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DarkMadMax

Join Date 03/2006

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Broken game dynamics

Slow kill ratio along with useless PJIs makes impossible to defend anything. - Simply because fleets can fly right to core systems practically unharrassed. This creates the situation where you can simply spam siege frigs in large quantities and win just by destroying worlds one by one.

I found after a while that the fastest way to win is siege frig spam due to this feature. I tried various apporaches but siege frig spam seem superior to anything else- once you get to 20-30 of them

I think kill ratio should be sped up dramatically and PJI needs to do at least 2500% slowdown to be of any use .In beta pjis completely stopped jump and that was never really a problem for big fleets -they could destroy pji pretty fast, but this was stopping tactics like siege frig spam.

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An adjustment that could be made would be to have siege vessels be highly vulnerable to defense platforms.

I had an AI jump 30 siege craft into my homeworld (it wasn;t defended when I was off conquering a neighboring system) and destroy my homeworld within minutes. It weas only siege craft. The defense platforms didn't even phase them either.

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If you check the "what would you like in 1.03" thread, PJI buff/change is possibly one of the most requested things.
This isn't only to do with siege, basically any large fleet can go unharmed through your empire, even with hanger defense they will barely have any losses.

The reason the developers made it this way was to prevent turtling of super weapons, but I would rather see actual choke points being effective (PJI worth building) and super weapons being modified to keep them balanced.

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If you check the "what would you like in 1.03" thread, PJI buff/change is possibly one of the most requested things.This isn't only to do with siege, basically any large fleet can go unharmed through your empire, even with hanger defense they will barely have any losses.The reason the developers made it this way was to prevent turtling of super weapons, but I would rather see actual choke points being effective (PJI worth building) and super weapons being modified to keep them balanced.

I have played with making these stronger on the LAN here and I have to say any change they make to PJIs needs to be really carefully managed. If you mess with how effective raiding is in any way then it quietens down the game a lot. The way it is now encourages a lot of activity and mobility in your fleets. There are already a few special abilities that provide the ability to stop a ship entering or slow a ship in hyperspace, they are quite effective, and to keep the game active they are all on ships, not structures. It changes things a lot if you can just block off any old world rather than relying on choke points that are in the map itself.

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The thing about jumping deep into your opponent's empire means that your empire will be also be vulnerable to the same tactic. Then it comes down to who has the most fortified homeplanets, etc... Remember to heavily fortify your coreworlds, and that your outer worlds are the least important.

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I completely agree that siege spam is a broken game dynamic. It's really obvious because it's a favorite AI tactic to mass siege, completely ignore defenses and kill the planet first. The planet is long dead before your defensive fleet has a chance to return.

I don't think improving PJI's is the solution though. That would dramatically change the way the game is now and make it into a turtling match. Siege just needs to be made far more vulnerable to stationary defenses.

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If you check the "what would you like in 1.03" thread, PJI buff/change is possibly one of the most requested things.This isn't only to do with siege, basically any large fleet can go unharmed through your empire, even with hanger defense they will barely have any losses.The reason the developers made it this way was to prevent turtling of super weapons, but I would rather see actual choke points being effective (PJI worth building) and super weapons being modified to keep them balanced.I have played with making these stronger on the LAN here and I have to say any change they make to PJIs needs to be really carefully managed. If you mess with how effective raiding is in any way then it quietens down the game a lot. The way it is now encourages a lot of activity and mobility in your fleets. There are already a few special abilities that provide the ability to stop a ship entering or slow a ship in hyperspace, they are quite effective, and to keep the game active they are all on ships, not structures. It changes things a lot if you can just block off any old world rather than relying on choke points that are in the map itself.

I wasnt suggesting anything like beta, just that they do need to be improved somewhat so that map choke points can actually be made into proper choke points.

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The thing about jumping deep into your opponent's empire means that your empire will be also be vulnerable to the same tactic. Then it comes down to who has the most fortified homeplanets, etc... Remember to heavily fortify your coreworlds, and that your outer worlds are the least important.

Like-wise a mobile defense fleet should always be waiting to jump into action.

Nothing says "I hate Siege Spam" like twenty fighter squadrons.

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Nothing says "I hate Siege Spam" like twenty fighter squadrons.

