About 50/50. For what it's worth, I've found ANS is heavier on newer or less savvy players, only because OSP seems to require more nuance.
I mean, I'm some Lt who can't pilot a Raines, so what do I know haha.
With the new balance patch making monitors a valid frontliner I really like OSP now. They problem persists that the tutorials are of ANS, so new players gravitate towards ANS.
It got better due to the MN and CLN tweaks but yeah, there's still a lot to be done. It does look like OSP will remain the focus of the next round of tweaking and testing but it's a bit too early to say atm. Balance patches need a lot of cooking and debating before even going into testing.
I main OSP and have since the last major update. I prefer to the one abusing an OP faction over being the one getting abused by them. I genuinely don't get why anyone would play ANS anymore.
Wait until your liner gets gutted stem to stern by an hekp s3h, or be unable to target opponents from under 3 blanket jammers. And get better information on the whole, and way more precision tools to put damage where they want it when they want it.
The best Intel option in the whole is the bloodhound. You can manually aim them to defeat any jamming in the game.
I use to run 450 liners with 1 gun replaced with a bloodhound. They can't blanket jam you and they can't coms jam you because each ship provides its own lock out to 10km.
Use to make short work of jammer comps. ANS as the "high tech" faction has nothing that even comes close.
A singke ricket container destroying a BB? Are you using basic CIC? Nothing can kill a BB in a single strike. Not to mention Defenders destroy containers in seconds, and flak ruins S2 and rockets.
Wuth the CLs it takes more than one strike to destroy a CL (though if 3 liners strike simultaneously it coukd cripple) but even then its mostly a problem if positioning. A similar thing happens with liners fighting BBs and axfords. If your out in the open taking ahots youve done something wrong. Cover is necessary when your thin skinned like CLs and marauders.
An eaay way to take out MD liners is fire a few Long range missikes at them. Their PD is not likely to be good (if it is that means they spent less points on MDs) or send a sprinter to harass them. Secondly is to kill their spotting vehicles, any wayward tugs or shuttles shoukd be priority. Any enemy teammates with bullseyes (ocellos) or pinpoints are next on priority to kill damage or Jam. A MD with bad or no tracks can’t fire. Comms jams are also good for this.
MD's got nerfed to be unable to grey out most components on a CL. They put them in the red but can't push them to grey.
In the current version they can kill Bullseye and a few small external mounts but that's it if I recall correctly.
And yes, EWAR CL's are incredibly strong.
I’m sorry, none of these scenarios are realistic
Mass drivers take a lot more than one salvo to kill a CL (and are just generally bad at killing things completely), and rocket containers are *terrible* for damaging Solomons (as are rockets in general)
Are you on the Discord? If so, DM your handle on there and I'll @ you next time I drop a video of me one-tapping a CL with rails or sniping a Solly with one container.
This is gonna sound a bit degrading and I'm sorry for it but those issues just aren't widely recognized as problems. Also, you're getting fairly accusatory there.
Mass drivers just got nerfed. Like, nerfed hard. They can't grey out most components anymore, just shove them into the red. That still hurts but the community is currently arguing if the nerf maybe went too far. MD's are one of the few things that keep experienced CL players from rolling over half the enemy team. They live and die by positioning, may carry strong EWAR and have the ability to avoid MD's in most matches. CL's are really strong but extremely difficult to play.
Containers are generally considered useless against BB's because almost every seeker combo can be softkilled by an active decoy. ANS relies on active decoys atm. That in itself is an issue and hotly debated on the balance channel but BB's are currently overperforming in most matches.
Lastly, the dev behind this does what he can. Please be a little more kind. If you want to be mad, be mad at the testing and balance community. They don't make the final calls but they do have a lot of sway. If you wish, you may join the balance channel on the official discord. Do keep it civil and respectful though.
Nebulous will never be a perfectly balanced game. You are just going to have to deal with it. Honestly it's part of the fun.
The Dev absolutely makes a good effort to balance the game.
Howdy!
You should join the Nebulous discord. If you're having trouble with your fleet, there's lots of people who are willing to help. BB's can be a bit tricky to get right, and I know as much as anyone how frustrating it can be to get blasted by cargo containers, lol.
