Let's think about that situation...if you have two Radiances overlapping with animosity then that means they are very close and therefore you still have a limited range...enemy ships still can move and still can FF on whatever they please once they are outside the range of either Radiance...if you use both Animosities at the same time, that's a clear window of 40s where they are just as vulnerable as before...if you stagger the animosities, you are still limited by the very short range...even if two Radiances are inside a battleball, you can still target anything you want (your ships inherently must be outside the range of animosity if the enemy is using repulsion)...

Fleets won't be invincible...the only reason the Radiances would be invincible is if the secondary buff was too powerful...take away the secondary buff and as I mentioned in the above post (which I get the feeling is not being read) you can shoot any target of your choosing so long as your ships are outside the range of animosity (which is every single LRF)...

I have tried this (was used before ForceAttackerToRepickTarget)...the problem I ran into was that if the interval was too large, you could still FF on whatever you wanted if you were facing it when the ability was cast...if the interval was too small, the ability didn't work at all...ships affected by BuffTaunt would turn either way too slowly or wouldn't turn at all because everytime BuffTaunt is cast it disrupts the ships velocity...if you found a time interval that does not run into either problem (and works without the need for ForceAttackersToRepickTarget) I would very much like to know what interval you used because this would definitely be a major improvement...

Radius is not wide, it is 3000/4000/5000 (make sure to have the most recent version)...

As I said in my last post, this secondary buff probably needs to be removed...

Again, I'm trying to get this removed...

I agree....that's why I just proposed a much weaker secondary buff that has been entirely ignored...

Every other capital ship ability, no matter how powerful or annoying, can be stopped by simply giving the enemy capital ship...if you add a mega-hull regen, then it will be impossible to kill one radiance unless you have a lot of FFing for the 40s it doesn't have this ability...multiple radiances would make it exponentially more difficult...

I have proposed something new for the secondary buff, I'd really appreciate it if people commented on that instead of the current buff which is going to be removed anyway...

I'm going to try your numbers when I get a chance...

I think you are underestimating our ability to exploit this. I keep my ships on hold position so this is easily accomplished and this is only a level 1 range.

I'm not talking about the damage reduction buff. It's the friendly buff periodically being applied that is the issue (ForceAttackersToRepickAttackTarget, ChanceToBeNotOptimallyTargetted:100%). This will indirectly affect all enemy ships regardless of whether they are in range of Animosity or not. Throw some scouts outside of the Radiance's Animosity range and you can play hell with the enemies targeting. (And I did read you post which is why I did not reference the damage reduction but focused on the friendly buff).

The difference is I only changed the BuffTaunt.entity. Atleast in the versions I have your mod, you have had the BuffTauntSelf.entity also applying a periodicAction to BuffTaunt (with some mix of a instantAction or periodicAction in BuffTaunt itself).

I've tested this without the linear movement being disabled and it works as I would expect.

Tests Perfomed

1. Target of Taunt can move away from the Radiance. (Passed)
2. Target of Taunt cannot attack a target other than the Radiance. (Passed)
3. Target of Taunt cannot attack another Target by continually clicking attack on the new target. (Passed)
4. Target of Taunt can move to attack a different target than the Radiance but will re-engage the Radiance if still under the effect of Taunt. (Passed)

Tests Performed with linear engines disabled.

1. Target of Taunt cannot move away from the Radiance. (Passed)
   • If a move order is issued the Target of Taunt will turn the direction of the move order, but will not engage linear engines until the Taunt expires.
2. Target of Taunt cannot attack a target other than the Radiance. (Passed)
3. Target of Taunt cannot attack another Target by continually clicking the attack on the new target. (Passed)

First I want to thank you for doing extensive testing on this...

An important distinction...you are correct, the periodic actions I used were only in BuffTauntSelf, and that was what prevented ships from turning at all...

