting flagship though, it wasn't as out of line as I thought vs some but was vs others. This wouldn't have any bearing on late game power though, just the start.

Graviton condensor feels pathetic right now, planets have more health than some stars in base game, stars have more health than some blackholes in base game. Graviton condensor damage has not been touched though.

This was not actually intended. Increased health on planets and stars was not something I meant to do. I checked after I read your post and their health is determined by their size, so I inadvertently increased it when I did the galaxy sizing. I can either buff the Condensor x10 or adjust the scripts to give 1/10th as much health. Not sure which makes the most sense. Maybe the latter, as I've suspected for a while that black hole death isn't nearly as devastating as it should be and the increased health is probably the cause.

Flak Cannon is pretty pointless outside of maybe early game for Tau'ri, they have access to unlock Flak Battery which just stomps it in effectivess.

These do need to be looked at. They were added pre 2.0 and flak batteries and I haven't been sure what I wanted to do with them. They do function in a pretty fundamentally different way from batteries though, in that they are AoE and they are specifically limited from doing much to large ships while doing increased damage to tiny ones. They were meant to clear fighter (size 10 or less) spam but 2.0 has sort of shifted the meta away from this to larger supports. I might look at tweaking the damage formula to affect larger ships as the size increases, that might help them along.

Strengths didn't seem to be to massively non reliable. Seemed to be a bit more varied and which higher strengths sooner. But still seemed to be an ok indication.

Since that's been the most recent work done, that's good to hear. I have no doubt that the new formula could use some refining, but it sounds like it's off to a good start at least.

I believe youve done this since I've never ever seen the AI react in this way before so huge massive congrats. But the Gouald at least decided to try and stop me exploding their planet, pulled their fleets back to their homeworld to stop my planet exploder even the ones that were currently trying to fight my main fleet. So super congrats if you did make them do that. Or if not super congrats maybe symbiotes truly do make you smarter.

I truly wish I could take credit for that, but I don't recall doing anything to make them expressly address that. Not really sure why they would do it in DOF but not in vanilla. Happy fluke perhaps? It is something that I wouldn't mind specifically adding to the AI though; and I've become quite a bit better versed in some parts of how the AI works so it might actually be doable now too.

Nukes - Personal preference is to make them a cast ability if possible. This is due to just how they add a level of micro thats annoying in my mind. That of having to also remember to set the fleet to hold fire between fights, then only have them fire when in an actual usable range to make good use of the nuke and not have it miss, hit the corner end of the fleet (want it to hit one of the middles preferable or even right in the middle), not miss, not hit a lone support round a planet that your fighting another fleet near and all sorts of annoying things that come from it being autofire.

I can understand that complaint. I don't even disagree - it's an extra layer of management that is a hassle. On the other hand though, nukes can be hugely powerful and I think this does reign in their power somewhat. An ability version makes sense for players but doing that will probably mean the AI won't use them... that might be something that I could address though but not just yet. I recently went looking to see about adding warhead/nuke construction to the AI (they don't rebuild them) and it wasn't as straightforward as I had hoped so no progress on that yet.

On the hiveship front, it may be because I have a tendancy to attempt to play the wraith how the wraith fleets function and take my hiveships into full on combat. I agree they can be weakened slightly, super low DR(for size) is quite a big decrease in effective health ontop of the 50% decrease in health. Say 30% decrease in health and the no DR would probably still keep them weak enough to not just be monsters.

Bioelectirc it's because I decided to actually break it down into what it's giving me and how many hexes of the corrosponding thing (in this case 1 supply hex, 1 generator hex, 1 weapon hex) I need to get the exact same thing or more. Probably in some designs it would be nice (thinking dedicated weapon platform with minimal engine relying on ftl mainly). I think perhaps up the damage boost a bit (given they are already limited) and maybe spread the power decrease to all systems. Since the wraith have a few systems that need lots of power outside of weapons. Might open it up then to more situations.



I understand why the ancients are strong, its very lore fitting (not as strong as I remember though, I see the shield regen for them isn't as high as it used to be). It's honestly fine in my mind to leave them as they are if it's the intention, I mean why not have a race that makes things easy on the player or gives the AI a nice boost in fleet power if set to them. Personally I see no problem having a stronger race for the sake of fun, if MP is done with this mod I'm sure friends can use "homebrew" rules and just say no ancients for players.
Perhaps it's because I use custom designs instead of the abse designs that made my experience with the ancients a bit stronger than yours, When your using 2 weapons particle beam ~40 drone cores (noticed increasing drone system size doesn't increase drone number, more drones would mean more spread of damage across the ships as they in turn can hit more hexes, sure its the same damage but better chance of nomming into weapon cores and such) enemy fleets fall apart. Destroyed every single ship the Goa'uld threw at my "exploratory" fleet (4 size 500's for a total of 4 big particle beams firing and 640 drones in each wave)


Larger support ships have always been better against a good designed ship just because otherwise the swarm would only really being doing 20% damage due to taking max DR damage reduction (80%) wheras larger support ships for the same overall damage could overcome that DR and pump out far more of its total damage into the enemy. I like the idea of them but I think at this point they might have been made obsolete.


