I don't get you Kharma.

You make a lot of valid points about balancing and nerfing in thread after thread about strikecraft and flak.

Yet in response to a unit that has been nerfed so much that virtually noone uses it because of prohibitive cost and fleet supply, you scream and scream about how overpowered it used to be. So what?

Let's say as a result of the discussions carriers got over-nerfed to hell to the point that they were never even researched anymore. If people started asking for them to be rebalanced to a useful level, would you scream at them like an old war vet about how it USED to be so terrible, oh dear GOD the carrier spam was AWFUL, you don't KNOW what it used to be like back then!

Or would you say, Yes, they've been over-nerfed, let's make them useful again?

And in response to a question you asked earlier in the thread, I do trust the devs to look at siege frigates and go, Well, they were ridiculously overpowered originally, but now they are flat out useless, let's find a practical, viable point for them in the name of fleet and strategy diversification.

I'm altogether happy with the strength and armour of the things. I'd just like to see their fleet supply and maybe cost dropped a bit - though they should at least be a tier 2 unit across all races.

Rather than going on in this endless circle of one of us saying they're useless and need a buff, and you saying that if anything they should be nerfed more, how about addressing my key points.  To convince me of your position, you'll have to convince me that these concepts are somehow flawed:

1) currently siege frigates have poor health, damage, and cost.  The siege frigates you describe are tough as diamond, dealt lots of damage, and costed relatively little.  There is a vast gulf between these two incarnations, and somewhere in that range I believe there is a balance.  I have repeatedly claimed that buffing one (and only one) of these three attributes is the best way to change the siege frigate.  This would ensure they retain some weakness, but most importantly it ensures they retain a poor cost:health ratio.  This means that cost for cost, a force of siege frigates will still go down faster than other types of frigates.  This was one of the key problems that existed before, and by ensuring we don't buff both cost and hit points, they shouldn't return to that state.

2) light frigates completely outrun siege frigates now, so there is an early game counter to chase them down.  Strike craft are also much stronger now than they used to be, making them more effective early on.  These counters give an effective way to pressure unsupported siege frigates that didn't exist in previous versions.  As well, by making siege frigates viable in the early game, it gives the light frigate and hanger defense renewed purpose that they desperately need.

3) siege frigates will remain terrible as an anti-frigate tool, ensuring that someone who invests in them will have a weaker fleet in a straight fight, and poorer defenses.  As well, their expense (like any other unit) will delay your tech and cause higher level units such as light carriers to come out later in the game.  This means that employing siege frigates is not without its cons, and an intelligent player can scout and take advantage of your situation before your siege frigate force is even completed.

I said that I was at this point out of the debate, and dropping my opposition to buffing the siege frigate.  However, if you're specifically addressing me and asking me to respond....

I won't address your key points directly, because the issue really isn't your key points, as reasonable and decently thought-out as they are.  Rather, I will address my own key points.

In summation, the siege frigate in its un-nerfed form is an inherently "unbalanced" unit.  Here are just a few reasons why:

POINT 1:
Siege frigates are one of a few special units in the game that have the power to "directly" cause you to lose the game, in that they take you off of your planets.  Capital ships, the TEC (and possibly Advent) superweapon, and culture also fall into this caterogy.  But the superweapon is a late game tech, and you will need multiple ones to win the game.  Culture is a late game phenomenon, and you will need multiple planets with multiple propaganda stations, plus time for it to work.  Capital ships will remain too expensive to build willy nilly in the numbers needed to bomb planet after planet into oblivion, certainly at least in the early game.  The siege frigate stands alone as the early game superunit with the power to cause so much harey carey that the game will no longer be fun to play for many people, myself included.  For the newb, it is utterly uncounterable, and they will just lose.  For the non-newbish average player, it is simply a massive pain to deal with.

POINT 2:
Usually there is some balance between a powerful unit, and how difficult it is to use.  It takes skill to use things like carriers correctly.  Not with the un-nerfed siege frigate.  You just spam them and send them to as many of your enemy's planets as you can.  The siege frigate stands alone as an incredibly powerful weapon that is simultaneously incredibly easy to use, strategy-wise, tactics-wise, and micro-wise.

POINT 3:
There is usually some balance between how powerful a unit is and where it appears on the tech tree (pre-nerf Returning Armada didn't appear tech 1).  Not for the siege frigate.

POINT 4:
There is usually some balance between how powerful a unit is and how expensive it is (i.e. the more powerful, the more expensive).  Not with the siege frigate.

POINT 5:
There is usually some balance between how powerful a unit is and how early it appears.  Not with the siege frigate.

POINT 6:
There is usually some balance between a tactic or strategy, and how easy it is to stop or counter that tactic or strategy (i.e. easy tactics should be countered easily, and powerful tactics should be hard/expensive to pull off, and hard/expensive to counter).  This balance doesn't exist with the siege frigate.  The ease at which you can spam them and send them out is not at all matched with any ease to counter them.  Countering them is a nightmare.

