yarlen, a nice wide range of changes,

BUT I do not see ANY mention of fixes for the issues of reading mapversion 3 maps and crashing rebellion that has been happening since version 1.02.

Ccould you please either check the mapversion number then REFUSE to read the map if it was the wrong version(as vanilla sins did) OR (and this is MY preference) re-enable the correct reading of mapversion 3 as rebellion beta, release and 1.01 did.

harpo

Some very interesting changes, cannot wait to try them out.

But i have to agree with others, although the buff to unity mass is nice, i still don't think the AL are on par with the other factions.
They still lack that certain "Wow-i'd-hit-that" mechanic all the other factions have... at the same time it more and more looks like the dev's are very reluctant to change something in that area.
Do you really think that they are ok or even too strong to buff them?
If yes, some sort of explanation would be nice, because i really don't see the reasons behind it.

Oh yes and the deliverance engine.
To be honest, i guess it will stay a running gag forever, that certain superweapon, that always was and will be the pitiful retarded cousin that the Advent hide at family reunions .


But overall i'm eagerly looking forward to Tuesday.

You could also flip the logic and say the previously it took 12 labs (8 Military + 4 Civilian) to get Tradeports + Starbase Mobilization and now it only takes 10 (2 Military + 8 Civilian)...

If your going up against a VR player rushing Starbase Mobilization, you could build a fleet of 40-50 Corvettes and go after the Civilian labs and constructors.  My guess would be that this could be very effective in slowing down / stopping the Starbase rush as the VR player would have to either 1) Constantly case down your Corvettes, 2) Build static defenses for the Civilian labs, or 3) Build several extra Civilian labs to account for the losses.  I suspect that they would have to do more than one of these and it would eat up a lot of time and resources.  IMO, this is the biggest nerf to Starbase Mobilization.

So to bring this together (and I think this is the point you were driving at) if a VR player is on the frontline, they are going to have a hard time fielding mobile Starbases before the late game.  These changes are going to have a big impact (especially the lab requirement).  If they are in the eco spot, these changes will have almost no effect and possibly even make them slightly easier to deploy (less labs verse extra research).

I also like the idea of making it a Starbase upgrade (possibly a second level to the Phase Stabilizer).  It would change the cost / benefit ratio while still retaining most of its power.  I also like the idea of requiring Phase Gates to move the Orkie (and even more so now that jumping is tied to Phase Gate research).  This would mean you would need either a Kostura or a level 6 Maurader to use them on the offensive, pushing them to the late game in all cases while still retaining their power.  It would also add an element of skill to their use.

Very much in agreement.  This patch looks like it will be really good and looks like it will balance a lot of things out without changing the flavor of the game or nerfing "cool" features into oblivion.

It happened to me too a few times. I have to let it die at least once when I play with a friend to show off super saiyan mode, but I can recall at least twice where it just died.

This is intentional as Repossession isn't a 'colonize' effect, it is literally mind controlling the existing population permanently.

We feel this is better left in the realm of modding. I may make one myself at some point, but first I want to do some other stuff to get new players into the game.

Feels like Orkulus Rex got off a little too easy - the Empire Tree requirements just mean VR will be using econ techs to better churn out maintenance-free battlestations, and a modest 25% damage debuff for 60 seconds just means it'll hesitate to jump into a large enemy fleet with no support - hitting mid-size fleets and lightly defended planets seems just as viable as before.  Not that the basic idea is bad - a 50% damage debuff for 120 seconds would mean you'd actually have to think about when to jump your SB in.

Eh, guess we'll see when the MP community decides whether to keep VR banned. 

On the upside, I am liking these other changes - am I reading it right that Corvettes are no longer affected by Titan AoEs?

Could make it an option setting.........

We will update the game so it will no longer load outdated map versions.

No... but they clearly need to be if they are intended as a counter to titans, as their damage type would suggest.

Well, it is nice to hear this from the devs, but Assimilated Populace should still apply when you use Repossession. When you mind control the people, aren't you Assimilating the Populace to the way of the Unity? It would also be a good synergy between this less useful tech and the Coronata's more situational abilities.