Hmm going to have to investigate that then see if I can get the AI to defend it's planets again, haven't seen them do that before even after 2.0. Wonder if it might have something to do with the much larger distances involved making the AI more likely to decide it doesn't have anything else in reasonable response time calling everything back instead of 1 or 2 fleets.

I would prefer to have the Atlanteans in a more reasonably balanced state. You're right that there is nothing wrong with having an "easy" faction, but ideally it shouldn't be too far gone. They may never be truly in balance, even the vanilla stuff may not have perfect balance but I would like to move things closer to the bar if possible.

Last night I got to work on some updates and the list looks like this:
-Atlantean warships no longer gain +50% damage.
-Atlantean warships no longer get reduced build costs based on size.
-Atlantean warships increased armor up to +150% from 50% (I didn't account for the hex limit change in the original value).
-Atlantean warships get the same x1.5 HP rating increase as destroyers for fleet strength.
-Wraith hiveships now have 40% reduced health instead of 50%.
-Bioelectric Converters now give +3% per hex.

Not sure when I'll publish yet, since I should probably do a little playtesting myself first but since it's mostly number tweaking hopefully not long. I'd be curious to hear your take on how much it improved matters, so probably sooner rather than later since you're playing with DOF atm.

So Atlantean warships get an across the board cut to their damage (which should help) and keep most of their existing fleet strength ratings. This doesn't address their shields being possibly too strong but they won't destroy the enemy as quickly so that means they should also have to absorb greater damage for longer and it may work out better anyways.

The fixed drone count thing on Atlantean Drones was intentional. If both damage and count are scaling up then there are two damage increasing metrics in play and since these were to be default weapons I removed one as a measure to try and keep things in check. Atlantean Drones get other benefits anyways, plus they have a lot more research support to make them quite nasty as the game progresses. With drones, Lifetime and Tracking bonuses end up equating directly into increased damage as well in many situations so there are a lot more ways to buff them as the game goes on. The Chair, Drone Control, Multi-Phasic, Drone Count (~x1.8 DPS by itself btw) on top of the regular kinetics research should more than make up for the lack of count scaling on the base subsystem.

The idea of making Bioelectric Converters affect all power use isn't a bad one. I may do that. I intentionally wanted power to be an issue for the Wraith because lackluster power generation is a cannon thematic for them. I want things like Powered Carapace to really not be deployable without a Stolen ZPM. Mind you, it currently takes multiple ZPMs in the design to coat the Super Hive design with Powered Carapace, so a 50% total reduction in power may not really hurt that.

I also addressed the Star health issue. In testing last night planets were in the 2-3G health range, stars were in the 20-30G health range and the blackhole was at 200G. This also fixed the blackhole death and properly wiped out surrounding stars. I'm not sure if those health ratings are the same as vanilla though, I didn't get around to checking in a vanilla game to compare last night.

I just wanted to note something on your comment about the Atlanteans vs the Goa'uld. The Goa'uld do have a bit of a problem in that their fleet strength rating does not really accurately portray their performance against a single target. Many of their ships are "directionless" to some degree and that often means that a bigger portion of their DPS is directed in other directions and cannot be focus fired. I didn't have to do this, but the stock designs in DOF are meant to try and represent the stuff from the source material rather than being "what its going to be strongest". Plasma currently has slightly boosted DPS to try and offset this a little bit (it was also a problem with the Wraith to some degree too) but stuff like the Ha'tak, Ra, Anubis do only give a portion of the rated DPS in any one direction. They should be good when engaging in mass fleets with targets all around but it will definitely hurt them against something like a destroyer or Ancient Warship. The problem doesn't affect all of their support ships though, so that can help but the AI isn't smart enough to be aware of that.

Sounds good overall.

Stellar object health matches in general to what it normally is around in vanilla.

I'll have to throw a try in with the Goa'uld then maybe see if I can keep the design close to the lore or even the same but move bits around to get them to function slightly better.

Edit:
Heres my screenshots of my changes to the Goa'uld ships + DeathGlider. They might be ever so slightly lore breaking in how a weapon isn't on every side but it retains the same shape and look as before while still covering covering a reasonable portion of the ship.


Death Glider Support:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=708609261

Ra Flagship:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=708610254

Shu'tak Flagship:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=708610290


Apophis and Anubis would be in need of some major changes to make more functional, more possible with Anubis through using the offshots as supply/support hexes, Apophis would take a lot of changes


Edit Edit:

Also one thing I think that has been overlooked is the speed of colony ships. Their speed doesn't appear to be changed (I think, checked the files as well but may have overlooked it) this is what seems to be making the game slower in expansion overall. Not saying this is a bad thing or good thing but since I noticed normal ships have their speed increased to compensate for the increased system size. So thought I'd point it out.


Edit Edit Edit (when well these edits stop):

Another oversight found, the ranges of planetary weapons, the two you can build and the rare occasionally found anicent one on planets, have not been increased to compensate for the much larger sizes