I am inclined to agree with Darksxx...i don't think that increasing the cost of the titan, or requiring more research for the titan is a very good idea.  the point of the titan is to have a really good fleet fairly quickly in the game.  if you make it almost impossible to increase the rank of your titan (by requiring outrageous amounts of XP before gaining rank) then you dramatically decrease the effectiveness of the titan.  i do think that the titan starts out to strong.  if you decreased the health and shield of a lel 1 titan then it would be more vulnerable at the start.  but just like other cap ships, the titan should be able to increase in rank family quickie.  i don't think that the rank structure of the titan should be touched, however the starting statistics should be altered to give the need to defend the titan until it reaches lel 4 or so...

thoughts?

@Aqwleach: Eitheir i really suck at explanations or you just didn’t fully read my post.

It doesn’t matter what you do to the base stats, the titan is going to be ludicrously overpowered very rapidly. A titan levels so fast and scales so much with each level that it rapidly acquires a level of power far beyond it's tech level. It scales in health and damage roughly twice as much per level as a capital ship.

A level 1 titan is roughly a tech 4 item. Yes some of them i agree need adjustment, but their in the right general ballpark.

A level 4 titan is nothing like a tech 4 item, I’d argue it's too powerful even for a tech 5 item. Yet it's available long before you'll reasonably have researched the majority of your tech 4 or especially tech 5 researches.

Start moving up to a level 6 or above titan and this becomes even more apparent. Whilst titan leveling post level 6 slows down a lot, it's still quite easy to get titans to that kind of level long before you have access to the endgame techs, yet your getting a titan with endgame capabilities.

This is what I’m getting at. I'm not remotely concerned with where a titan starts out at. That can be balanced. But without massive nerfs to it's scaling, a leveled titan is NEVER going to be balanced for when you can get access to it. It's scales too high too fast.

Titans will be out long before massed Heavy Cruisers, martox. Obscene amounts of LRMs can potentially do the job, if the Titan is alone.

@UberPretzel:

good question...i just didn't reread my post as well as i thought my mistake

btw nice name

@KarlBar99: 

"It doesn't matter... It's scales too high too fast."

I think that what you are describing is what the devs wanted...a movable ship/SB that would be a huge challenge to destroy.  really the only way to effectively destroy an AI titan is with a titan of your own (or a massive fleet).  i agree that as the titan gains XP that it becomes really difficult to destroy, but i think that that is the point.  the titan just takes the place of huge fleets.  i get that it is really really hard to destroy a lel 7 titan, the best way to combat a titan like that is to have one of your own.  if you really want to downplay the titan's role in rebellion, make is a lel 7 or 8 research item and increase the cost to 20000/10000/10000 just to build...but that will undo the strategy change that i think the devs were looking for with titans...

Here is my one cent

To start I will say I have a fair amount of multiplayer experience my opinion is largely based off this.

How powerful should the Titan be? Should it be a one ship fleet or should it merely be a slightly stronger capital ship? Not everyone will agree on how strong it should be, some may want an unupgraded starbase to beat it, while others want it to be the ultimate game winner. I honestly don't care how strong it is as long as it's not overpowered, it's viable, it counters a few things and is countered by a few others.

Regarding Cost, Build time and Tech Level of the Titan: Ask 10 people and get 10 distinct answers. This is the beta its purpose is to find and fix technical issues, uncover game imbalances, and fish out consumer opinion of game features (and for some games help with marketing). Already there have been major changes to Titan cost and build time. So how much should the Titan cost? How long should it take to build? And when should you build it? Well.... there really isn't a *correct* answer to any of these questions. How then do we decide what numbers to put there? What it boils down to is: What do the Devs want? Do they want a ship you are forced to build asap to remain competitive? Or, do they want a ship that isn't ideal to build until some point after the 3 hour mark? The game (unless modded) will hopefully play out as the Devs intend; whether the game is a giant Titan brawl; or, the Titan is just a small, but useful, component of the late game fleet. The Devs can make it so that it's really cheap and easy to get whereas you must get it very early just like everyone else who knows how to play; or they can make it very costly and hard to get. It all comes down to how the Devs intend the Titan to be used. The player base can argue and debate for the rest of their lives, about various aspects of the Titan. If when the game is released you don't like the path the Devs chose there are a few modders that will probably be happy to help *fix* it, or this might just be the wrong game for you.

So what do I think about the Titan:

XP:

Gain: I like the rate at which the Titan levels up. But... it shares XP with capital ships, the problem with this is you want to keep your capital ships away from the combat so your Titan gets all the XP; sure there will be a few cases where you want to use your capital ships in the same well as your Titan, but so far in the beta this has been rare, meaning most of the time I would rather have my capital ships sitting a jump or two away doing nothing except not splitting XP with my Titan. I do not see this as the way the Devs intend the game to be played.

