Weapon adjustments

[StarShadow]

Personally, I've made quite a few adjustments to make things more balanced, especially since the APB was the only weapon that made real sense.

Some of my many adjustments:

-Shields naturally regen every round (10% of max)
-Shield Regen components are somewhat cheaper, smaller and more effective (regen 30% of max, for the shield it's paired with)
-Better armor, up to 80kt protection, plus (after-battle)regeneration
-Torps have a 10%-25% hit bonus, depending on level of torp research)
-Tweaked the damage of the ripper/incinerator/wave-motion line of weapons to make them more relevant vs the other weapons
-Added two levels to the DUC, max range of 7, max base damage of 50

Personally I find it makes the game much more fun and challenging and corrects several imbalances with the stock weapons/defenses.

[Suicide Junkie]

Armor regenerating?

Personally, I'd make shields vs armor a tactical vs strategic tradeoff. Armor would have far more hitpoints, but be destroyed "permanently" in combat (lots of small plates or slow repair components or both).

[StarShadow]

Well, the armor only regens after combat, the regen ability I put on it is minimal. Plus, while a human would have the sense to include one or more repair ships to repair armor, the AI isn't quite that bright. Since I want AI opponents that weren't basicly clones of each other, I altered a few to use armor over shields. With the armor regen they are reasonably tough, without it they'd just be cannon fodder. Also, the regen is only on about half of the armor (levels 4-7, max lvl 8), and I forgot to mention that I also added some extra emissive, it tops out at 40kt, at armor 8.

[Suicide Junkie]

The AI sends damaged ships home to repair.

But if you can include enough repair ships in your fleet to fix all the armor damage, that mostly defeats the purpose.

[thorfrog]

StarShadow, could I see a copy of your components file? Do you also mod the mounts?

[StarShadow]

Sure, no problem. I mostly leave the mounts alone, mainly because the adjustments I've made are balanced for the stock weapon mounts. I did add in the neo-standard ships though.

[StarShadow]

True, they do send ships off for repair, however they don't research repair until very late (in the stock AI files). Repairing multiple ships at a rate of 3-5 components per turn, puts them at a severe disadvantage. Self-healing armor is still not as good as shielding, considering that shielding can actually regenerate during battle, especially with my altered shield generators (10% regen per generator per turn). Also, going with an all armor design has it's own drawbacks, such as vulnerability to anti-engine weapons and crystalline weapons. In my opinion, the self-healing armor is balanced within my personal game adjustments, and I find it makes the game more varied and more fun.