216 replies to this topic

[Battlemage1]

On the Covie hangar defense. No. It will not have weapons. The Covenant defenses are fluid. Ships and Mobile Stations, supplemented by the Hangars.

 

Genital Strategy. 

[Mojo]

I could be wrong but....isnt the prowler from halo 5 the size of a broadsword atleast it looked like it is?

[Fleet Admiral agigabyte]

Asymmetrical Factions, Battlemage. It works rather well.  

[Battlemage1]

I could be wrong but....isnt the prowler from halo 5 the size of a broadsword atleast it looked like it is?

Yes. They share the same size, perhaps Prowler slightly bigger. It's a corvette, just like Sloop. But Sloops weren't represented anywhere, while Prowler from Halo 5... you understood.

 

 

 

Asymmetrical Factions, Battlemage. It works rather well.  

 

I'll never believe to this, just like the thing about Valiant 'Command Equipment' instead of powerful twin-MACs, when Punic combines both advantages. Excuse me, but I see it as lame excuses. Yes, you have your own world view there, some of you set this, while others accepting. But from the side these limitatios to please balance looks... amusingly. 

 

Balance is not just numbers, but also features. And some features could be...decisive. Weak defence weaponry on hangars will never ruin balance.

 

After all, in the end, you will ruin current balance youselves, because you'll see another way. You'll fall and be seduced. 

[Fleet Admiral agigabyte]

I'll never believe to this, just like the thing about Valiant 'Command Equipment' instead of powerful twin-MACs, when Punic combines both advantages.

 

The Punic is a far higher tier, far more expensive ship. It's supposed to do the Valiant's job better. Besides, the Valiant and Punic have different buffs, which stack.

 

Excuse me, but I see it as lame excuses. Yes, you have your own world view there, some of you set this, while others accepting. But from the side these limitatios to please balance looks... amusingly. 

 

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but it seems like you're saying that to limit factions to please balance is silly. WHAT? Balance is the most important part. The game has to be balanced. That is all but a fact.

 

Balance is not just numbers, but also features.

 

Indeed, but you have to think about both. The asymmetrical balance is a feature. 

 

And some features could be...decisive. Weak defence weaponry on hangars will never ruin balance.

 

Maybe Point Defense, but Plasma Torpedoes? No. That is not "weak defense weaponry". That's Anti Ship weaponry. That defeats the point of the fluid defenses.

 

After all, in the end, you will ruin current balance, because you'll see another way. You'll fall and be seduced. 

 

Not sure what you mean here.

Edited by Fleet Admiral agigabyte, 05 November 2015 - 01:16 PM.

[PLPM]

On the Covie hangar defense. No. It will not have weapons. The Covenant defenses are fluid. Ships and Mobile Stations, supplemented by the Hangars.

 

I still fear THAT covie world with a Haven, a supporting fleet, and 26 Hangars... AKA; 104 Fighters/Bombers heading your way.

 

The hangar cluster**** was indestructable unless you focused your full alfa damage of macs, everything, on them.

 

Otherwise, their shields would just regenerate.

 

*EDIT*

 

And Point defense for a structure that is like three times as durable, has twice the fighters... while the UNSC isn´t armed either? In the name of balance???

 

Now.

 

I´d prefer a "static" fleet assigned to a covie world, or something small, rather "meh" (after all, the Covenant design choices ingame are hitting hard, and staying on the offensive; it´s not offensive focused? burn the heretic!) 

 

I do feel slightly sad when I see a covie world that has one haven starbase and 10ish hangars as it´s whole "defense"

[Battlemage1]

The Punic is a far higher tier, far more expensive ship. It's supposed to do the Valiant's job better. Besides, the Valiant and Punic have different buffs, which stack.

 

Both supportive crafts, have no such tactical offensive abilities like Marathon's pea burst and Autumn capture ability. Valiant's good MAC damage won't kill Marathon (mainly useless) anyway. At least you won't repeat that nonsense about command equipment instead of those powerful twin MACs. I can't imagine Valiants in roles of Autumns or Marathons, but I can imagine them as formidable foes with number of other cruisers and friagates. To be fair: I see them like that. Remember, I know some things about modding too. After my own trials... Can't say that slightly buffed damage ruined Covenant's superiority. But I didn't try to mass them as autumns and marathons, because both Valiant and Punic have no interesting offensive abilities to combat ships. Marathons can overrun them, and Autumns can perfrom a Grand Theft Starship. 

 

 

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but it seems like you're saying that to limit factions to please balance is silly. WHAT? Balance is the most important part. The game has to be balanced. That is all but a fact.

 

 

No, I didn't. I said that things like hangars defensive weaponry, better MACs for UNSC supportive and minor ships (Valiant, Charon) won't ruin balance. Balance is not a prison wall, especially in your case.

 

Indeed, but you have to think about both. The asymmetrical balance is a feature. 

