I already discussed issues with the tech level of the siege frigate. To sum up those arguments: The siege frigate is simply available too early. All the game balance issues you rage on about are a direct result of this, and can be easily addressed by bumping the siege frigate a few tech levels. You cheerfully glossed over it, however.

You are a dreamer if you think Ironclad is going to change the tech tree of this game which has been released for over a year now.  Buffing the siege frigate?  Sure, that can easily occur if you make enough noise.  Rearranging the tech tree?  You're nuts.

So, the reason why I "cheerfully glossed over it" is because it is irrelevant pie in the sky nonsense.

Give them some minor flak so they aren't totally helpless to Hanger Defence?

they just made major changes to the tech tree in the Entrenchment expansion. nothing is set in stone. you say pie in the sky non-sense because you're not thinking clearly. multiple people have made this suggestion and it seems like an incredibly obvious and good solution to the most troubling issue involved with siege frigates. you've already lost the argument and have now chosen to ignore the reason you lost so you can keep arguing. 

Prince_PWNly, if they didn't want them to be so easily killed by fighters, then they would just change the armor.  The point is that they are meant to be killed by fighters :/  Though Id on't believe theys ohudl have had their hp reduced so much.

1) That was an expansion.

2) The tech tree was simply added on to for the most part, not rearranged.

yeah, but how friggin hard is it to change the attribute setting _militaryLabsRequired =1 to _militaryLabsRequired =3.

 

i don't know enough about the coding of this game to answer that honestly, but im sure somebody could. i've seen lots of user originated mods that totally rearrange tech trees. its clearly not hard-coded into the game so as to be unchangeable. 

 

from a design point of view if one particular design decision lacks utility then it should be changed to one with greater utility. i think the case has been made clearly that tier 1 is the wrong tier for siege frigs because it is impossible to correctly balance them at that tier. greater utility would be gained by moving the tech tier up to 3 and then rebalancing the stats and costs of the frigate itself. 

That'll do part of it. You also need to move the research icon to its new spot, and change the reserach cost accordingly (each research level has an associated cost). So no, it's not very difficult, but it will take some time if you're new to modding.

This may be a surprise to some, but you can place land mines directly around a planet to kill siege ships. This means siege ships have to be escorted by scouts and flak to to dig through the mines, which means getting hit by more defenses, which means even more resources from an attacking player. Siege frigates can be countered in SO many ways.

Mines can be built in sufficient numbers to ring an entire planet, but it would be severely cost prohibitive, especially if you are talking multiple planets.  Mines are expensive as hell.  So, mines are not a counter to cheap, buffed siege frigates.

still debating inconsequential points. Hangar Defenses are the tactical structure that counters siege frigates. in the current state its like a retardedly strong uber-counter against siege frigates. the 2 squadrons on a TEC hangar d can easily kill 5 or 6 siege frigates before they even come close to killing a 1500 health planet. and a hangar d costs less than even 1 siege frigate. 

 

look, its clearly out of whack. i'm not sure what the origin of this resistance is. i think the analysis that we've done in this thread is both exhaustive and comprehensive. if something is clearly too weak it should be buffed. if something is clearly too strong it should be nerfed. its not always possible to tell when something is clearly out of line but the current status of siege frigates does not occur to me as one of those situations. it really is clearly, on the evidence, out of whack. i don't even bother researching siege frigs when i play multiplayer. 

 

there are ripple effects (i've called it "splash damage" in other posts) that come as a result of the weakness of siege frigates. it puts a massive emphasis on planet killing abilities on cap ships. if siege frigs worked properly would everyone consider Planet Suction a 100% necessary ability for Vasari? think about it. 

He's the one that suggested mines as a counter to sf, not me.

Quite clearly it's the original incarnation of the sf.  Did you play the original game when it first came out?

