Mid/late game balance

[george moromisato]

I'm working on improving mid/late game balance and would love to hear ideas. In particular, what are the biggest issues with balance? Some ideas:

1. Systems after St. Kat's get deadly too quickly. Maybe we need to tone down some of the initial Sung bases.

2. Some shield combinations are too powerful. What are your favorite *overpowered* shield combos?

3. Some enemies (like Xenophobes) need to be beefed up. What others?

4. Ferian farming is definitely a problem...what are your favorite exploits in the mid/late game?

5. What is your favorite weapon for mid/late game? Is it overpowered?

[namer4]

Thanks for asking

1. While I support a gentler introduction to the Sung, I find the Sung bases to be less of a problem than the Dwarg: while I do sometimes have to bypass bases because I'd quickly be destroyed otherwise, it's much less frustrating than being immobilized and nibbled to death out of the blue. If it were up to me, I'd:
a. Reduce the number of Dwarg masters, or tone down their damage.
b. Introduce a new Sung base akin to an Ares outpost, and push back the fortresses.

2. I pair a Taikon-200 with an ion reflector whenever I can. No other shield combo feels really overpowered, given that pretty much anything else needs to tread lightly around either the Deimos or the Ranx dreadnought.

3. [edit] For mid-late game ships, I can't think of anything that's really underpowered, though the Dwarg masters are powerful enough that the Dwarg behemoths aren't really consequential. As for early game ships, I think the Centauri need to be a little more of a threat -- their basic ships are basically harmless to the starting configuration for the freighter and the Wolfen. The Abbasid, Himal interceptors, and the Urak are rarely threats when I find them.

4. Once I find a transpace jumpdrive, a decent shield, and a fusionfire, I consider myself to have all but won the game because (in addition to farming Ferians and jumping the spoils to ringers) I can farm Teratons. Making them more quick to anger would be one improvement, and discouraging selling Teraton loot to other Teratons would be another, maybe by making docking after killing a base unwise. I also tend to abuse armor buyers (e.g., Thor's & the black market) throughout the game. Would it be possible to make the price contribution of barrels additive rather than multiplicative?

5. My favorite easy-to-find weapon is the Fusionfire. By virtue of being obtainable, 100MW, and very high DPS vs bases and ships, it tends to be my weapon of choice until I find the Taikon multi-ion weapon, which is overpowered in that I find it superior to any other weapon for all enemies except the Iocrym or some bases. The price isn't a huge issue given the exploits I mention in (4), and I feel it should be toned down... it feels like it should be level 11 or 12, using the plasma cannon and repeller as reference points.

[Aury]

Hi george!

Speaking from Vanilla balance, with only vanilla ships:

1) D: I hate those Barbary-class gunships and their EMP cannons... Especially since they run away when their shields go down, and they end up piling up in big groups, swamping, and then killing you.

2) shield combo's? I'm not sure about this one... (or what is really being referred to for that matter). I do love getting the invincible early on, and then jumping directly to a big mammoth, and then lastly, a Kaidun. The invincible really is the only one that is overpowered however. Atarlost could write a thesis on that one (And the Class V deflector too, same problem: each is too powerful for the level the appear at)

3) Yes, xenophobes are a bit weak... Now, here's a real balance oddity: the order of penitence: first off, they have miserable ships. However, that 'oracus harass' power really chews through any ship, often downing your shields in a single go. The problem is that their ships can't put a dent in you, while the harass power wipes you out if you get unlucky while flying around on auto-pilot (since they are virtually un-avoidable at those speeds and level of attention). Also, AUTONS really need a buff, but they arn't enemies. Auton dealers should occur earlier at any rate, and there should perhaps be some later-game autons too.

4) Ferian farming... but that seems to be about it (off the top of my head)

5) Hmm... mid/late game? Tough choice. I play the wolfen for a reason (plenty of weapon slots)

[Betelgeuse]

1. Systems after St. Kat's get deadly too quickly. Maybe we need to tone down some of the initial Sung bases.

I think this is partly due to the ramping up of player equipment there. Before that you have a slow progression after getting your gear in Starton. Then you hit a wall at St. K where it assumes you have access to all of this better equipment. I would suggest a level between the current level 3 and level 4 systems that has stations that would contain the lesser used stuff from levels 5 and 6 for weapons. Shields and armors don't have the variety to do this with currently.

2. Some shield combinations are too powerful. What are your favorite *overpowered* shield combos?

Nephren P25 but beyond that any reflection is overpowered even with the nerf. Maybe if it started at half damage at full shields and went from there as shields can regenerate very quickly.

4. Ferian farming is definitely a problem...what are your favorite exploits in the mid/late game?

Money isn't really an issue for the things that I want due to you can find what you want with looting. There is nothing that I want to buy because I am gearing up for the end. If we had more stuff that you could buy that could still be used at the end I would pay more attention.

