Revamping the Outer Realm

[Aury]

With proper WMD, a nerf that hard to internal HP would be way overkill.

Re-purposing heavy gunships into torpedo, artillery and bomb vessels would be a low-effort-expense way to closing the loop by filling the 'bomber' roll.

[JohnBWatson]

With proper WMD, a nerf that hard to internal HP would be way overkill.

I imagine superheavy armor would recieve a significant buff.

In my vision, armor types would work like this:

Ultralight: A gimmick armor that is used exclusively by very early NPCs. Gives no speed penalty and is virtually useless in terms of defense.

Light: Can take a few hits, and is substantial enough to make a group of gunships fielding it non - trivial to destroy with similar level weaponry.

Medium: Fielded by medium gunships, and can survive one or two hits from a howitzer - style weapon of similar level. Has little or no penalty to movement, and can be fielded by all playerships. Treated like Pseudoheavy armor for early light capships.

Pseudoheavy: Powerful armor used primarily by light capital ships like the Deimos, Salvager Nomad, and Aquila, though heavy gunships can equip it with a moderate penalty to speed and agility. Ships like the Wolfen and Sapphire cannot mount Pseudoheavy armor.

Heavy: Armor fielded by capital ships, like the Ranx dreadnought or Xenophobe worldship. Only very heavy gunships and freighterss can even mount the armor, and even they suffer a signifigant movement penalty.

Superheavy: No playership can equip this armor, it is exclusive to the most well defended and powerful capital ships. The CSC's P1300, the ICS's Heavy Iocrym Armor, and the Phobos's Massive Tharsis Plate fall into this category.

Re-purposing heavy gunships into torpedo, artillery and bomb vessels would be a low-effort-expense way to closing the loop by filling the 'bomber' roll.

Yep. Also allows for fighter - bombers, interceptors, and other specialized craft quite elegantly, and solves the player - related issues. The player will someday be able to switch into a Brit or an Aurochs, but something like the Yamato will always be off limits in vanilla.

[Aury]

I did some tests with a brand new bomber for TSB (built specifically as a result of this discussion), along with Brits and CSCs.

The 'RPS' system with Capships-Bombers-Fighters loop does indeed translate very nicely into Transcendence once actual bombers are added.

Fighter escorts for both bombers and capships suddenly become extremely meaningful. While the fighter-role gunships are still as useless as ever against capships directly - as intended - they do have a place in offenses against stations or capships as they greatly increase the survivability of bombers assaulting a capship when escorting the bombers, as they draw fire away from the bombers and can kill the capships' own escorts which would otherwise slaughter the bombers.

[JohnBWatson]

I did some tests with a brand new bomber for TSB (built specifically as a result of this discussion), along with Brits and CSCs.

The 'RPS' system with Capships-Bombers-Fighters loop does indeed translate very nicely into Transcendence once actual bombers are added.

Fighter escorts for both bombers and capships suddenly become extremely meaningful. While the fighter-role gunships are still as useless as ever against capships directly - as intended - they do have a place in offenses against stations or capships as they greatly increase the survivability of bombers assaulting a capship when escorting the bombers, as they draw fire away from the bombers and can kill the capships' own escorts which would otherwise slaughter the bombers.

You tested your bomber against a CSC, which is more of a station than a capship, in practical terms. The Yamato, likewise, appears to be designed for attacking stations, lacking the ability to face off against a "true" capital ship like the Ranx DN, Phobos, or Explorer asymmetrically. Anything with genuinely decent ranged weaponry could kill enough of them to make the attack not worthwhile.

There's also the fact that its tracking missiles are utterly lethal to gunships, and their WMD and armor makes light weaponry rather ineffective against them. All in all, if the Yamato is anything to go by, it's more of a capship in and of itself than a capship counter.

[Aury]

I didn't mention it, but I also tested them against Phobii and several capships from CC/EP/TSB, all with more or less similar results. As the TSB capships tended to have better point defenses, usually upping the escorts on the bombers was needed, but the overall findings were not changed.

I mentioned CSCs since they happened to deploy the brits to defend themselves, thus always had some minimum escort, and they were also the first thing I tested on.

[JohnBWatson]

Interesting. What were they loaded out with?

