Balance Observations & Questions

[Noble713]

Ok, I've only been playing the game for about a week. I love the mod (and Warlords) but I'm a little frustrated at my troubles playing as the Republic.

 

I played as the CIS first vs the Republic and things went pretty easily, so since then I've been playing as the Republic. I've tried the 1vs1 map against both Hard and Normal AIs and keep getting my teeth kicked in. I just can't seem to find the right fleet composition to give me an advantage against the AI's mix of large numbers of fighters and frigates/cruisers. I play with large fleets and fast income, so the size of my battles probably makes it more difficult to discern the nuances of each ship's merits. I have a preference for survivable ships because I build few shipyards, so my nearest frigate factory is often 2-3 systems away and waiting for a bunch of reinforcements to arrive is rather boring.

 

Capital Ships (general): They just seem to die....very quickly. It makes them not worth the logistics investment or price. You try to micromanage them because they come across as individually important but 30 seconds later they're an expanding cloud of debris just like your nameless/faceless frigates anyway.

Venator: This is the only vessel that can deploy a decent number of fighter squadrons, which against the AI bomber spam makes it somewhat mandatory. I tend to load them up entirely with fighter squadrons, and then train them up to Lvl 3 so they can get 2 levels of "Flak Burst". It doesn't help, as they still seem to kill only a few bombers before dying. I've tried fielding large groups of Venators (5-10) and they simply get overwhelmed by dozens of frigates.

Victory's: I don't build these often as I'm not sure what they bring to the table. The Venators have better shields and carry more fighters. Perhaps they are better against bigger ships, but I don't run into enough of those to make it an issue.

Procurator: same

Praetor: I've found this to be the most survivable Republic cap ship, and it's pretty nasty against frigates....at least until the rest of the fleet gets wiped out and it is subsequently overwhelmed. Fortunately they tend to live long enough to jump back to a friendly planet.

Mandator II: With the Targeting Uplink and higher Hull/Shields than even the Praetor this looks great on paper, but it seems to die faster. I've sent both ships into a system simultaneously (big fleet with numerous supporting frigates) and the Mandator went down first.

 

Frigates/Cruisers:

Dreadnaughts: I probably build these the most, as they are cheap and decently tough.

Acclamator I: Possibly the best Republic ship from an overall utility perspective. Just one is often powerful enough to clear out an entire system of independents and then colonize the planet before moving on. I don't use them in combat fleets though, generally keeping them back waiting for the target system to be secured so I can snatch up the planet quickly.

Vindicator: Packs more of a punch than the Dreadnaught but has a pricetag to match. Due to the much higher supply cost (7 vs 4), I generally prefer to build a far greater number of Dreadnaughts instead.

 

Patrol Ships:

I only use two of these: the Invincible Heavy Corvette as a disposable scout ship, and the Botanijef (sp?) Armed Freighter for quick, cheap, planet captures. I've tried fielding Carracks and they seem decent, but I think I compared them to Dreadnaughts and chose the latter instead. Most of these vessels get blown to pieces in seconds, and like I said, I hate having to wait for a bunch of replacements to arrive.

 

So basically the Republic fleet lacks the fighter capacity to meet bombers head-on, the Flak Bursts lack sufficient power to be an adequate substitute, and the capital ships seem more than a bit fragile for the investment.

 

Is there something I'm doing wrong? Am I building the wrong ships? What should I use to cut through bomber swarms like a hot knife through butter? What do Phase Missiles do?

 

In contrast to the above, I found the CIS fleet very durable. I could take a Lucrehulk (either model) with half a dozen each of Recusants and Munificents and conquer an AI system with fairly minor losses. Both of those designs kill enemy frigates rather quickly. The TradeFed carrier seems easily abused, being an affordable frigate with a 6-squadron capacity. I've only built a few of them (it's a relatively unknown ship to me) but I've been on the receiving end of a fleet that had ~10 and it wasn't pleasant.