Assuming it is too weak, the question isn't that it should be buffed, but "how should it be buffed?"  Therein lies the argument, and the dilemna, as I have described in this very thread.  One camp wants to buff the survivability of the siege frigate, because they want them to be used not as "corpse collectors" as Bobucles refers to them, but as "something else" (i.e. a way to attack someone).  The other camp does not want survivability buffed under any circumstance, because they want them to be used as "corpse collectors."  There is a vast divide between these two roles, and thus between the two camps.

Camp #1, i.e. "super siege frigs" - buff survivability, buff attack strength, reduce cost/popcap.  This essentially reverses the game in time and puts the siege frigate back the way it was when the game first came out.

Camp #2 - reduce cost/popcap a little, reduce survivabilty from what it is now to ensure that they are easily killable if used in any other role besides cleanup duty.

Both of these can be considered buffs to the siege frigate, but neither side is going to agree to what the other wants.  Note that there is a third camp that doesn't want the unit touched at all.

i barely use them   maybe 1 out of 20 games

 

only usefull when your capital ships are elsewhere, but even then i prefer just adding an assault capital ship ... becuase if your cap ships are to occupied it means you have to few

 

nice mini-tactic is to build 2/3 siege frigates and send them behind enemy lines enemy will have to start sending ships away or build turets...  nice tactic to make your oponenet use cash  but doesnt work if theres fighters/fleets/factory;s/ in grav well

you've got the opinion of the so-called "camp #1"wrong then, if thats what you think. obviously a buff to strength and survivability must be matched by an increase in cost.

 

there are two states that are balanced. strong and expensive is balanced. fragile and cheap is balanced. right now they are fragile and expensive. thats not balanced.

LOL - I'm like Cykur.  The word "obviously" is used way too much.  Camp #1 is as I described them.  As an example, ask Bobucles.  If I'm not mistaken I think he'd tell you that strength and survivability should be buffed, and cost/popcap decreased.

There is not an automatic formula for every unit of "strong and expensive" or "fragile and cheap" which results in balance.

I find it absolutely hilarious that Karma bases all of his arguments off a siege frigate that is invincible, has unlimited access to territory, and is 100% FREE. Surprise news: Siege frigates are expensive! Siege ships are also noncombat ships. Investing in siege is a direct subtraction from combat ships. Without combat ships, you are vulnerable to a vicious counterattack. Try to understand this before crying "OMG, but siege overpowered, nerf!"

I never said a thing about the population cost of the siege frigate. I did say that the tech level should be increased, so that the siege frigate isn't the first ship on the field. This is the primary issue, the one you callously ignore, that siege frigates are on the field when the only reachable planet is also the easiest and most valuable target (the homeworld). Only when the siege frigate is available later in the game, then can the survivability should be buffed. But then again, I didn't expect some people to be able to read.

An interesting thing about the main fleet, is that EVERY SINGLE PLAYER brings siege ships on their attacks. They're called capital ships! Most caps provide less siege power per cost, but a special few bring siege power equal to nearly a dozen siege frigates! This is on top of a drastically improved survivability, yet no one EVER cries nerf over the siege power of a cap. Isn't that a funny thing?

Since the same points get rehashed over and over, with the level of drool increasing at unprecedented rates, here's a new thing to talk about:

A siege attack currently increases in power exponentially with the number of ships involved.  A raid with 10 siege ships ships can last twice as long, and do twice the damage as 5 ships, which is 4 times the damage overall. It's easy to see how they can ramp up in power extremely fast. Not only that, but more ships survive survive the attacks, which in turn let them destroy even MORE planets faster. This is part of the problem with siege ships, that a high number of ships become capable of flatteing worlds with a sickenly high challenge of stopping them.

What about giving planets a mitigation system? Just like with ship combat, a mitigation system causes attacking units to recieve diminishing returns when they attack in large numbers. This means that 10 siege ships do NOT kill a planet 10 times faster than a single ship, but rather closer to 5 times faster. 20 siege ships may only be 2/3 faster than 10. This means that a large number of siege ships can no longer plow through your gravity wells. They have to stick around, slowing the push, and leaving them more vulnerable to attack.

