Well, one thing that truly stood for me was the huge amounts of flat shield from shield defense modules. On advanced military one simple shield covers more health than the base ship, even for carriers. I get that shield really needed a big buff and the changes are in the right direction... but as it stands now, shields are just the default option and the first thing to load as defense, even against projectiles...

EDIT: Thanks for the shout out BTW!!

The huge shield pool is part of Re-Awakening combat balance changes, I didn't add that. This is more a nerfing of Kinetic down to Energy's damage levels.

What those high Shield values do mean, is that Energy weapons can no longer expect to take down Shields in combat, which is why the original damage values are so low in comparison to Kinetic. In response, I decreased the ability of Kinetic to pierce through the Shield as well.

Beams are now better for constant chip damage through Shields, while Lasers are going to want high Crit% to occasionally sneak a full damage shot through. Missiles still have their massive damage pool, which means any shots that get through Flak and Crit will do massive damage, the nerf just lessens the ability to wipe everything on Phase 1. And Slugs are your primary defense against Missiles and Bombers.

EMP weapons are more valuable now as well, since they allow you to take down Shields temporarily.

Sorry if was a misunderstanding, I know shields have those values from the prepatch preview and not from your balance pass.

When we talk balance, shield, hull plate, and weapons all of them should be taken heavily into consideration. All I'm saying is the defense upgrade from a shield or from a hull plate as it is now seems disproportionate to me. Your changes to projectiles seem fine to me, I have to look into it in a bit more detail but are welcome.

A single plate doesn't counter projectiles as effectively as a single shield module counter energy damage as it stands now. Even worse, while a single plate does very little against energy, a single shield still helps a bit against projectiles, as 35%/45% of the missile and slug damage still gets absorbed with shields.

If you really want to counter beams you should invest heavily into shields, with a few shields, plus reloaders, shield extenders, etc, not add a shield module and call it a day.

Finally to compare, while on ESG full changelog you get more normal shield magnitudes: "Greatly buffed shield capacity on white modules from 550/700/850/950/1200 to 660/1160/2000/3200/3800 for tier 1-5" while on prepatch preview we have 1650/2450/3800/5700/7600.

I am just rambling about it, as the title suggests :P I hope you get the idea.

Originally posted by ninakoru:

Finally to compare, while on ESG full changelog you get more normal shield magnitudes: "Greatly buffed shield capacity on white modules from 550/700/850/950/1200 to 660/1160/2000/3200/3800 for tier 1-5" while on prepatch preview we have 1650/2450/3800/5700/7600.

I am just rambling about it, as the title suggests :P I hope you get the idea.

Yeah, I understand. As things are, the Shields are probably a bit overtuned. I opted to nerf Kinetic instead of buffing Energy, because I do think increasing base TTK(Time To Kill) across the board for each weapon type is a good idea. (Weapons quickly outscale defenses in late-game, especially when you start stacking % damage multipliers like the Militarist/Scientist Laws and Hero Skills.)

There is likely to be a 10% nerf to Missile weapons in next PatchPreview, so I'll likely slightly lessen the Missile nerf then. (30% Shield Penetration > 35% Shield Penetration)

Alright, 1.5.58 has dropped. So I'm looking at the balance again.

The changes to weapon balance in 1.5.58 are:

• Missile - damage values nerfed by 11%
  
• Slug - damage values nerfed by 10%
  
• Laser - damage values buffed by 8%
  
• Beam - damage values buffed by 8%
  
• Railgun - unchanged :(
  
• Shields - high end Shields had their capacity cut by up to 25% (non-linear)

In light of those changes, I've decided to give Missiles back 10% of their Shield Penetration.
(65% > 30% > 40%)

But, since I had wanted to nerf Slugs a bit more, they only get back 5%.
(55% > 25% > 30%)

I intend to publish the changes in a bit, just need to run the mod and test it.

Hmm. Reevaluating the current status of the mod. The AI seems to be preferring Beams/Lasers in the early tiers, and then Missiles in the later tiers.

Missiles are pretty strong, but also easily countered. That makes them a bit of a high-risk high reward play, and the AI doesn't do well with those. Unfortunately, the AI preference for Missiles in late-game is because the Damage/Tier slope is much steeper for Missiles than Energy. And I'm afraid that isn't as easy to counteract. I'd have to manually tweak each number.

Lasers are pretty weak in the early tiers, but actually really good once you hit critical mass with them in later tiers. Especially since the slope of Shields/Tier has decreased. But to fix the early-game weakness, I'd probably have to mess with Shields and bring that slope back into balance.

