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[pairedeciseaux]

I think current Hyperion is best compared to current Wolf.

Sure, you might think it is silly to compare the (theoretical) low-end to the (theoretical) high-end of High Tech frigates.

They have in common the following attributes:

Spoiler

• fragile
• front shield
• front facing main weapons
• ship system providing superior mobility, useful both offensively and defensively

[close]

Some differences:

Spoiler

• Hyperion is very rare, Wolf is very common
• Wolf has +50% armor, hull and PPT
• Hyperion has almost double base flux dissipation and capacity
• Hyperion has better shield efficiency ( 0.6 vs 0.8 )
• Hyperion has better shield coverage (300 vs 150)
• Hyperion cost (buy/deploy/maintain) is 3 times higher
• Hyperion has better (non ship-system) mobility stats
• Hyperion ship system is, uhhh, broken-good

[close]

Would you rather have in your fleet 1 Hyperion or 3 Wolves? Currently my preference is 3 Wolves, because they are easier to obtain, more reliable, provide good firepower and distraction, loosing one is not too bad, …

Would you rather fight against 1 Hyperion or 3 Wolves? Currently my preference is 3 Wolves, because Hyperion is almost impossible to catch.

So what kind of changes would make the Hyperion more useful to have in fleet and deploy, and more fair to fight against? I suggest:

Spoiler

• have Hyperion be less rare (same as Tempest?)
• (keep lowish armor, hull and PPT)
• aim for a 1 Hyperion = 2 Wolves deploy/maintenance cost
• maybe tweak flux, shield and mobility stats, to somehow balance WRT to cost
• fix the ship system: shorter jump distance than current Hyperion but longer than Wolf, max number of available charges similar to Wolf rather than "infinite" teleport only limited by flux

[close]

Done? Yes, I actually suggested what looks like a debuff in a buff thread  , can you believe that?

This is a bit off topic, but related to what I wrote just above, IMO, the ship system could actually be common with Wolf and Medusa, and be configured in the declarative .ship file.

Spoiler

Wolf would have something like:

“shipSystem”: {
   “id”: “displacer”,
   “charges”: 3,
   “rechargeDelay”: 15,
   “distance”: 500
}

And Hyperion could have something like:

“shipSystem”: {
   “id”: “displacer”,
   “charges”: 2,
   “rechargeDelay”: 15,
   “distance”: 1000
}

(maybe have some more options like "jumpFluxCost", "jumpDelay", and so on)

Doing so would also allow mods to re-use such a configurable ship system with different parameters, rather than, you know, re-invent a custom teleporting ship system when one just want a single-charge teleport with a different jump distance.

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[Grievous69]

That doesn't sound too interesting to be perfectly honest. You'd just end up with a more mobile, but weaker Tempest, which for some reason still remains with horrible PPT in your suggestion. And that defeats the whole point of a super frigate, being super. Being strong as 2 Wolves is pretty sad even for a destroyer, let alone a ship which has 6 times the maintenance cost of the Wolf (you forgot the High Maintenance hullmod).

It either needs to double down on being an extremely expensive very short lived super frigate with a teleport, or something more reasonable to fight against with equally strong offensive capabilities but longer PPT so you don't feel bad deploying it. I'm not that against the charge based teleport idea, although I fear it will be too similar to the Phase skimmer then.

[devurandom]

That doesn't sound too interesting to be perfectly honest. You'd just end up with a more mobile, but weaker Tempest, which for some reason still remains with horrible PPT in your suggestion. And that defeats the whole point of a super frigate, being super. Being strong as 2 Wolves is pretty sad even for a destroyer, let alone a ship which has 6 times the maintenance cost of the Wolf (you forgot the High Maintenance hullmod).

It either needs to double down on being an extremely expensive very short lived super frigate with a teleport, or something more reasonable to fight against with equally strong offensive capabilities but longer PPT so you don't feel bad deploying it. I'm not that against the charge based teleport idea, although I fear it will be too similar to the Phase skimmer then.

I think a longer teleport cooldown + better flux stats and a cruiser level PPT might put it in an interesting place. Being able to teleport would still be the defining feature, but it wouldn't be totally reliant on that one feature all the time.

[Embolism]

Personally I think the Hyperion is a ship well past its prime and niche. Its former role as the most powerful conventional frigate has been eclipsed by the Tempest, and its flavour as an experimental frigate has been edged out by the Scarab and Phase frigates. I wouldn't mind at this point if the Hyperion was simply axed. The Phase Teleporter is not a system that needs to exist.

