What we did for Sins of the Prophets was to utilize formation rankings to put combat frigates and cruisers in the front as screening and escort vessels (and ablative armor for the valuable capitals) with formationRank 0, capitals anchoring the fleet in the middle with formationRank 1, and logistics and support vessels protected in the rear with formationRank 2, as we felt this most accurately reflected the realities of naval fleet composition where lighter combatants protect and screen the heavier, more valuable combat vessels.

Yes, current build Sharlin starts with:

CommandPoints        

 StartValue 3.200000        

 ValueIncreasePerLevel 0.200000

Another consideration is weapon range, shorter range ships should be or will tend to migrate up front. I'm not sure which takes priority, weapon range or  formation rank but I strongly suspect it is more a sequencing over priority. Centauri doctrine calls for escorts to screen the capital ships so Centauri capital ships with few exceptions should be formation rank 1.

Yes and no. Due to the way shield mitigation works a slower firing but harder hitting weapon is better for ship engagements, faster cycling weapons are better where there are many weaker foes and strike craft are valid targets of that weapon. If shield mitigation is low then faster cycling weapons have a slight advantage.

I've had many ideas fail in translation or execution. I'm still miffed over fighter abilities.

Edit: minor corrections esp,  formation rank 1.

TobiWahn,

I've run the numbers and broke the listings into three categories: Capital ships (does not include titans), Siege, and frigates. I assumed ships were assigned logistics slots correctly and did not correct for nor account for other variables such as build time or maximum shield mitigation. Rather than try and account for all the differences I averaged the rate of each resource for each race per logistic point. It is worth noting some ships are well above and well below the average for that race.

All examples will follow this format: credits/metal/crystal pegged to the rate per logistic point for that category of that race.

Capital ships:

BSG mod (all factions) 60 / 8 / 5

EA                             120.23 / 40.23 / 39.13

Centauri                     129.19 / 58.55 / 10.81

Narn                          128.32 / 55.53 / 16.37

Minbari                      130.77 / 60.72 / 8.78

Shadow                     133.33 / 64.65 / 5.91

Vorlon                       123.56 / 61.37 / 3.04

Note I did not include proposed new ships only those in the current build from BitBucket for the Rebellion master. It becomes immediately apparent that while there is near parity between the SOTYR races all are much more resource intensive than the BSG mod which at least for capital ships is pegged to the SoaSE capital ship resource levels. It is my belief that a tailored reduction of capital ship costs will substantially increase game speed. I'd argue against a 40% across the board reduction but would rather reduce each ship resource cost to be closer to a targeted rate. It may be found some ships require logistic point adjustments rather than resource adjustments or both.

Siege ships are usually more expensive so were separated from the frigate group to not mask this group.

BSG mod                       52.08 / 7.5 / 5.85

EA (two ships)            47.88 / 37.58 / 13.03

Centauri (one ship)     44 / 35 / 18

Narn (three ships)      48.25 / 33.5 / 18.5

Minbari (one ship)      48.09 / 30.95 / 19.52

Shadow (one ship)     51.76 / 21.18 / 24.12

Vorlon (one ship)       47.82 / 33.91 / 17.39

Near parity and SOTYR ships are more multi mission still some review might be in order for the Narn as there is a wide spread hidden in the rate average.

Frigate remainder: Excluding non-combatants, constructors and diplomatic.

BSG  mod (Colonials)  84.01 / 11.78 / 9.66 

EA                             45.74 / 26.96 / 22.23

Centauri                    50.45 / 29.27 / 19.82

Narn                         49.38 / 32.31 / 17.23

Minbari                     46.03 / 29.26 / 24.21

Shadow                    44.63 / 25.12 / 30.25

Vorlon                      54.73 / 29.21 / 17.63   (includes transport which needs repurposing)

I'll note the BSG frigates are fighter intensive and slightly more multi mission than SOASE frigates so it appears SOTYR frigates are on par with another functioning mod. That said there are huge discrepancies with in the frigate group and some are likely in need of review. The Centauri and Narn have the biggest spread from cheap to expensive ships but there are other exceptions.

Thoughts?

 

Interesting comparison, especially between the B5 races - considering how different they are. How do build/research times compare?

On a different topic, I've figured out why capital ships don't have any hyperspace effects - turns out we're using blank particle names for caps & titans, see Player*.entity. It's easy enough to fix that - I've hacked my copy to use the original generic effects for all ship classes. However SotYR has particle effects for a B5 jump point** and Sins has separate attributes for enter & exit effects. So I was wondering if we could use a yellow/orange jump point as ships leave a grav well, and a blue version when they reach a system. Thoughts?

