my little report post alpha

[batailleuse]

Review of experience Alpha 2

Before entering into details, remember that it’s only a personal opinion and if there is anything
you feel is unfair, feel free to debate around it in a civilized manner.


First I’ll start with what I achieved so far as to give a better estimation of my review and experience compare to yours.

• This is my first Alpha so far, no prior experience and I didn’t check any stream online
• Played as Deprived Faction for 2 days with roughly 30h into game
• I tried a bit of everything available but I spend most of the time in discovery that I find the most enjoying so far.
• My main Deprived fleet is rank 7
• I have achieved Rank 6 in Deprived faction

Software and Hardware related The graphics are nice and polished, game runs smoothly.
Overall the game is fun to play and I’m waiting for more, excited to see the final product.

Factions and ship have good visual designs and there are some appreciable variety in design some more skins would be appreciated in the future 
There is in my opinion a Huge gap between different faction that I think need to be reworked which I think explain why Eclipse is largely overplayed over Deprived and lastly Vanguard in this alpha.

Factions

Vanguard
Supposedly highly armored and outfitted compared to other faction
Tends to have high amount of guns’/missiles system slots

Deprived
Armor repairs over time
Tends to be overall harmonious on ship systems it can use

Eclipse
Higher Shields and higher base shield regens
Supposed to have less overall energy for equipment
Tends to prefer laser weaponry


However I found after a while when I unlocked several ship from other 2 factions that there are inconsistencies and discomforting differences between what faction should be like and how they are actually like.

So Firstly Ship overall balance compared to faction description

All eclipse Dreadnought have similar HP, ARMOR and CAPACITY to both Vanguard and Deprived However they do have much higher Shield and shield regen than any of their peers, while retaining Higher Speed AND maneuverability.

So much for faction specificity that already gives a not negligible advantage to Eclipse Faction, but that’s not all.

At Equivalent Role Eclipse ships tends to have higher weaponry while not sacrificing much else if not for some engineering slots but for them it’s not a loss its gain because of how weapon and slot are designed.

Example of the Engineering Dreadnaught
Vanguard uses 16 slots Projectiles with 4 slots of 2x2
Deprived use 16 slots of projectile type with 8 slots of 1x2 you can only place basic weaponry
Eclipse has 19 Slots with 2 slots of 3x3 for energy weapon

so while 2 factions are stuck with Tier 1-2 on their slot and relatively low range and low dps we have eclipse that can put 2 long range laser eg 18k range heat laser

but same goes for

Paragon B1 Battleship that ship can Slot 2 missiles and either 2 of the best long range or 4 of the second best
Reagent MK1L Battlecruiser can slot both the best missile and the best long range laser or two of the second best
Arco MK1A Cruiser no engi slot but you can slot so many weapon it becomes deadly if you send them when the fleet are already in middle of pew pew

So in short Eclipse ships are Equivalent in every stat they do not even suffer capacity penalty like stated in their description while they do have higher shield capacities, and most eclipse ship tier have far superior design to both other faction that enable them to use last tier laser tech in their slots. worst it means that a reason vanguard is not played at all besides the despotic vibe, its because they basically have 0 advantages over Deprived or Eclipse. saying they have more firepower or armor is just FAKE vanguard needs a serious boost to their ship stats like a good 10-15% boost to base HP/armor and or capacity

Deprived are ok-ish but their regen to armor and hull needs to stick after you left battle stage or it also useless, its annoying to wait 1min at the end of a battle to regen all ship full life/armor to see them with no armor when you start another fight like they didn't regen. having this could be a decisive advantage on discovery map.

 
Now you saw me complain about laser/eclipse pew pew combo so I’m going to explain you why

Ammo Projectile Weapons
o Need ammo to function
o Pretty easy to get out of ammo unless you have dedicated stocks that will eat your available engi slots
o Can get destroyed during battle
o Bypass Shields
o Can pierce a bit through Armor plates
o Affected by Active Armor and Anti Bullet Devices
o Only low to Mid-Range
o Only 1 Long range GAUSS that needs ammo

Energy Projectile Weapons
o Do not need ammo, more engi slots free
o Unless destroyed in battle will always shoot
o Higher base Capa needed
o Need to break through Shield AND armor before doing any HP dmg
o Not touched by active armor or anti bullet device
o Mid-range ONLY
Physical Missiles
o Directly attack hp
o Use so much space
o Most ships unless specialized can only use first tech ones
o Affected by anti-missiles devices
o Need a lot of ammo
Energy Missiles
o Direct HP attack if shields off
o Do not bypass shields
o Not affected by anti-missile devices
o Do not need ammo
Lasers
o Lasers got huge variety
o Laser have low to ultra-long range
o Laser suits mostly Eclipse designs as the best ones can’t be slotted on other faction designs
o Do not use ammo
o Do low damage on shields
o Do double-triple dmg on armor
o Do normal dmg on hull

 
Now for simple comparison of weapons

Best Long Range weapons

The Best ranged Missile is the Photon Torpedo launcher
• range of 15k
• 3x3 yeah not that many ship could slot that anyway
• 201 capacity cost
• 400 dmg full health unless Shields are online on target
• 11 sec CD
• 36DPS

The Best Ranged Projectile is the Power Gauss Canon
• Range of 17k
• 2x4 so far only Vanguard can slot that beast
• 402 capacity cost yup that much
• 1300 dmg ignore shield but not armor
• 22 sec CD
• 59DPS
• NEEDS AMMO


The Best laser is the Heat large laser
• Range of 18k
• 2x3
• 276 capacity cost
• 35 dmg and it ramps up the longer you shoot
• Fires continuously
• 105 BASE dps

Now when you start to combine the fact that if you have missile or ammo you can’t compete by distance nor by pure DPS output and that laser have no way to be mitigated other than shield and that there are lots of devices to disable shields it makes by far laser superior to any other alternative be it LONG or Close range, hell you can even afford to not care about shield since half Eclipse fleet will be long range you can easily melt enemies before they even reach you

Even their various size type is a tremendous advantage since you can slot fairly easily tech 3-4 in early Eclipse ships while on the other hand you hardly can slot any tech 2-3 at best on both other factions.