Did these same tests before and did them again with your suggested change (ie no other changes except BuffTaunt periodically apply itself)...I set the time interval to 1 millisecond (I'd be interested to know which time interval you choose) and the ability seems to be working...you can get ships to shoot at other targets if you order them to move, but they'll simply be shooting at what is in front of them (so it would be very difficult to control, and no matter what we do it can't be fixed)...

So, Zombie's suggestion with BuffTaunt seems to work beautifully...

Updated mod...

v0.32 only changes Animosity

Zombie's method has been implemented...BuffTaunt now re-applies Force Attacking every .001s...

As of right now, Animosity is no different than the original version of the game except for this one change...

This ability needs to start from scratch...we have the fix to BuffTaunt that makes this ability work...

Now, we need to examine the other parameters and determine if they need to be changed as well:

Target Filter - currently affects frigates/capital ships/starbases/modules...does NOT affect SC...

Range - currently 3000/4000/5000

Max targets - currently 8/16/32

Antimatter cost - currently 65

Duration - currently 20s

Cooldown - currently 35s

Secondary buffs that have been suggested include:

• Hull regen
• Shield regen
• Shield mitigation
• Damage reduction
• Reduce enemy accuracy/weapon cooldown
• Disable linear engines of affected ships

Other tweaks to this ability are making it interruptable and channeling (currently ability is NOT interruptable or channeling)...

I would like to balance the primary effect of Animosity first, then add secondary buffs if necessary...the only exception to this is disabling linear engines (since that sort of falls in the category of primary effect)...

Animosity is wiped clean...assume it has been unchanged except that now it actually works...what improvements (if any) would you make to it?

I personally vouch for increasing the max number of targets...since an infinite target limit seems rather unpopular, I'll suggest some numbers...

First, let's determine the average ratio between capital ships and number of frigates/cruisers...early game you will likely see a player field 2 caps and have 2 fleet upgrades...that is 400 fleet supply, with 100 of it used to support two capital ships...therefore, the early game ratio in terms of fleet supply is around 1:3...

Mid game you can certainly expect to see 3 caps, maybe even as high as 5...4 fleet upgrades also is fairly likely (820 fleet supply)...so, lets say you have 4 caps and 4 fleet upgrades...that is 200 fleet supply points for caps and 620 for frigates...again, about a 1:3 ratio...

Late game, I doubt you'll ever see more than 8 caps...I don't think I've seen anyone build more than 6 on ICO...the most fleet upgrades I have every used in an MP game is 6, which is 1360 fleet supply...looking at end game stats, the largest fleet usually tends to be with 5 upgrades...let's just say you are fielding about 6 caps with 6 fleet upgrades...that is 300 fleet supply points for caps and 1060 for frigates...that is about 3:10, which is a little less than 1:3...

So, I'm going to go with 1:3 ratio of caps vs frigates in terms of fleet supply...I would use this ratio to argue that one radiance should be expected to affect it's "share" of the enemy fleet at lvl 3 of Animosity...

I'd say that lets expect level 1/2/3 of animosity to affect 50/100/150 fleet supply worth of ships...that is 12/25/37 LRMs/Disciples or 4/8/12 Enforcers....following this line of though, the max # of targets should not exceed 12/24/36 but should be more than 4/8/12...

Since you probably aren't going to get pure LRFs/Disciples, 12/24/36 is a little too high...but, you also aren't going to get pure enforcers all the time either, so 4/8/12 is ridiculously low...

I propose we pick some numbers in the middle that lean towards the high side...I suggest we increase the max number of targets from 8/16/32 to 10/20/30...not a major change, but nevertheless a slight buff at lvl 1 and 2...

For this next suggestion, lets assume there is a max target limit...in order to increase the odds that the ability actually affects its max number of targets, I suggest we increase the range...this is the same buff that was given to PM swarm so that LRFs are easier to affect...

The current range is 3000/4000/5000...I propose we increase that to 4000/5000/6000...that is a wider range but you also are only affecting 30 targets at most (and then, for only 20s)...

I set my version to 2.5 seconds with the following reasoning.