 

 

Asymmetrical balance is not a kind of balance. Different doctrines with own traits, strong sides and weak sides, even cheats, that's are features.

 

 

Maybe Point Defense, but Plasma Torpedoes? No. That is not "weak defense weaponry". That's Anti Ship weaponry. That defeats the point of the fluid defenses.

 

 

Hangar will never pursuit it's targets. It can be good to shooo frigates and other types of small crafts. 1 battery of plasma torpedoes is not so scary. About PDF... if those can cripple frigates and destroyes, then it would be useful.

 

 

Not sure what you mean here.

I meant, one day you'll open your eyes. I was joking, actually.

[Fleet Admiral agigabyte]

Different doctrines with own traits

...THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE ASYMMETRICAL BALANCE IS.

[Death]

On the Covie hangar defense. No. It will not have weapons. The Covenant defenses are fluid. Ships and Mobile Stations, supplemented by the Hangars.

I don't know, if you made these hypothetical turrets take up many, many tactical slots each, then you couldn't possibly turtle up like the UNSC could behind walls of them.  I think that you could pull off having a very sparse amount of turrets (3 - 4 at max) on say, the high tactical slotted worlds at best, and still maintain the asymmetrical balance.

[Fleet Admiral agigabyte]

I don't know, if you made these hypothetical turrets take up many, many tactical slots each, then you couldn't possibly turtle up like the UNSC could behind walls of them.  I think that you could pull off having a very sparse amount of turrets (3 - 4 at max) on say, the high tactical slotted worlds at best, and still maintain the asymmetrical balance.

I feel that so few are a waste when you can get small fleet with that money instead.

[Lord Stark]

Battlemage SoTPs already had plasma torpedo batteries in a really old build.  They weren't really good for balance, that'w why the team moved away from them.  I think you really should trust the team when they say we eat breath and sleep (sometimes literally) balance.  The devs put in countless hours balancing the units and then the playtesters did the same.  

[SiRD31M0S]

Asymmetrical balance is not a kind of balance.

Maybe Halo, a universe predicated on asymmetrical balance, just isn't for you.

Balance isn't about what we can get away with, it's about creating a compelling symbiosis of lore and gameplay. We don't NEED to squeeze every point of damage out of what leeway we have, because the current build already works. Capital ships are already an insane powerhouse for the UNSC fleet, and every ship fills its role.

Over the course of this thread, you have directly advocated changes that would lead to the homogenization of both factions. Please don't.

[Lavo]

    1) UI 'Save' False button and unclear save name position. I've taken this picture from Custom Gain menu.

 

As you can see here the menu is a WIP and that "false" button clearly is referring to the save tab rather than actually clicking there to save.

 

 

I. About Shiva

1) AoE damage distribution - that's my point. Did you see it's file?

I still think that's it's underpowered due to bad EMP effect. But I won't bother you with this anymore, just show dry numbers and say some facts.
Why LR damage always better than close range? In vacuum of space we have no air and rocks to reverse blast power back again. The blast will be most dangerous on impact and in closest range. Almost full power of warhead will be concentrated there.

 

I suggest to make Shiva to damage all targets in its area of effect, (allied or not) like in original game (Starbase red button). If some of your ships were close enough, so they will be crippled or destroyed as well.

It's been said before and will be said again; the Shiva's AoE damage is low as a nuclear weapon has very poor AoE in a vacuum. Further, outside of the NOVA bomb, we have not seen any UNSC nuclear weapon having vast AoE damage upon detonation. Making allied ships take damage will not be applied due to how the ability autocasts, namely that it disregards how close you are to allies. Without this, you could use probing fleets to get the enemy to literally kill themselves. The TEC's BRB has a condition that has the ability autocast solely as a last resort measure, while the Shiva is an offensive weapon; the two are not comparable in this instance.

There is a reason behind the long range buff doing more damage than the medium/close ranged ones; it's a byproduct of how Sins itself functions. To start, there is no "apply buff beyond X distance, but before Y distance" function Sins. As a result, the medium buff is often applied to close/point-blank targets and close is often applied to point-blank targets. This results in a weird mess. The long ranged buff is often applied to all three of these target types as well, however, given it's notably longer application range and target count, it gets a lot of "independent" targets, which do not have medium, close, and/or point-blank buffs applied to them. I'm not sure if I've explained it well, but to sum it up a bit better, the first three ranges often stack with one and other, while long range hits a lot of "alone" targets.

 

Also, looks like Shiva doesn't damage enemy fighters and bombers even where they're inside of blast. Check it and fix, if you can, please. Then long and medium range effects will be dangerous at least for small crafts.

Fighters are a valid target group for the Shiva damage buff, which truthfully makes this statement incorrect. However, they appear to be absent from the EMP effect; this is a bug and is unintentional. I will fix this, thanks for bringing it up!

