coming to think of it, those ships might not be able to be piloted by an AI. You'll need a very very powerful AI in order to work out any combination on its own.

I think there is inherently a problem with trying to balance interesting abilities with 1v1 combat. Many abilities by their nature have to be toned down or conceptually butchered to be fair in simple ship combat. Abilities that truly alter the game state on a fundamental level (think "ultimates" in MOBAs like Dota and Overwatch) require team play to be reasonably fair.

(Okay, I'm simplifying a bit, since fighting games like Dead-or-Alive obviously are 1v1 with overpowered abilities - but fighting games rely on a completely different input system that allows for 50+ offense and defense moves per character.)

So... AI vs AI, then Human statistical analysis.... Why not just drop the AI vs AI and just use human statistics? 

Don't make it harder than it has to be... 

Don't take this as me agreeing with you, though. I have reservations against any sort of attempts at balancing of custom ships, and my reasoning is still available in the opening post.

If you disagree and think you have the perfect solution, you can always make your own AI Fight Club custom ship balancing mod. I support your endeavor. Even more so because it does not come at the expense of the SCO budget for the SuperMelee mini-game. If you want to chase that white whale, lift your own sails Ahab.

There is no formula for determining the point value, or BPV.  There can't be, because the "combat value" of any ship is based more on the tactical situation than the composition of the ship.  In the end, a human needs to simply evaluate the ship and assign it a point value in relation to the other ships.  A point system for the components of the ship can provide an initial value to put in in the ball park, but in the end an expert in the tactics of this type of combat must evalutate the ship and assign it a combat point value based on the true power of that design within the existing "combat environment".

This is part of what a "Proving Grounds" type of system would allow.  Ships sent up to Stardock by a committee of players would then be evaluated by Stardock.  They might not like an effect, and want to replace it with something that meets their standards.  Or maybe it is an interesting design, but too fast, or it's gun is too powerful.  Few ships would go straight from the player and into the game, most would be "finished" by Stardock in one way or another before being actually put into the game... but all the credit always goes to the player who originally came up with it, no matter how much you wind up changing it.

This is how I wound up handling exactly the same thing Brad is wanting to do in SCO in my Pirate Dawn.  It was my way of apply SVC's methods to a computer game.  If you want a completely free and open ship modification system that would allow the players to do anything they want, and yet still allow some of those player designs into the game... something along these lines is the only thing that will really work.  Because, in the end, someone at Stardock needs to "finish" those player designs in one way or another, and assign it a point value for the Supermellee point system.  There is no possibly formula for assigning a point value to the ships, because its value in combat is more governed by the tactics of the situation that it is by the components that comprise the ship.  A person who understands the tactics has to assign a combat value, just adding up the "value" of the individual components doesn't work.

I have been thinking about what you guys were saying about The Measured currently being too weak.  I was confused at first because I was thinking about the Androsynth's "bubbles" but I realize now that you mean it has something like the Androsynth's "fireball" ability.  That makes it make perfect sense too me that it would be weak.  While this is not a hard rule and there could certainly be an exception for the right type of weapon/device, in general every ship should have a primary/button #1 "weapon" and a secondary/button #2 "device".  If The Measured currently has the "fireball" ability and a "beacon warp" then that is the problem.  They are redundant capabilities, and the fireball ability is a device, not a weapon.  It is "rocket boosters".

The beacon warp, ability to teleport, is really just a form of "hyper-maneuverability"... and so is the fireball/rocket booster.  So, in effect, it has two devices that functionally do the same thing and no weapon.  It should be weak because of this.  It needs a "weapon" on button one, not a second "device" that provides essentially the same capability as the beacon warp.  All the other ships can do two things, The Measured can effectively only do one thing, and neither of those things are a "weapon".

The whole idea of the beacon warp is to allow the fragile little ship to safely get close through maneuver, and then not have to endure the dangerous "separation" stage of the engagement.  It needs some type of "weapon" that can very quickly generate an appropriate amount of damage in 2-4 seconds, by which time it probably needs to warp away as the enemy is about to be able to start shooting back at it.  It can do other things, but the primary tactical value of the beacon warp is to allow that very fragile ship to "skip" the separation phase of the fight where the enemy basically gets "free shots" in on the enemy that is attempting to separate.

This is why, as Ishaan pointed out (you have a lot of good ideas about how all this works, Ishaan...) a ship like this needs to be very fragile and easily destroyed.  It's defense is in being nearly impossible to hit when flown well.

It's not that the Measured are too weak, it's that they went from being interesting and new(ish) to a boring rehash of the Androsynth without the bubbles. The beacon warp is gone.  Primary attack is "slam into stuff" and I can't recall the secondary.  Also the controls blow. 

Sounds like I'd have to actually use that version of The Measured to see what it even is.  But this discussion led me to write this...

*** Offensive Rocket Boosters ***

The “fireball/rocket booster” ability really isn't useful for The Measured, but what Stardock appears to be wanting there is a ship that uses a rocket booster like ability offensively. Just ramming with rocket boosters isn't really all that fun, but there is a very fun design for offensive rocket boosters. The Measured really needs a true weapon of some kind to go with its Beacon Warp, so this is a whole new ship you might have if you want the “fun charging offensive rocket booster ship” in the game.

The fun of using rocket boosters offensively comes from the fact that the momentum of the ship is imparted to the shot. The faster the ship is moving, the faster the shots it fires are moving. If you fire backwards with slow projectiles, for example, they will actually be slowly drifting in the direction you were traveling when you fired them and not even moving toward the target. More like a trail of little mines being left behind than projectiles. The opposite of this effect is, of course, shots moving very quickly when fired by a ship running on rocket boosters. This is what you use to make a fun “offensive rocket booster” ship.

