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[Megas]

Also, do you have thoughts on the 15 to 20 DP jump for the Pirate Falcon?  It is an identical sized jump, and we've had that ship through multiple releases now.

Missed that.  I think that is dumb.  What makes it powerful enough to be worth 20 DP (well, anything more than Falcon's 15 DP) to begin with, a loadout with machine guns and reapers in the missiles?  Should Alex start making XIV ships cost more DP than standard because they are more powerful?

As for Radiant being 60 DP.  It is stronger than Paragon, but it is an SNK boss ship that requires top Tech skills to unlock.  If it had to compete with +1 s-mod like today, I still think 40 DP is fine where it is at because it is the only thing keeping me from not getting Spec.Mods (which is also overpowered if fully exploited, especially on phase ships), and the other Remnant ships generally being too weak to justify Automated Ships.  That said, with the skill changes coming, Radiant being at 40 DP would probably be too low.  60 DP may be okay because if nothing else changes,  it is still stronger than Paragon, and still requires skills to unlock (but does not compete with other overpowered skills in Tech).

[Amoebka]

What makes it powerful enough to be worth 20 DP (well, anything more than Falcon's 15 DP) to begin with, a loadout with machine guns and reapers in the missiles?  Should Alex start making XIV ships cost more DP than standard because they are more powerful?

Presumably the new skill that lowers DP for unofficered ships could be too opressive with full missile falcon spam or something. As always with crazy balance changes, blame the local e-sports community (fleet building tournaments). 

Doubt XIV is getting DP increases. Muh poor low tech is already bad uwu.

[intrinsic_parity]

Haven't the AI tournaments shown that falcon P is very strong compared to other things of equal DP?

[DownTheDrain]

I'll note the Radiant is getting its DP increased from 40 to 60 DP, which is a 50% jump, while the Fury is only a 33% increase.  Do you feel that raising the Radiant's cost to 60 DP is annihilating it or a kneejerk reaction?

Does that change come with a buff to other Remnant ships?

In the current version of the game the presence of Radiants is literally the only factor that decides whether I attack or avoid a Remnant fleet. If there are no Radiants I don't have much to worry about, if there are Radiants I may be in trouble. It seems vastly superior to everything else.
Now while it's certainly too good at 40 DP I don't think it compares well to the Fury, or any other regular ship for that matter. It's the sole capital of a faction that's supposed to be a strange and mysterious threat and the player needs a level 5 skill to field it at all. Nerfing it basically requires buffing a number of other Remnant designs to keep them relevant, at least in my opinion.

[Thaago]

Haven't the AI tournaments shown that falcon P is very strong compared to other things of equal DP?

Yeah. While there were some counter builds that people came up with to specifically combat them for exhibition matches (Shield bypass (DR's version before the current patch) paragon was one!), Falcon P's with converted hangars + Omens came out of nowhere and dominated that tournament. The tournament rules prohibited the kind of sweeping and specialized builds that were needed to beat them so the eventual winner was a copycat whose Falcon P's + Omens were slightly better at killing Falcon P's + Omens than the original's.

In campaign missiles got a bump because hard enemy fleets are smaller in number/size than before, and skills can boost 2x to 3x ammo, so running out of ammo before killing a critical mass of enemies is much less of a concern. Falcon P's are quite good!

[intrinsic_parity]

As for Radiant being 60 DP.  It is stronger than Paragon, but it is an SNK boss ship that requires top Tech skills to unlock.  If it had to compete with +1 s-mod like today, I still think 40 DP is fine where it is at because it is the only thing keeping me from not getting Spec.Mods (which is also overpowered if fully exploited, especially on phase ships), and the other Remnant ships generally being too weak to justify Automated Ships. 

This logic is completely backwards. You don't balance the ships to fit the arbitrarily balanced skills, you balance the ships to be balanced independently, and then balance skills to work with the ships.

[Vanshilar]

Generally speaking if Fury costed 20 DP with no other changes then I think it'd probably be fine. Testing against Ordos fleets it always does more damage than the Falcon or the Falcon P, although I readily admit that depends on the particular loadout of each ship. The Falcon P does somewhat more than the Falcon but not significantly more, so maybe I'm using too niche of a loadout or testing situation, but I don't see it being worth 20 DP. Maybe 17 DP or something. Being able to equip 4 medium missiles is very strong though.

