zolobolo wrote:the player is not motivated to lean into boarding with Humans besides this as they start with a heavy disadvantage in tech and need to research Boarding like anyone else (no pre-researched tech or discount)

Not sure that's true! Inferior ship designs and a disadvantage in tech already push them in this direction because boarding ships is a good thing to do in those situations (to use better designs and to steal tech!). But they also have a pretty decent assault transport, marines, and I think many of their ships have a pretty good cost/manpower ratio - though I may be wrong about that.

Dragar wrote: Not sure that's true! Inferior ship designs and a disadvantage in tech already push them in this direction because boarding ships is a good thing to do in those situations (to use better designs and to steal tech!). But they also have a pretty decent assault transport, marines, and I think many of their ships have a pretty good cost/manpower ratio - though I may be wrong about that.

I agree that their ship designs and inferior research (and others: food, coin) would push them towards boarding but they do not hold any real advantage in this area to lean into

Why?

I have played around with boarding a lot and for all races the most effective way of boarding (both research, production and time-to-market) wise are:
1. Light Cruiser design
2. Boarding Module (this is available much earlier in the game and due to ship speed it is not cosniderably less efficient then Assault Shuttles, just need to stay behind somewhat in the first turn to engage the enemy in the next when they pull closer which is also the same in case of shuttles, but contrary to shuttles this boarding function cannot be countered by PD and thus its effectiveness is not reduced over time or nullified altogether)
3. Marine Quarters module
4. One shield Module
5. If available: Distortion Field Generator (this is huge for boarding ships as they can stay cloacked during boarding and still have active shields and normal recharge rate - thus taking them out before late-mid game is nearly impossible) PLUS they also do not need weapons anymore since they stay cloacked all the time thus final point:
6. Rest of the sluts filled with armor

Accordingly, the most effective races in boarding are in descending order:
1. Gremak (cloacked, shielded and heavily armored cruisers in record time - cant beat these guys)
2. Orthin (Quick reasearch for heavy shield and early Assault Cruiser suitable to task)
3. Humans (due to Light Cruiser design and if they get to it their Assault Cruiser is good but not ideal as it boasts heavy mounts that are not utilized especially when cloacked) - but this does not consider their starting state

So we could say they are still the third best faction to lean into boarding right? Whell their starting situation says otherwise
1. They lack production and food to build up early and even light cruiser needs a starbase
2. They lack research bonus from pop (like Orthin) and from buildings for quite a while and once they do manage to stack up research, the Assault Cruiser + Power Armor takes +860 research compared to Light Cruiser whereas +550 research will get them to deflector shield
3. They also struggle with the highest metal shortage of all races, so producing larger ships is extemely difficult for them till late-mid game
4. Once they have production buildings, pop, metal, reasearch capacity, researched the powerfull combination of marines+AC, they still need to produce both of them separately (so a bit of micro here as well + production of tank battalion is somehwat wasted ) In my last game with Humans this means: 17 Turns while boarding cruiser takes 11 Turns to produce

Hence the player cannot lean on the typical boarding scenario imagined for Humans (Marines+AC) in the first 150 turns!
If the player has not been destroyed already playing humans till that time, the game is practically won as at this point first 2 wars are over and additional planets and pops allow for any other gamestyle thus boarding does not play any further advantage when compared to other factions

This is why I say theit either or both of these techs need to be available to the humans from the getgo or made cheaper to make this tactic viable as currently it is suicidal. Tried a lot of things with Humans and the best course of action is to levarage the starting Heavy Cruiser and rush the weakest neighbour before they can counter it. Cannot wait for boarding to be feasable

Alternately, they could start with a single ship that is boarding capable and maybe an Assault Marine on it if AC or have the tech pre-reseached to instantly utilzie captured ships which would make the Light Boarding Cruiser design much more powerfull in their hands if they manage to crank one out

Arioch wrote: Other options are just as "viable" as they are on other faction ships; they're just not optimal. Reducing the bonus will not change missiles still being optimal for the Tinkers.

It is not my intention to not have them being optimal choice in most situations, but to prevent it from being optimal in all sitution (no brainer decision like using railgun or bomber carriers before their nerf)

Tried a game now with Tinkers on stable build normal difficulty. In this case almost all ships are solely using rockets, and plasma torps where possible (except for some Railguns as I can jsut not take totally one sided loadouts ). Then I started attacking everyone and harmonised their pops, so soon enough everyone was in war with me and allied to each other

Result: Tinkers easily crush all opposition with these loadouts even though they were almos completely surrounded, outgunned, outmanned and AI is quite competent in this setup

Reason:
1. Rockets are hard hitting, low energy cost weapons and they can practically not run out of them (-1 to overall ammo each turn considering usage and regen, but start from 13 and nothing survives beyond 7 turns). I thin the regen rate should be nerfed to only allow for 5-6 turns of full rocket bursts
2. Tinkers are naturally better at harvesting Arda tech due to their missile preference and lack of PD of Arda, this makes aquisition of Plasma Torpedoes easy to do when done conciosuly
3. Plasma Torps are almost impossible to counter (would even be so for a human), deal as much damage as Fusion torps and are available much earlier

So in a way this is a situation like that of Yoral torp destroyer with the exception of:
- Tinker ships are regenerating health, armor AND systems making them simpy a cannon instead of a glass cannon
- Tinker ships will never run out of torps
- It does take some more time to get to this tech for Tinkers
- It requires some planning and knowledge of the tech that can be used from Arda

In general: I jus do not see anything that can really stand up against Tinkers when using missile only loadouts (excdept for luck), and particularly plasma torps are a sure win for the player so using anythign else is letting go of a sure-win strategy. Fighters could be a natural counter to torps and buch of missiles but these do not regenerate while Tinker ships, systems and ammo does

But regarding plasma torps I have to say: if we accept Yoral torp destroyers then this is also sort of ok as it is balanced out to that OP ship a bit and is fun to use (you do need to pay attention when to launch the torps).