POINT 7:
If it's not enough that they directly attack your ability to remain in the game, to add insult to injury they are also one of the few units that directly attack your economy in a major way.  Sure, other units can take out mines or trade ports in a major attack.  But it will be a major attack, more or less, and either way you cut it, losing mines is not nearly the loss that losing planets full of population is.

POINT 8:
As a harassment/raiding unit, they are completely unparalleled and unmatched.  Honestly, the only real counter is to do to your opponent what he's doing to you.  Then the game degenerates into a race to see "who can siege bomb who to death" the fastest.  Your other option is to try to defend (GOOD LUCK!) and be harassed to death putting out fires all over your empire, while your opponent who is piloting the siege frigate laughs at you and gets his jollies, while probably stroking his dick to boot (see one of the posts on this very thread for a great description of the harassment technique - I saw it many times, and so did everyone else).

POINT 9:
Static defenses are useless against siege frigs.  To have any hope, you have to ring all planets with as many turrets as possible, and as many hangers as possible.  This is cost prohibitive and not an option.  Thus, again, the only option is to attack your opponent with siege frigates the same as he's doing to you.

You will say your points were unaddresed in that there can't be harm in buffing one of the stats of the siege frigate (survivability, attack strength, cheapness, etc).  My retort is that I don't believe the siege frigate will lend itself very well to a buff that will put you in your sweet spot, yet keep it out of the hell spot.  The devs tried this, it seems, and were unsuccessful. There is no sweet spot with this unit, you see.  There is simply "neutered" and "hell."  If you start upping one of the stats on the siege frigate, it will jump from where it is now, to OP and unbalanced.  There is a name for this sort of phenomenon in engineering.  It is called "hysteresis."

The bottom line is, in its un-nerfed form, the siege frigate is literally a superweapon.  Oh, it seems innocent enough - just like a lone strikecraft.  And just like the strikecraft, one isn't going to do anything.  But also just like the strikecraft, swarms are devastating.  The difference is, with the siege frigate, only a small swarm is needed (with strikecraft, much larger swarms are needed, not to mention that they are justifiably high up in the tech tree, justifiably expensive, take a justifiable level of skill to use correctly, yadda yadda).

The un-nerfed siege frigate is like a little pandora's box, just waiting for you to open it.  It is way too much power rolled up into way too volotile and small and easy-to-use and easily available package.  Now, if you want it buffed - I won't oppose you.  Go ahead and agitate for your buff.  Add my name to the petition for a buff.  Since I seem to be one of the lone voices that was opposing such a buff, now that I've dropped my opposition, I'd say you have a pretty good chance of getting what you want.

In the latest versions of Sins I have observed that 3 capital ships with 4 Siege Frigates take down a planet over a VERY lengthy period of time... certainly long by comparison to what we experienced before in earlier Sins incarnations. To wipe out a planet as quickly as one used to in the first Sins game, you would likely need about 12 to 14 of them; right now it seems like Siege Frigates do very little compared to capital ships.

You assume that a game of Sins commonly sees all players maintain all planetary habitations for the course of the game (?)... that a destruction of a colony by starships is an unnacceptable turn of events. Perhaps you believe only full fleets ought to be able to do that. Okay, so I build full fleets and destroy your colonies. Same effect.

While he builds Siege fleets, you build normal fleets. Scout, move, intercept. With Entrenchment, mine, starbase, intercept.

Making Siege Frigates less than useful is simply removing one more variation from Sins gameplay, something that to my mind helps keep strategy & tactics fresh. Of course, I don`t read anything here from anyone who wishes to make the Frigates super-powerful. We just want them useful.

Ok heres a suggestion. Bring the Siege frigate fleet supply to 9, lower its price to 450 creds 80 metal and 65 crystal. lower its shields to 100 and hull to 250 increase its weakness to light frigrates by 50%. plus make them a tad bit slower so they can't cross a bunch of planets and kill anything in there path without support.

Happy

you have a cheap effective bomber and an effective counter. Now the siege can't be spammed cause it has a high fleet supply and cost alot more that the basic units. on top of that it is 50% weaker to its appropriate counter and its survivablity has be reduced so it will die if it isn't retreated.

Of course I'm talking about the old siege frigate.  That's the whole point.

I beg to differ.  I work as a paid engineer, with other engineers (3 master's level, 5 or 6 ph.d level), and they (we) all use the word in the manner I use it - in fact we are all paid to use the term in that capacity.  Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to use the term.  I've seen it used in a number of different ways, with a number of slightly different definitions (and sometimes more than a "slightly different" definition).

Back to the topic at hand - if you want siege frigates buffed, like I said, go ahead and do it.  There is no need to convince me of anything - I have officially dropped all opposition to buffing it.

