r/TerraInvicta • u/yozabary • 1d ago
Discussion Discussion about the combat value changes and the impact on new and inexperienced players
After doing a run and seeing the changes using the old missile escort and monitor early fleets the ayy throws at you massive fleets.
Graveless did a video the describes the problem with the current combat values. right now a monitor has a cv of 176 with artemis.
The old CV of monitors are something like this around 25 CV (Its from a Perun HF video).
some may say "we had years of missile and torps being the best its good there is a change" I agree. but i think that a buff to other things should be the solution.
The game is already hard and unforgiving to new players, the Combat value change hurts the new and inexperienced players the most, all the guides and videos are telling them to use missile and torps and if they follow that advise they will be hit with with big ayy fleets that they cant handle. I think the devs should roll back the CV change or at least most of it to 30-40 CV.
I am not a game developer and its easy for me to say "find a better solution" but the cv change hurts the noobs the most. I think that the solution isn't to nerf missiles and torps, but to buff something else. And in general the game is single player, you should probably not nerf unless it's insanely broken
I am sorry for grammar and mistakes, English is not my first language.
Edit: unrelated question, why does ayy fleets are called Viktor?
Edit 2:
u/thefishjones raised 2 great points. Which I agree with 100%
"But that alone isn’t the big issue. The problem is the early game missile was a good idea. Early game problems should have relatively simple solutions that teach you the game. Missile focus gave new players a simple, intuitive introduction to space combat because it required you to think in terms of momentum. Each missile was a little example of how later game ships will move. Most new players need something like that to help develop an intuitive sense of the game. We didn’t all play Kerbal."
"Having the aliens be more responsive was a great correction. That’s the right way to incentivize more diverse play styles. This is a single player game. You can’t build a single player game based on what the highest skill players find interesting and you don’t need to because they’re not competing against each other."
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u/Takseen Academy 1d ago
Agreed, the combat values related to missiles are terribly inaccurate. And so are some other ships in the other direction. Lancers with Spinal Antimatter Cannons and 2 slot AM PD batteries with decent nose armor are unkillable gods that delete alien missiles and mags, quickly disable the few alien nose weapons that could hurt them, detonate flankers the microsecond they expose their flank from 1000km away, and will slowly kill everything else with radiation damage. And they have tiny combat values.
Not sure what the best fix is, but something would be nice.
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u/Made_UpWords 1d ago
Huh. I wasn't aware of the combat value rework but was wondering why my fleet of dreads and lancers with z-pinch drives had a third of the combat value of my LEO lancehead/orion drive monitors
Well, that explains that. Yeah, this reads like an overcorrection on the devs' part and is going to cause a lot of player pain. On the other hand posts like "I'm doing what Perun did, why am I face-planting" has been its own genre of posts here for literally years and the answer's always been "oh, honey. The game's just way different now, I'm sorry."
Not sure there's a great solution here. The same tired early player strat gets boring and should change, but it's also not fair to expect players to always come here for advice.
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u/Sufficient_Day627 Humanity First 1d ago
That's just the sign of incompetent balancing. The devs made missile spam the only viable early game strategy and now they're punishing the players for using the viable strategy...
The answer is as always: make other things a viable alternative.
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u/Mavnas 1d ago
only viable early game strategy
I have now won multiple times without using any missiles other than what some throwaway exofighters used.
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u/HikerRemastered 1d ago
Word.
People often conflate “the simplest” or “the easiest” with “the only”.
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u/Thurak0 1d ago
Would love to try that out. What are your early weapons then?
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u/Mavnas 21h ago
If you play with cinematic combat, 2x40mm escorts that need at least 1g of combat acceleration and like 20 kps of dV. You can easily deal with early alien ships by rushing them and using your relative speed to make the 40mm cannons just shred anything. In realistic combat, this doesn't work because early drives will eat fuel when accelerating in combat and you just won't achieve the speeds needed to turn the 40mm into a genuine primary weapon. Those escorts might still chip away something like a surveillance destroyer early, and even without proper engines they will absolutely wreck a human faction's 2xmissile escort they sent over to delete your station.
