When you say passive regen, are you talking about the planet health?  And I agree it could be OP in certain maps...I've been thinking about the numbers, and a higher antimatter cost seems in order...makes it much harder to use early in the game if you have to make several phase jumps to get to the HW...and, it would be much harder to keep going for more than 3 or so times in a row if the cost was set right....an incremented cost that increases with each level of the ability may even be in order here...

Uh... Sure, let's go with that. Hull/Shield/AM regen could work too if planet regen not good enough. Nice to keep population levels low or stall bombardment recovery if you need reinforcements, though.

My only issue there (If you can find a good balance) would be that it doesn't really fit the overall hit-and-run nature of the ship.

 

Mod has now been updated to v1.2...here are the changes since the last version...

First, Debris Vortex has been fixed so that it now properly upgrades to lvl 2...

Second, pirates have been tweaked, if ever so slightly...the time between pirate raids has been increased to 900s (which is the time between game start and first attack), so pirates attacks in general will be a little less often...also, the proportion of pirate ships that are pirate pillagers (the siege ones) has been decreased...

I would also note that the pirate threshold values have been doubled...this means one of two things...one, pirate fleets are about half their original size or two, the descriptions of pirate fleet size (ex "Severe") will actually describe a fleet half the size...I'm not real sure which so I'm hoping for some feedback on this...it's been a while since I've played with pirates on and quite frankly my intuition on what is a typical pirate fleet is off...at any rate, my understanding is few people play with pirates so I figured it was worth to risk to put in this change...feedback is appreciated...

Third, Docking Booms (TEC SB upgrade) now affects the starbase itself...TEC don't have Jam Weapons, TK push, overseers, repulsion, debris vortex, deflection shield, meteor storm, mass disorientation, or any of the extra things that Advent and Vasari have to protect their SBs (all TEC have is the red button)...so, docking booms now gives the TEC SB a little more survivability provided the player chooses this ability...

Fourth, Paradise planets now have only 3 logistic slots (technically 12), similar to asteroids...

Fifth, Gas giants now have 9 logistic slots (technically 36) instead of zero, which is similar to desert planets...gas giants are also rarer than they use to be (in general, they now have a weight of 2 instead of 3)...

Sixth, Subversion has been buffed slightly...Subversion will now prevent passive planet health regeneration for the duration of the ability...in order to do this, the subversion buff actually does .000001 planet damage every 2 seconds as a periodic action...the actual damage to the planet is unnoticeable, but because any damage is done, the planet will not regenerate health until the ability expires...

Technically, this also reduces planet population growth by 50% (due to recent bombardment)...if anyone knows the exact population growth rate (without bonuses), it would be possible to set it up such that there is no net population growth, though this may not be necessary...

Here are some things I may look at in the future...

Mobile Phase detection -- This ability is pretty much useless on the overseer...I've almost considered completely pulling it from the game so that it is not a prerequisite for researching jump degradation (which actually has some use now)...

Insurgency -- There has been some recent discussion on possible ways to buff this ability...as of right now, I don't see any good way to do this without throwing free experience at the enemy or making it OP (like pirate raids), but perhaps someone has a good, balanced idea that isn't too hard to implement...

Starbases -- I'm still have some problems with these...for one, I'm having a hard time getting Vasari to build them...I made some changes to the AI use times that I though made a difference, but over time it appears my initial tests were just flukes...also, I'm trying to see if there is any way to get the AI to choose SB upgrades like meteor storm, etc...even if SB upgrade limits are removed, I never see the AI put abilities on their SBs (easy to tell by looking at the SB's max AM points)...I've seen the Vasari put one of their 2 abilities on, but I don't know which and I never see them actually use the ability...

The change log states that the AI use time and target conditions for Vasari "Deploy Starbase" (under their colonizer ship) has been changed...however, the files in v1.2 do not reflect these changes because they don't seem to make a difference...if I find some settings that seem to work, the change log will be updated appropriately...if you feel like experimenting with this, I'd recommend playing on cruel or vicious as these AIs won't ever be limited by resources...

Iirc, it's the value at which the 'severity level' goes up. When the combination of factors of planets owned, trade, bounty, etc. described in game constants reach that amount, that's when severity level is determined. Not as sure, but it may be capped at a certain amount. (Specifically, one) If it is, it may not actually be possible to reach the highest severity level when those values are doubled. Might be better to halve the other values adding up to it instead in that case.

You're wanting to stop population growth entirely, just not reduce it? I believe there should be a buff somewhere, such as Krosov's ability.

Mini-Phase-Disruption like that of a starbase?

