Ok that makes more sense The flak/carrier/lrm relationship debate is still raging here at Ironclad central too (and to a smaller extent the long term usefulness of lights). The kiting fix was happening regardless.

If it helps any... Flak are roughly where they should be, now. Carriers could do with fewer penalties - the fragility of the strike craft swarms are fine; what'd be nice is if their build rate in hostile territory actually depended on antimatter more than build rate (like support craft - many of them can spam their abilities rapidly, but once dry, their effectiveness plummets).

But you've probably already heard that a dozen times by now. 

Are we getting the Developer.exe for 1.17?

Yes, Dev.exe 1.17 and 1.03 are going to be going up on the website on the same day.

Blair: Is there any chance of having the build penalties effect only carriers that have enemies within a certain radius of them rather than just if there are enemies in any part of the grav well. So if you had a carrier in grav well that has enemy units but those enemy units are far away from it then it gets no penalty but as soon as the enemy units get within a certain range of the carrier then it gets build penalties?

Thankyou for any response. And thankyou for your response to my question about the Marza changes.

So did you change Missile Barrage graphics AND sound as well? Might as well make it sound like Stalin's organ i.e. like a Katyusha rocket launcher?

Blair, We really need the carrier build penalty reduced.  It is much too severe.  I can go into the reasons, but other threads have all the content on it.

Is the carrier build penalty part of 1.17, wasn't it just Entrenchment?

The Marza adjustment isn't really what I wanted, its more like a step back.  One of the few elements of skill it had was speed and surprise, though even without that its still deadly to AI and planetary structures.  The 5s extra time for surviving interrupt-capable ships with antimatter allows more opportunity for the other factions to be skillful, but also also more opportunity just to tank, and while the barrage is dangerous early its not nearly as much of a threat later.  Worst, the extra time allows tight formations to profit at the expense of loose ones, the opposite of what an area effect weapon is supposed to achieve.

Perhaps kiting wasn't intended as part of the game, though if other ships can catch carriers there's even less incentive to field light frigates, wouldn't a boost to light frigates have been more appropriate?

TEC was disadvantaged again, especially as carriers were one of the few remaining TEC options- how is it that a level 5 TEC cruiser needs a level 6 technology to part-counter a level 3 ship with a level 4 upgrade which can shut it down completely.....?   

Huzzah! Carrier nerfs are easily fixed. I'm just happy to be able to mod the damn thing easily.

Would you mind elaborating? The sheer number of levels being referenced make my brain hurt.

I should have a tier 5 upgrade there.... that is, Guardians with Repulsion can just push Kodiaks out of range.  Even with the Intercept ability, since the Kodiaks have to use it every time they are repulsed, and only one Guardian can push many Kodiaks, the Kodiaks will run out of antimatter first.  Intercept is only a part-counter to a technology one tier lower from a ship two tiers lower.

Why was kiting annoying, and Repulsion isn't?  At least if the opponent bothered to build frigates other than LRM, carriers could be chased down.  If a fix was needed, it was to the LF ability to fire while chasing.  With this 'fix', kiting remains- for the faction that can just kite enemies away from their carriers. 

As well as the LF, the support cruisers needed a fix far more than the carriers.  If the Domina and its upgrade were exchanged with the Guardian, so that the Domina was the tier 3 cruiser with the tier 5 upgrade- or the Cielo and the Hoshiko, there would be howls of pain.  The higher level support cruiser should be the more useful- how about beam protection or illusion negation?  Why can the Guardian have area effect abilities, and not the Subverter? 

Nice change list - now I'll read the correct version!

I can't help but feel it's a little odd that Guardians can repel entire fleets, whilst the advent capitalships can, at best, repel fighters. A little strange, no? You could very nearly flip the two abilities and be getting somewhere. Of course, then you'd need to redo the numbers, and you'd want to give some sort of AoE anti-fighter weapon to the other frigates, but... eh, who'm I kidding?

They ain't changing a capital ships abilities any time soon.

The ability to affect a wide area then... what are the current figures for the Guardian and the Subverter?

What is also odd is that Sins offers more defences against short ranged attacks than long ranged attacks, which helps the long ranged attacks even further, since they also lose less time when they have to switch targets.  I'd like to see the less utilised support cruisers provide extra defence against LRMs- perhaps the Overseers could phase out some missiles, the Dominas cause interference between phase torpedos fired at the same target and the Cielos deflect beams with an energy grid or glitter?  Some counter to Illusion might also help (scouts?), as that makes the Illuminators very strong, and counters are preferable to downgrades.  The Subverter could have been balanced by a stun counter...

It seems better to have more options, rather than continue to downgrade the ones that exist, to the ultimate advantage of a single type of unit whether LRMs, LF or heavy cruisers.  The support cruisers are very expensive and vulnerable, and could use more abilities.

I suppose extras aren't included in patches though... I just wouldn't want the effect of having to balance the original game- often by downgrades, like the Subverter- to affect the options for the expansions, which I'll want to buy when they're available on disc.  I'd buy the original again, if there was an Entrenchment version!     

Hmm. I wonder if ... I'll have to look into whether it's possible, but what about the Cieleos having an ability to reduce the accuracy of incoming missile and beam weapons? Call it Disruptive ECM or something...

...Heh. ANd then let Designate Target grant the same bonus to hit as Disruptive ECM penalises, so TEC/TEC matchups end up with Cieleos countering one another.

Lol, it probably won't, I probably will depend on when they fire up the ability or are you suggesting a static ability, then you probably could do that...

How long after something is annouced like this does the patch show up?   I have a total of 36 hours now before I loose all internet access to my systems due to moving to a new home. Any idea on the release of this latest patch?

Either today or tomorrow, I would guess tomorrow.

First of all...the update seems to have been released (hooray!), but the vanilla patch returns the error "File download is larger than expected." and will not continue the download or install the patch.  Entrenchment seems to download the file fine, but it cannot install due to the vanilla patch not installing correctly.

Edit: I came back later and it seemed to be working properly.

Is there any reason why I can't see the update button on my SoaSE game info in Impulse?  I want to update, but there's no button.  I checked the game and I'm still running 1.12. 

Any help would be apprecitated.

Hooray!  You forgot to mention that level 2 Final judgement was also fixxed.

There is a button that says "More", click on that and select update.

Nope... all I have is a Run button.  Not sure why?  It's a legal copy as well. (for anyone thinking "torrent")

Can I please get an official answer on this?

thanks

Edit:  I found it.  For anyone having problems finding the update in Impulse, make sure that you have the 'show hidden applications' button checked off in the impulse menu.  that could solve your problem.

I'm liking the camera changes .  It's nice being able to get a closeup of even the smallest ships now!

I don't play multiplayer much, but I'm kinda liking the carrier slowdown; it means my carriers aren't sitting in front of the battles as often anymore. One of the bad habits the AI seems to have with the carriers is the tendency to pull them to the front lines along with all of the other capital ships.  Problem is, that kinda kills the reason why I build carriers in the first place: To stay behind and project power.

. . . although the enemy will usually pull right up to the carrier(s) anyways. No real concept of terrain in Sins, so everything they throw at you can pretty much pull right up to it.