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[Siffrin]

The nerf to Ordnance Expertise was warranted but also a change that affected nearly every ship in the game and so I would take a look into some of the more flux starved ships to see if any of them were hit a bit too hard by the nerf.

[Selfcontrol]

Imo, only the Astral and the Hammerhead need to be looked at. The rest is mostly fine.

But I am very biased to the Hammerhead :p

Oh, and Retribution. It's far too squishy for its meh by battlecruiser standards firepower - Oddy has same firepower, but a Large Missile, Conquest has less ballistics but a lot more missiles. Also zero range hurts it way too much.

I disagree.

The Retribution is fragile, sure, but its firepower is unparalleled. It can shoot 3 large weapons and 4 medium weapons at the same target, which is incredible. Its lack of range and lack of survavibility is what keeps it from being capable of going to-to-toe with battleships which is fair, but it also allows it to mount Devastators as its main HE weapons which are amazing at close range and fit very well the "bursty" nature of the Retribution.

But all ships below battleships are valid preys to the Retribution and it destroys them at an alarming speed thanks to its ship system which allows it to quickly approach them. The Conquest and Odyssey have far better resilience (and can actually fight battleships), but they are also far less "bursty" on the battlefield than the Retribution.

TL;DR : the Retribution doesn't have the same role than the other battlecruisers. The Retribution's role is to kill as quickly as possible as many cruisers/destroyers/frigates as possible to give breathing room to the rest of the fleet and to cut off the opposing battleships from their support. And it's very good in this role.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

If I'm completely honest, I think everything fighter-related needs a big balance pass because fighters suck. Their DPS is abysmal when you include things like travel time, reinforcement system and the fact most fighters don't even have enough flux to continuously fire their own weapons, they can be disabled, they can be destroyed, bombers' payloads can also be destroyed and can also miss, they scale inversely with battle size and they even use up a finite resource(crew) to operate. They have very few advantages(range, speed, "flux-free DPS", attack from behind the battle line) but every single one of these advantages needs a big asterisk next to it.

Players single out the Astral just because it's the biggest carrier worth 50 DP - which is so much that it makes them do a double take: "Wait, what exactly am I getting for that 50 DP?" But the truth is, EVERY carrier in the game has exactly the same problem. Heron is "only" 20 DP but it will never be as good as an Eagle, Apogee, Gryphon or even Eradicator P you could have brought instead.

On topic, Reality Disruptor. It was triple-buffed in 0.96, which made it about nine times more effective. It is stupidly broken both in player and enemy hands.

[ubernoob]

If I'm completely honest, I think everything fighter-related needs a big balance pass because fighters suck. Their DPS is abysmal when you include things like travel time, reinforcement system and the fact most fighters don't even have enough flux to continuously fire their own weapons, they can be disabled, they can be destroyed, bombers' payloads can also be destroyed and can also miss, they scale inversely with battle size and they even use up a finite resource(crew) to operate. They have very few advantages(range, speed, "flux-free DPS", attack from behind the battle line) but every single one of these advantages needs a big asterisk next to it.

Players single out the Astral just because it's the biggest carrier worth 50 DP - which is so much that it makes them do a double take: "Wait, what exactly am I getting for that 50 DP?" But the truth is, EVERY carrier in the game has exactly the same problem. Heron is "only" 20 DP but it will never be as good as an Eagle, Apogee, Gryphon or even Eradicator P you could have brought instead.

Moras are super tanky and stack well with officers with armor skills + Systems Expertise but you can make a good argument that a slippery frigate + combat cruiser will do better. They're in a good spot, I think.

About the best use I've found for Herons is SD + DO fleets, it gets knocked down to 11DP and it's ability is quite good for already good fighters (Broadsword/Gladius/Flash). I do think it works weird with carrier skills - putting an officer inside a Heron for the carrier skill buffs feels like a waste, and I get a lot more benefit from DP reduction and spamming Herons than I do from dedicated carrier skills. If you're filling out your frontline with ships, adding some more doesn't give as much benefit but an extra carrier is always good.


A thing I do wish comes back is support fighters getting the ability to support a ship that isn't a parent carrier and give them some roam range, would make Support Fighter Herons (and other carriers) actually decent.


Combat skills on piloted ship should also affect fighters in some way, so we're encouraged to put officers inside regular carriers and so they scale better with skills.

