Why are X weapons not OP again?

[morangias]

That can't be it because then they would be op.

X slot Tachyon Lance does 148 dps
2 L slot Gamma Laser does 73.94
4 M slot Gamma laser does 61.8
8 Small Slots does 49.28

From S to M to L is like a 20% increase each. But from L to X is a damn 100% increase.

What you're missing is you've researched two more endgame technologies to get to that damn 100% increase. It's literally meant to be so much better, you'll never install another slot on a battleship ever again! Mind you, this doesn't make it OP, because everyone's doing it - it's just where fully upgraded battleships are supposed to be, damage-wise.

 

[Knotw]

I'll agree that spinal mount battleships are the clear best ship design and monofleets of them seem to be the best navy, but I don't think that's necessarily because of the X slot weapon. I think it has more to do with battleships being so tanky that they end up being the best at disengaging rather than being outright killed, which means that trying to counter with evasive ships will just end up with you winning battles but not causing much in the way of actual damage to the battleship fleets and either losing more and more corvettes each battle or gaining war exhaustion faster than the battleship user is.

Frankly I think it'd make fleet design more interesting if battleships had a greatly reduced chance to disengage and tracking from sensor upgrades was toned down slightly. Maybe buff static defenses and some of the crisises in a way that makes the current meta build for battleships still desirable but not the one size fits all solution they currently are. Every size of ship should always have at least more than one viable option in each hull section slot at any given point in time. Corvettes and especially destroyers are currently good about this, but cruisers and battleships are either useless or very one dimensional in their viable design options which makes combat a bit of a boring slugfest once you get battleships.

 

[SpectralShade]

What you're missing is you've researched two more endgame technologies to get to that damn 100% increase. It's literally meant to be so much better, you'll never install another slot on a battleship ever again! Mind you, this doesn't make it OP, because everyone's doing it - it's just where fully upgraded battleships are supposed to be, damage-wise.

If everyone is making a specific "choice" because that option is just better than all other options, it's the very definition of OP. The choice is no longer a choice but merely window dressing or "fake choices".
If spinal weapons lost out to carriers, for example, you would suddenly get a whole lot more choice and decisions to do when deciding what to build for your fleets. Even a rock/paper/scissor approach would be better than one choice just being superior to all other choices.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

If everyone is making a specific "choice" because that option is just better than all other options, it's the very definition of OP. The choice is no longer a choice but merely window dressing or "fake choices".
If spinal weapons lost out to carriers, for example, you would suddenly get a whole lot more choice and decisions to do when deciding what to build for your fleets. Even a rock/paper/scissor approach would be better than one choice just being superior to all other choices.

I don't know, I think the problem with carriers is that strikecraft are fundamentally broken (2.2.5 might change that), and I also don't consider a Tachyon Lance a good choice for fighting fleets made mostly of Corvettes and Destroyers, seeing as how they practically can't hit them. Maybe Arc Emitters in the very late game, when everyone has crazy armor/shields. Even so, I think the real problem isn't that X slots are too good, but that Cruisers serve no real purpose once you have Battleships.

 

[Cordane]

Limited firing arc doesn't really mean much of anything when you're firing from Range 100-150 - they also have low rate of fire, so they have plenty of time to swing the bow of the ship around to the next target before it's ready to fire again. Tracking also isn't an issue, as X-slot weapons aren't intended to be used against Evasive targets, and Battleships have four other L-slots' worth of weapons for the Evasive stuff.

One of the problems that Stellaris has is that, while you have four weapon sizes and four ship sizes, the progression isn't even at all. Corvettes are able to mount both S- and M-slot (equivalent) weapons, Destroyers move up to comfortably carrying M-slots and expanding into L-slots - that would suggest that Cruisers should center on L-slots and expand to X-slots, while Battleships should be pretty much focused on X-slots across the board and maybe something bigger beyond that. But that's not what we have: Cruisers completely top out at L-slots, and Battleships can only have forward-fire-only X-slots, not turrets.