[sector_terror]

Personally I think the Hyperion is a ship well past its prime and niche. Its former role as the most powerful conventional frigate has been eclipsed by the Tempest, and its flavour as an experimental frigate has been edged out by the Scarab and Phase frigates. I wouldn't mind at this point if the Hyperion was simply axed. The Phase Teleporter is not a system that needs to exist.

Perhaps the issue then is the tempest is overpowered and needs to be dropped down to wolf levels.

[intrinsic_parity]

The wolf is pretty weak currently. Better to buff it than nerf other ships to its level if that is a problem (although I think the upcoming IR pulse laser changes could mix things up). The tempest is fine, it's basically a light destroyer with worse PPT and hullmods. The hammerhead is only 2 more DP, so I don't see the problem.

I think there's a fundamental problem with all 'playership-oriented' frigates. The player can only use one ship, so those ships have to beat out all the other ships the player could use at all sizes. A frigate has to be really OP to justify being used a playership outside of early/mid game with CR the way it is, so I think the idea of a heavily playership oriented frigate is just too hard to balance. Hyperion should be changed towards being a viable AI ship in a fleet IMO.

The TP is very AI unfriendly IMO, the best AI systems are ones with very low downside that can be safely spammed on cooldown (damage boosting systems, maneuvering jets etc.). I think shorter TP range would probably be a good direction, just to reduce the possible worst case, and adding charges is also good IMO. A significant cooldown fundamentally changes the system from a core defensive strategy to a more positioning-oriented system. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but it's a really big change. I don't think the ship is really balanced around fighting things head-on without a TP to engage/bail. If it had a long cooldown, it would have to be able to either engage or disengage without TP. 

[devurandom]

Personally I think the Hyperion is a ship well past its prime and niche. Its former role as the most powerful conventional frigate has been eclipsed by the Tempest, and its flavour as an experimental frigate has been edged out by the Scarab and Phase frigates. I wouldn't mind at this point if the Hyperion was simply axed. The Phase Teleporter is not a system that needs to exist.

Perhaps the issue then is the tempest is overpowered and needs to be dropped down to wolf levels.

The tempest is over 50% more expensive to deploy than the Wolf, it is supposed to be stronger. The reason Hyperion is worse than Tempest is simple. Alex nerfed assassin frigates massively. The game changed, and the Hyperion was left behind. It simply needs a refresh to fit with the new gameplay.

I think that giving the teleporter a cooldown and buffing flux stats and defenses accordingly would help. I tried giving it a 15 second cooldown, doubling flux stats, and tripling PPT. It definitely changed the playstyle, but more careful tuning is probably needed. Cruiser tier shields + flux on a platform with frigate level speed and firepower is definitely more interesting to play than a pure teleport strategy.

[Megas]

The gameplay changes that hurt Hyperion are:
* Weaker skills since 0.8a.
* Enemy fleets getting bigger, with hundred or more smaller ships in 0.9a or twenty-nine big ships plus token tanker in 0.9.1a.
* AI getting smarter defending against phase ships and teleporters.
* Afflictor and/or Harbinger getting better ship systems.

Hyperion, the ship that used to solo fleets in 0.65a, can only kill a single big ship before PPT times out.  It is faster to grab Afflictor with four Reapers and kill the target with one or two Reaper salvos than drag it out nickel-and-diming the enemy with dual Mining/Heavy blaster shots until PPT expires.  And Afflictor costs much less than Hyperion.

As for teleport cooldown like Karkinos in Blackrock, that would probably kill striking from Hyperion.  It teleports, unloads a shot that probably maxes out it flux, then takes fire and overloads, then dies.  If teleport is to be limited, it probably needs to build up charges, either two or three.  (Four is ideal for current striking because some ships have shot range greater than Hyperion's teleport range.)

As for Scarab, it is lame too.  Not worth 8 DP as it is.  Much rather use Tempest or Afflictor.

[Sly]

Wyvern has the right of it, IMO. After having toyed with it in a campaign recently after finding the blueprint, it just wasn't worth it even playing balls-to-the-wall reckless and having an infinite number of backups.

His suggestion (and mod) sound great to me.

[devurandom]

As for teleport cooldown like Karkinos in Blackrock, that would probably kill striking from Hyperion.  It teleports, unloads a shot that probably maxes out it flux, then takes fire and overloads, then dies.  If teleport is to be limited, it probably needs to build up charges, either two or three.  (Four is ideal for current striking because some ships have shot range greater than Hyperion's teleport range.)

