Secret Project ships tweak (r15)

Suggestions Balance
1

Contrary to popular belief, giving sp ships access to unique modules is not a smart idea knowing how powerful they can be with the basic of things available to them. IMO the proper way to nudge them into the slightly bit powerful way would be to tweak their special module selection while keeping everything else as it is.

 

Suggested changes on some of the ships would look like this:

 

Cyning - additional special mods cooldown reduced to 35 seconds on each.

  

Mjolnir - additional special mods cooldown reduced to 35 seconds on each while the standard one would be 30 sec.

 

Kraken - faster reload speed of the disintegrator and the ability for the torpedo to survive missile shield once.

 

Peregrine - Armada Plasma Web, decreased cooldown to 45 seconds, decreased active time to 10 seconds, disables the target’s passive regeneration on shield and hull entirely, reduces all external repairs and target’s active repairs to 50%

                - Vanguard Plasma Web, decreased cooldown to 45 seconds, decreased active time to 12 seconds, if the target uses afterburners the damage is doubled.

 

Caltrop - Raid Metastable Energy Field Generator, instead of stun effects, it drops any enemy lock on allies and prematurely triggers all missiles in a certain range after being invincible for 6 seconds.

             - Techs Metastable Energy Field Generator, increased cooldown to 60 seconds, increased active range to 2500m, does not stun the enemy, after 2 seconds of invincibility issues an EMP blast that hacks all drones and turrets and resets all enemy lock-on’s on allies in a certain range.

 

Saw One - Raid Diffusion Shield, decreased cooldown to 35 seconds.

                - Tech Diffusion Shield, increased damage to energy point ratio to 18:1 (with removal of the extra 1000pts of energy at the end of the effect).

 

Feel free to add your take on the special mods tweak.

2

On 8/26/2020 at 7:44 PM, ORCA1911 said:

Contrary to popular belief, giving sp ships access to unique modules is not a smart idea knowing how powerful they can be with the basic of things available to them. IMO the proper way to nudge them into the slightly bit powerful way would be to tweak their special module selection while keeping everything else as it is.

 

Kraken will never measure up to Archdragon/Black Dragon without access to Particle Flow Disruptor. That unique modifier is basically carrying the entirity of LRFs when it comes to viability traditional PvP as most long range access from other classes already suffers heavy damage reduction at range in Sector Conquest.

 

To the same tune, Ronin will never compare to even Patriarch let alone it’s T6 brothers the Custodian and Boremys. Patriarch holds out on pure damage potential with access to modifiers like confirmist booster and confrontation progam while Custodian is just… a Destroyer, but not bad.

 

The whole reason the main suggestion for bringing the “Secret Project” ships out of the dust via giving them access to unique modifiers from their respective classes is because this is in an attempt to bring them to the bar the premium ships of identical ranks have provided. If a Berserker does the same job of Cyning but better, why would I invest hundreds of monocrystals and various other resources when I can just play the market and buy the Berserker. The same deal goes for every other Premium ship and Secret Project ship of identical rank and role. If the SP ship does not match the performance of the Premium ship of the same rank - why would I put the effort into obtaining these ships?

3

You’re probably looking at it from the perspective how powerful the boosted premiums are with unique mods or how tweaked the newly added ships are with their unique modules. The way im seeing things is that all those unique modules will be tweaked one way or the other in the future as they fall into the constantly adjusting meta mods so judging things from a constantly changing perspective is probably not the best way of assessing something.

 

If we take out the part of how something is difficult or easy to execute (which should also be a factor but for some reason isnt, i.e. archangel, aka “skillcap”) there has to be a baseline that represents what SC is about pvp-wise, those would obviously be things like standard ships and standard modules, unique modules being things that perform only slightly better and not completely obliterating everything in its field. Granted that some basic mods need reduction in cd and some minor changes but that’s besides the point.

 

TLDR: the trash tier and god tier need to be adjusted to match the medium tier of things, judging things from god tier perspective makes things worse.

4

On 8/26/2020 at 5:44 AM, ORCA1911 said:

Contrary to popular belief, giving sp ships access to unique modules is not a smart idea knowing how powerful they can be with the basic of things available to them. IMO the proper way to nudge them into the slightly bit powerful way would be to tweak their special module selection while keeping everything else as it is.

