I know many of these have been thrown around, but I’d like to quickly weigh in as things seem to be moving faster. Some of the threads have become a bit controversial, so I’d like to do my best to have things that everybody can agree on. We can’t really expect new features, instead we’re pushing for a balance update. The biggest question is then ‘What makes the game unbalanced?’ Obviously it’s going to be specialists, since they are the only random component of the game. Some specialists are really good, and some are really bad. Find the places where they are unbalanced, and fix them. (Easier said than done, of course.)
So the King is of course everybody’s favorite specialist to hate. I think I’ll agree, especially as somebody who plays almost exclusively in domination, the King is a bit too powerful. On his own, one king is probably manageable, but in stacks he causes problems. This really drives to the heart of the issue: It’s not that specialists alone are too powerful, it’s that adding their strength together makes them too powerful. Most of the unpromotable specs just can’t handle the promoted ones, and even some of the promotable ones can’t manage each other.
For example, take the Revered Elder. As of now, I almost never hire one, simply because they aren’t useful. As we said, promoted combat specs dominate in most games, and for some reason the Revered Elder has no effect on global specs. Make her cancel out global specs, and now you have a more equal way of fighting Generals or Kings. Consider too the Thief, right now he takes over 15% of an enemy’s drillers. Not terrible, but also not great. Seeing as one King gives you a 33% bonus, I think the Thief could stand a small bump in power. Maybe 20-25%? I know there’s a danger of hiring three and making a killer attack sub, but at the same time, hiring and placing three Thieves on one sub takes a long time, and even then could be countered with some good strategy. The goal here isn’t to keep specialists from being powerful en masse, but rather to make them diverse and evenly powerful to encourage a more open play style, rather than just spamming Kings and Admirals. I think with this in mind, the goal should be to pull back on the reigns of a few powerful specs while at the same time bumping a few others to give everybody effective counters and options.
King: This is always the hard one. Alone, he’s a good spec. There’s a trade-off with shields, he isn’t too overwhelming in combat. But when paired up with more and more kings, it becomes incredibly hard to combat. Bump up the power of a few level one specs and I think it could be more manageable. I like the idea of the king dropping driller capacity as well as shields. As somebody pointed out, his negatives don’t stack. One you lose your initial shields, there's no harm in hiring more. But, if the trade off for more powerful drillers is that you lose toward your overall amount of drillers, I think that’s a bit more fair. In theory, the king would drop PC by 25 points, or whatever.
Admiral: I don't really like the idea of a Navigator having a sliding scale of power, it doesn't feel natural. What if he reduced your production number by one, like a MOE?
Revered Elder: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again -- Cancel out global specs as well.
Engineer: Repairs damage from global specialists too, but at a 20% rate instead of 25%.
Thief: Steals 20%
I’m sure I’m forgetting some specialists, I’ll update when I have another chance. I know none of these are particularly revolutionary ideas, but I think they’re about what we’re going to be able to get everybody to agree on.
I agree; the elder is awesome and underrated.
