Hey all! Some changes we can implement without patching the game; module balance changes are one such thing. While preparing for the update, I did indeed yesterday push some new numbers for some modules. Lasers have been too powerful for too long. To counteract this, shields took a slight nerf to make other weapon types more desirable. This change should also more strongly encourage other means of defense (such as point defense & junk launcher). The shield has been the optimal choice without any real drawback. As Mythago pointed out, later stage ballistic and missile weapons have received slight buffs. While the larger weapons already had advantages over their smaller counterparts (such as durability and range), we felt the benefit wasn't large enough as it was. Torpedoes have always been a very risky choice. Their low probability of success has warranted a high damage output, but even so they were too unreliable. Their damage has not been changed, but the speed of the projectile is a small amount greater. I hope this makes them a more reliable choice. The capital cannon has taken some serious nerf. It was by far the most powerful weapon in all situations, where it was intended to be more of a special tool for certain situations (low shield, good side hit). As with all piercing type weapons, I'll have to keep monitoring this, as the efficiency math is incredibly complex for me. Larger weapon types have suffered slight reductions in their health. This is partly to reduce the length of late game battles, and partly to bring armor into a more meaningful role. The power requirements for most modules have been tweaked slightly. This will result in most of the ships in the database having offline moments until they are overwritten by other ships. An unfortunate consequence, but necessary. Standard Ion engines provide more value for their required space now. The warp engine and afterburner have been extremely dominant choices, and I felt it was high time to give the Ion some love. The standard engines now provide more meaningful mobility while still being the safe, durable choice. There was a slew of other minor tweaks here and there, but this should cover most of the changes. And, as always, I'm continuing to follow the development of the balance and meta, and changes will be made where they are warranted -Ribatzki
Indeed. I've downloaded and tested dozens of iOS games that looked interesting, but were riddled with ads and agressive IAP's. Deleted them within five minutes. This game is a good example of how I like my F2P games. Starside Arena has no ads and is perfectly playable using only the Celestium that's available through daily missions and ship resets. I purchased a small amount of Celestium to support the developers, but honestly the benefit you get at high level is rather negligible. I estimate that my purchase gave me a new ship one day sooner than through normal gameplay (at low level you might fully pay for a new ship, however). But because the game was free and I've enjoyed it a lot, it felt like finally paying the price after getting an exhaustive trial period.
Maneuver Logic Why does almost every opposing ship seem to have an expert helmsman that can avoid my mines with no problem, but my ships always nail the biggest patches of opponents' mines every time? Whether it's head on or while turning, my ships can never seem to stop short of or go around mines -- but opponent ships almost always seem to do just that. This has happened with a slew of different classes on both sides.
First of all, I've also had series of matches where my ship seems to play minesweeper the wrong way, or the enemy ship has perfect timing with a flyover right after my shields are down and shoots a load of torpedoes into my engines/power cores. These games happen. I think the inability to steer our ships makes up pay attention to any stupid decisions the AI makes for them. But since I win more games than I lose, thinking that it happens "all the time" must be perception bias. We remember the times when things go wrong and not the times when we just simply win a match. That said, you can try to adjust the way your ship moves/behaves with module placement. I know it's not always a drastic change, but playing around with different engine types and warp drive/afterburner can change the way your ship moves. Some ships work well with only vector thrusters for turning, others do crazy evasive maneuvers with a balanced thrust/turning + afterburner. The latest server side changes increased engine power across the board, which should be noticable especially on lighter ships with good engine slots. Oh yeah, a warp drive can totally change the battlefield to a different place, leaving the minefield elsewhere and useless. With the warps being random, it can also backfire and warp you in the middle of the mines buuut...
Yeah, I've had the mine launcher frustration plenty of times. Best feeling when you win, worst feeling when you lose. My nemesis [roy2x ] always seems to avoid my crusader/mine ship grrrrrrrrr! I guess the ship paths have to be random to some extent otherwise all mine launcher builds would be too over powered if they always guaranteed a hit. Maybe there needs to be a defensive measure to combat mines...like a minesweeper.
I can attest to the Nemesis thing, and I'd love it if my wins/losses against an opponent would be visible when the fights starts (just a simple w/l below the enemy name or some such). GaoGaiGar's laser builds keep giving me trouble, and they often seem low on the side armors, but even with my 4x Warp engine Phantom vs. his Phantom, my ship just teleported in front of him for like two minutes while he chewed through my front plating. Frustrating sometimes, and against this guy, my captain seems to often go haywire I've always found it really odd that point defense has pretty low range, so it can't hit oncoming missiles if placed too far behind, and that it won't clear mines at all (maybe I'm too used to it in Elite Dangerous). So, my suggestion is that Point Defence Turrets would automatically shoot at missiles, torpedos and mines and receive a slight range improvement (or at least a similar indicator as shields have so we don't have to guess).
I'm not quite sure if capital cannon was actually nerfed or not but right now it's completely unstoppable. Capital cannon has no real counters as it pierces thru everything and now the best possible ships are pretty much any supercarrier with as many capital cannons you can fit in. I like the concept of capital cannon but having a ship filled with several of them is just too powerful. You could nerf it further until probably nobody will use it but another way to balance it would be limiting max cannons you can put in a ship (including supports) to two.
