Patch Balance Thread at Petro

[TearsOfIsha]

Finish the thread!? We are only getting started Just wait till we get our hands on the patch.

 

I’m just putting this out there but I think the xwing/torpedo idea could work. Just make it so that torpedoes will not fire while s-foils ability is active and torps are in flight. Don’t buff the Xwing anymore so it is still not especially strong BUT it will be more dangerous and versatile. Xwings are really nothing special at the mom and they need a definite advantage.

 

IMO Xwings need a boost to their HP and and a slight increase to damage. I don't like the torpedoes because it will not only render Y-Wings and B-Wings obsolete but it will also unbalance the X-Wing's role. the last thing I want is for my X-Wing to become the next StarViper.

 

Here's what I think the balance for Rebel Fighters should be -

X-Wing: Space superiority - handles non-defender TIEs and StarVipers

A-Wing: Dogfighter - capable of wiping out any fighter and is fast, but fairly pointless against cruisers

Y-Wing: Standard Bomber (I think the Y-Wing as it stands is fine)

B-Wing: Assault Bomber - a cruiser in fighter squad form

 

Oh yeah and at Yavin, I always thought the pilots there were those that they had on station and not necessarily their best. The DS was already closing in on them and they didn’t have time to call in better pilots; if they had they would have had reinforcements there to help. Vader’s sqdn on the other hand was probably among the very best in the Imperial Navy. This situation was rare however, since as the war went on, more and more reb pilots gained xp and suffered less casualties. I wrote on a thread before but forgot which one, that the Empire was spread out all over the galaxy. Many of its pilots were stationed where they saw no or very limited action. When they finally met the rebels they were still green while the rebs would (generally) be pretty experienced. The probability of dying for a reb would be higher overall as they see more frequent action but for each individual battle its going to be much less because of their experience compared to the Imps.

 

A bit off topic but....

Yeah, the rebel pilots weren't necessarily the best but none of them were incompetent. People like Red Leader and Biggs were former military pilots while Wedge was an ex-smuggler. And of course, Luke had no military experience but was known as a hot-sh1t pilot.

 

On the flipside, the Empire at the battle of Yavin were still obsessed with their 'absolute conformity' policy and hence the idea of 'best' imperial pilots wouldn't have really been measurable. The pilots on the DS were really considered the same as the rest of the Empire. Vader was probably the only notable pilot on the Imperial side - of course, he was one of the best in the Galaxy.

 

Anyway, back to the MC…what speed would you like then Shads? 50% increase from its current makes it as fast as a Neb-B? Is that about right? What about you Tears? You want something tangible, what do you think would be a speed to give the MC a definitive advantage in this area if the short burn boost wasn’t the option to take?

 

I've said until I'm blue in the face I couldn't care less about Raw speed. Really, the ability to fly under and over Imperial ships - that is, be able to get to any point in space regardless of what's in its way - would be the advantage it needs. Currently it has to spaz about trying to maneuver around obstacles etc.

 

Shadow I agree strongly with dispersing the MC-30s torp tubes. Good idea. After the torp tubes are taken out I leave them alone. 2 laser cannons do little damage but tying up 3 pop cap is even more damaging. Just one thing; the ISD and the MC have the same range = 2000.

 

I'm not against it. Personally, I think just increasing the HPs on the launchers and giving it a shield boost would be what's needed.

 

I agree with most of your suggestions except the Neb-B taking 2 cap. You could get away with that if you left the reb fighters pretty crap. The MC hangar could be done but it looks like that you don’t feel its necessary anymore.

 

I'm not really sure where this has come from - I reckon the Nebs are balanced as they are - sure, they don't have the firepower of the other basic cruisers but their shield boost makes them much tougher and they're great for holding battle lines and lending turbolaser support where needed.