Death: If its late game and everyone has level 8-10 Titans having your level 9 titan destroyed, rebuilding it at level 1 is kind of pointless; yet I feel as though rebuilding it at the same level it was when you lost it at is cheap. Rebuilding a high level Titan for the same cost as a level 1 titan (cheaper if you count the Titan factory/cap ship crew) doesn't seem right to me; you should lose something, like a fraction of the XP this will weaken it, and create some loss, but not reset its *progress* to zero.

Strength, Power and Abilities: Honestly you can make this whatever you want; as long as it's balanced with: Cost, Build Time, Scaling, and when its practical to build.

Counters and Scaling: I don't know when the Devs intended for you to build a Titan but I do know this; If you can build a Titan 20 minutes into the game, you should be able to field a reasonable counter within the same time frame. Sure if you see it coming you can try to take out the factory, but this can be hard to do (and risky), or you can even try to build your own Titan, but I'm not sure either of these are really *counters*. Modern RTS games are more or less a massively complicated game of rock paper scissors, every choice is countered by another choice there isn't something that beats everything else and then ties with itself, that doesn't make a very interesting or competitive game.

As it is the Titans scale mostly with XP; stronger abilities, more HP, and more weapon damage. The problem is that in the current version of the beta is once you and your opponent both build Titans it turns into a game of "who feeds the other guy the least". I really don't know what to say about this, you don't want your frigates to fight because they will end up feeding the other guys Titan; you don't want your capital ships to fight because they take XP away from your Titan, so what it comes down to is that you want to fleet to be a one ship fleet. While it might sound awesome to have a one ship fleet, this makes a fleet of multiple ships less viable, a balance needs to be achieved here (between frigates, capital ships, and Titan).

Suggestion(s) for the Devs to mull over:

1. Create a Tech Tree for the Titans.

   Things that can be included: building tech, damage, hp, hp regen, armor, mitigation, building time, XP attributes, move speed, jump charge up, jump engine, antimatter regen, antimatter pool, prerequisite techs that increase the cost of the titan (or even have each tech increase the cost by 2-5%). These techs can be cheap (or even free). The main purpose of this is to create scalability, where you can build the titan early game and it’s not OP, yet it scales into the late game and becomes a monster of a ship.

2. Titan XP.

   I think this needs changed, I honestly think Titans shouldn't split XP with capital ships. All to often I find myself leaving my capital ships behind just so it doesn't *steal* XP from my titan where the XP is put to better use.

3. Game infrastructure

   ICO friends list comes back? Sure steam is replacing alot of ICO's features; but I don't want to spam my steam friends list with people that I only want to have contact with while I play Sins.

   Stats could use some work (still unfinished beta I know but thought I would mention it) new units need added and it would be nice if user actions becomes fixed.

   Game Crashes: I know you guys have put alot of work into fixing this, yet this is still a major issue for many players. Beyond the crash that happens 90% time when you leave a game, I think there is a crash rate of about 1/(10-20) games. This very easily causes players to stop playing a game and move on to one that crashes less frequently.

Disconnected and Out Of Sync errors: Same issues as game crashes just effects a smaller portion of the player base

4. Random stuff

   I wouldn't mind a way to tell which subfation players are in game; when you scout players you can tell if they're TEC, Advent, or Vasari; but not if they are Rebel or Loyalist.

   There is always the old "Make custom maps transfer automatically when you join a game"

   Steam Alt Tab: when I have the chat box selected Alt Tabbing works like Tab.(cycling though whisper for everyone in the lobby)

I think your guys are on way to make SoaSE a better game; I hope writing all this helps.

Edit: It's master1a but for some reason my account(s) are mixed up and I'm not posting on my normal account.

What Auqia said.  He put the nail on the head.

In terms of fixing titan XP, I think the easiest of fixes is that titans can only gain xp from cruisers, capital ships and starbases.  Thoughts?

I think auqia/master1a definitely got the main issues with the Titan. You might want to make your own post for it so the Devs will for sure see it.

The only thing I will say is that I don't think losing XP is the best way to punish players for losing their titan. I think greatly increasing the costs either for each level it has or for every time you lose your titan (or both) would be fairer. Maybe set it up so that each level increases the cost/build by 1200 credits/400 metal/400 crystal +60 seconds to build, while every time your titan is destroyed increase the costs/build time by 10%. As titans are so powerful right now if the build time gets very long you'll be at a huge disadvantage waiting for it to be rebuilt in which you're basically a sitting duck because you'll be feeding the enemy titan, or they might beeline straight to your titan factory.

