Rebellion balance and analysis from SP point of view (long post)

from Sins Forums

Hi all,

I know there is a thread or 2 about game balance but there were a bit narrowed down and different from the perspective I would like to add here, so I make this seperate thread to say my opinion about the balance issues introduced with Rebellion regarding the single player aspect of the game.

First of all, let me state the simple fact. Sins of Solar Empire is an RTS. That means, a strategy game (and a 4X at that). In a strategy game, the player takes proud of his "base construction" (build a base in general, which in our case is multiple bases in multiple planets, but anyway..), build a variaty of units to make a "balanced army" (and enjoy building all those units the developers put in the game) and attack the enemy.  This is how a strategy player is having fun spending his afternoon etc...

So, lets see:

- Based construction? -- check -- All those buildings you can construct, in multiple planets, desicions about which planets to reinforce and which not, where to build your trade routes, your economy, your defense, your fleet production, etc, it's all there and then some. With all races having different flavors and different strategies and buildings to chose from. It's all there, strategy player is happy.

- Building a balanced army? -- First of all, why do I say balanced? Is it prerequisite? No, it's not prerequisite, you can have your hearts desire and build 100 heavy cruisers and rush the enemy, no problem, but in general, I mean that a strategy player wants to have the option/choise to take advantage of -every- -single- -unit- the developers put in the game and be able to have a viable strategy with them, with all of them being viable. So while you can rush the oponent with one type of unit here and there or everywhere (lol), in the end, you do enjoy building a somehow balanced army (fleet in our case) when you want to attack or defend a front, cuz you need as I said all the units the devs put in the game. You need your frontline heavy cruisers, you need your support, your carriers, your anti-strikecraft etc. Nobody is happy being forced to play with only one type of unit. Game becomes boring and goes down to "why bother playing?". Imagine a chess game with just queens... It all goes down to who has the most queens, so why bother playing? Count the queens each one has, say your gg and move on to another game.

So how does SoSE fair in this aspect? - I would say, from the SP point of view this was achieved up to a decent/good point.......up until diplomacy. With rebelion and the incredible aoe power of some titans all sub-capital units (frigates) became obsolete, but the carriers.  There are about 4 titans that run around with 2x lvl 6 Marza incorporated, with a short of missile barrage that is not even channeled and can not be interrupted, with a few seconds cooldown...lol - There goes the fun of the strategy player. - Don't build LF or LRM or Anti-SC or anything with low hp, they will go down fast, your HC will be demolished from scattered shot, any part of your fleet can be vaporized by the Maw, or slowly demolish by chastic burst or nanoleech and dissever etc. - There is no point in building anything but carriers that try to run around, kite and just have their bombers try to take down those megaliths. - Where is the fun in that? Where?

Anyway, let me tone down the emphasis of the previous paragraph and state that in my opinion, the aoe dmg power of the titans must be toned down a little because they can not be interrupted or disabled (apart from one subfaction's cap (which you can focus fire or disable anyway)), because it makes obsolete the majority of all the other units in the entire game. Especially the insta-gibbing ones. And a special mention to the drain anti-matter ability of the VRT (I expect his life draining making it unkillable will be fixed but how about his anti-matter drain?). Your whole fleet goes out of antimatter very fast and you end up having all those support ships that can't repair anything, all those offenssive utility ships that can't do anything, all those caps abilities that can't be triggered and basically you have a blob of ... nothing, that slowly dies in a fleet Vs fleet encounter. This is the most game breaking issue for me. Because this is the whole point. Eventually it all goes down to your fleet and titan has to defend or attack the oponent who of course has his own fleet and titan waiting. So it's all about fleet Vs fleet combat (which is the most interesting and excitting part of the game). A combat that you will lose no matter what if your entire fleet has no antimatter. No point of building support ships etc, you might as well just build HCs and Carriers and hope for the best. Where is the fun in that? - There is no fun even when you are the VR player cuz after a couple of wins, you get bored. Drain antimatter, and aoe them to death and/or kill them them with your fleet, rinse repeat - yawn - play something else more interesting.

