Fallen Spire feedback

[BobTheJanitor]

I don't know if this is intentional or accidental, but it bears mentioning. My retrieval for the 6th shard routed unavoidably through a core world. At this point I had the firepower to handle it, although the core world also had a spire archive on it and two black hole machines. So my choices were to take 20 AIP to get out of the world and leave the comm station up, or take 20 AIP from capturing the world and get two free BHMs to scrap plus a ton of knowledge... at the cost of basically permanently alerting the AI homeworld while I play out the rest of the fallen spire campaign. There were still other worlds within the requisite number of jumps that the shard could have been placed on. I guess I'm just saying that routing a shard retrieval through a core world shouldn't be something that happens by accident. (If it's supposed to do this, all good) My case is rather extreme because of the black hole machines, but still I thought I'd throw it out there and see what people thought.

[keith.lamothe]

I don't know if this is intentional or accidental, but it bears mentioning. My retrieval for the 6th shard routed unavoidably through a core world.

Do you mean the 5th city shard or the transceiver shard (the one the capitol scans for)?  The latter is supposed to be willing to spawn on a core world, or even an AI homeworld (heh heh), or to require pathing through said.  But only that last shard, the others intentionally avoid pathing through or spawning on a core/home planet.  Was there literally no path from any non-AI world (including ones you'd simply destroyed) to the shard planet?

[Red Spot]

I at some point did the math for a FS campaign on an X-map. Did the logic with the air of "I do not know how this will play out".
The end result was that I did not have enough 'string of 4-5+ planets' to get all the recoveries done. I disregarded this as a 'it wont work on all maptypes, just think about a 20 planet map' kind of argument, but based on the last 2 replies I think it cant hurt to say it ...

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, on some map types you'd have to be particularly careful to not take out the command stations along the recovery paths.  Alternatively you can just smash every AI planet except the homeworlds and core worlds and all shards except the very last would spawn in your territory (rather than spawn on an AI homeworld or core world).

What?  That would cause other problems?  Mere details

Though once you have 3/4 cities worth of spire capital ships, you can probably more or less get away with that if you can route every non-counter-attack-post retaliation through a single chokepoint (which is notoriously easy to do on an X map).  Of course at that point you could just take out the AI homeworlds themselves (probably), which is the semi-new way to win in FS (as opposed to the more-new way to win).

[Red Spot]

through a single chokepoint

I smell a hint of 'cause that is easy'. 
I can tell you that single planet defences are not easy when you play high level AIs with nasty minor factions enabled, being outclassed, outnumbers, out-everything, it is quite a struggle. You'll face 1000s of units vs your couple of 100, untill you reach a 1000 yourself, and the AI just reinforces a bit more.
(8.6 AIs with Neinzul enclaves are not easy behind a single chokepoint .. it takes the AI .2 seconds to reinforce a planet with a k of ships it seems, just no way to get through without suicide runs on the AI CC.)


Me likes though

[BobTheJanitor]

This is the shard that the capitol scans for, yes. So it seems it was supposed to route through that world, which is fine. My only concern was that it had just randomly ended up there, which just seems messy.

And this is actually an X map I am playing on as well. It's led to some interesting play style. Since I know, for example, that I'm going to have to take a world to plant a city on, and then clear out the worlds on either side of it, and due to the long lines of worlds around the middle of the X, I went on some crazy world-crushing killing sprees. Just flew my ships in and killed three worlds in a row and planted comm stations on all of them. The sort of thing that you would never ever do in a normal game. Of course, I also found a dyson within the first hour of the game, so now I have about 50-100 gatlings per world, which is making even the exo waves pretty trivial. I think they've gotten past my defensive front line planets once, and then the gatlings on the next world finish them off. Currently I am saved in the middle of the longest AIP drain I've ever managed with a superterminal. Planting the spire dreadnought on top of it is sure helping. I'm down from about 650 AIP to about 350ish and I've still got the firepower to keep going. I'd almost say finding a superterminal towards the end of a fallen spire game is exploitative, but then someone might try to fix it, so let's not say that.

I'm almost tempted to try smashing every world just to see if it's possible with this overpowered setup I currently have.

[keith.lamothe]

I smell a hint of 'cause that is easy'.

Well, it's at least easier  Though sometimes it's painful if the AI also has _you_ chokepointed.  Controlling the center world of an X map somewhat helps because the AI will somewhat split between all 3 "fronts", though that makes normal defense harder on you somewhat if you're trying to guard all 3 of the wormholes.   In an FS game I tend to plant my city smack on top of the wormhole that leads deeper into my territory, and so it makes it easier to defend the single point.

Just flew my ships in and killed three worlds in a row and planted comm stations on all of them. The sort of thing that you would never ever do in a normal game.

