Ship scale upkeep reduced in original doc.

something to point out "don't weaken SSB" is that all builds are SSB in the end. So really its just a self inflicted nerf

I haven't read beyond the OP (since similar threads have devolved into a cyclical SSB vs LSB argument involving only a few people) so these may have already been suggested but there are two things that I think would significantly improve PvP gameplay:

1) Crew members offering an 'efficiency bonus' rather than a static increase to their respective stat, specifically instead of

Ship attack = [Combined module attack] + [Total Tactical Officers], it would be

Ship attack = [Combined module attack] + [Total Tactical Officers x Efficiency constant x Combined module attack]

With this, you can have the same system of an increase in unbuffed attack by 1 with each TO gained but this is *provided all weapon mods are installed*. It never made sense that a ship with its entire arsenal of weapons uninstalled could inflict virtually the same damage to other entities with the array online. At a rough glance, the constants for attack would 0.005% per TO and 0.02% per engineer... I didn't bother to go through mods to calculate the defense stat.

The only real issue would be for those who have yet to obtain the majority of mods, so a new mission for low ranks giving a fixed boost for each stat (similar to the weapons testing/warp gate repair missions or w/e their specific names were) would be needed.

2) Critical hits, based on the scan and cloak of both ships, that do a fixed percentage of total hull and shield damage (ie. not based on damage cap). This has definitely already been detailed by others, it not only adds relevance to two of the seven groups of mods beyond hacking but helps address the issue of consistently growing 'hits to disable' statistic for all ships.

I think if Dan implemented these there'd be a lot more interest and interaction within the game. And I'm sure most high ranks wouldn't mind new/low rank players gaining a significant boost to help cover them until they got the vast majority of mods (because, frankly, they they aren't going to catch up in any case...)

It doesn't remove SSB's primary advantage--being hard to disable. This is what I consider to be an acceptable nerf to SSB.
Your concept in and of itself is flawed, any boost to LSB, regardless of whether it affects SSB directly, will relatively nerf SSB. Incentive to use module is incentive to be LSB and is disincentive to be SSB, that's just a simple fact. So what you are asking for is impossible, all we can try for it nerf SSB in the least important/significant fashion. And for me, that means nerf whatever aspect, but protect its hard-to-disable factor.

Helloo... SSB is not meant to be a defensive strategy- it's an "offensive" one. Your suggestion makes it perfectly useless. While damage cap is one of the SSB's major advantage, the chief thing is crew. By not spending rank points on decks, SSB's gain large crew counts. "Nerfing" crew destroys the whole point of an SSB. A "relative" nerf- i.e. making LSB more desirable while not changing how SSB works is a heck of a lot better. Your suggested change does nothing to LSB while ruining SSB. NO THANK YOU!!!!

just because you view it as an offensive one does not make it an offensive one. The biggest asset of ssb is low damage cap, SSB all deck out their hull's, you are small and hard to disable that by very definition if DEFENSIVE, how often do people disable themsevles from attacking? Most people refer to SSB as the turtle build, a creature known for being slow and hard to damage, not a creature known for fast attack/killing. A different choice may be some npcs that only bother to attack ships of a certain size, as anything smaller is not worth the effort. you know like Quasi/terraform drop npcs. (with rank caps that make it so that you would need say 5 decks to the rank to find them)

lets just look at attack

1 Large ship (25K attack from modules) 50.000 T.O vs a SSB (5K attack from modules) 50.000 TO's)

old values are
large ship 75K attack vs SSB 55K attack

new values would be
large ship 25.000 + (50.000 * 0,00005 * 25.000) = 87.500 attack

SSB ship 5.000 + (50.000 * 0,00005 * 5.000) = 17.500


you can run it with difrent numbers if you want to refelct difrent rank's, but basickly what I think this would do is kill SSB builds
as the only way to realy get your attack up would be to add as many weapons as posible, and you need decks for that

LSB Ships are not at a disadvantage to SSB ships. In the end, everyone ends up with the about the same damage cap regardless of ship build. I believe that not many people will go over 10018 decks either unless more modules are obtainable. In that case, nerfing the SSB will not fix the relevant of ship modules. However, as stated before by other people, upkeep becomes a problem overtime. That's what the GTC, mining and research contracts are for.

