Are all these balance claims legit?

Claimed to place in My Replies.

-Twi

Well, you can have as many Starbases as you want, in different grav wells, and fully upgraded they are harder to take down than a Titan, so people complain because it's not hard to research. Last patch did make getting mobile starbase harder, but it's still too powerful, because starbases don't cost fleet supply, and they are easy to build.

In addition, Vasari Rebels have researches like Armor Restoration and Shared Shield Tech. that make their ships way much better than the others', and with Phase Missiles researches Bomber Spam is even more powerful than it is for other races.

I play Vasari Rebel, not on ICO of course, but I myself see that these things need tweaking.

People complain about Titans because once you have a high level Titan it's pretty much unstoppable if you don't have a Titan on your own. Bomber Spam can work, but it's already a counter for too many things, so I think would be better to encourage a different strategy. Corvettes have quite a high damage multiplier against Titans, but they get wiped out at the first AoE skill, so someone suggested to remove corvettes from Titan AoEs, in this way they could work as some sort of counter/harass to Titans.

Problem with star basses is that they have fire-power of a titan and don't need fleet supply. If I play vasari rebel in most cases my fleet would consist of 45 fully upgraded star bases about 10 siege frigates and 1 or 2 capital ship.

I posted reply when I played like that. You can check for yourself....., I had to dispatch a guy first and I still had my first PJ sb before 20 min time. I had 4-5 running sb in 40 minutes. Times might be a bit off but not by much. 

The whole point of this thread is to get people to look at things from a designer's point of view, not justify the complaints...

-Twi

Well, if jumping starbases were with Vasari Loyalists, I could understand, mobility and shit, but Vasari Rebels aren't for mobility at all, and get jumping starbases, instead of the Loyalists, which is kinda stupid IMHO. 

And the Advent Rebel titan is kinda OP with it's lvl 6 ability, its got like 4 minutes of epic antimatter recharge/ability cooldown rate, and now with the patch it has become even stronger... So that claim is legit, altho all the other things I don't really notice(Granted, I play vs AI)

The developers' goal should be that every race gets a fair chance against the others, if a race is banned from multiplayer from the community because there are no ways to deal with it.

Moving Starbase and powerful Titans are not bad ideas per se, but need balancing.

If the developers refuse to understand a problem that bugs the entire community to the point that an entire race is banned, we might as well rely on community mods.

Assuming the developers want to make a balanced game.

The devs/designers don't understand the strategy of their own game, and anyone who says otherwise is either trolling or is just ignorant of the facts....

Take for example when pbhead actually played a game with a dev...halfway through the game, the dev decided "Well, I guess I better get trade up now"....FACEPALM...and then we have Ironclad devs make statements on the forum about how they honestly do not believe jumping SBs is in any way OP....see things from the designer's perspective?  Seriously?  They don't HAVE a perspective, because they don't understand their own game....

I can't speak for Ironclad, but Stardock has a history of awful game balance...it isn't what they care about, it just isn't...they want to make cool games that are fun, moddable, and cool...balance is an afterthought...

Now, that in and of itself isn't bad...SD makes great games that for SP or casual MP are pretty damn fun....they have the right combination of good graphics and low performance compatibility so everyone can enjoy the game...and they support modding far more than most games ever could be....but, from a competitive MP perspective they epically fail, and in no small part because no one on their team is even remotely close to the level of ICO players...

It is blatantly obvious that the devs wanted this game to be a titans/caps game, understandable since late game fleets completely wiped caps like they were toilet paper....the uncapped AoEs of titans marginalize frigates, forcing players to focus on titans, caps, and key support ships (which presumably is what the devs wanted)...what the devs struggle to understand is the power of bomber spam, which has completely replaced the "en mass frigate spam" that marginalized caps in the first place during the late game...so, the devs didn't get the titans/cap game they probably wanted because bomber spam still results in the same effect: you go through caps like toilet paper...

