Post by stuffwar on Aug 27, 2021 16:30:50 GMT -8
I'm hoping that the development team will be looking into the game balance some more in the next game. After replaying Sunrider 1(Mask of Arcadius) and 2(Liberation Day) for a second time years later, the balance issues are largely the same in both games. Everything I say is based on playing on the default difficulty.
I think the core of the problem is that the AI does too much damage and the player has too much damage reduction.
First the AI damage. The AI does an insane amount of damage collectively, ESPECIALLY with missiles and torpedoes. I had a problem in Mask of Arcadius halfway through the game where it was pretty easy to lose on turn 1 because the AI would focus fire the Sunrider. This is with All Guard, positioning as far away as possible, flak upgrades and health upgrades. Most missions had several Bombers, Battleships and Assault carriers all of which fire torpedoes on turn 1. Unlike Sunrider 2, you can't reallocate for free so it would have been super expensive to reset and put everything into defensive stats.
In Sunrider 2, even with a formation like this torpedoes and missiles would still still hit the Sunrider or Paladin.
The AI also in general has a lot of units with lasers which do quite a lot of damage when added up.
This brings me to my second point. The player has too much damage reduction but it's completely necessary because the AI does too much damage. Putting all of your units in a corner and picking off the AI as they approach is the the best strategy because if you don't group up for tons of shield, flak and evasion from distance, you would get completely shredded. On the flip side, if the AI didn't do insane damage, they wouldn't be able to destroy the player because the player can reduce damage too much.
These 2 issues tie into balance issues in the rest of the game.
Weapon Types:
Kinetic:
I think Kinetic weapons are weakest damage type because of because of low accuracy. They also don't gain much from upgrading because the % damage and accuracy increases are so small.
I think Assault weapons are mostly fine. They're good at cleaning up weakened enemies for low cost or clearing trash like Mooks. I wish they benefited from upgrades a little more. It takes 2 upgrades for their damage to increase. Sometimes Pulse lasers just feel like better Assaults because they're more accurate and can hurt things that have more than 5 armor.
Kinetic(the big pow shots) are way too inaccurate except on Sola. I think they'd be fine if they had a bit more accuracy.
Melee:
I think Melee is kind of mediocre because it's so niche ESPECIALLY in Sunrider 1. It costs a lot of energy, can only be used on Ryders and as the name suggests, it only has 1 range. You'll never go into melee range with Asaga because that's just asking to die and she's much better suited to spamming lasers with True Awakening ramping up. In Mask of Arcadius you can't do it with the Phoenix because all she does is die because Stealth is a 100% useless ability. It's passable late game with Phoenix if you invest enough into energy/cost though and Stealth actually does something (sometimes).
Missiles:
I can't comment on these all too much from a player usage perspective because I did not invest in missiles at all. They're nice for taking out a few key units, mostly ones you can't reach with normal weapons. I think they're decent overall, maybe good if I had actually given them more investment. I hate missiles in the hands of the AI though. Torpedoes and the AOE missiles Pact Destroyers are ridiculous because they're almost impossible to shoot down and do insane damage. Regular missiles are annoying mainly because the AI has effectively infinite of them. Bombers at least run out if for some reason they survive long enough to do so. I think Pact Destroyers are a bandaid fix to players commonly grouping up in some spot in the map.
Energy:
I think Energy weapons are the best damage type. The other weapon types have more pronounced flaws. The only significant downside to energy weapons is that they are reduced by shields. Shields are much easier to play around than armor though. There's no way to shut off or reduce armor as easily as you can with shields.
The so-called 'Trinities' that are actually quad beam Lasers are great. They have high accuracy, good base damage and mostly ignore armor. They have a relatively high cost compared to other weapons but they easily make up for that with the amount of consistent damage they produce. The AI ships also use this most of the time if they aren't firing missiles.
Pulse lasers are just better Assaults most of the time. They have better accuracy can hurt things that have more than 5 armor.
Playable Units:
I'm only going to talk about Sunrider 2 here because I think character balance has taken a big step forward over Sunrider 1.
Sunrider:
Unsurprisingly, the Sunrider is an overall very solid because it's player unit/protagonist. It has high stats in almost every category and is very versatile because it has access to every weapon type except melee.
