Review/Analysis of the new Ships

Kudos to the devs for working hard to give us a lot of new ships to play with!

My first comment is that there needs to be a reason to play any given ship.
Typically, once a player has leveled up enough to get past a ship, they rarely go back, except for a challenge maybe.

All these new ships as far as I can tell will unlock AFTER the current set ends (i.e. Armada capitol ship)
Hence none of them are meant to be intermediate ships I don't think.


First, lets look at stats of our existing Tier 5 ships (i.e. ship has 5 big slots):

Armada. 5 guns, 0 bays, 8 Point Def, 2000/600
Valhalla 3 guns, 2 bays, 6 PD, 900/500
Liberator 4 guns, 1 bay, 7 PD, 1000/500

I've always maintained that the Liberator is underpowered and its health should split the difference between the 2 bay and 0 bay ships.
It is a full tier above the other 2 choices as sidekicks however.

I for one welcome our new Tier 6 Overlord ships!

HARBINGER - 2 guns, FOUR bays(!), 8 PD, 1400/500 Slooooww.
OMG this is an amazing ship. PD guns are angled frontwards somewhat.
Huge health for a carrier.
It gains WAY too many good stats for the bit of speed it gives up.
This is the best ship in the game and it makes the beginning of the game quite a bit easier due to ability to mass Fighters really fast and overwhelm enemy Point Defense.


ERISHKGAL - 4 gun, 1 bay, 9 PD, 1600/450.
Not quite a tier 6 ship, but still a full tier above the existing Liberator, due to the Big boost in health and 2 extra point defense.
Definitely a good ship and an excellent new "Best Sidekick" ship.
Still needs a 5th gun though to make it competitive with the other 2 Tier 6 ships, which of course would make it too strong of a sidekick.


VALIANT - 4 gun, 2 bay, 12 PD, 1600/600.
The third Tier 6 ship I suppose. Another extremely strong offering.
12 PD is insane making this an amazing bully-ship at short range or providing an absolute ton of potential shields.
This will likely be my new favorite due to its excellent balance of bays and guns and toughness.

The rest of the ships I am not very excited about. They are basically FAST variants that look cool but arent very usable.
I mean, other than for a challenge and different playstyle. Which is fine.
I just wish there was a more compelling reason to use them.

Simply put, modest additional speed is not enough to really change the gameplay significantly.
I guess you can use cowardly "run away" tactics more effectively with rockets, etc.
But trying to close to use short range weapons vs distant foes would be suicide.
You can't outrun fighters or missiles/rockets nor outmanuever them.


COURAGE 1 gun, 3 bay, 6 PD, 1400/400 fast.
So, 1 gun, 1 bay, 2 PD in exchange for going from Slow to Fast. With 3 bays maybe thats doable but seems like a hard price.

CRUCIBLE 3 gun, 0 bay, 8 PD, 2000/600 fast.
Trades 2 gun slots relative to Armada for a speed boost. Meh.

AFTERTHOUGHT 2 gun, 1 bay, 4 PD 1600/500 fast.
Ugh.

EXELSIOR 2 gun, 2 bay, 6 PD, 1500/500 fast.
Similar to courage but more balanced.

INSTAKILL 3 gun, 0 beam, 7 PD 1800/500 super fast.
Even faster than Crucible, but loses a bit of toughness.

OLYMPIAN 2 gun, 1 bay, 4 PD 1200/500 super fast.
All 4 PDs are facing forward which is interesting. I like that arrangement.
Still, its kinda weak even relative to Afterthought.

So, how can we suggest making many of the new ships better and more playable and unique?

My idea is to introduce INTRINSICS, which are triggered abilities that are UNIQUE to certain ships.
All the fast ships would have one.
Basically like a Teleporter which has a Cooldown period and a triggered power.
Try to remember that these ships are weaker than their slower counterparts...

Existing threads already have laid out some ideas, but these make it such that AI does not need to change nor do the abilities need to be universal.
My list:

BOOSTER - triple speed and manueverability for 5ish seconds.
SURGE - Instant warp straight ahead.. about 2x the distance of a Teleport but however ship is facing.
TELEPORT - as per the module, plus or minus whatever changes.
EMP - All enemy rockets/missiles are destroyed or change direction.
WARP CORE - Minus 5 seconds off of warp timer. Or just a passive ability to make a hit-and-run style ship.
TIME STOP - Stops all enemies for 2 seconds or so.
HARDENED SHIELD - Invulnerable for 3 seconds.
DIMINSIONAL SHIFT - Ship spawns a copy of itself for 4 seconds that can absorb hits and fire its own weapons. Then disappears.
(or) RAPID FIRE - Weapon cooldowns are halved for 4 seconds.
DEATH BLOSSOM - Lots of Rockets are spawned in all directions. (damage increases every act)
ENERGY PRISM - Fires lots of small lasers mostly targeting enemy fighters/rockets. (damage boost every act)
TARGETING COMPUTER - Click on enemy ship to double damage inflicted upon it for 5 seconds.

and so forth.

I personally really like the new fast ships. Suits my style very well. In my mind valiant and harbinger are a little too uber and therefore there is no honor I'm using them.

I like the idea of intrinsics. I hope to see the new ships on the mobile version soon!

The intrinsics are a cool idea, certainly fun and battles could use more active abilities. However, I think the ships just need to be balanced better. Using the regular mechanics. Harbinger for example, four bays is way strong. If you want the 4 bays, the ship should be slow and SQUISHY so you have to protect it. The ship balance needs to be built around trade offs so the player has to strategize! Right now all the player has to do is pick the strongest ships.

Fast ships are harder to balance. Right now speed isn't useful, that's unfortunate, but it's pretty much a fact. For speed to be useful, long range weapons need to be rebalanced (to incentivize getting in close to do high damage). There would also need to be a module to modify speed, so that the ships with higher speed can really be taken advantage of by the player if they choose that strategy.

I like the idea of specific systems for different classes, I'm a big fan of the little ones but on the big runs they get smashed consistently around map 6 for me.
Having passive built in systems like a weak emp or small range increase for the fleet, maybe even including a fixed weapon type for the smaller classes like a Vulcan cannon that targets missiles or rapid fire missile batteries.
Needing to activate specials would probably become tediously annoying.
Nothing drastic but it would be enough to increase the overall usefulness of the smaller ships.

BSE Resolution is heavy assault carrier, from its class you could think it is really HEAVY with much life, but it hasn t enough life for its class. And BSE Valhalla too, its heavy destroyer carrier and it has only 900 life, traps with nuclear missile could deal a lot of damage to it and BSE Resolution can be destroyed with only one nuclear missile.

The carriers are soft and slow as a balance to their squadrons being quite deadly, they also have a rail of pdws giving good defence over one side of the ship with fighters able to directly engage after launch on the other.
I've been one shotted by like that a few times and in endless mode the nukes can be unpredictably powerful. Your best defence is to charge your jump engines then attempt to salvage the weapon at a distance. That gives you plenty of time to jump out if it is a nuke.

I have only 2 words to say about new ships: Power Creep.

It makes little sense to have so many ships, when you only use 1-2 in the end-game, after you've unlocked everything. :S