We could balance it by letting starfish target corvettes.

If that's the way it works, it pretty much equate to an hp buff then.  Or armor, not sure which.  Either way, something like -25%-50% damage from AoE would be better than immunity I think.  No ship should be immune to a certain type of attack.  i don't even like that there are certain frig/cruiser abilities that can't target capitol ships.  Or even that the corsev can't take one over...yeah, I see the need balance wise, but realistically?  It does not make sense.

-Twi

First, as I said you'd need far more than -25%-50% damage reduction to make corvettes viable against titans. A level 4 chastic burst would probably still one hit KO them at that level. Even heavy cruisers do not last that long against high level titans, hence why they desperately need some sort of frigate that is effectively immune to them.

Second, why can't your frigates attack fighters? The rational is they are too small for the guns on everything but flak frigates. Well, to titans corvettes are basically fighters, so why would they even waste their big guns and abilities on them?

Third, what exactly has been done according to "realism" in Sins.]? Why can you only build one titan or have only 2000 fleet supply? If you have the money, realistically shouldn't you be able to keep building ships? And why can't my Novaliths or Orgov's fire at your titan? Why can terran planets only support 14 times the population of asteroids? We could go on and on, but as long as there is some sort of rational that has just a tiny amount of truth to it, game decisions should be based on balanced, not "realism".

One thing no-one has really talked about much, but I think needs mentioning when discussing killing a titan, is not just being able to kill it, but also focusing on taking away your opponants ability to re-build another one.  This is where a war of attrition becomes so important...  you need to focus on choking off your opponants resources.... shatter his trade routes if possible...  Find where the titan is being built and superweapon that planet to death....  or all of the above... whatever it takes.....

Titans are super expensive, so I would advise using every opportunity you can to make your opponent pay dearly for it! 

The hit points of the thing make this tougher to pull off.  If it was more vulnerable it would be routine--but if it was more vulnerable, it would be easy to have your opponent get momentum and never recover.

In principle, I agree that its realistic to think that the factions would have Titan counters. This is the way the world works. someone develops a technology, and then someone else makes a counter for it.

 

I could see some kind of Cap ship sized warhead strapped to a pair of phase engines for the TEC that would cost around 4k credits. If you can get it into the same grav well as an enemy titan, it would kamikazi , doing significant damage. It would NOT be able to destroy a Titan with full HP. Or you could just leave it to defend a key world. The player would have to decide if researching and purchasing it is worth it.

It would have ridiculous amounts of armor, enabling it to stand up to a full-on Titan assault, but would not be capable of attacking any other unit.

 If not a nuclear warhead, then an EMP with the same design.

Give it the Kodiak's ability to close quickly.

For balance, it would have no HP regen, so of the Titan manages to get away, the player can snipe it with other units.

Of course the other races would have their equivalent.

Titans would still be incredibly powerful units, but they would no longer be able to prance around with impunity. This is balance, imo.

I Killed a titan with 70 Illums and 6 Guardians, with repulse and deceptive illusion. (Repulse to push the fleet back).

 

Its not hard to kill a titan, unless your in early game. Mid-Late game it is quite medicore, depending on fleet compostion.

 

It doesn't even have to kill the titan itself--just make it more vulnerable to being killed would work.

Where it would matter and make a big difference would be in an evenly matched titan-fleet battle but where one side had the hunter and the other didn't.

This would apply at any stage of the game.

Exactly why Corvettes are perfect for the job.

Corvettes are not sexy cool and have a lifespan measured in seconds.

That's why you send a crapload of them like LAC's in the Honorverse novels.

That's why I support removing them from titan AoE attacks. Right now yes, they'll die to fast to them.

      I still think the easiest way it would actually be done by the devs, w/o any major rework would be to let anti-structure ships target Titans.

Not really, the Vasari don't have one and the Advent one is bad at focus fire. If they were all like the Ogrov maybe, but that only helps the TEC and thus isn't a good structural counter to them. All factions do have Corvettes however.

The Vasari have their moving starbases as their anti structure ship.

And as far as Advent/TEC anti structure comparison, this game is more interesting without exact matchups.

The Japanese had Zeros....we had Mustangs......

Personally I think making corvettes into Titan killers is a terrible idea. As it stands already, you can mass bombers or LRMs to kill Titans if you don't have one (and if you don't have one, you should have a LOT more cash to afford a much larger fleet). Corvettes are already effective enough at what they do without encouraging spamming them even more against Titans.

And honestly I do not think that was a good decision. People building orkies in enemy gravity wells primarily do so to force the enemy fleet to attack where they'll have an advantage, the fact it's good against structures is just a bonus. Besides, it can already fire on nonstructures.

In general, but in this case I think a closer matchup is needed, titans are so important to the game now that every faction needs a better viable way of dealing with them, or at least wearing them down. If you were to rely on antistructure cruisers the Advent and Vasari would just keep spamming bombers, because that would still be more effective. Besides, the Corvettes are even more different than the antistructure cruisers with a different debuff for each subfaction, not just race, but they have roughly the same base offensive stats.