Oh my god, it sounds like I'm not in camp one anymore. I'm asking for a siege buff, AND a nerf at the same time! What ever shall come of this camp system that we have all come to rely on for our very survival? I swear the world might come to an end as we know it.

hyper-ventilating rants on both sides now. i think its nap time for everyone, maybe some milk and cookies first.

 

anyway, i don't like the idea of planetary mitigation. there are two main reasons.

 

the first is that planets, unlike ships, actually do lose usefulness as they get attacked in the form of population loss leading to revenue loss. a ship, on the other hand, fights just as well at 1% health as it does at 100% health. this doesn't necessarily mean a damage mitigation system for planets couldn't work, but it would have to be built up to account for the population as well as the planet health. makes it more complicated so i'd like to see some more details on how the system would work.

 

the second reason i don't really like it is less relevant to gameplay and more based on fluff and feel. its simply that mitigation in Sins is supposed to be the result of Shields and Armor. planets have neither of those things. they can gain some of them from research and tactical structures (hardened cities, disaster recovery, nano trauma medicine, planetary shield generator, etc.) so that provides a good fluff justification.

 

what i'd really like to see more than anything is a better balanced system where there is incentive to actually use siege frigates in the first place and therefore incentive to actually research planetary defense techs. the defense techs should be much more accessible as well. putting them at level 4, 5, or 6 tech tier (as they are now) basically ruins their utility. should be level 1, 2, or 3 in tech tier in my opinion. the logic is the same as moving the tier of siege frigs: in a balanced system the defense is available at approximately the same time as the thing it defends against.

I would like to see the AI adjusted because of the weakness of the siege frigate. The AI typically builds 5 siege frigates when it's fleet is in the 250 to 400 supply range. By doing this it puts itself at a disadvantage. IMO the AI would be better off building light frigates or long range frigates OR just investing that money and supply into a capital ship. There would be extra cost investing in command for a cap. Well worth it though when comparing the survivability of a cap with 5 flimsy, nerfed siege frigates.

This goes back to the original point. Does anyone even use siege frigates when playing online? More than likely an online player is building anything BUT siege frigates. I'd like the AI to behave as close to a human player as possible. Building siege frigates is not something human players do.

Not really.  Caps have never been able to be used in massive unstoppable raids like siege frigs were used before the nerf.  They are just different.  For one thing, caps can't be in many places at once.  For another thing, caps are expensive (the siege frigs were cheap).  Also, the loss of a cap has always been a rather big deal.  But nobody ever cared about the loss of siege frigs - more were already on the way to replace the ones they were losing.  In essense, siege frigs were spammable and disposable, as well as being powerful (that's a dangerous tri-combo).  Cap ships have never been spammable or disposable.  (Some would even argue whether they've ever been powerful, LOL).

Funny, this was the same argument advanced by some before the nerf.  This argument lost.  Either the devs didn't understand the argument either (in other words, they are stupid), or they just didn't agree with it.

The main reason caps get a free pass is because they are also VITAL combat ships, and don't really have time to stick around in a dedicated siege role. That's why the egg is SO good, because drain planet can facerape a planet before a battle, and then finish the job afterwords, without seriously impacting its combat power.

Actually, the more valuable part of a planet is NOT the population, but the planet upgrades. A planet is a BIG investment, with players putting in thousands of resources to increase income, orbital slots, planet health, or durability. Check it out sometime; a planet costs a ton of resources to build up. That planet keeps the upgrades until it dies, so a planet with 1% health holds the same value of investments as a planet with 100% health.

One interesting thing about planets is they are almost always the target of focus fire. The whole point of mitigation is to penalize players for focusing directly on one unit. This makes skirmishes faster while large scale battles bump the mitigation to max, and keeps initial casualties from steamrolling against a player.

There's really not much to it. It's just a mitigation system. As the incoming damage increases, more damage gets reduced. Population gets the same treatment, you can't kill people that are already dead. Percentage based attacks will be affected by mitigation, with resource drain also getting hurt. If you want numbers, then I could make some up.

