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General Discussion / Re: Anything desperately in need of Balance Pass next version (Add yours here)
« on: January 04, 2025, 10:26:52 AM »
I did indeed not specify that everything I listed I meant with player skills, officers, smods, everything the game lets the player use. This basically means that what I say is based on mid to late game player fleets, where the expectation is at least two s-mods, a level 5 officer (or support doctrine), and flux regulation unlocked.
So yeah, it might be true that omen without systems expertise isn't a problem. I still think combined with sys.ex. it's too strong, though. I just played a few fights against bounties and remnants without having my omens officered, and the difference is noticeable. Maybe it's the extra *range* sys.ex. gives that makes it so strong? Right now I think an officered omen is more anti-everything than a specialized support ship due to its ability to duel other frigates with EMP emitter, and my omens rarely die either due to maxed caps + hardened shields + unstable injector, but without officers they take too long to kill other frigates and as such are more in line with what I guess they're supposed to be (support ships).
I don't like the idea of changing the omens missile slot to a synergy one: I feel like missile autoloader is one of the more interesting mods to use, while not being too strong. As far as I know it's not even "meta", as the omen likes so many other mods (Hardened subsystems, hardened shields, unstable injector, flux coil adjunct, accelerated shields, solar shielding) and a salamander in the missile slot is actually quite decent due to free ECCM.
A stationary EMP emitter is an interesting idea, but might be too much of a nerf for omen and too much a buff for shade. Phase ships in general seem to be a bit of a difficult subject. Most players find them unfun to fight, and what's more important in a game, regardless of actual balance? Hard to say, a change as big as that would require testing I think.
My opinion on railgun might be similarly skewed, as there's basically two cases in which I use it: On frigates intended to duel other frigates, such as centurion and lasher, and on bigger ships with large ballistics for HE damage, such as onslaught and manticore. On the former it doesn't have the problem of the "warmup" causing shots to miss, because the range is short enough that the shots hit anyway. On the latter I always pair it with elite ballistics mastery, where the higher shot speed means they won't miss. This is in contrast to the light autocannon: I found it still misses a lot even with elite BM at a range, and for frigates it doesn't do quite enough damage, requiring the frigate to use another weapon to deal with armor and hull. This is also why I don't think "dps per OP" is a good metric to use, as it disregards both the weapons other properties as well as the fact that weapon slots have a baseline value and opportunity cost. With the dps per OP approach the likes of light machine gun, light mortar and mining laser would be amazing weapons.
Light needler is a good weapon, I would call it a sidegrade to railgun. However, it costs an OP more and necessitates another weapon for armor and hull. If railgun and needler shared a cost, I'm not even sure if the light needler would be the correct pick most of the time. Back when railgun was 8 OP, I don't think ballistic mastery and more importantly its elite effect existed. I believe elite BM benefits railguns more, as it allows them to accurately shred frigates at range without need for HE. As it is, I'm still not convinced railgun is not in need of a slight tweak.
I have played with lots of different Scarab builds too, it's been one of my favourite ships ever since tempest lost its old ship system. I find that right now it has three major problems:
-Locked into small energy weapons for damage
-temporal shell drains peak performance
-Remnants punish overextension harder than ever in this version, and scarab often overextends with temporal shell.
This is how I go about building a scarab with these in mind. First, as a frigate in a mid-late environment, it really wants max capacitors and hardened shields to avoid being popped. -20 OP. Hardened subsystems is a must for 180 PPT with a ship system that drains it further. -5 OP. Low base speed needs help, frigates are good with it anyways, and this type of ship doesn't suffer from the downside at all, -5 OP for unstable injector. Frontal shield conversion to not die against fighters and when flanking/diving, -3 OP. Tell me if you think some of this isn't necessary, but I really feel like every frigate needs to max durability now because of how brilliants and novas are. This puts a heavy strain on the scarab, even when using S-mods, because small energy slots aren't that good at killing things on their own. It leaves very little OP for actual offensive systems, which usually leads me to using weird *** like 3x burst pd+HSA+S-mod expanded mags or just two antimatter blasters as the main weapon and leaving all other slots empty, which just feels kinda bad, especially in a prolonged battle.