• The minimum cooldown on weapons is 4 seconds on ships. A value less than 4 seconds made sense.
• The minimum actionIntervalTime I found in the core sins files is 1.0 second. I'm assuming lower values may cause more actions to be performed than necessary in the game engine. A value of 2.5 seconds results in 8 checks for the duration of this ability. I could see dropping to a 1.0 second interval (20 checks) but don't see any value in going lower based on my testing.

First off, if you downloaded v0.32 before you may want to download it again...I accidentally uploaded the wrong folder...it had 5 files replacing each of the advent capital ships with a radiance that could only use animosity...you can simply delete those 5 files (the bottom 5 in the GameInfo folder) or download again...my apologies...

Was just curious...yeah 1 millisecond is probably over kill but I wanted to make damn sure it worked...

You probably want to re-download the newer version posted, because the Kols shield ability was no longer passive for me when i updated... Probably a similar error...

EDIT: After re-downloading ability returned passive =]

Had some small issues too...problem is I have the "official version" and then the "working version" (well, several of them actually) so small things sometimes get looked over...

I think the entity manifest was missing...fixed this, may need to redownload...

So we're back to the drawing board with animosity.  Let's ask ourselves a few questions:

1) Is it worth continuing to tinker with this ability, or should we scrap it and come up with a different concept entirely?  It seems to me we're having a lot of trouble making it work.

2) If we do want to pursue this path, what role do we envision animosity having within the fleet?  If we were to add secondary features, what direction would we want to go?

3) What do we really want to see from the Radiance in terms of its role?  It's got a clearly-defined suppression role with detonate antimatter, but it's a bit of a one-trick pony otherwise.  What purpose do we want this ship to have within the fleet?

Thanks by the way. Assuming we are correct and all indications seem we are this is really a change that should go into the next patch release for Sins.

Of course I'm partial to disabling the linear engines which seems to fit with the ability. I can see using this kind of like the Jurasal's Gravity Bomb. While It won't stop a phase jump I can keep part of your fleet in the gravity well from retreating until you are able to initiate a phase jump.

I'm not as hip on the damage reduction which the Radiance already gets with the Energy Absorption ability (Is a buff needed there?). The hull regen doesn't seem to fit with Advent and the shield regen should be synergized with the Progen. Shield mitigation is achieved through research and diplomacy.

I'd actually be curious to see how this ship does with some improvements to the overal stats of Capital Battleships.

Another idea.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but the role of the Radiance is primarily denial, right? Specifically denial of Antimatter... so what if as a secondary buff, it temporarily disables enemy ships from using antimatter for a short period of time? 

side note* name changed from 3psil0n.  Honestly i would've changed it sooner if i knew i could lol

Too similar to detonate antimatter, which already has this effect for a single-target.  The ship doesn't have to be a one-trick pony, and preferably it shouldn't be.  Currently it does have a strong suppression role because of detonate antimatter, and what we need to do, IMO, is add upon that.

very true.

So basically, the ship can detonate antimatter reserves of its opponents, draw fire and regenerate antimatter as it is hit. (so it has alot of antimatter, i understand...) This ship also doesn't really synergize well with the fleet so...  hmm... maybe a way of distributing this antimatter between nearby ships, something LIKE repair cloud but not actually repairing, just transferring antimatter?

Sorry i don't play advent very often so mind me if I'm abit inaccurate >.>

EDIT:  this could also be useful on defense, transferring antimatter to repair bays that are running dry.  Also compliments the Subjugator and Guardian.

More than it can use, in a practical sense. 

Too similar to the Revelation's Guidance and the Disciple's transfer antimatter.

Don't worry about it; brainstorming is good, even if I knock down the ideas

x.x

Alright.  So basically we need an ability that burns through its excess amounts of antimatter... lets see: an ability that stops passive shield regeneration on all enemy ships within a moderate radius?  That's a suppressive technique... = P  Like an upgraded ruthlessness on a capital ship.

isn't the radiance supposed to be a damage-oriented main battleship? i mean, all the others are strikecraft or ability-oriented

In a perfect world animosity should disrupt FFing on a high priority target, like a starbase or another capital ship....

