Balance Patch - 0.6.2.6:260903-1430

Hello Spacers,

We've just wrapped up our latest Public Test Branch (PTB) cycle. Thanks to everyone who participated and gave their feedback. We run these periodically to address balance issues in a more controlled way that doesn't just involve shotgunning changes onto the live branch.

The primary focus for this cycle was Alliance small ship blobs, which have been a persistent problem for a while. There were a number of reasons they were so powerful such as the difficulty of killing many ships one at a time, OSP counter-blob weapons requiring range data to fuze correctly combined with the strength of AN jamming, the lack of PD diversity pressure on AN fleets, and their ability to be dynamically split to double as a backup cap fleet if needed, to name just a few.

A secondary focus was carrier gameplay, and the interactions of anti-air and anti-ship loadouts with each other.

Here are the major categories of changes we settled on after the last month and a half of playtesting:

Bomb Shell Buffs

The primary counter-blob weapon for OSP is the bomb shell. These shells cast a number of shrapnel fragments in the direction of all ships within the blast radius. Fragment hit rate can be unpredictable because they are cast in the direction of the hull rather than at specific points. To improve this, each fragment gets a number of retries to actually find the hull (2x for 250mm and 3x for 600mm).

Additionally, the 250mm variant has had its blast radius increased, it's armor penetration decreased, and it's component damage increased to make it more effective against swarms of frigates and corvettes while becoming less effective against other ships with more armor or favorable angles. The 600mm variant has had it's armor penetration increased, making it more broadly useful against ships up to light cruisers.

Jamming LOB Range Memory

Bomb shells are similar to RPF but have a core shortcoming: they fuze based on flight time instead of proximity detection. This makes them dependent on range data to calculate fuze time, which jamming totally negates. Ship crews will now remember the last distance to the ship that is jamming them, allowing them to calculate correct fuzing time when firing on jam LOBs until the range changes, provided they had a track before jamming started. Lateral movement or holding range will now keep frigate blobs vulnerable to bomb shells, making jamming more of a tool to cover an advance or retreat instead of a blanket invulnerability.

The Strobe Correlator module has also been reworked to give it the special ability of broadcasting jamming LOBs to the rest of the sensor network. These LOBs can now be automatically crossed with any other to provide a crossfix, though that is susceptible to comms jamming.

SGM-3 Flail

Versatile cruise missiles for OSP have always been restricted to the CLN hull, which has left AN with little pressure to diversify PD layouts. Some chaff and 20mm can chew up containers all day, so why bring other defenses? The SGM-2 has a severe limitation on its cruise range, requiring it to sacrifice maneuverability and damage to reach distant targets and making them again vulnerable to 20mm.

This update adds the SGM-3 Flail for OSP, allowing their fleets to carry long range cruise missiles which can also be highly maneuverable in the terminal phase.

Loadout Masses & Craft Speed Changes

Fighters barely feel like fighters right now: they're only slightly faster than bombers and getting a defensive flight out to intercept enemy strike craft before they release weapons can be difficult in all but the most head-on geometries. To help aid interception play, all fighters have had their speeds increased by 25%.

We've also reworked how loadout mass is calculated, and its impact on craft speed. Missile mass is now based on warhead type, with anti-ship warheads being extremely heavy compared to fragmentation warheads. Heavy loadouts have been changed from impacting turn rate to a -33% speed penalty (countering the +25% increase). This means craft running pure anti-air loadouts get all the benefits of the speed boost to go out and intercept other craft, while craft carrying any strike weapons will fly at the same speed they did prior to this patch.

Other Changes & QOL

Finally, unrelated to balance, we've added a skirmish variant of the Seven Sisters map from the campaign, and we plan to add more campaign maps to skirmish in future updates.

There are also some quality of life improvements such as showing fleet callsigns to your teammates in the lobby and deployment screens, as well as bug fixes.

As always, full patch notes follow.

See you in the Battlespace,

• The NEBULOUS Team

Changes/Features:

• Added a skirmish-specific version of Seven Sisters to the map list.

• Added SGM-3 Flail missile body for OSP.

• Increased 250mm Bomb Shell blast radius to 500m (was 300).

• Increased 250mm Bomb Shell fragment component damage to 16 (was 12) and decreased penetration to 22cm (was 30).

• Decreased 250mm Bomb Shell fragment count per target to 6 (was 8).

• Decreased 250mm Bomb Shell hit probability against craft to 50% (was 100).

• Increased 600mm Bomb Shell fragment armor penetration to 40cm (was 30).

• Increased 600mm Bomb Shell damage probability against craft/missiles to 25% (was 15%).

• Decreased 250mm and 600mm Bomb Shell random effect multiplier to 2% (was 10).

• Each bomb shell fragment will now try up to several times to to find a ray which hits the target's hull.