Blackjack:
Just like the Sunrider, the Blackjack has overall high stats. It's also very versatile because it has access to every weapon type except Torpedoes. True Awakening is what really sets it apart from all the other units though and easily makes it the strongest unit. If you can survive a few turns and keep the Blackjack's health up, it will start shredding everything.
Bianca:
She's a good support unit. She's the only unit that can remove debuffs which is very helpful once you start having AI support units spam you with debuffs. She also generates shield which is extremely valuable. I wish her support abilities cost less energy though. Aim down and restore are fine but Attack Up and Gravity(even after the upgrade) cost too much. I rarely use attack up since I find that most of the time it's more useful to spam Aim Down. It reduces the damage the AI does and it reduces the chance of AI support units debuffing me because they have to choose between debuffing me or removing my debuffs from their own units. The function of gravity is nice but like Attack Up, Aim Down or restore are usually better uses of my energy. Her weapon is completely worthless. I know that she's a support unit and not a fighter but there's never any reason to use it, especially because it's Kinetic. It comes with all the drawbacks of a Kinetic and none of the upsides. It does almost half as much damage(250 vs the standard 400) as any other unit with it AND has significantly worse accuracy(55 vs 70) and costs the same 60 energy to fire! Even if it did 1000 damage I'd never be able to use it because it would never hit anything.
Liberty:
Also a good support unit. She's the only standard playable unit that can heal which is extremely useful. Just like Bianca, she has shield except her shield is better. It has higher base strength and she has the ability Shield Fly which lets her deploy her shield at any spot in the map, for free, as often as she wants. She has some of the same problems as Bianca. Since Repair is so powerful and costly, it's really hard to find times to use her other abilities. Aim Up never gets used because healing is way more useful. Shutoff is good, particularly on turn 1 but most of the time healing is more useful. I have mixed feelings about Flak Off mainly because I didn't invest in missiles. For me, it was mainly only useful for helping remove high priority targets that are usually isolated like Pact Destroyers. Disable is a Useless Useful Spell. It costs so much energy to disable a single unit for one turn that doing anything else with your energy is almost always a better option. The most use I've ever gotten out of it was perma disabling the Ryuvian Falcon until it was dead once it was the only thing left that could threaten me. Like Bianca, her weapon is completely useless. It at least has a reduced energy cost compared to normal lasers(50 vs 70) to make up for it being much weaker and has enough accuracy to hit something if you're desperate for just one more attack to finish off that unit that has 20 HP.
Paladin:
Drawfire is amazing and is the defining feature of the Paladin. She was mediocre in Mask of Arcadius but this ability alone changes her into a solid unit. This ability also makes the game less frustrating since the AI have something to attack besides the Sunrider. The biggest flaws of the Paladin are that Kinetics are the primary weapon and a very high movement cost. As I mentioned before, they're too inaccurate to be useful most of the time and armor hurts Assaults a lot. Speaking of Assaults, hers is incredibly weak for reasons unknown. Most units with Assault do at least 240 base damage but hers are a laughable 140. She has missiles which are nice for her since they allow her to output some high damage to key units a few times during the battle.
Phoenix:
Overall, I think her intended purpose suffers a lot because ending your turn away from your corner of the map almost always results in death. She also has the worst weapon types as her weapons. In Sunrider 1, she was mostly useful as a bait ship. The only unit the AI would focus fire anywhere near the amount of the Sunrider was the Phoenix. In Sunider 2, they never attack her except for when they only attack her. In almost every battle, she's literally never attacked even if you don't use stealth unless you try to engage in melee combat away from your group. Stealth doesn't help you there because the AI will focus fire her because she's the only thing backline units they have more than like 0-20% chance to hit and doesn't have 100 shield covering her. I wish she had some kind of support ability like the Cera Gunship Suppress either with higher effectiveness or better range or something else. It would have been nice if her Assaults had something better about them than others. She's better mid-late game when you can invest enough in her energy for her to go in, melee something once or twice then back out to safety or just spam Assault to clean up weak units like a Vulture.