I think part of the reason for this is that they decided to have sections with limited portions of the weapons load in each - Corvettes only have the one section and Destroyers are 2/3 vs. 1/3, but both Cruisers and Battleships only have 1/3 of their hardpoints in the Bow, 1/2 in the Core, and just 1/6 in the Stern. The M-slots in Corvettes and L-slots in Destroyers take up 2/3 of the hardpoints by themselves, but oddly these aren't viewed as spinal cannons when maybe they should. In order to justify an X-slot on a Cruiser, you'd have to pretty much do away with separate sections and instead just have a whole-ship blueprint to allow for the outsized spinal cannon.

The other part is that, if you have Corvettes with S-slots, Destroyers with M-slots, and Cruisers with L-slots, and there is a beyond-size-increase boost to damage as you go up in size, Battleships "should" be doing not just twice as much damage as Cruisers, if they only have L-slots, but an additional 20% beyond. If only 1/3 of the weapons can account for that additional damage, then they have to do even more extra damage to average out. If Battleships could just get X-slots in 3 mounts rather than just one, the DPS for X-slots could be more in line with regular slot size increase progression.

 

[Foefaller]

I don't know, I think the problem with carriers is that strikecraft are fundamentally broken (2.2.5 might change that), and I also don't consider a Tachyon Lance a good choice for fighting fleets made mostly of Corvettes and Destroyers, seeing as how they practically can't hit them. Maybe Arc Emitters in the very late game, when everyone has crazy armor/shields. Even so, I think the real problem isn't that X slots are too good, but that Cruisers serve no real purpose once you have Battleships.

2.2.5 doesn't really fix it.

Not because the buffs aren't good, but because all but a handful of AI personalities are set to take picket ship sections for corvettes and destroyers *all* the time, so anything that can be shot down by PD is useless against them.

And the AI types that don't use them aren't very common either; Slaving Despots, Fed. Builders, Migratory Flocks, some Machine Empires and one other that I can recall. Basically any AI that prefers missiles instead, which struggle to last long because they are hard-countered by everyone else.

Before they can make missiles/strike craft good, they need to head back to the drawing board on how PD/Flak works so the AI doesn't have to cripple its firepower on the off chance the other guy *might* be using missiles.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

2.2.5 doesn't really fix it.

Not because the buffs aren't good, but because all but a handful of AI personalities are set to take picket ship sections for corvettes and destroyers *all* the time, so anything that can be shot down by PD is useless against them.

And the AI types that don't use them aren't very common either; Slaving Despots, Fed. Builders, Migratory Flocks, some Machine Empires and one other that I can recall. Basically any AI that prefers missiles instead, which struggle to last long because they are hard-countered by everyone else.

Before they can make missiles/strike craft good, they need to head back to the drawing board on how PD/Flak works so the AI doesn't have to cripple its firepower on the off chance the other guy *might* be using missiles.

Yeah, the fact that my starting corvettes are outfitted with a flak battery, despite no one having strikecraft yet, infuriates me, especially since it reduces my damage by 1/3.

 

[mrt1212]

If everyone is making a specific "choice" because that option is just better than all other options, it's the very definition of OP. The choice is no longer a choice but merely window dressing or "fake choices".
If spinal weapons lost out to carriers, for example, you would suddenly get a whole lot more choice and decisions to do when deciding what to build for your fleets. Even a rock/paper/scissor approach would be better than one choice just being superior to all other choices.

Flesh this out more. Why is having more choices beneficial to your sense of the game?

I want to remind you before you respond that humans optimizing games based on their parameters is kind of what we naturally do so that no matter what designers do, there will always be grousing about the following:

Not enough tactical or strategic choices.
Too many tactical and strategic choices that don't matter.
Too few that do matter and are obvious after playing a significant amount of time.

