No worries AJAX I will fix it.... the thing is like this, when I first made the mod I was struggling with trying to keep ships more separated with less clipping / colliding.

So I increased engagement ranges, weapon ranges and slowed down ship speeds whiched helped alot. I also increased weapon cooldowns for less spam and that should theoretically nullify missile advantages but apparently that is not the case.

I don't need slow ships anymore thanks to change ship random offset which makes them use the z-axis more. So I will increase ship speed again as much as I can without it looking to arcady / gamey. If missiles are still too strong I will change weapon range changes from % based to flat increases again.

Blackthorn, one thing I hope you keep in mind is the ability to slow below normal for fleet engagements. I like to use the "slow" speed for such a thing, and I wouldn't want you to balance the combat speeds around something like "fastest"

Swarmer Missiles are supposed to counter Point Defense, but actually the game considers a swarm as a single missile. So a Point Defense can shoot down a "swarm" with one shot. I wonder if you can rebalance Missiles / Torpedoes, but manage to make Swarmer Missiles behave like they should?

Another thing that may cause a problem with the lowered speed are lategame tachyon lances. They have an insane range and power already, and letting them get more shots off before the distance closes seems OP as hell.

No need, missiles easily countered by PDS. If you'll nerf it more they'll become useless for sure.

I had lowered ship speed to reduce blobbing / collisions before discovering the random height offset value for ships.

The mod is now at a place where slow ships are no longer necessary so I will increase ship combat speed closer to default vanilla values which should reduce long range dominance. I will also turn wespon range buffs from % based to a flat increase because projectile weapons seem to have alot of problems with the new engagement ranges.

These should make all weapons competitive while retaining the long range benefit of first strike bonus damage.

I have to agree. Missles and torps are strong. And you CAN overwhelm point defense. I know because every ship in my fleets always carriys at least 1 point defense and sometimes as many as 2 - 4 on bigger ships. That sad it takes a ♥♥♥♥ load of scooby snacks to pull that off. And a well protected fleet is a hard thing to counter. With raw missile power.

One thing that really needs to be consider is that alot of what can and does exist in the balance meta around ships design has to do with counter equiping and not so much a flat rock paper sissocr dichotomy. But also the choice of player ships layouts. And refits to counter new tech the enemys is useing which is indeed ment to be part of the play.

Your not ment to be compeletely counter strong and immune against all weapons all the time but nor is it as simple as a basic rock apper siccosr formula depending on your fleet composition even though we have the basic aspect of that in the armor shield / shield pen armor pen scienario.

Something to be said for altering the speed however. That could pose interesting results.

I would however think one thing you might consider as an aside blackthorn is that you nerfed the bonus on disruptor type weapons against shields rather hard and they had a rather special nitch at there intial point in the game with that shield damage buff and later on as well. I would wonder if maybe you did not go a bit overmuch on that.

As now its really little better advantage to useing those than to use any other weapon system. And a change that make a weapons line obsolete like that feels unbalanced imo.

I think that to a certain degree if your going to adjust pen values you may need to consider other weapon statistics adjustments but thats a slippery sloope of balance and an easy way to create a very narrow meta of perfection and making many weapons outright useless. And thats a concern. Beacuse so much of the rest of your mod is working excellently.

And the weapon diversity in this game is pretty great.

Originally posted by Blackthorn:

I had lowered ship speed to reduce blobbing / collisions before discovering the random height offset value for ships.

The mod is now at a place where slow ships are no longer necessary so I will increase ship combat speed closer to default vanilla values which should reduce long range dominance. I will also turn wespon range buffs from % based to a flat increase because projectile weapons seem to have alot of problems with the new engagement ranges.

These should make all weapons competitive while retaining the long range benefit of first strike bonus damage.

Originally posted by Black Jack:

I have to agree. Missles and torps are strong. And you CAN overwhelm point defense. I know because every ship in my fleets always carriys at least 1 point defense and sometimes as many as 2 - 4 on bigger ships. That sad it takes a ♥♥♥♥ load of scooby snacks to pull that off. And a well protected fleet is a hard thing to counter. With raw missile power.

One thing that really needs to be consider is that alot of what can and does exist in the balance meta around ships design has to do with counter equiping and not so much a flat rock paper sissocr dichotomy. But also the choice of player ships layouts. And refits to counter new tech the enemys is useing which is indeed ment to be part of the play.

Your not ment to be compeletely counter strong and immune against all weapons all the time but nor is it as simple as a basic rock apper siccosr formula depending on your fleet composition even though we have the basic aspect of that in the armor shield / shield pen armor pen scienario.

Something to be said for altering the speed however. That could pose interesting results.

I would however think one thing you might consider as an aside blackthorn is that you nerfed the bonus on disruptor type weapons against shields rather hard and they had a rather special nitch at there intial point in the game with that shield damage buff and later on as well. I would wonder if maybe you did not go a bit overmuch on that.

As now its really little better advantage to useing those than to use any other weapon system. And a change that make a weapons line obsolete like that feels unbalanced imo.