The Fury is fast, with good flux, and has 360 degree shields, so it's a pretty good brawler, a scaled-down version of the Aurora. I find the 360 degree shields to be important, because Falcons (and Medusas) seem to always be taking beams and projectiles up their...engines a lot, and then dying. So the Fury is a lot more "fault tolerant", especially when used by the AI because the AI makes a lot of mistakes.

I tested 4 Furies, 4 Falcon P's, and 4 Falcons against my 2-Ordos (including 7 Radiants) test fleet. I myself piloted a Doom but tried to stay back and observe for the most part, except if a ship got in trouble. I deploy the entire fleet together, move them all to a spot in front of the main enemy fleet, and then set full assault on. All officers are reckless. The loadout was:

Fury: 2 sabot pods, cryoblaster, minipulser, IR pulse laser, Xyphos; expanded missile racks, hardened shields, integrated targeting unit, converted hangar, solar shielding, front shield conversion, 14 cap, 0 vent; target analysis, missile specialization, reliability engineering, shield modulation, energy weapon mastery (elite)

Falcon P: 3 sabot pods, assault chaingun, antimatter SRM missile, breach SRM, Xyphos; expanded missile racks, hardened shields, integrated targeting unit, converted hangar, solar shielding, 26 cap, 2 vent; target analysis (elite), missile specialization, reliability engineering, shield modulation, gunnery implants

Falcon: 2 heavy machine guns, cryoblaster, antimatter SRM missile, Xyphos; hardened shields, integrated targeting unit, converted hangar, solar shielding, 26 cap, 24 vent; helmsmanship, shield modulation, reliability engineering, target analysis, and either energy weapon mastery (elite) or gunnery implants (in which case TA had elite), though that didn't seem to make much of a difference

From previous testing, Falcons using heavy machine guns were better than heavy needlers in this situation, since it ended up being a close-range shootout much of the time. I also used helmsmanship for Falcon because it needed that to be fast enough for this fight, otherwise it wastes time chasing down frigates and/or isn't able to back off quickly enough when it's in trouble. The others were fast enough without it (Falcon P has built-in unstable injector, of course).

The Falcon P can't use the cryoblaster, so it did less hull damage. The Falcon doesn't have sabot pods so it did less shield damage. Overall though the Fury beat out the other two in all 3 damage categories (shield, armor, hull). The Fury generally did roughly 30% or so more damage than the Falcon, though this varied each run. So it costing 20 DP seems about right. The Falcon P also getting boosted to 20 DP seems too high though, unless someone can give me a better loadout than what I got. (Same goes for the other ships, if someone can come up with a better loadout than what I'm using, since these may not be the most optimized loadouts possible.)

Attached is a screenshot with the results from one of the runs, although in this one the Fury did somewhat more damage than average. Thus far though what I'm seeing is Fury >> Falcon P > Falcon.

Yeah. While there were some counter builds that people came up with to specifically combat them for exhibition matches (Shield bypass (DR's version before the current patch) paragon was one!), Falcon P's with converted hangars + Omens came out of nowhere and dominated that tournament. The tournament rules prohibited the kind of sweeping and specialized builds that were needed to beat them so the eventual winner was a copycat whose Falcon P's + Omens were slightly better at killing Falcon P's + Omens than the original's.

Hmm can you give a link to the tournament? I only found the 11th shipbuilding fleet tournament which seems to be based on 0.9.1a and thus didn't have Furies.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Grievous69]

@Hiruma Kai
The Radiant change imo was a long time coming because any sane person saw it was way stronger than 40 DP, unless you think it's on par with the Conquest for example. But it was just an AI ship so I guess it wasn't urgent, now that the player can actually use it, it became more of an issue (and REDACTED fleets being stronger in this version was probably another piece of the puzzle).

Pirate Falcon is a tricky one because while it's just a variant of an existing ship, it's completely different from it and obviously more impactful, 4 medium missiles on a 15 DP veeeery fast ship is nuts. Now the reason why I don't have strong opinions is because I actually didn't use it that much, not a fan of missile spam playstyle personally. Played with it a bit as a playership on the version it came out but eventually swapped for something bigger. I honestly couldn't tell you what DP cost I would propose since I'm not that familiar but obviously not 15 DP, as we can see from various tests and tournaments.