The game is sins of a titan, not so much because titans are invincible but because everything revolves around titans now...it's all about getting your titan, protecting your titan, leveling your titan, making sure you don't feed the other titan, finding ways to kill the other titan, etc. etc....cap choices, technology picks, and fleet compositions revolve around titans (which at high levels are damn near impossible to kill without massive massive fleet advantage or...that's right...your own high level titan)....

As far as specific balance issues, they come in two flavors...you have the things like Starbase Mobilization and SttC, which are (or at least were) grossly unbalanced...the devs can't understand how these things are too powerful because they don't understand what eco players are capable of and they don't understand that a Tier 8 lab requirement is a small obstacle for a skilled player...then you have things like Wail which are not necessarily OP but are implemented in very questionable ways and cover up the otherwise weak assets of a faction...

To answer your question more directly, Twilight, the balance issues people are bringing up aren't really because they aren't skilled....it's because either they are truly unbalanced or they just don't like the implementation....jumping orkies is not a "you aren't skilled enough to counter" them....they are grossly OP, and anyone who says otherwise is either a troll or needs to play a game on ICO...wail and titans are implemented in a way that just irks players...sure, we all know how to counter them, but it's not an inability to counter that irks us: some of us simply don't like their implemenation....

From what I've seen, the races are pretty much in balance except for the jumping Orkies.  Yes, each race has powerful abilities and/or combos that come later in the game, but these aren't blowing out the overall balance.  IMO, they add a richness to the gameplay that wasn't there before.

The problem with the jumping Orkies is that you can get them a lot sooner than the other race's powerful abilities.  Like Greg said above, he had one going 20 minutes into the game - long before you you will ever see a level 6 Titan.  The irony here is that the VR would likely be in balance if you completely took away jumping Orkies.  Their Phase Missile upgrades give them the best bombers in the game and their extra Armor upgrade is very good.  Not to mention the level 6 ability (Dissever) on their Titan...

Regardless of the Dev's intent, jumping orkies are game-breaking.  The biggest problem is when VR are in the Eco spot, where they can afford to just spam orkies, posing a major threat without having to up their fleet supply(meaning they can be a major threat while keeping their tax rate low and thus retaining a strong economy).

Early mid game- when this combo can first go online, killing max upgrade orkies is a HARD fight- and with the Eco Vas Rebel player not needing to hurt their economy to send this powerhouse offensive, by the time the victim finishes the first orky(If they can even manage to do so), the next level 8 orky is already ready to jump in when the previous one dies.  It quickly becomes a battle of attrition the enemy can't win as the enemy needs to increase fleet upkeep to defend, leaving the Vas Rebel player with a far superior economy to keep pumping out orkies with.

not to mention while only 1 orky may be active per gravity well, by attacking multiple locations the Vas rebel player can have several active.  Several orkies at that stage of the game is fielding a larger total fighting force then most other players, once again for 0 fleet supply.

The other fundamental problem is that Orkies are by design extremely difficult to defend against once upgraded.  This was balanced in the past by the fact that they had to be upgraded on-site, resulting in a long period of vulnerability before they became upgrade-8 incarnations of destruction.  And frankly orky-attacks were already a very strong tactic even with that weakness- remove that weakness by allowing them to be upgraded off-site ata  safe location and orky attacks are a joke.

Right now titans are too much of the game's be-all end-all.  Once they've leveled up a bit you can't counter them with frigates, you can't counter them with capitalships.  You can only counter them with other comparably leveled titans, which in an RTS/4X should be setting off alarm bells right off the bat.  Honestly they either need an external counter(corvettes perhaps?) or they need to not be so efficient at killing frigates en-masse.  Right now because of how powerful titan AoE is, frigates besides carriers are less then useless(they will accomplish nothing besides giving the enemy titan more exp).

 Honestly it's never good for any RTS game's balance for there to be only a single time of viable late game "common unit."  Counter-unit choice is part of the genre's foundation, and when every fleet looks the same more or less, something is wrong.

