Fixing up Tartarians ?

[Belac]

Originally Posted by Sombre

You would think right? Or just making them less powerful. But no, people always go for the sideways attempts to balance them. Make them mad, make GoR more expensive, make the equipment they use more expensive, make death boosters more expensive.

I think people inherently enjoy tarts being stupidly cost effective. Even as troops they're a bargain.

Because Tarts are the way to ultimate magic diversity, having the chance to have lots of tarts is cool. It makes the endgame include the puzzle of "I have x random magic paths, what can I do with this?" Also, there are already rare, powerful SCs--the existence of common SCs with other drawbacks is a fairly cool thing.

Perhaps there could be more types of Tart to rebalance them and make them more closely resemble what a cast of defeated gods would be. Take most of the magic paths away from the Titan and Titaness, and have the tart chassis that gets 3-2-2 randoms be a Great Sage. Ultimate magic diversity, totally not a SC.

[Burnsaber]

Or you guys could try out Llamabeast's Endgame Diversity Mod which was made to fix this exact issue (tarts being the only SC option)

[Festin]

Or we could reduce the cost of generally overpriced national endgame summons to make them worth using and add some diversity to the endgame.

[Squirrelloid]

I totally support 30d tarts and 5n GoR! GoR for everything!

[Foodstamp]

I think the reason they made tarts so cheap is for rapid end game cleanup. This is great for SP if you want the option, but it is predictable and annoying in almost all end game situations in multiplayer.

[Belac]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I totally support 30d tarts and 5n GoR! GoR for everything!

Actually, that is a really good idea (the 5N GoR especially). There's lots of stuff that would make interesting commanders (OK, I'm reviewing my turn in Mooseknight right now and wishing I had the nature gems to spend GoRing an Umbral), but 20 (or even 15) Nature gems is quite a fair amount.

I think there's substantial value in a cheap SC with severe and unavoidable drawbacks. There are other things we can do with Tarts that would weaken them relatively. For example:

GoR doesn't work on them. You don't get one of the 1/5 who are already commanders, summon another. That would weaken Tarts overall without changing the relative power of nations with more Death gems.
Instead of Shattered Soul (which still makes them useful on defense), they sometimes get Lost in Time and Space.
Tarts Leave After A While, as the magical bonds holding them on this plane weaken and they plunge back into Tartarus.

[thejeff]

Cheap Tarts are actually balanced better. That lets those who don't have the Chalice and/or GoH summon enough to get useful ones.
If they were sufficiently expensive then they'd only be worthwhile if you could cure all you got and whoever could hold onto the Chalice/GoH would dominate.

If you could change mechanics to balance them better, I'd make them uncurable, even by the Chalice/GoH.

[Doo]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Or you guys could try out Llamabeast's Endgame Diversity Mod which was made to fix this exact issue (tarts being the only SC option)

I agree this is a good mod, and it adds flavor to the game.

[Sombre]

I think more expensive and incurable is the way I'd go.

[Micah]

More expensive and incurable just raises the luck factor of what chassis types you end up with and what afflictions they come with. Tarts are a needed end game balance mechanism to unlock magic paths for certain nations and shouldn't be constrained too tightly. Adding in other summons is a much better idea IMO, as it increases strategic chassis selections as opposed to increasing the importance of luck. There are also a reasonable amount of counters available to tarts IMO.