Balance requests Thread - Star Wars: Interregnum mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

1. The imperial scout has a lot of trouble exploring as far as scouts of the other races, and I am not sure why. Please look into buffing their early game survivability so the empire can keep track of the enemy!

2. Please keep a special ops battleship for each faction in mind! For the tec, its naturally the carrier, (because of embargo) for the vasarri, its the warship with speed boost for everyone, for the advent its the mind controlling cruiser with their ability to mind control envoys.
For rebel it could be the mc80a, its just not specialized enough into it?
For imperials the role of specialist seems to go to interdictors and victory star destroyers working together.

3. Please look into manipulating hitboxes of starships that are about to phase jump. Its so annoying to have them keep bumping into each other. If only they could either grow and then rapidly shrink their hitboxes (knocking each other apart), or have no hitboxes on just the warp out part, or even make it so that fleet groupings are just a logical operator, and doesn't dictate how close units must be to each other to jump...

4. please add more techs to the warlord factions. I could see things like bribed officials, hidden spies, strong negotiators, diplomatic solutions etc added to the allegiance section.

5. On ysanne isard please consider having her manipulate ability convert enemy frigates for her to eat... Such QoL, not that op if its only 1 guaranteed per level, in addition to base effects?

6. The rebellion really struggles to follow the path of being an agile opponent that moves from star system to star system. Part of this is the fact that the deep space structures are not able to build trade lanes, or units. rebels are really shoehorned into building a starbase if they want to extend their black market trade routes, which is overkill. I also really think the idea of no surrender as a suicide move on the rebels is a little extreme. That said, I would recommend giving the rebel starbase the ability to construct frigates. The deep space construction to be able to build trade structures and missile pods instead of research structures. Add a midgame t5 tech that allows rebel starbases to build a research lab aboard them. These expensive labs count for both types of research stations. Also, allow manual placement of the deep space structures.

shaithias wrote:

1. The imperial scout has a lot of trouble exploring as far as scouts of the other races, and I am not sure why. Please look into buffing their early game survivability so the empire can keep track of the enemy!

2. Please keep a special ops battleship for each faction in mind! For the tec, its naturally the carrier, (because of embargo) for the vasarri, its the warship with speed boost for everyone, for the advent its the mind controlling cruiser with their ability to mind control envoys.
For rebel it could be the mc80a, its just not specialized enough into it?
For imperials the role of specialist seems to go to interdictors and victory star destroyers working together.

3. Please look into manipulating hitboxes of starships that are about to phase jump. Its so annoying to have them keep bumping into each other. If only they could either grow and then rapidly shrink their hitboxes (knocking each other apart), or have no hitboxes on just the warp out part, or even make it so that fleet groupings are just a logical operator, and doesn't dictate how close units must be to each other to jump...

4. please add more techs to the warlord factions. I could see things like bribed officials, hidden spies, strong negotiators, diplomatic solutions etc added to the allegiance section.

5. On ysanne isard please consider having her manipulate ability convert enemy frigates for her to eat... Such QoL, not that op if its only 1 guaranteed per level, in addition to base effects?

6. The rebellion really struggles to follow the path of being an agile opponent that moves from star system to star system. Part of this is the fact that the deep space structures are not able to build trade lanes, or units. rebels are really shoehorned into building a starbase if they want to extend their black market trade routes, which is overkill. I also really think the idea of no surrender as a suicide move on the rebels is a little extreme. That said, I would recommend giving the rebel starbase the ability to construct frigates. The deep space construction to be able to build trade structures and missile pods instead of research structures. Add a midgame t5 tech that allows rebel starbases to build a research lab aboard them. These expensive labs count for both types of research stations. Also, allow manual placement of the deep space structures.

1. That seems to be circumstantial. Scouts in Interregnum already got a good surviveability buff compared to other mods. And as a 3 fleet supply scout the Tartan is probably one of the tankiest scouts there is.