Bombers, Missiles, and Swarm Missiles is a pretty strong combo though. (That the AI doesn't use...) Mostly because of how strong Flak is right now. And I'm not sure what to do about that. Adding a base Flak level to every ship with a hidden module is an idea, but vastly increases the scope of modifications made by this mod, and I'm not sure I want to go there.

I'm also thinking that the increasing Salvo HP by missile tier needs to go away...

IMO missiles are the best weapon type of the game, mainly because is the highest damage, you start at long range and go with 100% accuracy since the very beginning, and also you get 100% accuracy on cross-lane fire. IMO flak from guns is not a enough effective counter, and once you throw in some swarms, is over.

AI will choose one module over the other based on their win/lose ratio and also the additional data about how good the weapon is vs ranges, so if it ends up leaning into missiles, could be that they countered heavily other AIs using beams/lasers... because missiles.

The only consideration for swarm is when is on same tech level than the missiles, will equip one only per ship instead of a missile.

Originally posted by ninakoru:

IMO missiles are the best weapon type of the game, mainly because is the highest damage, you start at long range and go with 100% accuracy since the very beginning, and also you get 100% accuracy on cross-lane fire. IMO flak from guns is not a enough effective counter, and once you throw in some swarms, is over.

AI will choose one module over the other based on their win/lose ratio and also the additional data about how good the weapon is vs ranges, so if it ends up leaning into missiles, could be that they countered heavily other AIs using beams/lasers... because missiles.

The only consideration for swarm is when is on same tech level than the missiles, will equip one only per ship instead of a missile.

I figure if I get rid of that silly tiered Salvo HP, so that every Missile has 30 HP, and Flak does 30HP, then that should even things out. While also giving Squadrons a fighting chance, since 600 HP of a Heavy Bomber isn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ against Flak firing 120 damage per shot 3 times per second...

I will probably leave boarding pods tiered. Starting at 2 shots per kill, and moving up to 4 shots on the highest tier. You'll probably still need Swarm missiles to break through heavy Flak, but it might not be a turkey shoot this way.

Fixing the Missile damage slope is the last step, I'm looking at leaving the bottom end alone, and knocking about 35% off the top end. So, I may be able to give them back another chunk of Shield Penetration.

Edit: Just pushed the changes as v1.2

I've played a few games with this and ENFER reloaded. I don't have enough experience to comment if it is balanced enough or not, but I haven't run into any bugs or problems. Thanks for continuing to support.

Originally posted by Smitty2k1:

I've played a few games with this and ENFER reloaded. I don't have enough experience to comment if it is balanced enough or not, but I haven't run into any bugs or problems. Thanks for continuing to support.

Thanks for the play. I expect most players will outscale the AI no matter what the combat balance is, this is just attempting to make all 4 of the basic weapon types viable.

I've been giving some feedback to Cobbs on the weapon damage, and it seems like there may another Missile nerf coming for PatchPreview, so this mod may need some more tweaking when that drops. I don't think that Slugs/Railguns/Squadrons are being touched though, so there will still be some differences between this and that.

I'm trying to decide if I need to look at Blast Effect Batteries as well. They've got a strong anti-small role but may be a bit overpowered compared to the rest of the modules in this mod. (Patchpreview buffed from 250 > 300 damage, and Carrier-mounted will do 3000 damage to Small or 1500 to Medium.) So, what is a fair amount of damage for them to do 3x(once per phase) in combat? (Confusingly, I don't know why BEBs do 3000 instead of 2400 as listed...)

Last item of business, do I need to nerf Beams more? (95% Armor Pierce > 90% currently)
Thinking about 80%. PatchPreview buffed them by 8% damage in 1.5.58.

Alright, just pushed a new update to 1.3. (Change the version # back to 1.2 in the xml for compatibility with previous games, sorry about breaking them.)

The biggest change is a nerf to Blast Effect Battery, from 300 damage to 150 damage. (This could probably be taken even further, but I want some feedback first.)

Nerfed beams down to 80% Armor Pierce. (They are still stronger than Lasers so I don't feel bad about it.)

Boarding Pod HP has been reduced, and they have a Strategic cost associated with them now. Hyperium/Antimatter/Quadrinix, and just Titanium for the Vaulter's Champion's Pod. The Strategic cost should prevent the AI from just spamming them and neglecting real weapons.

I saw a lot of Missile/Swarm Missile fleet combos from the AI when testing, so hopefully this gives you some good fights. (Endless difficulty Academy should be nice and mean to fight, since they go very Beam-heavy.)

Rapid flurry of updates, as I include the Bomber damage fix, apply crit to squadrons, and then realize that they were a little too OP. So removed 2x crit damage from squadrons to compensate.