Discussion of IC Changes

takingarms1 · Post by **takingarms1** » Fri May 01, 2009 11:53 pm

If the issue is, IC is constantly used in squad games, we should ask why. It seems to me that the reason is IC is the least risky faction for a number of reasons - starting ints, free ships, ungalvable bases. etc. But I think the number one reason is ripping miners. In a squad game, miner killing is huge, and the ability of the commander to save them is a huge advantage.

So if you're going to nerf them, which I would hate to see, but if you are, it stands to reason that aiming your nerf at the ripping miners is the way to go. So I would say the best way to go is lengthening miner rip time, and then playing with mining speed to make sure you don't end up screwing IC's econ.

I would think that nerfing the economy in any way would be a really unwelcome thing to do, because you might end up killing IC as a viable faction. IC already has a fairly weak econ, so that wouldn't be the place to nerf I think.

Icky · Post by **Icky** » Fri May 01, 2009 11:57 pm

THIS! ^^^^^^^^

ryjamsan · Post by **ryjamsan** » Sat May 02, 2009 12:21 am

Jezz No matter how you balance the factions you always going to end up with a factions specail ability. If you want them all equal just make 1 dam faction ffs.

Is it fair for BIOS to have cheap tech. No, but it takes 10 minutes to get it.

Is it fair for IC to have ripping miners, hell yes, they have no refs ffs

Is it fair that TF have miners you can rip nans and figs to? No but it is their specail thing

Is it far GIGA makes more money then god, and A good comm can build bases faster then most teams can galv? Sure cause their bases suck

I could go on and on and on but FFS. We have 8 factions each with thier own goods and bads. It just a matter of time before a decent commander finds what works and plays it to death and then everyone follows thier lead. which is why we have so many exp vs exp games now. Tweak it again and make something else work and youll have the same deal but this time its sup vs sup..

FFS you cannot BALANCE the factions. The purpose of HAVING 8 almost 9 factions is varity isnt it?

Clay_Pigeon · Post by **Clay_Pigeon** » Sat May 02, 2009 12:35 am

Broodwich wrote:QUOTE (Broodwich @ Apr 30 2009, 06:34 PM) Then why was gt hit with a yield nerf?

Also as you mentioned ic cannot take all of these nerfs everyone wants to hit them with. Most of these ideas arent that bad and would change ic but it would be nice to come to a decision soon and see how it plays out in game, then get back on track as far as regular releases. Then we could see how it played out for a month or so. Because i highly doubt that anybody can accurately predict how much a set of nerfs will effect ic. I think pick one and go with just that.

also dreg has 8% bonus, nubs

Broodwich is right. Innocuous nerfs/perks frequently have unforeseen consequences.

I think the real bummer here is that IC has a lot of characteristics that make it unique/fun, but many of those characteristics are clear advantages (only ripping miners serves as the slightest mixed blessing). To contrast, a faction like TF has a lot of neat quirks, but they are all mixed blessings (plasgens but no mines. Great offensive scouts but poor defensive ones. No missiles, but decent guns with extra gunmounts).

I think one of those quirks has to go, or be modified to make the benefit a little more mixed (I've always been a fan of ic ops being ungalvable, but significantly more vulnerable to ab missiles).

Whatever we do, lets do it slow.

spideycw · Post by **spideycw** » Sat May 02, 2009 4:34 am

I tested messing with rip times a bit. Adding 10 seconds it too much. Adding 5 seconds works quite nicely imo.

Will do some fiddling with tech base cost/build time tomorrow

Post by **zombywoof** » Sat May 02, 2009 8:14 pm

ryjamsan wrote:QUOTE (ryjamsan @ May 1 2009, 05:21 PM) Jezz No matter how you balance the factions you always going to end up with a factions specail ability. If you want them all equal just make 1 dam faction ffs.

Is it fair for BIOS to have cheap tech. No, but it takes 10 minutes to get it.

Is it fair for IC to have ripping miners, hell yes, they have no refs ffs

Is it fair that TF have miners you can rip nans and figs to? No but it is their specail thing

Is it far GIGA makes more money then god, and A good comm can build bases faster then most teams can galv? Sure cause their bases suck

I could go on and on and on but FFS. We have 8 factions each with thier own goods and bads. It just a matter of time before a decent commander finds what works and plays it to death and then everyone follows thier lead. which is why we have so many exp vs exp games now. Tweak it again and make something else work and youll have the same deal but this time its sup vs sup..

FFS you cannot BALANCE the factions. The purpose of HAVING 8 almost 9 factions is varity isnt it?

It makes me wonder if you understand what "balance" is. Variety doesn't mean the factions can't be balanced with respect to each other, just look at Starcraft: each faction in starcraft has very different special abilities, but they still managed to balance that game. The trick is to find *balance* with these unique perks, such that one perk is not better than the other, just different.

juckto · Post by **juckto** » Sat May 02, 2009 9:45 pm

Broodwich wrote:QUOTE (Broodwich @ May 1 2009, 10:34 AM) also dreg has 8% bonus, nubs

What?

Broodwich · Post by **Broodwich** » Sun May 03, 2009 12:48 am

yield/cost hurr

juckto · Post by **juckto** » Sun May 03, 2009 1:51 am

Nah, they have a 19% nerf. (capacity*yield)/cost.

See, I can combine things in random combinations too.

Psychosis · Post by **Psychosis** » Sun May 03, 2009 5:28 am

Remove the ungalvable bases, just make them tougher to kill, this improves sup against IC, reducing the int vs int stalements youll get because people wont go sup against IC

this has several effects, IC exp is nerfed because pushing a base does not ensure its invincibility to anything but a bomber
IC sup is nerfed because now you can be galved back
IC tac is nerfed because you have to worry about defending against galvs instead of just bombers
there, everything is nerfed through removing the cheesiest part of IC

As an IC com, I love not having to worry about adv sup, commanding against IC is always a pain for that reason, because I know its going to turn into a slugging match or a bombrush for me, it really limits your endgame choices against IC.

Removing ripping miners is a big change, yeah its annoying, however, its also a nerf, because failure to constantly manage them will have them rip into danger and death. I feel IC's econ is balanced out pretty well.

On the instant tech
perhaps raise the cost of getting tech, to balance out the free ships, so you get the ships fast but things cost more to get instead of being the standard cost, or raise the cost of techbases

tl;dr version:
remove ungalvable bases, see what happens