Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Embolism]

So there's a bit of chatter on the forums about how OP the Doom is right now, but as many people have pointed out the actual beef people have is with its system Mine Strike, particularly how it allows the Doom to confound Omnishield AI and effectively act as its own flanker (amongst other things).

For those who don't know, the Doom didn't always have Mine Strike: it used to have a system called Interdictor Array (and before that it had Fast Missile Racks). Mine Strike came about after this blog post that was actually about mines used by Star Fortresses. The Doom got the mines as a buff because it was underpowered at the time.

The reason the Doom was underpowered though was because it wasn't fast enough to take advantage of phasing on its own merits. This is no longer true with Phase Mastery's Elite bonus, and IMO Mine Strike always felt tacked-on to the Doom - it feels like a system that a ship needs to be built-around (i.e. a dedicated mine-layer), a ship that has to make sacrifices on other fronts; whereas the Doom seemingly makes no sacrifices with a impressive weapons package on top of an impressive offensive ship system.

I propose that we cut the Doom in half - create a new Phase cruiser that uses Mine Strike, but has a relatively weak weapons package (small mounts only), and give the Doom a different ship system (or its old system, Interdictor Array). This new Phase minelayer would be more of a support ship, creating flanking opportunities for other ships with its mines rather than being a one-ship flanking machine. It could of course still devastate fighters, frigates and low tech ships on its lonesome, but for a phase cruiser I don't think that's unreasonable.

... Or if creating a new ship is too much hassle, you could even make an argument for giving the Revenant-class Mine Strike! Thematically it fits - the Revenant would have plenty of cargo space to hold mines, and while sold as a "phase tender" you can't tell me that Tri-Tachyon has never used Revenants as cloaked orbital bombardment platforms...

[Grievous69]

Buuut, if it gets a new system somehow, it should be something equally potent because Doom isn't worth its high cost with just the weapons and a generic system.

[TaLaR]

Bypassing omni-shield is something all phase ships can do, in one manner or another.

Phase frigates are simply fast enough to outmaneuver it. Harbinger can disable shield right when shots are about to hit, if it uses the system with correct timing. Doom can distract the shield by dropping mines on opposite side.

All of these are things AI mostly fails at (with Doom AI being most likely to accidentally succeed).

[SCC]

I don't have an issue with the Doom as a whole package. It's the mine strike.

[Embolism]

Buuut, if it gets a new system somehow, it should be something equally potent because Doom isn't worth its high cost with just the weapons and a generic system.

I think the old Interdictor Array would be just fine on the Doom, now that it is fast enough (with Elite Phase Mastery) in phase to catch up to any ship it needs to Interdict (and thus keep it in weapons range when unphased).

I don't have an issue with the Doom as a whole package. It's the mine strike.

Hence, this thread!

[AcaMetis]

I think the old Interdictor Array would be just fine on the Doom, now that it is fast enough (with Elite Phase Mastery) in phase to catch up to any ship it needs to Interdict (and thus keep it in weapons range when unphased).

Having to invest four skill points and a SP to make a ship functional means the ship isn't functional on it's own merits, though. And most of these feats that were offered to show the Doom is overtuned were only possible because the Doom was piloted by a skilful player. I don't think ships should be balanced with that as the measuring stick.

[Megas]

Interdictor Array was terrible on Doom.  No way to attack a battleship without getting shot back and taking painful hits.  Can only target one small ship out of a swarm Doom cannot run away from.  All just to shut down few engines insufficient to cause a flame out, and even that would not work very well if the target had faster repair bonuses.  Fast Missile Racks before that was either more useful (with Typhoons... or that one release with unlimited Salamanders and FMR charges) or useless (no missiles)

Mine Strike last release was great on Doom.  It made Doom powerful enough to kill capitals and defend itself from a swarm of small ships, and phase ships were meant to act as a weight class higher.  The best part of mine strike on Doom was it distracted the AI, and Doom can decloak and brawl safely in weapons range, and the AI could use Doom competently.  (AI could not use smaller phase ships effectively, just phase, dance, and waste PPT.)  Even so, Doom was squishy and ran out of PPT sooner than most other big ships, even with Hardened Systems and Combat Endurance.

Doom is only overpowered because of the new skills.  Unskilled Doom is much the same as it was last release - powerful, but not more than a battleship.

