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Class Rebalance: Fleet Focus
http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=63554
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Author:  MasterTrader [ Sat Jun 22, 2019 12:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Class Rebalance: Fleet Focus

What are the goals of the Class Rebalance?

I'm sure you've heard it before, or maybe even thought it, "Berserker sucks without modstacking!", "Speed Demon's evasion device is OP!", or "Gunner needs more single target damage!". Our goal with these changes is to make sure that classes accross the board are fun and viable in a variety of situations. As such, we're willing to look at everything including Focus Skills, Class Skills, Sub Skills, Adv Class Sub Skills, and Class specific super items/mechanics.

Here are a list of the high level goals we have while doing these class rebalances.

  • Reaffirm the role and general abilities of each class without regard to how that role is achieved.
  • Approach relative strengths of each class from a top-down perspective and bring the different classes more in balance with each other, while allowing each class to still be able to do everything to some extent.
  • Rebalance aspects of the game which are so powerful because of certain classes that they ruin other classes in some way or make certain aspects of the game useless to other classes.
  • Examine potential changes to the class trees on a class-by-class basis.
  • Adjust other facets of the game at the same time since this will be a good opportunity (Out of combat regeneration, cloaking/visibility/radars, adjusting resistances, adjust damage types, etc.)

With that out of the way, let's get to the specifics. What are the classes supposed to be like? What theme are we looking for?

Fleet Focus

  • The heart of large squads. Enables multiple allies at once. Highest shield banks.

Fleet Commander

Enhance allies, bring his own mini-fleet.

  • Strategic Role: Strengthen allies wherever he is. Transwarp an entire squad to any warp beacon for surprise attacks.
  • Squad Role: Buff allies, DPS via slaves and fighters, absorb a lot of damage.
  • Solo Role: Use slaves, wild slaves, and fighters

Gunner

AoE damage, buffing all allied damage via destruction, possibly off-tank.

  • Strategic Role: Use destruction on enemy bases? BvB enabling.
  • Squad Role: Grab aggro from multiple adds while main tank retains aggro on main enemy. Kill large swarms. Buff all allied damage via destruction.
  • Solo Role: Destroy content consisting of lots of enemies together. DPS super items.
  • Note: Adv Subskill to give Gunner tankiness for off-tanking. (Shield Remodulation already fits the ticket).

Feedback

How do you feel about these classes, and this Focus? What's your take on the roles we have listed above? What are issues you have noticed? What are things you like? Try to answer these questions in specific context to the different "stages" of the game below:

  • Early game (Before you have leveled all of your class skills)
  • Mid game (After you have leveled all of your class skills)
  • End game (After you have acquired almost all of the gear, augmenters, super items, and bonuses/modifications needed to tweak the class to your preference.)
  • Wild Space PvP

Author:  maestro3000 [ Sat Jun 22, 2019 1:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Class Rebalance: Fleet Focus

For early game gunners: provide capital ship options with significant dps augmods so that new players that pick gunner don't have to pick other hull types to not be underpowered. The huge amount of class stats locked behind capital ships is plenty of incentive for these players to use capital ships if they are worth using stat-wise. Even having three-aug capital ships at that tech is an option, as they wont be broken for end-gamers.

Author:  kwilson [ Sat Jun 22, 2019 1:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Class Rebalance: Fleet Focus

A couple thoughts on Fleet Commander:

FC should be the class that can do everything pretty good, but one thing extremely well. Fighters are the one thing FC does extremely well and the rest like healing, tanking, dps, bots, etc. can be improved, but only to a limited extent through means like super items, class locked items, tweaks. etc. and never as good as another class like healing from a Shield Monkey.

Fighters should be launched in a Fighter Group that can be controlled similar to a bot. Think of the fighter group like a temporary additional bot. The bonuses that FC give to a launched fighter group make it far superior to a fighter group launched from a Gunner, or Zerk. The fighter group would consist of either 1, 3 or 5 individual fighters that launch simultaneously and form a tight V formation. They attack as one unit, but visually are individual fighters. Each fighter group you launch shows up with an icon like other bots that you can select and manage with the x key. You could only launch up to 3 fighter groups at a time, which would help limit the fighter spam that is currently a problem. AI ships that launch fighters would need the same treatment. Inbuilt fighters would not take up a fighter group slot. Bots that launch fighter groups would be limited to launching 2 fighter groups. This would enable bots to launch 2 types of fighter groups if desired. So, main ship has 3 fighter group slots plus an additional if the ship has an inbuilt, and bots would have 2 fighter group slots plus an additional if the ship has an inbuilt.

Fighter generators would only be able to produce 1 fighter group. You could equip 1 fighter generator for each fighter group slot, so that if you wanted to launch 3 Lice fighter groups, you would have 3 Lice fighter generators equipped. Un-equipping a fighter generator decommissions the fighter group it generated.

All other classes get 1 fighter group slot.

Author:  MasterTrader [ Tue Jun 25, 2019 8:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Class Rebalance: Fleet Focus

maestro3000 wrote:
For early game gunners: provide capital ship options with significant dps augmods so that new players that pick gunner don't have to pick other hull types to not be underpowered. The huge amount of class stats locked behind capital ships is plenty of incentive for these players to use capital ships if they are worth using stat-wise. Even having three-aug capital ships at that tech is an option, as they wont be broken for end-gamers.


We'll look into that, I just want to stress that there is a reason that some of the class stats are locked to Capital Ship. Capital Ships only have 2 augmenters, those stats are to compensate people for using them since Capital Ships get huge bank bonuses. Without those stats it is potentially preferable to use a Heavy Fighter.

kwilson wrote:
A couple thoughts on Fleet Commander:

FC should be the class that can do everything pretty good, but one thing extremely well. Fighters are the one thing FC does extremely well and the rest like healing, tanking, dps, bots, etc. can be improved, but only to a limited extent through means like super items, class locked items, tweaks. etc. and never as good as another class like healing from a Shield Monkey.

Fighters should be launched in a Fighter Group that can be controlled similar to a bot. Think of the fighter group like a temporary additional bot. The bonuses that FC give to a launched fighter group make it far superior to a fighter group launched from a Gunner, or Zerk. The fighter group would consist of either 1, 3 or 5 individual fighters that launch simultaneously and form a tight V formation. They attack as one unit, but visually are individual fighters. Each fighter group you launch shows up with an icon like other bots that you can select and manage with the x key. You could only launch up to 3 fighter groups at a time, which would help limit the fighter spam that is currently a problem. AI ships that launch fighters would need the same treatment. Inbuilt fighters would not take up a fighter group slot. Bots that launch fighter groups would be limited to launching 2 fighter groups. This would enable bots to launch 2 types of fighter groups if desired. So, main ship has 3 fighter group slots plus an additional if the ship has an inbuilt, and bots would have 2 fighter group slots plus an additional if the ship has an inbuilt.

Fighter generators would only be able to produce 1 fighter group. You could equip 1 fighter generator for each fighter group slot, so that if you wanted to launch 3 Lice fighter groups, you would have 3 Lice fighter generators equipped. Un-equipping a fighter generator decommissions the fighter group it generated.

All other classes get 1 fighter group slot.


We gave some thought to Fighters being grouped up in "Squadrons", we can revisit that and see if it makes sense to try to do something like that. I don't know that we would radically change the way slots work though, but the visual effect could potentially be nice.

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