This isn't unique to Stellaris. Fighting games have this complaint, FPS team based shooters have this complaint, strategy games have this complaint. There's simply no way to perfectly balance multiple tactical approaches to a defined problem when given several pass throughs to solve it. Does this mean that there shouldn't be some attempt made? No, obviously not otherwise why spend the time designing a game that can't improve upon Rock/Paper/Scissors or dress up a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors with extract, exploration, expansion and exterminate features?

Basically the more tactical approaches you allow for, the less possibility there is for balance and the more likely it is for a handful of approaches to be better than others.

Now lets tie this back to spinal mounts. All things considered is having spinal mounts be a no brainer choice a net detriment to the overall game? I don't think so given the placing of them in the tech tree, their expected reveal date, how the game already barely entertains viable multiple tactical approaches and how cumbersome a lot of the game would be without them at some point. Would it be nice to have a multitude of ways to play the game where the only limit on our choices are our imagination? Sure. But I don't see how this is a significant arena where that can be accomplished with any satisfaction.

 

[Methone]

If everyone is making a specific "choice" because that option is just better than all other options, it's the very definition of OP. The choice is no longer a choice but merely window dressing or "fake choices"

You're right. Clearly, Stellaris has too many fake choices!

Researching science is OP. I should be able to bulldoze all my science labs, not pay the upkeep on science leaders, ever, and still be just as good as an empire that does research.

Building outposts is OP - clearly, everyone makes the same choice!

etc. etc.

 

[Voidlord]

I think Titans should get turreted X weapons as a choice

 

[FiddleSticks96]

I think Titans should get turreted X weapons as a choice

While I agree that Titans need more sections to choose from, I don't think that X slots should have anymore firing arc than they already do. A small firing arc is one of the few shortcomings of X weapons and it has to have some sort of weakness.

 

[DrNukeLear]

While I agree that Titans need more sections to choose from, I don't think that X slots should have anymore firing arc than they already do. A small firing arc is one of the few shortcomings of X weapons and it has to have some sort of weakness.

Hear, hear!

 

[mrt1212]

You're right. Clearly, Stellaris has too many fake choices!

Researching science is OP. I should be able to bulldoze all my science labs, not pay the upkeep on science leaders, ever, and still be just as good as an empire that does research.

Building outposts is OP - clearly, everyone makes the same choice!

etc. etc.

You're right. Clearly, Stellaris has too many fake choices!

Researching science is OP. I should be able to bulldoze all my science labs, not pay the upkeep on science leaders, ever, and still be just as good as an empire that does research.

Building outposts is OP - clearly, everyone makes the same choice!

etc. etc.

And here we are. Can you compete in the game capably avoiding certain things like research? Is having more versatility in how to play and win by avoiding research something that can be balanced and should it be? For the most part, anyone with enough of an opinion to opine here accepts certain aspects of a game.

Sometimes I wonder if a lot of people who want seemingly limitless tactical and strategic methods to compete in a game would be better served starting their own business and playing that game. Limitless ways to try and make money, tangible prizes, real stakes!

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

While I agree that Titans need more sections to choose from, I don't think that X slots should have anymore firing arc than they already do. A small firing arc is one of the few shortcomings of X weapons and it has to have some sort of weakness.

IMHO Titans need, if nothing else, to be able to mimic FE/AE Titan builds.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

IMHO Titans need, if nothing else, to be able to mimic FE/AE Titan builds.

Better yet, go the Zenith of Fallen Empires root and allow their ship classes to be acquired very late game.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Better yet, go the Zenith of Fallen Empires root and allow their ship classes to be acquired very late game.

Nah.

I'm actually totally okay with NPCs having ships you can't exactly reproduce; the FEs/AEs/Crisis forces are more interesting for being unique. I just think it's weird that FE Titans get hangars and stuff that you can't build on your own. I don't really care about having the exact same slot arrangements etc- just that you can build something for roughly the same purpose/loadout.

