First Impressions from a Sins 1 Modder

A very good post. Since you have analyse the stats, are their ships that simply cannot be penetrated due to their armor rating being too high like in real life?

I like Garrisons as they are in sins1. They contribute greatly to defence while not being too overbearing and annoying to an attacking player as they were in sins1 when they jumped 1 or 2 phase lanes away. Garrisons also make more sense in sins2 as the size is dependent on upgrades and whether ship factories are currently in use in orbit of the planet. Garrisons take time to build and move slowly and in an AI controlled dispersed fashion, unless you have the upgrade to control them within the gravity well yourself.

I love the fact that fleet supply no longer cripples your economy as well. Same goes for the economy penalty you got for hit with for devloping planets you already paid to develop that sins1 had, it's less pronounced in sins2!!!!  I like that rare metals can now be fairly early on in the game acquired through exploration and then refinement or trade to get more capital ships. There are a lot more ways to skin a cat in sins2 generally so far. 

The component system for both planets and ships is a very welcome change. But I wish it went as far as designing your own ship as in stellaris. I think that the kodiak is a fairly unique design and that the new cruiser that replaces it is different enough to have a different name in lore. Maybe the kodiak will turn up again, personally I hated the kodiak design because it looked like a space dodgem car made for a 2D plane. I am also not a huge fan of the harcka design, i'd prefer a slimmer upsized cobalt or something in it's place. Something that looked wonderful. 

Overall I think this game is already better than the original albeit not as complete yet. But in my eyes in needs to expand on the lore and give something entirely new in terms of factions. 

Another major thing this game still misses though but is better on average than sins1 on would be making me care for my people. I know this is an RTS come 4x and that we are meant to be heartless strategists of empire. But I really like it in RTS games like company of heroes, Homeworld, Starcraft or Dawn of War when you feel for your people and do have a connection to them and their cause or perspective. This is usually done through voice overs that come with emotion or the functions of surrender or retreat, even being pinned. Fleets should lose cohesion if flanked and things like that. all the while depending on the commander for how they react. You should perhaps hear about peoples families and where they are established etc, how it affects them?? Is this game too big for that sort of thing?

A very good post. Since you have analyse the stats, are there ships that simply cannot be penetrated

No, it's nothing like that. Even when the Ragnarov went to the pirate base, it still took substantial damage from their autocannons by the end. Armor only reduces incoming damage. It doesn't eliminate it.

It is a shame that absolute protection is not a thing when effectively those small autocannons should simply be polishing your ships armor at best. 

Hi Volt, thanks for the feedback. Funnily enough I saw a crash report from you this morning.

An update as I've done more digging: I realized that shield mitigation isn't a percentage. It's a flat reduction on incoming damage. That actually does quite a bit to keep small arms from scratching capital ships. It's probably quite intentional that capitals have 8 mitigation and flak frigates deal 7.

It also means missiles are double-dipping on that damage reduction.

Whoops! I'd been editing entity files to see how things worked. I thought I clicked the X instead of the Submit button though. The crash definitely wasn't anything to do with the default game lol.

Excellent. So heavily "shielded" ships that would not be penetrated by what should be termed "space small arms" and therefore would not take any damage at all due to the reduction tally being greater than the damage total IF they are using shield.

But what about heavily armored ships with shields down?

From what I can tell, there's a minimum of 1 damage from any source, so you'll still take something, technically. Additionally, it doesn't look like mitigation works when shields are down, so it's just pure armor at that point.

So we have after the shields are down then the armor penetration matters. At this point is where I would expect a hard block of any space small arms by capital ships if the armor value beat the penetration value. But a minimum of 1 damage from any source is taken regardless of how proof the armor is to penetration from any of those sources. Hopefully I am "reading you right".

Yes, that's what my testing showed.

The biggest thing out of the gate for me is the change to Shield Mitigation. So far as I can tell, mitigation is a flat number without ramp. This makes it a lot more intuitive for new players, but doesn't handle the focus firing of capital ships as well. Considering capitals are hero ships (which you invest even more into than you did in the first game through the use of components, anything that reduces their survivability threatens to be unfun.