And maybe Adv's with their repulse can have some chance of avoiding this, but all other factions have this titan up in their faces draining them out while the enemy fleet, with full antimatter, stays alive and kicking. Even the explosive shot of TRT doesn't knockback the titan, so it can't be used defenssively. It's only used offenssively to KB the rest of the forces surrounding the target you want to focus, anyways...

Bottom line, all titans need some tweaking, some buffing here and there or toning down here and there, but the VRT's anti-matter drain (and ofc the life drain) is absolutely game breaking. Furthermore, the instagibbing aoe abilities of some titans have to be toned down too. No point of having a "support" titan, buffing your defense or reducing their offense if you now have... half the fleet and ofc you are forced to retreat anyways...

And a special mention to ALT ulti ability which is the most useless ability in the game. Fleet Vs fleet combat you invade an enemy planet. What's the point of insta conquering it? You can't build anything anyways (because your constructor will die in seconds) and so what? Your gimped ulti may cause you to lose the fleet fight anyway and then you retreat and then he re-colonizes it and he just lost some credits to re-upgrade the planet, who cares? You lost the fleet fight cuz your titan is gimped and that's all that matters and you may even get streamrolled even further. On the defense, it's even worse.

One other special mention to VR starbases. In my opinion, having starbases jumping around with no cap fleet requirements is also game breaking or at least huge advantage (it's advantage in defense that they roam around the well and you have to face them when you invade an enemy planet no matter what, but having them jump on the offense too is even more so). So imo  as others said  you must have a limited amount of SBs that can do that (maybe 1 or 2) and ofc costing fleet supply, maybe 1 cap and 100 or so fleet supply points. Their counter (structure killer units) cost fleet supply, they don't fair well in a fleet Vs fleet fight and thus gimp your fleet Vs fleet fighting potential (due to less fleet supply for actual combat units).

In conclussion, I would say that titans should be tweaked so that they don't break the game balance. They should not force players to not build the majority of units of this game because they will easilly die in a fleet Vs fleet encounter. It's very boring to have fleets with only one or two types of units. It's boring and game breaking.

3,137 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Low level titans are fairly easy to kill by a decent sized fleet, especially if you have your own or a starbase in the battle, and especially against the AI. Also while you can't interrupt or disable the abilities of titans, there are other things you can do. Bring a Radiance/Kortul/Dunov to drain their antimatter faster and quickly only the Ragnarov with its high base damage and the Coronata with its nasty passive debuff are much of a force on their own. Also the Jarrasul evacuator, Discord battleship, Celio command cruiser and (I think) the subverter have great singe target debuffs that can make dealing with titans much easier.

Now if you're playing a huge multistar, 10 player free for all map, yeah those titans are eventually going to hit high levels, but thats just a small subsection of single player, not all of it. Also as a single player, you have access to mods that can change the game to something you prefer. There is already a mod that disables titans entirely, and one that makes titans stronger because some single players think they are too weak. Its all your opinion of what kind of game you want to play. Eventually they'll probably be one that gets around titans keeping their levels on death, which will solve most of your issues I think.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 1
Low level titans are fairly easy to kill by a decent sized fleet, especially if you have your own or a starbase in the battle, and especially against the AI. Also while you can't interrupt or disable the abilities of titans, there are other things you can do. Bring a Radiance/Kortul/Dunov to drain their antimatter faster and quickly only the Ragnarov with its high base damage and the Coronata with its nasty passive debuff are much of a force on their own. Also the Jarrasul evacuator, Discord battleship, Celio command cruiser and (I think) the subverter have great singe target debuffs that can make dealing with titans much easier.