Copy the TEC ships that this ability uses, remove/reduce EXP given from the new ships, and tweak them how else you want. Might even be able to add a ship type or two.

I've never encountered a problem with AI not building SB, so never messed with it and can't suggest anything there.

 

I may just go with that and halve the other values...none of the thresholds were above one (I think the highest was .9) so a cap of 1.0 may be very likely...

The Krosov's ability simply reduces the population growth rate...the problem with population growth is that other factors can modify it (krosov ability, Vasari techs, planet bonuses)...whether its a percent reduction or a damage to population, its not always going to guarantee a zero net change...there doesn't seem to be a bool or entity modifier that simply halts population growth all together...I may just give it a -100% (or different amounts for each level of the ability), I'm not real sure...I think the key here was halting planet health as from a tactical stand point that's what matters...

Giving overseers something similar to what SBs do is a good idea...the problem is, it doesn't really fit the description of mobile phase detection...one possibility is changing jump degradation to what you suggest, and then adding the current jump degradation debuffs to mobile phase detection...

Mobile phase detection would then see as well as slow down approaching ships...jump degradation would remove a small amount of AM (I'm thinking removing HP would be too powerful) as ships left the gravity well...

As for insurgency, making ship copies and taking away the XP certainly would fix that particular problem...right now I'm leaning more towards making the attacks more frequent instead of making them more powerful (having no XP makes both options viable)...

In an effort to tone down the pirates, i replaced pirate armor with the normal equivalent for each ship class to make them more killable (i.e. lf - medium, flak - heavy... cutthroats have no equivalent so I just picked very heavy for them).  I also lowered the corsairs incendiary round damage and increased cooldown for the ability.  I should probably lower the experience to compensate but I honestly don't play with pirates as much.  

Okay, here are some changes I worked on over the last few days...

First, the overseer abilities were redone...mobile phase detection does what jump degradation used to do, and jump degradation is like a mobile PJI...

Mobile phase detection still detects incoming ships, but now it slows them down as well...this ability does exactly what Equilibrium's original jump degradation did, which is slow down incoming ships by 20% per overseer...I'd note that this debuff is not linear, so each additional overseer has less and less of an effect...

Jump degradation is now a passive ability with a range of 8000m...the ability is similar to what PJIs do, with each overseer increasing phase jump charge up time by 10%...I'd note that this ability stacks up to a limit of 30, or 300% (PJI is 700%, to put things into perspective)...I'd also note that this ability DOES NOT affect capital ships, only frigates...

The numbers may need to be tweaked (range, stack limit, etc...) but for now I think these numbers should work...

The appropriate string changes were made to reflect these revised abilities...

In addition, the pirate thresholds were returned to their original values and the variables that contribute to them (trade, bounty, # of planets) were halved...

Insurgency and pirate ships probably will be addressed next...

Okay, so here are two things that will likely be in the next update...

Two abilities, Phase Out Hull and Incendiary Shells, seem to be a little lackluster...

Incendiary Shells just doesn't seem that competitive with other capital ship abilities...a -.5/-1/-1.5 armor debuff is nice but nothing compared to nano disassemblers...meanwhile, the DPS that incendiary shells does is only 3/4.5/6, which is less than one frigate...

Increasing the DPS is one possibility, but that is boring and really not all that useful...increasing the armor debuff is viable, but somewhat problematic as this is a passive ability...so, I'm thinking that changing the damage to affect only hull seems like a good idea...it still isn't much damage, but it is at least something more...

Phase Out Hull also is still a little-lackluster...yes, it is an ability interrupt but the inability to do any damage to the ship is a major drawback...a level 5 marauder with level 3 Phase Out Hull doesn't seem too bad...the instant 400 shield points is nice for defensive purposes, and is actually helpful in depleting the shields of annoying enemy capital ships...still not amazing, but at least useful...

Its at level 1 of this ability where it just isn't worth investing in...so, I'm thinking a change to the AM cost is in order....the current values are 60/50/40, which makes it hard to use at lower levels, but allows constant spamming at high levels (similar to the issue with Kol abilities)...so, an AM cost of 40/45/50 may be in order...it is more spammable at lower levels, which under the current effects is probably the only way to make this ability (and indeed this ship) more useful...

I'm still going to take a look at insurgency...as for pirates, honestly I don't know if it is worth doing a major overhaul but I'll still consider it...

Sorry for being a little slow on the updates recently, combination of Christmas and working on another mod for GC2: TA has had me busy...

Okay...so, this is probably a very controversial proposition, I know...but, I'm running out of ideas here...

