Entrenchment research tree balance

from Sins Forums

One of those things that seems to fall through the balance discussion cracks is research costs.  While Diplomany will presumably help some of the worst offerenders (anything regarding pirates or missions), there are still some serious head scratchers.

Advent Military:

Unfettered Phase Jumps - Why is this so expensive?  Phase Jump Inhibitors aren't exactly common, and even then scouts are so cheap that losing one is hardly game breaking.  This should be tier 2-3 research at most. (issue for all factions, I won't list this one again)

Anti-matter upgrades - These are pretty damn low on most people's priority list. and yet even the initial upgrades are pretty pricy.  Shifting these a little lower would help out carriers and make various defencive structures a fair bit more usable. (issue for all factions, I won't list this one again)

Advent: Civilian:

High Efficiency Jumps - 1600$ 300m 475c for a minor reduction in jump antimatter cost?  Seriously?  This one needs to be a lot cheaper.

TEC Military:

Beam Weapons - Asking an awful lot for something that ONLY benefits one cap ships and starbases.

High Yield Warheads - Too expensive and too late for something that is far more useful mid-game.  Piling on the bombing damage and being an ass on large maps might actually be effective if this wasn't tier 6.

TEC Civilian:

Catastrophe Recovery - This is useless.  If you repel an attack before the planet is destroyed, then the health is probably going to recover before they can attack that planet again.

Basic Crew Training - Tier 5 for this?  If you have the money to research this and buy levels for your cap ships, you're winning anyways.

Visari Military:

Wave Cannon upgrades - Way too expensive.  The Enforcer is already the worst heavy cruiser, and the cost of weapon upgrades for them doesn't help.

Visari Defence:

Colony Pods - there's nothing wrong with the research itself, but the actual cost on the starbase upgrade is never worth it.  Trade ports cost less and yet give as much of a boost as TWO colony pod upgrades.

 

 

These are just a few off the top of my head.  While a new expansion being in beta, I think this is the perfect time to discuss and tweak research balance.

14,820 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Unfettered Phase Jumps - Why is this so expensive?  Phase Jump Inhibitors aren't exactly common, and even then scouts are so cheap that losing one is hardly game breaking.  This should be tier 2-3 research at most. (issue for all factions, I won't list this one again)

One of the purposes of PJI's is to prevent scouts from getting a few jumps behind your front lines to see what you're cooking.  So in that sense I do think it's the right decision to put it high on the tech tree, but I also think it's a tad expensive.  Maybe keep its current position but lower its cost.  It's nice that most techs have a standardized cost based on their tier, but if it's justifiable exceptions should be made.

Anti-matter upgrades - These are pretty damn low on most people's priority list. and yet even the initial upgrades are pretty pricy.  Shifting these a little lower would help out carriers and make various defencive structures a fair bit more usable. (issue for all factions, I won't list this one again)

Totally disagree; this is one of my top priority researches.  Now, I tend to go a bit heavy on capital ships and therefor have lots of powerful abilities to feed with antimatter, so maybe this is a bit specific to my playstyle, but the fact still remains that this upgrade is anything but useless.  Now, it does bother me that I need to put up four labs to get the TEC upgrade.  I mean, I may as well go for heavy cruisers if I've already got that much infrastructure...

High Efficiency Jumps - 1600$ 300m 475c for a minor reduction in jump antimatter cost?  Seriously?  This one needs to be a lot cheaper.

Lifesaver in the late game, but still very rare to get it.  If you're playing cat and mouse a couple jumps can really whittle away your antimatter and reduce the power of your caps and support cruisers in the coming battle.  That said, it's rare you can shell out that much cash.  I'd agree that it could use some help, but it's not the poster boy for underpowered techs.

Beam Weapons - Asking an awful lot for something that ONLY benefits one cap ships and starbases.

Agreed.  I've never researched this.

High Yield Warheads - Too expensive and too late for something that is far more useful mid-game.  Piling on the bombing damage and being an ass on large maps might actually be effective if this wasn't tier 6.

It's weak, but not worthless.  I don't think it's a huge issue.