Now if you're playing a huge multistar, 10 player free for all map, yeah those titans are eventually going to hit high levels, but thats just a small subsection of single player, not all of it. Also as a single player, you have access to mods that can change the game to something you prefer. There is already a mod that disables titans entirely, and one that makes titans stronger because some single players think they are too weak. Its all your opinion of what kind of game you want to play. Eventually they'll probably be one that gets around titans keeping their levels on death, which will solve most of your issues I think.
End of GoaFan77's quote

Hi there, thanks for your post,

I would like to say that ofc I was talking about end game and large maps (I even made a reference about 100 HC, ALT ulti as well as other titan's ulti's etc, which includes end game and large fleets ofc), where high lvl titans are the normal thing (hence I spoke of SP aspect, where the player usually (I thought at least) plays long games to enjoy his afternoons and his coffee) lol - And anyway, I was talking about game balance. When you talk about game balance you don't say all is ok because you kill them in early game and finish the game after. You talk about all aspects of the game including late/end game.

Furthermore, I do enjoy the titans, or else I would not play Rebellion, I would stick with trinity, I like those megaliths, but I just want them tweaked so they don't make the majority of frigates obselete in late game. I don't have a problem of them keeping their lvls. It's nice for the AI to be able to make a come back after they lost their titan or else SP games would be too easy. So the advantage of you killing enemy titan is having a few mins of being more powerful and press on the offense maybe conquering a few planets. I'm fine with that.

 PS: nothing can drain VRT's antimatter, they will all get drained instead (hence I esp. spoke about it)

PS2: A grant example of how "less efficient" the AI is Vs a human player is when the AI faces a human or even AI VRT. They will send their entire fleet on it not knowing they send it to their death lol (which brings us to the case that when devs introduce such units in the game, they have to keep in mind how the AI will behave towards them - it's a shame that when I want a balanced game I exclude VR from the game cuz AI can't handle facing their titan). - The other day, I managed to make a VR fleet retreat after a big fight and my fleet left in the planet with my titan (Ragnarov, I was TR), Vs their VRT. So ofc, I retreated my fleet to not feed the beast and have my titan just easilly kill it. Well, as it was down to about 3k HP when my ally (AI) thought to come help bringing their entire fleet. ofc, they fed the VRT back to full heatlh, I had to retreat my titan cuz it was mute point and saw my ally losing his entire fleet.... :-/

PS3: Imo, the devs must realise the facts of their own game (lol?) - A titan has a 150 fleet supply. It should be powerful as that to put it roughly regarding game balance. Not some VRT that can demolish fleets up to 1000-2000 fleet supply or even the Ragnarov (TRT) that has the fowerpower of 1000 fleet supply. (at lvl 10 is about 900 or so DPS)?, do 15 HC (about 150 fleet supply) have 900 dps? lol

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Odysseas70, reply 2
I would like to say that ofc I was talking about end game and large maps (I even made a reference about 100 HC, ALT ulti as well as other titan's ulti's etc, which includes end game and large fleets ofc), where high lvl titans are the normal thing (hence I spoke of SP aspect, where the player usually (I thought at least) plays long games to enjoy his afternoons and his coffee) lol - And anyway, I was talking about game balance. When you talk about game balance you don't say all is ok because you kill them in early game and finish the game after. You talk about all aspects of the game including late/end game.
End of Odysseas70's quote

I mostly play single player, but I do not play maps larger than large medium in most cases. And if I do I make sure its not a free for all, team games end much faster. I consider an enjoyable game to take about two or three hours, which is long enough to get to tier 8 techs and most research, hence I'm not killing them early game. And I never see level 10 titans. My point is merely that your single player experience is different from mine. I totally agree that for the kind of games you play that take all afternoon titans keeping their levels becomes a big problem. But not every single player plays that way.

Really thats the hard part for the developers, Sins is one of those games where you can play all kinds of ways. And with titans, they really can't make it work for everyone. Maybe some of the titans abilities are a bit over powered, but even if they were nerfed it won't fix the problem that when frigates die and get replaced, they're just as powerful as before. When titans die, they return with the levels they earned, meaning titans become a better deal with every bit of XP they get. In the end its this mechanic that makes it inevitable that the titan will eclipse frigates if you play long enough, as with your super long games you'll certainly do.