Personally I only build corvettes against LRF spam and for early game expansion, and have not seen anyone build corvettes late game. They are at best mediocre against everything else but titans. Corvettes are also unique as they are the only type of ship we could remove from Titan AoE target filters. In theory I'd like Heavy Cruisers to counter titans, but we don't have any way to make them immune to Chasitc burst, which defeats the whole point. We can however do that to Corvettes, and I think there needs to be some sort of frigate besides carriers that can attack titans without fear of being torn apart by them. As it stands now Corvettes are the only real option for that.

Even before the beta was released, a major concern was that the counter to titans would end up being bombers, which are already extremely effective against almost anything. While the Devs did give the titans antistrikecraft weapons to try and deal with that, they really don't make a huge impact on huge swarms of them. I wish we would have been more adamant about it early on that either bombers need to be nerfed or titans less vulnerable to them.

I see corvettes still late game. Great for countering bombers and still useful for sniping capital ships. Of course you have to keep pace with your weapon, shield, hull upgrades to help them.

I already mentioned LRMs. 30-40 of them can take down a level 1 Titan really quickly - especially with the damage upgrades they should have by that point in the game. Titans are not the end all-be all some people think they are. Of course the Titan should have a fleet too, that will deal with those 40 LRMs, and the LRMs will also have, yadda yadda.

By the way, the TEC LRM has an AOE explosive warhead upgrade. Is the AOE based on nearby other distinct units or is it just based on a defined distance (in which case it would splash Titans and capitals)...just something I've been wondering if anyone knows.

 

 

 

I think there is agreement that early on titans can be countered. I'm talking about once you get 6+ with maxed out Chastic burst, scattershot and the Maw. It just gets to the point that Caps, titans, starbases and carriers are the only thing that can survive long against these abilities. And carriers are way too OP anyways, and even worse lag the game more than anything else, hence the need for some other frigate you can bring in to a titan fight.

Yes, the one thing I did not like about the new Corvette damage type is that it is more effective against Capitalships than when they used the antilight damage time. Still, I don't claim to be a pro, but I do play some amount of ICO now and its odd I haven't seen this. I've seen a couple of Vasari Loyalists late game with their obscene heavy cruisers, but usually its carriers that by far out number anything else late game. Granted, maybe that's because right now titan AoEs will devastate them as it is currently.

The AoE damage is dealt to all units within a certain range of the target the normal missile weapon has. So it does work well against tight groups of units no matter how far away your LRM are. The Vasari titan AoE (besides Maw), Desperation, works much the same way.

For the record, cluster warheads will do 10 damage to up to six target that are 1200 "meters" away from the target that gets hit by the missiles. Apparently this could include the target you're firing at. However, the mere 10 damage makes it barely noticeable except in very large numbers.

maybe a dumb suggestion but what light frigate abilities could also target titans?  it's not an extreme counter but would just limit/prevent titans from using abilities. plus they die quickly enough that so long as you could clear them out (presumably with lrfs), you would eventually be able to use your titan's abilities as normal. 

 

 

 

Would be way too easy to to shut down titans that way.

 

 

that said, allowing LF in general to survive into the late game would do a ton for late game fleet variety, since LF counter carriers which are what generally get massed these days.

 

 

Honestly at the risk of sounding like a broken record I'm going to say again I think it would be an extremely positive change to make medium armor tak only 50% damage from abilities(since there is an ability damage entry in armor types).  This would make LF almost as resistant to AoE as carriers, giving them late game usefulness without really buffing their early game much(AoE is a lot less prevalent early game).

 

Besides even if LF weren't hard-countered by AoE anymore, their armor type already limits their survivability(both LRF & HC have high damage ratios to them and priotize them as targets).

I don't think any light frigate outright disables abilities (maybe the Cobalt). Sabatoge reactor inflicts damage when abilities are used, drain antimatter well does what it says, and Interference would slow but not stop the abilities. While I might not be opposed to that idea, I still feel there must be a ship you can build that will not get quickly destroyed by titan abilities, and LF abilities alone do not give them much protection.

I love the irony with corvettes. It used to be OMG OP NERF THEM BACK INTO SATAN'S UNHOLY BUTTHOLE and now they're just meh. Something to make as a last ditch defense, or as an annoyance fleet.

I like your AOE/medium armor suggestion.  but in any case, I think lfs' current survivability (or lack thereof) would make it harder to shut down titan abilities indefinitely.  after the mid-point of a battle there likely won't be many lf left.  if the few that are are targeting the titan, that means there are carriers and support cruisers that are not being targeted and doing their things (supporting and carrying).



IIRC, sabotage reactor also prevents ability usage for a small time.  Maybe that's worse or better.   bilun's idea might give lf enough protection, though (or too much?).