This is my opinion, some aspect might not be as balance as I think it is but I consider it a good base to work around in the future, it is opened to discussions and I would of course be honored to see some of those ideas integrated in the game in the future.
word of warning, it is a long and detailed post on each of the three faction, therefor it’s a pretty lengthy post.
Eclipse Faction
from their faction description Eclipse have good manufactured high tech ships supposed to rely on Shield Tech and therefore should be much higher than other faction, they are also a money and pride oriented faction I think this should be represented as follow
The best tech money can buy
feat description. Eclipse thanks to nearly unlimited funding and let’s admit an over exploitation of their scientists, managed to push the boundaries of energy technologies far beyond that of its competitors, proud of their achievement and eager to show it to others, they outfitted all their ships with those cutting edge technology. Nothing is too expensive to show you are the best, your fleets have better shields and better shield mods efficiency, better energetic weapon efficiency.
- • +20-30% faction bonus SHIELD TECH multiplicator to any mod increasing Shield or shield regen
• Additional Base Shield and ship regen per Ship Size <bigger ship have better base shield and regen>
• Additional 15% damage on energetic weapons *
Eclipse always need the best
feat description. members of eclipse are rich, and they like to show it through everything, they always need the latest technologies, newest gadgets, bigger screens, bigger shields, bigger lasers, better decorations. however all those fancy technologies need power to run and the power generators outfitted on ships can only provide so much power, this is translated to power core capacity allocated to run those things
- • +20-25% faction wide malus CAPACITY multiplicator on base hull and any device that gives capacity. <or +25% consumption on all devices which is basically the same>
10 Faction Ranks
Improved shield phasing
With additional funding and squeezing every drops of sweet and blood out of their R&D division they Eclipse found that by altering their shield frequency rapidly they could make the shield sometimes make matter or even energy absorbed this way is used to power up the Shield Overdrive module, however the technology seems to reach a limit at around 20% of efficiency. That remain a tremendous improvement over the initial technology and must be installed as soon as possible.
- • Each rank provides an additional 3.3% recharge speed on Shield Overdrive Module
• Each rank provides 2% shield soaking to all damage <*>
Total of 33% reduction on the module shield overdrive
Total of 20% shield soaking
Which obviously synergies perfectly with their shields and energy weapons oriented game style.
Conclusion on Eclipse Faction
I don't feel they would require any nerf to HP or Armor with the way I’m considering factions, they would still have average values.
Eclipse have fairly good ship manufacturing, they rely a lot on energetic weaponry and in a lesser way on missiles
They should therefore have extremely good damage output against foe relying mostly on armor without much shields.
Having good manufactured ship they have normal HP and normal armor plating, but are still rather vulnerable to missile and weapons that bypass shields.
the lowering on available capacity should would limit how much strong lasers they can slot at a base rate, or would have to later sacrifice engineering slots to put improved capacity mods which I think is a good trade off, since they can slot less armor/modules overall and will tend to favor shields, shield regen and shield mods because of their faction bonus.
the eclipse designs of slots on most ships as is, is already good enough I don't think it needs a change, but the overhaul I propose has the advantage of removing how easy it is right now to stack high range, and high dps lasers by having 20% less capacity. Players will then have to choose to either deal with it as is and slots armor plating, or sacrifice some engineer slot to have additional capacity power through mods.
Most ships will want the Shield Overdrive since the Faction rank is tailored for it and obviously gives an edge but even without, a strong shield based build would still have 20% ignore all damage which is still pretty good especially if you give them higher shield regen.
But remember that shields still are pretty easy to disable with some mods
Vanguard Faction
From their faction description, Vanguard is a militaristic despotic empire with bulky, armored and aggressive ships, and they kind of distrust <high> techs, Vanguard spirit is to rely on Force and Intimidation rather than on fancy tech or shields, this should I think be represented as follow.