Catastrophe Recovery - This is useless.  If you repel an attack before the planet is destroyed, then the health is probably going to recover before they can attack that planet again.

Not entirely.  If you can force the enemy capital ship to break off bombardment for even a few seconds, a planet can regenerate hundreds of hit points.  However, I do agree that these scenarios are fairly rare.

Basic Crew Training - Tier 5 for this?  If you have the money to research this and buy levels for your cap ships, you're winning anyways.

Agreed, too late in the tree, especially when compared to the other factions.  That said, being able to pay for level 4 is quite useful for raising caps in the late game, but this is too far up the tree.

Wave Cannon upgrades - Way too expensive.  The Enforcer is already the worst heavy cruiser, and the cost of weapon upgrades for them doesn't help.

Totally agreed.

Colony Pods - there's nothing wrong with the research itself, but the actual cost on the starbase upgrade is never worth it.  Trade ports cost less and yet give as much of a boost as TWO colony pod upgrades.

Totally agreed.

 

Of course, you missed some pretty glaring ones:

Advent Beam Range

The only Advent beam unit that has any real range to boost is the Illuminator, and even then it will never outrange anything significant.  Waste of cash.

Advent Resource Focus

Seriously, you need to stack both of its higher tech level upgrades and multiple loyalty boosting effects on a planet just to make this competitive with its trade route form... and by the time you can do this your trade route is probably so long that it still isn't viable.  This needs serious boosting because right now there's virtually no practical situation where it's ever viable.

Advent Increased Hanger Capacity

Seriously, not good enough to be worth our time.

Vasari Bombard Range Upgrade

Thousands of credits for a 10% increase in bombard range?  You're kidding right.  I've never actually seen a case where this increase of range would actually have been useful, much less worth its massive investment cost. 

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Advent Beam Range boosts turrets, does it not?  And anything that boosts the best frigate in the game is automatically not worthless.

The others you mentioned are pretty bad too.

Anti-matter upgrades are okay on huge maps when you can afford to get 6+ cap ships.  It is simply not worth it in any average 3v3 or smaller as you are much better off getting hull, shield, and weapon upgrades that boost ALL your units.

Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting lbgsloan, reply 2
Advent Beam Range boosts turrets, does it not?  And anything that boosts the best frigate in the game is automatically not worthless.

The others you mentioned are pretty bad too.

Anti-matter upgrades are okay on huge maps when you can afford to get 6+ cap ships.  It is simply not worth it in any average 3v3 or smaller as you are much better off getting hull, shield, and weapon upgrades that boost ALL your units.

Disciples actually use lasers, not beams. Only Illums, Bombers, Turrets, and Caps are being affected by beam research.

The Antimatter updgrades I've actually found to be very useful. Especially if you have to retreat from a planet with a SB; then at least Carriers can rebuild their lose squadrons at a decent rate. ^_^

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

One really bad upgrade: Raider Xenophobia. This upgrade reduces the number of pirate ships per raid so your cap ship doesn't get as much free experience. Really bad upgrade.

Karmic Retribution isn't used much because people turn pirates off. Expert Bounty Hunting is pretty meh. Diplomacy changes to pirates may make these upgardes more worthwhile.

No-one uses Planetary Shields or so I've heard, and I havn't seen it used online so this upgrade probably belongs on the list or never-used upgrades.

Pulse-beam projector upgrades for Vasari cap ships and pulse gun upgrades are pretty meh because they are so niche.

Gauss turret RoF and range upgrades are not very good, but not terrible either. I haven't actually bothered with these upgrades and I see no reason to. Turrets are largely pointless.

but it's not the poster boy for underpowered techs.

And I'll tell you what is: the upgraded abilities for the Overseer. A tier one upgrade does exaxtly the same thing as Mobile Phase Detection yet is better in everyway to a very high tier upgrade. Jump Degredation is also very expensive and useless. These upgrades are so incredibly bad, they need to redesigned from scratch.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Advents beam range is highly useful to the ilum when using repulse.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Gauss turret RoF and range upgrades are not very good, but not terrible either.

Actually these are very good upgrades.  It's the gauss turret that sucks.  If you do build them (often to counter scout rushes) these upgrades are extremely worthwhile.