One good thing I have to say about the scarab is that it's probably the best ship in the game at utilizing non-missile omega weapons. It's amazing with shock repeaters and a minipulser, but then again, I'm not sure if omega weapons should be taken into account when discussing balance.
So yeah, it might be true that omen without systems expertise isn't a problem. I still think combined with sys.ex. it's too strong, though. I just played a few fights against bounties and remnants without having my omens officered, and the difference is noticeable. Maybe it's the extra *range* sys.ex. gives that makes it so strong? Right now I think an officered omen is more anti-everything than a specialized support ship due to its ability to duel other frigates with EMP emitter, and my omens rarely die either due to maxed caps + hardened shields + unstable injector, but without officers they take too long to kill other frigates and as such are more in line with what I guess they're supposed to be (support ships).
I don't like the idea of changing the omens missile slot to a synergy one: I feel like missile autoloader is one of the more interesting mods to use, while not being too strong. As far as I know it's not even "meta", as the omen likes so many other mods (Hardened subsystems, hardened shields, unstable injector, flux coil adjunct, accelerated shields, solar shielding) and a salamander in the missile slot is actually quite decent due to free ECCM.
A stationary EMP emitter is an interesting idea, but might be too much of a nerf for omen and too much a buff for shade. Phase ships in general seem to be a bit of a difficult subject. Most players find them unfun to fight, and what's more important in a game, regardless of actual balance? Hard to say, a change as big as that would require testing I think.
My opinion on railgun might be similarly skewed, as there's basically two cases in which I use it: On frigates intended to duel other frigates, such as centurion and lasher, and on bigger ships with large ballistics for HE damage, such as onslaught and manticore. On the former it doesn't have the problem of the "warmup" causing shots to miss, because the range is short enough that the shots hit anyway. On the latter I always pair it with elite ballistics mastery, where the higher shot speed means they won't miss. This is in contrast to the light autocannon: I found it still misses a lot even with elite BM at a range, and for frigates it doesn't do quite enough damage, requiring the frigate to use another weapon to deal with armor and hull. This is also why I don't think "dps per OP" is a good metric to use, as it disregards both the weapons other properties as well as the fact that weapon slots have a baseline value and opportunity cost. With the dps per OP approach the likes of light machine gun, light mortar and mining laser would be amazing weapons.
Light needler is a good weapon, I would call it a sidegrade to railgun. However, it costs an OP more and necessitates another weapon for armor and hull. If railgun and needler shared a cost, I'm not even sure if the light needler would be the correct pick most of the time. Back when railgun was 8 OP, I don't think ballistic mastery and more importantly its elite effect existed. I believe elite BM benefits railguns more, as it allows them to accurately shred frigates at range without need for HE. As it is, I'm still not convinced railgun is not in need of a slight tweak.
I have played with lots of different Scarab builds too, it's been one of my favourite ships ever since tempest lost its old ship system. I find that right now it has three major problems:
-Locked into small energy weapons for damage
-temporal shell drains peak performance
-Remnants punish overextension harder than ever in this version, and scarab often overextends with temporal shell.
This is how I go about building a scarab with these in mind. First, as a frigate in a mid-late environment, it really wants max capacitors and hardened shields to avoid being popped. -20 OP. Hardened subsystems is a must for 180 PPT with a ship system that drains it further. -5 OP. Low base speed needs help, frigates are good with it anyways, and this type of ship doesn't suffer from the downside at all, -5 OP for unstable injector. Frontal shield conversion to not die against fighters and when flanking/diving, -3 OP. Tell me if you think some of this isn't necessary, but I really feel like every frigate needs to max durability now because of how brilliants and novas are. This puts a heavy strain on the scarab, even when using S-mods, because small energy slots aren't that good at killing things on their own. It leaves very little OP for actual offensive systems, which usually leads me to using weird *** like 3x burst pd+HSA+S-mod expanded mags or just two antimatter blasters as the main weapon and leaving all other slots empty, which just feels kinda bad, especially in a prolonged battle.
One good thing I have to say about the scarab is that it's probably the best ship in the game at utilizing non-missile omega weapons. It's amazing with shock repeaters and a minipulser, but then again, I'm not sure if omega weapons should be taken into account when discussing balance.
