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Howdy there--Haxus and everyone reading this topic. I haven't been known to post a lot here, but I figured it's never too late to start working on a habit. As many of you might agree, the new designer redefined the rules of designing a warship, and not necessarily in a good way. It used to be that you had to be clever about optimising space in your ship to place components. Each component was an individual piece on your design, taking up a defined amount of weight, adding a specific degree of qualities to your spacecraft. Besides, there was TL limiting the max mass you could design your craft to have, and, henceforth, max volume remained very limited, which somewhat prevented the creation of literal Death Stars.
Things have changed.
Designs can now have much more potential than they ever had back in the days of the old designer. Which also means balancing is going to be more delicate. But it's not necessarily for the worst, of course. We have never had that much creative freedom in SoH before the 3D designer, and although I too would be one to argue it is overly concept for the average player, this isn't the point I aim to debate in here, so I will refrain from discussing it in this thread, and invite each and every reader to do the same.
"So what's your point?" you may ask. Volume. The way volume is addressed in Shores of Hazeron has never really been balanced in itself. It is pure fact to say that bigger is better, and in my opinion, this is an issue for three reasons:
First issue, it unbalances planetary conquest quite greatly in the invader's favour. Buildings cannot take up as much volume as spacecrafts, and as a result, meta defence buildings are going to be extremely vulnerable to meta warships. This shouldn't be the case: a well-defended world should not be vulnerable to single warships. Fleets can retreat. Cities cannot.
Second issue, it creates a single viable meta design for warships: as big as possible. And since more faces mean the design is going to be more costly in terms of time (and resources? Not sure about that), and that the design's boundaries are a giant square, the best and biggest design possible is going to be a gigantic cube. Let's be real, Borgs are badass, but battles of giant, untextured cubes don't really sell much in space operas. To sum it up, it creates bland military fleets, since there is no real need for lighter ships, and, henceforth, no need for diversified rosters in your navy.
Third issue, it's pay-to-win. Hear me out: as far as I know, giant ships can take more than a month to build, and by the time your fleet is completed, your current subscription month will have ended, if your empire has not been ended first. This means the ones who cling to the game and renew their subscriptions are the only ones who really get to enjoy actual space battles in which they get to rival strong fleets. Of course, being more invested in a game ought to be rewarding, but in my opinion being able to even have a fighting chance in war shouldn't be something locked behind a paywall.
Now, to the solutions I suggest, which I consider to be rather easily feasible--but I could be wrong.
The first suggestion I would like to submit would be to make volume have more significant effects on the HP, armour and systems of military buildings. By systems, I mean weapon systems, shields and whatnot. Since buildings cannot be as big as spacecrafts, they should require less volume to achieve similar stats. This would make planetary conquest a bit less of a joke, and more of a serious matter for the invader to consider before acting upon it. Defenders would have a fighting chance if they bothered building a decent defence grid in the first place, and invaders would be forced to commit more forces in such a fight, making the overall battle all the funnier.
Second suggestion would be to implement buff/debuff factors linked to ship volume. Smaller crafts should have slight acceleration bonuses to make them more manoeuvrable without hindering the ship's other systems, as well as armour bonuses to represent the effect of a compact hull. On the other hand, a speed and armour debuff would be linked to increasing your spacecraft's volume, rendering them more vulnerable to damage, and less practical for sublight travel. Vessels that have more acceleration could also have a higher chance of dodging shots, that heavier crafts would be unlikely to have. All of this would give lighter ships some degree of purpose in space warfare, and bring a whole new diversity of meta designs, as building huge would no longer be ideal for combat. The ideal size of warships would not only get smaller but also more diversified. It wouldn't only be about which empire has the most resources, but also which one makes the smartest mix of ship classes to optimise their fleet in the long run.
PLEASE DO NOTE that I am in no way advocating for a suppression of fitting slots such as armour, gravity/rocket drives, and so forth. I am simply suggesting including effects produced by your ship's volume, which would act on the design's stats. Hypothetically, if you built a huge cube and got all those debuffs, but still wanted to compensate the armour debuff by adding more armour than usual, you definitely could, but you'd have to sacrifice space otherwise beneficial for weapons, shields, engines... it's all about making "big" less OP and overall perfect for spacecrafts, and forcing the player to make choices, which is often where things get interesting.
EDIT Third suggestion that I came up with in the comments below, would be aligned to the second one to some degree; giving smaller ships some degree of evasion from weapon locking systems, according to range. The smaller the ship, the closer you'd have to be to lock it and fire at it, or at least fire at it with acceptable accuracy, which would make more sense. A delay for locking any target in a spacecraft could also be another idea, something like "the smaller the target and the higher its acceleration in design stats, the longer the lock." Small frigates would be able to play on that to harass big ships, without causing an alarming rate of damage, but still being able to get some good shots on the big ship, and withdrawing before being caught in its range or locked and shot down, thus forcing the enemy fleet to dispatch their own interceptors in order to chase down yours. The big-ass ship in itself would not be useless, as it would still be a solid countermeasure against medium-to-large enemy ships, and military buildings planetside, but they would be dependent on a more diversified fleet (medium, tanky warships like destroyers, light, speedy interceptors like frigates, and so on), just as any genuine capital ship should be.
Please note that these suggestions are presented as complementary rather than in a "either one or the other" scheme.
I'd like to hear what y'all think about that. Honestly, I feel like right now, SoH does not invite players to design a diversified navy. Civilian fleets (explorers, cargo ships...) still call for some variety in designs, but whenever it comes down to war, the fact there is only one meta, and that spacecrafts are overall stronger than defence buildings, greatly hinders war gameplay as a whole in my opinion.
Anyway, thanks for reading all of that, and be well, all of you!
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