 

 

I’ve said it before and ill say it again; all this crap about ZC ships being weak-armored is rubbish…The Aggressor has the same armour as an MC, Keldabe as an ISD, Int IVs have the same armor as an Assault Frig, not a Neb B which would be its equivalent! As for shielding the Aggressor has 200 points less than an MC/ISD but the Keldabe has 200 more and both have about the same refresh rate. Let’s compare their firepower too: Aggressors do same damage as an MC (60) and Keldabes do ISD damage (70). To put this into perspective, the Aggressors mondo weapon does 400 damage, its self destruct does 1500 damage and the plasma cannon on the ZC station does…6000. I’m not going to whinge I’m just putting these figures out there. I still think that with this patch the ZC isn’t going to be too bad BUT my gripe still exists and which happened last night, that when you take out their income in skirmish their must be a script to boost their income because they had no mines (and they took out all my mines after I got theirs) yet were able to bring on 3 frigates, 2 crusaders and 2 Vengeance almost at once when I couldn’t even afford one Interceptor squadron and I only had Vader and Fett…

 

Any argument that says the ZC are balanced currently is either not sensible or is being made by absolutely appalling players. What you've just said here highlights this.

 

I'm reserving judgement on the ZC until I get the patch. I'll see then whether they need more tweaks.

 

Question: does anyone know if the self destruct ability affects ZC ships as well? It’s been a while since I’ve played it. If it doesn’t IT SHOULD!

 

I would ordinarily say 'of course not' because that would be totally unbalanced and complete nonsense.... but then again, the same can be said of the ZCs abilities to fly in Asteroids, so I'd rather not know.

[XkaOnslaught]

i am not sure if this has been mentioned before, but the b-wing's lock foils ability has its graphics reversed. the wings are currently not in parellel with the ship when i use lock foils, and when i unuse it, the wings are parrellel XD

 

shouldn't it be the other way round?

[YertyL]

Rebel Fighters and Balance

From my understanding of everyone’s unhappiness about the quality of rebel fighters, this has more of an impact in GC than skirmish where you have to buy the sdqns, whereas the Imps don’t. Would I be correct? (In skirmish the sqdns are roughly the same price so its not as critical.) YertyL made a good point about having the flexibilty to bring on more fighters than an Imperial force however I can understand a Rebel players point of view that this could be expensive and even if the Rebel force won, the victory could actually be a defeat economically. I guess it depends on how much you have in the bank but I generally dont like a 'meat grinder' strategy.

Well, for the cost of 5 ISDs (29.000 credits in GC) you can buy quite a lot of fighters before it gets economically disadvantegeous. (1 ISD costs more than 10 fighter squads and 10 bomber squads together) - you will experience losses though, but I think it is often overlooked that fighters are relatively good for how cheap they are.

 

One thing that annoys me with fighters is that if you lose half the sqdn then they are lost. Its just not cost effective. Why not have it so that once you buy a sdqn, even if it gets wiped out it will still replenish its losses after the battle provided you win or withdraw some of the force. At present I think rebel fighter sdqns are far too disposable.

My thoughts as well . It's funny that you can get far higher "military efficiencies" with the Empire than with the Rebs (at least I can) although the Empire is supposed to rely more on sacrificing cheap units.

 

The first GC in FoC I played (on medium) with them I took over the galaxy quicker than I did when playing with the Empire. I fought only 1 ZC space station, only because I wanted to. I destroyed every other station by using raid forces. This is the best and most important ability of the Rebel and, even if you don’t hold the planet for very long it can cause huge economic damage when a side has to take it back and rebuild. When you play as the Empire you don’t have this option and you have to grind through other factions military the hard way. All you have to do is make sure your raid fleet is led by the right hero.

True, but IMO also a bit sad - raid fleets should IMO be more like a sabotaging ability than a way to conquer planets - ATM however they are still strong enough to take out most planets (especially with the Gargantuan - how imba can you get? )

 

 

THE ZC

I take it you have all seen the price increases for the ZC upgrades in skirmish? Some of them are HUGE. It will be a real investment and important decision when and whether to upgrade or not. I agree the Aggressor is a pig of a ship; still no Keldabe though. One thing that is annoying is that the ZC is the only faction that gets a capital ship in skirmish at Tech 4. The Imps get one yes but a) it’s a hero, b) its horrendously expensive and c) you cannot mass produce it.

