Power Progression and Ship Obsolescence

[Last_Misadventure]

When you're at the tip of a power progression, it's pretty darn silly. When I first got my battleship and level 2 plasma cannons, I could annihialate whole fleets single handedly. It's kinda cool at first, but makes having a fleet, station, planet, faction, etc, kinda pointless which seems to be what the game is actually about.

When you're at the bottom, it means everything is a bullet sponge. I can park my carrier next to a 'Defense Platform' (which is about 1/16 my size) and target fire my fighters and turrets for minutes before it dies. I really think it would be faster to just tow it into a star.

What about just forgetting the massive power difference between weapon/shield/whatever upgrades and give them interesting secondary effects paired with minor damage/efficiency/speed/range increases.

Ship Classes. Am I doing this wrong? I stopped building everything but Battleships and Dreads (then Crusiers when I have to) becaues everything else gets vaporized in the first minute of a battle. Perhaps if each chasis got an innate evasion bonus against larger chasis? Or some special ability that made them worthwhile after you can build something bigger.

Anyway, I have enjoyed my time playing despite the above. It could be I'm just looking for a different game or fundamentally don't get this one.

[FrogMachine]

Chassis upgrades for ships gives them more stopping power, but also significantly higher fleet power. Use this to your advantage by sending fleets to attack bases. When they're doing it on their own the total fleet power makes a difference, so you can send out fleets while you do other stuff. Attaching war masters to them also increases the total power.

The researchable weaponry and items are not the best. Other factions sell different stuff. Read up on the factions in your reputation screen, and you'll notice a lot of them specialise in areas. I think it was AdvTech (can't remember the exact name) that sells crazy weaponry. I've got their plasma cannons on my ships, they cost up to like 8 million per cannon, but those things with enhancements melt things at the cost of a lot of energy requirements. Makes installations easy to kill (though I agree they're still a bit too spongy).

I think a lot of people stick to the concord for everything and that's definitely a mistake, the other factions have a lot of good stuff and it's worth taking the time to explore if you feel like you've hit a wall.

[joamsons]

Good advise. So far, in HQ, a researchable heavy fusion torpedo called "Requiem III" is hard hitting and I'm using it. Light weapons I get from other faction.

[Vytae~[Ikk]]

One thing i have noticed is that the researchable weapons while not the absolute best, are the eastiest to get in a hurry and last a good long while.

The game still has some balancing issues, but should be easy to fix now that the devs have access to more live data. Right now there is no reason not to get the biggest and best ships. But with the RTS component gunships can be made very useful in a strategic sense by making them quicker and cheaper to build (so you can afford to spam 20 of them per battle to tip the balance)

[joamsons]

I came across in this thread that an AI dreadnaught can lose in combat against 20 AI gunships. This is unbelievable but maybe there is truth in this. Any experience, anyone?

[depresso]

If you are surrounded by 20 gunships, even as a player without Halo III, you can die / get out of there limping. Especially if you are a Ragnarok and they just spam the bottom of you. (Playing on Extreme).

[Last_Misadventure]

Thanks for the advice. I will check out the other factions' weaponry. Has anyone gotten the Gunship perk? I like the idea of flying a faster ship, but I feel like homing heavy weapons and beams will negate any possible fun. The 50% evasion thing...what does that actually mean? :)

[harg]

I read it as, you will dodge 50% of the shots fired at you.

Another way of saying this is that it will take twice as many shots to do the same amount of damage.

Yet another way of saying this is that evasion directly increases your ship's effective health. In this view, the gunship perk increases the gunship health by 50%, which doesn't seem very valuable.

[Kinja]

Originally posted by Last_Misadventure:

Thanks for the advice. I will check out the other factions' weaponry. Has anyone gotten the Gunship perk? I like the idea of flying a faster ship, but I feel like homing heavy weapons and beams will negate any possible fun. The 50% evasion thing...what does that actually mean? :)

If you mean you'd like to keep flying a gunship at high level i think that's a very bad idea. If you're playing on anything other than easy i think you won't even scratch anything above a cruiser with a gunship, no matter how good your weapons are.

The problem, with the example you gave in the OP, is that Carriers right now are pretty terrible. With a Dreadnought you kill defense platforms in a couple seconds. Atm, Dreads are the top of the food chain. If at any point you feel like you're steamrolling, just bump up the difficulty. I know there's people around here who are good enough to solo fleets on extreme but for the average player(like me) it will be more than enough challenge.

[Nuclear]

Originally posted by Last_Misadventure:

Thanks for the advice. I will check out the other factions' weaponry. Has anyone gotten the Gunship perk? I like the idea of flying a faster ship, but I feel like homing heavy weapons and beams will negate any possible fun. The 50% evasion thing...what does that actually mean? :)

People is used to only think about raw power. So when they see a perk of 50% evasion they are used to imagine a mosquito killing an Elephant pack.
The gunship is awesome in exploration (openeing the map). Also awesome performing non-combat missions (like taxi, repair, hack, scan, etc).
A gunship have the flight speed os a big ship in sublight, therefore a gunship in sublight have 2x to 3x times the big ships speed. Get the perk and you can do any non-combat mission into enemy territorry, getting through entire enemy fleets.

[Geek]

All ships have the same top speed and sublight speed.

[Kel'Ithra]

The only difference is acceleration and turning. Since more mass a ship has the more power it needs, specially in space to move. Why the proxima jumps only too heavy for standard engines to push... in space.

[Kinja]

Originally posted by Geek - Gemini Warlord:

All ships have the same top speed and sublight speed.

