New issues in 1/9/18 update

Even though there were some good changes in this recent update there are a few issues as well.

1.) With slow caps gone, we were told that surrounded sectors will eventually flip on their own. So far after 7 hours surrounded, these sectors have still not flipped. That makes it slower than the lock timer. This seems like a problem to me. That is if it is even working for them to flip which we have not seen happen at all yet

2.) In one battle tonight we had two instances of players being announced as arriving in chat but never showing up. The AI sent a ship to the wall to warp out as if making room for the player, even though no player actually appeared. In one case, a player was announced as arriving in two different sectors at the same time. He did show up in one but obviously not the other.

3.) AI's are warping out when sector is not full, even when they have no friendly players present. One theory on why they do this is that it seemed that when smaller player ships came in so that our average was lower and smaller AI started to spawn, the bigger ones that were already present started to go to the wall and warp.

 

24+ hours have past and the isolated sectors are still there. How long its supposed to take to change sides?

 

Actually it has only been 15 hours since the update so not 24 have passed, but yes the sectors still have not flipped. This means that surrounding sectors is now bad for your side since they become untouchable territory belonging to the enemy.

Item 4.)Patch notes on steam say that T3 other than starters no longer have permadeath and the timeout is 1 hour. The timeout is actually 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Item 5.) This one is not new to the update but I have not seen it posted elsewhere yet. The targeting skill (the one with a chance to knock out an enemy weapon) clearly says that it is useable once per allocation. In actual practice it is only useable once per battle just like the much more powerful activated skills.

 

A further update on the removal of slow cap: Let us say for example that invaders get a system to 28 out of 50 points needed to capture. The defenders rally and drive them off. In this example, the system now shows 22 out of 50 for capture (since the attackers lost a few points on warp out) and never resets. The defenders can do nothing at all to regain control. It is only a matter of time before the invaders return to finish the system.

EDIT: After the defenders all leave the system, control does eventually start ticking back down. It is a great deal slower than before but control does at least seem to reset eventually as long as it was only partially conquered.

 

One unintended consequences for the removal of slow caps - from my point of view.
Just purchased a Lvl 8 Gen - normally you would find a safe slow cap map and get that one point you need for dark matter.
Now I was required to either.
1. Harass a defense map with sol lvl 3 or 4 to obtain a .2 point - in doing so this scares off the lvl3 - which are possible newbies, if they are notI would expect a call on the sol chat that I am at this location so I could expect boosted up 7 and 8 to arrive - not a good position for me to be in.
2. If I join an offensive map - of cause I would need to be able to get in the first place, I would need to be there until the map is won, of course the longer I am in a map the more likely I will be targeted - and I expect that to happen.
3. yes I did lose my 8 in only having it for an hour, my fault, but I never really had the opportunity to operational test the ship and having the added concern of not having dark matter.
- A solution for the open maps behind the lines - slow cap can be activated - but the map only can hold one ship - so no multiple free points only one per map.

While I enjoy my Vic III - its actually hard now to have a lvl to lvl fight or even if sol is +1 - due to my officer selection and sol players picking better upgrades (which I have no problem with), usually I can get one attack run in, but even that is diluted with sol's evasion, the sol player goes turtle and still has offense power against me. my next run (which I got feedback from) with rally II on, I was still 2 shield points short after my run. From what have noticed with these actions - I usually sustain hull damage of around 40-50 (shields cuts down on avail movement to get in and someway out) while sol gets around 10-15 (because of evasion). So even with my higher hull they would destroy my hull way quicker then I can effect them.

As some sol players are aware - I have said to them "what is the point of continuing".
I mostly dont like hunting lower tier ships (unless they seem to have a fixation with me) but the options are getting fewer.

Just my view.
Always - happy hunting.

 

Gonna have to agree with mavrick on this one. With all the shields sol ships have, stacking additive evasion on top of it makes them literal tanks that sometimes you cant even penetrate the shields due to the amount of misses. Imagine in star wars an x-wing firing at an imperial star destroyer and missing 30 percent of the time, it just doesnt make any sense at all. That would be the equivelant of a c3 missing shots firing at a c8. I think implementing an accuracy system of lower class ships getting an accuracy boost shooting against larger class ships or to make evasion multiplicative instead of additive would be the solution.