To which the tactical readout says: "What siege frigates? The debris to my right?"

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Solution is quite simple - all the capital ships should have a scroll of town portal ^^

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It's easy to say that a mobile defense fleet or fighters are the counter. Most people have a mobile defense fleet, but it can't be everywhere at one time. Even having a lot of fighters doesn't make a difference if the siege spam fleet just runs away.

The core problem is the fact that 20-30 siege ships can destroy a planet before your defensive fleet can respond. Once that planet is gone, the siege spam moves to the next planet and the next, completely ignoring the defenses. Once you manage to get your main defensive fleet in place, the siege fleet just runs away to safety after dealing quite a painful blow to your credits.

Like any massing, siege spam is a potentially risky strategy. But the speed of planet destruction and ignoring defenses makes it seem really cheap and unrealistic.

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i don't like how there is no real front line in sins of a solar empire. that's probably my biggest complaint. I would love it if phase jump inhibitors prevented enemy ships from jumping into phase space in any direction but the one that they came from. It would also make planetary defenses more useful by default.

Even better, make the phase jump inhibitors to be built on the planets themselves, thus the only way to move deeper into the enemy's system is to take out the outer planets first. To me it seems like it gives defense a fighting chance and creates a proper home-field advantage. Planetary seige cannons such as the novalith should be adjusted to take into consideration this new defense potency.
Novaliths are overpowered anyway, 5 star systems and you can shoot a cannon that far away? It takes a fleet 20 minutes to make it to neighboring star systems as it is.

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It's weird to argue 'realism' in a sci-fi game, so in a way, it's hard to argue how the game should be.

In a traditional war game, there should be a front line. It should be difficult to bypass defenses. Skipping planets should mean that you leave your retreat/rear vulnerable. In many cases, this game ignores these standard conventions.

At the same time, this is set in outer space which is unimaginably vast. It would seem near impossible to build an impassable front line in outer space. It's impossible to cover all that space to prevent a fleet from ignoring all your outer planets and jump straight to your home planet. How can there be choke points in outer space?

But when you talk about defending a single planet, then I have a problem with how the game works right now. Planetary defense should be formidable. It should take a lot more effort to destroy the defenses and the population.

Maybe a possibility is to make it impossible to directly attack the planet when the planetary defense is still in place?

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As said before, you simply need a defense fleet. I wouldn't be opposed to PJIs being more effective, but the core issue is you sent -everything- out and are complaining that you had nothing left to defend.

Siege frigs aren't so strong that they can wipe planets before you can respond, especially if you have a small defense fleet.

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Well, according to the charts, *scouts* are actually the best at taking out siege (and LRFs). Bet nobody tried that yet! So perhaps leave some supply room, or have a small fleet of scouts ready for defense.

The whole idea of the "front line" in space makes ZERO sense. I agree with boxox, making PJIs more effective has to been carefully done. A little more, ok; a lot stronger, and it becomes a "battle of the choke points".

If that happens, people will mass their fleets even worse, and cripple any hit 'n' run-type tactics. It becomes just another "throw everything into one big fight," like every other RTS.

P.S. If you think games take long now, increasing planetary defense strength will just make things worse, IMHO.

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The problem is not with the siege ships. 30 of any ship focus firing will take out any unit pretty quick. The problem is with the planets themselves.

I modded most planets to have about 5x or more health and population each. I found it pretty retarded that any colony could get killed just by a few handful of ships in a moment of minutes. Ok sure big capital ship comes along with its super cannon and wacks a big chunk of life out with a large cooldown, sure I can accept that but come on now with the rest of the firepower in the game. This stops complete planet destruction/conquering without having a supporting fleet by doin the mods like I said.

For example home worlds should be the hardest to conquer and take a very long time.

more resources, more health, tons of population are for development. (it takes about 6 hours to max your population with this mod)

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It's easy to say that a mobile defense fleet or fighters are the counter. Most people have a mobile defense fleet, but it can't be everywhere at one time.

