[Raapys]

As IPAndrews said, all the ships are underpowered compared to their show counterparts. It think it should be  balanced a little differently in the next patch, though.

For example: I pitted one Vorlon Cruiser against a Minbari Tenashi and had them fight.
Now, show-wise the Cruiser is about as strong as a Shadow Battlecrab, which in turn is much stronger than even a Minbari Sharlin.
However, in the test battles I ran the Tenashi squashed the Vorlon Cruiser ten of ten times, sometimes with as much as 90% of it's hull intact.
Also, the Minbari Sharlin win pretty easily against even the biggest Battlecrab. And that's when the Battlecrab is lucky enough not to have it's slicer turret destroyed.

My suggestion would be to increase the damage of the slicer beam some, make the slicer turret's hitpoints equal the ship hull, decrease the Minbari weapons' damage( especially considering *many* of them fire at once and that they're beam weapons and rarely miss), increase the damage of the Vorlon main turrets a fair bit, decrease the Hull strength on the Tinashi and Sharlin (even as much as 50%, they can take way too much damage right now), and vastly increase the Hull strength on the Vorlon cruiser & transport.

Now, the ships would still be underpowered compared to the show, where a Battlecrab takes out a Sharlin with a single beam, but it would hopefully adjust the balance correctly as to 'which ship win against which', while still mantaining a gameplay balance. But that's more the job of the mission creators.

Anyone feel free to chime in on any of this.

Love the work you've done with the game guys, thanks !

[Fodder]

In the Earth-Minbari demo's Last Stand, I made earth cap ships invincible just to see how long it will take them to destroy the Minbari ships.  The Tinashi was destroyed fairly quickly but it took forever to defeat the Sharlins.  Sharlin armour and turret armour needs to be reduced.  It will still be more of a match than any other younger races cap ships.  Fix it until 5 hyperions vs 1 sharlin is 50/50 in simulations.

[Fury]

With the latest Base release, IPAndrews was handling tables instead of me. So I do not know if he has actually made any notable changes to ships and weapons entries that aren't new. However, I agree that balance of new ships, such as Shadow and Vorlon vessels needs to be reviewed. I intend to do that in the coming weeks.

As for Sharlin, I am not too fond to change Sharlin's stats at this point. I've found balance of the best capital ships of younger races to be quite fine.

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

I agree with Mr. Fury here. The ships of the younger races are pretty much perfect the way they are. Sharlin is supposed to be very, very deadly while the Tinashi is an older and weaker support ship.

[aipz]

Some hints for the makers of my favourite space-sim:
Sharlin is ok as it is, don't  make it weak!
Shadow slicers should be 50% more powerful, like 2-3 hits of the large to detroy an Omega ...
The Vorlon Cruiser should be tougher and it's main cannon stronger similar as with the Shadows...
btw. the hp of Shadow ships are OK!
The Dilgars and Drakhs are well balanced!
Thats all...

[IPAndrews]

The first ones tend to stick all their most powerful weapons at the front of the ship and little on the sides. In the show that would be enough for the first one ship to vapourise the opposition at a distance. In TBP though because everything is underpowered the younger race ships manage to get close. Once that happens you get into the "dance of death" situation. Both ships circling one another. In that position the first ones' hefty forward weaponary is useless and the younger race ships with the better all over weapon coverage own them.

Try running the tests again but rig the mission so the first ones ships make at least some effort to keep the enemy ship in their forward firing arc.

In the meantime I thank everyone for the comments here and I will give them due consideration. Cheers guys.

[-Norbert-]

But shouldn't the shadow have a very wide firing arc?

And also, the battlecrabs could make a 180° turn in about 2 seconds. And even though the vorlons where only seldomly seen in battle, I guess the transports at least are as manouverable as the battle crabs.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by -Norbert-
But shouldn't the shadow have a very wide firing arc?

It has a fairly wide firing arc but not that wide that it can hit a ship to it's side. That would look rather silly in my opinion. And the turning speed of the ships isn't really an issue. It's the way the AI handles capship battles. The ships don't even make any effort to turn and face their opponents unless you script it in the mission. By default they just circle one another.

[-Norbert-]

I guess it's an artifact from FS1, where it made sense, since the ships had most of their firepower on the broadsides.
With the new shivans vessels from FS2, mounting most firepower in the front, they should have updated the AI too.

[Raapys]

Heya.

IPAndrews, yes I did test the ships by putting them far apart and destroying their engines: they basically stood facing each other and just shooting straight forward.
And doing so, the Tenashi won against the Vorlon cruiser 10 out of 10 times.

As for the Sharlin, I think it's a bit too strong. I mean, the biggest Battlecrab needs 5 or 6 shots to kill it, but by then the Sharlin has long since destroyed the Battlecrab. The damage output is also incredible.

So I'm still of a mind that it should have it's hull strength decreased at least about 20%. Both Shadow & Vorlon ships needs a *huge* damage boost, and Vorlon ships needs far more hull strength, so that the Battlecrab and V.Cruiser both can take a Sharlin in a 1on1 stand-still confrontation. And of course the slicer turret's hp need fixing. The Vorlon fighter should also probably be the fastest of all the fighters. Right now it's flying at 100 while the Minbari fighter is going at 130.
The rest seem to be balanced pretty nicely.