But at present the simple fact of the matter is that games are won and lost by protecting your own titan and killing the enemy titan- the game just has too much focus on titans at present- Which is generally a good indication that they are too good at what they do.

 That said, there's a pretty good consensus that the *primary* titan problem at present is the potency of Titan AoE damage- If frigates were less marginalized by titan AoE or corvettes were removed fro mall titan AoE filters(creating a counter-unit), it's very likely the problem would be resolved.

I pretty much agree with Bilun, with the sole exception of the Ankylon (in regards to Titans of course, his analysis of Orkies is pretty much spot on imo and there's nothing more I can really add to it). I really like where the Ankylon is at now, if we can just get it to not be worthless early game, it'll be the way titans should be imo, basically a high level Ankylon is a bit of a weirdo in terms of Titans. Instead of being this big steamroller that crushes everything in its path I.E. every other titan with the possible exception of the Coronata (which is stretching it), the Ankylon is first and foremost a support ship, but is also a tank, as your fleet supports the Ankylon, so too does the Ankylon support your fleet by augmenting its capabilities and reducing those of the enemy, rather than "supporting" your fleet by just turning the enemy into paste with all powerful AoEs.

Sure, the Ankylon packs a pretty good punch (not as much as other titans, but its still more powerful than any capital ship, and is a formidable opponent for any ship when it is on its own turf, due to millitia armor/ weapons and Furious Defense getting buffed there) but the firepower difference is not so vast that smaller ships cannot adapt to survive it, unlike microwave chastic burst + beam weapons +plasma + psionic surge of the Eradica, or the absolutely brutal Kultorask Nano Leech> Gravity Pulse (or whatever the disabling thingy is) > Dissever combo, or the Ragnarov, which laughs at the dps of any other ship even without its antimatter, or The Maw, which doesn't even care if your HCs have full health, they're dead regardless.

The game is so Titan centric that the only way to counter them is either A. Destroy the enemy before their Titan reaches a high level, B. Have your own high level Titan or C. Spam the hell out of bombers and pray (which is too effective of a universal strategy to begin with). I honestly think Titan AoE needs a hard nerf across the board, or else they need another effective counter, which as others have suggested to be corvettes, since they are marginalized late game by the appearance of flak in larger numbers as well as the addition of powerful Titan AoEs which they are extremely unlikely to survive even a single use of.

Too many things at this point to change to bring the around.  No matter how much feedback we put in, Rebellion isn't going to change significantly.  There might be balancing for the next 6 months, but the core mechanics are just locked in. 

Remember, Stardock started development with no input whatsoever from the community at large, then put out the Beta + content/patches, and finally released the game.  Too many people voiced concerns during Beta against 1 titan, level retention, corvette OP, jumping starbases, early game titan dominance, worthlessness of Trinity traditional fleets in Rebellion, and many of the abilities that still have problems.  Those voices of opposition were considered up to the point that they didn't jive with what Stardock wanted. 

This is their game, not ours.  Rebellion is exactly what they wanted; a Titan/Champion dominated quasi-moba where you build your empire and own minions.  You can't play without Titans and jumping starbases, might as well play Entrenchment/Diplomacy.

Hey Samaz, what about the Sa-Matra?  Wouldn't that be a jumping Starbase?

OH GOD

Guys from 7DS are talking about balance when their mod includes titans with massive damage. Damage so high that normal frigates are not worth building at all. Those are 1 shot 1 kill ships and not all races have them.

Well jumping starbases was about the worst thing to pick for that. It is the only thing where there is full agreement in the community that a radical change is required. Its safe to say the devs probably thought of this as getting a giant assault platform to lead an assault late game. In practice, these things replace fleets, as Greg said he could build 40 of them as an eco player and easily get the tech in under an hour.

