Ship and Weapon changes

I have played quite a few hours on this game, and completed it on Hard both with Carriers and specifically going no Carrier Strats. I have tried lots of combinations and would like to make the following suggestions with regards to combat.

Current Problems

* Ship Maneuverability is completely irrelevant. The main guns can fire from so far off, that you rarely have to move from where you warp into. Only in the early game, when you have little firepower, do you have to worry about turning your ship to line up your weapons.

* Weapon ranges and power are not balanced. Short range weapons are completely outclassed, also because of the point above.

* The balance between Point Defence (PD) and main weapons is completely off. As I mentioned in a different post, Projectile cannons are the best PD, 4-5 of them with recharge rate boosted gives you 1200 range PD, nothing gets through.

* Shields are somewhat irrelevant. Either projectile weapons can be made so that they overwhelm the shields or as a new player you just get missiled/rocketed to death with your shields doing nothing.

* The ships you unlock are not really balanced at all, they simply get better. This is in stark contrast to FTL where the ships encourage different playstyles, but there are not really OP ships.

Changes to consider

Ships

* Maneuverability should be factored into the game, smaller ships should be faster. I would also suggest to add Evasion, not just the accuracy of the projectile hitting, but ships should have percentage based evasion where a hit can still miss. Smaller ships can then have advantages that the larger cruisers and battleships do not. Also this will allow you to mount Short Range weapons on them as they have a chance of getting in close.

* Main Turrets should also be directional or have limited arcs, meaning that maneuvering becomes meaningful.

* Ship chassis should maybe also have a load or energy value placed on them, with weapons carrying different values, so you cannot just install the most powerful weapons. It could be an energy cost, also as you improve a weapon then it's energy cost will rise, this will make you think more about your build. You can then have smaller ships with maybe high energy ratios, so that they can install a smaller amount of high powered weaponry, whereas some bigger ships might be brute force low powered weaponry.


Weapons

* PD needs to be strongly buffed, the ranges need to be increased. I would say that the minimum range for PD should be around 500.

* I would also make Strike Craft immune to large weapon fire, they cannot be targeted by main weapons and have 100% evasion against them. The only exception would be missiles. In combination PD ignores Evasion from ALL ships. Essentially Strike Craft can only be engaged by PD.

* Missiles I would change to be energy hulls and not armour hulls. This would mean that lasers should be the de-facto missile defence, with them being less effective against strike craft.

* No weapon should be Shield penetrating. This needs to be got rid of. This will serve to prevent frustration from new players, who will die from Missile overload and it also stops Shields being completely irrelevant to experienced players. Missile turrets should be either Ion based or Projectile based, however, they should not ignore shields, if a projectile based missile hits a shield, it should be absorbed.

* Weapon damage decay over range could also be worthwhile considering, if you fire at maximum range then the damage reduces. Obviously not applicable to missile weapons, but all energy and laser weapons should experience this, perhaps projectiles are also unaffected.

* The main turret balance is kind of okay on paper, except that range is king in game. Energy and projectile weapons need to swap their ranges. Missiles and Rockets having 2K range and above is okay. However, energy should fire at 1200, projectile should be around 800 with Flaks around 600. If you then accompany this with 500 PD range and better ship maneuverability, then you can have ships that are close range brawlers or long range snipers and being able to maintain your position and distance is key. (I will have to have a think through about the changes to weapons and how to balance them better. At the moment projectiles are simply too OP, Nukes come in close second when on a cruiser, Flaks are completely useless, Energy only requires 1 and Missiles/Rockets are also useless really).


There are a lot of changes here, but I think they are all worth considering.

If it is considered, then really the UI needs to be updated as well, the current controls are fine for just warping into the corner and not having to maneuver 3 ships, but if it can be changed to where actual control is required, then having a short cut icon for each ship will be essential. So click on Ship icon (static not the ship itself) and then click where you want it to go. A formation ON/OFF icon would also be useful, to save being asked each time if you want to break formation.

You make some good points. Weapons in general do need to be rebalanced.

I like your suggestion to make missiles use shields instead of hull. It would be cool to have to select what you want your point defense to be good at shooting down. I don't agree that the point defense need to be buffed though. Many variants can be quite good at shooting down missiles and they do a ton of damage at close range. If anything they need a way to be more effective against missiles without doing so much damage to larger ships at close range. Point defense currently also force you to think about positioning if you want to be good at shooting down incoming missiles. However, this ends up penalizing movement, which is probably another point in favor of buffing mobility.