This is why I suggested making modules more relevant with a variety of upgrades for the increase diversity in ship builds and for for them to icrease in value that is meaningful. The growth in ship modules with upgrades keep them on the shelves of our ships longer too because they have personal value overtime.

As for levrosh, I continue to agree with him. We cannot just nerf the SSB by making crews completely worthless. This does nothing to strengthen an LSB at all and prevents variety in ship builds. Your comments somewhat sound like you want to eraticate SSB ships too by forcing them to put on modules they do not want to put on at all. That is killing variety of ship builds to the highest degree.

By the time crew matter and module don't, that's no longer true. Have you ever heard of ship bots? By the time you can stack thousands of crews, you can stack thousands of deck w/o rank point. Of course, we can always make the first 1000-2000 crew function at full capacity to preserve this status quo,

Wrong again. Crew beats modules from rank 1. Since research is required for any modules, and crew comes from arti pulls, crew can increase faster if planned correctly. Which is why my SSB ship beat the crap out of pretty much all opposition (Except other SSB's lol) up to rank 100. Then, When I started ranking faster, I remained a strong ship for my rank at all ranks. How did I do this? Maintained large crew (1), and small deck (2). FYI, I've actually had more decks than a proper SSB since like rank 400. I'm getting close again now, but my main advantage remains crew. If that gets taken away, I quit.

okay, here's a real suggestion then:

A. 3 new ct.lab recipes

1. Stealth Sabotage Team (enemy ship artifact)
- requires: 50 xcharge cells, 50 durtanium brackets, 500 spy probe - defenses
- when used, damages enemy ship by 15% of current hull and shield

2. Shock Troop Dropships (enemy planet artifact)
- requires: 100 rescued prisoners, 100 containment missiles, 100 ship bots
- each researched ship weapon now provides a bonus to invasion attack of (WEAPON ATTACK * [SQRT ( SHIP RANK)] / 10) for 30 minutes

3. Cybernetic Sensor Boost (ship artifact)
- 100 android scientists, 100 android helmsmen, 200 tachyon cylinders
- when used, scan receives a %boost of ([SQRT (DECKS)] / 10) for 30 minutes

so that would bleed off some of the infinite artis ... but still leaves researched ship mods so ...

B. Set bonuses for researched ship mods:

- full set of 5 most advanced hull mods - 5% hull boost

- full set of 2 most advanced cloaks - 10% hacking boost

- full set of 2 most advanced jammers - 10% defense against hacks

- full set of 5 most advanced shield mods - shield recharge rate doubles

- full set of 4 most advanced thrusters - 15% defense against enemy pilots

- full set of 4 most advanced dampeners - 10% defense against raids

- full set of 3 most advanced reactors - 3% bonus to total energy

There are some good things in there. Some bits which are less good, but totally sound like "Dan ideas", in that they would add nothing, but would fool 90% of people into thinking they're awesome.

I like part B better than part A of your suggestions. However, it'd be better to have set bonuses for all modules for equipping certain ones to get the bonus, instead of just advanced high ratio mods. Also, a tier for different % bonuses for having different combinations of certain modules from weakest to strongest equipped would be great too. This adds more variety and value to every module equiped for all ranks.

hrrmm. yeah, forgot that you could not use artis on Exotica. how about this then:

1. Stealth Sabotage Team (enemy ship artifact)
- requires: 50 xcharge cells, 50 durtanium brackets, 500 spy probe - defenses
- when used, provides a ship module, size 20, scan 60 with 5 charges (if mod already exists, fills up charges back to 5)
- use the ability to damage an enemy ship guarding a planet by 15% of its current hull and shield

introducing new contested planets along with this might be useful too [see digression below]



yeah, wasn't sure what to do with this ... how about it increases the chance of a critical hack upon a successful hack ?



so, say it 'protects' half of your current research point total, meaning that whatever the successful hack is, the share taken is halved. dampeners could do the same for raids.



yeah, i can see that it doesn't have to be the most advanced level of research. then the decisions about when to jump up or down a level in mods could have some added interest. so the set bonuses would be modified by (x/y) where x is the current level in the research branch out of y total levels in that research branch.


**new contested planet - once at the beginning of each month, a currently unoccupied, unscanned world becomes the contested planet for that month. planet scan would be unlocked via a new rare npc drop (3 drops per npc).
> whichever legion holds the contested planet receives a base production boost of 10%