Quote Originally Posted by Leedot View Post
Jet - The specialties are definitely out of balance, there's no doubt about that. As it stands it doesn't matter what I make the resources costs as Traders will always have more resources and access to build the same ships (other than the highest tier) so whether I make a battleship cost 50 RO or 500 RO doesn't really matter in terms of specialty balance. As it currently stands Traders will always be able to build proportionately more units, faster than anyone else because they'll always have more resources and faster build times.

So, I agree the specialty balancing does need to be addressed but it's a separate issue. I think I probably just confused things by cross posting the new ship balancing spreadsheet in this thread.
The fact that the specialties are unbalanced does not mean you should give up making costs reasonable. Cruisers, for example, level the playing field. There is no imbalance in ships that only require CO, since CO is effectively unlimited for any speciality. While Traders can build faster, in practice it will also come down to how many factories each side can put to use, etc.

If you increase the RO cost of everything, that's what shuts out non Traders and slows down the game. If anything, more ships should cost CO only. There is a HUGE difference between not being able to build the same ships at quite the same rate as a Trader and not being able to build those ships at all, to say that it just doesn't matter since Traders build faster is an oversimplification.

And by the way, if you ask me, th current cost of the Planet Killer is grounds for an emergency patch. I truly believe it is impossible for a non-Trader to reach 440k RO right now (let alone multiple times if their Planet Killer is destroyed), which means it is currently impossible for a Warlord to win the game. If you can refute this, I'd love know how it can be done.