Balance:
10 exos for FS are good. They really hurt.
Exos for golems/spirecraft still need to be buffed.
To me, it seems like the FS Exowave strength is all over the place. City building waves are really nasty, but the timed waves are wimpy in comparison. The shard chase waves individually aren't too bad, but they spawn so fast and so often that they can make up in numbers what they don't have in individual power.
Golem and Spirecraft Exos do need a bit of a buff, though, I agree.
Spirecraft on the AIHWs needs a counter, like a tough "spire disruption field" cannon which insta-kills only spirecraft (even when under cloak).
That kinda ruins the point of a superweapon, doesn't it? I mean, why would you take putting up with Exowaves for hours to get stuff, if you can't then use it in the hardest battle in your campaign?
Champion counterbalance needs a small nerf. There were over 60 enemy champs in special forces after only nine hours, with me constantly killing threatfleets of ~8.
Yay! Someone else agrees with me.
Just for reference, 25 or so Nemesis frigates can destroy a full cap of 4 Mk II Fortresses, even in a system covered in Mk III Grav turrets and 50 or so sniper turrets.
The way it stands right now, the Nemesis frigates are basically another, slower, Exowave source.
The neinzul mod fort insanity inducers need a nerf. For 3 unlock points, I can get a one-system, defence only botnet golem. Which is twice as tough, cheaper, and also happens to have a fortI stapled to it.
100,000,000 HP + 100,000,000 HP in shield + 48 zombify shots every 2 seconds, and not unique? How could that possibly be OP?
Although, I can already tell that I'll miss it when it is gone (Monday).
Spirecraft:
Martyrs are obviously OP. Try having them do 200,000 damage per mark (so kills fleet ships equal to their mark, usually) and giving their AoE immunity immunity to warheads.
Penetrators are good, but need some kind of AIHW-related nerf.
Rams, shields, jumpships, and attritioners are well-balanced.
Ion blasters and siege towers need a buff.
Martyrs slaughter fleetships. They do NOTHING against starships, Golems, Spirecraft, etc. They're one shot, fixed in number, and usually require putting up with Exowaves. While they are OP if facing only fleetships, there's a lot more stuff out there.
Penetrators should probably not be able to pop the AI Home Command Station that easily. I must admit, in all the time I've been using them, I never realized they were FF immune. Makes them better than I thought, although I still think their damage could use a boost given how much other stuff has gotten HP boosts.
I think almost all Spirecraft need an HP boost. Implosion Artillery and Attritioners are very fragile, so much so that a single Sniper or Spider guardian can do serious damage to your collection in just a few seconds. Rams basically need to be cloaked to reach anything worth killing with them. Siege Towers lose to starships 3 marks lower than them.
You played with Complete Visibilty so you didn't use Scouts, but have you tried the new Scouts in any of your other games? I've tried the new ones out and I am not impressed. In fact, I think they went from the in-game equivalent of Complete Visibility to mostly useless.
This was a quick, easy game. I first upgraded to a destroyer, then used that to conquer a few planets, then upgraded to a cruiser, conquered a few more, built up a huge chokepoint and one-shot spirecraft to counter the first sc/golem exo, became a battleship, conquered the last few CSG planets, set up a single spire city, and killed the AIHWs with the full fleet, including another huge batch of spirecraft.
It seems like you were only in danger for the very beginning of the game, as you built up to survive the first wave or three. You kept the AIP very low, so the first Exowaves were small, only built one spire city, and it sounds like you finished the AI off before the Defense Exo or the timed FS Exos had time to build up.
Now, my complaint. You say "easy", in no small part because you never faced the truly nasty stuff the AI will throw at you later in the Exowaves. If time had gone on, or had you persued the FS campaign, I think you would have found it much more difficult.
In my current game, the building the 3rd Spire City wave was 8 HK Mk IVs, over a dozen Golems, 2,000 starships, and 10,000 or so fleetships. While I play 2 HW, (hence twice the size for the Exo wave), I was also playing only Diff 9.
Unlike difficulty level balancing, Exowave balancing hits all the difficulties. Making Exos harder for diff 10 also makes them harder for diff 7. Making the Exos harder because they start off small ignores that they already get harder as time (and AIP) increases.
With the way I play, large maps, long and slow games, frequently playing deep into the FS campaign, I think Exowaves are TOO powerful. You can't use FacIVs, Fabs, or ASCs, you MUST chokepoint hard into no more than 1 or
maybe 2 systems of frontage, and you'll spend a lot of time rebuilding your fleet/defenses.
Or you race through the game, ignoring Fabs, picking up only what was on the CSG planets anyway, not doing FS, and trying to end it before the Exo difficulty catches up to you.
In other words, just because you are skilled at abusing the superweapons, please don't ask Kieth to make it impossible for the rest of us to use them!
