Hmmm, a few issues.

The first, I think the 'ship visible' if triggered conditions quite harsh. Basically, why deploy a beholder which shows everything when I can fire a sticky field and then whack anything that flies into it

Second, if it was possible, I'd blanket anywhere I intended to fly in those fields so that I couldn't be slowed down.

Third, why are dizzies not affected?

Fourth, what other utility apart from a speed killer. It only affects conventional engine powered ships so ships beyond a certain size wouldn't care.

Well, my ships would care a lot. I have vessels of move 5 to 8 which really use thier movement to navigate.

But I welcome your reservations and will read then again later in the day! (Got to get the train in a minute)

for the most part I find spindizzies the one thing you can use to have bigger ships have an edge over fighters, since fighters can't really use them and have no real need of them either (need 2-3 of them powered up just to go normal speed)...

since spindizzies are supposed to work differently then regular engines... how about limiting 'where' a ship can move, by making it so ships can only travel in straight lines unless using a spindizzy? very weird and cumbersome probably compared to what we have now... but would drasticaly alter (and make interesting) a lot of different things, wouldn't it?

eh, probably not... instead, how about having ships have a 'base armour and firepower' value that is added to drones based on size? ships attacking ships lower then it will get an attack bonus, ships attacking ships higher then it will get attack penalty, and same class ships no change. the bigger the difference, the more power you need to counter the penalty... like perhaps 1 drone power per 2 lvl's (that way ships around the same size aren't affected either)

I think that a class based penalty is probably what will happen.

But, it will be v simple.

Either that or an increase in armour and antibody effect.

It's a tricky little problem to tackle a single situation without skewing the entire game.

a simple drone power penalty/bonus isn't simple? well, I suppose it would tie in the actual ship firing and being hit, where it looks right now it's just between the drone and the ship being hit...

perhaps when created the drone is given the ships class size somewhere in it's stats, so when it hits the damage to the ship can go off of that... then again, I dunno about coding so I'll stop there

Simple is as simple does.

By Class, each 'cell' of a ship takes 'x' nano to destroy. Armour absorbs twice that amount.

1 - Fighter
1 - Frigate
2 - Destroyer
3 - Cruiser
4 - BattleShip
4 - Dreadnaught
5 - Mauler

Now multiply the 'power' of a drone fired by each of those ship classes by the same constant.

Fighters and Frigates are reduced to 'pecking' a Mauler to death.

Ulp. Thats a bit nasty.

One of my first proposals was to limit max attack drone power by ship class.

But it was swiftly pointed out that the problem is actually hitting the fighters more than anything else...

Granted. At the very least though a mauler could power down to a 1 attack drone, which is a little bit more speed. That said though, I'm not doing so well at the moment in combats. In fact, I feel a little like a hunted rabbit in a lot of systems right now. Players seem to of shifted their strategies to cope a little.

Anyways, lets try something else. Might I suggest increasing the time a ship hit by EMP is affected to 2 turns and maybe doubling the number of cells (on a ship) that they affect. Its tactically very difficult to hit a ship with multiple emp (as the drones tend to destroy each other), but due to ships being smaller this would give another means of disabling (and then perhaps killing them).

Or, to put it another way. How many of you use emp to destroy mines/drones... All of you I'd guess. Now how many of you use them against an enemy ship? Yep, not that useful then are they?

Comments;
1) The sticky field sounds like it overlaps strongly with the purpose and function of the gravstar.

2) For all the hate directed at it, and the fact it helps maps as much as anyone else, making the speed 3 does make gnats easier to hit, and anything that does this fulfills criteria (4) (prevent/reduce additional vollies).

3) Mappies direction of thought and suggestions on making bigger ships more survivable seems consistant with the idea of small v big. (not the multi-nano-per-component suggestion, the earlier ones dealing with Swarm. shields seem like what SS is trying to accomplish...)

4) Is maps still working with the old large DL ships or the reduced DL ships? how much does that change effectiveness?


Idea;
1) Reverse the explosion % modifier part of the ship class chart, make any hit more devastating for small ships and less likely to be scary for big ones. Instead of making small ships more stable, make big ships more stable. Alternately, make all ships v. unstable and make each hab reduce the explosion % modifier.

I really like the comment about stability. And relating it to habs is very very nice.

I don't really want to go with swarm/ss changes as I fear it could hurt cruiser and above battles which actually play out very nicely at the moment.

Discarding sticky fields as I agree with everyones comments.