Spotiflyer

I don't think it fully works yet, but the way shield mitigation now works seems to be intended to improve capital ships against swarms. You need at least a certain amount of damage per gun to actually touch them. I'm not sure how it currently applies, when at 0 shield or whether it's before or after armour for example (I assume before). I think the point is that apart from abilities and other capital ships in general, the only thing that can effectively take out a capital ship with a high level and the shield mitigation research done are missiles.

Doesn't seem to work that well yet, but the idea is definitely a step towards making capital ships stronger against weak spam.

Now that I've had some opportunity to play around with things more, I have some thoughts on the components.

• Radiation Bomb: my biggest concern here is that this takes time to install, and slots are very much at a premium. Honestly, this seems more like the sort of thing you'd stick on some sort of modular cruiser that could have components installed on it. I think the idea with Radiation Bomb was to give you a little extra oomph in some early-game battle, but I'm skeptical it would ever be enough to matter when the radius is small enough that you can readily avoid it.
• Reserve Hangar: I think this is okay, but I don't think it's anything special. The other options are just better. Honestly, the biggest mark against this in my book is that you can't use it on ships that don't already have strikecraft to patch a weakness in your early fleet.
• Targeting Array: this is the first of the bunch that I love. Not only does it help the ship in question stay safer, it helps the entire fleet. I think auras like this are absolutely a good way to go on a lot of these.
• Rapid Autoloader: this isn't great on most ships, but it goes well on the Ragnarov and arguably the Kol and Marza. I'm fine with this as-is, though the antimatter cost is pretty high for the Kol to stomach.
• Missile Guidance Computer: another great option for any ship in the fleet (though probably Dunov or Marza).
• Flak Burst: This is strong, but I don't think it's broken. I like this.
• Combat Repair System: I think this is too little, too late. By the time you get this in midgame, 15-30 hps just isn't very much. This needs to be a lot higher or boost the whole fleet.
• Derelict Specialist Team: I feel like this is shooting for a very particular map type that I've never encountered. Maybe this would be more useful if you could choose it over the insurance policy for your first one. In principle, it's probably fine, just situational.
• Exotics Salvage Policy: I get the reason this is preinstalled on your first ship--it keeps you from autolosing if you lose the ship, but I've never had any inclination to get it on later ships. The fact that you're locked into it doesn't feel good either because it means that capital will be weaker than other ones of its level.
• Salvage Kit: I don't think this is good enough. Again, maybe on your very first one as a way to fix a Cobalt or something instead of the insurance, but after that, it's just not remotely worth it.
• Antimatter Engine: at first I thought this was overpowered, but I think it's merely good now. Not every ship benefits all that much from it (mainly the Kol), and it does a good job of helping the Kol to scale by easing its thirst for antimatter. But why oh why, does it not have an autocast mechanic?
• Deploy Argonev Starbase: this also feels like something for a modular cruiser because capital slots are too valuable. I like the idea though, and I think it's better than what Sins 1 had.
• Tactical Analyst: as potentially valuable as this is, I don't think capital ships scale hard enough for this to be worth sacrificing a lategame component slot that could otherwise be used on Flak Burst. If this came earlier, maybe it would be worth it, but as-is, I don't see the use case, even on titans.
• Volatile Accelerants: I want to like this. It's flavorful; it's effective. I've just never had any need for it. This will probably see a lot of use in multiplayer though as a way to hedge bets.
• Heavy Gauss Slugs: I don't think this ever beats out the autoloader, even for its passive damage. I'd just take the autoloader a second time because it stacks linearly, not asymptotically.
• High Yield Warheads: situational, but useful for closing out games, and the fact that it's an aura is what makes it useful in my book.

Ultimately, the ones I like the most are the ones that benefit the fleet, not just the one ship.

Good thoughts. I would say from a less analytical point of view that their may be a META eventually BUT everything is fun to try and does not need a constant place in a line up. But yeah, I know that in game design everything is supposed to be more than just flavor. Their are also combinations of things like auto loader and heavy gause slugs. 