[Sendrien]

Maybe instead of a hullmod, make it part of the recall device? The astral sends them straight out on another attack run after using it pretty much every time. That would solve the cohesion problem and it would effectively allow the astral to double strike a target very quickly. Might make the scintilla too strong, but it's not that threatening as is. Even if it becomes an issue you could just up the dp a little.

This idea sounds interesting, but could you elaborate exactly how it works? Do you mean that after recall, it immediately teleports the fighters back to the location they were occupying prior to the recall?

[Megas]

Astrals are seemingly everywhere because it's the only carrier TT gets, so they have a massively increased spawn weight. Hell, Anubis is gonna make Astrals disappear by itself and it's not even dedicated.

Anubis is probably a warship like Odyssey, if the game still does the 1/1/2/3 or more bays on the ship is a carrier.

Oh, and Retribution. It's far too squishy for its meh by battlecruiser standards firepower - Oddy has same firepower, but a Large Missile, Conquest has less ballistics but a lot more missiles. Also zero range hurts it way too much.

It does not feel right the Retribution has less armor than several cruisers or even Enforcer.  Even Astral has more armor (and better shields) than Retribution, and having as much hull.  Astral can tank better than Retribution.

The nerf to Ordnance Expertise was warranted but also a change that affected nearly every ship in the game and so I would take a look into some of the more flux starved ships to see if any of them were hit a bit too hard by the nerf.

It made Industry even weaker, and it was already the weakest tree before the nerf.  The nerf made sense for officers who do not need to burn their levels on annoying non-combat skill as prerequisites, but it kicked the player who uses Industry while he is still down because he has to pay for a non-combat skill to get Ordnance Expertise or Polarized Armor.  I like to see Industry made good aside from Derelict Ops usage.  Industry needs more combat skills, or the few combat skills it does have made overpowered, like old Ordnance Expertise, to offset the non-combat junk the player is forced to take.

On topic, Reality Disruptor. It was triple-buffed in 0.96, which made it about nine times more effective. It is stupidly broken both in player and enemy hands.

At the very least, it should not have extra stun time.  Remnants have EMP resistance?  Who cares, Reality Disruptor stuns things longer than normal.


P.S.  Let Hull Restoration remove builtin d-mods that Restore can remove.  Special Modifications on Executor should be gone since Restore can remove it.  The ones that Sentinel ships have?  They get left alone since Restore does not work.  Hull Restoration ought to do better for combat power, but at the very least, it should be at least as good as Restore in removing d-mods.  Right now, if I want to use Executor, Hull Restoration is useless, and I have to Restore the ship the hard way to get the full 15% Hull Restoration can give.

[Princess of Evil]

Players single out the Astral just because it's the biggest carrier worth 50 DP - which is so much that it makes them do a double take: "Wait, what exactly am I getting for that 50 DP?" But the truth is, EVERY carrier in the game has exactly the same problem.

People single Astral out because it's bad even compared to other *pure* carriers (not even talking about battlecarriers).

TL;DR : the Retribution doesn't have the same role than the other battlecruisers. The Retribution's role is to kill as quickly as possible as many cruisers/destroyers/frigates as possible to give breathing room to the rest of the fleet and to cut off the opposing battleships from their support. And it's very good in this role.

You don't need an oversized cruiser to punch down, Oddy can do that *and* threaten capitals. (And Grendel and Eradicator make better anti-cruiser chainsaws.)

[Doctorhealsgood]

At the very least if the astral is going to get touched up it would be nice to revise the recall device behavior so it just doesn't refuse to use it if you have a fleet that dares to not be all fighters.

[Not a Pirate]

Give officers the chance to get carrier based skills.

They don't have to be new skills, but let them stack (with diminishing returns) with the player.   8 fighter squadrons getting buffed then the skills start to degrade.  It's hardly worth it in an average fleet, and a fighter heavy fleet loses half the bonus without even trying.

Or let the skills keep their bonus no matter how many fighter bays are in your fleet.   Perhaps balance it by making only civi ships have the debuff applied.

[Bungee_man]

Not strictly a buff, but the Heron being the League's trademark carrier feels weird now that they forego bombers, given its bomber-focused ship system. It'd possibly feel weird to have League fighters using conventional missiles in an otherwise DEM-only fleet, which is why the change was made, I think, but right now the Herons in League fleets feel very underwhelming in terms of threat profile.

Also obligatory Gigacannon buff request - as funny as it is for the Executor to be the only ship it's really viable on, GC Sunder would be fun if it could be made to work.