 

 

2) AoE EMP effect distribution. See extras from game file below

While I see where you are going with this, however, buffing the EMP effect would make Shivas far too powerful. It was the EMP effect, not the damage, that made the Shivas the terror they were in 0.55, where they would instantly lock down any ship in point-blank range, make nearly all close ranged ships ineffective, and severely cripple medium ranged ships. Even long ranged ships would get a small, but notable, debuff. While perhaps it could use a buff, I'd approach this very carefully, given past experiences; the numbers suggested here are far too powerful for starters.
 

I'm not quite sure about Stalwart-class, but Charon and Paris share same reactor and MAC. I suggest to make Charons (and counterpart) without bombing damage, but with bombing ability instead. Then, you have to buy these ships, but not spam them like  Parises with same MAC damage. Also, Charon should have worse armor and HPs.

Again, it's about MAC barrel length; the longer the barrel, the stronger the MAC, even if the guns are otherwise the same. That being said, it is a matter of gameplay here rather than balance; if the Charon had the same MAC power as a Paris, the Paris would thus be pointless assuming the Charon had any planet bombing ability. Giving the Charon little health would not matter as the UNSC is all about alpha damage and the basic UNSC frigates are treated as write-offs as it is. Getting rid of it's bombing damage would make the ship utterly pointless from a gameplay perspective and break the AI and as such will not be done.
 

About Dodge Effects

    I know how it works and I have experience, that's why in Halo aesthetics high values of dodge won't be looking good. But dodge below 30% definitely won't make some kind OP from frigates... Just additional reason to buy them as cavalary in late game. Or... Halberds/Halcyons spam against AI.
    Balance is not only adjustment of something to something, you know.

What? If you "know how it works" you would have not suggested it seriously as you would know that it's just a damage reduction in disguise. Unless you are suggesting this in order to put in a stealth buff for frigates, which is silly nevertheless.
 

Suggestions about Strident-class heavy frigate

    Disclaimer: Not a spoiler, you've included this into release by your own hands.

Congratulations on finding an unused entity file that was purely used for random testing months ago! This is a hint for something coming in the future. I will say however that currently there are no plans to make the Strident a buildable frigate; it will only be spawned from Infinity via ability.

 

5) Add Halcyon Refit research as arm for Halcyon-class research.

Hold on here. In your opening post you said the only useful UNSC ships versus the Covenant are "Halcyon, Autumn, Orion and Infinity". Now you are suggesting to have research buff a ship which you have also mentioned might be nearly OP in a post some time after the opening post. This is rather contradictory. That being said the Halcyon certainly does not need a buff.

[Death]

I feel that so few are a waste when you can get small fleet with that money instead.

Yeah, but in some cases your fleet(s) might not be capable of getting somewhere in a timely enough manner to deal with a mere annoyance.  You might say that is what Havens are for, but if you were to replace the hanger bays with some turrets I think the effect would remain pretty much the same in terms of gravity well defense.  Plus Havens are expensive in the early game and moderately so in the mid game; having 3 UNSC ships randomly pop into my empire early game when my fleets are off rapidly expanding territory, means I have to recall one usually to go take care of that.  Being able to plonk down a turret to ward off those little AI pokes would help with that in the early game in a way that a few hanger bays can't really handle.  Having both hangar bays and a sparse amount of turrets fills that niche, is simply variety IMO, and spices up the mod just that much more from the lore perspective, without sacrificing balance.

[SiRD31M0S]

ALL ABOARD FOR THE "UNSC WITH SHIELDS" HYPE TRAIN, CHOO CHOO

[Death]

ALL ABOARD FOR THE "UNSC WITH SHIELDS" HYPE TRAIN, CHOO CHOO

Sorry for voicing my opinion and reasoning for adding options and not break balance.  I won't do it anymore if you want.

[SiRD31M0S]

If your opinion is, "Covenant should be UNSC with shields," and your reasoning is, "I'm too lazy to manage more than one group of ships at a time," then by all means, make it so.

[Death]

If your opinion is, "Covenant should be UNSC with shields," and your reasoning is, "I'm too lazy to manage more than one group of ships at a time," then by all means, make it so.

Do you think that is what I said?  Or what someone else said?  Because I only came to this topic because for some reason it became more popular than the other one, and I am not sure to whom your reply was directed to considering your general wording.

[SiRD31M0S]

That was exactly what you said.

having 3 UNSC ships randomly pop into my empire early game when my fleets are off rapidly expanding territory

Expansion, meaning slaughtering helpless rebels, which can be handled very quickly and efficiently by two ORS's, effectively creating one-ship fleets.

means I have to recall one usually to go take care of that.

Meaning you can't, or won't, make a separate group of ships ready to mobilize in place of your colonizers, because you evidently have all of your ships piled into one place.

[Death]

Alright fine, you know best I suppose.