 

I’ve said it before and ill say it again; all this crap about ZC ships being weak-armored is rubbish…The Aggressor has the same armour as an MC, Keldabe as an ISD, Int IVs have the same armor as an Assault Frig, not a Neb B which would be its equivalent! As for shielding the Aggressor has 200 points less than an MC/ISD but the Keldabe has 200 more and both have about the same refresh rate. Let’s compare their firepower too: Aggressors do same damage as an MC (60) and Keldabes do ISD damage (70). To put this into perspective, the Aggressors mondo weapon does 400 damage, its self destruct does 1500 damage and the plasma cannon on the ZC station does…6000. I’m not going to whinge I’m just putting these figures out there. I still think that with this patch the ZC isn’t going to be too bad BUT my gripe still exists and which happened last night, that when you take out their income in skirmish their must be a script to boost their income because they had no mines (and they took out all my mines after I got theirs) yet were able to bring on 3 frigates, 2 crusaders and 2 Vengeance almost at once when I couldn’t even afford one Interceptor squadron and I only had Vader and Fett…

Good thing you actually looked into the XML for hard proof

I find it funny that in skirmish the ZC gets ships as fast (or faster) than the Rebellion/Empire.

In GC a ZC player at least mostly needs a space station one level higher than e.g. an IMP player for the "same" ship (level 3 for an Int IV, level 4 for a vengeance and lvl 5 for the Keldable)

Btw., IMO this makes it a bit more balanced that the ZC ships are generally stronger than their "counterparts" since they have higher build requirements.

 

Valter with the Keldabe I think you only need to nerf the shield leech ability. It’s lost a lot of teeth with its ions and mass drivers getting nerfed. As for the Aggressor, if anything is done, the special weapons should be a bit more on the fragile side. Such weapons wouldn’t have the armour they do and this gives it a nice weakness.

Totally agreed, shield leaching is just a god special, everything else could be OK after that patch.

 

I have to disagree with darthcarth about the Int IVs though…I think they ar superior to both Acclamators and Neb Bs. 1) They are faster 2) They are better armoured 3) Their concussion missile launcher is really nasty and makes Int IV highly effective against starfighters and shielded craft. They fire more missiles than the Acclamator too, plus their special ability makes tem really nasty. Int IVs in a group can really make a mess of capital ships and starbases yet provide their own support.

True, but like I mentioned earlier I find that Int IVs are somewhat harder to get ("rarer")than Accs and Neb Bs (at least when playing as ZC in GC).

I think part of the reason the ZC seems so unbalanced is that the ZC AI miracelously spawns vengeance frigates en masse on tech level 1.

And FunSolo, you do pretty damn good if English is your second language!

Hehe, technically English is my second language as well

[ImpElite]

Holy cow, I don't have time to read these humungous posts.

[Shadow_015]

Holy cow, I don't have time to read these humungous posts.

 

Then skim-read or...don't read?

 

Hehe, technically English is my second language as well

 

Looks like i'm part of the club. English is also my second language!

 

I just noticed that you didn't suggest adding a hangar bay to the Mon Calamari Cruiser. What changed your mind Shadow?

 

The reason I am not asking for a Hangar anymore is because:

 

1. There are only a handful of people who support the idea.

 

2. A speed boost is more realistic in terms of a being released in a patch. It merely requires a tweak on the MC's XML files. A Hangar would take more effort and I don't know if the designers would be willing to do that.

 

3. One of the two is adequate I guess, as long as the speed boost is more significant to make up for not having a hangar.

 

I still support the idea of Hangars, however i'm not holding my breath. I believe that a more realistic solution would be to:

 

1. Get rid of the Home One's shield generator hardpoint, or give it two shield hardpoints AND...

 

2. Give the Home One a hangar along with 1 A-Wing squadron and 1 B-Wing squadron.

 

That would put it on par with Thrawn and Piett, you wouldn't have to tweak the cannons whatsoever and I assume (and I say assume because I don't mess around with XMLs) that it would be less work and less of a balance issue if only Home One got the upgrades.

 

If MCs got no Hangar but the Home One did, I could live with that.

 

By the way, I agree with all of the balancing ideas you posted just now. (I don't think decreasing the Nebulon's pop cap is necessary though)

 

This doesnt need to happen they are better then aclamators and im prety sure interceptor 4s so their pop cap is what blances them.