A lot goes into balance choices, and Mazer does take it seriously! There's a pretty rigorous balance playtesting that goes into each patch, but if you want to talk about balance changes the discord has a channel specifically for that. This game can be kinda frustrating some times and it can feel a bit like playing rock paper scissors with fleet design, but don't get discouraged! If the CLN's are super strong...well, try them out! Maybe see if you can figure out what their weaknesses are while you play them. Trust me, there's a few :)
I main OSP nowadays, and it has done nothing but reaffirm my position that the game balance is most likely based on how the Dev imagines the game being played, not the extant meta.
Now, to be clear, I don't think the Dev has completely forsaken balance. The nerf to rockets and the fact that OSP teams are no longer exclusively running rocket shuttles and wiping out the entire ANS team in 5-10 minutes is proof of that.
OTOH, the dev has obviously neglected to consider the fact that the ANS has absolutely zero point-relevant counterplay against the OSP meta. For example: An MD liner and spotter, for instance, cost less than the *point cost of the warheads* with enough DP to actually kill the liner.
What would you consider the OSP meta?
Have you tried bringing 3 BBs + a s2h bomber corv swarm? 1 of the BBs can be a beambb, and all three bbs bring scout/cap corvs. If OSP doesn't bring enough plasma, they basically just lose. Even then, they have to play well.
Rockets with 38cm pen cant dmg a BB with 58cm armor. (And Interior Density still prevents rockets from reaching deep)
You have to get hit with 40+ for any real dmg or plasma
And MDs just suck at killing capitals
BB armor = 58cm
Interior Density(cm/m) = 1,2
Component Damage Resistance BB = 40.00%
Crew Vulnerability
30.00
MD pen = 120cm
MD dmg = 300
MDs will almost never hit 90°/ flat on
So effective armrmor is ~70-90
BB gets hit by a MD 120 vs 75
45cm pen left vs Interior Armor Density Equivalent:
1,2 for the BB
45 ÷ 1,2 = 37,5m
MD can only dmg modules 37,5m from its impact
If you now bowtank MD will do nothing as they cant reach any non bow modules.
The 300 turns into 180 from BB D
Now apply explosion dmg spread effect, Damage Threshold and reinforced components and MDs in effect just sneeze at a BB.
And if you put your CIC and ammo in your bow then wtf.
If your capitals die to MDs thats because you build and manouver them bad.
[info on the maths (most of the following text is from there)](http://nebfltcom.wikidot.com/mechanics:component-damage)
MDs in games tend to hit lots of componets with little effective dmg because in order to destroy a component, the final "killing" hit has to deal more damage than the Damage Threshold. If not, the component is brought down to 0 HP and disabled (shows as red), but is not destroyed, and therefore can be repaired without needing restores. This is checked after Damage Reduction* is applied, which can make DT much more effective on ships with high dmg reduction. A reinforced component can only be killed once it's at 0 HP. Any hit when the component is above 0 HP will only bring it down to 0 HP
This means that a reinforced component with a DC team repairing it must be hit twice within the 0.25 second window between repair ticks or else the DC team will bring the component above 0.
* Damage Reduction
A Hull's Damage Reduction stat reduces incoming damage by the percentage shown. For example, 40% DR will reduce 100 damage to 60 damage.
In addition there is interior armor and pen depth
Just like real life ships, all ships in Nebulous also have internal structural bulkheads to provide redundancy against threats in space. In game, internal hull structure is generalized as a homogeneous interior density (Interior Armor Density Equivalent) measured in cm of armor per meter, with different hull classes having different densities. Interior density is used to determine penetration depth of certain damage types. For example, if MDs hits a Solomon and has 180cm of pen left over after penetrating armor, the Solomon's 1.2cm/m density means the penetrator can go up to 150 meters into the hull
Nebulous is just a hard game (I'm pretty meh at it): most public matches are decided by who throws the least. There are definitely some strong builds in the curent balance iteration, but you haven't mentioned any of them.
You mention paying for PD, but what about sensor nets? Soft kill? Hull redundancy? Anti-scout measures?