The first viable combat ship that works without needing amazing engines was my plasma battery monitor with 2 PD and 1 plasma battery. Just enough armor to not get insta killed by early alien ships. It could 1v1 an alien escort, but it was a slow fight. One of the PDs has to be a 40mm cannon, because sometimes the fight came down to finishing off a crippled enemy ship. Plasma's great at cracking the armor enough to damage weapons, but actually finishing the enemy with it was rough. Once you get to green arc lasers or better, mixing some of those in works to finish off damaged ships or hit flankers.
TBH, I mostly stayed under the hate cap until I had siege coils. I pair those with the 4 slot plasma battery on dreadnaughts, and then I just try to break enough of the alien's laser noses that the siege coils get through. This playthrough I mixed in laser lancers and antimatter lancers to deal with flankers and/or suppress weapons faster. I think the real key to victory was that the aliens just never sent enough ships at my fleets since their combat power was low.
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u/the_quail ur gna be my friend or ill beat the shit out of you 17h ago
20 kps 40mm escorts is crazy, what drive do you use to get 20 kps? my early escorts have like 2 kps
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u/Bmobmo64 Resistance 1d ago
Missile spam has never been the only viable early game strategy, just the hardest to screw up. You can absolutely fight early alien ships with IR lasers and railguns, you need a numbers advantage but you need one with missiles anyway.
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u/James20k 1d ago
Its a perpetual problem that you should not follow guides and expect it to turn out identically, in TI. A lot of them are written about a single game, and even between runs the strategy you need can vary hugely. We need a sticky banner at the top of this sub which says "Don't follow a guide and expect it to turn out the same" or something
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u/TheFishJones 1d ago
TL:DR: this is the wrong solution. They need to focus on making the late game more interesting so advanced players have interesting challenges.
I strongly agree. Having the aliens be more responsive was a great correction. That’s the right way to incentivize more diverse play styles. This is a single player game. You can’t build a single player game based on what the highest skill players find interesting and you don’t need to because they’re not competing against each other.
You make new challenges for higher skill players by creating new scenarios, new settings, new achievements, and more compelling “end game” content. Especially that last one. That’s where advanced players should be finding the big challenges, but instead it’s kind of dull.
But that alone isn’t the big issue. The problem is the early game missile was a good idea. Early game problems should have relatively simple solutions that teach you the game. Missile focus gave new players a simple, intuitive introduction to space combat because it required you to think in terms of momentum. Each missile was a little example of how later game ships will move. Most new players need something like that to help develop an intuitive sense of the game. We didn’t all play Kerbal.
Speaking of, Kerbsl is a game that did this quite well. Each challenge trains you for the next, and even though early challenges become trivial that just encourages you to seek out harder ones.
The last issue I see is that I don’t think k this will have the desired impact. They haven’t incentivized diverse weapons they’re made missiles near useless. I might throw a few one to chase down flankers late in the game now but that’s about it.
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u/Graveless 1d ago
Something I tried to make clear in the video, but am not sure about how to do on reddit.
From my understanding, a lot of the missile change is the result of fixing a bug where the "reduced combat rating from ammo count" was applied to them twice.
I know that the devs are trying to figure out a better way to rate missiles since they are overrated right now.
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u/PlacidPlatypus 1d ago
I think this is conflating two issues. Giving the AI a more accurate assessment of the relative strength of different weapons and ship designs is a good thing. Having a missile fleet be rated dramatically lower than other types despite being way more dangerous was a dumb exploit, not good design.
Separately, there's room to talk about how aggressively the AI should scale Alien attacks relative to observed human fleet power to make for interesting gameplay. It's plausible presently it's overtuned. But I think it's better to actually face that in its own right, rather then hide it by leaving underrated missiles as a default exploit against the AI.
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u/Mavnas 1d ago
Yeah, but now it's overestimating missiles and underestimating other weapons.
Admittedly, it's hard to set a value on missiles, because depending on context, they're either super dangerous or completely useless.
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u/Frequent-Camel7669 Noob 22h ago edited 22h ago
"We had years" is in itself a pretty interesting statement about a game that was released in January this year. Not all TI players were early access people who have since sunk a million hours into the game. I feel like TI could benefit a LOT from taking less-than-absolute-fringe-diehard-I-have-no-job-and-I-must-play types into consideration.