Edit: And also sol players have gotten smarter and now every c6+ ship has been getting evasion and there is nothing any genari ship can get to counter it. With all genari ships having low base accuracy, getting the accuracy boost provides minimal benefit since it is multiplicative. Maybe change accuracy to be additive as well, or nullify evasion at point blank range (being right next to the enemy ship). At this point, Im being forced to look for maps with C5 ships or below to just get exp since if i fight a c6+ im giving away way more exp than I would get by fighting that ship. Also I dont understand why we wouldnt get exp for hitting a ships shields. A nagara can just sit in a corner of a map, power up shields for 3 sides and max scanners, and just sit and wait until an enemy ship comes into view and burst them down from 10 hexes away with 90% accuracy. Which is what every nagara does in this game and there is literally no counter for that.

 

Please don t say such things as Sol having good ships or any advantage. Our dear Sol elite players have already proven many times that is not the case becasue they can t power up shields and weapons to max withot losing init vs Genari. Thats why they requesting many times to nerf Genari damages totally ignoring the fact that using 3 power for 1 damage on on plasma beam is inneficient when you can use those 3 powers to get 9 or 12 shields.

But I already know what Sol will say : blablabla shields useless in 4v4 (wrong and also 4v4 almost never happen in the current state of the game) blablabla Sol better endgame ships (which was what Genari was saying when they were crying)

 

Agreed not having a slow cap does make it hard to get that first officer level to get dark matter drive. It took me a long time to finally get dma on my lenin IV yesterday. Genari like to drop Victory III's with officers on anything attacking that is not tier seven or above. One time I had 5 hp when the ship finally jumped. It was definitely difficult, but with a little help from Locke and his tier seven...

Mavrick your tier eight was destroyed before the patch... I know my mercury III took the last shot. You flew into six sol ships attacking a station and shot my ship in the middle of the formation, then went to the side and slow warped in front of a fleet of sol pilots. My mercury III was destroyed the next day saving a sol tier eight from two high officer Victory III's. That tier eight warped out with only five hp left...

The issue that I see as someone reaching the higher tier ships later, is that officers are extremely powerful. So a tier eight with officers is a monster compared to a tier eight without officers which can barely escape.

 

Sorry mate have to disagree - if it was before the patch I would have got the DMA point needed (and would have escaped) .
As I said it was my fault - I totally except that my tactical judgement on that map was incorrect - and I got what I deserved.

As to being hounded by Vic III - As above I stated the reason why Gen does not chase many 7's so 6's and 5's are going to be hunted sorry.
And with the man power shortage in Gen (I was the only active Gen player for at least 15min and then a newbie showed and still another 30min until a regular gen player showed - Suno can confirm), I was that bored I watched the epic station battle in a Lvl2.

 

Thanks Ves - was just letting you know my experience with the game.
I feel if we at least bring these up (with as minimal personal bias as we can) we can get some "balance" - and I never expect to have exactly 100% balance, other wise we may as well have all the same shipyard.
Otherwise - I am still here so I am enjoying happy hunting.

 

Well to be fair if it wasn't skipping my turn you would have died even with DME.

Just a broad response to evasion: Yes its too powerful <-- The end.
I welcome the Exeter change its a good ship compounding evasion only makes it a bit too strong with 30%(Which is what I have right now).

I hope we still can maintain that balance between Hull > SOL, Because if you start stripping any of our advantages including accuracy then Hull wins out every-time.

Vic 3 Has 3/4 of my Exeter Hull lol <-- Can move faster and has huge shields when upgraded

 

I do appreciate and agree with what Suno has to say here (i don't know how to quote yet in forums) :

"I welcome the Exeter change its a good ship compounding evasion only makes it a bit too strong with 30%(Which is what I have right now).

I hope we still can maintain that balance between Hull > SOL, Because if you start stripping any of our advantages including accuracy then Hull wins out every-time."

Could we be thinking about evasion being too strong as not wrong, but something that could be addressed in accuracy?

Say, accuracy bonus applies AFTER evasion bonus? This would be a huge shakeup, I know. Not saying it's a proper change, just something to think about.

