Ambivalent on ships.

NicWester

I wanted to wait a while to get a feel for ships before posting feedback so I could give useful information. I think it's been long enough.

When they came out I was excited, now I'm kind of meh on it. There's a lot I like, but there's also a lot of room for improvement. So here are some bullet point stream of consciousness feedback points:

--Too many enhancement droids, not enough spacebucks. I've bought one spacebuck pack, participated in the tournament, and done T2 spacebuck challenge since the end of the first week of ships. I currently have 119k spacebucks (saving to rank up Home One) and enough enhancement droids that it would cost 3,002,190 to actually use them all. That's a HUGE disparity. I'm only doing T1 droid challenges because there's no way I'll ever have enough spacecash to use them all, so why get even more? Please adjust the gain rate, thank you.

--Power ratings are waaay crazy. At first I thought this was a thing that would sort itself out, that people with strong rosters from the start (ie: because their crew were already geared and leveled) would rise to the top and eventually you could rely more on power rating to determine who would be a good target. But it didn't. My rating is about 90k now, and I can sometimes beat teams that are 92k, which is to be expected--but I will often play against a team that's 85-86k and lose. That is not to be expected. If I can't trust the power rating to see who would be a good target, then what is its purpose?

--Reserves are invisible. When picking your target you can only see their starting five ships. On the one hand, I like this because it leaves a little mystery to the game and makes fights more interesting. On the other hand, I hate this because I can't trust the power ratings. If I could trust them it would be fine.

--Too much healing, too much HP. This, in turn, puts a premium on raw damage, but ships that do good damage (various TIE fighters) are fragile, so low damage attacks will drop them. This leads to a meta where the optimal plan is to just have as many hit points as possible and go for the draw. Likewise, when the meta says "Just stay alive as long as possible" any admiral who can heal is going to be superior to the others, in this case it's Ackbar because he can force assists, which sorta heal (protection up isn't the same as a heal, but it might as well be) and prolong the match with long animations.

--Unclear investment strategy. I know increasing mods, abilities, levels, ranks, and gear will improve a crew member. How much? I have absolutely no idea. I feel like I'm just throwing credits and gear into a pit and hoping something nice comes out. When I invest in a character and give them a level, I know I'll get 4.5 strength per level, when I give them Stun Cuffs I know they'll get 65 physical damage, when I improve a mod I know they'll get 5.whatever% offense at max level. That all makes sense from the character standpoint, but from the crew standpoint I just have a number that arbitrarily goes up a little, with no clear translation to the ship's stats. When I go into a ship's stat card I can see how good it is, and how much of that comes from crew, but it's still a mystery what the relation is. Similarly, when I level up a ship I know how much it gains from stat growth, but that doesn't seem to really matter compared with crew. I feel like your ship should be at least as important as the pilot...

--Some ships are just BADLY unbalanced. 5s has a ton of hit points and does good damage and debuffs. In return he gives some turn meter (which is a nice concept, to be clear, I like the idea of a character/ship who is so good they have to give the opponent something to compensate--it's just that I don't think he gives enough compared to what he does). Slave-1 and Millenium Falcon are "I Win" buttons. There's a power creep happening with new characters being introduced and making older characters obsolete on the squad side, but the power creep is already built into the foundation with ships.

--Rewards are great. I wanted to be clear about that because Im saying a lot of constructive criticism here, but this part is a straight up compliment. I really love how the rewards can be spent on upgrading pilot ranks and buying gear for characters. Congratulations!

--Need more Dark Side ships. It might be a function of the Empire being rather homogenous: lots and lots of TIE fighters, and the game only allowing one TIE fighter per team. But there really needs to be more variety. Especially in terms of ships that are "easy" to farm. Like, it's very easy to get light side pilots. But FOTP only has a few hard nodes to farm from, Vader and Maul need to be bought with fleet tokens, Empire TIE, Geonosian Spy, and Geonosian Soldier are all Cantina farms that you can only do one at a time (realistically speaking). Compare this with Biggs and Resistance Pilot being in Galactic War, Poe being a Cantina token purchase, and so on The point being that you can multi-task a lot easier with Light side.