general:

1. braced needs to reduce the chance of receiving critical hits: atm it is only useful to kill massed fighters and to a lesser degree for ramming. it is not very useful for damage tanking, because you lose the stance too fast to a deck crit.

2. lances need better armor-pen or more damage: macros do more crits and with AP ammo, they do more hull damage at 4500 range too. at the moment, there is no good reason to take lances over macros.

eldar:

1. remove the admiral range upgrade for eldar: similar to the after release removed pulsar range upgrade from the first game, it gives eldar a safe distance to fight from. if you properly screen your admiral against stealthy ships, there is no way to catch it and your admirals damage output is high enough to get through shields quickly.

2. holofields are too strong against lances: you have to take an all-comers list, which makes lances/pulsars a liability. a max. lance absorption of 50% would be better balanced with the macro accuracy reduction.

3. eldar torpedo ships are too cheap: high dps macros and extremely resilient torpedos that ignore armor together with the relative ease of delivery thanks to the instant turn, makes them the best pick in the roster. a modest price increase per torpedo tube would help.

4. corsairs got overbuffed: reduce their hull (-100 for LCs, -200 for Cr and -200 for the VS).

5. reduce critical hit chance for eldar macros from 4/1 to 8/1 (damage/crit chance): it is too easy to take out generators with the current eldar macro damage output, which skews the balance between dps/hull/shields in the eldar/non-eldar match-ups. holofields already reduce the amount of macro crits by half through the accuracy debuff.

gonna add more about other factions later.

AM:

1. cruisers and the ark are too expensive: you pay premium prices compared to the navy for the extra turret and the nova, while having less troops, boarding and -25 bravery. the ark compares especially unfavorable to navy BBs.

2. nova cannons should have no limited charges: you can only hit against most fleets by carpet-bombing or waiting for an engine crit. reducing the wind-up time is imo not very fun to play against and it would reduce the big drawback of using the nova (standing still in a forward arc for the wind-up).

3. unleash the gothic / lunar: give them at least 13.500 base range with the lance batteries. they really need it to be viable next to the tyrant.

4. mechadominator cannot be canceled: it is limited to three charges and a damaged deck already, making it easily canceable makes it look really bad compared to rad-tempest, the orb and the disruption bomb. if it is needed, it can have a shorter duration (necrons can't cancel it atm anyway).

chaos:

1. change the slaneesh favor to a morale reducing cone: taunt in the first game was not fun and it is not fun to stun in a cone for 10 seconds and cancel stances and active abilities now. it completely overpowers the other good chaos favors (shutting them off), it hard-counters eldar (who can only get by right now, because they are overpowered) and against all other fleets it is 10 seconds of free damage.

2. find a place for prow-lances: murder and hades trade six 270 degree macro dps for two 90 degree lance dps. that trade was not good in the first game and it got worse in the second.

3. minimum lance range of 13.500: like AM, to be more viable compared to macro boats.

4. bloodletter parties need to do more boarding damage: you can have the stun, 45sec of stealth, 45 seconds of 10dps and 2 heals/s or you can do 2-4 boarding damage.

And IN BBs are already subpar choices.

SM:

1. non-boarding torpedo ships are too expensive: boarding torpedos synergies with "honour the chapter" and their boarding/lightning strike assaults. on top of that, these variants are also the cheapest ships per class. there is zero incentive to not take them.

2. barges are overpriced: three torpedo LCs or two torpedo strike cruisers are just more flexible or flat-out better in doing troop damage.

navy:

1. minimum lance range of 13.500: same reason as before

2. sensor perk should raise stealth detection range and give non-escorts the scanner ability: increased identification range is pretty useless atm, especially with cheap scanning available. the meaty stuff is revealing stealthed ships.

3. same nova changes as suggested for AM

4. small price decrease for non-dauntless ships: dauntless overperform currently in the roster. they should be a trade-off (speed and stealth vs less hull/shield/dps). I don't think the non-dauntless ships are competitive atm, so I would prefer to raise them up, instead of nerfing the daunts.

I think IN (and imperial in general) broadside lances should have a unique attribute where reload increases their rof too. Also I'm not a big fan of the nova changes, I would much prefer admech cement their uniqueness by having their ships suitably upgunned in comparison to their IN counterparts for a cost. I also don't think daunts innately overperform. A big part of bfg is knowing what beats what in what situation and then working to get your stuff in that position. Stealth allows the daunts to get into their optimal position. This is much more of an issue with stealth than the daunts themselves which don't have notiucably high dps for their price or anything along those lines. It also doesn't help that daunts are literally the only thing in the whole IN roster that fills a role that needs to be filled rn in the current mobility dominated meta. I also think there needs to be more anti stealth.