5. What is your favorite weapon for mid/late game? Is it overpowered?

good mid/late game weapons

Star Cannon - overpowered with passthrough getting multiple shots
Fusionfire - not a primary weapon but still fun
Ares archcannon - I need this to beat the game as I don't like doing quests. Very nice weapon on its own due to the fact that it is an EnergyWeapon.

[Aury]

We need to get our balance expert in here... *goes searching for atarlost*

[Atarlost]

1. Sung
Sung aren't the problem as namer4 said. It's not hard to have a particle resistant shield by the time they show up. There's a particle resisting shield available at that level but nothing blast resistant. There are also several particle resistant armors. There are no blast resistant shields at the level in question which is one thing that makes the Dwarg a terror. Another is that they can actually hit the broadside of a barn, something windslavers sometimes have trouble with. Sung aren't dangerous until Citadels and Earth Slavers with their shieldsdown hacks unless you get a really early camp and aren't prepared.

2. Shield combos

• The Class V is all kinds of broken. Its resists are a superset of the p25, but it's power use is lower than the S100 and its regen is higher than either.
  Nephren p25: 100 HP 4/30 regen 30 mw particle/ion resist
  Yoroi s100: 100 HP 4/30 regen 20 mw
  Class V: 100 HP 5/30 regen 16mw laser/particle/ion resist
• The invincible is a very nice shield if you play without Domina powers. Unfortunately triggering sustain when it goes down lets you ride out the systems shutdown in perfect safety. In this case I don't think it's the shield that's broken, it's Domina. Even so it's not as overpowered as the Class V. They both actually go obsolete at the same place: where sandstorms start appearing even though the Class V is a level earlier, has just over half the power consumption and is nonmilitary.
• All level 9 or higher shields except the nonfunctional lazarus are basically overpopwered with blue ethyrium as is the level 8 ion reflector. The big bads of the late game are the Ares and they're ion happy. A reflection plasma shield or unboosted ion reflector the positron users can wear down, but the higher level shields resist everything a little better and the tough ships only use ion effectively. The problem isn't the shields though, it's that the Ares have a very nice combined arms force they don't use effectively. If they tasked Chasms and Sandstorms to escorting Phobos and Deimos and set them on wider patrol like the Ranx do they'd be a lot nastier, especially to people relying on reflective shields.

3. Weak Enemies

• Xenophobes need better turreting on their howitzers to start with. They never use them. Having that second damage type would make them a lot nastier without changing their loadout at all.
• The Kobol need to last longer. Massed Tev-9s hurt especially to defenses optimised against ion. Additional Kobol encounters for later systems with larger group sizes would reduce the overpoweredness of reflect crystals.
• Other weak enemies have been mentioned already

4. Exploits
Pretty much just ferians.

5. overpowered weapons

• Katana Starcannon. The passthrough makes it a basecracker, but isn't much help against most ships, but part of the problem is that the other ion weapons are all pretty lackluster but ion as a damage type is one of the least resisted. The Katana is turning about the same DPS as the Mark V Howitzer ignoring passthrough and WMD and they're the same level and nominally equivalent damage types. Since passthrough doesn't happen against small or shielded ships it's not really as great as Betel makes it sound, though it is a big deal against heavily armored large ships. The killer app is the range, but the high power costs for the other commonwealth ion weapons doesn't help matters, especially since it sits below the breakpoint for using it with an enhanced Nova-100 and an invincible, mammoth-25, or Yoroi S100. If it drew 100mW I wouldn't use it until much later, but I'd still use it because for me the range is worth the damage tradeoff even against the heavy ion blaster two levels up and with more than double the DPS. I think the solution is not to nerf the Katana directly but to either introduce more ion resisting enemies or reduce the Ares armor ion vulnerability while making the higher level ion weapons suck less (meaning in most cases 40 or at least 35 lifetime, though the flame cannon is probably unsalvagable).
• The Ares Archannon is indispensable as an easily looted weapon that can upgrade to an Iocrym killer, but the Ares are so vulnerable to ion that ion is as effective against their armor as positron making the 32.5 DPS Katana even without passthrough nearly equal to the 36 DPS archcannon. The AAC can take down their shields faster, but the Katana starts multi-hitting with passthrough once the shields are dropped A closer match both in item level and power consumption is the 73.5 DPS Heavy Ion Blaster. In general I think a lot of the weapon selection problems in the late game come down to Ares armor being apallingly weak against ion weapons. I only use it for the Iocrym and Ranx really, though if it had enough HP to not get scragged insanely easily by point defense I'd use it against Gaian Processors as well. I can live without it until the Iocrym though.
• Mark V Howitzer. It's nothing special really. It's just the first fusion howitzer. Since most bases don't regen the difference between a Mark V and a Fusionfire just isn't worth the extra power consumption for me.