Great point about DP costs meaning jack *** in early game, hell I'd pilot a Fury for 25 DP if I can't find anything else. But the reason for my post was precisely the large battles where you carefully have to pick your ships. I had 3 Furies in my fleet, and every tougher fight at least 1-2 would die. They just seem super expendable when the smaller cheaper ships would far outlive them. Eventually I ditched all buy the last Fury which I sometimes used in pursuits, and my fleet was doing better, with less casualties. Now obviously this is just from one playthrough so my opinion my change a bit, but I seriously doubt I'll be using Furies in late game if they cost 20 DP and keep the squishiness they have now.

I know how speed is super important in this game trust me, but I feel like people are overrating it a bit. Who cares if I have a lightning fast cruiser with good weapons when I can have a solid ship that can protect itself easily while having even better weapons. Maybe I just dislike Plasma burn ships because they let me down so much. I'll probably stick to Champions and Dominators if Fury gets a 5 DP bump, at least those ships won't die to a random destroyer.

[Megas]

As for Radiant being 60 DP.  It is stronger than Paragon, but it is an SNK boss ship that requires top Tech skills to unlock.  If it had to compete with +1 s-mod like today, I still think 40 DP is fine where it is at because it is the only thing keeping me from not getting Spec.Mods (which is also overpowered if fully exploited, especially on phase ships), and the other Remnant ships generally being too weak to justify Automated Ships. 

This logic is completely backwards. You don't balance the ships to fit the arbitrarily balanced skills, you balance the ships to be balanced independently, and then balance skills to work with the ships.

NPC-only ships do not necessarily need to be balanced the same way as playerships.  Remnants appear to be an attempt at a deliberately overpowered and unfair SNK boss faction.  (in terms of fighting games, those endgame opponents with totally unfair moves, 1HKO or 2HKOs, infinite combos, immunity to flinching or sweeping, breaks the normal rules, etc.)  Without Automated Ships, player cannot use them at all.  Automated Ships is a high-tier Tech skill, not something the player can get just by dipping one or two points in Tech.  If player wants to use those NPC ships, he needs to sink points in Tech.

With that said, the Remnant ships smaller than Radiant are comparable to the good human ships.  Not very intimidating for a boss faction.  Automated Ships are a waste on those ships (except maybe frigate spam).  Radiant is the only ship that makes Automated Ships worthwhile enough to take instead of Special Modifications.

@Hiruma Kai
The Radiant change imo was a long time coming because any sane person saw it was way stronger than 40 DP, unless you think it's on par with the Conquest for example. But it was just an AI ship so I guess it wasn't urgent, not that the player can actually use it, it became more of an issue (and REDACTED fleets being stronger in this version was probably another piece of the puzzle).

If Radiant was a normal human ship, I would agree that 40 is criminally low.  But as a normally unplayable SNK boss, less DP cost is part of the perks of being an unfair opponent player normally cannot use.

Some games have easter eggs that make them playable and may try to nerf them.

[FooF]

I know how speed is super important in this game trust me, but I feel like people are overrating it a bit. Who cares if I have a lightning fast cruiser with good weapons when I can have a solid ship that can protect itself easily while having even better weapons. Maybe I just dislike Plasma burn ships because they let me down so much. I'll probably stick to Champions and Dominators if Fury gets a 5 DP bump, at least those ships won't die to a random destroyer.

This is true to but one reason the Radiant is more terrifying than the Paragon isn't its firepower (which isn't that much greater), it's that it's a battleship that can keep up with Frigates. The speed of the Radiant is its greatest asset, even more so than the brutal forward-facing firepower or impressive flux stats. Give it High Energy Focus instead and it becomes an Energy Onslaught that would be powerful, sure, but nowhere near as terrifying than it jumping in point blank-after your cruisers. You could easily disengage from it or flank it. That's where speed becomes most advantageous: not in closing the distance but in the pursuit and the getaway. Just take a loot at the Odyssey pre-Plasma Jets: it had HEF but it was considered sub-par.

[Grievous69]

But the Radiant doesn't have only speed, it has mobility in ALL directions, meaning it can just blink away and reset its flux. Plasma burn ships can't do that.

If I'm remembering things right Odyssey got a ton of other changes which made it a great player ship. Massive boost to general top speed, large energy on the side to large synergy, extra fighter bay? but it also got its shields nerfed. Old Odyssey was just too boring and a hassle to pilot.