[aipz]

Speed of the Vorlon fighter isn't that important... It's very monouverable and 1 beam hit from its lightning gun destroys every other fighter!!!!!!!!! ( tested )

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by aipz
1 beam hit from its lightning gun destroys every other fighter!!!!!!!!! ( tested )

I think that's pretty fair. My other criteria should be that a large enough group of Vorlon Fighters should be able to take down a small battlecrab given a bit of time. They can do that at present but it takes them a little too long. So they could do with powering up a little bit too maybe. Although that'll make them even more lethal against the younger races. It's hard to get this stuff balanced without ruining playability.

[Raapys]

I see the problem. I would suggest that you aim for a realistic 'which ship wins against which' setup, and leave most of the balancing up to the modders. That way the mission creators just have to be careful to balance up the stronger ships with numbers, when the first ones are involved, but we would still get that 'awe' feeling when seeing a shadow/vorlon ship tearing up the younger races' ships as if they were little more than insects. That's part of the charm, I think.

By the way, what differences does the difficulty setting make? I tried a mission with a Tishat against 5 shadow fighters, but they could never hit me on normal difficulty, so I always won. But then I took it up to insane, and I was blown out of the sky in the first assault, even with several tries. Does it adjust both the accuracy and the firing rate?

[Kiith-Sa]

Your problem could be solved if SCP did something like Armor in RA2.
That means that every unit has armor type, say, "Light","Organic",or something and every weapon has assigned its "Warhead". Now more weapons can have the same warheads and warhead stores, how many percents of weapons damage takes which armor. For example:
Light= 100
Organic= 50

Now I dont (at least now) mod FS2 so I dont know if this is possible with or without SCP, but just take it as an idea.

[karajorma]

It's been added (or is in the process of being added) by WMCoolmon.

It would take a lot of rebalancing to get it working with TBP though.

[Fury]

Adding the new armor table thingy bt WMCoolmon would require HUGE reworking of ship hitpoints and subsystem strenghts. The concept is still very interesting and may be worth doing, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

[Gai Daigoji]

First I'd like to say that the Babylon Project team have done a really great job.

However I to have noticed the balancing problems with the Shadow/Vorlon ships. In the show these ships could be destroyed by the younger races but only in a continued effort between multiple ships.

And most of them were destroyed before either of the Shadow/Vorlon ships were taken out.

For example; I put a single Omega class against a Shadow crab - the Omega won. Tried it again, the Omega won.

To me, who is a very big fan of B5, that is wrong. No way in hell could a Omega stand up against a Shadow ship.

Also the crab's turret tends to be destroyed all to quickly >.<. Maybe changing the hit-points, damage and turret health a little would help things?

Other then that, nice work!

[Prophet]

Well. The way I see it, the changes must be done quickly, or not at all. It doesn't motivate you to do campaigns for TBP if the balance is totally shot after the next release. So if changes are to be done, the should be very small changes. The hitpoint issue is not as big as it seems. It is very easy to correct in the mission making stage, it just requires a little creativity. For example in the previous release you couldn't really disable a Th'Nor because it would be destroyed before the engines were down. But by making events that gradually add a little extra damage to the engines at the same time as player is causing it solves the problem nicely. And it isn't very noticeable. And firstones ships are seldomly seen in numbers, if at all. And even then the damage they take... Well, do they take any damage...?

Ofcourse if the mission has "Battle of Coriana 6" syndrome you cant fine tune the damages for dozens of ships like that.

Originally posted by Gai Daigoji
To me, who is a very big fan of B5, that is wrong. No way in hell could a Omega stand up against a Shadow ship.

I just happen to know that balancing tables is hard as hell. And eweryone has their own opinions about it. So just keep your shorts on. The TBP team has done one helluva job already. It just is unfortunate that these balance issues surfaced after the release...

[IPAndrews]

Well the next release won't be a million miles away and the balance will change a bit for that since everyone seems to be pretty much agreed on this. Although next time it might be helpful for you guys to participate in the beta testing process

[Raapys]

I just happen to know that balancing tables is hard as hell. And eweryone has their own opinions about it. So just keep your shorts on. The TBP team has done one helluva job already. It just is unfortunate that these balance issues surfaced after the release...

You shouldn't confuse the unbalanced issue with us not being grateful or appreciating the work they've done; far from it. It's exactly the opposite, because I appreciate it so much, that I care at all.

Now, it shouldn't need to be justified that any of the First Ones' vessels can easily beat several of the younger races' ships of the same size; they're millions of years ahead of them technologically. So that leaves one issue: balancing.

And that's what I would want left up to the modders. So if the Mission creator decides to put a shadow battlecrab in the mission, one he wants destroyed, then he just have to make sure he puts enough firepower on the other side to manage to take it out; for instance 3 Sharlins or so, or perhaps the Vorlons come to help them out. Or perhaps the Shadow vessel just decides to leave, for reasons unknown, after wrecking havoc for a while.

Anyways, other than the First Ones' Ships, I think you've done a very good job balancing stuff. And I'll be glad to participate in the beta testing when it starts again.

I was wondering, though, are there more ships planned for the next release?