 

** used by the Jump Gate structure and 'Open Jump Point' abilities

 

That would be cool.

Yes and no. First, the range of the two weapons differs by 1400 units. Second, the AttackType differs. The first weapon does more damage to almost all types of ships because of the AttackType COMPOSITE. The second weapon uses AttackType ANTIMEDIUM.

The balancing suggestions sound good to me.

Working on the sync right now, wasn't skiing, to exhausted from work. Sync is a bitch. If only I had planned for a controlled sync routine right from the start...

Don't know but that sounds like a good investigation for your data parsing skills, though I'd wait till the research is fully updated to Rebellion. I'd have a starting premise that the sum of each races tech research time should be on parity. There are many reasons why it wouldn't be exact and techs that reduce the time to research occur at different places in the various tech trees which will influence that number but the presumption should be that the starting sum is near parity. Later adjustments can look at end state and balance from there.

 

Agreed!

Requirements creep! The bane of managers (and the technical talent that support them) the world over.

The ships also have greatly differing stats. Not that I'd say some don't need changing, but different prices for different wares

 

Sounds nice. Now if someone could make a really cool jump effect using texture animations...

Agreed but I was strictly looking at the resources rate per logistics point... Yes some are obviously at low points price points with zero in crystal while others are above the average. If a ship is too far from the average it sort of begs if was assigned the correct number of logistic points or if the resources for that ship are out of alignment. On average the frigate resource costs seem reasonably close between the races. When I get some time I'll make some specific recommendations. I assume that in place or planned abilities are included in the existing logistics point assignment for any given ship.

The capital ships in particular are over priced this is especially so since many lack abilities that should be included in the price listed resources per logistic point. Given that SOTYR caps are on average tougher and can deal much more damage than SoaSE caps yet lack significant distinguishment (excepting ability access) from other caps of the same type but of lower level the inflation is more glaring. I'll concede some early ships should be cheaper to produce, while others should be more expensive which nests well with canon.

Another feature I dug out of the BSG mod colonial tech tree was the idea of assigning additional hull as a rate with armor progression (armor # rate x "n" = y additional hull) rather than strictly additional hull. Other techs would/could adjust the amount of armor both reflecting combat learned refits and damage control practices. Additional hull can also be applied as a separate tech but other than as a ship specific ability I can't think how this could be applied to a single ship only vice every ship in the faction fleet, though perhaps by ship type is possible... hmmm.

Clearly if we adopt specific ideas from another mod effort I'd feel more comfortable with permission and specific citation but more general concepts should be fair use. Thoughts?

Feel free to use anything I've done without need to ask (excluding art assets which I'm sure you wouldn't want anyways ;))

Shield mitigation is given by putting a fractional point in shields. Without the fractional point it's not possible to use mitigation even with an ability.

 

I'm going to have to say they really aren't, not when warships in SotYR tend to deal far more damage than in Sins.  Toughness is entirely relative to how much damage is being thrown at something, and there's a lot more damage being thrown around in SotYR than in Sins.

Yes and no. Some ships have high single hit damage output (Shadow, Vorlon, Minbari, and selected later ships) while the remainder are outfitted with a mix of medium and lower yield weapons. Shield mitigation is the largest determinant of ship toughness and if I recall tops out around 65% for the Elder races. Younger races particularly early ships max at a mere 10% so yes, some ships fold under pressure. Also, the first hit is critical due to the way the engine calculates the mitigation response and decay. For most ships min mitigation is 1%. So a single first hit by a powerful weapon, say a Shadow death ray has a good chance of popping many younger races frigates. In a peer to peer ship engagement the Younger races caps are designed to withstand 6+ full volleys of weapons fire though some ships are tougher than that average.

What really makes a difference is the minimal hull and AM recovery rates. Ships don't recover after a fight without visiting a planet or starbase for refit (repair) and replenishment (AM restoration) though there are mitigations for most races.

Following canon, fights tend to be brief so I'll concede the point that some races can brush aside individual ships and small fleets while a peer v peer engagement will last a bit longer, some ships are decidedly tougher than others but the mechanics of shield mitigation adds a twist when using high damage first shot weapons.

We are not sure yet if the Shadow and Vorlon can be properly balanced, that will have to wait till abilities are fully populated and more coarse balancing has been applied.

That was fun, thanks.

Did we ever find a way to change the shield glow graphics effect when a weapon hits, to something that resembles a little explosion (think a real life flack-burst).

This would allow us to graphically show 'point deference' using the game's shield and mitigation mechanics while relaying to the player the sense of 'overwhelming the point defenses'.