Some good counters could be: 1. Letting the Ogrov be able to shoot at Titans, since Titans are slower, and 2. giving corvettes bonuses against Titans.  Not huge ones, though.

Also, When I have a group that includes my Titan, the group splits into several groups, and stays that way.  This is when they move.

I am playing one right now.  It is running, and every once in a while I check the forums.  Back to the game.  I am playing as the Loyalists.

Then you missed the point. I know i'm not great at explaining my point but i'll try again.

You can try upping the XP requierments. The problem as i've allready stated is simple:

IT WON'T WORK

the rate at which you gain XP and the percentage of that XP that goes to your titan is not fixed. It varies based on a huge number of factors. That means there no fixed "time to reach level X". The issue here is that with any resonable XP per level value some of those times wil have the titan increasing at a rate that's appropriatte to the rate tech is making counters for such a level titan avalibile, but at other times it will be increasing in level much faster than the tech is making counters avalibile. There's no way through XP alone to make a titan allways level at least in line or slower than the rate at which your tech is increasing.

@Master1a: Yo've mostly hit the points i was trying to explain. Though i've tried to clarify one you missed above.

That said part of my OP was intended to address the point you raised. "What do the devs want?".

IMHO this whole rapid scaling thing is about making it so that the titan is avalibile early so you can see it in short games, but is able to scale well enough that it's viable at the endgame of a longer game. In effect it's able to be both and mid game and a late game asset as approppriatte. The problem is the current scaling dosen't match up in terms of rae of scaling with how quickly the endgame comes along.

@Kafisher: You won't see an issue. You've got all your econ and all your military techs by now. But a level 10 titan can and will easily arrive long before that point. A level 10 titan vs an enemy fleet thats only got half the weapon, sheild, hull, armour, and econ tech upgrades is orders of magnitude more powerful. And especially since your ability to have a well upgraded starbase everywhere the titan could go is also zero. The situation your describing is the best case scenario for killing a titan.

I think Karl´s point is, that it is not the brightest idea, even if the devs are doing this on purpose. Titan should not be quintessential element in the gameplay, you should still have a choice to not build it and chance to win a game that way. Technically, you can win without Titan of your own, but most probably only when you hit defenseless enemy in the period, when he is trying to build it. But that is not enough.

And i agree with that, although i think the Titans are absolutely brilliant addition to the game and i would want it to build it myself.

The question now stands, whether the titans are really all that powerful, that at certain XP levels you have no chance of beating them, regardless of the size of your fleet.

In response to the OP:

Yes I agree that there is no simple on fix, but a few simple fixes overall. 

1. Increase the Titan XP requrements for the first 5 levels so that when a titan faces an early LRM snipe fleet it takes longer to level (when it levels it increases its durability...making it an impossible to kill target).  People should get what they pay for with LRMs...just make sure that a titan being repaired at their planet has the defensive advantage.  In this way the dynamics of the game won't be too upset by titans.  Titans will still be vulnerable to an early LRM spam fleet, just not for very long.  They can do hit and run engagements(really only talking about the ragnarov here) and come out fine, and grab experience on the way.  In this way the rebel and loyalist titan will be percieved as substantially different ships tactics wise.  Ankylon moves in to stay.  Ragnarov has to dance around, flirt with death, and come back stronger.

Level xp requirement suggestion 

1st level ~ 1200 xp

Work from there, after level 5 the experience required should become equal with the current experience required curve.  In my view higher level titans (after level 5) should require a little less experience per level to better keep pace with fleet growth.

2.  Decrease titan speed, especially turn speed.  The Rebel titan is the most hurt by this change, as it should be.  A big ship like that shouldn't be able to hit lots of frigates right on top of it.  Its strength is in initial engagement of the enemy force and picking them off if they retreat.  Also, great for taking care of starbases.

3.  drasitc Reduction of the damage caused by scattershot and explosive shot in the 1st level of both of these abilities(and a reduction for level 2 as well), balance these as if the players always choose those two abilities as the first, because most people in MP do anyways.

Using these abilities effectively takes almost no skill, and currently is the hardest fleet counter in the game.  This is so hard of a counter that it makes early frigate production almost meaningless. 

You can't apply early pressure if you know your opponent will get fed resources to early titan and just blow all your fleet to hell in the very first encounter.

Since the first encounter sets the pace of the entire conflict, having it go extremely one sided forces a resource feed to ensure that you won't be quickly overrun.

If all of these are balanced you will see titans having a very different effect on the game.