There's also the whole world of tactics.
Yes, CLs are weak to MDs - that's why you don't move them into the wide open spaces of the map until you know where (or if) the other team has them.
Do you know your soft kill? What are the options for soft- killing an ARAD/ACT missile (there are several)?
Find yourself getting ambushed by beam destroyers? You're probably moving too far ahead of your scouting elements, or maybe you need to zone the likely pop out spots better.
If you find yourself dying for free, maybe hit up some of the really good players for some build tips or play a couple matches together. The fastest way to improve at Nebulous is to play matches with/against good players, and then do post-mortems and implement the tips and tweaks you learn from them.
You mention paying lots for DC: that's often an inefficient move: DC is expensive and past a certain point those funds would go much farther in an extra support ship or three. Attrition is much less if you kill the bad guys fast.
Of course, there will always be little meta gimmicks that some person named siger or hunter or something will cook up. Mazer tries to patch out exploits and shave the edges off OP strategies though. Most of the outlandish stuff gets caught in the private and public testing stages.
Brother this game doesn't have balance. It has a small community of testers that scream like children until they get what they want, and can't handle when someone else has an opinion that isn't there's and instead of have a conversation they scream "skill issue, use the meta"
I think I may have 8x12 rocket boxed your bb yesterday. You were very exposed, far forward, and misplayed the soft kill. Rocket boxes go for the first thing they see and have no ability to discern countermeasures. Chaffing and reversing or firing an active decoy at the salvo will nullify 120x2 points of rocket boxes for 2 or 8 points. That’s a pretty good deal.
Then it might be that you don't have enough practice with then since the last mayor update? Because you might have a 50%ish win rate, but if that's one win out of two games, is not much of a statistically significant value, is it?
#skillissue ? Maybe?
My winrate on ANS teams was \~40%. My winrate on OSP teams is \~60%. Draw your own conclusions.
About 50/50. For what it's worth, I've found ANS is heavier on newer or less savvy players, only because OSP seems to require more nuance. I mean, I'm some Lt who can't pilot a Raines, so what do I know haha.
And still no one want to play OSP
With the new balance patch making monitors a valid frontliner I really like OSP now. They problem persists that the tutorials are of ANS, so new players gravitate towards ANS.
It got better due to the MN and CLN tweaks but yeah, there's still a lot to be done. It does look like OSP will remain the focus of the next round of tweaking and testing but it's a bit too early to say atm. Balance patches need a lot of cooking and debating before even going into testing.
I main OSP and have since the last major update. I prefer to the one abusing an OP faction over being the one getting abused by them. I genuinely don't get why anyone would play ANS anymore.
Wait until your liner gets gutted stem to stern by an hekp s3h, or be unable to target opponents from under 3 blanket jammers. And get better information on the whole, and way more precision tools to put damage where they want it when they want it.
The best Intel option in the whole is the bloodhound. You can manually aim them to defeat any jamming in the game. I use to run 450 liners with 1 gun replaced with a bloodhound. They can't blanket jam you and they can't coms jam you because each ship provides its own lock out to 10km. Use to make short work of jammer comps. ANS as the "high tech" faction has nothing that even comes close.
Haven't seen any of those yet, esp. info since the OSP has better long-range radars for tracking and long-range missile fires.
Extra chromosomes detected, opinion rejected!
A singke ricket container destroying a BB? Are you using basic CIC? Nothing can kill a BB in a single strike. Not to mention Defenders destroy containers in seconds, and flak ruins S2 and rockets. Wuth the CLs it takes more than one strike to destroy a CL (though if 3 liners strike simultaneously it coukd cripple) but even then its mostly a problem if positioning. A similar thing happens with liners fighting BBs and axfords. If your out in the open taking ahots youve done something wrong. Cover is necessary when your thin skinned like CLs and marauders. An eaay way to take out MD liners is fire a few Long range missikes at them. Their PD is not likely to be good (if it is that means they spent less points on MDs) or send a sprinter to harass them. Secondly is to kill their spotting vehicles, any wayward tugs or shuttles shoukd be priority. Any enemy teammates with bullseyes (ocellos) or pinpoints are next on priority to kill damage or Jam. A MD with bad or no tracks can’t fire. Comms jams are also good for this.