Exactly. There's literally no reason to fly a smaller ship at high level. Anything it can do a top tier ship does better.

[iFrame]

Only way to make all ships relevant is to give them purpose, specialization.

Gunships get Evasion Modules.

Corvettes get Point Defense Mounts to fight off Fighters, Heavy Weapons and Torpedoes.

Destroyers get Torpedo Mounts, medium anti-capital weapons, Torpedoes can be destroyed with PD. They can't equip Heavy Weapons.

Cruisers get 2 special Support Mounts to equip offensive or defensive auras/buffs like +Shield/Hull regen, +Wep dmg, -speed & accuracy for enemies etc in a XXkm radius.

Battleships get Broadshide Mounts, heavy artillery type weapons with AoE and reasonble dmg but long Cool Down and Charge Time. For massacring Gunship & Corvettes. They can also get 1-2 Point Defense Mounts. They can't equip Heavy Weapons.

Dreadnoughts get Spinal Mounts, heavy anti-capital weapons. They can equip Heavy Weapons but have all 4 forward facing for maximum missile spam. I.e. you gotta be skilled to use a DN effectively since all your firepower is towards the front.

Carriers... get tons more Fighters. Also 2 Flak Turret Mounts(Heavy PD that can also target Gunships & Corvettes). Finally they get single Heavy Support Mount, provides strong fleet buff.

Honestly, i feel Heavy Weapons feature should just be removed and replaced with specialized mounts.

[Kel'Ithra]

Originally posted by Deathcoy:

Only way to make all ships relevant is to give them purpose, specialization.

Gunships get Evasion Modules.

Corvettes get Point Defense Mounts to fight off Fighters, Heavy Weapons and Torpedoes.

Destroyers get Torpedo Mounts, medium anti-capital weapons, Torpedoes can be destroyed with PD. They can't equip Heavy Weapons.

Cruisers get 2 special Support Mounts to equip offensive or defensive auras/buffs like +Shield/Hull regen, +Wep dmg, -speed & accuracy for enemies etc in a XXkm radius.

Battleships get Broadshide Mounts, heavy artillery type weapons with AoE and reasonble dmg but long CD. For massacring Gunship & Corvettes. They can also get 1-2 Point Defense Mounts. They can't equip Heavy Weapons.

Dreadnoughts get Spinal Mounts, heavy anti-capital weapons. They can equip Heavy Weapons but have all 4 forward facing for maximum missile spam. I.e. you gotta be skilled to use a DN effectively since all your firepower is towards the front.

Carriers... get tons more Fighters. Also 2 Flak Turret Mounts(Heavy PD that can also target Gunships & Corvettes). Finally they get single Heavy Support Mount, provides strong fleet buff.

Yeah I made about something similar. The thing with fleets in a game you can't treat ships as just level progression. Because then 99% of the ships get discarded and forgotten.

You need to keep everything relevant. Everything should have advantages and disadvantages that keeps every ship relavent. Otherwise you get unrealisitic fleets of dreads,carriers and cruisers and nothing else. Same with players they end up always ending with a dread or carrier and ignore the rest, unless their choosing to add difficulty to their game.

Since a fleet is about variety and having ships that complement, fill gaps, protect larger ships etc etc. This is the first game I played where dreadnoughts are a beast that kills fleets and just ignores everything smaller than it. Usually dreads are dead the minute its isolated because its designed to be a weapons platform that isn't designed to fend off a fleet on its own. Usually their escorted and used to kill large ships and intimidate. In this case proxima is a actual dreadnought.. while the dreads in game are more akin to Battlecruisers.

Yeah proxima can kill ships but without protection a fleet will eat it alive.

My other beef is turrets are too accurate. Even manouvering smaller ships and you manouvering(sp?) They still track perfectly. But anyways the titans in spg2 are more dreadish than the dreads.

[Kinja]

Originally posted by Deathcoy:

Only way to make all ships relevant is to give them purpose, specialization.

Gunships get Evasion Modules.

Corvettes get Point Defense Mounts to fight off Fighters, Heavy Weapons and Torpedoes.

Destroyers get Torpedo Mounts, medium anti-capital weapons, Torpedoes can be destroyed with PD. They can't equip Heavy Weapons.

Cruisers get 2 special Support Mounts to equip offensive or defensive auras/buffs like +Shield/Hull regen, +Wep dmg, -speed & accuracy for enemies etc in a XXkm radius.

Battleships get Broadshide Mounts, heavy artillery type weapons with AoE and reasonble dmg but long Cool Down and Charge Time. For massacring Gunship & Corvettes. They can also get 1-2 Point Defense Mounts. They can't equip Heavy Weapons.

Dreadnoughts get Spinal Mounts, heavy anti-capital weapons. They can equip Heavy Weapons but have all 4 forward facing for maximum missile spam. I.e. you gotta be skilled to use a DN effectively since all your firepower is towards the front.

Carriers... get tons more Fighters. Also 2 Flak Turret Mounts(Heavy PD that can also target Gunships & Corvettes). Finally they get single Heavy Support Mount, provides strong fleet buff.

Honestly, i feel Heavy Weapons feature should just be removed and replaced with specialized mounts.

This is a very good list of suggestions. The way it currently works there's no real difference between flying a Gunship and flying a Dreadnought, it's just beefier and has more guns. It's more or less all about positioning the ship to keep your chosen foe in the arc of as many turrets as possible and popping off your class skills. It would be nice if ships tiers actually had specializations like this.