@brohanbroski
1160 points of dauntless mk2: 40 torpedo tubes, 40dps macro turrets and 40dps macro broadsides, 3x90 troops, 2000 shield and 12.000 hull

1152 points of dauntless: 27dps prow lance, 36dps macro turrets and 36dps macro broadsides, 3x81 troops, 1800 shield and 10.800 hull

1068 points of tyrants: 36 torpedo tubes, 66 dps macro broadsides, 3x72 troops, 2400 shield and 9600 hull

1080 points of overlords: 30 torpedo tubes, 10 dps lance turrets, 50 dps macro broadsides, 3x65 troops, 2000 shield and 8000 hull

1194 points of avengers: 96dps macro broadsided, 3x90 troops, 3600 shields and 12.000 hull

only the avengers can keep up on paper if you compare the daunts to the other line ships. that's what I meant with overperforming, because you get speed and silent running on top of their good fleet-stats (I was writing specifically about the navy roster).

about the novas: I don't know how to make them good without making them spammable. if you reduce the wind-up to 5 seconds like in the first game, you have to reduce their accuracy, or they are extremely unfun to play against. if AM just have more dps for the same price as navy (which they already have to a certain degree with cruiser mirror builds thanks to their damage skills), you don't have any reason to use novas, until something loses its engine. and even in this situation it is questionable, if it is wise to sit 10 seconds with your entire nova equipped fleet still to fire them at one target.

This is a really good list you made.

Ah you meant internal IN balance. I completely agree. And yeah novas are a bitch to balance as they need to have a noticeable impact but also tend punish slower top heavy builds while doing little vs more mobile meta factions. I would say admech ships should all get a range boost and maybe another turret at the cost of an increase of expense to really differentiate them from IN

@BrohanBroski

about the lance ROF: I think an important upgrade like AP-ammo for macro builds is missing for lance-builds. such an upgrade could be a reload stance ROF increase for lances for example. besides this, there is still the problem that lance damage is too low compared to even non-AP macro damage after the switch from 25-50-75 armor to 50-67-83.

about slow ships: I was thinking about at least for merchant tau to change their boost from 300% speed for 4 combustion points to 400% speed for 8 combustion points. 120 speed ships would have the same boost speed as 160 speed ships for a shorter duration, which would limit their map movement more than what they have now as a trade-off for less vulnerability to AOE templates (especially the instant abilities). I think the same change would not be bad for the slow navy BBs.

general:

3. 120 speed ships with all ahead full should move with 400% speed for a cost of 8 combustion points per second: this would give them the same boost speed as 160 speed ships, while lowering their average speed due to the shortened AAF duration compared to their previous combustion point consumption. the intention is to make them less vulnerable to AOE templates (unavoidable damage / less hard counters), while keeping their overall slow map movement.

crons:

1. immunity to heavy critical sub system damage: you have to take pyramidal reconstruction at the moment, because they are extremely easy to cripple otherwise.

2. light critical sub system damage gets repaired after 30 (alternatively 45) seconds: the repair rate must be able to sort of keep up with focus fire. 60 seconds is definitively not enough, because right now it is trivial to get the light to heavy crit. conversion, before the repair can kick in. sub-system should not stay in a permanently damaged status, even if there are no more heavy crits. as comparison "emergency repairs" have a 90sec CD.

3. reduce the cooldown of "Inertialess Drive" to 45 seconds: I have given up on getting direct control over the ships facing after the teleport, but their maneuver skill should at least not be on CD most of the time. they need to have more options to engage and disengage fights to get the most out of their hull cauterization. relying only on recall as the 2nd "have to take" skill should not be your only option to do that.

4. increase basic hull cauterization to 2 hp gained for 1hp lost per second: necrons fold pretty badly against basic AP-ammo macro builds. they need either more hull or damage to keep up. increasing hull cauterization is an indirect hull buff that together with the other suggested buffs makes fights against necrons more a test of endurance, in which the necron players wants to drag it out, while the other player tries to finish them off quickly.

Certainly interesting takes and interesting solutions

I still think there should be a flat damage reduction on crons as an attribute so they don't eat shit to ap while soaking up loads of damage otherwise. However I think they are reasonably tanky and that their issue is boarding and their lack of damage for their price.

@brohanbroski I made a longer post about necrons some time ago in this thread, that included damage reduction: https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/33017/necron-issues-and-breaking-of-lore-why-did-you-ruin-them/3

the "tldr" was to make them robo-zombies, that endure damage. one key suggestion was to scale hull cauterization to the ships max hull (like how shield regeneration works), so they have some DR through their healing (that can be lowered by crits). of course some crit healing and troop healing would be needed too.

Yeah your suggestion would certainly fix it, and I agree with the starpulse nerf/changes as I always saw it as primarily an anti ordnance tool. I wish interialess drive just massively increased speed and rotation for a short amount of time instead of what it is now.