Stock Ship Balance

[Reiver]

Hey, all. BF is my new favourite game.

I do have a couple things that I can't figure out, though, regarding the various ships.

#1: What's the point of the Athena? I just can't seem to make it work, which seems strange for what is supposedly the pride of the fleet. At long range, the best you can manage is a trio of railguns, which for its points you're better off just using a trio of Redons. Facing forward, you get two railguns, and a pair of invincible nose sections. ...However, if you're trying to absorb fire, it's a damn shame the sections behind the invincible ones are nigh impossible to protect from fire, which swiftly leads to the nose being cut off. And sailing it into the middle of a firefight, like one would a Hecate (Which works quite nicely, in that it actually has a reasonably heavy frontal attack, whilst the side batteries let it engage opponents around it at the same time), seems to kinda negate the whole point of having the long range weaponry.

So, um, why? If I want a damage soak, I just grab a Cronus. At least it's a straightforward bruiser to boot.

#2 Demeter Drones seem a tad anemic. I guess they're meant to be that way, but it would be nice if they had a little more endurance - I don't mean toughness or even range, but literally that they hung around longer. It's kinda sad to watch the things fly across the map, fire twice, then die...
While we're at it, I've noticed the things seem incapable of actually targeting specific components. Is this a matter of inaccuracy, or that they only target ship sections instead? Seems a tad strange to watch them spray fire at things I didn't tell them to shoot, is all.

#3 Flak, and specifically the Helios. For some reason, a lone Flak gun seems to do a respectable job; at least of asteroid defense. But the Helios's entire point is supposedly fleet defense - yet it seems incapable of actually hitting incoming fire. To the point that the Tmouls seems to do a better job itself. >.> Is flak supposed to be The Best PDS Guns Around, (at which point it seems that they fail), or is the Helios a bit undergunned in general?
It just seems odd, that's all.

Otherwise, 'tis a glorious game in general. I'm planning on working on 'balanced' craft to add to the fleet; it's in this role that I started to notice the discrepancies above.

I note that if I'm just using craft wrongly, I'm happy to get advice. The current ('logical') methods of using them just seem to not be working as well as one would expect, so I thought I'd raise the point.

[TormakSaber]

1: th15 has discussed replacing the Athena with something else, and possibly changing the Hecate as well. Personally I think the Arcas, Athena, and Hecate could all use a slight boost in HP. It's obvious that the Cronus and the Peitho are very ver much better than the rest of the battleships, with the Arcas a close 3rd, but its use is very situational, unlike the Peitho and Cronus..

2: Demeter Drones become *exponentially* better with numbers, and how close they're fired at the enemy. They're also some of the best things for tying up enemy point defense because they have a 75% resistance to it. They're very powerful.

3: The Helios, and Flak in general is better at stopping widespread fire, like blaster barrages or pulse guns. It's not so good at single hit thigs like Railguns. The Tmolus and the Eos however, aren't so great as widespread stopping power, but are excellent at killing the hard to kill things like Railguns, Demeters, Tachyons, and asteroids. General rule: Flak for AoE, Particle Gun for single target. That said, I admit I don't often use the Helios.

[Arcalane]

#2 Demeters are obscene in large numbers. You can order them to fire at specific targets and they'll do their best, but if you just aim at the core they'll shoot at anything.

#3 Flaks, like Demeters, are best in groups, and better against barrages than particle guns.

[th15]

The flak guns are indeed designed to have that feedback loop. The more fire you throw at a flak gun, the more effective it is, unlike particle guns which always intercept the same amount of fire regardless.

[Reiver]

Hmm. I guess my main issue with the flak guns is that they keep missing, then...

As for the Hectate and Athena... I can certainly see a reason to replace them. On the other hand, they are rather pretty. Perhaps a re-speccing of their various armaments rather than a complete replacement? I get vauge visions of them being relatively fragile long range Bringers Of Hellfire And Death(tm), leaving the close range give-and-take to the battleships. Heh, an Athena outfitted with broadside missile launchers (Whose guided missiles were capable of letting it manage a full-forward fullisade) could be quite... interesting. Not least because the drone launchers could help tie up point defense. >.>

Actually, I think I might see how one of those turns out. :p

[th15]

Umm the Hecate has the highest firepower to cost ratio in the game. You just need to get all it's weapons firing.

[Reiver]

I personally think the Hecate is quite useful. It's the Athena I've been scratching my head over...

Edit to avoid doublepost: I just finished making the Athena R, the rocketlauncher version thereof. Essentially swapping the 6 railguns for 6 default missile launchers, at a 60 degree angle ('cuz it looks cool ).

It works... surprisingly well, actually, as a standoff bombardment platform. Much more than light point defense shuts it down rapidly by itself, but combined with other incoming fire it causes a not inconsiderable amount of carnage. It just sits back, pounds away, and most returning fire is caught on the nose because it's far enough away to not have it's slow speed a liability. It's fun!