My recommended changes would be get rid of elite Phase Mastery (and make the basic skill not so mediocre), and replace Systems Expertise.  Also, elite Helmsmanship is good for enabling Phase Ships to run away as they decloak and vent.

Unstable Injector is good on phase ships because the reduced shot range does not hurt them as much as on conventional warships.

[Rauschkind]

tbh i wont like any ship that can inflict serious damage while cloaked. no matter where you put the mine on, i wont like it.

reason: it will never be balanced. it will either be cheasy op or useless. because of hte nature of mines being a danger to the own fleet in pitched battles, it is only useful if it can nuke high value targets alone. because it is a squishy ship, it can only do that if the target cant fight back.
now, if it can do that it will be always cheesy to use and frustrating to fight against, and if it cant it will be useless.

[Sandor057]

This is no longer true with Phase Mastery's Elite bonus...

Basically this. With it, especially with player piloting it, Doom's a beast, for sure.
There's enough said about this in other comments, but let me mention it as well, without the skill its decent, but not that good anymore.

For a dedicated minelayer phase ship basically kit out a Doom with Graviton Beams and Burst PD Lasers. Downsizing weapon mounts would not necessarily make the ship less killy as long as Antimatter Blasters and torpedoes exist.

[intrinsic_parity]

I definitely think the problem compared to last release is skills, and the ship can be balanced (at least back to around where it was last release) by changing skills.

[Megas]

I definitely think the problem compared to last release is skills, and the ship can be balanced (at least back to around where it was last release) by changing skills.

I almost soloed the first stage of a Tesseract with Harbinger.  No way I can do that without the Combat skills.

[intrinsic_parity]

I really think the phase cloak cooldown reduction is huge for doom too. It lets you avoid a lot of damage you would have to eat on the last patch. The speed is nuts too. I think that whole skill should be removed, and maybe a 25% speed boost while cloaked could get added to elite helmsmanship.

[Megas]

Another idea to whack phase ships, maybe.  Cloak upkeep penalty for adding Unstable Injector (in addition to standard range penalty).

[TaLaR]

Doom may be more discussed on forums, but I think Afflictor makes better use of 0.95 skill changes. I'm pretty sure Alex didn't intend to buff Afflictor (Reaper build getting nerfed to oblivion is pretty strong indication), but it happened anyway.

1) Speed: 400% (100% speed at 4x time from old skill) to 600% (200% at 3x time). The only controversial part - phase ships are faster, but harder to control due to more inertia and less subjective player time.
1.1) Consequence of the above - more efficient PPT use, you are not burning it at 4x anymore. Also skilled phase ships are not at disadvantage in duels against unskilled ones.
2) Cloak cooldown: 2 to 1 sec, AI pretty much can't react to such short window of vulnerability.
3) Damage buffs from: EWM around 30-45% (bonus from AM salvo costs seems to apply to whole salvo), Wolfpack 20%(for Afflictor)
4) Better system uptime: More mines for Doom, almost perfect sync between AM and system cooldown for Afflictor (system has longer recharge without skill).
5) More PPT via Wolfpack for frigates (Phase Corps too, but it competes against T4L, which is MORE important for Afflictor, so I never take T4R anyway).
6) More flux capacity, especially for frigates via 10 caps instead of 2 from T5L and up to 20% base capacity form T4L. This allows to properly utilize 4 AM blaster configuration on Afflictor, which was impossible in 0.91.

And I already considered Afflictor extremely strong in 0.91. This is what 0.95 Afflictor does to sim Paragon:

Spoiler

[close]

I like piloting Afflictors, but this is too much. In terms of combat performance, the only reason to pilot anything other than an Afflictor is not having one.
And given that 0.95 skill system marries you to single ship (or handful of ships depending on build), with Afflictor-optimized build I am weaker than average officer when piloting a conventional ship anyway.

[IonDragonX]

I don't have an issue with the Doom as a whole package. It's the mine strike.

Just like swarmers, annihilaters, ion cannons, burst pd lasers all have two variations : ship or fighter. Regular or nerfed
I propose Mine Strike have the same treatment, one kind for battlestations and a nerfed kind for ships (Doom)
Just make the Doom version's stats negate/balance the bonuses from System Mastery. That way, an Elite skill captain has the same use of the mines that everyone had in 0.91