@DesConner   for your forum activity. You've had some really good posts.

On the damage type for mines I'm a little curious as mines use ability/buff to cause damage and not weapons. Therefore the instant action type is DoDamage for 700 or 1050 respectively that affects shields and hull and is shared damage. I don't see anything around buffs that indicates there is a damage modifier. I guess my understanding was damage dealing abilities inflict 100% of the damage to hull and/or shields based on the damage affect type (normal mitigation and armor rules apply of course). Is this innacurate?

Ah, so all abilities use the CAPITALABILITY damage modifier in gameplay.constants then?

Well, given their appears to be no other ability modifier then yes it makes sense. However, i might have also assumed there would have been a non-capital ability modifier, but apperently not.

Keep telling them until they hear

Well mines don't seem to do 100% damage to everything other than capitals with the limited experience I've had of them.  I'd like them to be substantially more deadly- as it is, with the best result where an enemy force enters the minefield you might destroy a couple of frigates, but this only pays for the cost of the minefield, so at very best you break even- except that the enemy has already had the use of the ships, while your minefield does nothing until it is destroyed. 

Unless your fleet is present, its difficult to capitalise on damage that doesn't destroy, and TEC minefields at least can't be meant for fleet support?  The Advent mines are the only ones difficult to sweep, anyway.  I might add mines to the original four priority enhancement requests, unless anyone can present a case for keeping the explosive power as it is.  The Subverter/Ruiner combination would be the only worry, but if it were only the gravity mines that got the increased explosive power as well, it might correct the deficiency identified earlier by Darvin? 

Even the Advent mines seem to be considerably less powerful than I expected.  Is it reasonable to assume that if you have a Drone Host next to a couple of enemy carriers and deploy three sets of mines almost on top of them, that they would be destroyed?  The cost of the mines themselves is equivalent to losing more than a Drone Host, plus you then have another Drone Host without any strikecraft.

I'm still hoping for tactical advice on mine deployment, or examples of successful use.  My impression, however, is that mines are just an ignored part of the game.  I've only ever seen them in multiplayer with a Ruiner, or when someone was left alone for ages in a locked FFA, and had the time and funds to deploy TEC mines.

A few players seem to have the attitude that multiplayer might be better without mines, as they cause lag, and any increase in effectiveness might lead to them being deployed by players, rather than just AI.

A severely restricted number of effective minefields would seem better than many ineffective ones.  Naval mines were very dangerous to ships, but they were mostly limited to restricted waters close to harbours, and the three dimensional nature of space would seem to further limit their role.  

How about a limit of three minefields per grav well rather than the current limit, and cranking up the damage accordingly?  That would make them more effective and usable.  As scouts have lost their combat role, it would be good to have them needed for minefields, rather than players just ignoring mines because the damage isn't critical and is spread around a fleet.  The mines might then be cost-effective.  A limit of three minefields wouldn't affect Ruiner or Drone Host deployment techniques, though if mines were to be made vastly more powerful a greater arming period might be necessary, to prevent abuse.  Also the AI minefields wouldn't then affect the game. 

Alternateively, have them be able to kamikaze into a ship while in squad form, dealing significantly less damage than if they were deployed.

That would help to mitigate the ai's habit of building to many mine squads. But wouldn't that also be invading the bombers role to some extent.

the marterdom ablity officially sucks.

Its like... almost as powerfull as the gauss rail gun (rofls)

I really thought it did splash damage... well it doesnt.

the autocast (which starts off) sends the scout in at around 1/2 health... which means that its got to make it from point a to point b before it blows up, and considering it is being focus fired... gl with that.

ya, so itll do 80-90 damage to that capital ship... (before armor)

So... if you happen to be bored... and have 50 scouts lying around... and have 4 military labs... and are rediculous at micro... you can prolly take down a lv 1 cap ship.... for about twice the fleet supply and cost as that cap ship.(not including research)

however... that being said and all... if i see you with 50 scouts... ima going to be verrry carefull with my cap ships!

I actually once lead such a project for Battle for Middle Earth 2.  Basically, if we could change it with a text editor, it was fair game.

It's impossible to say what we could do for Sins, but at very least I'd wait to see what the next patch has in store.

Darvin is the lead on our community multiplayer map pack project also... and I would suggest that the community patch include new maps.

Three of the four worst military technologies I've identified have just never been integrated into the game, so there's no real starting point for balance- as soon as they become at all useful they will start to change the game as it exists.  Planetary shields should have been adjusted with Entrenchment, when all factions got a superior version of the technology available on their starbases.

Also we might have to be careful not to break the combat AI.  The maligned Repulse, like Resource Focus, is another example of a feature that has been heavily affected by changes to the design of the gameplay, and though Repulse was then nerfed slightly many consider it still to be a balance issue.  But were these issues produced by 'dumbing down' the game in response to poor play?  Should they be solved by a return to the original design?

The original design of the game had Illuminators as different from other LRF, they countered capitals and heavy armour more effectively, but LF with medium armour not as much.  This meant that Advent were more vulnerable to light frigates, so Repulse may have been intended to prevent the Advent support cruisers being picked off by faster LF.  Also, Illuminators were more effective against Subverters than standard LRF.  However, when Illuminators became anti-medium in v1.04 the range of usefulness of light frigates declined, and as Repulse was no longer needed to cover a weak spot it became more of an offensive than defensive ability.  Advent have been the balance problem for much of the game's history from then on.