Similarly, I kind of want to be able to put missiles on Battleships again. It feels weird having them only on Corvettes and Cruisers.

 

[Adantigus]

X weapons should be the most powerful because they are towards the end of not one, but two separate tech branches: you need battleships, which are near the end of the ship branch of engineering, and you need an actual X weapon, which you can only research after you have battleships and have reached the very end of either the energy weapons branch in physics or the kinetics branch in engineering.

No other weapon combination requires tech like that. Titans, for example, come with their big beam weapon included. X weapon battleships are the pinnacle of weapons research, and so rightfully are the most powerful.

If the game started out with all ship classes unlocked and X weapons were just "rock" in a "rock/paper/scissors," then yes, they would need to not be so powerful. As they stand, they are your reward for capping the tech tree.

 

[Mohreb]

[QUOTE="DreadLindwyrm]
And nah, I know who the downvote was. I can check such things [/QUOTE]

" Down votes " are in real "respectfully disagree".
I for one like them.
They mean respect.

 

[SpectralShade]

Flesh this out more. Why is having more choices beneficial to your sense of the game?

I want to remind you before you respond that humans optimizing games based on their parameters is kind of what we naturally do so that no matter what designers do, there will always be grousing about the following:

Not enough tactical or strategic choices.
Too many tactical and strategic choices that don't matter.
Too few that do matter and are obvious after playing a significant amount of time.

This isn't unique to Stellaris. Fighting games have this complaint, FPS team based shooters have this complaint, strategy games have this complaint. There's simply no way to perfectly balance multiple tactical approaches to a defined problem when given several pass throughs to solve it. Does this mean that there shouldn't be some attempt made? No, obviously not otherwise why spend the time designing a game that can't improve upon Rock/Paper/Scissors or dress up a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors with extract, exploration, expansion and exterminate features?

Basically the more tactical approaches you allow for, the less possibility there is for balance and the more likely it is for a handful of approaches to be better than others.

Now lets tie this back to spinal mounts. All things considered is having spinal mounts be a no brainer choice a net detriment to the overall game? I don't think so given the placing of them in the tech tree, their expected reveal date, how the game already barely entertains viable multiple tactical approaches and how cumbersome a lot of the game would be without them at some point. Would it be nice to have a multitude of ways to play the game where the only limit on our choices are our imagination? Sure. But I don't see how this is a significant arena where that can be accomplished with any satisfaction.

You're really just saying alot of things there for no effect.

The bottomline is that if there is no real choice, then it becomes less a 'game' and more a 'connect the dots' exercise.
ALOT of things in stellaris at the moment are of the 'connect the dots' style of flavour at the moment, and they really need to get away from it and into meaningfull decisions (aka. choices) instead.

The problem, as I see it, is that instead of expanding on the options, DLCs and patches keep removing options and instead just add windowdressings of the 'connect the dots' variant. All the while they keep saying stuff like : "the AI will be better at making decisions with this". the sad part is that even when their game has almost become unilateral 'connect the dots' in most areas by now, the AI still sucks because they can't even get the weigths right in their scripts listing what the AI should do once triggers are reached. Someone else described the current version of the game as an empty shell in sore need of an actual AI to play against, which highlights the problem of the underlying design. Instead of making an AI capable of making decisions, the game is being dumbed down constantly to be a succesive series of "A is better than B, so when possible, go from A to B. C is better than B, so if possible go from A and B to C. " and so on.

Stellaris started out as a game but is slowly over time turning in to what could basicly be described as a visual novel.

 

[SpectralShade]

You're right. Clearly, Stellaris has too many fake choices!

Researching science is OP. I should be able to bulldoze all my science labs, not pay the upkeep on science leaders, ever, and still be just as good as an empire that does research.

Building outposts is OP - clearly, everyone makes the same choice!

etc. etc.

nice straw man.

If you want to comment on research, maybe you should focus on the fact that we all end up with the same technologies in the end, regardless which choices we make during the game regarding research.