3. Honestly I don't think us modders can control that.

4. They already have way more techs than the default Empire though...

5. Could you elaborate on this a bit more. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

6. I tried to let them build trade ports, but Sins crashes if you try to do that. :p Conventional factories don't work either. Starbases can't count as research labs for the same reason. Game just won't work that way and there's nothing any modder can do about that. And finally I would allow manual placement if I could, but the deep space structures spawn via the same mechanism as the Vorastra titan's spawned phase nodes, which are placed randomly as well.

A lot of times the decisions we have to make while modding are not what we like but what we can get the game engine to do. :p

1. The issue is not the tartan's tankiness, it feels slower and clunkier than the other scouts for some reason. Maybe look into giving the tartan a turn rate increase for 15 seconds after entering a gravity well.

2. See Moddb.com for in depth tweak of the mc80A. It would make it into a special operations ship that specialized in a minelaying/sabotage/diplomat and spies fleet Also, look into giving the interdictors the ability to see enemies jumping towards the planet they are in. This would make them useful far away from home planets.

4. Although they have more techs overall there is a large percentage of them locked out due to not picking each proper side.

5. The manipulation ability currently gives all units a wide area debuff. She also has betrayal which sacrifices a unit for her to heal some and get some firepower. If manipulation also let out a pulse at the same time that converted the nearest unit, or if units that were manipulated had a chance to convert when hit by fire, she would be able to betray even after her fleet was gone.

6. What if the deep space construction station were counted as a trade station. If they can't be directly counted as a trade station, what if they were counted as a starbase? Further taking that idea, what if the deep space constructors spawned units, and those units had the ability to morph into structures via the starbase construction method?

Oi and another thing. It would be really nice to have a no titans minimod.

Edited by: shaithias

shaithias wrote:

1. The issue is not the tartan's tankiness, it feels slower and clunkier than the other scouts for some reason. Maybe look into giving the tartan a turn rate increase for 15 seconds after entering a gravity well.

2. See Moddb.com for in depth tweak of the mc80A. It would make it into a special operations ship that specialized in a minelaying/sabotage/diplomat and spies fleet Also, look into giving the interdictors the ability to see enemies jumping towards the planet they are in. This would make them useful far away from home planets.

4. Although they have more techs overall there is a large percentage of them locked out due to not picking each proper side.

5. The manipulation ability currently gives all units a wide area debuff. She also has betrayal which sacrifices a unit for her to heal some and get some firepower. If manipulation also let out a pulse at the same time that converted the nearest unit, or if units that were manipulated had a chance to convert when hit by fire, she would be able to betray even after her fleet was gone.

6. What if the deep space construction station were counted as a trade station. If they can't be directly counted as a trade station, what if they were counted as a starbase? Further taking that idea, what if the deep space constructors spawned units, and those units had the ability to morph into structures via the starbase construction method?

Oi and another thing. It would be really nice to have a no titans minimod.

1. All scouts have identical movement stats. In fact minus some of the Rebel ships, most ships of the same type have identical base movement (speed, acceleration, etc. stats).

4. Warlords are designed to be more about customization though. I'm pretty sure if you counted them the Warlords still has more research than the Empire even if you disqualify 6 that you'll never be able to get because they're for the 3 Warlords you didn't pick.

6. I can't make it "count as a trade station" because the game crashes if you try to spawn anything that counts as a trade station in an uncolonizeable gravity well. Starbases are the only way you can get trade lanes through an uncolonizeable system, and there are other reasons that doesn't work well either. I agree trade/refinery structures would have been a better pick, and that's what I tried to do first, but again that didn't work out so I had to switch it to research stations.

I'll look into the no titan minimod, but it probably won't make the latest minimod update. And its possible the AI won't like that very much.

What if rebel starbases were designed to pick up the role of trading post faster?

1. cost of defense upgrades increased, cost of initial starbase construction decreased. The amount changed is an overall equal cost to get a single starbase to 3/3 defense.
2. time to build decreased, time to upgrade defenses increased. Again, zero sum.
3. amount of base health/shields decreased, amount of hp/shield provided by defense upgrade increased.