[Wurmish]

Ferian farming... mmm. Oddly enough I haven't really seen anyone suggest changes for them. Here I go:

Plenty of suggestions for the Ferians to have a warship of sorts. I doubt this will come to pass honestly due to what I perceive their history is (mostly pacifist).

How about simply reducing the loot they give you from colonies? Or if you're worried about mostly farming the ferian miners themselves, if I remember rightly then the colony continues to produce miners indefinitely (or so it seems). So why not give each colony a cap to produce? Say no more than 10 in a small asteroid field, and no more than 25 in a ring, that way if multiple colonies spawn, the most miners you will have may hover around 50-80 (I haven't yet seen more than 3 colonies in a system), given that I have been able to round up about 40 from one colony easy...

Why not arm the colony with a plasma torch or something? Or give them plasma turrets? Or something annoying like that?

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About Teratons, I have found them either far too difficult to take on OR far too easy to farm. Farming them is basically a game-breaker for me.

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Katana - I agree with atarlost on this one, changing the enemies around a little will probably help solve some of the balance on its own.

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To be honest, as much as I hate them, maybe give the Ventari some more power closer to Ares space, since damaging devices is probably my biggest annoyance and fear.

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One of the most annoying things I have to say is all the Ares shipyards late game... just the same stuff over and over again really, which of course tends to get boring. Maybe change the shipyards a bit and have a few different types that 'specialize' in one or two ships (e.g. Deimos only, no Phobos, and a few Chasms, another will have a Phobos or two patrolling with Sandstorm escorts, etc.)

That's all I have for now.

[digdug]

1. Systems after St. Kat's get deadly too quickly. Maybe we need to tone down some of the initial Sung bases.

I don't think so, I actually quite enjoyed the difficulty gap that exists just after st. kathrine, switching to different kind of weapons and shields to survive the Sungs is something that I had to learn if I wanted to progress in the game. I understand that can be a problem for beginners, but because of the intrinsic bonuses of weapon damage types I think that we are going to see these kind of difficulty gaps more in the future (AFK post heretic).

2. Some shield combinations are too powerful. What are your favorite *overpowered* shield combos?
3. Some enemies (like Xenophobes) need to be beefed up. What others?

Definetely Ion reflection for late game is still overpowered. Ares has been fixed in 0.99 thanks to the more widespread use of positron weaponry. However enemies like the Ventari needs a secondary weapon. By the time I encounter a Ventari, I have already ion reflection, and the Ventari becomes ven-kitties.

4. Ferian farming is definitely a problem...what are your favorite exploits in the mid/late game?

My favorite exploit was Huari farming, and that's been fixed.
Teraton farming has been reduced, thanks to intDestroyItems.
So we cannot destroy a teraton weapon station and sell the stuff to another teraton station. However the Teraton pit station is still a gold mine. Destroy then sell to the Ringers all the high value ores.

5. What is your favorite weapon for mid/late game? Is it overpowered?

The overpowered weapon for the late game is the IM90. But I don't want it nerfed at all. On the contrary, in systems with a high number of foes with Ion weapons, I'm expecting to see ion resistances on armor and shields, thus reducing the effectiveness of the IM90 and other Ion weapons.
What I'm suggesting is that 10% of the Ventari ships should use Ion reflecting crystals. Kobol ships too probably.[/quote]

[Prophet]

Systems after St. Kat's get deadly too quickly. Maybe we need to tone down some of the initial Sung bases.

I disagree; the player is not forced to kill every enemy in every station and it would be quite boring if they were not challenging. This forces the player to use different tactics, find better equipment or just run away.

Some shield combinations are too powerful. What are your favorite *overpowered* shield combos?

The shield combos aren't necessarily too powerful but they are too easy to get. I can easily find a dozen different crystals with at least one of every type before Point Juno.

Some enemies (like Xenophobes) need to be beefed up. What others?

Order of penitence ships are pitiful.
The Ventari need small, fast ships to stop you from sniping the crusiers from a distance.
I'd like to see more enemies with order="wander" to fill up space a bit more. Everyone is huddled around their base.

Ferian farming is definitely a problem...what are your favorite exploits in the mid/late game?

I feel there is too much equipment available as loot. Selling a few powerful weapons to the ringers/teratons gives you enough rins to buy your Iocrym-Killer equipment and then you can sail through to Heretic and forget about everything else. The biggest challenge is simply finding your end game equipment.

What is your favorite weapon for mid/late game? Is it overpowered?