Yep  In one of my games I just glassed the entire outer ring of the concentric map, largely for fun (the knowledge was necessary too, though).

I'm almost tempted to try smashing every world just to see if it's possible with this overpowered setup I currently have.

Yep, particularly once you have the BBs and DN (or even DNs if you make more cities), it gets to the point where it doesn't matter that the AI knows you're coming, it can't stop you  That is often a design downfall in RTS games and we wouldn't want that to be normal, but it's ok for FS games to sometimes end that way.

Which is one of the "relief valves" built in against the FS campaign being "grindy": if you feel that way, just take your whole spire fleet (plus whatever else you like, munitions boosting stuff is good, or some transports with colony ships, engies, etc to setup repair bases, etc), and try to kill the AI.  No subtlety, just lots and lots of beam weapons

But folks tend to feel like they need to finish the "storyline", so that option may not seem apparent.  And there's also just the same-ness feeling of the recovery missions, which hopefully we'll be able to do something about fairly soon.

[BobTheJanitor]

If I haven't killed the whole core shield generator network, will that throw off the fallen spire win? Or does the end-game fleet of death that spawns have the ability to shoot right through external invincibility shields?

[keith.lamothe]

If I haven't killed the whole core shield generator network, will that throw off the fallen spire win? Or does the end-game fleet of death that spawns have the ability to shoot right through external invincibility shields?

When the end-game fleet initially spawns through the core shield generator network is instantaneously vaporized.

[TechSY730]

I will say that the fallen spire exlusive ships need either a moderate to large nerf or a large cost increase. Right now their cost effeciency is way, WAY, WAY too huge, even considering what you have to do to get them. Normal starships cost like twice as much for half the power. It gets to the point where there really is no need for fleet ships or normal starships. It even gets to the point where mid way through the campaign you can amost curbstomp the whole galaxy.

I understand that the fallen spire exclusive ships are supposed to have better cost effeciency than normal ships, but at their current level, they are completely breaking the balance and the pace of the game.

[BobTheJanitor]

I think that's the point though. They're supposed to be insanely powerful. Really the main place you're going to lose fallen spire is in the early game, when you're still weak but the AI has started sending exo-waves. You might lose in the late game if you get caught flat-footed with a poor distribution of spire ships and a big wave slips through your defenses. But in general, it seems like they're supposed to be simply too good. That's why the AI is sending those waves, after all. It's trying to stop you before you get there. And yes, you can probably roflstomp the AI worlds by the midgame, which the journals suggest a few times. By then, the main reason to keep playing is because you want to see the plot through to the end.

Speaking of overpowered, I rode that superterminal down to over 1000 AIP reduction. I stopped when I hit the floor and was actually raising my AIP again (for a real AIP change of about 680 down to 280, and I also took a few worlds while this was going on), although I really could have kept going pretty much perpetually. It seems the superterminal caps out at spawning 250 MkV ships about every 20 seconds. It might be a good idea to look at raising the top end on that, because at least in this specific scenario, the normal situation where you have to kill the superterminal because it's about to overpower your defenses was simply never going to happen.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I've already nerfed the capital ships a fair bit and might do a little bit more there, but any major challenge discrepancies need to be met by increasing the challenges rather than decreasing the tools provided to handle them.  In my play I still found a distinct need for turrets and other normal stuff to cover areas that I couldn't cover with a sufficient concentration of the capital ships.

I could make them cost more (and probably will for the frigates) but I've heard enough complaints about the FS stuff costing so much m+c that you're just sitting there waiting so long, etc, etc, that I'm hesitant to aggravate that any further   Let's just say that my first two unlocks on an FS game are likely to be Econ Station MkII and Econ Station MkIII   And the harvesters not long after...

[Red Spot]

I dont think the FS ships are too expensive, just that it takes too long to build, which you will notice when you lose a good chunk of components.
If you trigger the end game and somehow damage your own FS fleet you are in for a nasty end game (want a savegame to demonstrate? .. it is, iirc, already in this topic ).
Perhaps the time it takes to construct things could be lowered, but have the cost go up a bit. This way, if your econ allows, you can build them fairly quickly and dont have to just sit there with 50 engies rebuilding stuff, but only if you have a really out-of-proportion econ

[BobTheJanitor]

a really out-of-proportion econ

Like, say, the one that you probably always have by the end of a fallen spire campaign, because you've had to take double the worlds you normally would and because you have probably unlocked econ 3 stations and mk3 metal and crystal gatherers to feed the hungry maw of your spire empire? In my current game I have used my spare economy in-between spire buildings to build merc ships, and now I am actually sitting at a full cap of all the merc ships. Now that's a crazy economy.

[zebramatt]

I dont think the FS ships are too expensive, just that it takes too long to build...

Given that one can simply assign engineers to a construction to speed it up, aren't those the same thing?