[geoschmo]

If you add in the ECM bonus for Stealth and Scattering armor it's not nearly as bad for the sensors. But I still wanted the sensors to have tha advantage.

One of my biggest problems with combat in the stock game is that with a slight edge in ECM+Stealth+Scattering Armor your ships become almost unhittable. Throw a couple PDC's to hanlde the missles, and a couple shields to soak up the few lucky shots that do manage to get through, and you have a ship that all to often will escape a battle completely undamaged.

It's not even uncommon for battles to be so lopsided that 10 ships with said ECM advantage can wipe out 50 or even more that are otherwise equal in tech, without losing a single ship, or even suffering much damage.

By giving sensors the advantage, or less of a disadvantage at least, those battles have a different dynamic. You should still expect to win with superior tech and equal or nearly equal numbers, but you should at least suffer some casualties and damage and have to be more selective about when and where you fight.

What I was going for with the slow progression of the combat modifying techs is to make it take more of a comitment from an empire to develop them. To keep anyone from getting a big advantage very early. However one side effect of this is that if a race ignores these areas long enough it will be next to impossible for them to catch up. Not sure if I have the balance right yet.

I also wanted experience to be more of a determining factor, because that's something I can't really control since it's hardcoded. But I weakened the training facilities so you have to earn the experience the hard way.

Geoschmo

[ May 19, 2002, 23:37: Message edited by: geoschmo ]