I'm guessing you fall into 1 of 2 categories:  1) people who never played the game in its original incarnation, or 2) people who did play the game in its original incarnation, and yet were still against the siege frigate nerf in the first place.  Category 2 is usually composed of "pros," and "conesseurs" of the game who have exotic tastes for certain gameplay dynamics.  For instance, many catetory 2 folks hate the PJI, and wanted it to remain uber-nerfed, or removed from the game altogether.  Personally, it doesn't matter to me which category you fall into, even if it's "none of the above."  It's just an off the cuff general observation I've made.

No, it's not.  First of all, no one is asking for a super-cheap, diamond plated world-killer that used to be.  As I've said time and time again, I'd like to see a HP buff, a cost buff, or a damage buff (Spiralblitz's suggestion a few posts back is essentially a damage buff; by lowering both their cost and HP their cost:hp ratio stays the same, but their cost:damage ratio improves).  Secondly, units like strike craft and light frigates are now able to better hunt down and kill siege frigates than they were in earlier versions, so the "siege frigate running amok" may no longer be applicable anyways.

For me, I see the biggest change is that the environment in which we're talking about buffing the siege frigate is different than the environment that existed when it was nerfed.  I totally agree, siege frigates running amok killing stuff everywhere would suck, but with the faster LF and stronger SC, I'm convinced that can be avoided while still making the SF a viable part of an offensive fleet.

Well, I searched Wikipedia, two dictionaries, and cross-referenced several websites that came up with a hit when I googled "hysteresis" and they were all pretty consistant towards that definition.

Now, where this confusion may be sourced is in the behavior exhibited by hysteresis curves of ferromagnetic materials, which have very sudden and dramatic drops like you describe.  However, the definition of hysteresis is simply a system whose outputs are based upon past inputs.  Hysteresis curves are a behavior associated with hysteresis in ferromagnetic materials.

As mentioned before, current state siege frigates can be slaughtered by even the most accidental of defenses. You accidentally leave a few ships behind? Well, that's good enough to stop hundreds of fleet points of siege ships. You have a convoy of freshly built ships going to the front? Butcher the siege ships, and they're only slowed down by a few minutes. The potential damage siege ships can do is the most in the game, but the cost to counter them is insignificant. So they don't get used at all.

What's all this talk about hysterisis? Siege ships have no real value until they reach the numbers necessary to completely destroy a planet's infrastructure. I think "Critical Mass" is a more fitting description of the phenomenon. Sure, siege ships can heat things up by killing off a planet's population, but it's only when they can destroy the entire planet that they go nuclear! 1.00 siege ships could reach this "Critical Mass" with ease, at a time when only one kill wins the game. Modern siege ships can't even bomb an empty gravity well without taking heavy casualties from last ditch defenses.

I think that siege ships shouldn't be hitting the field until midgame. Starting game siege ships have to be balanced against a single counter with a single critical target. Midgame siege ships can be tougher and stronger, because there are more counters and more minor targets to kill.

Well for the record, that certainly isn't my consensus.

The AI always keeps its fleet in one huge group.  A player sometimes does this, but if he catches wind (through scouting...) of a smaller strike force he'll be sure to match it with his own secondary fleet.  Seeing as siege frigates cost approximately as much as a carrier cruiser, this gives you strike force a significant combat disadvantage against an enemy force of equal strength.  If you're caught on the defensive, you may have no choice to retreat, and on the offensive siege frigates are easily picked off in a few volleys before they do any damage. 

Nor mine - they are certainly less useful now but still very useful in the right situations - I played a game online the other day where my fleet was smalller but I had Persuasive Economy so could out econ them - I got into an attrition battle with one opponent and basically built ships faster than he could kill them or build enough reinforcements to counter my ever growing advantage (after a certain point) - he then retreated - I followed because I new ships streaming in from all over - and followed and followed and followed - eventually he and his ally stood and fought 6 sytems away from the first battle - and meanwhile my trusty sieg frigates (in gradually increasing numbers) were busily reducing his planets to dust (his defences having been destroyed by my passing fleet)

This was an important use because I needed all my caps at the front - and if I'd stopped to destroy each planet in turn with them my opponent would have been able to rebuild. My continuous offensive rattled them completely and was only made possible by the siege frigates coming along behind.

Nah, I'm with Peter on this....this is how I see siege used successfully, and how I occasionally use it.  When you are pushing a frontline, just a couple siege ships no cleanup duty with a couple escort frigates to prevent rebuilding can clean the worlds behind you.  Siege frigates do more population damage than most capitals, unless they are siege capitals, so they neutralize the economic value of a world pretty fast...then they eventually kill the fortifications too.  While it is true capitals are a better long term investment, sometimes you don't need a full capital, or have time to train and build one.  You just make a couple siege frigates at the factory 1-2 jumps away, and get them to where they are needed quickly.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen someone rebuild and refortify when their enemy's fleet waited around for the capitals to bomb a world.  When you have a decisive upper hand, pushing forward like this often makes a lot of sense.

This is a good example of how to use them currently. They do make a great mop up crew.