https://steamcommunity.com/games/835860/announcements/detail/1710701432528743158

Some interesting changes this patch, TLDR at bottom.

" Drain Drone (Tactical Cruiser): The energy drained by the drone has increased from 4.2/second to 6.5/second at tier 4, and from 9.8/second to 14/second at tier 5."

• Module has seen very little use. This buff helps quite alot providing a ~55% increase in drain ammount at T4, and a ~43% increase at T5. While substantial, the module remains underwhelming, mostly due to how easily the drone can be destroyed as well as the targeting issues that affect all drones.

Drain Missile (Artillery Cruiser): Reduced energy reduction per missile by 15 at tier 2, and by 10 at tiers 3 and 4. The resulting total energy drained should be 35 at tier 2, 60 at tier 3, 80 at tier 4, and remains 125 at tier 5.

• Probabally not a change artys needed, but it seems they're nerfing drains across the board. No change at T5 seems about right, arty's give up some pretty important modules to take drain missile as it is.

Drain Pulse (Destroyer): Reduced energy reduction from 100 to 65 at tier 4 and from 125 to 85 at tier 5.

• Great change in my view. There has been a very popular trend lately of Vidys just using drain pulse on Drednoughts with little time for them to react, and destroying them too quickly by dumping their burst. This is really going to curtail that suicide move that can be so frustrating for the other side, and provde a window for the Dreadnought to retaliate

Drain Torpedo (Corvette): Reduced energy drained from 65 to 45 at tier 2, from 80 to 55 at tier 3, from 100 to 70 at tier 4, and from 125 to 85 at tier 5.

• Same deal as with the destroyers. 100% energy drain on demand is just too powerful when these ships have access to such high burst damage that is provides no counterplay. Good change.

Drain Torpedo (Destroyer): Slightly increased the cooldown and a significantly increased the damage of this module across all ability tiers. The Drain component should also be equal to the Corvette version of the ability, with energy drained reduced from 65 to 45 at tier 2, from 80 to 55 at tier 3, from 100 to 70 at tier 4, and from 125 to 85 at tier 5.

• Good to bring the damage in line. Before there was no point to taking this as pulse just did its job better in almost every way. Still probably won't take due to other choices being more important, but provides a more compelling reason to take.

Energy Generator (Destroyer and Tactical Cruiser): Normalized the total amount of energy granted by this module. The module now provides about 14 energy per second at all tiers, and the duration and cooldown of the two versions have been standardized.

• Energy module seemed fine to me. Not sure exactly what standardizing the cooldown and duration means exactly as no numbers are provided, but hopefully its just a QoL change that makes the modules between the differient tiers more consistint to use.

Nuclear Missile (Dreadnought): The effect radius and damage of this module have been increased.

• Again, no numbers given (why?), but I am very happy to see this change. As it is now, at T4 & T5, Nuke is a complete joke. The warning comes super early so higher tier players have no issue raising shield in time to parry it. This would be ok if the Nuke literally one shot everything except for Dreadnoughts, but it doesn't even do that. Hopefully the increased damage and radius will make this module worth taking again.

Offensive Lockdown (Dreadnought): This module's functionality has been standardized across all tiers. The module now increases rate of fire by 30%, reduced reload time by 50%, and increases damage per shot by 20% for 10 seconds at every tier, with cooldowns that vary by tier.

• Module is still garbage across all Dreds except for maybe oberon dred thats built like a destroyer. With what you have to give up to take this module (Warp or Armor Amp), I am not sure there is anything they could do to this module to make me use it. Personally, I would like to see this module moved to a differient module slot.

Storm Missiles (Destroyer): Reduced the missile count from 16 to 12 at tier 4 and from 32 to 24 at tier 5.

• Unclear on this one. Is this a nerf or a buff? I suspect nerf. If overall damage is the same its a buff because it means fewer missiles do more damage each. But I suspect the damage is also being reduced proportional to the number of missiles removed (-25% T4 & T5). If nerf, this is also a great change imho. Doubles down on destroyers zipping around one shotting everyone including dreds in a few seconds. Hopefully this combined with the drain pulse nerf will lead to some new playstyle stratigies emerging from desto players.

Triad Pods (Dreadnought): The damage output and the duration of the pods spawned by this module have been increased substantially.

• I like the word "substantially" in this. Again no numbers given, please just give us the numbers in the patch notes, but regardless this module is absolute garbage in its current state and there is, in my opinion, literally no reason to ever take this module over literally anything else in the tree except for maybe T4 bombers. Hopefully the buff is enough to make this a compelling pick for dred players.

Stasis Pulse (Artillery Cruiser and Dreadnought): Increased pulse radius from 1200 to 1600, decreased Stasis duration from 10s to 6s at tier 4, and from 12s to 8s at tier 5.

