One's Own Medicine

[keith.lamothe]

Started in 5.097 (which is 6.0 without the version number or music, using this as my soundtrack instead), in my steam copy so without the dev copy's accidentalia.

Going for a pretty simple game, no superweapons, nothing too fancy or chaotic.  Just want to see how the thing plays end-to-end, been a while.

Expansions: all enabled

Diff: 7.3/7.3; I'm no superman

AI 1: Sledgehammer
AI 2: The Tank

Map Type: Clusters.  Concentric used to be my favorite, but Clusters has really grown on me.  Not doing the microcosm variant this time.
80 Planets
Conquest (though I would like to find some way to bring Defender up to snuff some day, seems like missed potential)

Ship Types: Complex, all enabled (including CSGs)

Combat Style: Normal
Unit Cap Scale: Low (playing on low-end hardware)
Visibility: Full Fog
Cheats: Off
Unexplored Planets: shown

Minor Factions
Marauders 4/10
Resistance 4/10

AI Mods:
None

Auto AIP: 1 every 15 minutes

AI Plots:
Avenger on both

Map seed: 1394755226

My bonus ship type: Tackle Drone Launcher! Bwahahaha!

------

0:43 unlock harvester IIIs
start build scouts

0:59 broadcast that any scout still in-system in 1 minute will be used for target practice (auto explore)
start build military (TDLs first)
place turret defenses

1:55 initial scouting report:

- Rebangaeo (first HW neighbor) MkI, Fort I; neighbors:
-- Murdertic (has a link out of the cluster) MkII, ZPG, Distro, 2m/4c
-- Ralockaki (extra-cluster-link) MkII, ZPG, IonIII, P-Armor-Booster
-- Bingbing (extra-cluster-link) MkIII, ARS, CSG-A, IonI, Counterattack-post

- Rodhagcen (second HW neighbor) MkI Co-Proc; neighbors:
-- Fucave MkII, Interplanetary Munitions Booster, Co-Proc
-- Erasaelplu MkII, ZPG

- Waydarkael (third HW neighbor) MkI CSG-E, Distro node; neighbors:
-- Xuaelmas MkII, IonIII
-- Ipquienan MkIV, CSG-E, Ion Eye, IonII, 3m/4c

Hmm, priorities... Bingbing is a given, considering the ARS and extra-cluster link.  Before that I'd like to capture my HW-neighbors, but I don't want to alert that MkIV longer than I have to.  Though taking the MkIV is attractive due to 3/4 resources.

And that Interplanetary munitions booster needs to die.

Anyway, back to initial building.  First fleet attack planned for Rebangaeo.

4:59 First TDL rolls off the line, commissioned as the TCS "Terry Tate".

During this, built off another few caps of scouts and auto-picketed them.

8:00 all 4 TDLs online, building the rest

11:12 first wave announced: 65 anti-armor ships.  My leech starships would be grateful for the donation, if I had any.

That reminds me to check up on the AI ships to see what bonus types they have.

The Tank:
- Spire Blade Spawner.  Lovely.
- Sniper

Sledge Hammer:
- Anti-Armor

With the reinforcement-focus mechanic I may not have all the info yet.

Anyway, I guess I deserve blade spawners on the other side, for taking the tacklers.

11:39 all fleet ships done building.  Starship additions considered and rejected.  I'm targeting a mkI planet, what could go wrong?

Thankfully that planet's fort (which could go very wrong) is off in the boonies with the SF guard post, so it won't shred me out of the gate.

12:40 command station down, AIP = 30

13:42 A wild spire blade spawner appears and starts inflicting more losses on me than anything else on the planet was able to.  Retreating rest of fleet, sending in the fighters to take it down.

14:03 wave hits

14:28 between the defenses and Terry being bored, wave down.  Still chasing the starship.

On the other planet, spire blade spawner died.  Somehow my fighters (not in FRD) interpreted their leftover orders as "get in range of the fort and die horribly".  Their mission, whatever its origin, was achieved.  Thankfully I only left the fighters, the accountants were worried for a moment there.

15:00 AutoAIP, 31 now

15:20 Rebangaeo command station online.

Getting stuff online there and picking off a few annoying stragglers...

16:54 31 Bomber wave announced for the new planet

19:44 wave hits

None of the bombers get in range, Terry sees to that.

Once the defenses kill the starship, dispatch fighters to clean up bombers.

20:52 killed the SF post via missile turrets outside fort range, AIP 32 now

23:25 12 (out of 48) fighters give their primary keys to take out the Bingbing tachyon guardians so my scouts can...