 

I agree with most of your suggestions except the Neb-B taking 2 cap. You could get away with that if you left the reb fighters pretty crap. The MC hangar could be done but it looks like that you don’t feel its necessary anymore.

 

For MC Hangar you can just read above Rust

 

The reason I partly suggested it is because of the Hangar imbalances in terms of the ISD vs. MonCal (factoring in Pop. Cap). The way I saw it is that if Nebulon-B's were upgraded it would make them more feasible to bring in (instead of spending 500 more for an Assault Frigate) and would kind of make up for the population and firepower gap that the fighters create.

 

By the way darthcarth, as Rust already pointed out that Interceptor IV Frigates are stronger than Nebulon-B's or Acclamators. They're still my least favorite though

 

Anyway, back to the MC…what speed would you like then Shads? 50% increase from its current makes it as fast as a Neb-B? Is that about right? What about you Tears? You want something tangible, what do you think would be a speed to give the MC a definitive advantage in this area if the short burn boost wasn’t the option to take?

 

Shadow I agree strongly with dispersing the MC-30s torp tubes. Good idea. After the torp tubes are taken out I leave them alone. 2 laser cannons do little damage but tying up 3 pop cap is even more damaging. Just one thing; the ISD and the MC have the same range = 2000.

 

Yeah i'd say a speed increase on par with a Nebulon-B would be about right. I'd be happy with that. Either that, or a boost engines ability like Corvettes which is shorter and weaker.

 

And just for reference, don't MC30s have 1 laser cannon and 2 torpedo tubes instead of 2 torpedo tubes? I'm just wondering because you said two and i've now forgotten whether it was 1 or 2. Anybody know off-hand?

 

By the way in case any of you wanted to know this (you probably already do): if you lose both cannons, the best thing to do is make the MC30 fly through the middle of the battle while charging its cluster bombs, the comp usually switches firepower towards it, get between several enemy capitals or fighters and detonate them, making it an excellent diversion/cannon fodder for ur fleet. Well at least that's how it happens for me.

 

I didn't know ISDs and MCs have the same range (I don't do the XML modding thing ) but if an ISD is getting a firepower increase then a speed increase is still equal, don't you think?

[FunSolo]

first of all, thanks

 

but back to topic.

i think the shield boost for the fighters is a good decision for balance, but still, these tartans and corvettes are still a pain in the ass lol. especially when u play against the AI which will endup in masses of them in an assaultforce (at least in GC). would they be a bit less effective it would greatly improve the role of all the fighters. on the other hand that way the bombers would be nasty (more like they are atm). i dunno what would be best here, but right now fighters are pretty useless till u bring them in masses imho. i know they r capable to do good damage, but losing them fast is a pain.

 

yertl brought in a good point.

what bout if they raise the lvl requirements for the ships. wouldnt that be enough?

lets say give the ZC at lvl1 just regular pirate ships like the z-95 and stuff, and bring in the better fighters and so at lvl2 and so on. wouldnt that be a better idea instead of nerfing all their ships?

[Shadow_015]

first of all, thanks

 

but back to topic.

i think the shield boost for the fighters is a good decision for balance, but still, these tartans and corvettes are still a pain in the ass lol. especially when u play against the AI which will endup in masses of them in an assaultforce (at least in GC). would they be a bit less effective it would greatly improve the role of all the fighters. on the other hand that way the bombers would be nasty (more like they are atm). i dunno what would be best here, but right now fighters are pretty useless till u bring them in masses imho. i know they r capable to do good damage, but losing them fast is a pain.

 

yertl brought in a good point.

what bout if they raise the lvl requirements for the ships. wouldnt that be enough?

lets say give the ZC at lvl1 just regular pirate ships like the z-95 and stuff, and bring in the better fighters and so at lvl2 and so on. wouldnt that be a better idea instead of nerfing all their ships?

 

Ich bin auch Deutsch lol

 

Level requirements are a step. But if we look at the fact that its only a matter of time until you reach level 5, you still end up with the same problems we have now. Plus, what if you set tech starting level to 5? What happens then? It seems to me that we'd still be where we are now...