Suggest to remove fixed damage description for small crafts (including Tinker Vindicators) as they are referencing current gun and missile tech already
Display of small craft HP would make sense though for small crafts so that the player can estiamte the firepower that can counter them

Suggest to not start any faction from a system on theedge of a Spiral map (cant say to the other maps types but probably makes sense for box as well)

This is to prevent the player (and AI) to start from an overly defensive system. If there is at least one system till the edge of the map that is fine but the starting poition as very restrictive on the edge and the startup a bit one-sided - or literally one sided

Also it would make the galaxy feel mre vast - my favorite starting position is from the central 25% of the galaxy, as there are a lot of directions to expand to and lots of diplomacy going on. When starting on the edge, the next enemy of the player is pretty much given

zolobolo wrote:Suggest to not start any faction from a system on theedge of a Spiral map (cant say to the other maps types but probably makes sense for box as well)

I don't think we have a Spiral map.

Arioch wrote: I don't think we have a Spiral map.

Or do you?! No, no you dont Its Ellipse

This is just cosmetics: when playing default colored Haduir, main ship colors are lilac and gray
When taking over (or annexing) Phidi designs, almost the entirity of the ships are lilac and almost no grey - would be nice if the later wold break up the striking lila ships.

Maybe this is only due to colors being replaced outright: yellow to lilac bu I have noticed in some cases (Gremak taking over Phidi ships) for the captured ships to get patterns on their hull previously not visible and solored by the main color of the faction that has captured it (leaving the primary color intact)
I think this method would work perfectly also for Haduir when they are capturing ships meaning: leaving the primary color of the ship intact (or whistching it to Haduir secondary) and giving them a new pattern overlay with the primary color of the Haduir

This occured me the first time I have annexed Colonials with Imperials: there is not much difference between the two factions to assimilate and gaan an advante grom during annexation on the ship-design front

Now there is obviously a light carrier vaiant of the coloniast that can be annexed but the imperials have nothing the colonils do not already have access to as far as design goas, and the only sort-of unique tech the tow factions altogether have access to is the stargate to which only imperials get teh advantage of research reduction and the AI never actualyl researches it to ever ractically be annexed

So what if:
- Make the colonials ability of having +1 small craft in hangars an actual tech (with the small craft and a plus sign as art) which can be then annexed with the faction, increasing your small craft capacity in all circumstances by +1. This would even be helpfull ofr Imperials. The tech could be pre-researched or made researchable tor the faction, both have advantages and disadvantages
- Make the Ashdar Destroyer design unique for Imperials - this way the colonials have soemthing to assimilate as well. Admittedly I do not tend to use this design as the Light ruiser is superior in every way and the destroyers might actually need some edge to them, but the idea is simply to have at least one unique deisgn for each faction
- Alternatively, the Imperials migh have the Light Cruiser as an exclusive design but that would hurt the colonials a lot - still would also enjoy this concept
- Have stargate tech pre-researched for Imperials, ensuring that they to provide a "unique" tech to all other factions whan annxed (including to colonials) AND enable the AI to actually build these at the same time when controlling imperials

Could really do with seeing the planet number max and populations on said planet on the overall planet UI.It is fiddly having to pan to each planet to know if it's near max.

Something like this.
http://i71.fastpic.ru/big/2015/0921/0f/ ... ecb00f.jpg

It's a bit annoying to change the planet defense design (or few of them) every time you get a new armor. What would be the case than you don't want the best armor on your planets? Are there plans to implement special armor types (like "immune" to a specific weapon type) that make choosing the best not obvious? Is it hard to have a (built-in) armor that auto-upgrades to the best available?

Suggest for Arda nests to have some sort of defense in order for their research bonus to be gained.

Question regarding missiles: there was a rewamp of Gremak missiles a while ago and sicne then they have very cool double laucher art (like Ashdar do in some cases)

Couldn't all ships get a double launcher art that fire 2 missiles from the hardpoint at once? This is basically always the case except for very rare cases where only one is launcher - for these I would recommend to double the capcity as well and then it is consistent everywhere

The art for doulbe launcher seems to be already available and applicable to all races but only used for heavy mount)

Notice, that heavy hardpoints offer 2 missiles per turn just like medium and the double launcher art is used in some vases (when heavy even though it represents the same firepower as when mounted on medium hardpoint)

All ships would look much cooler I think with the douple lunacher art (especially Ashdar Light Cruiser which would have two of these beauties under its wings )

Shouldn't Harmonised populations suffer penalties to coin income, as well as science income? Tinkers themselves lose coin income, presumably due to lack of individuality (and thus independent economic activity); I'd think Harmonised aliens would be similarly disadvantaged in economic activity. It's not as if losing food consumption and gaining labor isn't a fairly significant boost on the other side.

It was already noted by many players that Ion Beam is... not very exciting. Maybe take straight-forward approach and declare it primarily shield-depleting weapon? Damage against shields is doubled. We have specialized anti-shield missiles, and second way to solve the same puzzle will not hurt.