Otherwise, when you get the Coronata you have a choice: either use Repossession to capture the planet quickly, or bomb it and then capture it to get Assimilated Populace. Repossession would be much easier, and so Assimilated Populace is very rarely used. If you made the tech and the ability work together (in typical Advent synergy fashion), then both would be used more and it would make the Advent Loyalists a slightly stronger and more different faction.

An easy string update and a little bit of work in the code, and this missing synergy could be amended.

I actually think that this would still not be enough, and that the VR would still be banned from multiplayer. However, the 120 seconds is a great idea. I propose that for the first 40 seconds after a VR starbase jumps into a gravity well, it does 75% less damage and is dealt 75% more by any attackers. For 40 seconds after that, it does 50% less damage and is dealt 50% more by attackers. For the last 40 seconds, it is 25% less damage and takes 25% more. After the 120 seconds are up, it takes regular damage and dishes out 100% of its own.

A 500 credit, 750 metal, and 1000 crystal charge for each starbase jump would also help quite a bit. If the VR player did not have the funds, the starbase could not jump. This might be more complicated to do, though.

I also think that this patch looks great. It is obvious that the devs put a lot of work into many areas of Sins for this patch, and fixed, added, and improved a ton of things. Job well done, StarClad.

How often do you play online? I'm plagued by mini dumps for half the games I should win online. Its so frustrating I have almost gone back to playing Starcraft II.

ahh k, well that is a tad unfortunate.  I Appreciate the reply and information in any case- always great to get such a quick and enlightening reply from the boys upstairs.

 Well I suppose that shifts me from hoping for a bug fix to hoping the dev team considers enabling  the Repo+Assimilated Populace hypothetical potential combo

Regardless, going to be great on Tuesday when this patch hits.

What about Chastic Burst and Wail changes?

Great set of updates for 1.04. If I put myself in the ICO chair and ask, "What race would I wanted to play?," three things come to mind based on this update:

1. I might not actually want to be VL. STTC is not really a viable strategy any longer, except for scorched earth policy (which has its place). There are still a lot of good things for VL, so I still might want to be them. It means I'd rotate among VL, TR, TL, and AR. That's a good thing.

2. Notice that I didn't write AL. I don't see any reason in 1.04 why I would ever want to be AL. Am I missing something? AL really need a mega-culture ability that just completely wipes out all contenders. Too easy to defend against that. Perhaps make the 2 sb culture upgrades as "built-in" to every AL starbase. That'd be serious, i.e., AL starbase on any planet would more or less eventually take it completely over if left unchecked, i.e., something like the unchecked Orkulus.

3. VR will have to be field tested. It's an interesting point that you can "take them down" by going to find the civ labs. Still, I don't think this is enough to get VR allowed back in multiplayer. VR player just sits a mean starbase on a desert planet full of labs, and he's safe. Ideas out there for V1.05: (a) make jumping an ability upgrade, (b ) make mobile sb's count against fleet supply, and/or (c) make 60 s debuff of weapons into something much longer.

By the way, the +10%/level for destroyed titan seems very good. That value can perhaps be adjusted upwards a bit based on feedback from ICO play.

yarlen, thank you for the statement about the map reading issue.

harpo

VR in a 5v5 eco spot will now have an even easier time in lobbing out SB after SB, but aside from that it will be more prohibitive in most starting positions. Be interesting to see on ICO on Tuesday. For AL, the Fury of the Unity change is nice but for that high tier a tech it still is underwhelming considering it needs culture, which sadly wasn't addressed at all. I was hoping there would something, anything, to buff AL's ability to spread culture. The Coronata got a huge buff, giving it real Titan killing potential along with the Ragnorak, although I'm not sure the impact of changing damage type from  Physical to Energy is.

As far as the maps go, what size are the ones besides the Random? Are they balanced for resources/starting positions? 

Interesting changes. Unfortunately cannot test them out. My water cooling pump gave a fit yet again  

This is just a pet peeve... lol... but can someone please address the Players "InGameName" option in galaxy forge... please???  I know it's a little thing compaired to balancing out the game, but I love making custom maps of different combat situations, and I would love to be able to actually use it and have the ability to name an opposing faction in a single player game, like it's supposed to.

