oh no, not another game balance thread!
One of the big problems with seIV game balance is that point defense is too strong, making missiles virtually useless as soon as pd is available, and causing trouble for fighters. reducing the damage of point defense, or increasing missile damage resistance might however lead to bigger game balance problems.
The problem is that right now there are only two realistic outcomes in a battle between a missile based fleet (fleet A) and a direct fire weapons fleet. (fleet B)
Possibility A: the point defense of fleet B is too strong, fleet B takes no damage, fleet A is destroyed. (the current situation in SeIV)
Possibility B: the point defense of fleet B is to weak. Fleet B is destroyed, while fleet A can easily stay out of fleet B's range, and won't take any damage.
Humans could react to outcome B by building fleets with more point defense, the AI isn't that flexible, and will keep losing. making point defense less effective could thus lead to even greater problems with game balance.
I had an idea that might work, maybe it would be nice to have a (moderately ranged) weapon that specifically interferes with point defense cannons, either by destroying them or by making them inactive for a couple of turns. There is a racial trait weapon that does that for normal weapons in SEIV (psychic or temporal?). Missile based races could than put a couple of these weapons on specialised heavily shielded/armored 'point defense jamming' attack ships. The result would be that missile fleets would have a chance of winning, by jamming enemy pd, but they would still be vulnerable. If the point defense jamming ships (which have to come into enemy range) are destroyed, the fleet is in trouble..
Anyhow, just an idea that's different from the more obvious and probably worse solution of decreasing pd damage, I don't know if it's possible to mod this right now, but i'd like to see it. (sorry for the long post)
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