At zero damage, mitigation is at a minimum, and after say 1000 damage it goes to max. This means a planet without health upgrades is still an easy kill. At max mitigation, incoming damage is cut by at least half. This means that siege ships can do a nasty initial punch, but need to stick around twice as long to make the kill. This makes it more difficult for players to siege rush a world, since the primary goal of a quick kill is directly countered by mitigation.

Mitigation will drop relatively quickly, so that a planet under a long term siege doesn't simply max out. The siege ships are just sitting back and crushing every new attempt at government until they give up. This rewards players who have "beaten all resistance", and are just keeping a few siege frigates out back to finish the job.

One possibility is to have the maximum mitigation increase with infrastructure levels. This makes upgraded planets even more reslilient to a hard hitting siege attack, the most critical of course being the homeworld. More upgrades means increased protection against percentage based attacks like hysteria and drain planet, and increased resistance to attacks like resource drain. Planets without infrastructure upgrades (usually most of them) will still be highly vulnerable.

Advent planets will get the mitigation bonus from culture. TEC have the planetary shield generator (which may need tweaking). Vasari have phase gates to respond to ANY distress call. Separate abilities, but all of them protect planets in their own way.

The main idea is to dramatically slow down a siege raid designed to steamroll across your territory. In 1.00 this was a serious issue, and players had little recourse as world after world gets crushed in seconds. But with mitigation, even a buffed siege frigate will find it twice as difficult to pull off.

Justifying fluff is pretty easy. You can say that the initial government structures are easy targets, but that it becomes very difficult to target the emergency facilities. With the planet lit up like a roman candle, sensors won't be able to find vital targets, so most shots will be firing blind, with reduced effectiveness. Smaller facilities like asteroids could have internal force fields which act the same way.

you're totally wrong about the most valuable part of a planet being the upgrades. those are just the source of the expenses. the only reason you bother to upgrade the planet is so you can build structures in orbit and so you can tax the population on the surface. losing the structures and the population is what damages your empire.

 

if a siege crew comes in and kills 100% of a 280 population terran world you basically just lost 10 creds/sec worth of income (varies, depending on alliegance level) for a long time. it takes like 20 minutes to regrow that population back to full. thats a much bigger economic hit than if somebody blows up a couple of tradeports. they'd have to nuke like 4 or 5 trade ports to hit your income that hard and you can rebuild the ports pretty much instantly if you have the money saved up for it. the population can't be rebuilt by any means, it has to grow over time.

 

seriously, this is the crux of my whole argument. sieges should be able to kill off planetary populations quickly and cause economic damage but it should take them alot longer to finish off the planet's health and completely remove the colony. that way you buff the economic warfare role but prevent the game-loss role from getting out of hand.

The ONLY planet that can have 10creds/sec is the homeworld. The homeworld gets a +4 credit bonus directly from the capital, even if you have ZERO population. Having 100% allegience makes up the other half of the planet's income. The only chance you have of DIRECTLY hitting the homeworld is first thing in the game (or last thing if you're vasari). After that, it takes far more effort to run through chokepoints, blockades, and multiple fortified worlds.

The dramatic population loss you're talking about can only happen on a TERRAN world, only on the HOMEWORLD, is actually 6 credits/sec., and is likely happening first thing in the game, which is where the old siege ships reigned supreme. For every other world you have less population(average of half or worse), NO credit bonus, and a loss of income due to allegience (a typical world will have <80% allegience in a decent sized empire). So the worst case scenario is just that, a special scenario.

For all the other ice/volcanic/asteroid/desert worlds, the primary value is in the PLANETARY UPGRADES.