The issue is that if you make one Radiance really good at this, multiple Radiances become too powerful...

Bumping up the max # of targets from 8/16/32 to 10/20/30 in the grand scheme of things won't do a whole lot...yet, making these numbers larger and/or extending the range can become problematic...

Given the abundant antimatter this ship has, I say keep the cooldown at 35s and antimatter cost at 65...and make an ability that won't be overpowered when used this often...

For starters, raise the max # of targets a bit (10/20/30, why not?)...if someone has a good argument for other numbers I'm open to it...

To make this ability truly useful, I think it needs a buff to the radiance...

I vouch for Damage Reduction...

If there are any ideas to making the primary effect of this more powerful I'm open to them, but there has been a lot of opposition to affecting SC or high max target counts...I'm sort of out of ideas on improving the primary effect so suggestions are most definitely welcome...

I think this is a very good analysis, but I think you're being too cautious with the target cap now.

Even if we leave strike craft off the list, I think you could easily go higher than 12/24/36 max targets because:

1) If you're not using the forced target-repick function, then this ability is relatively easy to circumvent by issuing move orders and/or moving/staying outside the Radiance's radius.  At present, the ability will *only* be forcing enemy ships to either: A. switch targets for 20 seconds (could be changed) or B. move.

2) I don't think an ability for a cap ship needs to *only* affect its proportional third of frigates.  I understand your logic here (and I think a cautious approach is important), but the target cap is not its only limitation so it doesn't necessarily have to scale in that sort of limited proportion.  Even if the ability affected an infinite number of targets, it could still be underpowered if the range, duration, cooldown, and AM cost were too restrictive.  The key, which we missed when Animosity was getting (imho) overbuffed, is to just try and buff it relative to other cap ship abilities.  Many other abilities can affect many more than 36 enemy ships, and I think that's fine.  Even if we go for a much higher target count, the ability will only be used a small portion of the time (due to AM costs and cooldown), and the affected ships *only* suffer a forced attack vs the Radiance.. the source of the ability.. So if the opposing fleet is strong enough to win then there's a good chance that they'll just destroy the Radiance anyway.  And cap/support ships can go on using their own abilities, even in the radius of Animosity, so it's not like it will disrupt other ships from supporting damage tankers and counter focus fire.. And AM draining abilities can always shut the Radiance down completely.  And, with a well balanced AM cost, the Radiance will be forced to choose between spamming Animosity and spamming its other useful abilities..

I'm not saying it's worthless, I've argued several times that Animosity has a lot of as-yet unappreciated tactical value.. But it clearly has its drawbacks too.

So... I think the increased radius is a very good idea, and I think the ability to temporarily disrupt enemy FF and/or make them move should be the heart of this ability.  For that to work, it needs to be able to reach/affect a large number of enemy ships, even if it's only for a limited amount of time. 

With that in mind, I don't think it would be crazy to use a target max at least twice what you suggested here.  I also think it would be nice if it affected strike craft...  That's clearly a bit harder to balance, but my instinct so far is that it's worth including them and just bumping the max targets up to accomodate the larger numbers of SC (maybe 2x what we'd use for just frigates?)  It doesn't matter if it won't affect all of them.  It doesn't matter if, in some battles, it easily affects all of them plus all of the frigates.  If the radius is limited then anything faster than the Radiance (i.e., SC and most frigates) can easily just move away if they don't want to play along.  If they do decide to stay then the Radiance gets to convert a lot of incoming dmg to AM (hopefully letting it spam detonate AM and Cleansing Brilliance), and nearby Advent ships get to continue fighting without being attacked..

After we get that going then I think a small secondary buff, offensive or defensive, can be used to incentivize the use of the ability in other situations.  (It would be nice if Animosity had some value *even if* it were already the target for enemy focus fire, or maybe even if it wasn't already in battle).