[Megas]

Not strictly a buff, but the Heron being the League's trademark carrier feels weird now that they forego bombers, given its bomber-focused ship system. It'd possibly feel weird to have League fighters using conventional missiles in an otherwise DEM-only fleet, which is why the change was made, I think, but right now the Herons in League fleets feel very underwhelming in terms of threat profile.

Targeting Feed seems to work on interceptors too.  It is kind of like a weaker Reserve Deployment.  The main problem with Targeting Feed is the flux usage, which is not friendly with battlecarrier attempts with Heron (trying to brawl).  But for Heron that hangs back, the system should work for any fighter, not just bombers.

This is unlike Recall Device where the AI ship almost never uses it if all the fighters are non-bombers.

[Thaago]

...

On topic, Reality Disruptor. It was triple-buffed in 0.96, which made it about nine times more effective. It is stupidly broken both in player and enemy hands.

This is very true. The current "Disruptor" Tesseract is about 5 times more deadly than the "Strike" Tesseract, because reality disruptors hard counters almost every ship in the game. Only 360 degree shielding ships can engage it without immediately losing every weapon and engine for far too long.

It's also very boring to fight against, because after the player ship is hit you just sit there doing nothing for a very long time.

[Phenir]

TL;DR : the Retribution doesn't have the same role than the other battlecruisers. The Retribution's role is to kill as quickly as possible as many cruisers/destroyers/frigates as possible to give breathing room to the rest of the fleet and to cut off the opposing battleships from their support. And it's very good in this role.

You don't need an oversized cruiser to punch down, Oddy can do that *and* threaten capitals. (And Grendel and Eradicator make better anti-cruiser chainsaws.)

Yeah but odyssey costs 10 more dp and has the whole broadside thing going on. Don't get me wrong I love Odyssey, but it can be a hassle broadsiding things sometimes, especially since it doesn't have a maneuverability system like the conquest. Plus it's one sided broadside. If you want to go westward to find targets, you have to turn even more or go around the north of the enemy which can go badly if they get reinforcements.
Eradicator and especially Grendel aren't as mobile as the retribution.
People seem to forget the Retribution has battleship firepower while still going faster than most cruisers and destroyers and even some frigates and still is really cheap to deploy. You can't have it all, so it sacrifices range (but it's fast) and durability (but dead ships do no damage, on either side lmao).

...

On topic, Reality Disruptor. It was triple-buffed in 0.96, which made it about nine times more effective. It is stupidly broken both in player and enemy hands.

This is very true. The current "Disruptor" Tesseract is about 5 times more deadly than the "Strike" Tesseract, because reality disruptors hard counters almost every ship in the game. Only 360 degree shielding ships can engage it without immediately losing every weapon and engine for far too long.

You don't need 360 shields but you better have omni shield if you don't, or at least 270.

[Bungee_man]

On the note of Retribution, since it's getting mentioned, I forgot about it but I completely agree. It feels like an objectively worse version of the Odyssey. Doesn't have the range to enjoy the benefits of ballistic weapons, nor the armor to be able to rely on PD, so you're stuck with a close-range brawler that has no particularly durable barrier between it and whatever's trying to hurt it and doesn't have the flux to hang out and unload weapons into the target.

Don't get me wrong, it can be effective and even decisive with very skilled piloting, but I can't think of any situation where you'd pick it over an Aurora or an Odyssey. Odyssey broadside is mentioned, but, with the forward-only ship system, it's much, much better to have a broadside than forward-firing weapons. Moreover, the Luddic Church loves to use them in its fleets, but it has no idea how to fight with them, and just gets them killed in the first few seconds of an engagement.


As for special modifications, I know there's pages of discourse on it, but it really should just be non-removable, with Executor stats buffed so that it evens out, and/or it should not be present on player-manufactured Executors. Having a capital ship that costs a full new capital's worth of credits to get to baseline performance just discourages players from using that specific ship, which is rather a shame.

As a side bonus, it'd make the "pristine Executor for massive rep hit plus PK" deal a lot more interesting, since it would be a unique ship akin to the special XIV warships.

[BigBrainEnergy]

On the note of Retribution, since it's getting mentioned, I forgot about it but I completely agree. It feels like an objectively worse version of the Odyssey.

I haven't used it much, but being 10 dp lower makes it better for neural link. The odyssey can't link with anything more expensive than a wolf before you get the transfer delay, while a retribution can link with an afflictor or hyperion just fine. Then again, the difference in the skills they want makes makes this less attractive...