 

I think I'll start another game as the CIS on hard to get a different perspective. I'll also try playing at Normal fleet sizes to see how the ships perform in smaller engagements.

[Evaders99]

Thanks for the notes. You are right, its not really tuned for balanced sides yet

I'm sure Eville will take these into consideration

[Noble713]

I've got more useful data now, as I just finished a game and took pretty heavy screenshots.

 

Settings:

Random 1vs1 map, CIS (me) vs Republic (random Hard AI), Large Fleets, Fast Income, Pirates Inactive. These are my normal settings for now.

Battle 1: I sent a scout into a system with a plasma storm and found a huge enemy fleet. Fortunately my entire navy was just one jump away at the desert planet that had become my forward fleet base. While my fleet was heavily loaded with bombers, it seems they can't fly in plasma storm systems so my ships would be fighting with no support. I held back my Geonosian Dreadnought and a Lucrehulk DCS with only 30% shields for about 10 seconds, as I didn't want either getting targeted early.

 

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q209/Noble713/SoaGE%20screens/OOB-battle001a.jpg

 

I'm outnumbered 147 to 25. My 6 TradeFed carriers are essentially useless, I have only 13 real cruisers to the AI's 23, but I do have 6 capships to the AI's 2 . Should be a pretty bloody matchup, right?

 

It turned out to be a complete rout. The AI fleet tried to flee as soon as I arrived but the Geonosian DN's gravity well made sure that wasn't happening. (full desktop screenshot)

 

As you can see I'm not even stressing my economy to accomplish this, and while I've used up my current logistics capacity, I'm only about halfway up the tech tree for that (somewhere around 800 total supply, I think). All I lost was a single Recusant class, with minor damage to a few other vessels:

 

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q209/Noble713/SoaGE%20screens/battle1-aftermath.jpg

 

I pulled the Lucrehulk DCS (not letting my Lvl5 capship get killed!) and a damaged Providence out of the fleet and sent them back for repairs. The rest pressed on to the next system, which I expected to find lightly defended. I was wrong.

 

Battle 2:

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q209/Noble713/SoaGE%20screens/OOB-battle002.jpg

 

Of course this was a much smaller fleet than the last one, and also I was able to employ my fighters this time around, unleashing those nasty CIS bomber swarms that I mentioned in my first post:

 

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q209/Noble713/SoaGE%20screens/battle2-bomberswarms.jpg

 

There were about 3-4 other major battles after this but they are pretty much repeats of the above, with the AI fielding 1-2 cap ships at most and getting wiped out with no ship losses on my side. The next bit of interesting info is the post-game statistics:

 

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q209/Noble713/SoaGE%20screens/frigates-destroyed.jpg

 

15:1 kill ratio for frigates for the whole game

 

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q209/Noble713/SoaGE%20screens/frg-strength.jpg

Here you can see the timeframe where the bulk of the fighting took place. Notice how the AI's total frigate strength fell by 135 ships in 5 minutes, whereas mine fell by....one. I wasn't building anything either, so it's not like new construction was compensating for losses on my side.

 

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q209/Noble713/SoaGE%20screens/hulldmgtaken.jpg

35:1 ratio for overall internal damage

 

I have more shots (frigates destroyed at different timeframes throughout the game, going from 80 @ 1h58m to 400+ @ ~2h45mins), but I think you get the idea.

 

When I play as the Republic on Hard it's like beating my head against a brick wall, and when I play as the CIS it's a breeze. I'll need to sit down at look at the actual ship stats to narrow it down (and right now I'm probably not familiar enough with the game mechanics for that to be much help), but I think the CIS frigates are far more powerful than the Republic frigates, and the mainline Republic capships (Venators/Victory's)can't be fielded in large enough numbers to compensate. The top-of-the-line CIS capships appear far more destructive than their Republic equivalents as well.

[Evaders99]

Excellent observations. I'd sure Eville will do what he can to fix this