I think that to a certain degree if your going to adjust pen values you may need to consider other weapon statistics adjustments but thats a slippery sloope of balance and an easy way to create a very narrow meta of perfection and making many weapons outright useless. And thats a concern. Beacuse so much of the rest of your mod is working excellently.

And the weapon diversity in this game is pretty great.

@Blackthorn, you have done a really great job at meeting the demands of this vast meta community of players, when something breaks you try and fix it. I will tell you this, you have made this game vastly more playable just for myself, before the battles just weren't right. Messing with weapon values and things like that are tricky, especially for someone as busy as yourself with wife and kids. THX for all the hard work.

@Black Jack ... I do like what you said about diversity in contrast to a simple R-P-S type setup where you take the wrong weapons for instance and you are instantly dead upon combat. I will tell you that upon my original post time it was literally insane. Missiles from everywhere from my enemy and I was dead before killing a single ship (I had lasers btw). Now I assume that this has been fixed and just screams actual fun to be had. Nothing displeased me more than to watch my 10 hour empire crumble because all the AI had taken missiles and I was stuck with lasers and projectiles...I literally quit for the night and thought about deleting this mod....then I waited...a fix was applied...then I began playing again this morning.

Yeah I had a similar experience to you only early game. And I had projectiles the AI had gone all torps and some lasers and then really visoulsy attacked my poor poor despotic empire. Alas when the war started I had not yet researched torps.

It was a rough initial fight those torps overwhelmed my ships and brokes through my shield based fleets as if nothing existed but I did not have PD and all shields ><. However then I setup my ships to have a heavy armor and a single shield unit to act as buffer for conventional weapons and countered with every ship in my fleet haveing at least 1 small slot with PD even the corvetes then loading up with many assorted weapons to create high alpha with enough defense to close into melee.

My point in this example however, other then to express how damn much fun it was, is simply that the missiles where indeed powerful but not uncounterable. But it did require me to reconsider my whole order of battle. I was slaughtered but it was also a hard counter to my existing build design. Once I made a new generation of build that was more armor heavy and had PD for the missles and did upgrades to the survivors while useing strategic distractions to buy time and raid his space with the existing inferior fleets. I then had a fighting chance.

I mean by fighting chance I commited a small genocide. But details.

That war lasted 50 years man. Burned me some Xenos.

@black jack, sadly in my meager game I had not the research nor the resources to wage such a genocide. It was fun yes, taking a loss is always fun in my book, however I felt so powerless with my ships not even fighting back while the torps and missiles just came raining in from hell.

Originally posted by Black Jack:

I have to agree. Missles and torps are strong. And you CAN overwhelm point defense. I know because every ship in my fleets always carriys at least 1 point defense and sometimes as many as 2 - 4 on bigger ships. That sad it takes a ♥♥♥♥ load of scooby snacks to pull that off. And a well protected fleet is a hard thing to counter. With raw missile power.

One thing that really needs to be consider is that alot of what can and does exist in the balance meta around ships design has to do with counter equiping and not so much a flat rock paper sissocr dichotomy. But also the choice of player ships layouts. And refits to counter new tech the enemys is useing which is indeed ment to be part of the play.

Your not ment to be compeletely counter strong and immune against all weapons all the time but nor is it as simple as a basic rock apper siccosr formula depending on your fleet composition even though we have the basic aspect of that in the armor shield / shield pen armor pen scienario.

Something to be said for altering the speed however. That could pose interesting results.

I would however think one thing you might consider as an aside blackthorn is that you nerfed the bonus on disruptor type weapons against shields rather hard and they had a rather special nitch at there intial point in the game with that shield damage buff and later on as well. I would wonder if maybe you did not go a bit overmuch on that.

As now its really little better advantage to useing those than to use any other weapon system. And a change that make a weapons line obsolete like that feels unbalanced imo.

I think that to a certain degree if your going to adjust pen values you may need to consider other weapon statistics adjustments but thats a slippery sloope of balance and an easy way to create a very narrow meta of perfection and making many weapons outright useless. And thats a concern. Beacuse so much of the rest of your mod is working excellently.

And the weapon diversity in this game is pretty great.

Oh come on, U just using auto-design ships and whinig about missiles OP, make a new design fited with mostly of PDS and use them in your fleets, missiles wond be a problem at all.

Uh... What? Yes missiles are not op that was my point though I would think auto design is a bit lacking in inspiration. I think you misunderstood.

So I fail to see how you think that was whining but regardless... anyhow. Also PD wont shoot down all long rage projectiles efficiently late game but it will handle basic missles and torps fairly well but you can overwelm PD with volume or certain specialized missile weapons.

@Chosen One, I didn't have the access to any of the mods needed to counter the missiles, this happened rather early game. Throughout the war I began having the means to slightly handle things...after a nine years war raged on.

Originally posted by AJAX:

@Chosen One, I didn't have the access to any of the mods needed to counter the missiles, this happened rather early game. Throughout the war I began having the means to slightly handle things...after a nine years war raged on.

It is as its indend. Missiles are good for start but remember, this weapon is the only one wich can be countered effectivly with PDS, none other weapons countered like this.

Evasion is pretty much PD for projectiles.