I am impressed that the torpedo ships could chew up your fleet given that, according to the data files /gameinfo/gameplay.constants it looks as if anti-module ships do 100% damage to module (starbases) and a mere 1% to anything else (very much unlike Destras). I mean, the explosions look pretty, but unless there is a bug interfering (and no, I have not tried it out, merely read the file of constants), they ought to have a really hard time killing anything when compared with an equal number of just about anything else.

Are you sure that the Advent didn't actually chew up your fleet with the rest of their fleet?

Even without a range advantage they are overpowered. I had a vasari starbase, full weapons, and 3rd armour upgrade and it was taken out by a 3 bar fleet with only 5 of those missile fleets. As soon as I saw them I told the starbase to attack the missile ships. Before my starbase was destroyed I could only take out 3 of them. The starbase had over 10,000 hp and 5000 sheilds.

lol myabe ghosts drive it....

Thats a good point. Even if the torpedo cruisers phase in at point blank range against a star base, they will tend to do tremendous damage before they can be taken down.

I just don't like the idea of the torpedo cruiser at all though. Why does something that can destroy structures in seconds not hurt regular ships at all. It makes no sense. 

My idea for rebalancing them:

Give them more range, and slightly slower speed. These ships should get maybe 30-50% more weapons range. to help keep them out of the skirmish. It also helps them to start doing damage sooner.

Lower their base damage amount. It should take longer to bring down a starbase than it does now.

Remove the damage inhibitors against other ships. 1% is really strange. These are obviously powerful weapons and they should be able to hurt everything. or at least something more reasonable, like 50% reduction. or whatever playtesting finds appropriate with the next change

Add a minimum range. Like submarines, torpedoes have an arming time, it won't allow itself to detonate while its still too close to the ship that fired it. Increase the minimum range of torpedo ships to the average range of other frigates. They would be helpless to fight back against anything attacking them directly. This will leave them vulnerable to faster frigates that can chase them down without fear of being fired upon.

Make sure they are vulnerable to strike craft

edit: also make the torpedoes dumb fire, with only a very weak homing ability. Fast ships can evade them rather easily. This will only make static defenses worth shooting at.

I thought the starfish and the ogrov were anti structure only?  Why on earth are they firing at ships now? 

Dunno.

One could, as one possible explanation, use the simplest of arguments: Starbases cannot dodge. If we posit for fun that those huge torpedoes are stuffed with heavy duty explosives, shaped charges, jammers, with comparatively less space used on guidance systems - or god knows what, just assuming that they are designed very specificially to penetrate the walls of a target that is for all practical purposes nearly fixed in position during the flight time of the torpedo rather than going for soft proximity kills by exploding close to their target, they might not be agile enough to reliably hit much smaller and very mobile targets so they'd be lucky to do any significant damage to or score any proximity kills at all if used against non-structures. The bureau of weapon design know very well that using a different distribution of payload or a design that would make the torpedos more agile and intelligent and hence better for proximity kills would make them more effective against fleets, but that would come at a cost of less efficiency versus Starbases for the same mass, and what they were asked to design was a dedicated Starbase killer since that is what was needed.

As an obviously silly analogy - a good club will kill a fly when you hit it with it, guaranteed, yet the odds of you killing a fly with a club are minimal. A flyswatter, while doing much, much, less damage to the targets that the club are designed for, is almost infinitely superior to a club for the purposes of killing flies. Fundamentally, more power can only be assumed to inflict more damage if it can be applied reliably to the target and directed properly.

Or perhaps it is the influence of the Space Ponies. You never know.

Yeah, I would agree with you that tactics have to be rebalanced so the starbase is not too weak vs some attacks.  All I was saying is upgraded starbases are pretty damn powerful, and I didn't agree with your first post that they needed to be more powerful overall.

I think the Ogrov is fine, minus the reuse of the marza siege gun explosion sound(gets annoying after awhile). If there was one change I'd make it would be to have the torpedos be dumb-fired, that is, once they are launched, they can't track targets.  So basically the Ogrov has to sit still to take the shot and have it hit, and it wouldn't be able to hit fast moving ships.

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE do not nerf anti-structure frigs like siege frigs were nerfed into uselessness after 1.0.

One fairly easy thing to do, presumably, would be to up the priority for fighters or bombers in targeting torpedo cruisers if in a system with at least one friendly structure, however, I have not thought that idea through, so here goes: What would the disadvantages of that be - in other words, in which devious situations would it be smarter not to go after the torpedo cruisers first, accepting the significant casualties to your squadrons.

I'd say torpedo frigs should always be a top priorities for the squads that have decent dmg versus them. if the enemy has a significant amount of bombers, then the fighters could kill them and avoid dmg to the starbase. but then ... bombers get replaced for free over time, torpoedo frigs not. so, in the long run, you'd maybe be better off killing those few than trying to eliminate bombers that eventually get replaced anyway.

just a thought though, must put it to pracitice still. but then, blair I think said they'd look at the torps still.

as for me, I'd think downshootable torpedos would rock. that way a few stray of those guys would still have trouble killing a starbase with figthers, but if they get some air support they would be even more effective. combined arms you know. or even a new type of squad specialised in shooting down other fighters and torpedos (just the projectiles, not so much the launcher ships), but bad at anything else. but I guess new ships are pretty much off the board at this stage.