Also, what if rebel cultural centers doubled as a market that brought in credits per turn as an upgrade, and were buildable in deep space, but had less strength than the unity culture centers? This would allow rebels to build outlaw stations/black markets!

As is, rebels credit situation is pretty dire, especially if nobody is buying from black market.

shaithias wrote:

What if rebel starbases were designed to pick up the role of trading post faster?

1. cost of defense upgrades increased, cost of initial starbase construction decreased. The amount changed is an overall equal cost to get a single starbase to 3/3 defense.
2. time to build decreased, time to upgrade defenses increased. Again, zero sum.
3. amount of base health/shields decreased, amount of hp/shield provided by defense upgrade increased.

Also, what if rebel cultural centers doubled as a market that brought in credits per turn as an upgrade, and were buildable in deep space, but had less strength than the unity culture centers? This would allow rebels to build outlaw stations/black markets!

As is, rebels credit situation is pretty dire, especially if nobody is buying from black market.

It's possible, we will be redesigning Starbases for all factions eventually.

I might think about giving the Deep Space station itself a credit generating ability. The Rebels are a little weaker economically, so it could work.

Just a thought, but would it be possible for rebel starbases to have the cost and time of constructing the base restructured to allow the rebels to finance themselves faster?

Nerfs:
Rebel base initial health/shields lowered by 50%
Rebel base initial weapons removed.
Rebel base hp/weapon upgrade costs increased by 10%

Buffs:
Rebel base upgraded health/shields/weapons increased to compensate for hp/shield/weapons nerf
Rebel base now builds 60% faster.
Rebel base now is 60% cheaper.
Rebel base now has a privateer upgrade, that creates friendly ships that attack enemy trade ships in nearby sectors.
LORE: Starwars.wikia.com
Game justification: This creates additional opportunities for hostility, and for making credits for rebel scum.

Privateers would be fun, but from watching how the AI handles temporary ships, I'm not sure how well that will work in practice. Maybe it could just steal nearby planet income.

While the starbase changes could be argued for the Rebels, the New Republic will be using the same starbase and it certainly doesn't make sense for them, as unlike the Rebels they have a professional military whose main job is sector defense.

That said, I believe one of the Rebel unique techs gives them a bit of a discount of starbase upgrades.

Rebel specific tech- incom engineers/research pact.

Research speed governs the speed at which empires rise to their top strength. If you speed up rebel research, they plateau before the empire, resulting in behaviour unsimiliar to star wars where the empire had the upper hand until the end. That is, with sped up research, rebels will hit a plateau quickly where they can damage the empire, but if the empire survives the plateau, then the game goes badly for the rebels. It should be the direct opposite. The empire hits their stride quickly, and then goes into decline.

Incom engineers currently gives 15% speed and 5% cost decrease. Rebels do struggle with money, so buffing the cost reduction side to 10 or even 12 % would help them out. However, 15% speed really shouldn't be part of the package due to how it causes that sudden surge of rebel power followed by a decrease of relative power while the empire catches up.

Secondly, The rebels normally make money from donations. It would be interesting to have a tech that caused the rebels to get more credits for finishing missions than other factions. This would keep the rebels lean, but help out with their money problems.

thirdly: hidden rebel bases. This is a big trope, and im not sure how to hide a rebel base, but perhaps there could be a rebel only upgrade that converts a planet to a hidden rebel base. The planet does not radiate culture, and it is immune to culture effects.

Last, but not least- the empire had enough power and resources to quash any single rebellion, but they were dealing with so many tiny uprisings that they were forced to keep spread out. There is just not enough uprisings in game to force players to spread their units and quash rebellions mid/late game. If the rebels were able to induce more uprisings, that did actual damage (like killing mining nodes) then the rebels would be a force to be reckoned with. The reason that its not viable for players to do hodge podge attacks is because defenses catch them all. Although people like the doom fleets, once one side has a doom fleet, then its GG. one fight between doom fleet and non doom fleet or one fight between two doom fleets. Also, doom fleets are laggy. Preventing doom fleets from occurring limits fleet sizes to star wars levels.