• Further simplified bomb shell burst particles to reduce framerate impact.

• Strobe Correlator now has the ability to broadcast jamming LOBs to the sensor network, allowing them to be crossfixed with other LOBs to produce a fireable fix.

• Decreased Strobe Correlator point cost to 15 (was 25).

• Jamming LOBs will now remember the last range to the ship that is doing the jamming, provided a track on the ship was held within 30 seconds of when the jamming started. Time-fuzed shells can now base their timing on this last known range.

• Added a "stun" to the EO seeker, causing it to remain jammed for 1 second after leaving a dazzler's area of effect.

• Decreased Lock Target TTGI of all ACT(RADAR) seekers to 2.5s (was 3).

• Added an additional C1 mount to the top stern of the Flathead.

• Increased damage threshold of all Flathead thrusters and main engines to 25 (was 15).

• Decreased point cost of WAKE(THERM) validator to 3 points (was 4).

• Decreased point cost of Sturgeon bomber frame to 12 points (was 15).

• Decreased Barracuda R-1 rocket pods additional swap work to 0 (was 20).

• Decreased Sturgeon R-1 rocket pods additional swap work to 0 (was 30).

• Increased Sturgeon R-1 rocket pod base accuracy 0.05 (was 0.1).

• Decreased R-1 rocket point cost to 1 point per 6 (was 1 each).

• Decreased FBU-15 Fragmentation Bomb point cost to 1 point per 3 (was 1 each).

• Increased Tanto cruise and combat speeds to 112m/s (was 75).

• Increased Barracuda cruise and combat speeds to 100m/s (was 65).

• Increased Pike cruise and combat speeds to 130m/s (was 85).

• Reworked craft overmass penalty to impact top speed instead of maneuverability, decoupled from base frame mass.

• Decreased Barracuda base frame mass to 10 (was 11).

• Rebalanced masses of all missile bodies, rockets, and bombs. Updated thrust stats accordingly to maintain same maneuvering characteristics.

• Added a loadout mass to missile warheads, making anti-ship warheads heavier than fragmentation warheads.

• Rebalanced masses of all craft components.

• Decreased point cost of 35mm Nose Guns to 0 pts (was 2).

• Decreased 35mm Gun Pod ammo capacity to 100 rounds (was 250).

• Decreased 35mm Gun Turret ammo capacity to 300 rounds (was 1000).

• Increased 35mm Flechette point cost to 1 point per 250 (was 1 per 500).

• Increased 35mm Flechette collision detection radius to 3.3m (was 2.5).

• Decreased Sturgeon 100mm Gun Pods cycle time to 0.5s (was 1s).

• Increased Ceramic Tiling fuselage component craft-health-skinthickness buff to +0.125 (was +0.05) and removed craft-mnvr-turnrate debuff.

• Decreased point cost of Stealth Coating fuselage component to 6 points (was 8).

• Increased Pike S1 Pylons loading speed modifier to 0.5 (was 0.2), now arms faster.

• Increased OSP Skiff advanced radar sensitivity to -39 (was -37).

• Craft moving in formation (e.g. move-to-position order) will now fly at the slowest speed of other craft in the group. They will fly at their true max speed during independent movement (e.g. attacking a target, evading a missile, etc).

• Added ship callsigns to the fleet select list, fleet lobby preview, and deployment screen.

• Increased T30 Cannon and T81 Plasma Cannon DT to 25 (was 15).

• Increased the size of tactical view projectile particles.

• Updated starter fleets.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed Flathead nameplate overlap.

• Fixed Solomon paint mask coloring some mount warning stripes.

• Fixed dual-purpose jammers with the Perimeter PD targeting mode not being assigned targets.

• Fixed ML-9 Mine Launcher retaining a compounding cost after being changed to an self-contained system.

• Fixed continuous weapons (beams, jammers) firing when BSHRT was on despite not facing the target if the vector to the target passed within the target's radius of the map origin.

• Fixed MLS launchers not firing all of the ordered missiles in a salvo if there were not enough launchers to iterate over and the first launcher was ordered to fire again before its shot gap expired.

• Fixed modded ContinuousWeaponComponents not being able to disable the ability to battleshort.

• Fixed ships not recording that they're taking hits, breaking some tutorial objective completion triggers.

• Fixed fleet editor magazine ammo items not showing the ammo icon if that item had previously been used for an ammo type with no icon.

• Fixed AMMs ranging out when fired at threats which were accelerating.

• Fixed after-action report game duration being printed improperly if the game lasted longer than 60 minutes.

• Fixed bomb shell fragments reporting their damage numbers to the intended target ship even if the fragment hit another ship that was between the detonation point and the intended target.

• Fixed WAKE seekers not seeing craft countermeasures.