You could have a ship with rocket boosters and a gun with rapid-fire shots that move at an average speed creating a tight grouping (i.e. close together line) of shots. It shoots, essentially, in “dashes”of 4-8 or so shots. It's like a machine gun, but very short duration before running out of energy. Without the rocket boosters active, they are spaced out a little more. Less accurate because they are moving slower, and less damaging because fewer are likely to hit before the target gets out of the way of the shots at the end of the line. When you are on rocket boosters those shots are more tightly grouped and moving a LOT faster. They are both more accurate and more powerful (more of them are likely to hit if on target) when fired with the additional momentum of the rocket boosters added to their velocity.

It's actually harder to line up a shot with the “squirly” rocket boosters active, so this helps compensate for enhanced accuracy due to the stupidly high speed of the shots fired on rocket boosters... but people who are good with this ship are very dangerous. The gun isn't that powerful or dangerous when fired normally, at normal speed, because the average speed of the shots makes them, well, average to avoid. But a well lined-up rocket booster shot feels too the player doing it almost like injecting the target with a needle of damage. This is a very fun design for a ship, Subspace players will recognize it as being very similar to the “Leviathan” of the Death Star Battle zone which was my favorite and most often used ship in Subspace.

You can make this even more interesting, or use this for balance if needed. Just to be revealing source material here so you know where things are coming from and that they are coming from something that is already out there, SFB players will recognized this as “Warp Booster Packs” used on fighters in that game. If you need this for balance purposes with this design... you can temporarily remove half of the ship's hit points whenever the rocket boosters are active. And restore them when the rocket boosters expire, meaning any damage done while rocket boosters are on is doubled.

This is a very fun ship with an average gun that temporarily becomes an awesome gun, if you can line it up just right on the squirly rocket boosters. When you get a perfect rocket booster shot off, it feels as though you injected the target with a needle... and it's a really good feeling. This is, I think, the effect that you are actually looking for when you add that Androsynth “fireball ability” to a ship. This isn't for The Measured, but it is a very fun design for a ship in a top down space combat game.

They axed the beacon warp completely.

A ship with a teleport ability isn't necessary, but I like them a lot and would love to see one.  If there won't be one, that's no big deal.  There are far more fun ship designs than will exist as "stock" SCO ships, so they have to pick and choose in the end.  If they want one but think the Beacon Warp was too powerful... it kind of is.  If, as I assume, it was as simple as "drop warp point, it has a duration, warp back unless it has been too long and expired" that really is a very powerful ability because it is 100% reliable and teleporting is a very powerful ability.

So if they are interested in having a ship with a similar ability I could suggest some different ways of achieving that in interesting ways that aren't 100% reliable.  If they just aren't interested in having a ship that teleports among the stock ships, then, like I said, there are a lot more fun ship designs in SCO.  There is no reason that there needs to be one.  They can't have all the good ones in the stock game because there are a lot more of those than SC really calls for.

Regarding the latest update... 

I'm sorry, Brad. I know you think custom ship melee can be done, but I have yet to see a competitive build-your-own game that doesn't degenerate into a meta with one or two ship setups that dominate all others.

There will be fleets of Star Wars ships.  

There will be fleets of Star Trek ships.  

And there will be fleets of people kicking these casuals' asses because they chose custom ships that had the best combination of abilities and the smallest hitbox.

Now, if you want to say that you don't expect there to be any sort of balance, I'm okay with that. Just give us the option to play with and against stock ships.

second that.

i'd also be happy to see a system that allows the best ships to be added to cannon through proper curation (e.g StarDock signing off)

Curation is required in order to make sure ship designs are not absolute crap.  There could be penis ships and incredibly unbalanced ships, or just ships that aren't at all fun to play with or against.

But I wouldn't like to see resources going into curating that. So yes, I do believe (and agree with some others here) that the main focus should be on the official roster.

I think if you are going to allow custom ships in there should really be a "pure" mode where they are not allowed.  It could even just be a check box on the set-up screen.  I realize that this splits the audience, but this is always desired by many players in games like this.  There are always "purists" who just like the stock setup and don't want to wind up in a game with custom stuff.  This was true even in the very first online game community for Front Page Sports: Football on INN.  There were two equally large groups of players, the ones who only used the stock plays that came with the game, and the ones that used the play editor to make custom plays.  An example of why the "purists" only played with stock plays was what the custom guys called the "Gap Rush" where they would put DL players in a position that would be in between the opposing linemen of the stock plays.  So you just couldn't even play against the guys who did that.  There were some custom players us stock guys got to trust, who had two different custom playbooks.  One with all their very best plays for playing against other custom players, and one with "fair" custom plays with no Gap Rush defenses or "Fly Jink" pass routes that the stock plays just couldn't stand up too.  But those "nice" custom players were rare.  This is a general issue in all games as far as I know.  So, in some way, shape, or form I think you really need to allow for "purists" to have their way, too.

As far as the ship design set-up question I would think that you would design ships and save them, to then have them available for selection when composing a fleet to bring in to Super Melee.  I don't even understand exactly what the other option would be?  I think I am misunderstand what is being said... I wouldn't want to have to wait 5 minutes in the middle of a match for the other player to literally design the next ship he is bringing in during the middle of the game.  I don't think I even understand what the other option actually is.