• Sort of backpeddling from a previous patch where the range was reduced. I like this change. Makes it easier to hit, but also provides a bigger window for the vette to escape with the reduced duration. I use stasis pulse all the time on my Jutland, and while the duration nerf will really suck, prob won't be able to so easily kill vettes that get to close anymore, I appreciate that the range was increased so I can more easily pulse other ships a bit farther away after I warp in.

Rapid Fire: The module will no longer hold the user in place at tiers 4 and 5, and will remove the user's energy at every tier. In addition, the effects have been standardized across all of its tiers.

• Not a fan of this one. Honestly the module should have no drawbacks. I don't really play Artys, but it seems they have it hard enough as it is. No comment on this change really.

TL;DR: Overall positive changes. Destroyer drain+storm spam heavily nerfed. Nuke may see glory again. Some sidegrade changes for other classes.

Why is there allways such a knee jerk reaction when it comes to balanceing (nerffing) things ? The storm missle numbers now are absolute trash , watch by tommorrow nobody will use them so you've basicly created yet another useless module. They used to be 2700k damage at t4 then the first nerf brought them down to 2300k and now yet again another nerf brought them down to 1800k at 2k come on man really ? Oh and the range distance was changed on the first nerf too. So why in the world did you not increase the distance back out to something like 5k ? For heavens sake the tempest missle does 17280 damage at 7k, no reason to make a close range version of tempest missle but you went ahead it did exactly that. The reason why they were effective is when used in conjuntion with a drain pulse and module amper and now that you nerfed the drain pusle there was no reason to double dip on nerffing the missles themselves. Maybe shoud have buffed anti missle lazers but then again maybe more people should use anti missle lazers. Still confused why the rams have not been touched yet. The hit box for when you are getting rammed is not where it should be because you could be a good distance away from it and it will still register as a hit and kill you one shot. With all of the complaints about heal clusters, corvettes, and drain/storms. I don't know how these very powerful rams combined with engine rigger,asault thruster, or evasive maneuver would not be up for the next round of the nerf hammer. On a possitive note very glad to see the nuke missle get some buffing still think it could be better though.

I like the changes in general and agree with most things OP said. Just adding my thoughts here about some of the changes.

About Offensive Lockdown, its still useless because of the self drain making your ship too easy a target. After this patch the tier differences are only in cooldown wich seems weird to me.

Storm missiles were a little too strong, they should still be a great choice for destroyers after this nerf. The short burst makes them easy to be boosted via module amper. I just think it looks cooler if more missiles come out so they should've reduced damage instead

Triad Pods: I sure hope those missing number don't mean anything bad. Maybe they finally become more useful now. I always wanted to do a "autofiring" dreadnought build with just interceptors/bombers and all that stuff. BTW FIX POD HITBOXES

rapid fire on artys: I actually think this is good. Too easy to kill unsuspecting targets with weapon amped rapid fired shots. BTW, arty's loose about 10/15% energy just for activating weapon amp. Why?

I welcome the nerfs to drain pulse and storm missiles in particular. This will make it harder for Vindi players to one-hit light armoured ships such as healers.

In practice, however, I suspect that Vindi players who used storm missiles will just switch to plasma ram instead as that one still guarantees one-hit kills.

For this reason nerfing storm missiles and leaving all rams untouched doesn't make much sense to me.

The nerf to Energy Generator (from 500% generation rate down to 200%) sounds a bit harsh but I reserve my final judgement until I've tested it myself in combat.

All in all none of the changes sound game-breaking. Let's see how they will influence the actual gameplay...

SAD-Reclaimer#0656 posted (#post-234032) said:

I welcome the nerfs to drain pulse and storm missiles in particular. This will make it harder for Vindi players to one-hit light armoured ships such as healers.

Taken one of the few tools that broke up a heal ball away.

In practice, however, I suspect that Vindi players who used storm missiles will just switch to plasma ram instead as that one still guarantees one-hit kills.

Not everyone is good at ramming. This just pigionholes Vindis in to a ram ship.

For this reason nerfing storm missiles and leaving all rams untouched doesn't make much sense to me.

I don't think storms where supposed to take a damage nerf.

The nerf to Energy Generator (from 500% generation rate down to 200%) sounds a bit harsh but I reserve my final judgement until I've tested it myself in combat.

All in all none of the changes sound game-breaking. Let's see how they will influence the actual gameplay...

It should stop healers being able to out surstain a ship getting focused.

Kazma#2232 posted (#post-234023) said:

BTW, arty's loose about 10/15% energy just for activating weapon amp. Why?

To limit the effective damage they can deal. You could just flip ptw on, fire, then instantly deactivate, since it snapshots the reload buff and damage buff, so you could get a lot more boosted shouts out, and thus deal, comparatively to other classes with their rapid firing guns which get a lot of their drain from the 6e/s base drain, way more damage.