Lamplighter with +Fast is just really fun to use and looks so pretty. It's not overpowered because of what you have to do to get it.

The Qianlong Archcannon is not worth the hassle of doing the Huari missions. It has great potential but using longzhu spheres as ammo is simply too costly.

Of course, the IM90 and Katana for reasons already stated.



In my opinion, the biggest problem with mid-late game is the sheer abundance of equipment as loot, which makes money too easy to acquire and turns the game into a simple hunt for your end game equipment and passing over all the remaining systems. The early systems are fun because money is still valuable are there are tons of ways to get it, albeit at a more reasonable pace. Late game, the only thing resembling a trade run is farming ferians and there are no repeatable missions like the Korolov/miner missions.

[BloodEagle]

I'm working on improving mid/late game balance and would love to hear ideas. In particular, what are the biggest issues with balance? Some ideas:

1. Systems after St. Kat's get deadly too quickly. Maybe we need to tone down some of the initial Sung bases.

I'd rather the difficulty ramp stay the same in that area. It makes it all the better when you finally finish off every last living thing in the sector.

2. Some shield combinations are too powerful. What are your favorite *overpowered* shield combos?

Considering power usage and shield-hackers, I don't think that there is a vanilla shield that's overpowered.

That being said, I only use the Taikon-200. It is, in my opinion, the best shield generator in the game. There's very little that can take it out (sans-hacking).

On another note, the Lazarus is terrible. Even if you can comfortably power it (*cough* modding *cough*), its low HP insure that it can be taken down by later enemies in one shot. And since shields are temporarily disabled after being taken down....

--

In response to above posts: Leave my Class V alone.

Considering the work (and sometimes luck) that it takes to acquire it, I'd say that it's just right. The only acceptable nerf for it would be to power-usage.

3. Some enemies (like Xenophobes) need to be beefed up. What others?

Xenophobes are definitely too weak by the time you find them. I've never encountered a hoard when I didn't have a Mark V or Fusionfire.

I suppose you could double the size of the swarms, and give the scouts a kinetic weapon or something of the like.

--

Heliotropes feel a little weak in the latest version. Particularly their bases.

Giving their bases a second Sunflare cannon and a health boost would be a quick-fix.

--

Star Carriers are too weak. The default CSC should be as powerful as the "rogue" CSC.

--

Gaian Processors are on the weak side, by the time you run into them.

One solution would be to significantly increase the damage that Gaian Demolition Cannons do.

5. What is your favorite weapon for mid/late game? Is it overpowered?

The IM90. But considering its price, I think it strikes a nice balance.

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The Qianlong Archcannon is severely underpowered, compared to the Lamplighter. And when you compare the amount of effort involved in getting it and the amount of effort in getting the Lamplighter, it just doesn't add up. The only real advantage it has is in power-usage, but that doesn't make up for the fact that you have to use Longzhu Spheres as ammunition.

The only way I could see the Qianlong Archcannon being worth the effort and the ammo would be if the damage output was more than double that of the lamplighter. Though, that would make short work of the Iocrym.

--

The Dvalin Ion9 cannon isn't worth the amount of donated materials, either.

--

As for the 'end-game loot' idea... while it's certainly true at the moment, I would imagine that the systems after the Iocrym would dissolve that notion.

[Ttech]

I stick with a 150% upgrade on the Mamoth 100mw sheild and a omni-atkan for most of the game till Heretic or the im90.

I think it would be cool to get more systems instead of dulling the sung. But I think thats not exactly a great idea either.

And with the frgn hnstl i usually just get near their base blow it up and have them flow me to a large station then just loot.

[Aury]

I stick with a 150% upgrade on the Mamoth 100mw sheild and a omni-atkan for most of the game till Heretic or the im90.

Personally I think the 2000HP of the +150% Kaidun is even better.

[Psycholis]

I stick with a 150% upgrade on the Mamoth 100mw sheild and a omni-atkan for most of the game till Heretic or the im90.

Personally I think the 2000HP of the +150% Kaidun is even better.

i feel that the kaidun is the best end game shield simply because it doesn't ever drop during normal use.

[Atarlost]

I don't like any of the mammoth line shields including the Kaidun. They may not drop in normal use, but you can't get back into battle quickly with them when they do get low. I find downtime boring. It really depends on how fast your ship is though. With a freighter sans booster that downtime probably gets swallowed by transit times at least for the early mammoths.

[digdug]

yeah, mammoths and freighter is winning combination for my experience. With the freighter avoiding enemy fire is more difficult, so the fighting is more static and becomes "I can hit you, you can hit me, who's going down first ?"

For the same reason, I tend to prefer long range weaponry (howitzers and missiles) that will give me the edge on the battle.

Basically I transform the freighter to a hard to crack long range missile platform