The thing I notice is that the better people are at the game the more fleets they tailor and move around at once. If you have a 'defensive fleet' which is a big group of all the ships you have dedicated to defence then someone will work out where it isn't or can't get to quickly and strike there. Someone with multiple defensive pickets that are tailored to different jobs (speed fleet of flaks and carriers, anti-cap fleet of LRMs and robotics and command cruisers, blockading fleet of a cap with anti-hyperspace abilities and a bunch of heavy cruisers and 1st tier frigates) can box a fleet in and make sure it never gets out in anything like the same shape. If you have multiple fleets then you can lure someone into sticking around for an 'easy' win vs a small holding fleet and then jump other components in from behind, park a bunch of flaks in a system they're jumping to so they take it from all guns as soon as they leave the phase lane, all sorts of fun things. If you have one big fleet it will keep losing antimatter trying to catch up with someone and fall to pieces the moment they turn and take theirs out different exits.

Even having a lot of fighters doesn't make a difference if the siege spam fleet just runs away.The core problem is the fact that 20-30 siege ships can destroy a planet before your defensive fleet can respond. Once that planet is gone, the siege spam moves to the next planet and the next, completely ignoring the defenses. Once you manage to get your main defensive fleet in place, the siege fleet just runs away to safety after dealing quite a painful blow to your credits.Like any massing, siege spam is a potentially risky strategy. But the speed of planet destruction and ignoring defenses makes it seem really cheap and unrealistic.

This sounds like you are playing the AI? Have you tried this online much?

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I agree with boxox, making PJIs more effective has to been carefully done. A little more, ok; a lot stronger, and it becomes a "battle of the choke points".

The thing is that the increase in effectiveness is not limited to just making ordinary worlds better at blocking a fleet - it is uniform and it makes natural choke points incredibly effective and beachheads almost impossible to create.

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they should reduce the planetary bombardment ship's hp alot more
i had a capship with a bomber squadron, and it still only managed to take out 2 or 3 of the 10 krosovs before the planet was dead

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Slow kill ratio along with useless PJIs makes impossible to defend anything. - Simply because fleets can fly right to core systems practically unharrassed. This creates the situation where you can simply spam siege frigs in large quantities and win just by destroying worlds one by one.
I found after a while that the fastest way to win is siege frig spam due to this feature. I tried various apporaches but siege frig spam seem superior to anything else- once you get to 20-30 of them
I think kill ratio should be sped up dramatically and PJI needs to do at least 2500% slowdown to be of any use .In beta pjis completely stopped jump and that was never really a problem for big fleets -they could destroy pji pretty fast, but this was stopping tactics like siege frig spam.

If you wanted a turtle fest ... go play ... I don't know what. No one plays turtle games because they are horrible. SOASE very effectively awards aggressive play. You can attack, and have a very good chance of getting away. It is hard to have front lines when you are dealing with faster than light speed spaceships. You can't just build a wall.

There are counters, EMP bolt, Grav warhead, PJI slows them down.

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Solution is quite simple - all the capital ships should have a scroll of town portal ^^

hahaha

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I think my solution is best either way. Its more realistic. Think of ww2 Germany was able to get by and get whereever overall to supress but the "extermination process" took a longer time leaving more time for the other countries to get there in this case ships of empires to stop the extiction.

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IMHO, making siege ships slightly less effective would be better. Increasing planet stats would end up penalizing capital ships.

Personally, I think a few hangar bays and a group of scouts defending the planet should be enough to hold off most planet sieges.

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they should reduce the planetary bombardment ship's hp alot morei had a capship with a bomber squadron, and it still only managed to take out 2 or 3 of the 10 krosovs before the planet was dead

Oh wow, I had 40 FP worth of units and couldn't take down 120 FP worth of units before they killed my planet!

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I dont think upping planets HP would be good solution ,because outside of siege spam (e..g if you field normal fleets ,with 5-6 siege frigs max) it takes forever to kill a planet. Then all of a sudden siege spame will become requirement to do anything at all and game WILL degenerate in turtlefest.

Imho making PJI work wont turn it into turtle fest - it never did in beta, mainly because PJIs are low HP and decent sized squad of bombers takes them out in a couple of passes

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IMHO, making siege ships slightly less effective would be better. Increasing planet stats would end up penalizing capital ships.Personally, I think a few hangar bays and a group of scouts defending the planet should be enough to hold off most planet sieges.

Except those cases when there is 20-30 of them

.Not talking about AI sieges (which are easily beat off) , talking about MP spam.

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