Starbase balance & meta thread: Ship roles

[Verbatos]

I got into a discussion recently about ship archetypes and balance around them in a different thread* (which I suggest you read before this one) and so at the request of @five I have made a separate thread to discuss.

What do you think the dynamics of ship types will be as the game progresses? I am on the stealth fighter/carrier dynamic track, but I have seen people talk about different types of metas, which do you think will progress?
What will be the dominant ship type? Speedy fighters? Heavy gunships? Spacecraft carriers?

Also: the wiki** is always a good tool to use if you are unsure about some aspect of ship design or the components required! I want to create a good healthy conversation around this, so it's always good to get more informed people to discuss with!

* (https://forum.starbasegame.com/thre...ll-you-try-to-achieve-in-starbase.1258/page-3)
** (https://wiki.starbasegame.com/index.php/Main_Page)

 

[Jasperagus]

What do you think the dynamics of ship types will be as the game progresses?

This comes down to how the devs want people to play the game and how they balance things. Anyways I still think people are going to make large gunships because they're cool and maybe find a way to make the more viable.

What will be the dominant ship type?

I can't say much because I don't have CA but Heavy gunships would be cool but carries might be useful when people start going farther and farther from orgin.

Also isn't there going to be some sort of detection system for ships?

 

[Cavilier210]

Jasperagus, currently the meta is heavy fighters. I'm not sure if you've seen the talk about it, but many see that meta as an issue.

I honestly think the devs want all ship types to be viable. Fighters, big ships, and carriers. How to make that happen though is the issue. The general problem is that spamming parts is just inherently better. Many of my fighter designs use 2 main thrusters and a pair of weapons, while other people make large fighters with 10 thrusters and an array of 8 or more weapons. They use railguns while I use lasers. Stuff like that. In that situation, and without need for anything else in these vessels, you can spam engines and guns and always win.

There are many solutions to this, like diminishing returns on increased thruster numbers, making some weapons unfeasible to use without massive size and massive powerplants. Things like that. I have faith in the devs, but I don't envy their position on this issue.

 

[five]

My opinion is that the meta will eventually but surely favor smaller very fast and agile fighters with few guns, over the current "block of guns and thrusters" meta. I think stealth will be also important or rather good camouflage is going to be important, as having a pure stealth fighter is kind of a gimmick.

 

[kiiyo]

In my opinion, if the devs don't implement rapid and sizeable changes that we can't really take a guess at right now, we will only see the heavy fighter block of parts that is in meta right now. Maybe with more strafe capability, but these absurd armored beasts are here to stay as far as I think.

 

[Jasperagus]

Jasperagus, currently the meta is heavy fighters. I'm not sure if you've seen the talk about it, but many see that meta as an issue.

Sorry I should've been more specific. I was mostly talking about corvettes and other ships like that.

I honestly think the devs want all ship types to be viable. Fighters, big ships, and carriers. How to make that happen though is the issue.

Having no meta would be the most preferable thing and would allow for people to be creative. It also be alot more interesting to see different and interesting ships other than what kiiyo was talking about.

 

[CalenLoki]

I think mouse control will shake the meta quite a bit. With longer reliable engagement range heavy fighters may have problems leading small nimble ships.
And light fighters dying really fast at short range, as they unpredictable movement won't help them as much as now.
And maybe torps will get faster, and you'll have to defend against them with agility or tripod CIWS - which would give a hard counter to heavy fighters.

But we'll see once those changes come.

 

[Verbatos]

Also isn't there going to be some sort of detection system for ships?

Is there going to be something like that? I remember the devs saying no radar.

Having no meta would be the most preferable thing and would allow for people to be creative. It also be alot more interesting to see different and interesting ships other than what kiiyo was talking about.

Not having a meta may be the ideal, but I think that there'll always be some ships that are dominant over others, and I have learned from fighting games that perfectly balanced games are basically impossible. Barring something really out there like Footsies.

 

[CalenLoki]

Is there going to be something like that? I remember the devs saying no radar.

Yes, radiation detector is planned. So if you're running big generator or carrying a lot of radioactive ore you can be detected from very long distance. Lauri said up to 1000km in extreme cases.

Complete stealth will be still possible using batteries, but those won't get you too far.

 

[orangelemongamer]

Having no meta would be the most preferable thing and would allow for people to be creative. It also be alot more interesting to see different and interesting ships other than what kiiyo was talking about.

I agree with Jasperagus. In that all ship designs and creations all have the relatively same power with their own strengths and weaknesses which would allow more creative and specialised ships to be made. But that is hard to achieve as a developer making a game especially when the games limits for vehicles are very large.

 

[RyuShihan]

maybe making certain guns only fit on certain mass size ships. example rail guns need more mass to hold them and are great long range. Lasers scale depending on how much energy can pump into them, but that is offset by mass on batteries/reactors which slow thrust down.

 

[GeneralSyb]

In the few conversations that I've had with some devs and people of major dev factions, Heavy/super heavy fighters will be the meta that the devs are trying to steer the community towards, but without restricting the possibility of using small fighters.

I am not sure if I can or am allowed to say why they want that but I think that making it fun and diverse combat is the ultimate goal of balancing.

The devs are always trying to push their tech to the limit and upgrade it to try to get as big as possible ships into the game so that they have the room to change the type of ships. In the end we want cool ship on ship combat with huge amounts of giant ships. Ville and some people I play with have already made up a little naming system for ships and everybody wants to see the big power projection ships in game even tho they won't be the meta for combat.