I took out a Progenitor with 12 corvettes for the loss of one corvette. Not good.

Why are Corvettes cool?  What makes them different than all the other units?  They debuff even the biggest of targets, like caps, SBs, and Titans (ships which are immune to most abilities)....

I look at Corvettes, and I think "The point of these units is their abilities, not their damage"...on that line of thought, I again advocate for a slight DPS nerf...they'll still be good against LRFs but not great against anything else...the point of building them in large numbers would (and should) be to debuff high value targets, not to inflict large amounts of damage....

what could be done is a slight dps nerve and a increased build time to 15 and you could make them stack heavier with upgrades for lasers etc to make them useable in late-game

I... how? Which corvettes?

I really like the idea of Corvettes being a launchable ship from something else, through an ability or whatever. Maybe Titans should have those instead of strikecraft. It'd sure be cool waching your Titan deploy more ships in its own defense!

(You could also make your Titan act as a Corvette factory, which if thats the only ship that can build them removes the very early game spam problem.)

I'm tempted to go with this as well...already tried it out through modding to see if I liked it...one limitation is the abilities, as that gets buggy on SC...

I like that idea as well, although I think corvettes should have their own 'slots' separate then SC, I think level 6 carriers, SBs, and titans should be able to field them.  The current corvettes could then be moved up in the tech tree "miniature phase drive?" so they do not dominate the early game but would still be around. 

remove their shields and reduce their HP by half. They are fine as is, they just need to be easier to kill.

Way overkill.  When they were considered useless pre-buff they had way more survivability then that.

Honestly all I think they need is perhaps a 10% damage nerf or so. 

Also, the TEC corvette should have it's cost increased by 25% or so.  Early game TEC ships have always been less cost-effective then equivilent classes of advent ships.  There is a reason for this, corvettes are way too cost effective atm for an economy as strong as the TEC's

For reference:

Advent Loyalist/Rebel Corvette

• Cost: 100/10/5, 2 supply, 15 seconds to build
• 200 HP, 250 SP, .75 'very light' armor
• front bank Beam weapon- 40 dmg for 1.3 sec, 3000 range,  15 sec cd, 'composite' type
• rear bank Laser weapon- 25 dmg, 3500 range, 14 sec cd, 'composite' type
• side banks Point Defense- 23 dmg per bank, 3000 range, 12.5 sec cd, 'antilight' type

TEC Loyalist/Rebel Corvette

• Cost: 100/10/5, 2 supply, 15 seconds to build
• 350 HP, 130 SP, 1.0 'very light' armor
• front bank Laser weapon- 30 dmg, 3000 range,  12.5 sec cd, 'composite' type
• rear bank Missile weapon- 25.5 dmg, 3500 range, 15 sec cd, 'composite' type
• side banks Autocannon- 15.5 dmg per bank, 3000 range, 10 sec cd, 'antilight' type

Vasari Loyalist/Rebel Corvette

• Cost: 140/15/10, 3 supply, 20 seconds to build
• 390 HP, 160 SP, 1.25 'very light' armor
• front bank Pulsegun- 35 dmg, 3000 range,  12 sec cd, 'composite' type
• rear bank Missile weapon- 30 dmg, 3500 range, 13 sec cd, 'composite' type
• side banks Flashbeam- 20 dmg per bank for .1 seconds, 3000 range, 9.5 sec cd, 'antilight' type

I think there's a few things that can be done with them as-is, but having a unique armor type will help balance them not just for release, but subsequent patches and re-balancing. Making them carried by either carriers or large ships does not fight any over-effectiveness of Corvettes while keeping the good roles they currently play. It does help 'cap' the number on the board.

One thing that could be tried is to decrease the cooldown on the Rear bank weapons, then decrease the damage to compensate. My aim here is that this would increase the amount absorbed by shield mitigation and effectively reduce their dps. I would try doing this solely to Rear bank weapons because the bigger targets will also not move much and the Corvettes will be forced to turn around more often when fighting them, I think. This would also have the benefit of making their weapon affects more important... Something that I've said before should be the main focus of the ship.... But that's just what I would do.

That'd make them completely useless once a TEC Loyalist Titan shows up. Disruption Matrix owns them as it is, but with that little ability to take damage theyd' be wiped out instantly.

you should update your awesome spreadsheet of awesome sometime... prolly when things are a little more hammered out.

I plan to. Trick is that I don't own Excel and Open Office... well, it's not Excel. I need queries, I'd like VBA, and I'd prefer not to have to do it all at work, upload it, then download it again at home

The average DPS is about 4.5 -ish.  Half going in, half on the way out.  Ships can't spin fast enough to hit them so anti-fighters, capitalships and titans are the only counter -effectiveness increasing respectively. 

The pirates ships can always be given regular armor and corvettes given pirate armor, then damage % bonus changed.

