Do SuperFortresses need to be made more useful or interesting?

[LordSloth]

With the implementation of all these new modular fortresses, the Super Fortress is looking less desirable than ever. Of course, the Zenith Trader has never been known for selling practical things. And as high as the metal and crystal costs are, the knowledge cost is zero. Is it even worth changing? Do you have any particular suggestions I should add to the poll?

Personally, I'm not convinced it should get a direct boost or dramatically reduced cost. Zenith Traders and Ion Cannons are better known as a frivolous extravagance for those with more resources than sense (like me and my and nine spire cities, 18 habitation centers, +5400 metal/crystal, for instance). Reasonable and practical? I think not.

Rather, I suggest making it more interesting by giving it two new abilities.
1). Let the human and AI versions provide supply to their system, like a Fortress King's modular fortress. Unlike those fortresses, it should provide supply to only the system they inhabit, but do so even if the command center is destroyed. If this is implemented, care should be made to prevent it from flying out of system boundaries if it cannot already.
2). Let it provide a system wide buff. There may be something interesting it can do, but the only suitable thing I can think of is let it function as an attack power booster, similar to a military command station. This would be useful, but hardly irreplacable in human hands, while also making an AI held system with a SuperFortress more than just a system with a no-fly zone until the bombers slowly wear it down.

Thoughts? Alternate Suggestions?

[TechSY730]

I think just buffing them to match the levels of awesome that is expected of a Mk. V fortress will do, and then some due to their rarity and cost. The HP seems about right (though it could use a tad bit more), the DPS, yea, not living up to standards.

However, even though I didn't vote for it, I wouldn't argue with it providing supply. That would give some interesting setups for both humans and the AI.

[LordSloth]

Theoretical MkIV fortress: individual DPS 5,200,000, cap DPS 10,400,000
 cap 2, damage 520,000 x 60 reload 6 sec, health: 80,000,000 metal: 4,000,000 each, crystal: 7,200,000 each

Theoretical MkV fortress: individual DPS 7,466,666 (equal to entire cap of mk2?)
 cap 1, damage 640,000 x 70 reload 6 sec, health: 100,000,000 metal: 8,000,000 each, crystal: 14,400,000 each

Current superfortress: individual DPS 6,400,000
 cap 1, damage 160,000 x 120 reload 3 sec, health: 150,000,000, metal: 18,000,000 crystal: 18,000,000

Are these numbers correct extrapolations from the current mk1/2/3 fortresses?
The firepower might actually be fairly close to where it needs to be, using existing forts as guides, and possibly better due to less overkill.

It's just that fortresses seem to be an exception to the idea that your DPS per cap per mark actually increases with each tier, and fortresses run counter to that. They can already be  sort of crazy powerful, albeit in a good way.

Edit: Also, Super Fortresses seem to lack the radar dampening of regular fortresses, for better or worse, given they're designed to soak damage, and possess self-repair and immunity to repair.

[Draco18s]

I'm skewing the vote here a bit, but I chose:

Nothing
Buff their stats
Decrease their cost

As I'm undecided, but either a stat increase, a cost decrease, or nothing.  Ability-wise they're fine as-is.

[Coppermantis]

Yeah, ability wise they should be exactly what their name sounds like. A really, really big fortress. Although Zenith Trader items are supposed to be sort of a ripoff, they should be at least somewhat valid to field.

Or make the Superfortresses capturable.  (I jest, I jest)

[Vitka]

Why not scrap them altogether and have these new modulars take their place?

On the other hand, I like idea of them providing supply. Even better if we take it one step further and have them actually act as a command station. Then again, same could apply to modular fortresses.

[Shrugging Khan]

1. Supply sounds like a good idea.
2. Let them be short-range armour boosters. Fortress = A thing people can take cover in. Same goes for regular fortresses; they ought to have a defensive effect like this. Modular fortresses do not need it, since they have FF modules.
3. Reduce their range. Having an entire system inaccessible to everything but bombers is no fun.

