| Speed matters a lot, yes. But +1 speed doesn't matter much when your ships have 10-20 speed anyway. |
the grav accelerators are available from a fairly cheap tech (even if the AI never grabs it early) and can be traded for other items. i'm fine with a +1 boost.
i'd much rather see the hyperion ship yard be an upgrade to the starport, or otherwise affect you bonus rather than ships in that yard. or make it a boost to HP or something. i can't justify building a hyperion shipyard on my main industry planet usually for the little bonus it does give. those ships usually group with ships built on other planets, nullifying most of the benefit of an extra +1 movement.
personally i'd rather see an upgrade series for the starport that did this for any of your ships. and also roll in the "orbital fleet manager" functionality perhaps.
damage / (cost / 100) : size ratio
Doom Ray: 0.917:1
Black Hole Eruptor: 1.116:1
Black Hole Generator: Still 1.333:1 |
true, but they all have the same size mod value (6). take a look at GC2Types.xml, the rations for the bases sizes are:
beam: 2.2000
missile: 2.2727
gun: 2.6667
that's dividing damange by BASE size. as you can see, when you actually put these on ships the differences slim up a bit. but you're looking at the weapons in a vacuum.
defense: absorb/ base size = defense efficiency
ultimate invul: 9 / 3 = 3
aereon defense: 10 / 4 = 2.5
zero point armor: 10 / 3 = 3.3333
as you can also see, driver defense is also "easiest" (not cheapest, but most space efficient). personally, i prefer to research drivers because of how cheap the high end weapons are. also consider the fact that early drivers are pretty bad, except for the nano-ripper which is increadibly expensive for its time.
personally, i'm more annoyed at what happens with high-end beam weapons. yes, i want to research something that's worse than disruptors. i'm posted about it a couple times. i figure if SD wanted to change it, they would. i've tried modding around things a bit myself.
tried increasing the damage caused by missile weapons. starting at photo torps, i made them increasingly more powerful but a lot more expensive. re-did the missile defense tree. didn't really like it. tried redoing beam weapons to make them more powerful. didn't really like it. the reason i don't stick with any of these mods ive tried making is because it's too difficult to really test it. if you want to mod an aspect of the game, though, i suggest applying a certain change equally across the board.
in other words, change black hole eruptor to 32/18 or so, so that it matches the black hole gun. maybe 32 / 20, since size mod affects each comp individually (in other words, if you put a 32/18 and a 16/9 on a massive hull, the 32 / 12 will probably end with a better damage/space ratio, depending on your mini bonus). make the tech and comp both cost more, and boost defenses accordingly. also make previous missile weapons and defenses and their costs appropriately balanced. now do you see why it's so difficult? it isn't just math taking place in a vacuum. i've won a couple wars by retrofitting a chunk of my fleet with a newly-designed but inferior weapon, simply because my foe wasn't ready to defend against it (anti-matter torps to plasma beams? sure!).
honestly, i usually start by researching missiles. in a perfect world i follow up with drivers.
every game is different. the usefulness of a weapon or defense is determined first and foremost by your enemies' technologies.
i think with the new battle system coming into play, we might expect a rebalancing of the weapons and defenses. not too sure really.
i'm over modding the weapons and defneses right now. i did think of one more alternate system based more on realism. let me take a step back. i don't see any reason why sensors should have any size mod at all. the colony pod, troop pods, constructor and trade comps all have 0 size mod, and it makes sense. those parts shouldn't need to be any bigger on a large hull than a small one. the same seems like it should be true for sensors, IMO,
and weapons.
yes, i said it. for better realism, weapons should have 0 size mod. defenses, engines, and life support in my mind would obviously need to be bigger to achive the same effect for a larger ship, but not weapons. what i'd rather see are the later-gen weapons having exponentially larger base sizes, so that it's very difficult to put the ultimate weapon of any type on a tiny fighter (either that, or the sizemod tag should also affect the amount of damage weapons do, but i think i'd actually prefer my method). my hesitation with a mod like this is that i don't think the AI would intuitively account for the differences. it seems to always use the most expensive weapon available, even on its tiny fighters.
i guess this idea is based more on how i build ships. my large and huge ships end up decked out with defneses and the best weapons, while my fighers are typically designed for minimal cost and usually extra speed, since i'm hurrying them off to the front line. (that's why i'd also love a carrier comp, and since i'm making wishes, a structural reinforcement comp line, to boost hit points on a ship... maybe even nerf eyes of the universe since it gives the human player such an unfair advantage, and makes sensors and sensor bonuses meaningless, and since the AI can't use it fully even if it does beat you to it).
anyway, i think bottom line is, if you feel drivers are obviously that much better, use them and don't worry about it. or if it bugs you that much, change it yourself. nearly all the files can be edited in notepad, and the tag names in the xml files are pretty self-explanatory. i'm not trying to dismiss your opions as all. i agree with several of them for the most part. but thie game is balanced enough for now, and SD is working on developing and fine-tuning other aspects. the kinds of changes you want are, for the most part, things you can mess around with yourself. if i can do it, it can't be that hard.