Its just too bad that apparently there is someone and Starclad who doesn't seem to take this seriously. In the off chance one of them reads this, we would be glad to play a game with you where the pro players all use Vasari Rebel demonstrate how to abuse them first hand.

I know.  I'm trying to poke fun at Samaz since I'm completely willing to admit our mod has plenty of imba stuff and is in no way a serious competitive mod for multiplayer.

On the other hand, Titans with massive damage that one-shot normal frigates that not all races have could describe Rebellion pretty well in some cases.  That Ankylon is a pretty nasty frigate-eater, and I'm sure the Coronata absolutely devours frigates alive, too.  It isn't like they lack of massive railgun and Gauss batteries of the Ragnarov or the Eradica's Chastic Burst. Those Vasari Rebels also get some pretty nasty technologies that buff their hulls and shields to absurd levels in addition to their jumping starbases, so don't you and your friends like to boast about how banned in MP they are?  Both Rebellion and 7DS have major imbas, so don't act like our mod is massively inferior because of that.

Seriously though, 7DS is not a competitive mod, so just go ahead, grab a couple friends, start drinking beer, and stomp some comps into the ground.  Our inevitable move to Rebellion is going to open up some options for that with the Cruel and Vicious AI, especially if the TOC is set at one of those difficulties.

Given this, what could be done to bring them into balance without compromising the developer's vision for their role?  Possible ideas...

- Significantly increase their cost.  Possibly by making jumping a very expensive starbase upgrade.
- Requiring 8 Military and 8 Civilian labs to make them jump capable.  (i.e. by requiring level 8 Fortification and Empire techs to be researched)
- Requiring Phase Nodes at their destination (i.e. needing a Kostura to attack)
- Allowing only 1 jump capable Orkie at a time (a la Titans and through a starbase upgrade)
- Greatly slowing down their speed while they jump (say 1/8 the speed of ships)

I'm thinking any combination of these ideas could be used to bring them into line without losing their ability to lead a late game assault.

Personally I think any solution must be tied to a starbase upgrade that must be purchased separately for the starbase to jump. Otherwise you will nerf purely defensive orkies, possible even without the tech researched. It will also makes their cost scale more with large numbers, and reduces the number of upgrades that can be used for combat.

After that is done, I think the phase node idea or simply making it so they can only jump once say every 5 minutes would do a lot to limit their mobility. It then boils down to how tough they are with only 5-7 combat upgrades instead of 8.

Also in my mod I have kept Orkies at the tier 8 military level, but still with the prerequisite of Enhanced Tunneling, so in effect you need 8 military labs and 7 civic labs. It definitely slows it down but once its online it is just as exploitable.

It's such a fun idea and should stay in the game but should be significantly limited without reducing the effectiveness of the Orky

Really just one accomplishes this and maintains balance

This is quite simply the best solution to the problem.

Before Kosturas come online you have the ultimate mobile defense requiring far less money to defend multiple planets than any other faction can do.

Each expansion into enemy territory would be immediately fortified by a fully leveled star base simply by building a phase node.

With Kosturas or a leveled Antorak you have the ability to attack high valued targets with a fully leveled star base.

This is not an unreasonable implementation of phase jumping starbases, maintaining their hold the line mentality while being able to constantly re-fortify as needed without incurring additional costs to deploy new star bases.

So simple and accomplishes so much to balance this out, they even have the basis for the code in place that prevents a Starbase from jumping to a system that already has a Player starbase present. Add an additional check that prevents jumping as well if there is not a phase node present.

[quote who="Seleuceia" reply="8" id="3226491"]The devs/designers don't understand the strategy of their own game, and anyone who says otherwise is either trolling or is just ignorant of the facts....
[quote]

This is exactly what I'm talking about.  (Although coming from Seleuceia, I am slightly inclined to believe this is a troll in itself...)  Regardless, everybody on these forums seems to have their own idea of how the game is supposed to work.  Suggestiong that the developers of the game don't know how it works is rediculous.  Yes, there are problems with it, and there have always been some minor issues(Or major in the case of Illums) but overall, the game has been balanced very well IMO.  Just take a look at all these different complainst people are coming up with recently.  I've noticed quite a few people opposing there even being a balance issue on some of these, and immediately accused of trolling after.  (Yeah, a couple probably are, but not all of them.)