[Aury]

Answered this on IRC - heres the response for anyone else who's interested

(answering what the torps were like)

Code: Select all

[08:48:22]	AvanFluffRaptor	the new ones
[08:50:03]	AvanFluffRaptor	are pretty slow, unguided, there's a tracking version but it has very slow tracking and does reduced damage of the heavy version. Across the board they do substantially more damage than normal missiles. They also cost way more and weight way more.
[08:51:04]	JohnBWatson	Cool, seems balanced. Any screenshots, or are those not easy to capture well amidst the action?
[08:51:48]	AvanFluffRaptor	well, screenshotting in T is kind of a pain, so i didnt bother. ATM, the explosions just use standard station/capship explosions
[08:51:55]	AvanFluffRaptor	blast 4, thermo 1, thermo 2, plasma 2
[08:52:36]	AvanFluffRaptor	plasma 2 was originally 2x plasma 2, which was stupendously OP, so i reduced it to 1x plasma 2

[JohnBWatson]

To go a bit off - topic, Alt + prntscrn works well in Transcendence. It's gotten me some beautiful pictures.

[Song]

To go a bit off - topic, Alt + prntscrn works well in Transcendence. It's gotten me some beautiful pictures.

To continue off-topic, an important thing to remember is that you can advance frame-by-frame while the game is paused by pressing the spacebar. As long as you wait a bit after pausing so the "game paused" thing is gone, then you can get nice shots that way.

[Atarlost]

To go a bit off - topic, Alt + prntscrn works well in Transcendence. It's gotten me some beautiful pictures.

To continue off-topic, an important thing to remember is that you can advance frame-by-frame while the game is paused by pressing the spacebar. As long as you wait a bit after pausing so the "game paused" thing is gone, then you can get nice shots that way.

You can also use this trick to make animated gifs.

[KaoS]

space bar stepping through a paused game: i had no idea... that's a nice tip

[JohnBWatson]

Back on topic, I've added two points on balance. Cometfalls should be less durable(at present, it takes an Iocrym weapon to kill them reliably) and better escorted, and when Sandstorm squadrons spawn in unknown hostile missions, they should serve as distractions from an assault rather than the entire mission, to make the endgame level mission less trivial.

Also, I noticed that the Terra bug is back again. It's on Ministry now, so if anyone's got additional input, it would likely be helpful.

[JohnBWatson]

The micronukes are, at present, somewhat overpowered. Their ability to blanket an area with damage and hit multiple times makes them quite powerful against the player. At the same time, they lack the range and raw damage to effectively bombard stations and capitals.

I believe this could be remedied by reducing the maximum blast radius, adding an arming time, reducing the sensitivity to target proximity, and adding a moderately high arming time, while increasing damage, lowering firerate, and upping range.

In addition, the Chasm, intended to be a gunship killer, is less dangerous than the Tundra or Cometfall at present, and doesn't really do much to justify its expensive weapon. A speed buff and a 30 degree fireark might resolve this.

Any input on this idea?

[PM]

Micronukes are my to-go weapon for Huaramarca. I try to get micronuke cannon, Ares launcher, and several dozen micronukes to counter the entire Sung fleet (a.k.a. gigantic loot pile). Very effective against big swarms or large ships. Not so much against a lone small target like the playership in a standard game. (Micronukes are dangerous to player piloting a big capital in PSD, though.) I often shrug off micronukes if I am appropriately equipped.

Ares positron cannon, on the other hand, just kills any shield with very few hits, and there is no defense against it aside from killing everything armed with it immediately. It went from underpowerered joke to (maybe) overpowered. Sentries and Chasms are priority target #1.

[JohnBWatson]

Micronukes are my to-go weapon for Huaramarca. I try to get micronuke cannon, Ares launcher, and several dozen micronukes to counter the entire Sung fleet (a.k.a. gigantic loot pile). Very effective against big swarms or large ships. Not so much against a lone small target like the playership in a standard game. (Micronukes are dangerous to player piloting a big capital in PSD, though.) I often shrug off micronukes if I am appropriately equipped.

Ares positron cannon, on the other hand, just kills any shield with very few hits, and there is no defense against it aside from killing everything armed with it immediately. It went from underpowerered joke to (maybe) overpowered. Sentries and Chasms are priority target #1.

Really? For me both go down rather easily. Chasms retreat almost instantly, and fire slow enough that dodging is trivial in any gunship. Their speed and size are such that once they start falling back, they're effectively dead. (note: If possible, ships using advanced AI should retreat only if faster than target unless target is engaged with other ships.)

Sentries, given their limited number of facings, are fairly easy to kill with anything omnidirectional. If George is planning on modifying them, making them into larger, omnidirectional weapons platforms with better armor would be fairly balanced.

The usefulness of the micronukes in Huaramarca is something I didn't take into account. I'm not entirely sold on my own proposal for rebalancing them, do you have any ideas?