If we do want to buff the ability more, then I think the channeling/interruptability is a good fit.  As someone else mentioned, that has the added bonus of giving an indirect buff to ships with interrupt/disabling abilities.

 (I hope you're still considering the 90s cooldown for Cleansing Brilliance alongside the Animosity changes.  It's important that we give the Radiance some good options to burn through AM so that the synergy between Animosity and Energy Absorption is fully realized).

PS: I read through your previous posts over the last few pages. I apologize for the many things I'm not addressing directly.  I think some of it (like the modest mitigation buff) could work quite well, but I'm focused on the primary function of the ability for now.

PPS:

If you want to move to the armor issue, I've already been toying with some numbers.  Right now I'm trying a LRF debuff of: 0.75 -> 0.65 vs Capitals, 0.75 -> 0.70 vs Very Heavy, and 0.75 -> 0.70 vs Heavy armor.

I'm also trying to think of ways to buff Light frigates for the later game, so I'm trying:

Anti-heavy (light frigate attacks) as:

0.5 -> 0.55 vs Caps and 0.5 -> 0.55 vs Very Heavy (i.e., Heavy Cruisers).

 Right now, Heavy Cruisers seem to dominate (aside from LRF) because of their composite attack type that works so well vs almost all targets, and because heavy cruisers are a concentrated strength, high end ship.  If the DPS per cost and HP per cost remain the same, then it's almost always better when it's concentrated because the concentrated ship is easier to manage (i.e., to focus fire/maneuver/buff/retreat), and more resistant to focus fire.  So they come out ahead in the big battles of attrition, except that LRF actually have slightly better DPS/HP per cost/supply ratios..

Anyway, I know this has been discussed hundreds of times before on these forums.. but what I'm aiming for (with my own personal testing mod) is to debuff LRF a bit, but also debuff Heavy cruisers (at least relative to the roles for LRF and light frigates).  Any buff that encourages the use of light frigates is ultimately a gain for the LRF.  If more could be done to highlight the use of carriers, supports, and flak, then light frigates have more to do and we might get something a bit more circular between LRF countered by carriers/HCs/Support, carrier SC countered by flak, and carriers/support/flak countered (best) by LF..  That's the circle we want, right?  If so, then I think we just need a few small tweaks so that HCruisers remain dominant as the biggest, toughest, and most versatile... but against a fleet of carriers/flak/supprt ships and caps, I want light frigates to significantly better than a pure HC fleet..

With that in mind, I'm also considering a small debuff to the HC armor tables vs caps and heavy, and maybe vs very heavy and medium as well..

Is that close to what you guys were thinking too?  Is there even a consensus (just in this thread, not across the whole forum/community..) that LRFs deserve some kind of nerf?

This is a good point...after all, Telekinetic push or Jam Weapons don't exactly affect only their "fair share" of targets...

So, what numbers do you suggest?  Would 24/48/72 sound good?  Apply those numbers just to frigates...if we are going to let this ability affect SC, I think (was it Pbhead's idea?) we need to have a separate max number of targets for SC and non-SC...

Using the same analysis I used before, for each capital ship you'd have 150 fleet supply of frigates...now, the number of carriers and SC can really vary...150 fleet supply could be as much as 10 percherons/transports or 7 Aeria's...that is about 20 or so SC max...carrier caps or course change that, but then again the enemy is likely not using just light carriers...so, what's just they have half of their fleet supply as carriers...that is about 5 or 6 (4 or so Aerias) which is 10-12 SC per 150 fleet supply...double that and you get 24 squadrons...

So, I'm thinking lvl 1/2/3 animosity should be expected to affect 8/16/24 squadrons of SC...now, the size of a squadron can range anywhere from 3 (Vasari Bombers) to 9 (Advent fighters) and can even be more in certain situations...since TEC are about in the middle, lets just say you want to disable 8/16/24 TEC bomber squadrons which is 40/80/120 SC...

So, with these numbers we are looking at 24/48/72 frigates/capital ships/structures and 40/80/120 individual SC...

