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[CaptainD00M]

doom is currently op af in player hands. if i had to nerf it i would make it unable to spawn mines while phased. just like harbinger can't disable shields while phased

[Kanjejou]

personaly i would make bomb longer to activate so having some pd and focus would counter it at least....

spamming mine and seeing even one blow is enough to ruin most ship.

[Megas]

Remove Systems Expertise (or at least remove the range boost).  Change Elite Phase Mastery to activate zero flux boost anytime while phased (so no doubling speed and no stacking with elite Helmsmanship).

Unskilled Doom now and skilled Doom from previous release was fine (except for placing mines too close to frigates).  The new skills overpowered Doom.

[Tartiflette]

Either the Doom can't drop mines while phased + the mines always land between the ship and its target, or the Doom can only drop mines while phased and only at a very short range.

[Ramiel]

Make the mines more fragile and make the activation time longer.....

[Flying Dice]

Hard cap how many mines it can drop in a single engagement. Allow the cap to be increased by Systems Expertise and maybe Expanded Missile Racks. So, in this scenario, you could use at the very most 12 mines, or 5 with no enhancements. This compartmentalizes mine balance as a discrete issue that can be tackled semi-separately from Doom balance as a whole.

[Megas]

Doom before it got mines was a joke or a punching bag for 35 DP.  Too slow to escape while phased, and outranged by any cruiser that was not an Aurora.

[SafariJohn]

or the Doom can only drop mines while phased and only at a very short range.

This sounds promising to me. Stops the Doom from sniping people with mines.

[TLW]

I'd take the indirect approach. Don't nerf phase ships directly. Instead make the phase lance do (some) damage to ships in phase. Or just have it increase the target flux if it hits a ship in phase.

It even fits into the flavortext of the phase lance.

(One downside of this is that there's no equivalent ballistic-based weapon to do this with.)

[Flying Dice]

I'd take the indirect approach. Don't nerf phase ships directly. Instead make the phase lance do (some) damage to ships in phase. Or just have it increase the target flux if it hits a ship in phase.

It even fits into the flavortext of the phase lance.

(One downside of this is that there's no equivalent ballistic-based weapon to do this with.)

No real issue there, vanilla beams are so gimped by the lack of hard flux damage that they need little things like this to be even marginally viable.

[Randaru]

         I'm sorry, but the problem seems to be poorly presented. How is it "OP AF"? What is the reasoning behind needing to nerf it?

          The way I see it, having ships that are more impactful in the hands of an experienced player is just Starsector's way of delivering a balanced challenge.
          Enemies in this game, generally speaking, get larger fleets with no need to worry about upkeep logistics, or having to make sustainable builds for consequent fights and mitigating casualties. They also have access to ships that are broken by design as they are meant to represent bossfights (Tesseract, Radiant, Ziggurat) with player getting either gimped versions of the originals, or none at all. The AI also has more global control of the battlefield, with units utilizing lines of sight and covering each others retreat by putting constant pressure with freshly vented vessels as the damaged ones regroup.
         
          The player, on the other hand, gets worse AI that only functions as a collection of individual units that loosely follow a limited selection of commands with, and not as a team, while the outcome of their command execution is always unreliable and uncertain, on top of having limited and more balanced fleets due to having to plan ahead and be prepared for any kind of engagement, all while being severely restricted by all logistical problems such as resource upkeep, deployment recoveries and fleet limits. Also, all the more impactful ships (Doom, Ziggurat, Radiant in your AI fleet, and so on) require significant investments into skills that effectively cut you out of options that would further improve your fleet.
          All of this is counterbalanced by the fact that player has excess of control over: 1) selecting the best capital ship with the best build to make the most impact with their personal skill, and 2) fully customizeable builds that let them select the best tools for the job, thus building fleet compositions with overall better performance to further tilt the scale of battle in their favor.

          So, the way I see it, is that OP takes issue with ships (that are only effectively spammable by enemy AI, and not in vanila player's fleets, specifically, mind you) that perform better in players' hands than they do in AI's. This is where I'd need further elaboration, because I fail to understand how the ability of skill application is a problem in a game that takes skill application as part of core challenge balancing, and already has built-in ways to counterweight it on the enemy side?

          All and all, I am mostly left with my assumptions, since the entire topic was a blanket statement, and we're left with only guessing the reasoning behind it. Hope I helped OP with defining the framework, and they can start there, or they can present it in completely different light that I've missed, but far as I can say right now, Doom itself isn't really an issue here, since it's the player's hands people seem to be concerned about.

[hydremajor]

@Randaru

There's a single mission in the main story of the game where you have to face 3 of thoses at once, haven't experienced myself, but everyone agrees its just the worst thing in the game by FAR...

As for me, I say change its forward hardpoints to energy only, VASTLY reduces its damage potential but still doesn't change the fact that Phase ships are given a "you can't hurt me" button that has little to no cost/risk

Unless anti-phase weaponry is added into the game this is not getting better anytime soon

how about a series of Flux/Phase weapons that inflicts severe flux on hit with phased ships ?
of course you'd need a whole collection spanning most of the weapon mount options...

[Randaru]

There's a single mission in the main story of the game where you have to face 3 of thoses at once, haven't experienced myself, but everyone agrees its just the worst thing in the game by FAR...

          Two main issues in that fight are 1) Harbingers, which are, unlike Dooms, broken and have no counterplay whatsoever when handled by the player outside of overwhelming it with several beam ships, 2) the sheer DP cost of their fleet, which, as I've said in my previous post, are an upside for the enemy AI, but a downside for the player due to logistics, size limitations and the game in general favoring versatility over specialization in player-made compositions. Implying that, your argument went completely over my head.

          "AI Doom bad >>> Let's nerf player's Doom" is not a chain of logic I can get behind. Changing Harbinger's system for something that has counterplay options? Sure. Making enemy spam less ships that would've been challenging for the player to field? Eh, maybe. Nerfing already heavily specialized Doom, which is practically the only "alternative" way to play vanila Starsector? Sorry, but for me, as well as, I would assume, any player who enjoys playing in a non-conventional manner, convincing would require more than just stating that there's something you don't like.

[Megas]

My biggest gripe about Harbinger?  Its system range is too short without Systems Expertise, which locks it into AMB bomber or assassin.  Basically an easier-to-use Afflictor that costs 20 DP instead of 8 DP to use.

Once it gets the same Combat skills that make Doom overpowered, Harbinger can become brawl with Phase Lances (or other more conventional weapons if the player wants) from beyond melee range and still have the target in range of QD.

[Thaago]

...The player, on the other hand, gets worse AI...

The player and the enemy side have identical AI, including the limited command points to give orders.