[Wilfer88]

1 and a half month, soon 2. And still no patch. What are they doing??? This is unaccepteble for a game with alots of bugs. People get tired and play other games instead. (sorry for disturbing yor discussion, but this was the best patch thread i found)

[Shadow_015]

SAGEKING-PG said a patch is coming out late tomorrow. It's stated on Petroglyph Forums...

[XkaOnslaught]

patch or not, the game still looks good. its enough in my books

 

im only complaining about the b-wings ability being graphically reversed. it makes my screenshots QUALITY. D:

[Rust_Lord]

Yeah Wilfer they did have a HUGE amount of changes and bug to fix...when they changed one thing it could have stuffed up something else

 

Tears, your breakdown of the reb fighters is exactly how I would like to see them too. I think the Bwings need attention too. They really should be flying tanks. i never noticed their graphics glitch before...

 

Thanks YertyL for the comparison of Fighters and ISD cost. I should have taken the time to calculate that. Only trouble is to put the value of an ISD in starfighters into battle would take about 20 pop cap.... (and its okay dood when you have dorks like me around to get the info out of the XMLs for ya )

 

As for efficiencies and calculating losses, I guess poor TIE pilots dont count! How Imperial can you get

 

One other thing I noticed about the rebs was their dependence upon one unit for their upgrades and intelligence....C3PO and R2....If IG-88 sends them for extensive repairs the rebs lose a very important unit. And its not that hard to find a unit for a bounty hunter. The rebs could probably do with another unit for intel gathering.

 

I thought the MC-30 has 2 laser cannons???

 

I liked YertyLs idea about increasing tech levels but Shadow is right. It doesnt really fix the problem because once the ZC get to tech 5 they get a licence to beat the S&*t out of the other factions....the game shouldnt concentrate on ensuring the ZC dont get to tech 5. Reminds me of another game where you had to take a side down before they were too strong otherwise it was all over....damn memory....

 

FunSolo, I agree with you 100% about Corvettes. I touched on it in my last post. The amount of squadrons a few tartans can destroy in a short time when they boost their guns is incredible. My first GC with the Empire I saw how tough StarVipers were and resorted to massed tartan attacks..I only needed 3 or 4 and I slaughtered 30+ sqdns no problems. Corellian corvettes have double the guns of a tartan and crusaders have 11! If corvettes were not as good against fighters, but instead used as tough scouts then fighters would be more important for intercepting bombers so you would want to protect your fighters more for this reason.

[XkaOnslaught]

for one the corvettes needs the ability to have a shorter time. having 11 laser cannons is no joke. looks like the crusader has turned into the Corellian corv in vanilla EAW. except it also has the ability to shoot down torps and missles as well. if petro wants to buff the ability to increase the rate of fire of the point defense, i think its only fitting they reduce the duration of the ability too. else the crusader would be kinda overpowered. especially of its 2 crus overlapping each other, wouldnt it turn into a barrier of sorts? a impenetrable barrier of a very limited time, ... ok. but for the current duration of the ability.. i think its gonna get a little ... interesting.

[Linky Triforce]

So when is the patch suppose to go live?

 

I wouldn't mind some balancing for the Consortium vs. the Rebels and espicially the Empire, not to mention bug fixes heh

[Wilfer88]

Downloading something now. It must be the patch.

[wedge2211]

Here it is!

[mrsparkle]

What does this mean?

 

"Mobile Defense Units for all factions garrison cost"

 

Or this:

 

"Health increased from 1000 to 800"

Does that actually mean it's decreased from 1000 to 800, or increased from 800 to 1000?

[Shadow_015]

What does this mean?

 

"Mobile Defense Units for all factions garrison cost"

 

Or this:

 

"Health increased from 1000 to 800"

Does that actually mean it's decreased from 1000 to 800, or increased from 800 to 1000?

 

MDU question I can't answer, but the Crusader's health has been decreased from 1000 to 800.

[wedge2211]

I think the "garrison cost" refers to the number of transport slots the unit takes up, but I'm not positive.