 

doing this would make evasion nearly useless. Some ships get to 100% base accuracy at a range of 7 or 8 hexes without even putting much into the officers to get it. Evasion would be entirely meaningless against them other than forcing them to close the range by a couple of hexes if your idea were adopted.

I think there could be some room for a middle ground. I know that raw accuracy can exceed 100% but gets capped. Maybe we should retain something like 1/5 of the accuracy that goes over a hundred before then subtracting evasion.

 

Yesterday Interdictor III with probably high pool of officer points, commanded by good player deal to my Leningrad II near to 51 dmg in one turn, when this ship have 70 hull. Can't have shields everywhere and he managed to guess from which side i don't have raised shields. Then cripple my ship with marines so in this one turn my ship was wrecked without any chance to survive in next turns. Any new players who just buy his dreams TV will be disgusted that he die so quickly. I do not have a problem with this, because I should remember that there is no equal chance in this tier, and Fresh is a very good opponent. So, the ship is in repair, but I wanted to fight with it longer than only one battle.

After this i decide that Sol lower tier must be only faster (and then must be) or with good evasion, because fine shields make you no movement or you need to decide which arcs will be without any power. If shields drop ship will be fragile versus trained marines. Any new Sol lower tier can't counter that, like new genari will be have hard fight versus full shielded and full evasion ship. Officers give a lot to every ship, and even more to larger one on skills that give %.

I thinks, that there is no tactics if you can die so quickly even with 1 vs 1 on the same ship class. If in this battle would be more players then ship can even die in one turn, so the only reasonable tactics is to fly to the one enemy, fire all weapon to him, and then you even don't need to hide, because one side lose one ship and probably in next turn also. Like 4 Liverpools vs 4 First Honor.

 

If you sum up last feedback on balance :
- Genari T4/T5/T6 with officers are much more stronger than Sol T4/T5/T6 (with or without officer)
- Sol T7/T8 with officers are much stronger than Genari T7/T8 (with or without officer)

In game it means : Sol players are in pain at beginning then Genari players are in pain. Also it leads to Sol going t3 --> t7 and Genari to stop at T6 (to be clear t6 = Victory 3)

But the interesting part is why cause such situation ?

For me, it comes from different factors :
- The power pool and the power scaling --> On low class ships with lower power generation, using 1 power for shield as a big impact on move and init, also you have less raw power to spend on your systems while on higher class ships using the same 1 power has little impact on move/init and you also a lot of "spare" points to use has Sol players said : early ships can t use ships without losing a lot on other sides while bigger ships don t have to make those choices
- The multiplicative effects of upgrades --> for example, the classic view of effective HP vs raw HP. Genari have a base value higher but have low shields and can t really upgrade them. SOl have lower HP but can scale shields. Normal situation, its the strength/weakens of factions.
But dodge come to mess all of that because 200 hp Genari ship with 25% dodge means 267 equivalent HP (if 25% of shots miss then you need to do 267 damages to effectively kills 200 HP). You can add 15 eHP from a 10 Genari shields
A Sol ship with 150 HP ( On all tiers, Genari have roughly 33% more HP) is 200 equivalent HP + 40 equivalent HP (for a 30 power shield which is not that hard to reach for Sol t7/t8) the Shield is renewable every round so in 4 turns : Sol have more eHP than Genari
- The balance turned to Genari being "early" game and Sol being "late" game --> Sorry but some Sol players had t7 in 10 days of play so if Genari have to break 2 lines (with t4/t5/t6) ships in 15 days otherwise they lose its plain bad. Also on a living game, it shouldn t be balanced around ships raw power but on how they are meant to play with both sides having equal chances to win if they play their ship well.

To summarize my points on a more concrete view :
- Genari early tiers should be toned down and higher tiers buffed up to reach a situation when we are not in Interdictor rape Lenin but in if Genari is able to do hit and run or to go in melee vs Sol and outplay shielding he wins
- The effect of some cumulative upgrades should be review (aka shields + dodge or damage upgrade + init upgrade + rally) (Vesuvius already explainde something is going on)
- The interaction between power/move/init should be looked at to less penalize low tier in powering systems and to have more meaning on high tiers