Factions BRO <Balance and Rework Overhaul>

[batailleuse]

I saw a few post saying that faction need more flavor but also balancing, so I’m posting here an idea of a total rework for them that I feel match the best it could the way they are officially presented.

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 *

<*>note: Energetic weapons includes all Missiles and Projectiles that are energy variant and all laser type, because yes, Eclipse still has projectile and missile weapons but those slots on some ship designs

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>

Another idea would be to give Additional bonus when you Rank Faction
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

<*>note: Shield Soaking would ignore a % of all incoming damage as long as a shields are online. If shields are disabled in anyway or in reboot you lose that bonus. at max rank, 20% of all damage could be ignored this way even from projectiles and missiles that usually bypass
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

Military Mind
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

Will of the Father
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 **

<*> note: I consider 40-50% on par with shields at 20-25% for a few reasons
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***

<***>note: armor soaking is a % of total damage per incoming shot that is ignored, soaking is lost when no armor plating is left on the hull.

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.

[batailleuse]

Deprived Faction

Deprived is a somewhat special faction, they are survivors, they have wits and seems to be able to think outside the box, they are supposed to be scavengers, and to make a whole makeshift fleet out of basically scavenging on a wasteland earth to be honest they must be freaking skilled engineer. They should have somehow less resilient ships since they are sort of flying junkyards, but on the other hand they can make the best of whatever they come with.

Scavengers

Deprived is a faction of survivor and they can find treasures that other would have left unnoticed, this bonus is translated to more and better loot when destroying enemy ships, and even more rare, and chance albeit small to find a blueprint

• • Deprived have much higher chance to receive loot from destroyed enemies
  • Deprived have a higher chance to drop one of the best tier equipment from destroyed ships <including pvp>
  • You will sometimes drop a random blueprint when destroying a ship <must be low drop chance>

Make do

Deprived build ships and outfit them with whatever they can find, if it’s a missile launcher, a laser, or a turret, armor plating or shields they tweak it, and use it, however all those unstable techs together make the whole ship a bit of a time bomb, Those bonuses are translated by all deprived ship having universal weapon slots, a small increased efficiency with all type of weapons, but higher capacity need for all weapons due to sometimes having hard time adapt all technologies together, decreased efficiency of both increased efficiency of the self-destruct mod

• • Deprived have universal technology weapon slots, they can equip whatever weapon technology they desire as long as they have enough weapon space slot for it.
  • All weapons have a +10% increased damage output due to being carefully tweaked by deprived technicians
  • All Weapons systems incur a 20% additional capacity cost due to technical difficulties patching so many energy circuits together
  • Due to so many techs together and how they are adapted, every deprived ship can be highly unstable, when equipped with a Self-Destruct mod, deal 50% more damage when your ship is destroyed.
  • -10Shield, shield regen and armor efficiency

the flying junkyard

their ships might look clunky and poorly built to outsiders but what others seems to think is no concern to deprived, their ships might actually be junkyard, but to a deprived they are wonders full of spare parts and raw materials at hand’s reach to fix anything in their ships, last but not least, sometimes it’s hard for other factions in space to make the difference between an actual space junk and a deprived ship, those bonus are translated to a passive HP and armor regen over time, increased maneuverability and speed, but lower HP due to poor hull integrity, but better efficiency with the Stealth module <or maybe anti detection one>

• • Deprived ships have the unique ability to repair ship health over time at a rate of 1.6% hp per second while engaged, double rate out of combat <no damage received last 10sec>
  • Deprived ships have the unique ability to repair Ship armor over time, unlike health that regenerate for free, repairing armor will cost total armor integrity at a rate of 3.3% regenerated for 1% max armor lost, double rate when out of combat <no damage received last 10sec>
  • Since they already look like junk, deprived ships are harder for other factions to detect, deprived gain 25% reduction CD to stealth module.
  • +15% max speed
  • +2% angular speed for all ships
  • -20% ships health

note: it would take 1 min not engaged to regen full HP and Hull, those point should be saved between battles, this could be a decisive advantage in discovery mode, and if you make efficient use of Stealth Module in battle.
however for the armor regenerating part, be aware that if you tend to lose a lot of it in fight, it will regenerate but you can lose a lot of max armor over extended gameplay and will in accordance be much weaker to defend yourself too on the long run


Additional bonus when you Rank Faction
10 Faction Rank

Jacks of all trades, masters of... SCAVENGING

Scavenging all those battlefields and junks from all factions made the Deprived manage to piece bits of technology used by both Eclipse and Vanguard Faction, while they don’t fully understand the science behind it they did manage to reverse-engineer part of it. In addition, doing scavenging mission deep inside enemy faction territory made the deprived pretty good at tweaking their Stealth generator by finding the detection technologies used by their enemies aboard computers space junks. Like any deprived could tell you <scavenging is a way of life>

• • Additional 2.5% CD reduction on stealth modules per rank
  • +1% total capacity per rank
  • +1% to shield soaking per rank
  • +1.5% to armor soaking per rank
  Total Stealth CD reduction 25%
  Total capacity 10%
  Total Shield soaking 10%*
  Total Armor soaking 15%*

<*>note: considering you have two soaking they function one after another, as long as the shields are online, they will absorb 10% of all damage, and your hull 15% of the remaining damage that is armor related <projectile armor section and laser> you still take the remaining 90% of missiles damage to your health and the piercing part to your health. It is a nice small addition to survivability but nowhere near as good as original techs

Conclusion on Deprived Faction

Deprived is I think a jack of all trades and should be reflected as such, they are described as survivors that somehow managed to piece a damn fleet together, and their faction specificities should reflect that, they have more and better loot, which itself can be useful in early games and might just be small money boost on long term, and for the lucky a chance to drop a blueprint or even a piece of tech your pvp foe was using can always be nice. But scavenging is about luck so it’s a funny perk.

Deprived have a big portion of their skills useful in discovery mode to explore and survive longer than vanguard or eclipse fleet, but that can also make a nice difference in the hands of skilled player that can micro manage a fleet efficiently and make good use of the stealth combined with regen perk.

Deprived overall have very little pure combat advantage compared to Eclipse and Vanguard except their crazy versatility, when you face a deprived player, you should have really no idea how they are going to play it, except that they might be stealthier than your usual enemies, and that you should avoid them getting too close from you when they die...or boom.

The lower armor and shield is not too big to make a huge difference, but it does fit the scavenging profile, tons of tech pieced together, so they don’t work at peak efficiency, but armor and health regenerate as compensation, you could try to throw additional shield regen to compensate, and you still get passive mitigation when you reach more ranks in your faction.




Final note, the Faction bonus are active ONLY for said factions and not account wide.

Hope you like my ideas.

[relampago]

Thank you for the feedback and ideas - we've just been thinking about reworking and making new cool bonuses for factions :)

Just a short note: there is no crtitical damage chance in the game at all.

[batailleuse]

Thank you for the feedback and ideas - we've just been thinking about reworking and making new cool bonuses for factions :)

Just a short note: there is no crtitical damage chance in the game at all.

edited to reflect that, added an additional 5% dmg instead, which makes it on par with Vanguard 15% on projectiles

[hayran]

These ideas are great. It will help a lot and encourage people to look for factions that most identify.