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Vulpex Posts: 390
8/11/2017
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Right now I feel that something is a bit off in the way in which artifacts relate to ships. The issue here has more to do with artifacts than ships but the whole thing is a bit odd, both from the point of view of balance and from the point of view of gameplay.
Let me give you an example.
I have a varitek fantastic unit. I want to make it even better - I slap on an A5 artifact on the thing. GREAT stuff. +50% attack woohoo!!!!
I have a corvette - decent for fighting bombers. I would love to make it stronger but I am aware that it is a bit of a glass cannon. Also if I want to give it a similar +50% attack (which is really not that huge of a boost) kaboom I need an AX artifact which in essence costs five times as much. So I basically get to choose between boosting five variteks or boosting a single corvette. Seriously this is a no brainer.
There might be a case to separate ships into two classes - capital and non-capital ships. In which case the non-capital ships would be able to use A5 artifacts instead of the AXs for upgrades.This is however not without some concerns.
First - Carriers - would probably need to be in the capital class of ships. Why? Because militarily they are without a doubt the single most powerful ship in the game. (I laugh at you monoliths...)
Second - types of upgrades. The way things are setup ships can now benefit from A5 boosts in speed, cargo and hangar space. These are moderate boosts certainly but they are useful ones. For that reason I am not sure there is a need to tweak the dimensional artifacts.
On the other hands, boosts to hps, attack and maintenance... it would make sense to split these out somehow so that there is at least some incentive to use them on the smaller ships. Right now while it makes sense to use an AX dimensional to increase the speed of a scout-class ship no one would consider the same investing of an AX metaphysics for hps or attack to be even remotely viable.
There are several ways to skin this cat so would be interested in what everyone else is thinking on this.
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/11/2017
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I agree. The small ships will never get any love from artifacts because you just don't get enough bang for the mega-buck when you slap an AX Metaphysical on them
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Rekkles Posts: 36
8/17/2017
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Agreed. Not going to really bother with kitting out large/medium ships currently.
Also - I feel like maybe some sort of negative attack modifier could potentially be put in place for units on Carriers?
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/17/2017
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This is a good point. The smaller ships scout corvette, freighter, and maybe frigate should be moved into the "small unit" category when it comes to the artifacts so they can use the low level ones. OR they get a much larger boost using the current big ones.
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/17/2017
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I would say that Scouts, Corvettes and Freighters should be A1 and Frigates, Destroyers and Carriers should be A5s. The only thing you would put a metaphysical on a carrier for is hitpoints, and that would only add a thousand hitpoints. 1000 hitpoints doesn't justify an AX.
Maybe you would put an upkeep bonus on a Warp Carrier, but after looking at the cost of producing a single AX Metaphysics artifact from a level 10 Research Base on Coppell (just shy of half a billion $) I can see that it would take 39,323 turn to recover that investment by installing it on a level 10 Warp Carrier. It would only take 7865 turns to recover your investment if Carriers used A5s.
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Vulpex Posts: 390
8/17/2017
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I am actually very much intrigued by the idea of the smaller ships getting a much larger boost from the AXs - it might actually help to offset the fact that they are currently a little underpowered. (You may in fact do both - allow for AX with a big boost and A5 for normal boosts)
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Corbenik Posts: 2
9/8/2017
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I was just wanting to check if there are any plans to change how artifacts work for small ships. I am thinking about putting something on a corvette but not sure if I should wait.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
9/8/2017
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Corbenik wrote:
I was just wanting to check if there are any plans to change how artifacts work for small ships. I am thinking about putting something on a corvette but not sure if I should wait.
The current in the air idea is to make the artifact effects more powerful the SMALLER the ship is by scale. So the current effect would apply to a size 10 ship for example, but a size 2 ship would get 5x the power of the effect and a size 20 ship (monolith) would actually get half the effect.
I'm considering doing the same for ground units somehow but I'm not sure about it. If I did it would go by their level not multiplier so the current artifact effects would apply at level 10 (full size) and a level 5 unit would get 2x the power and a level 1 unit would get 10x the power.
An artifact that does +50% damage would apply on a level 10 ground unit, a level 1 ground unit would get +500% its normal damage (hit like a level 2 5x unit)
Artifacts would still be more worthwhile on larger ground units but have a more scaled up benefit when placed on smaller units . And on ships while its still more bang for the buck to put them on bigger ships, its not worthless to place them on smaller ones
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Corbenik Posts: 2
9/8/2017
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Cool, sounds good. Would the changes apply to existing units, or only moving forward?
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
9/12/2017
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Corbenik wrote:
Cool, sounds good. Would the changes apply to existing units, or only moving forward?
If I put this change in, all existing ships would be updated. I need a section of the units description which shows the bonuses in more detail because something like that makes the total calculation difficult to understand at a glance.
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