E.S.F. Sol

Hi! I've been playing lots of Skirmish since you guys sent out 1.2 ( great work by the way, love the mine animations ) and just noticed a few things, primarily problems ( in my opinion ) with the E.S.F. Sol.

Most noticeably is that in my few tests, the plasma beam was not sufficient damage or duration to significantly impact shields of a fresh enemy cruiser/battleship. Most anything above the T3 ships it only manages to get the shields to anywhere to halfway or 3/4 down from full, which seems rather weak given its cooldown and that other abilities ( like the Asgard laser on Odyssey ) perform much the same damage.

It normally wouldn't be a problem except that the Sol costs 8000 naq. and that seems like a large waste of resources. Especially given that the damage of each railgun is directly comparable to a normal BC-304, and that the "Magnetic Pulse Cannons", at least as far as I could see, did even less damage than Asgard plasma weapons and comparable damage with normal Mark VII missiles. The large hangar is nice as is, but for a ship that size especially with a spinal-capacity hangar, just 5 mixed squadrons also seems rather weak, again considering the cost.

Even its shields and armor, despite being noted as superior in the description, don't seem all that different from a Belsikner (sp?). 3 or 4 Old Hataks and a "New" Hatak with one of those artillery ships were sufficient to drain its shields in one of my games, before the Sol had managed to do significant damage to a the "New" one. It just seems disproportionate that this "experimental" battlecruiser, designed well after Anubis introduced his own capital ships, would be so vulnerable to lesser vessels without outstanding armaments of its own.

Maybe I'm just complaining, but everything together still seems to just be a weak ship for its massive cost. I would think Earth's Battleship of the Stars would be able to tackle larger ships on its own and come out on top with little damage, like an Apophis Mothership losing quickly to its massive armaments and deadly weapon. (I think the name changed for the Apophis Mothership in TPC, but I'm stuck in old SGEAW ways, so I apologize)

I would recommend some balance tweaking here, maybe lowering the cost to make it comparable to other Tau'ri capital ships ( Thor, the O'Neill ) OR boosting its survivability significantly to offset the cost and weak, slow weaponry. A third option is to just massively enhance the firepower of the MPCs, and the plasma beam to make it a devastating show of force in any battle. One on one I'm sure this ship could take anything less than the T5 capital ships itself as is, but in the context of Stargate lore, the Tau'ri ships were always massively outnumbered and still managed to hold their own, mostly (exceptions notable). I would think that the combined powers of the European Union would take that into account before launching such an expensive ship.

But again, this is all my opinion, maybe I just had bad battles, but even then, the 8k cost does seem a little high. I acknowledge that when shields are down, the plasma beam directly targeting a ship's hull usually ends in immediate death. But. Shields are powerful. And typically more important to bring low.

Damek wrote: Hi! I've been playing lots of Skirmish since you guys sent out 1.2 ( great work by the way, love the mine animations ) and just noticed a few things, primarily problems ( in my opinion ) with the E.S.F. Sol.

Most noticeably is that in my few tests, the plasma beam was not sufficient damage or duration to significantly impact shields of a fresh enemy cruiser/battleship. Most anything above the T3 ships it only manages to get the shields to anywhere to halfway or 3/4 down from full, which seems rather weak given its cooldown and that other abilities ( like the Asgard laser on Odyssey ) perform much the same damage.

It normally wouldn't be a problem except that the Sol costs 8000 naq. and that seems like a large waste of resources. Especially given that the damage of each railgun is directly comparable to a normal BC-304, and that the "Magnetic Pulse Cannons", at least as far as I could see, did even less damage than Asgard plasma weapons and comparable damage with normal Mark VII missiles. The large hangar is nice as is, but for a ship that size especially with a spinal-capacity hangar, just 5 mixed squadrons also seems rather weak, again considering the cost.