For the worst case scenario, try maxing out a new terran world:

Population(4 upgrades): 450/550/650/750 credits. 150/175/200/225 metal. 75/125/175/225 crystal.
Logistics(2 upgrades): 450/550 credits. 150/175 Metal. 75/125 crystal.
Tactical (3 upgrades): 450/550/650 credits. 150/175/200 metal. 75/125/175 crystal.
Artifacts(2 upgrades): 450/550 credits. 150/175 Metal. 75/125 crystal.
Health ( 3 upgrades): 450/550/650 credits. 150/175/200 metal. 75/125/175 crystal.

Now add that all together. 7700 credits, 2450 metal, 1750 Crystal. To max out one terran world.

Of course, no one will have all the upgrades, and most planets don't upgrade as high as a terran world.  It's very common for people to max out population and logistics, depending on the world that can cost a third of a max terran planet easily. A planet invested with 2500creds/800M/500C is worth plenty more than a capital ship! In the end, the loss of a few homeworld bound taxpayers may be enduring, and may SEEM to be horrible, but it just doesn't compare to the resource loss of having ANY other world wiped off the map. Especially when they start reaching max upgrades.

oh come on, at least try to understand what i said. and at least try to get the numbers right.

 

fully upgraded homeworlds with 110% alliegance and 322 population (which is how much they have after 2 upgrades researched) put out about 15 creds/sec.

 

subtract the homeworld revenue bonus and you're down to 11. shave 20% off of that for having 90% alliegance instead of 110 and you'd be at like 9 creds/sec. losing a world that was putting out 9 creds/sec would be pretty horrendous.

 

and for the love of god, please don't persist in confusing investment with income. buying the planet upgrades has zero return value of any kind. you can buy 5 logistics upgrades on a desert planet and get no benefit at all out of it unless you built structures. you can buy 4 population upgrades on a terran planet and get no benefit at all out of it until the population grows to fill it up.

 

losing the upgrades due to destruction incurs additional opportunity cost, but thats all it is. the reason why you cared about it in the first place was because you had some productive thing their such as the taxes or the logistics structures. i honestly don't see how you can confuse this point. the income source is the population. tahts the part that makes the money. the upgrades don't make the money, the taxes do. taking out the taxes without touching the upgrades make the planet temporarily useless.

 

now this whole thing has just gotten stupid and pedantic. please at least tell me you did comprehend the meaningful part of my post, which was the rationale for wanting to change siege frigate. that rationale is the source of this whole thread anyway. lets discuss the part thats meaningful and not get into this kind of stupid spitting contest over idiotic pedantry. 

 

I understood that the meaningful part of your post applies to the single most heavily fortified and critical part of an empire and doesn't matter anywhere else. My point is: Why are you trying to balance the siege frigate around the MOST POWERFUL world in an empire? It's made to kill other planets too. It's first use SHOULD be killing other planets! The 1.00 siege frigate failed because it killed no other planets.

Dude... Wait what? Without civilian upgrades, your tax income gets crushed due to underdevelopment. If you don't get logistics upgrades, you can't have an empire, period. "Zero return value" gives no justice to the fact that these upgrades are both CRITICAL and EXPENSIVE. Losing ANY planet is no joke, as  it takes a ton of resources to recover from that! If you don't, you will handily lose to the player who makes the most of their planets.

Losing tax income is great and all, but no player in their right mind is going to send siege ships to their death, just to cut your empire's income by some pittance. Those siege ships are going to make sure that planet DIES. Losing siege ships is expensive too, so your scenario of a failed but moderately damaging siege attack is a shaky tradeoff (which only applies to ONE planet!)at best. Add in a couple more ships to that failed raid, and you've destroyed the capital. That wins you the game.

Your worst scenario of damaging a planet (killing pop on a capital) is no match for my worst scenario of killing a planet(killing the capital). Both outcomes are separated by only a few siege frigates. Your best scenario of damaging a planet is killing the 10 people on an asteroid, something to the tune of 5 credits. My best scenario of killing a planet is losing your initial civilian upgrade, and giving the planet + extractors to the enemy, which is typically worse than losing a few taxpayers. In summary: a lost planet is a MAJOR loss.