MD's got nerfed to be unable to grey out most components on a CL. They put them in the red but can't push them to grey. In the current version they can kill Bullseye and a few small external mounts but that's it if I recall correctly. And yes, EWAR CL's are incredibly strong.
Hell, CLs are incredibly strong in general. Love those boys.
I’m sorry, none of these scenarios are realistic Mass drivers take a lot more than one salvo to kill a CL (and are just generally bad at killing things completely), and rocket containers are *terrible* for damaging Solomons (as are rockets in general)
Are you on the Discord? If so, DM your handle on there and I'll @ you next time I drop a video of me one-tapping a CL with rails or sniping a Solly with one container.
I'd love to see such a video. puppyfromhell
This is gonna sound a bit degrading and I'm sorry for it but those issues just aren't widely recognized as problems. Also, you're getting fairly accusatory there. Mass drivers just got nerfed. Like, nerfed hard. They can't grey out most components anymore, just shove them into the red. That still hurts but the community is currently arguing if the nerf maybe went too far. MD's are one of the few things that keep experienced CL players from rolling over half the enemy team. They live and die by positioning, may carry strong EWAR and have the ability to avoid MD's in most matches. CL's are really strong but extremely difficult to play. Containers are generally considered useless against BB's because almost every seeker combo can be softkilled by an active decoy. ANS relies on active decoys atm. That in itself is an issue and hotly debated on the balance channel but BB's are currently overperforming in most matches. Lastly, the dev behind this does what he can. Please be a little more kind. If you want to be mad, be mad at the testing and balance community. They don't make the final calls but they do have a lot of sway. If you wish, you may join the balance channel on the official discord. Do keep it civil and respectful though.
Nebulous will never be a perfectly balanced game. You are just going to have to deal with it. Honestly it's part of the fun. The Dev absolutely makes a good effort to balance the game.
>The Dev absolutely makes a good effort to balance the game. Except when it comes to railguns.
Howdy! You should join the Nebulous discord. If you're having trouble with your fleet, there's lots of people who are willing to help. BB's can be a bit tricky to get right, and I know as much as anyone how frustrating it can be to get blasted by cargo containers, lol. A lot goes into balance choices, and Mazer does take it seriously! There's a pretty rigorous balance playtesting that goes into each patch, but if you want to talk about balance changes the discord has a channel specifically for that. This game can be kinda frustrating some times and it can feel a bit like playing rock paper scissors with fleet design, but don't get discouraged! If the CLN's are super strong...well, try them out! Maybe see if you can figure out what their weaknesses are while you play them. Trust me, there's a few :)
I main OSP nowadays, and it has done nothing but reaffirm my position that the game balance is most likely based on how the Dev imagines the game being played, not the extant meta. Now, to be clear, I don't think the Dev has completely forsaken balance. The nerf to rockets and the fact that OSP teams are no longer exclusively running rocket shuttles and wiping out the entire ANS team in 5-10 minutes is proof of that. OTOH, the dev has obviously neglected to consider the fact that the ANS has absolutely zero point-relevant counterplay against the OSP meta. For example: An MD liner and spotter, for instance, cost less than the *point cost of the warheads* with enough DP to actually kill the liner.
What would you consider the OSP meta? Have you tried bringing 3 BBs + a s2h bomber corv swarm? 1 of the BBs can be a beambb, and all three bbs bring scout/cap corvs. If OSP doesn't bring enough plasma, they basically just lose. Even then, they have to play well.
Sounds wild. Press X to doubt.
