remove regens - Printable Version

Well, it's an old and a good idea actually. Why? It would stop all sorts of bot feeds from caps to snubs and between caps. Implementation? Equivalent increase of hull points. Shield is a tricker thing to balance though, since bold increasing of the shield capacity to its bat equivalent value would actually increase the ship's overall defenses. Otherwise, hull strength could be increased to bats equivalent instead, which would slightly increase ship's overall survivability too (since hull isn't succeptible to EMP weapons), although the difference is small. But after all, bats are rather minor thing to big ships compared to bots, so this issue isn't of much significance.

So what's the difference between no bots-more hull big ships and as they are now?

First, it's that big ships wouldn't be able to trade bots anymore (imho bot transfer is a negative thing).

Second, repair ships would have to be fitted with repair guns instead of a hilarious bot and bat amount (which is nothing new either). While repair ship's hull strength would need to be increased, it wouldn't be nowhere near repair ship current survivability (which is, again in my opinion, vastly overrated even though repair ships are potentially snacable). There is a caveat though which may be either negative to the balance or problematic to implement. To act as a usable repair asset, repair ships should be able to perform repair at high speed (that is, equipped with high negative damage weapons). But that would make them able to repair snubs too fast. Potential ways to avoid this problem could be either very slow repair turret projectile velocity (which would hinder repairs for smaller capitals as well, which is undesired), or to make repair beam projectiles act differently to ships of different classes (and that is probably either impossible or unstable in implementation, and at any rate, problematic). So the issue of repairing isn't that straightforward.

Third, there is an issue of instant kills. For example, an instant killable ship with bots isn't the same as the same ship with more hull strength without bots. How much is it really an issue? First of all, fighters and bombers are out of question, but we weren't talking about them anyway. Freighters? Given their low bot/bat amount and overall behavior, including their vulnerability to snacs, they should probably be left as they are together with snubs, that is, with bots and bats. Transports? They tend to have quite strong hull, especially with at least AU8, so they are not even double snacable to instant death. Heavy Mortars? Not always instant either, as well as it's a rather rare circumstance anyway. I would say, transports could be rebalanced with bot/bats removal. Gunboats? They are supposed to use at least AU8 and usually much better armor upgrades. How much are they succeptible to instant kills? Lightest gunboats with low armor upgrade can be dual snaced, as well as mortared by battleships, heavy mortars may cause instants even for some heavier boats with lesser armor upgrades. How often does it happen? Overall, considerably rare compared to everything else. I would say, bots/bats on gunboats could be removed with equivalent hull increase without a significant balance change. Cruisers? Instant kills without armor or some really bad armor can be possible by heavy mortars, but that's not a real issue. Battleships are not one-shot killable. So it's hardly a balance change to remove bots/bats from cruisers and battleships either.

So what does it all mean? It means that, while there are some issues, removing bots/bats from everything bigger than snubs and freighters wouldn't make much unbalance but would prevent all these botfeeds, especially by caps to snubs. Also, I beleive absense of bots would increase overall immersion and satisfaction, because after all, bots/bats are ... lulzy.

So yes, I vote for yes. Remove bots/bats from bigger ships in favour of equivalent for bots+bats hull stregth increase