If I recall the previous numbers correctly, Capital Cannon went from 150 damage to 125 damage. But I agree, that doesn't matter much with its piercing ability. I have started seeing Capital Cannon all the time now and had to redesign my ships radically. I have not bought the weapon myself so far, partly because I'm saving everything to upgrade the rest of my ships first and partly because I want to see if it's absolutely necessary to have it. Redesigning my ships seemed to help some, but we'll see. The bottom line is, Capital Cannon changes the endgame instead of being a niche weapon that shines after the shields go down. Missiles (especially torpedoes) shine after the shields go down, as there just isn't anything that's effective against the splash damage and high alpha burst. Capital cannon can do it even through a shield. Early piercing weapons are underpowered because of their low initial damage that just keeps dropping after they hit something. It doesn't matter if you can pierce through modules when you do so little damage it takes dozens of shots to destroy anything (with their low rate of fire). However, Capital Cannon may be too far towards the other extreme, where their damage doesn't go down enough (or it starts too high). I don't know the math behind piercing weapons, but one possible solution is to limit the piercing effect, reducing the number of layers it can punch through. You can then either increase the damage or rate of fire on Gauss Rifle, and maybe leave Capital Cannon unchanged. Currently it's a bit ridiculous to see the enemy ship fire from 120 range and punch through a shield and the whole hull of your ship, leaving a yellow/red streak with the first shots.
Agree with everything you said. I typed my message earlier on my phone so didn't want to write a long analysis. The main problem with CC is that it doesn't have any viable counter because of it's piercing nature and high damage. Other piercing weapons are countered by having several layers of armor and shields along with repairbays but 4x CC doesnt really mind those as it still destroys most modules with one burst.
Hey all, just dropping in to say I'll do us all a favor and reduce Capital Cannon impact / piercing first thing come monday. It's really not working as intended by design; was supposed to be a powerful niche-weapon, but now it dominates every build regardless. That's not good. -Ribatzki
That would be much appreciated. I was definitely frustrated when I had to dismantle all of my well balanced builds and cram them full of CCs to remain competitive. Would it be possible to post here when that goes live so we know when to change our builds?
Just a suggestion but I think it would be a good idea if we moved the conversation over to https://www.reddit.com/r/starsidearena or if the guy who created that one isn't active you could create a new one. It would be a lot easier for new players to find and easier to search conversations. It would also be helpful in promoting the game to new users on the other gaming subs. People also tend to react very positively to devs being active in their game's subreddit
Capital Cannon Nerf The initial hit damage of the Capital Cannon has been reduced from 125 to 75. The damage dropoff (piercing) is unchanged, meaning for each grid slot the projectile passes through, the damage is multiplied by 0.45. This is a rather radical change and I hope it helps the weapon find its role better at excelling in niche situations rather than being the solve-all. -Ribatzki
Consuming Celestium when replacing a ship Good day, I don't know if this topic has been posted before, but I hope you can help me. When replacing a ship and having the money needed, also some Celestium is used (not much, about 3-5 each time). Thanks.
Can someone explain to me the point of Warhead Launcher? For 40 more range it takes the place of two torpedoes, while firing a single Torpedo, which is more vulnerable to Point Defense or eaten by a single shield that would have let the other Torpedo through, and also deals less damage than two Torpedoes. Given that 90% of the time you are inside the 80 range, I'm feeling bit annoyed dishing out money for it. Was expecting it to function like 2x Torpedo with increased range with a minor dmg penalty for the range increase.
I've noticed this in general. I bought every new module until recently, but found out that I don't use some of them at all after seeing them in action. Especially lasers were hard to judge based on their description only, because their damage is reported in such a confusing way. Ribatzki has already commented that they are aware of this, so hopefully the information will be made more clear. It doesn't annoy me much, however, because more variety in modules is good and I like experimenting with them. Regarding Torpedoes vs. Warhead Launcher, I'd say you are correct. Of those two, I only use Torpedoes, although I did buy Warhead Launcher before realizing what you just described.
Weird. I've always bought my ships ASAP, meaning I've had to convert at least some Celestium. The game prompts you before converting Celestium into credits in that case. If I ever had the required credits when buying a ship, I guess I just didn't pay enough attention to notice a change in Celestium. The devs are active on these forums, so hopefully they'll figure this one out.
Hey all, I am unable to reproduce the situation where a few celestium are mysteriously spent when replacing a ship. The only scenario which I can reliably suggest this might reflect is that your game client (the actual app on your device) has somehow fallen out of sync with the server. When buying a new ship the game client refreshes its data from our server (which is always correct and in sync), and if there was a mistake in the amount of celestium you had, the server corrects this in the process. Of course the client being out of sync is an issue, but the reasons could be many (a break in internet connection, or a bug), and we'll keep our eyes open for any more info on this. Thanks for the report. As for the Warhead Launcher: currently it is in a curious spot where it is deliberately out-damaged by 2 normal torpedo launchers. The payoff is a module that is individually harder to destroy, a projectile that moves slightly faster, and a vastly greater damage when impacted. In internal testing I was satisfied with the current numbers on it since any higher damage values made it absurdly powerful (one-shotting reactors, for example). This doesn't mean it's perfect, and as with all balance, it's an ongoing process -Ribatzki
Ribatzki: what if it shot two Torpedoes with halved damage, then it would be a nice alternative.Two modules would then not get completely countered by a single PD.
After today's update, my game keeps crashing when the hangar doors open after the loading screen. I had occasional crashes earlier, before the update, but restarting the game worked. Hardware: iPhone 4S, 16Gb iOS 9.2 (latest) 2.0 Gb free space
