Let's talk about ship design

[fallenkezef]

I play games like this for the ship design/combat element and most of the time I am disappointed.

Now Stars in Shadow gets so much right in this regard and I am really developing a love of this game. I like how each race has different elements to ship design, even within shared classes.

This could be developed a bit further I think, there are a few too many weapons that are just superior to the point where taking other options is rather silly.

An eample is rapid fire turbolasers. All you really need to do is research these and you are all set till you get carriers, load up PD trbos, get close and rip the enemy apart, job done.
There seems little point to ion cannons and the special weapins like leech missles are just a waste to be honest.

Then we come to carriers, they seem a bit too strong and make researching battleships/battlecruisers/dreadnoughts rather pointless. Just get carriers then get super-dreadnoughts.

Even the game itself realises that fighters/bombers are op. When playing the Humans, once you research the assault cruiser (a ship designed to capture other ships/planets) the auto-uograde feature always replaces the troop shuttles with fighters.

[Sapiento]

Yes, the overpowered carriers are a problem.

[unkn0wnx]

Also they won't do anything about the OP carriers. Kind of make the "carrier races" much easier to play.

[Arioch]

Originally posted by unkn0wnx:

Also they won't do anything about the OP carriers.

We will, just not right now.

[Implied Facepalm Deadmeat]

Carriers are op in real life, so not much problem. They should be prohibitively expensive tho

[Jean-Luc]

Overpowered and very powerful are not the same thing. If carriers were prohibitively expensive then they wouldn't be overpowered. And what does real life have to do with game balance anyway and just how many space faring carriers are there irl in the first place?

[DeltaV]

Originally posted by Jean-Luc:

how many space faring carriers are there irl in the first place?

There are 3, I counted them.

[Pherdnut]

They're not overpowered. Heavy guns are underpowered. Lots of small ships with PD that can cluster tightly together however, are easy to come by.

[Gemroth]

Quick and dirty ballance, you have to make the fighters :P

[Pherdnut]

I was talking about destroyers, not fighters and they're not that hard to make.

[Tanaka]

The other problem with carriers being OP is that the AI cannot handle them and really gets wiped in tactical combat. Especially against the Ashdar Colonials super carriers. I saw two of those just wipe the map of the other AI players.