Sola:
She's overall a strong character but it takes some investment to get there. Once you invest enough in her for her to be able to fire twice in one turn, her effectiveness dramatically increases. She can snipe almost anything with 100% accuracy from anywhere in the map. Awakening combined with Full Forward (or Attack Up) allows her destroy most units in 1 attack. She functions the same in both games and didn't receive any changes in Sunrider 2 but she was indirectly buffed anyway. The AI almost never target her and Disable Lite can be cured instead of removing her ability to Awaken.
Battle Commands:
Mostly only going to talk about Sunrider 2 here. The change to get command points on kill was a great change from Sunrider 1 and makes the commands much more dynamic. I also like that the buffs stack with anything granted by Liberty or Bianca.
Vanguard Cannon:
The increased range was easily the biggest improvement to this. In Sunrider 1 it was difficult to use because it had short range and a very high cost. It also did way less damage. It's definitely a great ability in Sunrider 2.
Full Forward:
Can't really go wrong with this. For a modest cost of 750 you can make it easier to remove enemy units with +20% damage and +15% accuracy.
All Guard:
I think Full Forward is generally more useful because removing enemy units reduces the amount of damage you're taking. +20 Flak, 10 Shield and 10 Evasion can really help out in a pinch like on missions where the objective is to survive. It's also nice if you want to go with a more defensive playstyle.
Repair Drones:
I think the best part about this is that it frees up Liberty to heal other units. I rarely needed to use this ability though. It definitely is very handy in an emergency though.
Short Range Warp:
I found this to be useless because of the cost. I think the increasing cost per use is unnecessary. The Sunrider will explode very quickly if isolated so it really costs 1750 so you can warp back to avoid game over. I could see it useful for repositioning to use the Vanguard Cannon to maximize damage then warping back but that would cost a total of 5750 points in one turn. You would need to have 4750 to warp and fire, then destroy things with your other team to get the 1000 to warp back. I suppose you could also warp the Sunrider to take out key targets then warp back as well. I think that's a strategy you'd rarely find is worth the cmd cost of doing so.
Resurrection:
I think this also fits the Useless Useful Spell category because it's really hard to find a time where other commands won't help you more. It's definitely not a bad option to have but I think I only used it once to revive Paladin. I found that it was better to either save for a Vanguard Cannon or use the points to upkeep All Guard or Full Forward.
I think the core of the problem is that the AI does too much damage and the player has too much damage reduction.
First the AI damage. The AI does an insane amount of damage collectively, ESPECIALLY with missiles and torpedoes. I had a problem in Mask of Arcadius halfway through the game where it was pretty easy to lose on turn 1 because the AI would focus fire the Sunrider. This is with All Guard, positioning as far away as possible, flak upgrades and health upgrades. Most missions had several Bombers, Battleships and Assault carriers all of which fire torpedoes on turn 1. Unlike Sunrider 2, you can't reallocate for free so it would have been super expensive to reset and put everything into defensive stats.
In Sunrider 2, even with a formation like this torpedoes and missiles would still still hit the Sunrider or Paladin.
The AI also in general has a lot of units with lasers which do quite a lot of damage when added up.
This brings me to my second point. The player has too much damage reduction but it's completely necessary because the AI does too much damage. Putting all of your units in a corner and picking off the AI as they approach is the the best strategy because if you don't group up for tons of shield, flak and evasion from distance, you would get completely shredded. On the flip side, if the AI didn't do insane damage, they wouldn't be able to destroy the player because the player can reduce damage too much.
These 2 issues tie into balance issues in the rest of the game.
Weapon Types:
Kinetic:
I think Kinetic weapons are weakest damage type because of because of low accuracy. They also don't gain much from upgrading because the % damage and accuracy increases are so small.
I think Assault weapons are mostly fine. They're good at cleaning up weakened enemies for low cost or clearing trash like Mooks. I wish they benefited from upgrades a little more. It takes 2 upgrades for their damage to increase. Sometimes Pulse lasers just feel like better Assaults because they're more accurate and can hurt things that have more than 5 armor.
Kinetic(the big pow shots) are way too inaccurate except on Sola. I think they'd be fine if they had a bit more accuracy.
