A suggestion for human ships

[Chasm]

Human ships seem to be far underpowered compared to the hulls fielded by the other factions (Apart from the Phidi, of course).
It might be a bug that their scout hulls can't mount armor (Every other scout class can). Since the human scout and destroyer both use the same amount of resources to build, the player should just delete the scout design at the outset, and create a scout destroyer...
Human capital ships are generally very lacking in heavy mounts also. The idea I think is that their capital ships are multirole, so perhaps creating all the hulls that require a shipyard to build an automatic empty cargo bay (NOT a fighter bay, just an empty hold similar to what a transport gets) would be appropriate ? With the heavy hulls getting 2? Not overpowered, but giving the human players ships a bit more flexibility in exchange for their lesser combat utility.
Just an idea.

Game is wonderfully addictive, even in this current beta stage. Money well spent. Thank you.

[Arioch]

I'm glad that you're enjoying the game. Thanks for the feedback.

I suspect that the lack of an armor slot for the Human scout is an oversight. I think we need to do more with the Scanner functionality to make scouts more compelling. I think there will be an opportunity to do this when more events are in the game.

The Human heavy cruiser and battleship have the same number of heavy weapon slots (2 and 4, respectively) as those of most of the other races, and a lot more normal-size weapon mounts than most. Some races' ships are more heavily armed, but I don't see that as a balance problem as long as they are appropriately priced. We'll be doing more balance passes at some point, but what situations do you find yourself in that lead you to feel as if the Human ships are underpowered?

[mharmless]

Human ships seem to be far underpowered compared to the hulls fielded by the other factions

So far I play humans the most (by far), and I really like to capture enemy hulls. The biggest advantage I've noticed on my own ships VS captured ones is the large number of turret slots instead of fixed forward hardpoints. This seems to fit well with boarding actions because I can leapfrog a front line ship to attempt to board a weaker one behind it and still direct the majority of my fire backwards to the primary target. It also makes lining up shots against the weakest part of the shields very easy since I just have to be able to move into the right quarter and don't have to spare a thought to my orientation.

[Chasm]

Human Heavy Cruiser 2 x 1 heavy weapon mounts
Human Battleship (they have no Battle cruiser) 2 x 1 heavy weapon mounts, 2 x 2 missle bays

Teros/Haduir Heavy Cruiser 2 x 1 heavy weapon mounts
Teros/Haduir Battlecruiser 4 x 1 heavy weapon mounts

Gremak Command cruiser 2 x 1 heavy weapon mounts, 1 x 2 missle bay
Gremak Battlecruiser 2 x 2 heavy weapon mounts, 2 x 1 heavy weapon mounts , 1 x 4 missle bay
Gremak Battleship 3 x 2 heavy weapon mounts, 1 x 1 heavy weapon mount, 1 x 4 missle bays

Orthin Heavy Cruiser 3 x 1 heavy weapon mounts
Orthin Battlecruiser 4 x 1 heavy weapon mounts
Orthin Dreadnought 2 x 2 heavy weapon mounts, 1 Siege Weapon

Phidi Cruiser (light cruiser) 2 x 1 heavy weapon mounts

Yoral Heavy destroyer 2 x 1 heavy weapon mounts
Yoral Heavy Cruiser 3 x 1 Heavy Weapon mounts, 1 x 1 Torpedo bay
Yoral Battleship 3 x 2 Heavy Weapon mounts, 2 x 2 Torpedo bays

Heavy Weapons breakdown, All Dread stars identical

[Arioch]

Thanks for the breakdown. As I said, they're not they're all not intended to be the same, and the classes don't all directly map to each other (e.g.: the Yoral "light cruiser" is equivalent to some other factions' heavy cruisers). Some have extra heavy weapon mounts, some have extra normal weapon mounts, some have extra specialty mounts, and some have all of the above. This is intentional, to give each faction a different feel, and to reflect their differing character. The Gremak are warmongering jerks, with big battleships and raiding vessels. The Ashdar have big supercarriers but leaner cruisers and no true battleships. The Humans have a beat-up ragtag fleet with standard armament plus additional medium weapon mounts; they're more flexible in terms of being able to mount offensive or defensive weaponry. The dreadnoughts/battleships are the most asymmetrical between races. Several factions don't even have true battleships.

Components add to the total cost of a ship. Those ships with a larger number of total mounts are more expensive to build, and since there's no limit to fleet size, there's no inherent advantage to those factions with slightly beefier ships; since they're more expensive, they can't build as many of them with the same amount of resources as can factions with slightly leaner ships. Some cost examples of kitted-out capital ships at max tech:

Ashdar BC: 1172
Ashdar CVA: 1492
Phidi CVA: 1514
Human BB: 1582
Yoral BB: 1675
Gremak BB: 1808
Orthin DN: 1812

So, why is it a problem that the Orthin have a bigger (and correspondingly more expensive) dreadnought than the Humans? Is there something that you're trying accomplish with the humans that you feel you aren't able to do because of this asymmetry, or are you just experiencing some dreadnought envy?

