Istrolid Update 0.51.5 - Community Balance Patch!

Community Balance Council

We ran the [Community Balance Council](https://www.reddit.com/r/istrolid/comments/lxp3i3/community_balance_council_1/) reddit thread where you voted on the balance changes. We took the highest upvoted balance changes with slight tweaks and here they are:

Ranged Group Rework

by Owlfeathers (with influence from No-Personality 4982)

These changes are a large rework to the range increments of the current game. They improve range mods for low-range use, diminish them for high range use, and generally increase some of the nuance in the range game.

Generally speaking this is a broad normalization of range based effects. I look forward to seeing what options this opens up for classically ‘mid-range’ weapons.

Spinal Mount

• Range +600m → +500m

• Energy use +50% → +25%

Demispinal Mount:

• Cost $5 → $7

• Energy use +25% → +10%

• Weight 10T → 15T

Micro 360 Mount:

• Range penalty -34% → -25%

Targeting Subsystem:

• Range +25% → +20%

• Flat range N/A → +80m

Heavy Cloak Rework

by Zango

This one is going to be one of the larger changes to the game, despite only affecting one part. It represents a dramatic rebalance in what is viable cloaked and why. Light cloaked ships, especially Bombers that were only sometimes cloaked, they now have to pay a very real price in additional Weight to use the cloaking device.

Short-Range Cruisers, especially more armored ones, should now be able to sustainable be cloaked, nullifying ranged attacks.

There is some irony here that it comes at the same time as the range normalization, as this would indeed allow super-high range weaponry with less degeneracy, but I am sure it will find a powerful place enabling slower cloaked vessels that are still able to close on longer range targets.

Cloak

• Weight 10T → 60T

• ‘Cloaking Power’ 165T → 420T

Jump Engine Rebalance

inspired by Owlfeathers

A special note to the Dreamlight proposal. It indeed scored higher in the voting, but neither jump change was tremendously popular, but Owl’s represented something that could be altered to deal with the Heavy Cloak changes and the Game Engine changes that are making low-range jump turn more difficult.

Jump Drive

• Jump power 100% → 250%

• Cost $25 → $50

• Weight 6T → 15T

• Min Jump Range 50 → 200

The proposed change got a moderate amount of votes, but was not wildly popular enough for us to break open the code to implement a possibly buggy change. Instead the proposal has been trimmed to its core aspects, weightier jump drive to diminish cheap bombs, implicitly lower energy cost, and a more concentrated jump strength.

There is some additional Jump Drive strength and a large increase to min jump range to help compensate for the very real problems with microing jump-turns on tiny jump circles. This was really never the point of Jump Drive, even if it was an interesting byproduct, and is not being protected now that it’s somewhat problematic.

Sidewinder Changes

by Blazeroflasher and Dreamlight

Two significant sidewinder buffs were proposed with near identical votes. To reconcile them and keep it reasonable, sidewinder was increased to 10$, along with autocannon (it seemed lonely).

Both weapons get a 20% DPS increase from the change, along with mass reductions. This should help make them both interesting fighter weapons and keep them

Autocannon and Sidewinder

• 5 → 10$

• 10t → 7.5t

• Reload Time 6.00 → 5.00

• Sidewinder Range 780 → 795

Tesla Changes

by Owlfeathers