- Removed speed penalty after winning battle
My immediate reaction to this was an indignant "What?!" As others have mentioned, this promotes kiting, which as I understand it was actively being targetted as an undesirable gameplay style -- and the nerf to tugs (I'll get to that in a minute...) clearly indicates that kiting (with heavy singletons, at least) is considered an undesired gameplay element.
If you're not going to go back on this, then may I suggest a Mount & Blade style reinforcement (in a later version, obviously), where in any scenario that you attack an enemy fleet within shooting distance of another fleet, the other fleet can join on the side they want as reinforcements (to arrive at a later point in the battle, rather than as initial deployments)?
- Reduced amount of cargo space taken by ship weapons, now 2/4/8 (was: 5/10/20)
If we're going this route, it might be worthwhile just to make them take up the same amount of space as their OP.
- Removed XP gain from losing your own ships
Hrm. "Failure is a great teacher, and I think when you make mistakes and you recover from them and you treat them as valuable learning experiences, then you've got something to share."
- Doubled the prices for all ships
- Balancing:
- Greatly reduced amount of salvage from battle
- Fighting combat fleets unlikely to result in high profit unless a bounty is also involved
- Best opportunity is to attack trade fleets carrying expensive goods
- Adjusted fuel use and capacity of ships across the board
So we're increasing the value of ships and cargo even more, but we're still sticking with the principle of "we'd rather blow them up than board them and take them intact"...? =)
- Ox-class tug: now limited to a maximum of one per ship
From a realism perspective (for whatever good that serves in an environment where Handwavium is perfectly justifiable), I figure this should be based on hull size (hit points) instead. The larger the ship's actual hull, the more tugs it can accept to boost burn. The weaker the ship's hull, even in a particularly large ship (e.g., a high-tech glass cannon instead of a low-tech brute), the fewer tugs it can use to augment its speed.
A single tug per ship smacks of arbitrary things done in the name of balance, which may be acceptable in quick-and-dirty RTSes but aren't as readily accepted in games that have a more rigid simulation bent.
- Removed "send out salvage teams" from post-engagement options; choices are now "maintain contact with the enemy" (functions as "harry" did) and "stand down"
Is this because "stand down" is redundant, or is this further nerfing of being able to partially recoup your losses in a battle? I hope the former, because as much as trade is going to be "fun" subjectively, combat still needs to be a viable means of income to justify the vast amount of development time that went into perfecting it.
- Made fleet movement slightly less inertial (2x acceleration)
I suppose I like and dislike this simultaneously, since I was usually able to coax ordinarily faster ships into action, Honor Harrington style, by fooling them into navigating the wrong way toward a larger fleet, which they would flee from and then subsequently choose an evasion path which would force them into contact with me. I like this because the AI should have been smart enough to avoid being boxed in, but dislike this because it makes it even harder to catch meaningful prizes in combat gameplay.
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The rest I'll reserve judgement on until I actually see it, but every other tweak of existing features seems to be right on the money! (I'm a pessimist at heart so I focus on negative feedback rather than positive feedback, although at least I think it's constructive criticism. =))