So:

1) Get rid of stability bonus on small ships.
2) Each hab on the ship will reduce the chance of explosion alot (eg 5%)
3) Power 1 drones can either:
3a) Move at rate of 3 (dislike)
3b) Never run out of burn. (quite like)

The nice thing about 3b is that large ships can create high move, power 1, massive armour drones to whittle away at fighters whereever they are. Big ships can do the same, but now, because of 1) and 2) these tiny drones will probably hurt fighters more.

GameAdmin wrote:

1) Get rid of stability bonus on small ships. 2) Each hab on the ship will reduce the chance of explosion alot (eg 5%) 3) Power 1 drones can either: 3a) Move at rate of 3 (dislike) 3b) Never run out of burn. (quite like)

Not too sure 3b wouldn't turn the tables too much the other way. At the moment, my best strategy has been to fire power 1 drones with speed 10-12, and as much burn as I can get (well, that and mines...). This suceeds in driving the fighters away, even if I still don't hit them. With unlimited burn, a fighter might be forced to do nothing but run from drones the whole battle. Perhaps instead of power 1 drones having unlimited burn, simply doubling the burn on a power 1 drone. That would allow a fighter to eventually return to battle, if it can avoid the drones long enough. A combination of change 1) and 2) might be nice though.

Anyway, my concern is simply balance between the ship classes. I don't want fighters crippled beyond usefulness, but I don't want to lose to them 75%+ of the time either. As Mappy pointed out, people are adapting, and maybe eventually someone will figure a good way to hit them outside dumb luck, lol.

Valdez makes a very good point about 3b- Fighters, and other small ships, cannot simply "dodge" a drone to terminate it, the production of mimics being a significant strain on their limited resources. Thus far their "dodge" has been steadily moving and using grav-wells to improve their lead until the drone expires. Thus, making the burn unlimited would make drones unavoidable except by jump-out.


Can I ask why the hate for move 3 attack drones?

I think Mr Mappie has said previously that he already has trouble running. I was thinking it would negate the only really massive advantage his fleet has.

Hopefully he will comment.

Very well. I was playing about with my high speed fleet back when there was unlimited burn so I already know that I can exist in that sort of environment, its just slightly harder.

My Frigate design fields a 45% mimic rate while my ships move at 12+. In general I choose not to use mimics because drones burn out, but its almost a straight substitution and I did design with that in mind.

The hate on move 3 attack drone has never really been verbalized but probably relates to 'tactical' considerations. In any case, since you can estimate the time to hit a target quite easily by taking the difference between the maximum speeds of drones and ships, and then counting the hexes between the firer and the target, then you should be able to set it to whatever is considered 'fair'.

Or you can just do what you're doing in the game map, and all team up to kill the little blighters.

this doesn't sound like "trouble running."

Mapmaker wrote:

Very well. I was playing about with my high speed fleet back when there was unlimited burn so I already know that I can exist in that sort of environment, its just slightly harder.

Can I ask for an expansion on this?

Mapmaker wrote:

My Frigate design fields a 45% mimic rate while my ships move at 12+. In general I choose not to use mimics because drones burn out, but its almost a straight substitution and I did design with that in mind.

Just to check; the standard "small ship" under discussion are Frigates (size 2), not Fighters (size 1)?
Would {or how would} an increase in drone movement shift your mimic-outrun decision?

Mapmaker wrote:

The hate on move 3 attack drone has never really been verbalized but probably relates to 'tactical' considerations. In any case, since you can estimate the time to hit a target quite easily by taking the difference between the maximum speeds of drones and ships, and then counting the hexes between the firer and the target, then you should be able to set it to whatever is considered 'fair'.

This is approximately my thought process, though I reached a different end result- By increasing move you increase the potential distance at which a shot is considered worth making. In this case time to hit doesn't change- but extra space does increase options, especially for ships carrying spindizzies (ie- bigger ships where normal max speed is negligable compared to such tactical options). In current ranges drones would hit faster; however, this seems like a wash when targeting large ships and the sort of "nerf" for small, fast ships that's being sought.

This last is mostly conjecture on my part, though it is based largely on my own play experience and making or being subject to the distance/target speed/drone speed calculation you just outlined. That experience tells me;
Large, slow ships will be hit, how fast/soon really doesn't matter.
Small, fast ships will only be hit under special circumstances or by really fast drones.
Medium ships will find ways to cope that make them either fall into the fast or enduring categories or find some other special niche.