I think the idea of a cooldown is to allow for better flux stats without becoming unbalanced. What if Hyperion got doubled flux stats in return for the cooldown?

[Megas]

I think the idea of a cooldown is to allow for better flux stats without becoming unbalanced. What if Hyperion got doubled flux stats in return for the cooldown?

Hyperion will also need more PPT for spending more time flying around.

[intrinsic_parity]

The Hyperion already has exceptional flux stats for a frigate (I think the best in class). The problem here is that we want the hyperion to have a cruisers worth of impact in a frigates body, which is inherently unbalanced. TBH, maybe the hyperion should just be classified as a cruiser or destroyer with even further inflated costs (full cruiser deployment cost, fuel cost, supply cost (could be additional supply cost on top of that) that way it can actually have higher PPT and better stats and be very strong without being an insane outlier.

[Retry]

Hyperion has exceptional flux stats for a frigate.  It better, since it's 2x the deployment cost of the next high-end frigate, and 4x the maintenance cost.  This top-in-class flux stats still mean the Hyperion's riding on the edge with any builds that are not just Gravitons, since medium energies are so flux intensive.

I'd imagine the primary reason people here want the Hyperion to have a cruiser's worth of impact is because the Hyperion has a light cruiser's worth of deployment cost, and a heavy cruiser's worth of maintenance expenses.  It seems like a reasonable desire.

What would be the purpose of reclassifying the Hyperion as a Destroyer or Cruiser?  It's a description of size class, so unless you're also scaling up the Hyperion to be destroyer-size or cruiser-size (in which case it'd obviously not be a superfrigate anymore) this is bound to only cause more confusion without solving any actual problems.

[devurandom]

The Hyperion already has exceptional flux stats for a frigate (I think the best in class). The problem here is that we want the hyperion to have a cruisers worth of impact in a frigates body, which is inherently unbalanced. TBH, maybe the hyperion should just be classified as a cruiser or destroyer with even further inflated costs (full cruiser deployment cost, fuel cost, supply cost (could be additional supply cost on top of that) that way it can actually have higher PPT and better stats and be very strong without being an insane outlier.

The Hyperion is already a light cruiser tier deployment cost. Making it a full cruiser tier ship in a frigate form factor would just make the problem worse.

I don't see anything inherently unbalanced about mixing some attributes of the classes. A flux-buffed Hyperion could have Light Cruiser level shields and flux with frigate speed, but is extremely fragile once shields go down and has very limited mount options. At the very least, it is more balanced than relying entirely on teleport spam to be effective.

I think the idea of a cooldown is to allow for better flux stats without becoming unbalanced. What if Hyperion got doubled flux stats in return for the cooldown?

Hyperion will also need more PPT for spending more time flying around.

Yes, that too.

[intrinsic_parity]

The Hyperion is already a light cruiser tier deployment cost. Making it a full cruiser tier ship in a frigate form factor would just make the problem worse.

IMO the problem with the current hyperion is that it is more powerful than a light cruiser already (ignoring PPT), but it is classified as a frigate so it has to have it's PPT nerfed into the ground to prevent it from being abused. I would just rework it as a an actual cruiser with weaker stats and a strong TP system (still nerfed from current state) to compete with ships that the player might actually pilot for most of the game (like doom/aurora/eagle etc.). That's not the only possible solution, but it's what I would do. I don't think super frigates are really compatible with the ideas behind CR/PPT (i.e. that gameplay where you slowly grind down/kite the enemy is undesirable). Either the ship is strong enough to kill things quickly (in which case it is OP with frigate speed/maneuverability), or the ship doesn't get enough value out of its frigate PPT. I think it's very difficult to find a balance there, and any balance will always be on the edge of that grindy/kitey playstyle that the CR/PPT mechanics are designed to prevent. The concept of a super frigate is just very in-conflict with the ideas behind the CR/PPT mechanics IMO.

I don't see anything inherently unbalanced about mixing some attributes of the classes. A flux-buffed Hyperion could have Light Cruiser level shields and flux with frigate speed, but is extremely fragile once shields go down and has very limited mount options. At the very least, it is more balanced than relying entirely on teleport spam to be effective.

You don't see how a ship with better base dissipation and shields than an eagle, plus a tiny profile, high speed and a teleporter while costing the DP of a destroyer is unbalanced? People already complain the omen with .6 shields and worse flux stats and speed than the current hyperion is too strong.