JeffL

While converting the engines balance sheet to the new style, we are making a few small systematic changes to the stats of engines in Star Sonata.

All stealth engines are being given a significant increase in engine power, and the medium-stealthy ones are getting reductions in their engine visibility. I understand that stealth engines aren’t used much at higher levels because we don’t have a lot of good high tech stealth engines and because people can use the “tapping” technique with regular engines, but we are also adding a few high tech stealth engines and we will be looking at the tapping issue as part of the upcoming visibility revamp. For now, a stealth engine should be much more viable for stealthy ships, and should be more maneuverable than using a high vis engine and tapping.

Sizes of engines are getting slightly adjusted. Engines with very strong aug mods used to just have worse engine stats to make up for it, but that created a weird situation where players would just use the engines with the best aug stats they could and just suffer the bad engine stats because DPS trumps all. The old Hydra Engine was a prime example of this. This didn’t feel right, so engines will no longer be worse for having aug stats, but rather be bigger. At the same time, the overall sizes of engines have been reduced such that the new average size of all player-obtainable engines is 2 size less than before. Engines with a lot of aug stats will now be bigger and more powerful and engines without aug stats will be smaller and with the same power. I think this creates much more balanced engines and the possibility of more interesting and powerful engines, since giving up hull space for aug stats makes a bit more sense than giving up quality of life maneuverability.

The price curve on engines has been adjusted to give higher tech engines higher prices so when you get something as DG loot that you want to sell, you can sell it for more credits.

We have created 6 new tech 22 engines, 2 as DG drops and 4 as KD loot, including class 1, 2 and 3 stealth engines.