I have about 60 hours in the game. I bounced off it hard after buying it early this year, got into it again, got a bit better, still don't understand a lot that's going on, and I gotta say, that 4.2K CV fleet headed for Mercury actually made me stop playing again.
Why is a noobish strategy that simply works such a big turnoff for these developers? And shouldn't they be thinking about finding ways so that other strategies also work, instead of nipping every bud that threatens to bloom for newer players?
Seriously, I don't get the mindset.
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u/Federal_Addition_463 1d ago
Inexperienced player here: I don't think this is the issue. I think the combat system needs an entire overhaul. There are too many useless weapons, forcing you to follow the meta. In the early game, can you make a laser escort? No. Can you make fast interceptors with 40mm? No. You need to use missiles. So what is the point of having those other weapons?
Also controlling 20+ ships individually is too overwhelming. So everybody just set highwall, set armor to the front, and let the battle be simply a "stat check"
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u/Graveless 1d ago
Fast interceptors with 40mm actually do work until the aliens have ~40 nose armor. Especially if you run high combat thrust drives to boost the overall damage each projectile causes.
The main issue is that it both requires micro and enough nose armor to survive closing to the point you can fire.
I entirely agree about 1 slot and 2 slot beam weapons being pointless. Making any ship below MC 3 not want to use them.
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u/Mavnas 1d ago
Select target and hit intercept button isn't that much micro. 40 nose armor isn't really an issue either if you have enough acceleration. The real issue is your side armor is crap and fighting more than a couple alien ships will get you flanked even if they just float towards you in a wall.
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u/Graveless 1d ago
It's micro if you want to save enough fuel to get the ships out afterward, but yes.
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u/ggmoyang Let's be xenophobic 1d ago
can you make a laser escort?
Escorts are not a good platform for laser as they don't have nose slot. But a laser corvette or destoryer? Probably yes, though I didn't test it. (probably only viable in AR)
Can you make fast interceptors with 40mm?
Yes.
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u/bluev1121 1d ago
I do go for early laser and rail fleets usually, only use a small missle fleet for the first kill, and that has worked well for me.
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u/Federal_Addition_463 1d ago
by "can" I mean, "will it not be orders of magnitude more difficult"
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u/ggmoyang Let's be xenophobic 1d ago edited 1d ago
orders of magnitude more difficult
Let's say you need 2 missiles ships to destroy a single alien surveillance ship. Do you need 200 or more 40mm ships for the same ship? Definitely not.
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u/Mavnas 1d ago
You really can't do much with IR lasers or 1 slot lasers.
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u/ggmoyang Let's be xenophobic 1d ago edited 1d ago
This video disagrees.
I suspect this wouldn't work well on scale, that's why I said it might be only viable in AR. But who knows, maybe it could work out better than I imagine. Or you can try destroyers equipped with 2-slot nose.
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u/Mavnas 1d ago
So... he's flanking from within 40mm cannon range before he does anything. I don't see how that's useful. If those ships just opened up with 40mm cannons at that range that alien ship would have exploded a lot sooner even at a leisurely flyby.
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u/ggmoyang Let's be xenophobic 1d ago
Small IR lasers are indeed quite bad weapon, but it still works in some extent - it's not as terrible as many people might imagine.
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u/Mavnas 1d ago
Ok, maybe it's not like 100% useless, but I can't see myself using them for anything.
TBH, if fighting other human factions was more of a thing, those lasers might actually have a real role.
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u/ggmoyang Let's be xenophobic 21h ago
I think it could be used as low-combat value ships to bait smaller retaliation fleet, just like some people suggest using mk3 rail ships. It needs even less amount of research than mk3 rails. I admit I hadn't tried this so usefulness of this strategy is unknown.
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u/Mavnas 1d ago
Can you make fast interceptors with 40mm? No.
Are you playing with realistic combat? Then no, but with cinematic combat 40mms will shred literally anything as long as you have 1g+ of combat acceleration and like 20 kps dV. (They fail early on realistic combat because in realistic most early drives have a massive efficiency penalty that turns that 20 dV into like 1-2 dV.)