-Twi

The developers actually welcome this and have used several of our ideas and taken many of our suggestions on balance into consideration.

Your claim is unfounded and doesn't represent the history of changes of this game through the various beta's and subsequent changes. 

Yeah people think that devs are really good at the games they make but this simply is not really true because they don't spend nearly as much time playing the game as they do developing it. Something that might look fine on paper could be horribly broken in practice, as is often the case.

Seleuceia trolls sometimes because he is truly upset by the balance (or lack of) in the game. He's also one of the few players who tries to mod the game to work as he thinks it should, but since he also likes competitive MP, only approved patches will be widely accepted on ICO. So he trolls to show how rediculous the status quo is (or maybe for fun sometimes).

And if Seleuceia is sometimes a troll, I assure you Zombie, Greg and myself are not. And I think its pretty clear we agree with him. Most of the regular or even semi-regular ICO players really are better than the devs (I'd love for them to prove us wrong). Its pretty clear they came up with features that "were cool" first, and then balanced them later. Problem is they do not try to break the game the way competitive players do. Any advantage will be exploited to the extreme, to the point that their entire strategy can revolve around abusing it. And many times its not obvious what these are (unlike jumping starbases), its just once someone figures it out online it spreads like wildfire. In the last days of Diplomacy for example one of the "cheese tactics" was getting a Sova carrier, and buying the levels up to 3 so you could get level 2 Embargo. While that is quite expensive early game, as a rush it was extremely difficult to deal with, and the first time I'm aware of where a strategy relied on purchasing capitalship levels. Corvettes were really the only thing that stopped that in Rebellion, or perhaps we just have so many more OP strategies now.

The developers' is the perspective I aspire to appeal from.

Fun first, game balance second.  The complaints are legit, and vasari rebels are overpowered in many ways.  Titans really aren't overpowered as they are, most complaints were with the factions titans that were UNDERPOWERED.  From what i've seen all the titans are now up to strength.  Now the vasari rebels titan hasn't gotten much balancing because that faction hasn't been played much because the mechanics of how the vasari receive their mobile starbases are extremely exploitable.  By extremely exploitable i mean that players online will be rush building vasari starbases almost exclusively, and all successful team combinations will require at least one vasari rebel player.  That doesn't make for good game play, because the game becomes centered around one faction in team play.  By banning VR in multiplayer we are giving everyone who enjoys playing all other factions a relatively fair and balanced version of sins rebellion.  

By having a balanced multiplayer experience, you have a higher retention of new players playing online, and therefore you will grow your online community.  

win for developers, win for players.

I'd say that the multiplayer community has the right perspective.

This is why if and when Sins2 time comes, I will be very hesitant to get it. MP functionality/stability/features, committment to MP balance, and community-dev interaction/feedback are what I look for in games like this and with Rebellion most of these fail miserably. At this point I honestly think they should just do Sins2 as a SP with campaign and more depth of SP experience. I don't think SD has any experience with MP RTS or shows much interest so they should probably focus on their strengths. The only saving grace to this would be if Ironclad really pushes the MP side more and improves their committment to it. Seeing as their current project is very MP focused, this isn't impossible.

This may be true with Stardock but Ironclad was mostly a non-factor during Rebellion's development for the most part I believe.

By the time Rebellion beta came around and such, they were already focused in on their Sins of a Dark Age and let Stardock deal with Rebellion.

Hopefully if Ironclad is serious about Sins of a Dark Age, they will gain much more experience in balancing and maintaining on online MP community even though it is a RTS/MOBA. So by the time they roll back to SOASE, they can do a better job at it.