I asked a long time ago for a warship type of a class between cruiser (armored cruisers to light cruisers really) and capital ships (super uber hero battleships). Something that I see you seem to be asking for in your comment about in some of your comments above. I think it would be great to have capital ships be sort of compulsory for some functions and therefore the default flagships but also possibly equalled by 3 or so of this new "heavy cruiser" type. In terms of model size the heavy cruiser would be about 2/3rds the size of a capital ship and nowhere near as heavily armoured but just as elegant looking. These would be the flagships of subfleets patrolling less important regions.

Always good to read your well thought out contributions :) 

This is going to affect the Advent quite heavily in terms of balance. The advent's biggest strengths were they had the strongest shields in the game. Alongside their strikecraft, culture and exotic abilities among its fleet composition. I'm actually a huge fan of the Advent faction. In Rebellion, an Advent Radiance Battleship would always solo a Vasari Kortul Devastator or a TEC Kol Battleship because of the Advent's technological superiority both in general technology and in shield technology.

This new shield mitigation seems to be more geared towards resistance to armor meta than anything else, if I'm not mistaken. So how would this affect the faction that relies on shields the most in the game?

I was ASSuming that a Sins 2 would have frigates that can gain levels, this way you're likely to be more tactical and hope for each ships survival.

I'd love perhaps not to see frigates per sae get experience and leveling. That would be coool. But what might be better could be fleet experience now that we have such a great fleet tool. I guess any XP for normal ships might make the game hard to balance. Because it would make defense harder due to less experienced ships and losing a fleet devestating late game. Losing experienced capital ships is bad enough

I will admit that I really like the concept of unit veterancy from games like Halo Wars 2. I think leveling for every single unit in the game gets too wacky and creates situations that are too unpredictable for an RTS.

Even little boosts can create situations that snowball and don't allow for players to recover from early mistakes. Imagine those early game fleets of 20-something light frigates all with some leveling or veterancy. Suddenly your opponent cannot build enough ships to counter the bonus you've gotten from previous lost battles.

@Unikraken what about the possibility of a singular unique vessel having veterancy? For example Titan ships which are limited in the game, gaining unit veterancy that continues the longer it survives in the game?

In supreme commander: forged alliance forever which is the biggest gaming community aside from Sins. The supcom modders introduced a mod with unit veterancy in the game which was hilarious and fun.

Governors in Civ give advantages depending on where they are placed.

Sins 2 could have Admirals or Captains assigned to certain ships to gain perks.

An update on my thoughts on Sins II as I've had more time with it

• I know it's not supposed to be balanced yet, but LRC are really really bad right now. Not only can missiles miss, double dip on shield mitigation, and be shot down, LRC damage just... isn't good. You're always better off making more Cobalts instead.
• Something needs to be done to combat LF spam, and oddly Sins 1 had the answer to this in Cluster Warheads. I don't see any reason to not bring these back.
• Unfortunately, it seems that Harckas suffer the same fate as their predecessor. I want to like them. They're just so delightfully blocky, but they just aren't that good. Maybe some sort of regeneration feature so they can be used for raiding parties?

Mechanically, how would that differ from components?

I actually hate the blocky shape of the kodiak and hacka as you know. Hacka is a bit better looking. The hacka reminds me of a crab.

As for performance. I have not used them en mass. They seem to be pretty well armed on paper. The cobalt is not far behind health wise I guess. But they do seem to take a whole lot of punishment but hull armor per sae does not seem better than the cobalt?

Both in game and in my simulation sandbox, I'm seeing the same results. When I modded the AI to always shoot down LF first and HC last, it got a lot better.

Different captains/admirals whould be able to inject some personality into the game with the addition to having benefits.

How do components differ from Sins 1 capital ship/starbase/titan leveling upgrades?

So much good stuff, thanks. Way too much for me to address here but I assure you its being read, collected, and discussed. Some of these points were / are already in progress and some have already made it to the new public test build (e.g. being able to build ship items on the fly). 

The main thing I want to point out for modders is we have a programmer entirely focused on generating a schema for use in vs.code etc. No more guessing what is available or not.