Melee:
I think Melee is kind of mediocre because it's so niche ESPECIALLY in Sunrider 1. It costs a lot of energy, can only be used on Ryders and as the name suggests, it only has 1 range. You'll never go into melee range with Asaga because that's just asking to die and she's much better suited to spamming lasers with True Awakening ramping up. In Mask of Arcadius you can't do it with the Phoenix because all she does is die because Stealth is a 100% useless ability. It's passable late game with Phoenix if you invest enough into energy/cost though and Stealth actually does something (sometimes).
Missiles:
I can't comment on these all too much from a player usage perspective because I did not invest in missiles at all. They're nice for taking out a few key units, mostly ones you can't reach with normal weapons. I think they're decent overall, maybe good if I had actually given them more investment. I hate missiles in the hands of the AI though. Torpedoes and the AOE missiles Pact Destroyers are ridiculous because they're almost impossible to shoot down and do insane damage. Regular missiles are annoying mainly because the AI has effectively infinite of them. Bombers at least run out if for some reason they survive long enough to do so. I think Pact Destroyers are a bandaid fix to players commonly grouping up in some spot in the map.
Energy:
I think Energy weapons are the best damage type. The other weapon types have more pronounced flaws. The only significant downside to energy weapons is that they are reduced by shields. Shields are much easier to play around than armor though. There's no way to shut off or reduce armor as easily as you can with shields.
The so-called 'Trinities' that are actually quad beam Lasers are great. They have high accuracy, good base damage and mostly ignore armor. They have a relatively high cost compared to other weapons but they easily make up for that with the amount of consistent damage they produce. The AI ships also use this most of the time if they aren't firing missiles.
Pulse lasers are just better Assaults most of the time. They have better accuracy can hurt things that have more than 5 armor.
Playable Units:
I'm only going to talk about Sunrider 2 here because I think character balance has taken a big step forward over Sunrider 1.
Sunrider:
Unsurprisingly, the Sunrider is an overall very solid because it's player unit/protagonist. It has high stats in almost every category and is very versatile because it has access to every weapon type except melee.
Blackjack:
Just like the Sunrider, the Blackjack has overall high stats. It's also very versatile because it has access to every weapon type except Torpedoes. True Awakening is what really sets it apart from all the other units though and easily makes it the strongest unit. If you can survive a few turns and keep the Blackjack's health up, it will start shredding everything.
Bianca:
She's a good support unit. She's the only unit that can remove debuffs which is very helpful once you start having AI support units spam you with debuffs. She also generates shield which is extremely valuable. I wish her support abilities cost less energy though. Aim down and restore are fine but Attack Up and Gravity(even after the upgrade) cost too much. I rarely use attack up since I find that most of the time it's more useful to spam Aim Down. It reduces the damage the AI does and it reduces the chance of AI support units debuffing me because they have to choose between debuffing me or removing my debuffs from their own units. The function of gravity is nice but like Attack Up, Aim Down or restore are usually better uses of my energy. Her weapon is completely worthless. I know that she's a support unit and not a fighter but there's never any reason to use it, especially because it's Kinetic. It comes with all the drawbacks of a Kinetic and none of the upsides. It does almost half as much damage(250 vs the standard 400) as any other unit with it AND has significantly worse accuracy(55 vs 70) and costs the same 60 energy to fire! Even if it did 1000 damage I'd never be able to use it because it would never hit anything.
Liberty:
Also a good support unit. She's the only standard playable unit that can heal which is extremely useful. Just like Bianca, she has shield except her shield is better. It has higher base strength and she has the ability Shield Fly which lets her deploy her shield at any spot in the map, for free, as often as she wants. She has some of the same problems as Bianca. Since Repair is so powerful and costly, it's really hard to find times to use her other abilities. Aim Up never gets used because healing is way more useful. Shutoff is good, particularly on turn 1 but most of the time healing is more useful. I have mixed feelings about Flak Off mainly because I didn't invest in missiles. For me, it was mainly only useful for helping remove high priority targets that are usually isolated like Pact Destroyers. Disable is a Useless Useful Spell. It costs so much energy to disable a single unit for one turn that doing anything else with your energy is almost always a better option. The most use I've ever gotten out of it was perma disabling the Ryuvian Falcon until it was dead once it was the only thing left that could threaten me. Like Bianca, her weapon is completely useless. It at least has a reduced energy cost compared to normal lasers(50 vs 70) to make up for it being much weaker and has enough accuracy to hit something if you're desperate for just one more attack to finish off that unit that has 20 HP.