While some ships _are _competitive mostly because of their specmod (like Dyrnwyn), I don’t think this is the case for the SP ships. Cyning gets a slightly better microwarp with a reload penalty, Mjolnir a better overdrive with a reload penalty, etc. with Jaguar imo having the most unique specmod, that being the short cloak. I don’t find that these specmods, unless extremely heavily buffed, would warrant using those ships on them alone. I like the idea of buffing the specmods, but it wouldn’t be universally helpful - for example, Jaguar already has great specmods, but has at best a niche role because no matter how much you buff its specmods, it doesn’t have the stopping power or damage of Slowing Projector or Beam Disintegrator; and it would be difficult to make Caltrop and Dyrnwyn both viable on specmod alone because Dyrnwyn is already vying on its specmod.

 

I think SPs should have access to one unique module of their class, which I think would cause the following:

-Cyning is still not super relevant because Taikin exists. Maybe it’s a bit better than Berserker, but Berserker remains relevant because it has two unique slots, allowing more flexibility with some builds (I’m sure many of us have wished that we had more unique slots on a premium). But also Leonina exists, and has access to things like Hazardous Veil with a 20% module cd…

 

-Mjolnir is similar because Tharga exists. Gauss or pion with Magnetic Disruptor might be fun. Spark still has more Thi’Lith damage.

 

-Kraken becomes usable because it has comparable bulk to the dragons with Particle Flow Disruptor, but still probably situational because DoT doesn’t stack and LRFs mostly shoot relatively immobile targets. Energy drain might be fun to use against Waz’Got, but you’re sacrificing efficiency on killfeeds, LRFs and Zetas. Black Dragon would still be as good or better.

 

-Peregrine gets Adaptive Plugin, which would indeed be pretty strong, especially with the regen debuffing specmod, but it’s not like Plague Doctor and Spike don’t exist. GEagle is and would be questionable.

 

-Jaguar can actually be a team fighter or anti-inty, instead of just being a meme brawler. Sawtooth would still compare because better bulk and Panther would still chase better because Dawn Locator. Rockwell would also still remain a viable anti-inty.

 

-Octopus can heal more. Still probably outclassed by Scylla, which has better bulk, more damage, and crazy heals, but it would be usable as a more lightweight engi. It’s not like Mammoth is amazing.

 

-Caltrop gets Dazzler! That’s really about it, it doesn’t have synergy buffs that improve ECM mods so this is the only real thing I can think of that would be comparable to/better than Waki AE, to say nothing of Dyrn. Karud wasn’t really considered a meta ECM anyways and would still remain the relevant bomb runner because of Shield Seal.

 

-Saw One gets Thermal Energy Burner or Improved Charge Algorithms. TEB would be fun with the damage shield and crit chance, but I doubt it would compare to the current meta commands, being Loki, Granite, and Pilgrim.

 

-Ronin. I’m not familiar with guards but I don’t think it would break anything. Would probably not be significantly better, if at all, than Patriarch. Conformist would be fun.

 

I don’t think those would be terrible changes, and it would allow for more freedom in build design, in that you can build around uniques rather than a limited choice of specmods. Would they be better than the R15 premiums? Maybe. But how many of the R15 premiums are actually worth using over either their R12 counterparts or a T6 or ellydium? Maybe Patriarch, Black Dragon, sometimes Rockwell and sometimes Spark. The premiums are already less than amazing, and SP ships are much more expensive (than a premium on ship sale) and offer a fraction of the viability.

 

2 hours ago, ORCA1911 said:

TLDR: the trash tier and god tier need to be adjusted to match the medium tier of things, judging things from god tier perspective makes things worse.

When Leonina is at all comparable to Taikin, Tyrant to Zeta, Scylla to Wazgot, and Orelus to Tharga. At the moment there is no easy way to balance regular ships with ellydium ships and strong uniques are the only thing they have. Scylla has amazing uniques and is an amazing engi and is just completely sidelined by the fact that Wazgot can teleport people, instantly heal people by locking on, has an aiming laser, and can just kill anything that approaches it by slamming it into a wall. Leonina also has great modules like Hazardous Veil and is just pushed aside by Taikin, which has access to multiple cloaks, insane manoeuverability, a better tackler module than most tacklers have in Satellite Crystal, the ability to just rewind damage and debuffs with Quantum Leap, and actually strong DPS (Duelist + Predators Instinct + nodes = +75% damage). The existence of these basically means that unless you nerf ellydiums into oblivion, normal ships will need their uniques to be viable.

5

The problem with all of the comparisons is the word

24 minutes ago, chopinomania said:

insane

 

Making things sane without nerfing things into oblivion is what i was talking about. Perhaps the cheapest solution would be to enable one unique mod for sp ships and see how that goes but i’d rather tone things down as everything is either too easy with too many gains or a crap ship loaded with so many modules that its actually low key godlike for no reason.

6

Quote

TLDR: the trash tier and god tier need to be adjusted to match the medium tier of things, judging things from god tier perspective makes things worse.