[th15]

Well, how is that functionally different from the Arcas and Demeters? This is kinda why missile launchers aren't on any of the stock ships.

[Reiver]

It was just an idle experiment to see what would happen if one turned an Athena into a ranged bombardment craft. Functionally it's not really different, other than the invincible-nose thing giving it something of an edge in long range duels. It also doesn't miss ships that rely on dodging, which is a minor bonus, though one probably outweighed by its large vulnerability to flak.

It was just a five minute experiment that I thought was kind of interesting; not trying to tell you how to write your own game. Sorry if it sounded that way...

(So how are you supposed to use a stock Athena, idly? It's a tad puzzling.)

[th15]

Well I didn't mean to be so hard, it's just that each ship needs to be distinguished from all the others significantly.

The Athena is usually used in pairs which each one protecting the other. It's the only player ship with aegis which makes it unique in that sense.

[Captain Trek]

Well, one day while I was down at the supermarket with my dad (this is a true story, BTW) I had a thought (and, of course, told him all about it)... The Athena's ageised prow is meant to make the ship virtually invincible from the front, right? And its meant to be somewhat vulnerable to flanking attacks or 'bypass' weapons like sidewinders, right? Well, the problem is that the Athena, as it is now, is bad at protecting itself from the front. The two strut sections behind the ageised prow sections tend to get shot off by front-on attacks...

I assume you tried to fix this by giving the Athena that second set of ageis deflectors. This, however, made the ship too strong against flanking attacks... it became overpowered... now, however, it's back to being underpowered...

So, I though of a simple way to solve both problems... Simply make the prow sections wider... this would make the deflectors effective from the front, whilst at the same time leaving the struts open to flanking and 'bypass' weapon attack... both problems solved...

What do you think, TH?

[Mr_Wizard]

I think the Athena would be better served as a 3 Shock Beamer broadside rather than a 3 railgun broadside. Since its slow, when something moves out of its broadside firing arc, all it does is give those weapons time to charge up. I think it would add a nice play mechanic, where you save your broad side until it can do the most damage.(which it is like now, but only in the sense that it has more broadside weapons than forward weapons) I would keep the forward rail guns though, so it can still fullfill its "big ship bombardment" role. Having a variety of weapons on big ships is always fun in any case.

[Reiver]

Not a bad idea at all, although in that sense it still leaves it a little undergunned from the front; whilst 3 shock beamers would make an interesting but short ranged weapon. It could work, though - but you'd probably want to increase its tertiary armament to something a touch heavier than just four pulse cannons and a pair of drone launchers.

And on further thinking, I re-remembered what the niche I was pondering was - able to sit back in long range duels and pummel things to bits with relative impunity; so long as it was protected from flanking operations. The lighter craft can do long range bombardment, but need guards to keep bad guys 'away'; this would do long range bombardment (Guided missiles mean light craft can't dodge!), so long as you kept the bad guys 'in front'.

I think the main logic behind this (regardless of the weapon configuration that does it) is that there's already several close-in specialists:
* The Pethio for 'Stand tough and soak hostile fire in front of you'
* The Cronus for 'stand tough and blast everything in front of you to death'
* The Hectate for 'Sail into the middle of everything and blast everything all around you to death'.
And only the Arcas, at the moment, counts as a long range/force multiplier battleship, and that's via Demeter Drones - which are a nasty and interesting weapon, but given we have three close/medium range specialists who all do their jobs via different methods and quirks in tactics, I sorta see the Athena having a potential role here, too.

Further, the invincible-nose would amplify that role hugely - the Pethios is far better at handling heavy incoming fire in general (Due to being able to resist a wide angle of fire at a time, and being completely protected from the front during this), while the Athena can only handle fire from a narrow arc (Say, something far away...) but can do so indefinately. Which to my mind, suggests perhaps a loadout that emphasises a patient, ranged slugfest role over the quick-kill of the Cronus or the Hectate, or the pure-damage-soak and flying riot sheild of the Pethios.

[Anarki]

Athena is strange and contradictory.

It has an invulnerable front, but is meant to be used as a broadsider. Furthermore, it has a weak rear.

[Normandy]

Hrm, This does pose to be a problem. You can't really do anything to the Athena that wouldn't make it lose it's style and feel (necessary, in my opinion), yet it doesn't live up to it's style and feel. My suggestion?

Replace the Plasma Charges with missiles, give slightly more ablative armor, mainly on the sides, change aegis targets to the pieces right below the nose.

The change from plasmas to missiles will further encourage long-range battling, since missiles are far less likely to miss their targets at long ranges.

The more ablative armor will be simply that - more ablative armor. The Hecate could be a slightly faster "stripped-down" version of the Athena rather than a straight sister ship.

By changing the aegis targets to the sections right below the nose gives the Aegis more use, since it's harder to break those pieces off.