However, for people who play shorter, more competitive games, especially online, titans keeping their levels is a must because otherwise the game will become "who can destroy the other players titan first". Even a level 3 or 4 titan has a huge advantage over a level 1 titan, and its very hard to overcome that advantage considering the player who killed the titan probably won the battle in defeating the other players fleet too. With titans keeping their levels, the possibility of a comeback is at least possible. So the devs really can't make this work for both kind of play. But the online players can't use mods, which is why I support the system the way it is now.

Quoting Odysseas70, reply 2
PS: nothing can drain VRT's antimatter, they will all get drained instead (hence I esp. spoke about it)
End of Odysseas70's quote

Nano leach is on the nerf hammer target list, that thing screws up everyone no matter what kind of games they play. I'm sure it'll get adjusted. Probably with a patch due next week.

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 3

Quoting Odysseas70, reply 2I would like to say that ofc I was talking about end game and large maps (I even made a reference about 100 HC, ALT ulti as well as other titan's ulti's etc, which includes end game and large fleets ofc), where high lvl titans are the normal thing (hence I spoke of SP aspect, where the player usually (I thought at least) plays long games to enjoy his afternoons and his coffee) lol - And anyway, I was talking about game balance. When you talk about game balance you don't say all is ok because you kill them in early game and finish the game after. You talk about all aspects of the game including late/end game.

I mostly play single player, but I do not play maps larger than large medium in most cases. And if I do I make sure its not a free for all, team games end much faster. I consider an enjoyable game to take about two or three hours, which is long enough to get to tier 8 techs and most research, hence I'm not killing them early game. And I never see level 10 titans. My point is merely that your single player experience is different from mine. I totally agree that for the kind of games you play that take all afternoon titans keeping their levels becomes a big problem. But not every single player plays that way.

Really thats the hard part for the developers, Sins is one of those games where you can play all kinds of ways. And with titans, they really can't make it work for everyone. Maybe some of the titans abilities are a bit over powered, but even if they were nerfed it won't fix the problem that when frigates die and get replaced, they're just as powerful as before. When titans die, they return with the levels they earned, meaning titans become a better deal with every bit of XP they get. In the end its this mechanic that makes it inevitable that the titan will eclipse frigates if you play long enough, as with your super long games you'll certainly do.

However, for people who play shorter, more competitive games, especially online, titans keeping their levels is a must because otherwise the game will become "who can destroy the other players titan first". Even a level 3 or 4 titan has a huge advantage over a level 1 titan, and its very hard to overcome that advantage considering the player who killed the titan probably won the battle in defeating the other players fleet too. With titans keeping their levels, the possibility of a comeback is at least possible. So the devs really can't make this work for both kind of play. But the online players can't use mods, which is why I support the system the way it is now.


Quoting Odysseas70, reply 2PS: nothing can drain VRT's antimatter, they will all get drained instead (hence I esp. spoke about it)

Nano leach is on the nerf hammer target list, that thing screws up everyone no matter what kind of games they play. I'm sure it'll get adjusted. Probably with a patch due next week.

 
End of GoaFan77's quote

 

Hi again,

Unfortunatelly I edited my last post not in due time for you to see the part that I am fine of titans keeping the lvls after they die because it's a nice way to make the AI have a chance of a comeback after they lost their titan. (you can reread my previous post if you want for further details and some additions) :)

Also, I do agree with you, each player plays the game differently, so I guess I speak on my behalf and whoever plays the games the way I play them, slowly, long, end games. :)

So, since nanoleech antimatter drain is getting fixed, I'm fine with that, phewww. I would also hope a few tweaks to the titans so that the poor frigates/cruisers are not obsolete late game and some limitation to the VR jumping SBs :)