Do you guys want to keep the carrier drone?

[Mastametz]

Most of the garrison-related changes in XC were sensible. I hope to see some of them implemented into CC.

[DasSmiter]

Protected garr tech had been talked about for CC14, but delayed. I'm not familiar with XC's changelog, would you mind going over the main changes to garr tech that you want?

What I'm mostly hearing here is a middle of the road option, with carriers receiving a nerf (through removal of nan 2 from floating treasures or something more direct). If you oppose the carrier speak now or hold your peace for a while

[Mastametz]

If people want to remove carriers because they don't like the concept of them that's one thing.
but to remove them entirely because they're difficult to kill in the current situation, is stupid.

I think removing nan2 as a floating tech would be a good starting point, or nerf it substantially and add nan3
or both

and then if carriers are still too much, then it can be discussed again

it's dumb to make drastic changes in a core this far along for something that can so easily be fixed through more subtle changes
like nerfing/removing floating nan2, and tying carrier to sy flag. all of which make sense to me.

[Spunkmeyer]

Putting in a nan 3 and removing nan 2 from floats is a good idea. But since nan2/3 is still a pretty central tech it may not do it on its own. I still think a regen nerf is way to go, then adjust as necessary. I agree anything more would be too drastic.

[Mastametz]

I assume you mean carrier energy regen. The problem with that is it's going to render carriers useless in a bigger game. Should just leave regen as-is and just tie it to SY as to not ruin its bigger game functionality.

or nerf their regen, and tie enh carrier research to sy flag, and give enh carriers a substantial regen perk

[Spunkmeyer]

Depends on what you mean by bigger game. We don't see much beyond 12vs these days and current regen is plenty even for that.

The SY flag idea is interesting - we can definitely do it if there is consensus (or Das decrees so ). May be a good idea for a poll but need to work out what goes in there first.

[BillyBishop]

If we had CC with nan2/3 you could leave the nan2 floating perhaps, remember removing some floaters is only going to increase the others. If anything if we could find other minor techs to add floating that would help.

Spunky were you thinking of also having sy tied to carriers so if it's not toggled carriers are a bit weaker?

Related note is from what I've seen on normal treasures there seems to be much more than normal, is that just subjective to me or have normal treasures been increased at some point on CC?

Also it would be an interesting r7 option (since I doubt r6 changes are being still considered) to have treasure setting changed from none/normal/high to none/few/some/lots.

[Mastametz]

Nerfing nan2 of course necessitates a nan3 for any sort of successful bombing late-game.
So you can consider that option one in the same

Nerf Nan2/Add Nan3
If nan2 is nerfed it is not so unreasonable to leave it floating (though it's for certain not going to solve the carrier issue if it's only nerfed but still floats)
I don't think anyone is opposed to the nerfing nan2 and adding nan3 idea so that should probably be done regardless of carrier issues

In the interest of the whole CC cause and not my personal extreme views -

It's probably best to leave nan2 floating but nerf it and add nan3
and either tie carrier to the sy flag, or nerf carrier energy regen while tying enh carriers to sy flag and buffing their regen a ton

[Spunkmeyer]

There hasn't been any changes to treasure rates since 2007, before that I don't know and I can't recall the original values. We can definitely add a Low rate for treasures - go ahead and open a ticket for it. This is not tied to the code, it's a simple change in newgamescreen.mdl so it can be done at any point in time.

Weaker (again i'd primarily hit the regen rate, not hull or anything like that) carriers is certainly doable and may beat nuking them altogether. Same concept could be done for specs too.

We cannot nerf nan 2 too much, it would only be a very minor nerf. There needs to be a 25% strength increase for each generation of weapon upgrade (that's pretty standard across Alleg) and nan 2 is at 33%.

[phungus420]

QUOTE (Sheriff Metz @ Feb 14 2012, 05:58 PM) Nerfing nan2 of course necessitates a nan3 for any sort of successful bombing late-game.
So you can consider that option one in the same

Nerf Nan2/Add Nan3
If nan2 is nerfed it is not so unreasonable to leave it floating (though it's for certain not going to solve the carrier issue if it's only nerfed but still floats)
I don't think anyone is opposed to the nerfing nan2 and adding nan3 idea so that should probably be done regardless of carrier issues

In the interest of the whole CC cause and not my personal extreme views -

It's probably best to leave nan2 floating but nerf it and add nan3
and either tie carrier to the sy flag, or nerf carrier energy regen while tying enh carriers to sy flag and buffing their regen a ton

Trying regular carrier drones to SY flag would mean effectively banishing them from the game, since SY is only played on Saturday when the server gets enough players - and even then only sometimes. If you go this route you must balance SY first.

And again, the problem with nerfing carrier drones in general is that the carrier drone is a major part of the sup/expo/tac balance. You are effectively nerfing sup and tac techs if you significantly nerf or remove carriers. This is not a viable option, especially since the last two CC versions have focused on nerfing expo and buffing tac/sup; why reverse this when we are close to an optimal balance? Carrier drones are really only a problem with belters (fig nans), and to a lesser degree TF - so a better aproach would be to focus on specific nerfs to the carrier drone rush on these factions specifically - rather then nerf tac/sup in the entire game and get back to expo being the only viable tech.