[Chasm]

More that any human ship past assault cruiser is not viable to produce at all. Without long range firepower in late game you get chewed up. This is why the yoral Heavy destroyer is so lethal, small material cost, short production time, hard hitting, and easily able to move into firing position.

[Arioch]

More that any human ship past assault cruiser is not viable to produce at all. Without long range firepower in late game you get chewed up. This is why the yoral Heavy destroyer is so lethal, small material cost, short production time, hard hitting, and easily able to move into firing position.

Cost-effectiveness of larger hulls compared to smaller ones is a potentially valid issue that we'll need to keep an eye on (as it applies to all factions), but you haven't sold me yet on the Human BB being under-armed for its price tag. It has 4 heavy weapon mounts (the two Missile slots are heavy, meaning you can mount torpedoes or pulsons) and 8 medium turrets that can mount offensive missiles, if desired. That's quite a bit of long range firepower. Two assault cruisers cost about the same amount, give you 4 heavy weapons, 2 medium turrets and 2 berths, and have 180 total hit points (versus the BB's 280), half the armor and only 2 system slots for extra protection vs. the BB's 3.

Missiles are also a good counter against Yoral heavy destroyers, which can't take much damage and usually don't have good anti-missile defenses.

[Chasm]

Yoral HDD comes with a point defense mount, as standard (I know, I love that hull as a yoral). We will have to agree to disagree, I suppose. Also, remember, I was not suggestion more weapons, I was suggestion cargo capacity (Phidi should have it also). Good chatting with you.

[Arioch]

I like the idea of adding cargo capacity to some Human ships just based on the character of the faction (you can see some cargo canisters on the ship graphics), but at present I think that would be too much in practice considering that dedicated transports (which are quite large vessels) only have 1 cargo space each. We could increase the number of cargo spaces on transports to compensate, but then that will introduce other problems with efficiency of moving individual population with the transport pool, etc. Also, I'm not sure what you'd do with cargo capacity on a warship except to carry troops. Still, it's worth thinking about.

[Chasm]

Concerning scanners, some suggestions. Passive ability in combat to see enemy ship stats in combat, perhaps an improvement to initiative. An Active function per round to increase damage on a single ship (targeted per round, lost if scanner is destroyed) from friendly fire (maybe 10%)

[mute]

Also, I'm not sure what you'd do with cargo capacity on a warship except to carry troops. Still, it's worth thinking about.

Personally I'd love it if human ships carried extra infantry either to deploy in boarding actions or for planetary conquest. Why put them in soft transports if you can just spread them out through your whole fleet? There is some historical basis for this at least, the IJN would make regular use of destroyers and light cruisers to transport infantry during the years it was conducting invasions. For truly massive invasions, maybe you bring along the transports but for outlying colonies or raiders why bother?

From a fluff standpoint, it would seem to fit with Humanity's background. They're a bunch of quick-breeding feral spacers wandering the void. Gravity wells are for suckers. So why wouldn't they bring a bunch of up armored cantankerous troopers along to make things interesting and to help out in a pinch?

[Arioch]

I think the capability is appropriate to the race fantasy of Humanity in this setting; the problem is game system scales. The few thousand troops or colonists that a battleship could carry are probably not significant in terms of a game system in which one unit of population represents a million people.

The Human advantage is meant to be in ship boarding and salvaging, which is not very well fleshed out in the current builds.

But like I said, we'll give it some thought. We want to do things with the Gremak raiders (in terms of transporting captured populations) that run into similar problems of plausible scale.

[mute]

The few thousand troops or colonists that a battleship could carry are probably not significant in terms of a game system in which one unit of population represents a million people....

That argument entails the assumption that you would want to capture a world intact. If your fleet bombards the inhabitants down to a few hundred thousand, then the troops you're carrying with you are fully sufficient to rebuild the world as a Human colony. Which would then of course harbor the requisite alien underclass for slave labor etc. Alternatively, you could just glass the surface. Personally, I am often loathed to lose the structures of a well developed world but, as a human player, the added headache of managing troop transports when tight on production generally means I glass everything to re-seed with my copious human population.

[Chasm]

Assualt ship berths already have this scale issue, and TBH they work reasonably well (This game has battlemechs, forgive me but I class it as a soft science game). I just found the idea of a human heavy cruiser acting as a trade ship (a cargo bay would let you ply the trade lanes after all) to be something humans would DEFINITLY do... Silly space monkeys.
Interesting webcomic showing humans doing just that http://cato.thecomicseries.com/comics/

[mharmless]

The Human advantage is meant to be in ship boarding and salvaging, which is not very well fleshed out in the current builds.

Hell yeah! I already play them this way; nice to know it's going to be the canonical interpretation!