War ships and training
Vanguard is a military based faction, throughout their numerous military campaigns they improved their ships designs to be the best there is for war environment through improved ship-wide security fail-safe in case of hull fracture, Improved armor plating and strengthened hull integrity, however those improvements came at the price of speed and maneuverability of their ships. Vanguard also possess the most well trained and disciplined fleet crew in the known universe, those bonuses are translated by an increased Hull and Hull integrity, increase repair speed of broken system in the midst of battle at the cost of decreased maneuverability and speed
- • +20% Faction bonus to Base HP on all ship size
• +50% Bonus faction wide multiplicator on any upgrade or mods that provide Armor*
• Additional Armor granted per ship size <Bigger ship have stronger armor plating>
• +20% repair speed of destroyed system <or 20% chance to avoid system breakdown>
• -15% max speed
• -2% angular speed on all ship size
• -20-33% speed acceleration
• -20-33% deceleration
Vanguard ship are outfitted for war, they like to have either lot of gun, or big guns and if its both its even better, their generators are therefor bigger than those built by other factions to provide enough power to those weapon systems ship-wide, this bonus is translated to a bigger ship generator capacity, and better efficiency at using non energetic weaponry
- • +20% CAPACITY faction wide multiplicator bonus on available capacity on all ships <not to additional modules>
• +15% damage on all weapons using ammo
Vanguard like more traditional means of weaponry systems and war strategies, they tends to be phobic to new technologies, those bonuses are translated by a malus using energetic type weapons but an increased efficiency at using traditional weapons and stocking ammo for them
- • -50% Faction wide malus multiplicator to ENERGETIC type weapon and modules capacity costs**
• +20% Faction wide Malus to Shield Technologies efficiency <understand they provide 20% less shield and shield regen>
• +30% Faction wide bonus multiplicator to AMMO **
First: Shields regenerate at 1-3/s base, and can regenerate an additional 10/s for only a 1x2 slot, Armor never regenerate and have only one expensive and big module.
Second: most if not all traditional projectiles weapons have pierce armor effects and lasers do 3 times more damage on armor plates when shields are down.
<**>note: Energetic weapons includes all Missiles and Projectiles that are energy variant and all laser type weaponry therefore vanguard will need to focus on their Ammo Variants, ammo that lets remind it are limited per battle, if an enemy player can outlast a vanguard ammo pool then they will become big space punching balls, vanguard players will have to think about how much ammo they should bring to a fight, but hopefully those regenerate between two battle
Additional bonus when you Rank Faction
10 Faction Ranks
Mono-filament extreme plating
Vanguard have perfected a technology that enable them to coat their armor plating with a mono-filament coating that will absorb kinetic and energetic damage before the hull even takes a hit, making the hull effectively ignoring a part of all damage it would take, the technology however seems to reach a limit around 30% efficiency, but like vanguard said when they first discovered it , <30% less pain they take is 30% more pain they can inflict>
- • additional 1.5-3% ARMOR SOAKING per rank***
• for a total of 15-30% ARMOR SOAKING***
Which obviously synergize perfectly with their armor oriented build.
Conclusion on Vanguard Faction
Overall Vanguard should have stronger and much initially tougher ships than other factions, have a slight bonus to dmg using projectile weapons and pretty big disadvantage using any <high> tech, with their 30% bonus to ammo it means that vanguard will rely on those weapon heavily and slots used by ammo won’t be used by other things like armor/shields, so even if Vanguard will tend to have more armor they won’t have too much of it and the high increased anything tagged energetic will prevent abuse like slotting only strong energetic weapon and use the saved slots to full slot armor plating to insane amounts.
With 50% boost to its armor values, some might think it’s too much, but let’s remind a few things
First,
Armor do not regenerate like shields do, when its out its out for the whole fight unless you are Deprived or have an expensive 2x3 module <repair drones> and even if you take it Vanguard incurs a 50% additional costs to slot mods, last I checked it was a base 175, it would, make it cost 266, so 88 more, yes it can be good, obviously but it’s something you need to think about, 6 engineering slots around 20% total capacity for a single item is it that useful for me? <might be useful for a tank ship tho>
Second, Laser do 3x more damage on your hull, and one type of laser even bypass armor
Third,all missile bypass armor altogether
Fourth, ammo projectile weapons have piercing effects partially bypassing armor and stinging into hp directly, Soaking would indeed reduce armor damage incurred but not the piercing HP dmg part.
so armor helps, but not that much, it’s just a big temporary damage buffer against laser that is its natural counter and really good mostly against bullets without much piercing, but useless against missiles.