Phase missiles are a big problem....the issue isn't their power, that could be fixed if necessary, and in general I don't think they are overpowered....the real issue with phase missiles is that they are vastly more powerful against Advent than TEC or Vasari....so much so, that weakening phase missiles just a bit would put Vasari at a great disadvantage against TEC, but still have a clear advantage over Advent...

The problem is, Advent just don't have a counter against PMs...an even bigger concern is to make sure that whatever change is implemented, it can only affects Vasari/Advent match ups...basically, no affect on TEC....

Here is a proposition that only affects Vasari/Advent match-ups and won't be of great relevance in the early game...

What if shield projection also granted a small phase missile block?  We are talking like, I don't know, 15% or 20% PM block....keep in mind that repulsion got seriously nerfed, and this change would do nothing to the TEC/Advent match up...

Just something I'm considering...I think it would be a lot better than nerfing PMs, which have been a traditional Vasari advantage and don't seem to be OP in Vasari/TEC match ups....

I've had the same idea and discussed it with Darvin in another thread. He recommended giving such a PM defense to the much less used Domina so it'll fix two problems at once: gives Advent a defense against PM, and gives advent a good reason to build some dominas.

I may consider that...it certainly would help capital ships since it is easy to stick a domina on those...but for fleet support, I feel shield projection would be much better...

Domina's aren't going to pick target's fast enough to give you good benefit from a buff like PM block...the autocast for dominas (as far as I know) will pick ships that have hull damage or are disabled, and by that time whatever ship the domina is trying to help has probably already suffered a heavy barrage of PMs...wouldn't be a problem for helping long-lasting ships like caps but for frigates it wouldn't probably work out...

Domina's also come out late...Perseverance is a level 7 tech....fully upgraded PMs is IIRC level 6?  

With repulsion nerfed, I'm finding little use for iconus guardians when I go up against a Vasari player...I keep a few in reserve and jump them in to cover a retreat with repulsion if necessary...shield projection though seems pretty pointless unless they have massive amounts of HCs (in which case none of this matters since enforcers don't use PMs)...unless you come in with just a ton of guardians, a little bit of FFing by the kanraks will kill them all pretty quickly, so I usually just invest in more DPS units like LFs or HCs...

Here's another thing I'm considering...

The big problem with mines is the economics...you are simply so much better off investing in something else, and that's assuming the mines actually ever matter (most humans will avoid them with ease)...

I know DesConnor suggested this, but I'm sure he's not the only one with this sentiment...make mines more powerful, and make them less numerous...I think it seems like a good idea as more bang for your buck could make mines actually economical...

Okay...these changes will be in the next update...

All envoys will have a fleet supply of 6 instead of 12...

GRG reduces target's shield mitigation by 10%/20%/30%...in addition, the duration of this ability is now 20/25/30 (up from 10/15/20)...

Shield projection gives a 20% chance to block PMs to all units in radius of the buff...

Incendiary shells reduces armor by 1/2/3 (up from .5/1/1.5) and affects only hull...

Previous changes regarding the overseer's abilities...

Good news...Project Equilibrium is now updated for Diplomacy v1.2!  In addition, some other changes have been added...

First off, if you have any suggestions or find any problems, please post them on this thread...I have played a couple LAN games with the most recent version but that doesn't mean we couldn't have missed something...as always, feedback is appreciated...

Each download includes change logs in .pdf format, but I will briefly list all changes here...note that this is a cumulative list that documents all changes from Diplomacy v1.2...I highly encourage you to look at the change logs as they document all changes in detail...

Gameplay:

• Damage tables have been changed to force more diverse fleet compositions; in general, LRFs and bombers no longer dominate and are much easier to counter; LFs are much more important now; most units should be effective against pirates now
• Significantly more XP (5x) is gained from destroying capital ships
• AI retreat threshold has been increased slightly...this will needs some good observing but hopefully this prevents the AI from losing entire fleets against SBs (I have yet to determine whether this change was useful or not)
• 7 new galaxies have been added...these are identical to the 7 random standard maps except that they don't have any pirate bases...good for MP games where pirates are turned off anyway

Capital ships:

• In general, AI use times have been tweaked for ultimate abilities to encourage the AI to use them more
• All colonizer caps are slightly faster 
• Kol - GRG now reduces targets shield mitigation; adaptive forcefield is now passive
• Sova - Heavy strikecraft slightly more powerful
• Dunov - Shield restore now channels a small shield mitigation buff; magnetize has greater range
• Marza - Incendiary shells now decrease target's armor slightly and do hull damage
• Radiance - Animosity does a small AoE damage per second; application of buff changed to prevent overriding of taunt; energy absorption now grants damage reduction instead of armor bonus; cleansing brilliance in general does more damage but has a small radius of affect
• Rapture - Vengeance has longer duration
• Revelation - Guidance now reduces antimatter costs as well; clairvoyance makes planets more vulnerable to bombing damage; provoke hysteria kills more population
• Marauder - Phase out hull now does hull damage; distort gravity has much greater range; subversion is easier to use, more powerful, and does damage over time to targeted planet
• Vulkoras - PM swarm damages more targets

Frigates/Cruisers/SC:

• XP of various things changed to make similar ships from different factions more comparable
• Construction time of SC tweaked to make factions more comparable in ability to build SC
• Fleet supply of envoys halved
• Vasari bombers/fighters now have an additional SC per squadron (note that HP, DPS, XP, and construction time were adjusted accordingly to make retain original strength of a squadron)
• LRMs and kanraks are slightly slower
• Cielo - Embolden is twice as powerful
• Seeker - Martyrdom is significantly more viable (managed to kill a capital ship rush with just scouts, albeit at great economic cost)
• Guardian - Shield projection now grants PM block; repulsion no longer affects capital ships and has smaller range
• Domina - neither of its abilities require it to face target
• Solanus - cheaper to build and uses less fleet supply
• Skirmisher - slight DPS increase
• Overseer - Mobile phase detection now slows hyperspace speed of approaching ships; jump degradation no longer does that, and instead increases phase jump charge up time of nearby enemy FRIGATES (both abilities are now passive); reactive nanite armor uses slightly more AM
• Ruiner - gravity mines have a longer duration
• Herald envoy - cultural assistance, sacrifice, and quell unrest are all now more effective
• Voruntak envoy - nanomedicine outreach is more powerful while mutual threat is less powerful

Structures

• Refineries are cheaper
• Hangars have greater AM regen
• Shield generator - has more HP and mitigates more planet bombing damage
• Antimatter recharger - now affects structures and SBs
• Vasari hangar - phasic trap now has target cap
• Novalith - does more population damage, but reduces trade by only 50% instead of 100%

Starbases

• XP for destroying increased significantly
• Induced reverence is cheaper
• Colony pods is cheaper and adds more population

Technologies

• Many obscure technologies (mostly weapon) have been reduced from 2 or 3 levels to 1; bonus adjusted accordingly (for example, TEC dynamic frequencies has 1 level giving a 10% bonus instead of 2 levels giving a 5% bonus)
• Advanced maneuvering thrusters significantly more powerful
• Resource focus more powerful
• Advent SB shield tech more powerful
• Induced reverence and colony pod techs are cheaper
• NME warheads (highest PM tech) slightly weaker
• All wave cannon technologies appear 2 levels lower on tech tree (costs and research times adjusted accordingly) and are slightly more powerful
• Many pop cap techs are more powerful (TEC arctic, Vasari volcanic and arctic)

Pacts:

• Missile Pact - increases PM damage instead of increasing chance to bypass shields; also affects Advent psionic surge weapons (only on SBs)
• Supply pact - FS bonus halved
• Culture pact - provides increase to max allegiance
• Research pact - greater cost reduction
• Shield pact - greater bonuses

Things that probably will be looked at in future versions:

• Insurgency - contemplating making it happen less often, but bigger insurrections
• Returning Armada - don't know what to do here, but it is pretty useless now
• May reduce number of levels for other obscure technologies, particularly ones that are very high level
• MINES - definitely need to be tweaked

 

Suggest RA be switched to a single level tech with stats of second level.

 

That is a likely change for RA...it is simple and only makes things better (even if it's not the best solution)...here are some changes that will likely appear in the next update...

Some changes are likely going to be dropped as they are simply unnecessary...this is after all a balance patch and many of the most OP and underpowered elements from v1.011 were tweaked in the v1.2 update...