Right now any eclipse fleet that rely heavily on long range 11k easy for half the fleet or 18k for some other. With either scoot ship or a resilient ship that can either warp/tag the enemy fleet with device will surpass any other possible fleet we throw at them.

Anyway the way lasers are designed right now is straight terrible, they have relatively cheap to mid cost in capacity for the best DPS and the best Range, since when in a game you put all advantages on a single weapon type.

Hell even simply put an anti-bullet and anti-missile devices and some Active armor on an eclipse fleet and you can avoid most of what a Deprived or Vanguard fleet can throw at you.


The game show good promises if the earlier problem mentioned above are addressed.

The Game need among other things much more Missiles launcher and projectile weapon diversity to even catch up with how laser are superior in every way and a heavy rework on weapon stats.

Other bug to signal

• Random pirate invasion with over 100 ships make some systems even sometimes a homeworld system inaccessible those seems to last a while and they will attack in chain until you die there are no way to escape other than disconnect, die or abandon in which case you lose all your loot. Happened twice during the alpha
• Regularly get stuck after a region warp the ship wont load I usually need to leave to main menu and relog into discovery
• The Shop from main menu where you can sell your duplicate equipment needs a mass sell function right now you can sell things only 1 by 1 its very slow and also tends to be buggy making the game crash after you spam click a hundred time which can be annoying when you have a load of things to sell
• Sometimes after a fight or going to planets/homeship I can’t move the ship anymore only way is to relog into discovery.

And that will be all, thanks for reading

see you all next alpha

[relampago]

Hello batailleuse,
Thank you so much for such a detailed analysis - this one really helps a lot! Our Team member who is in charge of game balance has already read it and will take some measures, If needed.

[batailleuse]

Hello batailleuse,
Thank you so much for such a detailed analysis - this one really helps a lot! Our Team member who is in charge of game balance has already read it and will take some measures, If needed.

wow good to know

I just want to add that i think you should harmonise dps the following way

• First by Tech level dps increase per tech Level so that a tier 3-4 can never have less dps than tier 1

o right now some tech 3 or 4 still have lower dps than same type weapon of lower grade which feels meh

• by size since a weapon that uses 6-8 slot should clearly do more than a weapon of 3-4
o right now laser have max size of 6 and have the highest possible dps when things like the gauss that needs ammo and 8 slot have barely half its dps, same goes for missile they are huge for most part need ammo and do pretty ridiculous damage

• By Range to implement risk versus reward

o short range weaponry should have an edge in brawl as it is harder to get to close range and since you also put your ship in harms waym you expose your ship to high damage and said ships need to be outfitted to take the pain, while right now you can just make a scout outfit all the army with long range and upgrade to dps and not have to worry much about retaliations

• related to above, you could add Fall Off damage Charts to weapon Tag,

o Example weapon tagged for close range would have max range of say 7k, 1s cd, 60dps BUT when target is further than 4k the laser loose 50% dmg and only does full 60dps when closer than 4k
o Example weapon tagged for long range would have max range or 14k, 6s cd, 80dps BUT when target is closer than 7k it loose half dps and only get the full dps on target further than 7k


• i saw you already started but keep going on special variant of weapons, piercing, heating and so on, it adds flavor, although i would like to see things like EMP doing much more dmg to shield, Corrosive doing stackable dmg over time to hull, plasma doing damage over time to HP, some weapon with aoe effects, some weapon that web/slow ships. weapon with effects should of course have the base weapon adjusted to compensate for the new effects

• Last thing, i would like to see numbers on devices, most of time except descriptions we dont really know how they do it

o How much shield does EMP burst removes?
o how much does plasma web do overtime and should mention that additional plasma web shot on it increase its radius,
o how long some device work,
o how many bullets/sec or missile/sec device shoot down,
o same goes to Active armor it says shoot big projectiles but ... which one ... how many

for the size and cd some devise take they should be much more efficient, example plasma web takes 8? with 20sec? CD and the damage it was doing seemed ridiculous compared to what my ships gun would do

the one that gives piercing i didn't see any noticeable difference either with how much dmg was piercing armor to hp.

Considering that most of the modules are 3-4 slots or bigger and and do take capacity slot too and for that same price you can have anything between 1500 Shield, 20 regen shield/s, 1500 armor, additional adaptive or active armor

this would encourage players to play more tactical on maps instead of just see who spot the other one first and snipe him across the map before you can get to retaliate.

This way long range army still would have an advantage at spotting enemy early but as the enemy gets closer it loose lot of dps if the player doesn't reposition its ships on the battlefield.

I dont want the game to become a simple Brawl either, both type of game-play should be rewarded if played correctly and i think that if weapons are fixed properly in addition to some tweaks to how they work the consensus could be reached

[relampago]

• Last thing, i would like to see numbers on devices, most of time except descriptions we dont really know how they do it

o How much shield does EMP burst removes?
o how much does plasma web do overtime and should mention that additional plasma web shot on it increase its radius,
o how long some device work,
o how many bullets/sec or missile/sec device shoot down,
o same goes to Active armor it says shoot big projectiles but ... which one ... how many

This one we will most likely add later. Just had not enough time to take care of small nuances ;)