I'll go out on a limb and say not yet. If a talented artists were to take up that effort I'm sure prominent listing in the credits would be just compensation...

Edit: There would have to be several types matched to each weapon and I don't know of a way to ensure any sort of matching. The best that could be done is one or more graphics per race, perhaps with significant effort changing with in the story eras. A lot of art work when we still need so many ships, stations and orbital structures...

Also the lack of repair/impede abilities - EA has the only support cruiser (Hermes). Are there plans for support abilities/cruisers for the other races, particularly the younger ones? Might give them an advantage over Shadows & Vorlons.

Obvious anti-Shadow impede ability for EA, Minbari and maybe Centauri would be 'telepathic jamming', Not sure how you'd go about distracting a Vorlon ship though.

Yes the Centauri Balvarin has several support abilities proposed but haven't made it through the approval process, several other Centauri frigates have support abilities. Narn, not yet to my recollection but they were not known for long campaigns only raids which is predicated on frequent base support.

The full extent of the telepathic jamming abilities are also not built or tested for any race. There is a lot that is desired some with clear paths but insufficient volunteer labor and some without a clear path. We also have not yet made a distinction between normal and ultimate abilities which may be necessary for the interrupts of the telepath abilities.

The Centauri already have an in game ability that will distract a Vorlon ship but it is unhealthy to do so. It would not be that hard to further modify that ability for other races and other ships.

New Horizons,

I've been looking at some of the other mods and there are some good ideas out there. Many of which do not mesh well with SotYR which is as it should be. That said...I've seen several enhancing features that do and that I think we could incorporate.

1) More levels of planetary development

    a) Some planets even when fully developed generate negative income to compensate such planets have a combination of more resources or higher collection rates, etc Some places are nasty but still worth having.

    b) More incremental and/or higher planetary population caps. Some planets are just better places to live and will be a strategic location for that reason.

    c) More than just hot and cold for colonization types particularly among the asteroid sub set such as heavy radiation, or low gravity. Not all races need have access to all the colonization types.

Thoughts?

Edit: how does b ) become sunglasses emoticon?

SoGE springs to mind there, although I haven't played it for a while - so many excellent mods, never enough time!

IIRC it has a class of terran planet that could be upgraded to support large populations that generates shed loads of tax - although the higher level upgrades were expensive. I could see extra planet upgrades fitting in with SotYR and your empire's capital planet. In B5 you get the idea the loss of a colony (even a large one) wouldn't spell the end of an empire, but the loss of the homeworld would - "What ever you do, don't give away homeworld!".

The one disadvantage with population upgrades is that they're the same for all races. Certain B5 races adapted (naturally & unnaturally) to their planet's unusual (non-terran) environment. Eg Minbari (natural), Narn (unnatural - the Centauri strip mined it) and Shadows (unnatural - Za'ha'dum had been ravaged by millennia of wars).

That only leaves race specific techs that increase the population on certain planet types. SotYR already has quite generous bonuses with techs that increase planet populations. What might be worth doing is fine tuning these techs so that each race has a planet type they thrive on instead of population increases for all planet types. Eg Narn - desert, Minbari - ice, Centauri - terran, EA - terran/desert (Mars was being terraformed), Shadows - asteroid/volcanic (maybe). Younger races get the bonuses for planets that support larger populations, hence given percentage bonus is more generous thus giving them an economic advantage over the more powerful races. Having said that I haven't looked closely at the numbers - just noticed that, for example, late tech Minbari owned terran planets can support large populations - maybe it would be more in keeping for their terran populations to stay relatively constant but their ice worlds get generous population increases.

While playing I was never keen on the negative income planets, but I could see it applying to "dead asteroids". The main reason you colonize these are to fortify them to protect valuable planets behind. Such systems will not generate income as they don't produce/trade anything, but will require the garrison to be paid and supplied.

Hhhm, that's given me an idea - could tactical planet upgrades reduce the amount of tax? The more you fortify a world, the more all that hardware costs to run, so you get less for the treasury.

GoaFan77 also did a nice thing with his E4X mod where each race had their own capital planet type (eg TEC Homeworld) which granted them a specific bonus. I can't remember exactly what the bonuses were, but the they fitted well with each race. B5-race specific homeworld bonuses would be nice - it could be an extra incentive for younger races to conquer Shadow/Vorlon homeworlds, eg the conqueror could get access to the Vorlon's 'every planet is a jump gate' feature.