Paladin:
Drawfire is amazing and is the defining feature of the Paladin. She was mediocre in Mask of Arcadius but this ability alone changes her into a solid unit. This ability also makes the game less frustrating since the AI have something to attack besides the Sunrider. The biggest flaws of the Paladin are that Kinetics are the primary weapon and a very high movement cost. As I mentioned before, they're too inaccurate to be useful most of the time and armor hurts Assaults a lot. Speaking of Assaults, hers is incredibly weak for reasons unknown. Most units with Assault do at least 240 base damage but hers are a laughable 140. She has missiles which are nice for her since they allow her to output some high damage to key units a few times during the battle.
Phoenix:
Overall, I think her intended purpose suffers a lot because ending your turn away from your corner of the map almost always results in death. She also has the worst weapon types as her weapons. In Sunrider 1, she was mostly useful as a bait ship. The only unit the AI would focus fire anywhere near the amount of the Sunrider was the Phoenix. In Sunider 2, they never attack her except for when they only attack her. In almost every battle, she's literally never attacked even if you don't use stealth unless you try to engage in melee combat away from your group. Stealth doesn't help you there because the AI will focus fire her because she's the only thing backline units they have more than like 0-20% chance to hit and doesn't have 100 shield covering her. I wish she had some kind of support ability like the Cera Gunship Suppress either with higher effectiveness or better range or something else. It would have been nice if her Assaults had something better about them than others. She's better mid-late game when you can invest enough in her energy for her to go in, melee something once or twice then back out to safety or just spam Assault to clean up weak units like a Vulture.
Sola:
She's overall a strong character but it takes some investment to get there. Once you invest enough in her for her to be able to fire twice in one turn, her effectiveness dramatically increases. She can snipe almost anything with 100% accuracy from anywhere in the map. Awakening combined with Full Forward (or Attack Up) allows her destroy most units in 1 attack. She functions the same in both games and didn't receive any changes in Sunrider 2 but she was indirectly buffed anyway. The AI almost never target her and Disable Lite can be cured instead of removing her ability to Awaken.
Battle Commands:
Mostly only going to talk about Sunrider 2 here. The change to get command points on kill was a great change from Sunrider 1 and makes the commands much more dynamic. I also like that the buffs stack with anything granted by Liberty or Bianca.
Vanguard Cannon:
The increased range was easily the biggest improvement to this. In Sunrider 1 it was difficult to use because it had short range and a very high cost. It also did way less damage. It's definitely a great ability in Sunrider 2.
Full Forward:
Can't really go wrong with this. For a modest cost of 750 you can make it easier to remove enemy units with +20% damage and +15% accuracy.
All Guard:
I think Full Forward is generally more useful because removing enemy units reduces the amount of damage you're taking. +20 Flak, 10 Shield and 10 Evasion can really help out in a pinch like on missions where the objective is to survive. It's also nice if you want to go with a more defensive playstyle.
Repair Drones:
I think the best part about this is that it frees up Liberty to heal other units. I rarely needed to use this ability though. It definitely is very handy in an emergency though.
Short Range Warp:
I found this to be useless because of the cost. I think the increasing cost per use is unnecessary. The Sunrider will explode very quickly if isolated so it really costs 1750 so you can warp back to avoid game over. I could see it useful for repositioning to use the Vanguard Cannon to maximize damage then warping back but that would cost a total of 5750 points in one turn. You would need to have 4750 to warp and fire, then destroy things with your other team to get the 1000 to warp back. I suppose you could also warp the Sunrider to take out key targets then warp back as well. I think that's a strategy you'd rarely find is worth the cmd cost of doing so.
Resurrection:
I think this also fits the Useless Useful Spell category because it's really hard to find a time where other commands won't help you more. It's definitely not a bad option to have but I think I only used it once to revive Paladin. I found that it was better to either save for a Vanguard Cannon or use the points to upkeep All Guard or Full Forward.
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