[Megas]

This is true to but one reason the Radiant is more terrifying than the Paragon isn't its firepower (which isn't that much greater), it's that it's a battleship that can keep up with Frigates. The speed of the Radiant is its greatest asset, even more so than the brutal forward-facing firepower or impressive flux stats. Give it High Energy Focus instead and it becomes an Energy Onslaught that would be powerful, sure, but nowhere near as terrifying than it jumping in point blank-after your cruisers. You could easily disengage from it or flank it. That's where speed becomes most advantageous: not in closing the distance but in the pursuit and the getaway. Just take a loot at the Odyssey pre-Plasma Jets: it had HEF but it was considered sub-par.

Also for escaping when losing the flux war.  I could not count how many times Radiant skimmed and escaped my Paragon with four autopulse or two plasma cannons only without taking significant damage.  This is why I put Tachyon Lances in the turrets (to back up two plasma hardpoints) so that if Radiant tries to skim away from the plasma barrage, it gets sniped by lances.

Radiant can comfortably support three plasma cannons.  And back those up with either missiles or Paladin PD.  Thanks to Radiant's skimmer, it can get away with leaving more (smaller) mounts empty because it can skim to reorient its facing.

If I'm remembering things right Odyssey got a ton of other changes which made it a great player ship. Massive boost to general top speed, large energy on the side to large synergy, extra fighter bay? but it also got its shields nerfed. Old Odyssey was just too boring and a hassle to pilot.

Old Odyssey was the only capital that was less than battleship strength after Conquest was buffed in 0.8a.  Its only strength was exploiting Tachyon Lance cheese while constantly backpedaling, (which the AI could do well enough in one-on-one duel, but was distracted by multiple opponents).  It was a player-only ship that was inferior to other capitals.

[SCC]

Great point about DP costs meaning jack *** in early game, hell I'd pilot a Fury for 25 DP if I can't find anything else. But the reason for my post was precisely the large battles where you carefully have to pick your ships. I had 3 Furies in my fleet, and every tougher fight at least 1-2 would die. They just seem super expendable when the smaller cheaper ships would far outlive them. Eventually I ditched all buy the last Fury which I sometimes used in pursuits, and my fleet was doing better, with less casualties.

Interesting. I eventually ditched all the smaller ships, because Fury was more than capable of dealing with small ships, while possessing some survivability against bigger ones. I still lose some from time to time, but I doubt many fleet comps could fight Remnants without sustaining losses sometimes.

If Radiant was a normal human ship, I would agree that 40 is criminally low.  But as a normally unplayable SNK boss, less DP cost is part of the perks of being an unfair opponent player normally cannot use.

Remnant ships being undercosted was fine, when you could outnumber them with just ships, but is less so now. Bringing equivalent officer force is no small feat. Player gets hit with two disadvantages at the same time.

[FooF]

Remnant ships being undercosted was fine, when you could outnumber them with just ships, but is less so now. Bringing equivalent officer force is no small feat. Player gets hit with two disadvantages at the same time.

Right, I didn't think Ordos were that hard in .091. The skill changes and metagame moves that shifted a lot onto officers gave Ordos a ton of advantages that the player can't match. Radiants being 40 DP in .091 really wasn't that big of deal. They were strong, sure, but the 40 DP wasn't an issue because you could still steamroll the rest of the Ordo fleet. Now, Alpha-Core'd Brilliants are no slouches and you're almost always out-ranged due to electronic warfare.

Radiants being 60 in the new Ordos should help. 1 Radiant is manageable but 2 is tough sledding. It's possible but as we've all been talking about, Radiants can escape pretty well too and even if you get one out of position, it's not that way for long.

[Megas]

Remnant ships being undercosted was fine, when you could outnumber them with just ships, but is less so now. Bringing equivalent officer force is no small feat. Player gets hit with two disadvantages at the same time.

I am not fond of officer spam.  I think mercs were the gateway to allow officers on most or all ships in any endgame NPC fleet, and I wish mercs were removed from the game just like clips for ballistics, just so endgame fleets cannot spam officers on every ship because mercs are plausible deniability.  (Or at least, limit mercs to two in a fleet and do not allow any fleet get more mercs than that.)  Player needs to bleed story points AND money to support mercs.  I did not have unlimited money when I first made it to endgame in my last game.  Meanwhile, NPC fleets have unlimited resources and do not care about money and story points, or time wasted searching markets for mercs.

With Remnants spamming officers, I do not bother trying to keep up with either DP or ECM.