Things likely to be reinstated to original Diplomacy v1.2 stats:

• Novalith - the change to the trade penalty was made based on my misunderstanding of how the trade penalty was applied
• Heavy SC (Sova Carrier) - if you do the math, Heavy SC isn't that much inferior (DPS wise) as adding additional squadrons with SB or ADA, and the Sova is a pretty fine ship anyway
• GRG (Kol Battleship) - the shield mitigation penalty with GRG is actually bordering on OP (I have even been playing with smaller values than what was released in PE v2.0); the greatest buff to GRG is making adaptive forcefield passive to help with the Kol's AM; also, the changes to the damage tables make capital ships harder to kill with frigates so this ability seems to have its place now
• Magnetize (Dunov) - really the only reason for changing its range was to put it in range of a Guardian's repulsion...however, repulsion will no longer have the shorter range so this is unnecessary
• Provoke Hysteria (Revelation) - The only reason for making this ability more powerful was to compensate for the lack of a normal ability that improved siege capabilities...clairvoyance is going to be tweaked to accomplish this better than before so changing provoke hysteria seems unnecessary
• LRF speeds (Kanraks and LRMs) - The damage tables put these ships more in line now...the speed reduction was a great idea but capital ships are more resilient and LRFs can be easily countered with fighters or HCs...this change may pop up later but I'd prefer the damage tables to do their work in balancing units where possible

Damage tables are going to be tweaked from v2.0...it is confusing and complicated as there are a lot of changes whose individual effect depend greatly on other changes...hopefully it is a step in the right direction...honestly, you are better off comparing the v2.0 and v2.1 change logs (when v2.1 is released)...in general, all ship types should be viable and important...

Here is a list of potential new changes, focused mostly on frigate abilities:

• Embolden - currently I am trying a version of this where this is an AoE ability...stats are returned to original (2.5 shield regen, 10% weapon cooldown), AM cost is doubled (50 --> 100), and duration is halved (60s --> 30s) but the ability can affect an unlimited number of targets within its moderate range (somewhere around 3000-4000 IIRC)...cooldown would probably be 30s...
• Demolition Bots - I've had a few MP experiences with this one before Dip v1.2 as PE removed the need to face its target for Dem bots long ago...this is a very powerful ability, and I may consider nerfing it...I would rather have a weaker ability that doesn't require the hoshiko to face its target than reinstate this to v1.011...two changes I am trying it is 1) halving duration (60s to 30s) and 2 ) imposing a weapon cooldown penalty of 200% instead of disabling weapons
• Repulsion - I am reinstating this to almost its original condition...physics state of affected ships will now be reset and the range will be brought back to 7500m...the key difference will be that this ability will not affect capital ships in any way...this change is being considered because the primary complaint with repulsion was how it could be used as a cap killer, not how it could be used to harass fleets...
• Timed explosives - the arcova's ability right now seems underused...I am considering adding a second debuff that disables the structures functionality for a full minute...this would disable construction, functionality of a tactical structure, and possible the ability for a research facility to count towards your tier level (not sure on that last one)...
• Phase cloak - can't remember the actual name but this is the Vasari scout's researchable ability...basically, the AM cost per second will be reduced and the ability will be made channeling so the autocast doesn't just use it for 5s at a time...
• Phase out Hull - In general, the AM cost will be increased
• Clairvoyance - In general, the bombing damage bonus will be increased...right now I'm thinking either a constant 25% or a 20%/25%/30% instead of the current 10%/20%/30%
• Energy Absorption and Cleansing brilliance - may return these to their original Dip v1.2 stats, not entirely sure on these two yet
• Shield Restore - won't be a channeling ability anymore, but will still provide 2%/3.5%/5% shield mitigation bonus for 20s
• Battleships - instead of increasing the linear speed, I am considering just giving a bonus to angular speed...in general, I feel the turning rate is what gets caps killed more than linear speed...also, abilities like GRG, volatile nanites, and cleansing brilliance would inherently become more useful if the turning speed was increased...
• Supply pact - instead of giving a fixed increase in supply, it will now give a percent bonus increase (currently looking at around 20%)

There is another list of possible changes that may be the most controversial of all...basically, a lot of technologies are not researched because the buff per tech is simply so small and so expensive you are far better off building more ships or more trade ports...

The simplest solution is simply to reduce the amount of levels for a given tech from 2 to 1...for abilities like returning armada or insurgency, this may be very good...however, for basic techs like weapon upgrades, resource upgrades, etc this is much more controversial...

A similar proposition could be made for the economic starbase upgrades as there is a huge opportunity cost for picking, say, two levels of induced reverence since a SB can have only 8 upgrades...

Therefore, I will be releasing two mods in the near future: Project Equilibrium v1.2 and then a 2nd mod (don't have a name yet) that basically changes all the technologies and SB economic upgrades from 2 to 1 levels...

For example, the tier 0 laser tech for Advent gives a 5% bonus to laser weapons per level and has 2 levels...this would be changed to simply having one level that gives a 10% bonus...

I have played several games with these changes and so far I like them...however, I don't feel they qualify as mere "balancing", hence why they will be released in a separate mod...

 

it all looks good.

 

I'll have to do some testing when I get the time.