Big Rebalance

Big Rebalance

Augmenter Stat Change

Instead of each augmenter (and items with aug stats and skills) multiplying through with all the others, each one will give a bonus based on the players base stat. For example, a player with a shield with 1000 max and two 100% augs currently gets a final shield of 1000 * 2 * 2 = 4000. Under the new math, the final shield would be 1000 + 1000 * 1 + 1000 * 1 = 3000.

This will make things more sane and reduce the possibilities of totally broken set ups. It also encourages more mixed set-ups instead of going to an extreme in one or two stats.

The players total power after this will be drastically reduced as will the power of the AI. We will need to go through and test the strength of every AI in the game and modify their equipment or level so that they are the right difficulty after this change.

Capacitor Changes

All energy and shield capacitors (for ships and bases) will be changed from percent bonuses to constant bonuses.

Drone Changes

We want to change DM from being the most OP class in history to being more of a balanced support class. We also want to keep drones as somewhat useful for other classes.

Drone tech limited by ship tech

You can only deploy drones of tech level equal to or less than the tech of your ship. This will prevent low level players from deploying tech 20 drones and also implicitly give a level limit to getting tech 20 drones since you will be effectively limited by your piloting skill. It will also give DM's more of an incentive to get a better ship, rather than just hang out in a crappy ship deploying really good drones.

Drone slot changes

Drone deployment skill no longer affects how many drones you can deploy. Rather, it determines the tech level of the drones that you can deploy.

Players can deploy 3 drones of up to their DD tech level. DM skill gives +1 slot at level 1, +2 slots at level 10, and +3 slots at level 20 as well as 1% stats per level to temporary drones instead of 3% stats.

Drone Research adds +10% max shield, max energy, and range per level to temporary drones. Adds +1 slot per level for permanent drones.

Some drones can take up more than one slot. This will be defined by a parameter in the drone and not by the tech level.

Drone Energy

Drones will no longer have built in energy bonuses.

Drone Shields

When you scoop a drone, it will "remember" how many shields it had while it is in item-form, so that scooping and redeploying a drone immediately will not recharge the shields. Drones in item form will recharge their shields at a fixed rate of 100% per 60 seconds. If you have multiple drones in item form in a stack, the one with the most shields will be deployed when you deploy a drone of that type -- this means that scooping and redeploying will still work if you have a big enough stack of drones.

New Drones

Fire Control Drone - tech 5, DM only, gives +15% damage and +15% electric to friendly drones.

Command & Control Drone - tech 10, DM only, gives +15% damage and +15% electric to friendly drones and ships.

Advanced Fire Control Drone - tech 15, DM only, gives +20% damage and +20% electric to friendly drones.

Advanced Command & Control Drone - tech 20, DM only, gives +20% damage and +20% electric to friendly drones and ships.

Basic Drone Protection Drone - tech 6, DM only, gives +6,000 shields to friendly drones, has healing laser.

Drone Protection Drone - tech 10, DM only, gives +10,000 shields to friendly drones, has a healing laser.

Adv. Drone Protection Drone - tech 14, DM only, gives +14,000 shields to friendly drones, has a healing laser.

Sup. Drone Protection Drone - tech 18, DM only, gives +18,000 shields to friendly drones, has a healing laser.

Area Suppression Drone - tech 16, DM only, has a splash laser that does decent damage to many targets.

Charge drones will take 2 slots.

(The above drone auras will be fairly short range, like 1000 or so. Cap ship field gens will have their range increased to practically unlimited.)

Astral Injection -> Drone Controllers

Astral injection is so very rarely used with temporary drones as to be almost pointless, except for when it is used with very powerful augs as to make it unbalanced and OP.

Astral injection will only apply to permanent drones.

Temporary drones will be beefed with new Drone Controller items. Drone controller items enhance your deployed temporary drones.

There will be Drone Controller items that match up to the firing, shield, electric, damage, range, and regen augs which give your temporary drones the stats of the matching aug and cost 30 of that aug at a repeatable trade-in mission. The Drone Controllers will be hot swappable so you can have the damage controller out at first, but if your drones are starting to take a lot of damage, switch to a Regen Drone Controller. All drone controllers are NB.

Overloader Change

Overloaders will be changed so that the overloader blows up instead of the weapon. They will also be made stackable so that you don't have to re-equip an OL if one blows.

Overloaders will be rebalanced so that their power is proportional to the chance of blowing such that a same tech OL with a c chance to blow up per second should have something like power P * (1 + (2c)^.5) This would give the following table:

| Chance | Power | | 0% | P | | 0.1% | 1.04 P | | 1% | 1.14 P | | 2% | 1.20 P | | 5% | 1.32 P | | 10% | 1.45 P | | 50% | 2 P |

Parasite Changes

Parasites will be changed according to this document. We will add a lot of DoT-style parasites and give specialized DoT weapons to Snipers and Seers.

Fighter Changes

New fighters will be added that take up 2 and 3 slots. 2-slot fighers will be 3x as powerful as 1-slot fighters and 3-slot fighters will be 5x as powerful as 1-slot fighters.

Various Item Rebalances

Energies and shields will be rebalanced so that regen is dependant mostly on tech and rarity, while bank is dependant mostly on size.

Lasers will be reblanced so that DPS and DPE will be mostly dependent on type, tech, and rarity, while range and tracking will be mostly depdendent on size.

Pulse guns will all be given a little tracking.

New Visibility System

A new visibility system as described here. This should help Seer's and Snipers.