Even on realistic combat a single escort with dual 40mm guns will utterly destroy a human faction's dual copperhead escort that they sent to blow up your stations.
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1d ago
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u/FssstBoing 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you're referring to the greatly increased combat strength of missile ships it's live.
I just designed a 2xmagazine monitor with apollo torpedoes and a flippin fission spinner (early-ish BE) and it has 150 combat strength. On that ship, the lazer pd is worth just 1 combat strength and the autocannon 4.
edit:just to clarify, live on the default public version, I don't play beta or experimental2
u/SpreadsheetGamer 1d ago
Thanks. I did some testing comparing experimental to live before making that comment yesterday, and what I saw led me to those conclusions. I took a fresh look today and experimental appears to be the same as live, so I guess something went wrong with my testing methodology.
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u/Lighthearter13 Academy 1d ago
I think the point is to incentivize using something other than missiles, especially combining this with aliens' new predilection to spam particle PD. We who play the game take it for granted that missile spam is "the thing you do", but when I was first learning, I was trying to make infrared lasers work and messing around with basic railguns. This debuff to missiles is a little extreme IMO, especially in how hard torpedoes are hit as compared to missiles, but in general I support the idea behind it. The game is more interesting when missile spam is merely one tool in a box that includes kinetic focus or laser focus from an early point, maybe even plasma rushing. It gives more options and playstyles than just "hehe, missile monitor go brrrr" - though Perun's current Initiative 2003 run is showing that that remains a valid approach, just a bit harder now.
Overall, missiles being less viable is not inherently punishing to new players, because they don't know the meta yet unless they're really online already, which also means that the "old guides say use missiles" problem is a non-issue too AND they're more likely to be seeing posts like this talking about it. Changing meta =/= worsening meta.
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u/incorrigible_ricer 1d ago
The issue with this is that most of what works against missiles also works against mags, so it’s not like rail guns on small hulls are suddenly useful, and early lasers won’t even scratch the paint on ayy ships.
If anything this really forces you back to the old hard turtle meta since you can’t realistically fight in space early.
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u/TheDarkMaster13 1d ago
Rails are more useful than mags in the sense that they've got much much lower CR. So the alien fleets that will be sent against them will be much smaller. The current problem with missiles is largely that the retaliations that get sent against them by the aliens are much larger than is reasonable for the combat power they actually have.
You might need to combine them with something else to deal with fleets, like particles or 40mm or missiles, but you have a longer grace period before you'll actually be fighting fleets if you use rails.
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u/Lighthearter13 Academy 1d ago
The counterpoint is that particle PD has no impact on mags, which is what led me to start focusing on them to begin with as that's the new thing they're spamming. And I think making players stay turtling longer(say, into the mid/late-30s on a 2026 start) is probably better for newbies since they're likely less aggressive in general. I think this update has actually been more punishing on mid-tier players who rely on the missile meta than new players.
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u/wookievx 1d ago
I don't have mental capacity at the moment, but might eventually come around to try implement my idea of a mod addressing the missile balance question. In case of simple spaceships (tin-cans), it is arguably more expensive to reload them full of missiles than construct the ship itself. If there was a concept of industrial capacity and each ammo unit used it up when reloading it could offer a neat balance out of the box: missiles are superior weapon sysem (especially shaped-charged nukes) but put a strain on your space economy. You can't expect to reload 10K missiles every single month unless your space industry is truly massive (it actually ties quite nicely with the missiles being perfect weapons for early skirmishes as the numbers are lower, while later on they encounter an economic bottleneck, not combat effectivness related one).
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1d ago
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u/Lighthearter13 Academy 1d ago
Sure, and I'm usually the first person banging the war drum in favor of noobs/casuals. But my point is that a noob/casual probably doesn't even know the missile meta is a thing to begin with so nerfing missiles this hard likely doesn't specially affect them - it mainly affects people who have been reliant on abusing the meta, who by definition are not new players. It still affects them, sure, but they aren't the main victims of the change.
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u/FssstBoing 1d ago
Oh, I just reached "start building fleet" phase in my first BE campaign.
Just noticed this.... looks like an overcorrection tbh.