I think the best way to change mobility would be to add speed and agility modules for blue slots that work as a percentage of the base hull stats. That way the smaller ships will always be faster than large ships. Like you said, it would be best if the larger ships were more powerful (more weapons/health) but not better in every way. If the modules provide a flat upgrade, you could make even the big ships fast, which would be bad. It would be really cool if you could choose between small fast ships, and barely mobile capitals, or even a mixture that you could direct independently. Encouraging and enabling multiple play styles is super important for replayability.

I think careful consideration needs to be given when considering manuevering changes - already, you can be forced into a stern chase with a faster enemy, having to cross the entire map until they are cornered, and have to follow them around, turning inside their turns to close distance.

Enabling a strategy of kiting would also enable the AI to kite the player more effectively. And while there are options to mitigate that, (missiles, fighters, etc,) imagine a new player coming to a zone with anti-shield guns as a main gun, and gatlings for hull damage, encountering an AI ship that can kite him and whittle him to nothing with, say, a projectile cannon. Being forced to run because an inferior ship can whittle you away from a distance isn't a lot of fun.

I have managed one win on easy with a guns only starting ship. It was remarkably tough, but I managed to get through it.

Oddly, one of the best strategies I have come across is just plain energy-cannon/projectile cannon mix. Upgrading their fire rates makes them remarkably powerful in a fleet, especially with a fighter screen to absorb and attack at longer range.

While flak and mega cannons are great, they require a much bigger upgrade investment and it is much tougher to win when one of your ships is lost with its expensive equipment aboard.

I propose to consider the following changes:
- armor, pumping front, rear, sides, 4 scales of modernization, strength
as a result, you can make modifications to armor or to weapons
- add reactor energy, affects the pumping energy weapons, flight speed, pumping boards, (it is possible to make a lever between the engine shields and weapons, what more energy to spend)
In arms:
Mines triggered at a distance
- The rocket, sticky, or slow movement or speed gun, looking where to get
- Unit lab increases the drop rate of weapons in the destruction of the enemy
- Electromagnetic cannon firing scrub (money) is very fast, the speed of the projectile, armor piercing, possibly some damaging the engine or weapons
Add space monsters with high life regeneration , interesting weapons, unique reactors
Anomalies, black holes which can attract and destroy, radioaktivnye place where shields don't work
Add a rating for the captain of the ship , upon reaching the level, you can choose to choose a bonus
It is possible to make one of the ships transformed , improving the attack (for melee, expanding) or protection (for example becomes narrow), variable forms
If we add the possibility of boarding ships special fighters

I agreed with a lot of sinzer's stuff until he said energy should be longer range than projectile. Assuming this game is sticking to Newtonian physics, the projectiles should continue moving forever, until they hit something. I'm not saying their range should be infinite, just that if they miss target, they should continue flying in the same direction, and at the same speed as when they were fired, until they exit the sector.

Energy weapons should keep moving, but begin to decrease in power once they reach their weapon's range. Also, I really like the idea of a PD laser that is usefully specifically against missiles. That would be an incredibly useful addition to the game.

Also, you guys had some very good ideas in classic and first strike. First off, the repair bay, as opposed to the laser thing in harbinger. It would be a cool addition, and it would give players more options for the PD slots. Also, the ability of fighters or even main guns to target specific parts of ships (engines, guns, hangars) would make for more intense combat.

I like the idea of captain ratings that effect ship performance, though I would like to see officers, permitting up to two or three modifiers per ship. This would allow for some interesting boosts that you normally see in RPG's from artifacts, runes, or the like.

I am leery of a reactor implementation that would cap weapon output - I feel like that would bring in a level of strategic limitation that hasn't been seen before. While it would increase the depth of the game, it might go too deep for some of the more casual gamers that have so far made the game's audience.

Alternately, a reactor might be simply a module to balance performance. For example, increasing manuevering at the cost of weapon fire rate, or increasing range at the cost of damage, etc. It would still be something that balances to a player's particular style, and various tech levels could still provide straight-up 'better' reactors as gameplay progresses, without a complicated implementation of weapon power generation and consumption on a per-weapon basis.

Thank you Commanders, for all the fine points here. Crew is something we have thought about, right now we don't have resources to implement that for the next update. You have a lot of good points regarding turrets and ships, we will review them and try to cook up something good!