Thanks! 

I completely endorse this

Neat ****:

• Corvettes with own weapon damage type
• Superweapon to planet ratio of 1 to 4 -EXCELLENT!
• 10% boost to build cost and time after Titan dies
• Snipe AiUseTime! to nail Titans and Starbases
• Shipboard Labs has been split into two research subjects:
• Shipboard Labs (Tier 7) will grant 1 military lab per capital ship.
• Empire Integration (Tier 7) will grant 1 civilian lab per capital ship.
• Starbase mobilization research balancing and penalty to starbase on entry

• [ Interface ] Added new UI option: Empire Tree - Show Ships in Phase Space, which toggles whether ships phase jumping to other gravity wells are displayed in nods in the Empire Tree. (Helps prevent the Empire Tree from 'jumping' around.)

• All the stuff in Modding

• Increased formation distances between frigates and capital ships to prevent ships from clustering too closely during group phase jumps (which slowed things down while they waited for formation).

Expected Meh:

• Eradica Buffing
• No Corvette Armor Type
• No Titan Level drop or did I miss something?
• L10 Titan dies, but is rebuilt titan still L10 or L9 or L8 -any levels lost at death?
• GalaxyForge still largely ignored
• Starbase still phase jumps... but at least it takes more to do it.

Really its not much of a choice. Instantly taking the planet is much more useful given hardly anyone builds siege frigates. The time it saves is worth far more than the mediocre economic benefit of Assimilated Populace. Of course the ideal thing would be for Repossession to take over planet upgrades as well, but it seems that won't be happening.

Even two minutes is far too short a time frame, given any reasonable debuffs. Most battles with an Orkulus Rex will take far longer than that, and I'd argue this the totally wrong approach to balancing them. While I'd argue Starbases in general could use a few more weakness (or at least better antistructure options for Advent and Vasari), its really not a lack of counters or tactics that makes them so powerful. Its that this one research makes every starbase that player will ever build infinitely more flexible, leading to much more abuse by players who ignore fleets and build swarms of these things, despite being an "end game weapon". They need to be much harder to use so players can't field an Orkulus Rex on every planet, not weaker.

To whoever at Ironclad seems to think this "slap on the wrist" to starbases jumping in is enough to fix the problem, I'm sure any semiregular or better ICO players would love to show you why more radical action is required first hand.

Assuming the VL are put more in line with the patch, I'm sure Chastic Burst at least will get some attention in the next patch. Out of all the faction unique "end game" techs, Wail seems to have the least argument on if its over powered, and if so what to do about it.

Its not a huge thing, but its probably a minor nerf. The only things I can think of that affect this on abilities would be that the Radiance will gain some antimatter after getting hit with Unity Mass if it has Energy Absorption, and that the TEC Rebel corvette debuff that increases the damage ships take from physical damage no longer applies in the odd case of a TR and AL double team.

Sounds like they added the missing ships and planet bonuses, so that's a plus.

For Repossession to take the planet at with all of its population and planet upgrades would be ideal, and this would eliminate the devs having to make Assimilated Populace work with Repossession because you would already have the population. And I agree that with the tiny buffs presented by Assimilated Populace, it is not ever worth it to bomb a planet and capture it instead once you have a Coronata with Repossession.

Well, I did suggest a resource cost every starbase jump, and though I suggested lower numbers before, I now think that a 1500 credit, 2000 metal, and 2500 crystal charge per jump would be sufficient for proper balance, combined with my other suggested debuffs after a jump. Just my opinion, though, and I am by no means the most experienced of Sins balance aficionados.

I think that Wail is fine as is, though it could give some kind of warning (I don't really have an idea for that). For Chastic Burst, I would suggest a cap on affected targets.

Anyway, thank you GoaFan77 and Pbhead for assisting with the new maps. I'm sure they will be awesome.