More planet types, with textures, are always nice. Additional B5 examples could be desolate (like Za'ha'dum), ravaged (what's left after the Shadow death cloud has done its worst). Latter would have 'dead asteroid' stats, but would be a planet-sized rocky husk. For comparison I see the Vorlon planet killer doing a Vasari-style stripped-to-the-core (giving them a load of resources) but instead all that is left is an asteroid field.

Also like the idea of excluding certain races from various planet types, not too many though - AI already seems to not bother with the hot/cold colonizing techs.

Seeing as how some ship's crews in B5 'jerry-rig' themselves up enough to continue on (but take a hit and still go boom), is there a way in Sins for the ships to self-repair up to 2% hull or something and then stop?

Also, for the 'shield convert to pds' effects, I was thinking a generic 'explosion' icon for the EA ships, etc and each race would have one grahpic feature for their 'shield conversion effect'.

New Horizons,

Wow so much to digest... SoGE goes a bit to far for my liking but I'd like to see more than just terran, desert, cold, hot, asteroid and dead. Rocky radiated springs to mine as another basic type (think Mercury). Mixed with this are planet bonuses which need not all be positive. BSG has a "war torn" bonus that is all negative a bit extreme but perhaps "frequent meteors" reduced population but a better resource collection rate as the good stuff is closer to the planetary surface. Such a place could easily cost more to maintain than it generates in taxes but is made up by having better resource collection. Frequent meteors could also logically reduce the orbital logistics for that gravity well, perhaps to zero though a (random) sliding scale makes more sense.

Unique home worlds would be nice but would have to be carefully constructed. Ideally the unique features would be of the most benefit to the original race. Still home worlds are special by definition and of strategic importance.

I agree that each race should have a bonus (as well as negative bonus) for colonizing different planet types. The game has some of that but I don't think it has been approached in a logical concise method say with a spread sheet to illustrate the impact of the various bonuses (and the techs that apply them). Keep in mind that the population of a dead asteroid even fully developed is still zero.

I really like the idea that the last fortify and perhaps planetary military orbital planetary upgrade both reduce planetary tax rates. That way the player has an option. That needs to be tempered though as the planetary jump gate is part of the military orbital structures. One way to compensate is to have the jump gate generate tax income (as a researched ability perhaps).

As to colonized planets generating negative income rates. That is the normal condition until they are fully upgraded. With negative bonuses though I see no problem with even a fully upgraded planet still retaining a negative income rate. If the EA wants to colonize Venus it probably could but doing so would create a money pit, or so goes my thinking. The Narn might just however be able to make a functioning colony where the EA could not. I also have no problem with a race not being able to colonize a planet type. That could be corrected with a pact however though such colonization would never be easy and may never be profitable.

Thoughts?

Some ships have abilities that produce limited healing, the Minbari have minor hull regeneration, Vorlon and Shadow more robust regeneration. I haven't found a way to produce minor healing except by ability and passive means and equipping each ship with abilities for that purpose creates other problems.

There will be some support abilities which will mitigate but the designed approach is for the damaged fleet to make to a base for repair and refit. The lack of passive regeneration also prevents new hull via research from being applied without a visit to a friendly repair base. It is up to the player to manage. I have no idea how the AI will manage but later balancing may have to address.

It doesn't. I've just seen the AI send a Sharlin into battle with 3 hull - that's ~0.05% and never seen AIs build repair bays.I've not seen the tier-8 Minbari tech actually have an effect in Rebellion, hull regen remains at zero (excluding their overpowered repair bay bug see ticket #150)

We may need to add a repair ability to structures the AI uses and add it to the tech tree as a prerequisite as an AI only tech. It won't help if the AI fleet never goes back for refit but at least that way they will have the same opportunities as players.

Maybe semantics on my part but I always thought the repair bay should be called a graving dock or refit yard or some such.

I have seen the tier-8 Minbari regeneration tech work in Diplomacy...I don't recall about Rebellion so it used to work. Please post human readable files to your ticket and I'll take a look.

I think the reason AIs in Sins build repair bays is to repair structures - you generally only see them near starbases and groups of turrets, hangars etc.

IIRC SotYR's repair bays don't affect structures so that reason for the AI to build them is no longer there, so they don't.

I don't think AIs (in Sins) build repair bays to patch up damaged ships, but instead rely on hull regen, support cruisers**, eg Hoshiko and cap ship abilities, eg Skirantra's repair cloud**. For example, I've seen (in Sins & SotYR) friendly damaged ships sit just outside the range of one of my repair bays.

So from an AI point of view the only repair mechanism for ships in SotYR is the EA's Hermes.

That's my recollection too, I think it used to work in 0.422 for Diplomacy.

 

** More likely down to autocast abilities having valid targets nearby instead of a concious effort by the AI.