Yes, Corvette class weapon a major solution.  With this, the damage % bonus can be appropriate and the damage doesn't have to change because the Front/Back weapon type would only be good vs capitalships, corvettes and titans.  Spam away, It'd take 2-5 Corvettes to dish out full listed damage against other targets.

        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:CapitalShip 0.75
        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:VeryLight 0.20
        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Light 0.25
        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Medium 0.30
        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Heavy 0.40
        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:VeryHeavy 0.50
        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Module 0.20   
        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Pirate 1.00   
        DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Titan 1.00

@ SithlordAJ

Good idea for corvettes, reducing damage and increasing firing times.  This would go a long way to helping capitals survive against an early swarm of these buggers and live to tell the tale.

Early carrier capitals would still be relatively weak against corvette spam.

To be clear to those that look at this, this was SemazRalan's suggestion. Currently, there is no 'Corvette' Attack modifier. I just went and looked it up to be sure.

Another thing I might advocate is actually giving Corvettes their own armor type instead of their own attack type. This way, ships can be tailored to anti-Corvette duties.

Ty

thanks for clarifying AJ.

np

I agree changes need to be made. Lets keep this topic on the front page!

corvettes basicly already have their own armor type.

its only shared currently with fighters, which, only take damage from other fighters and flack frigs...

so medium-titan modifiers are totally touchable without affecting previous balance.

Just remove their jump drives - make it so they need to dock on strike craft ships to move systems, that would make them a powerful defensive fleet, but you'd know they were there and could counter them by tossing mass flak at them and if someone made such a mass corvette fleet to defend a system they'd cripple their offence.

I'm only building corvettes at this point and my Titan (for taking over the planets... playing as Advent.   FYI... building 400+ corvettes and spamming the enemy makes the game lag and then finally crash.  :) If I was playing the TEC and had the Wal-mart economy powering my fleet of corvettes, I doubt anyone would be able to stop it. And the TEC only got more awesome with the addition of a 2nd starbase per gravity well. None of my friends play any other race (and haven't for awhile because of the TEC's super economy). 

This is true, but adjusting the damage they take would be a difficult way to balance them.  When microed they avoid most damage by exploiting frigate's slow turn speed(always attacking from behind), meaning even with a damage boost it would be difficult to make any specific type of frigate a counter for them.

Moreover they are suppose to counter capitalships, so their capital-ship armor value shouldn't be increased above the current 25%.

The changes we likely want are:

A). make them more counterably by flak

B ). make them not shred pretty much everything fast.  They should be great at killing scouts & LRF, good at killing Cap-ships, and have a slight advantage against LF only due to their maneuverability.  But they shouldn't be any good at killing other frigates.

Accomplishing A by chancing armor values would hurt fighters as well and frankyl B may only be addressed via corvette damage.  This is not to say both A & B need to be implemented, but the point is neither can really be achieved by changing the armor type corvettes & fighters use.

Corvettes are their own ship type, but they are not fighters and can be fired on at by any ship in the game except antimodule.

typeCount 1
frigateRoleType "Corvette"
statCountType "FrigateCorvette"

armorType "VeryLight"

The VeryLight armor does not mean only fighters/AF's can fire on them.  VeryLight armor comes into the DamagePercentBonus -how much damage different weapons do vs things with that armor.

Ok, I once again would like a dev to come and state their vision for the roles a Corvette is supposed to fulfill and the intended counter(s) for them. There is entirely too many different views as to what they should be doing and how they should be countered. Once we have this information, we can provide better feedback as to what is too much and too little and what just doesnt work.

So far, the potential roles I have seen people claim for Corvettes include:

• anti-scout/patrol boat. Fast speed lets them get around fast and engage quickly while waiting for backup.
• anti-titan. Weapon affects reduce the strength of titan and allow frigates to do more damage to them or take less.
• anti-LRFs. Combination of maneuverability and weapon affects make LRF rushing ineffective.
• anti-LFs. I think the idea is more variety in tier-1 ships?
• anti-capitals. Same thing as titans
• anti-fighters. They have flak on them, and actually come before flak research.
• anti-corvettes. Well, duh. of course they counter themselves
• anti-bomber. Because nothing counters them.

And the suggested counters include:

• flak. These are designed to shoot moving targets and get a bonus to this armor type.
• fighters. Fighters already have a counter, and could use another target
• titans. Since everything else is 'so nicely balanced as-is', and titans are new, make the other new unit counter it.
• capital ships. Makes capitals more useful in the early game and fulfills that vision of bigger = better
• HCs. Gives HCs a more specific role, and lets spamming continue until the later game.
• LFs. LFs are at the bottom of the food chain in a lot of ways, so putting another ship below them makes them useful?

As for the people suggesting the sole fix is to 'make it dock like fighters'... Why? I understand you think it's more realistic that way, and that's fine... but gameplay-wise, how does making them dock on other ships do anything to make them more balanced?

If someone thinks I have missed a role or counter, let me know and I will add it to this list