For a while I have contended that the option chosen when the Illuminators were made similar to other LRF was wrong, and that in fact other LRF should have been more like Illuminators.  Instead, what has happened is that LRF damage against LF has been generally decreased, so that instead of LF being a good option against only Advent, they became poor, modified to weak when it was realised that LF were going out of the game entirely, against all factions.  

However, if in the patch we returned to either the original anti-capital Illuminators, or moved to entirely anti-capital LRF with less effect against LF, would it impact the AI's automatic choice of target in combat?  What I'd like most is to have LRF that were no better at attacking capitals but lost their superiority against LF- switch them to anti-heavy: 50% light 75% medium, 125% heavy, 75% capital and anti-heavy and LF with anti-medium: 100% light and medium, 75% heavy and 50% capital and anti-heavy.  That might solve both the Repulse and Subverter problems without hitting capitals.  Flak could become more vulnerable, solving the flak problem without having to limit flak effectiveness against strikecraft.  However the hardcoded AI might not be able to handle this.

Got that?  It took me a while to work the original intent of Repulse out, and I've played many many games.  This could be a very complex game, and if if was balanced with all its features it would be.  I've also been advocating superweapons that were an effective end to games.. of course, if the resources were limited, as they were in the original design, the existing superweapons start to become superweapons again.  The more I research the game the more I become convinced that some of the original concepts are much superior to the carrier strikecraft=no antimatter cost game that exists at present.  Why tone down some of the combinations like Malice-Vengeance to the extent that they were no longer used, and capital ship variety became an issue?  Why was there a need to look for 'other methods' of victory when there were civics technologies like the Difference Engine, returning fleets and Insurgency that already presented alternative paths- had they been implemented?        

Here's another problem.  There is a mod that aims to add more mobility to combat because the designers find the game too static.  Yet if you watch a really good player, the combat is anything but static.  Good players micro, can you imagine a top Starcraft player's reaction to a mod that automatically 'flew' units around...?  But how many players who post on this board can say that they have seen a really good player in combat?  I might have seen it two or three times, for obvious reasons it only happens when they are under pressure, and most times the top players can just exploit a better knowledge of counters or better strategic planning.  But micro doesn't just mean being able to retreat capital ships at the right time.  Can we balance a patch without these extremely talented individuals?  How much skill should it take as a minimum?  Should anyone who can't play multiplayer be involved at all, as they just don't 'know' the game?  I wouldn't want the game dumbed down some more...

'Constant developer involvement with the community continues to hone both Sins and Entrenchment and will do so for a long time.' March 2009 

By the combat AI I meant the combat auto-target AI, not the strategic AI.

Your input is always welcome, I shall be sure to refer to it as the Indifference Engine in future, to make it more clear- and the non-returning fleets, until they are made useful once more, perhaps...

Players say that there are no counters to LF but LRF and it just isn't true.  Heavies counter LF.  Capitals counter LF, and isn't that one of the main purposes of the patch, to have a greater role for non-carrier capitals?  Turrets counter LF...  Up to v1.04, if LRF were the only counter to LF, Advent had no counter as Illuminators were anti-capital.  Would you agree that the change altered the game substantially?  For the better?  It led to an extended period where balance greatly favoured Advent.

Would you agree with the central point, that effectively including all of the unused technologies would make for a far deeper game very unlike what we have at the moment?  For the Indifference Engine to work, Culture would have to work...

I'm very tired of carrier capitals, all of them exploit the hole that their strikecraft don't need antimatter, so they don't 'pay' for poor play.  Zombie bombers is just the worst case, where the hole is exploited so much that it completely distorts the game.  However the Halcyon is nearly as bad, especially after the extra squadrons rather than extra strikecraft in a squadron change, that was a dumb down option.  As the carriers have gained large numbers of squadrons compared to carrier cruisers, I'd also have all of them pay costs for rebuilding strikecraft, at a reduced rate, but still some cost.  Nothing should be entirely free in games, free strikecraft is worse than 'free' returning fleets- which were expensive to set up, not free from the first minute of the game... also the 'free' returning fleets even had a cooldown, which could have been nerfed to just have a larger cooldown... larger than 35s, anyway. 

If we simply waited for the developers it would give them no assistance at all.  Also, we have been told that 1.02 is not under development.  While we have also been told that there is, however, still developer interest, a community patch might sharpen that interest...?     

I think this is more a case of too many prerequisites; this ability is quite fine once you have it on the field, the problem is that it's an 8th civic lab level tech with a 5th and a 7th level tech as prerequisite, and requires a network of expensive phase stabilizers be built to support it.  That's a massive investment to get it off the ground, but once you have it this ability is just to die for.

I'm not sure how to fix it; if we push it too far it will once again turn into a "GG" ability once it's on the field (the Kostura is bad enough in that way...), but on the other hand I don't see an easy way to reduce its rather steep prerequisites.

First of all, that leaves the LF uncountered until you hit the 5-lab mark and get these tanks on the field.  Secondly, heavy cruisers are really bad at chasing after light frigates.  Long range frigates at least can use that long range pepper more distant targets, but a heavy has to stay close and keep pursuit of a much more agile unit, something it really isn't built for.  I do believe that LF need to be countered by a unit that has some answer to its mobility, and the LRF has that answer with its range (or, with illuminators, their side-beams).  I don't think a heavy assault tank is the right kind of unit to counter this one.

Not really; a battleship or other strong tanking capital, sure, but throw a Halcyon, Antorak, or Akkan against a swarm of LF and they will be high-tailing it outta there.

I don't mind this being the advantage of carrier capitals ships, but you are certainly correct that something needs to change about their current dominance.  My view is to tone back bombers, and then bring the other capital ships up to the same level as the carriers.