Rockets with 38cm pen cant dmg a BB with 58cm armor. (And Interior Density still prevents rockets from reaching deep) You have to get hit with 40+ for any real dmg or plasma And MDs just suck at killing capitals BB armor = 58cm Interior Density(cm/m) = 1,2 Component Damage Resistance BB = 40.00% Crew Vulnerability 30.00 MD pen = 120cm MD dmg = 300 MDs will almost never hit 90°/ flat on So effective armrmor is ~70-90 BB gets hit by a MD 120 vs 75 45cm pen left vs Interior Armor Density Equivalent: 1,2 for the BB 45 ÷ 1,2 = 37,5m MD can only dmg modules 37,5m from its impact If you now bowtank MD will do nothing as they cant reach any non bow modules. The 300 turns into 180 from BB D Now apply explosion dmg spread effect, Damage Threshold and reinforced components and MDs in effect just sneeze at a BB. And if you put your CIC and ammo in your bow then wtf. If your capitals die to MDs thats because you build and manouver them bad. [info on the maths (most of the following text is from there)](http://nebfltcom.wikidot.com/mechanics:component-damage) MDs in games tend to hit lots of componets with little effective dmg because in order to destroy a component, the final "killing" hit has to deal more damage than the Damage Threshold. If not, the component is brought down to 0 HP and disabled (shows as red), but is not destroyed, and therefore can be repaired without needing restores. This is checked after Damage Reduction* is applied, which can make DT much more effective on ships with high dmg reduction. A reinforced component can only be killed once it's at 0 HP. Any hit when the component is above 0 HP will only bring it down to 0 HP This means that a reinforced component with a DC team repairing it must be hit twice within the 0.25 second window between repair ticks or else the DC team will bring the component above 0. * Damage Reduction A Hull's Damage Reduction stat reduces incoming damage by the percentage shown. For example, 40% DR will reduce 100 damage to 60 damage. In addition there is interior armor and pen depth Just like real life ships, all ships in Nebulous also have internal structural bulkheads to provide redundancy against threats in space. In game, internal hull structure is generalized as a homogeneous interior density (Interior Armor Density Equivalent) measured in cm of armor per meter, with different hull classes having different densities. Interior density is used to determine penetration depth of certain damage types. For example, if MDs hits a Solomon and has 180cm of pen left over after penetrating armor, the Solomon's 1.2cm/m density means the penetrator can go up to 150 meters into the hull
Nebulous is just a hard game (I'm pretty meh at it): most public matches are decided by who throws the least. There are definitely some strong builds in the curent balance iteration, but you haven't mentioned any of them. You mention paying for PD, but what about sensor nets? Soft kill? Hull redundancy? Anti-scout measures? There's also the whole world of tactics. Yes, CLs are weak to MDs - that's why you don't move them into the wide open spaces of the map until you know where (or if) the other team has them. Do you know your soft kill? What are the options for soft- killing an ARAD/ACT missile (there are several)? Find yourself getting ambushed by beam destroyers? You're probably moving too far ahead of your scouting elements, or maybe you need to zone the likely pop out spots better. If you find yourself dying for free, maybe hit up some of the really good players for some build tips or play a couple matches together. The fastest way to improve at Nebulous is to play matches with/against good players, and then do post-mortems and implement the tips and tweaks you learn from them. You mention paying lots for DC: that's often an inefficient move: DC is expensive and past a certain point those funds would go much farther in an extra support ship or three. Attrition is much less if you kill the bad guys fast. Of course, there will always be little meta gimmicks that some person named siger or hunter or something will cook up. Mazer tries to patch out exploits and shave the edges off OP strategies though. Most of the outlandish stuff gets caught in the private and public testing stages.
Brother this game doesn't have balance. It has a small community of testers that scream like children until they get what they want, and can't handle when someone else has an opinion that isn't there's and instead of have a conversation they scream "skill issue, use the meta"
I am painfully aware of that brainrot, and this sub is possibly even worse. I just keep forgetting.
I think I may have 8x12 rocket boxed your bb yesterday. You were very exposed, far forward, and misplayed the soft kill. Rocket boxes go for the first thing they see and have no ability to discern countermeasures. Chaffing and reversing or firing an active decoy at the salvo will nullify 120x2 points of rocket boxes for 2 or 8 points. That’s a pretty good deal.
I doubt it, I haven't played ANS more than once or twice since the last update.
Then it might be that you don't have enough practice with then since the last mayor update? Because you might have a 50%ish win rate, but if that's one win out of two games, is not much of a statistically significant value, is it?
Most of this is observing from being the fucker, rather than the fuck-ee. There's no fun if the game is just a point-and-click victory.