[LordSloth]

Added two new options to the voting list.

So Super Fortress Damage Per Second is already 85% of where it would be if regular fortresses extended all the way to Mark V. Fortress stats, and the cost is actually fairly close. The thing is, Fortresses seem to scale on a unit level by mark, not a cap level by mark. Along these lines, I think you'd actually be quite disappointed making it in line with a Mark V.

On the other hand, if Fortresses were nerfed (or even limited to one per system) and SuperFortresses weren't, they'd seem incredibly powerful. Or if Fortressed were redesigned on a per cap rather than individual scale, it would give the expected results.

So rather than saying, the equivalent of a mark V (which by cost and by stats they come fairly close), what firepower do you think they should have compared to a). full cap of markIII, or b). a full cap of mk1-3s?

Alternatively, let rebalance everything, let us build five mk1 forts, five mk2 forts, five mark 3 forts, and one superfort equivalent to a cap of theoretical mark Vs.

P.S. I thought I allowed revoting, but I don't see how I can do it now.

[Kahuna]

They're way too expensive. If building an Armor Inhibitor is a pain in the ass and takes forever.. think about Super Fortress.. LOL! Would take about 20 hours in-game time.

[TechSY730]

Anyways, I think one thing that should be done is to balance the forts according to cap strength. More precisely stated, make a cap of Mk. II forts as strong as 2x a cap of Mk. I forts, and so on. As Superfortresses have a cap of 1, it should be around as good as 5x a cap of Mk. I fortresses.

3. Reduce their range. Having an entire system inaccessible to everything but bombers is no fun.

5121: AI Superfortress still has human Superfortress range

[Coppermantis]

They're way too expensive. If building an Armor Inhibitor is a pain in the ass and takes forever.. think about Super Fortress.. LOL! Would take about 20 hours in-game time.

It took me something like an hour to build one in my current AAR. That was with Econ CC II, Metal II and Crystal III though.

[LordSloth]

Surprisingly, Super Fortresses are actually surprisingly buildable in a respectable amount of time, though hardly easy. Having a single co-op partner is a big help, more for doubling the resource cap than anything else. If you have a net income of around 2000/sec before starting construction you can get in about five and a half minutes of work in to about eight minutes of rest. In other words, the 58 minutes project becomes about 145 minutes. If you assist with engineers you reduce your efficiency in the build phase, but do increase your sanity. My perspective comes from a 7/7 co-op game, many of mine which often see several people sitting at full resources, even running out of mercs to bleed off resources. Now in a singleplayer game, having to take care of every role and never getting the leisure of being the designated defense player for a half hour, it is an entirely different situation.

If you end up popping all your distribution nodes, it is surprisingly helpful for the final push.

In 7 difficulty, high AIP games, multi-player  (but not multi-homeworld) games it becomes considerably easier to get one of these out of the door, especially with the energy rebalance. In singleplayer or higher difficulty games... well, I'll have to try it out this weekend, if I can make it past the CPA and defensive hybrids mobilizing.

[Diazo]

Okay.

I have not looked at the numbers but the superfortress should be a 'SUPER'-fortress.

I'm okay with one of these essentially locking a system down if you can build it and I believe the only time the AI gets one is on a Fortress Baron homeworld.

With them being that rare, I'm okay with them straying into the OP territory.

Now, I have not used one of these to face off against an exo-wave but against normal stuff, they absolutely lock down a system as they should.

Maybe their numbers could use a tweak with the modular forts added but a superfortress is there to kill things, kill lots of things really fast. It is not there to do anything else.

D.

[Cinth]

Not so cool when the AI sends in Artillery Golems. 2 of those one shot superforts.

[Shrugging Khan]

I believe the only time the AI gets one is on a Fortress Baron homeworld.

Definetly not true. I recently had one two hops from my homeworld (and right on the most important hub. Damned.)