Haven't been around for a while, but checking back in and finding this makes me very happy, especially the following:

Added new Corvette weapon damage type Great
Updated Corvette damage balance per new weapon damage type.
The maximum number of superweapons a faction can field is now based on the number of planets they own. By default a faction can field 1 superweapon for every 4 owned gravity wells.  THANK YOU!!!!  Question though, can you still have a superweapon even if you only have one planet and do they deactivate if you lose planets?
The Frigate target filter will no longer improperly target Corvettes.
Destroyed Titans now cost an additional 10% per level in resources and build time.

TEC (All)

Corsev Battlecruiser: Capped the maximum number of targets on Demolition Teams to 25 from unlimited.  This thing needed a nerf.  Idk if this was the right one, but the effort is definitely appreciated.  We'll see how it goes.
Corsev Battlecruiser: Updated Demolition Teams autocast to target Boarded vessels.

TEC Loyalists

Novalith Deregulation now allows TEC Loyalists to field 2 superweapons for every 4 owned gravity wells. Once again, this is awesome!

Advent Rebels

Eradica Titan:  Unyielding Will re-designed Awesome to hear that this thing getting changed like this!

Vasari Loyalists
Stripped to the Core scuttle time is now dependent on the planet being stripped:  Asteroids/Dead Asteroids - 60 seconds; Desert - 240 seconds; Ice - 260 seconds; Volcanic - 280 seconds; Terran - 300 seconds; Home worlds - 400 seconds.
Stripped to the Core income is now affected by Fleet Upkeep penalties.  Idk how I feel about the taxation, but the time increases is something I've definitely been interested in trying.
Shipboard Labs has been split into two research subjects:

Shipboard Labs (Tier 7) will grant 1 military lab per capital ship.
Empire Integration (Tier 7) will grant 1 civilian lab per capital ship.

Vasari Rebels

Moved Starbase Mobilization from Defense to NonCombat tech tree with a pre-req. of Enhanced Tunneling. YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!  I'm afraid though that it might not be enough since any competent Vasari player will want phase gates and this doesn't add much to the lab cost for it.  We'll have to see how exactly it impacts things in MP.
Starbase Mobilization is now disabled if the player doesn't maintain enough labs for the research to remain active.  Good to hear.
Vasari Rebel starbases now suffer a 25% weapon damage penalty for 60 seconds after exiting phase space.  Again, perhaps not enough of a nerf, but definitely appreciated.
Added an appropriate error message when a starbase fails to jump to a gravity well due to their already being a player starbase present.  This was annoying me quite a bit.  Thank you.


 
[ Interface ]


Added new UI option: Empire Tree - Show Ships in Phase Space, which toggles whether ships phase jumping to other gravity wells are displayed in nods in the Empire Tree. (Helps prevent the Empire Tree from 'jumping' around.)
Anything that helps prevent jumping is an an excellent thing.

[ Modding ]


Added new Corvette ChanceToHitTargetType to gameplay.constants.
Added new Corvette weapon damage type to gameplay.constants.

DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:CapitalShip 0.65
DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:VeryLight 0.50
DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Light 1.5
DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Medium 0.6
DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Heavy 0.5
DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:VeryHeavy 0.55
DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Module 0.35
DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Pirate 0.50
DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Titan 0.7

Added cannonsPerGravityWellRatio to gameplay.constants.
Added cannonGravityWellRatioDenominator to gameplay.constants.
Added new buff modifier - CultureSpreadModifier.
New aiUseTargetCondition - HasBuff. Only autocasts on targets who have the specified buff.  Awesome!
Form:
aiUseTargetCondition "HasBuff"
buffType "BuffMyBuff"
Increased iconBackdropDefs from 3 to 5.
New buffInstantActionType: ApplyBuffToFirstSpawnerNoFilterNoRange. Same usage as ApplyBuffToLastSpawnerNoFilterNoRange.


 [ Misc ]

Increased formation distances between frigates and capital ships to prevent ships from clustering too closely during group phase jumps (which slowed things down while they waited for formation).  Another thing that any change to help fix is welcome.

Very much looking forward to Tuesday.  I may not exactly agree with the implementations of everything in this patch, but I definitely love the mentality behind them.  Great job devs!