I don't think the engine supports dumbfire anything.  There's no simulation at all, it's all calculated.

I like this idea of being able to shoot down torps also. You would think that if a point deffence or flak system on a SB that can shoot down fighters would be capable of taking out torps also. They both move at reletively similar speeds (or at least it looks like they do, they are quite alot bigger, I could be wrong!). The flak frigates or other races equivilants could be moved in to chip in as well.

I'm not sure though of how easily, or for that matter wether it would be possible though! Also should or would flak / point deffence work against the Advents anti structure weapon. Plasma I believe. Perhaps it could.

If the Ogrev's torpedos were an ability instead of a weapon, they wouldn't use the gigantic missiles on ships.

I do end up wondering why the torps are far larger than the anti-planet nukes, and larger than many frigates, have a massive explosion, yet are useless against ships.

It would be cool if the torpedoes were fired sova-carrier-missile-battery style, so once fired they could be shot down, to compensate for their long range and huge size. They could also be treated as 'squadrons', and thus build automatically and kill themselves upon every attack, using a 'final attack' ability.

(Overall, I find Ogrev's weird, though they do fill a very useful role.)

It was an ability in beta 1, but that made it impossible to group target and you had to babysit the cooldown of each ship if you wanted it to nuke the same target because auto-use went all over the place. I don't really like that it was made weapon-based because it can be targetted on ships.. but I think it will be better if the Ogrov sound is toned down. The sound works on Marza's raze planet because you don't hear it 20 times back to back.

I'd like to see the Vasari siege ships gain an anti structure power. Vasari siege uses giant lasers, why shouldn't they be good against both planets and in space?

Possibly, but I was watching what the ships themselves we targetting (their weapon is pretty distinct).  I'll try building a fleet of the things myself.  See how it turns out.

Edit: You are 100% correct sir.  I took a fleet of 8 Orgovs (with 2/3 of the damage upgrades) on patrol and came upon a lone Advent Missionary craft.  Their huge wave of missiles barely scratched the paint.

hm, well, they are weak and expensive enough. could be cool.

now, if we are discussing vasari and anti-structure capabilities, I have a little idea: given that starbases for vasari are designed for offensive purposes also, how about a research option that speeds up their construction rate in enemy territory? I am not talking about instant build and I love the slower build rates in neutral and enemy wells, I believe I was even among those who suggested it, but does make it kind of hard for vasari to assault heavily upgraded starbases without bad losses. speeding up SB construction rates somehow would probably help and make sense.

I agree that the Anti Structure ships need to be toned down abit.

The Vasari Starbase's first weapon upgrade (the lightning zaps) is meant to be particularly good against buildings, and IC said they'll probably beef it up a bit still.

This is why they don't have dedicated anti-structure ships.

I was not going to argue that. I was just saying it's a bit more difficult and as such some other benefit could help them. but then, the anti-structure beam will apparently get some loving, so ...

I am just thinking that as a vasari, it must be a pretty nightmare to attack another vasari with a starbase. I mean, the see you ships, move their starbase there and voilá, your base-in-construction gets assaulted by another base which may have a weapon specifically designed to kill it.sure it's possible to survive it, but the thing will have a very hard time from the get-go.

But it is USELESS! It is almost impossible to build a starbase offensively now against a competent opponent, and once you've got the damn thing built and sunk much more than the cost of a mobile missile cruiser fleet, it's stuck in the gravity well! It just reeks of poor design.

What's wrong with being stuck in the gravity well? Now it's a defensive post for your new territory.  I mean you dont need to upgrade the thing to demigod status if it has much better anti-structure power than other SBs.

Because ideally you're going to blow right past that well. You've pierced their front line, now you want to take advantage of that. You don't want to have to advance your front line by 1 well at a time; that's too slow and costly. The Vasari are about MOBILITY and this technique completely counters that spirit.

Bypass the frontline defenses then. Vasari are the only race capable of doing that and not die horribly.

With next to no vital synergys, fleet coheesion is for style more than anything.

Yes you loose your am, yes you take quite some damage but the main vasari skirmischer can reg that on their own and a carrier can help with the rest.

I am not sure I understand what you are saying.

You can't send a marauder past an enemy starbase and jump your forces to it. If it even survives the trip, it loses all its antimatter leaving the gravity well and will have an enemy force bearing down on it leaving it unable to regenerate in time. You can't use the Cannon; it's an end-game tech and starbases get built an hour before you research the canon. You can send your entire fleet past the starbase and take losses, but every race can do that equally well, and it hurts to do.

Vasari need a viable method to either bypass starbases or destroy them. Right now they are at a very significant disadvantage, and can't take advantage of their strength (mobility) to work around it. I would be very happy with some increase in mobility to get around it, but it's just not t here at the moment.

The marauder out runs any oposition and the anitmatter regenerates quick enough. At level 6, which is a requirement, you have grav distortion at 3 after all.