Right now, I'm leaning towards keeping the range what it is, allowing it to affect 24/48/72 frigates and 40/80/120 SC (individual ships, not squadrons), and keeping the current cooldown, duration, and antimatter cost...

65 antimatter every 35 seconds is a lot, even with energy absorption, so I don't have a problem with the short cooldown since this ability can be easily countered...I kind of like this ability being spammable instead of a long cooldown...

As for Cleansing Brilliance...

Currently we are at 3000 damage every 120s, which is 25 DPS...if we bring that down to 90s that would become 33 DPS...however, shrinking the column radius could nerf the ability enough to where a faster cooldown would not require a damage reduction...

So, what if we reduce the column radius from 1000 to 75, then decrease the cooldown from 120s to 90s, and leave damage constant?  I'm iffy on lowering the damage since in either case whatever you shoot at is going to have long enough to get away before the 2nd beam blast (except starbases)...in addition, you'll be hitting less targets and the antimatter cost is still the same...so, what are your thoughts on this?

I would say there is...

Just looking at the numbers, I'm good with the concept....

I'm going to be honest, I don't know how much longer this thread or mod is even going to continue progressing (at least as a semi-community effort)...

I'd like to have the abilities on caps done 100%...then, some slight changes maybe with the speed of caps and DPS to help out battleships and support caps be a bit more useful...after that, I don't know, it may depend on the momentum of this thread...

It's not that your suggestions aren't good (I personally like them and think your armor values are worth testing), it's that I don't know how many people are paying attention to this thread anymore...I think it may be best if a second thread is opened that addresses just the armor values (or similar things to help caps in general) that is separate from this thread...doing so I think may get better feedback than trying to continue this thread (which is slowly dying)...I was going to open another thread once I felt the abilities were entirely done (or very very close) but by all means if you would like to start it yourself don't hesitate...

Honestly I think out of all the versions of animosity we had, the hull repair version worked the best. The goal of animosity from my understanding is to absorb the fire from an attacking fleet, thus reducing its capacity to focus fire on anything but the Radiance. Thus while the Radiance needs to have a large target cap (if it has one at all) and be able to somewhat tank the damage. However, it has always been a double bladed ability, so I think their needs to be a real risk of the Radiance dieing, and perhaps should be suicide without Progenitor/Subjugator/repair bay support. Has anyone tried to see what happened when two animosities are active at the same time?

Also HerrPenguin, I think their is a consensus LRMs need to be weaker against capital ships, but not much else.

herm... you know, the absolute worst thing about that 75% damage from cap abilities thing... is that some things (DoT) are not effected!! the eggs nanos, the radiances detonate AM, and the marzas (the dot portion) rad bomb, dont have to go through that .75 multiplier, while GRG, and the vulk's missle swarm do.

GRG just sucks so hard... lolz.  I keep forgetting to take this multiplier into effect when calcualting how much GRG sucks... so every time I have said GRG sucks on this forum... multiply it by .75 please.

I'd add gaurdians to the support listed above. At this point I'd want to do some testing with a working animosity and see if it changes any battles. I'd like to point out suiciding the Radiance fits with the Advent theme. Additionally, Advent is the only race that can bring back a high level Radiance that sacrificed itself while you pick off enemy targets (again fitting with the synergy idea).

I'm not involved in this, and I haven't read all the posts (I just pop in to scan some posts once a week).  However, I just wanted to know if you guys reviewed the brainstormings we had on Animosity a few months ago, posted on the forums?  For instance, having a certain percentage of damage done within a radius of the Radiance dumped onto the Radiance (I am not suggesting that particular solution over any other, just offering it as an example of what was offered in the brainstormings)?

Some of the ideas here seem to focus on protecting the fleet from enemy ships within a radius around the Radiance.  Have no idea whether this is a good idea or not (just brainstorming), but what about protecting the fleet from enemy ships OUTSIDE a radius around the Radiance?  Might even synergize with repulse, in that you could then repulse ships out to the radius at which the fleet is then protected.