Even its shields and armor, despite being noted as superior in the description, don't seem all that different from a Belsikner (sp?). 3 or 4 Old Hataks and a "New" Hatak with one of those artillery ships were sufficient to drain its shields in one of my games, before the Sol had managed to do significant damage to a the "New" one. It just seems disproportionate that this "experimental" battlecruiser, designed well after Anubis introduced his own capital ships, would be so vulnerable to lesser vessels without outstanding armaments of its own.

Maybe I'm just complaining, but everything together still seems to just be a weak ship for its massive cost. I would think Earth's Battleship of the Stars would be able to tackle larger ships on its own and come out on top with little damage, like an Apophis Mothership losing quickly to its massive armaments and deadly weapon. (I think the name changed for the Apophis Mothership in TPC, but I'm stuck in old SGEAW ways, so I apologize)

I would recommend some balance tweaking here, maybe lowering the cost to make it comparable to other Tau'ri capital ships ( Thor, the O'Neill ) OR boosting its survivability significantly to offset the cost and weak, slow weaponry. A third option is to just massively enhance the firepower of the MPCs, and the plasma beam to make it a devastating show of force in any battle. One on one I'm sure this ship could take anything less than the T5 capital ships itself as is, but in the context of Stargate lore, the Tau'ri ships were always massively outnumbered and still managed to hold their own, mostly (exceptions notable). I would think that the combined powers of the European Union would take that into account before launching such an expensive ship.

But again, this is all my opinion, maybe I just had bad battles, but even then, the 8k cost does seem a little high. I acknowledge that when shields are down, the plasma beam directly targeting a ship's hull usually ends in immediate death. But. Shields are powerful. And typically more important to bring low.

Hi and welcome to our English forums!

Glad you like our latest patch, any bugs you noticed in particular?

As the one responsible for the Tau'ri space units I do see your point; it is quite expensive and can only be built in a Milky Way Supergate.

However, before it was massively overpowered, and as long as you micro manage your fleet correctly you can use its good shields and awesome hull points to tank a lot of damage while moving out of range before any hardpoints are destroyed etc

But I agree, lowering the price may be an option.

If you only play singleplayer you can always mod the ship yourself File is \%FoCDirectory%\Mods\Stargate\Data\Xml\Unit_Space_Tauri__Hero_Sol.xml

Cheers

One sort of bug I haven't exactly been able to replicate very consistently is an apparent delay in the availability of Colonel Mitchell after he is KIA, it takes anywhere from a few seconds to a minute in my experience for him to become available again to build. Other than that, haven't really seen any bugs. (( I've mostly been playing Tau'ri, will probably head over to Wraith and Goa'uld eventually ))

I'm bad at code and logic and things and don't like modding myself, I would prefer to help the mod group out even if its with useless suggestions since I love what you guys are doing :3

Honestly my only complaint was the price. It is a good ship, just far too expensive.

Okay, none of my squadrons died, or I didn't think they did, so I thought it literally "only" carried the 5 xD. I was confused from the description because in the vanilla game ship descriptions include their total carrying capacity as opposed to the "launched" capacity ( ex: Piett has unlimited squadrons in his hangar ((in EaW)) but can only have 2 fighters and 1 bomber squadron launched at a time, a normal SD has 10 fighters and 5 bombers, still only 2 fighters and a single bomber can be launched at a time ). 10 replacement squads indeed is much better :3 Also the heavy versions. Yeah I missed that. My bad.

Maybe my problem with the beam is I mostly use it on heroes. I don't know for sure. It's hard with the AI to get any actual testing in ( I has no friends to play multiplayer with ) so its usually just this mass, convoluted bubble of ships fighting each other and I try to get the units I'm playing around with around a flank to see how it does. Not very reliable, so sorry for that :X

Well the shields are maybe too weak right now. You can fix it yourself as described above, just be aware that you cant play online then. If you want a tutorial to do so just ask.

SOL is a carrier, so it has to be weaker in close-to-close combat, otherwise its just overpowered. Its allready strong due to the beam weapon in 1v1 battles.