See here’s the thing though. The “god tier” of some classes are literally only mediocre in comparison to just about every other ship choice. You probably would notice for LRFs in particular that if you “try” to do the old “gunboat” approach in current PvP meta you die within seconds of taking fire. This is why Particle Flow Disruptor is the only thing holding even a small amount of LRFs in viability for traditional PvP as even with permacloak the moment you are spotted you are guaranteed to die within seconds. Even if you attempt to reverse thruster away your attacker can simply follow the effects of the RT to track you down and finish you off.

In the meanwhile Particle Flow means that if you play as true LRF in PvP - which is to say you are not contributing  at all  to the objective unless it is team battle you are at the very least immune to long range counterplay from Destroyers, Missile spam from Frigates, Archangels and more. At the very least you force your opponents to go out of their way to come to you and be forced massively out of position to kill you with the modifier equipped.

As for other classes - the problem is; is that Premiums and unique access modifier rules have been left untouched for so long that if a change were to happen now it’d burn a lot of players quite harshly. The same problem we face with PvP balance now too. It has been left alone for too long without any major changes that players would be burned if anything did get “hit hard” by nerfs or reworks.

7

Personally i play lrfs as close and long range and i have no problem with the basic of plays. In any case, things have to change for the better, this is just one step at a time.

8

10 minutes ago, ORCA1911 said:

Personally i play lrfs as close and long range and i have no problem with the basic of plays. In any case, things have to change for the better, this is just one step at a time.

Yes I know things do have to change - just I know from both sides of the LRF problem that gunboating just isn’t safe/viable as it was back in 2014. I know as a Destroyer if I see a permacloaked JLRF I can just tap it a few times with my main weapon and lob a photon and they’ll die almost guaranteed and I know having played the poor Tormentor AE in public PvP recently that if you get spotted by anyone at all or you come on radar for even a split second you’re just done for.

 

It’d be nice to be able to properly brawl without having to crutch on unique modifiers like the old days; just current burst DPS output and mobility means it isn’t possible.

 

Double edit:  Yeah I thought I’d bring it up on the hand of the whole “mobility ceiling is too high”. Currently if I go into PvP and see a high rotation Thar’ga, Wolfhound, Stingray or Tai’kin they  literally  teleport around the map at ranges above 6km. Which before any other discussion - this is a latency compensation issue which also makes it  borderline impossible to hit high mobility setups at high ranges (LRFs, Destroyers).

9

1 hour ago, TheDerpNukem said:

“mobility ceiling is too high”.

Yeah that’s among the things that should change together with the rest, there is a lot of issues to deal with if one wants to bring some balanced play into the game. For this topic, pretend as if everything’s okay and ask yourself what would make the sp ships more interesting in terms of special module selection ![:D](<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/006j.png “:D”)

10

1 hour ago, ORCA1911 said:

Yeah that’s among the things that should change together with the rest, there is a lot of issues to deal with if one wants to bring some balanced play into the game. For this topic, pretend as if everything’s okay and ask yourself what would make the sp ships more interesting in terms of special module selection ![:D](<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/006j.png “:D”)

Well the SP ships were designed and implemented during Dogs of War - back when the developers gave a damn about balance and alternate special modules for ships was a new idea so none of them truly shift the identity of the host ship at all.

 

With that in mind; how about altering the special modules to shift the ship identity with each one.

So for example Cyning’s Warden Microwarp could be shifted to a higher rank equivalent to Nightingale - instant but low range warp with the Warden’s flare of a small radar disable in an AoE around the initial jump point.

 

Legion Microwarp could teleport the ship to a certain range behind (X) target so if it would be made to teleport to allies it could be you mark an ally within let’s say… 5000m (emergency retreat is 7500m but that thing needs nerfing tbh) and upon activation has a 1 second windup where you cannot shoot or use other modules before it teleports you to the designated ally.

 

Just some ideas of special module changes that could give the ships unique identities within the current sand box rather than just being “Jarl but customisable” or “Lightbringer but customisable”.

11

Thats what im looking for basically. Personally, i wish to see the game in the dogs of war vibe and balance, included with all the new additions to the game. It shouldnt be hard as most things are about adjust values, its a bit complicated to even things out but i hope it can be done sooner than later. The game is fun and all but when it comes to the competitive scene its rather meh, i’d like to see some nice plays and teams emerge, i loved the low rank tournaments like the USC, it was a joy to watch ngl. I wish for the same joy in higher ranks soon.

12

I like those ideas a lot.

It’s a shame the SP ships are generally useless as they have unique designs which deserve to be seen more often (well, a few are ugly AF, but most are very nice looking). More viable ship choice is always welcome.