31
General Discussion / Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« on: December 22, 2021, 07:48:17 PM »
Many people complained that fighting phase ships was not fun. It did indeed sometimes feel a bit rough, especially a certain fight in a certain mission with a lot of phase ships. This is why phase was changed.
I think Alex has a tendency to overdo nerfs. Usually what happens to something that is powerful at a time is that it gets hit from multiple angles at once. Double, triple, even quadruple-nerfed, if you will. A good example of this is the Drover; Once upon a time it costed 12 DP, it's ship system was better, it had good synergy with the remnant spark-interceptor, and the player could pick skills that boosted carriers fleet-wide, with no such things as fighter bay soft caps like there is now. Naturally it was really really strong. Then came the nerfs. In one patch:
-Drover DP increased by 25% to a whopping 15, meaning it now had the worst fighter bay to DP ratio of all regular carriers save the Astral
-It's ship system got absolutely gutted; Cooldown increased by 200%, and now it also lowers it's own fighter replacement rate by 25%.
-The spark interceptor's main weapon got nerfed to a high delay version. (same burst, much lower dps. This was really really needed though, it was kind of insane) This was the fighter drover had most synergy with.
-Fleetwide carrier skills vanished with the skill rework.
-Officer carrier skills vanished with the skill rework.
-New extremely strong anti-fighter skill added to the game with the skill rework; AI cores always got this at elite level.
So yeah. Unsurprisingly, drover was not, and still isn't in a good place despite big changes to the skill system recently. I think the same thing has happened to phase ships, though not as severely. Phase ships, too, got hit from multiple angles, although most of them are still okay, some even good. But their role has been fundamentally changed. They no longer function by themselves (save for the mega-redacted ship), they will lose every duel against any ship of their own weight class. They have become supports, who excel at enabling other friendlies do more damage. Afflictor does this literally, shade disables engines, harbinger overloads causing shields to be dropped, doom forces awkward positioning of both ships and shields and also destroys fighters. (Doom might still be really good for player piloting too, don't know, haven't tried that yet)
All in all they have indeed become less annoying to fight, at the cost of being a lot more boring, weak and largely not worth it to pick up for anything but player piloting. Especially harbinger got hit really hard. Not only is it a destroyer, which means it's got neither the speed of frigates nor durability of cruisers to avoid inevitable damage due to the phase rework, it also got it's ship system gutted. Yeah, it was pretty bad when it could chain-overload, But a 30 second cooldown? Really? For one go? Might as well completely rework it and give it a new ability if you don't want players to use it's current one. I am really getting Drover vibes from this one.
Also not a big fan of 10DP afflictor. Don't get me wrong, It's still probably the best phase ship in terms of power to dp ratio due to it's insane ship system, but I just don't LIKE it. I'd much rather have actual battle-capable phase ships with slightly weaker ship systems than the current "ship system on a stick" ones.
I think Alex has a tendency to overdo nerfs. Usually what happens to something that is powerful at a time is that it gets hit from multiple angles at once. Double, triple, even quadruple-nerfed, if you will. A good example of this is the Drover; Once upon a time it costed 12 DP, it's ship system was better, it had good synergy with the remnant spark-interceptor, and the player could pick skills that boosted carriers fleet-wide, with no such things as fighter bay soft caps like there is now. Naturally it was really really strong. Then came the nerfs. In one patch:
-Drover DP increased by 25% to a whopping 15, meaning it now had the worst fighter bay to DP ratio of all regular carriers save the Astral
-It's ship system got absolutely gutted; Cooldown increased by 200%, and now it also lowers it's own fighter replacement rate by 25%.
-The spark interceptor's main weapon got nerfed to a high delay version. (same burst, much lower dps. This was really really needed though, it was kind of insane) This was the fighter drover had most synergy with.
-Fleetwide carrier skills vanished with the skill rework.
-Officer carrier skills vanished with the skill rework.
-New extremely strong anti-fighter skill added to the game with the skill rework; AI cores always got this at elite level.
So yeah. Unsurprisingly, drover was not, and still isn't in a good place despite big changes to the skill system recently. I think the same thing has happened to phase ships, though not as severely. Phase ships, too, got hit from multiple angles, although most of them are still okay, some even good. But their role has been fundamentally changed. They no longer function by themselves (save for the mega-redacted ship), they will lose every duel against any ship of their own weight class. They have become supports, who excel at enabling other friendlies do more damage. Afflictor does this literally, shade disables engines, harbinger overloads causing shields to be dropped, doom forces awkward positioning of both ships and shields and also destroys fighters. (Doom might still be really good for player piloting too, don't know, haven't tried that yet)
All in all they have indeed become less annoying to fight, at the cost of being a lot more boring, weak and largely not worth it to pick up for anything but player piloting. Especially harbinger got hit really hard. Not only is it a destroyer, which means it's got neither the speed of frigates nor durability of cruisers to avoid inevitable damage due to the phase rework, it also got it's ship system gutted. Yeah, it was pretty bad when it could chain-overload, But a 30 second cooldown? Really? For one go? Might as well completely rework it and give it a new ability if you don't want players to use it's current one. I am really getting Drover vibes from this one.
Also not a big fan of 10DP afflictor. Don't get me wrong, It's still probably the best phase ship in terms of power to dp ratio due to it's insane ship system, but I just don't LIKE it. I'd much rather have actual battle-capable phase ships with slightly weaker ship systems than the current "ship system on a stick" ones.