24:04 scout Joifi, which is on the other side of the bridge to the southwest cluster: MkIII, CSG-E, Barracks, IonI

26:03 strikeforce alpha loaded into transport, preparing to be dropped on the head of Bingbing's IonI.

Transport reaches destination at half health, deploys fighter to draw ion fire; deploys bomber to kill ion

... Somebody forgot that units now have to reload after exiting a transport.  General unload button mashed.

AI courteous destroys the transport for me, resolving unload request in a rapid fashion.

26:27 Ion down, everyone in the car!

... Dude, where's my car?

Guess we need to deal with these guardians that even Terry can't get out of our face.

26:45 guardians down, but so are all my fighters, retreat before the accountants get too worried.

27:21 the important stuff (TDLs) made it out, but being a missile frigate is a dangerous occupation

28:51 reprisal taken out; that was easier on my side of the wormhole

29:09 starship reinforcements requested again.  Accountants balk, but Terry convinces them to be team players.  Combat Starship construction underway.

30:00 autoaip, now 33

30:48 ScienceII station scans Bingbing; ARS projects: Spider / IRE, EtherJet

Hmm.  If this were an exo game, the IREs would be a slam dunk.  EtherJets are fun but more fragile than I'm looking for here.  So not wanting to take the hacking antagonism to pick a non-default, spiders it is.

31:58 crystal hits bottom, metal on the way.  Accountants remind Terry where the cheetos come from, and a policy of fiscal responsibility is adopted (i.e. no more starships)

33:30 the missile turrets on Rebangaeo finally take out the Fort I.

*facepalm* and only then do the harvesters start building.  Accountants frothing at the mouth.

34:26 Strikeforce alpha loaded onto transport.  Backup transport on standby.

Threat eval on Bingbing... nothing too dangerous left, time to pop the command station and take out the trash.

34:51 Transport reaches target at 88% health; much less dangerous now.  Deploying.

... counter attack post providing station invulnerability.  Everyone in the car.

Starship Dissassembler Guardian.  Accountants smirking.  Terry desmirking Accountants.

35:44 Starships reclaimed, albeit a little gooey-er.

Counter attack post down; 45 mkIII ship counter heading to homeworld in 13+ minutes

Normal wave, 55 missile frigates, heading to second planet.

37:12 Bingbing command down, cleaning up, AIP 53

37:36 normal wave hits, right on top of my returning ships.  Terry gives wave a pep talk.

40:06 Bingbing station online, shields online, sending out patrols to clean up the rest.  ARS immediately lost to enemy ships, but that's ok, I got my spiders.

42:22 one CSG-A down
75 bomber wave announced for Bingbing

43:16 Bingbing SF post down, AIP 54

43:27 unlocking mkII scouts to get further and since I've got so many mkIs on picket duty

44:30 bomber wave hits Bingbing. Terry hits wave.  Terry wins.

45:00 autoaip, now 55

45:30 Terry informs accountants that cheeto supply is high.  Starship construction resumes.

49:25 No more cheetos, starships paused again.

49:36 counter wave hits.  Terry informs them that they can stay right there at the grav limit.

Sledgehammer spotted as commanding Zenith Paralyzers

53:00 counter wave done, minimal losses

53:30 dissatisfied with scout mkII coverage, sending raids on tachyon busting

54:35 raids were doing well, met untimely demise from all at about 75% health to 0 in something like 3 seconds.  Not sure what happened.

56:00 rest of northwest cluster scouted, catalog:

Kaladm 3 hops from HW, mkIII, Advanced Factory!, CSG-B, IonI, barracks

Vageo 3 hops from HW, mkIII, CSG-E, Distro, barracks

Dorcave 3 hops from HW, mkII, Fabri-

* Terry busts through the wall

"Hey, boss!  There's a MkV Tackle Drone Launcher Fabricator on that planet!"

Yes, yes, I see that.  Very interesting indeed.

Dorcave 3 hops from HW, mkII, Fab-TDL-V, CSG-C, IonIII, counter attack post, 4m/3c

Memondlea 3 hops from HW, mkIII, CSG-D, Sentry Eye, IonI, counter attack post, barracks, 3m/3c

Marbulrex 3 hops from HW, mkIII, ARS, CSG-A, Fab-Bomber-V, counter attack post, distro, barracks

Boatmurdersuo (no, I didn't make it do that, this is actually entirely stock-game planetnaming, and that's all Chris) 4 hops from HW, mkIII, IonIV, IonI, 4m/2c

Ipnaku 4 hops from HW, mkII, ZReserveIII

Jisho 4 hops from HW, mkII, CSG-D counter attack post

Ipnine 3 hops from HW, mkIII, Data Center, IonI, Distro, 4m/4c


And the gateway planet in the southeast cluster:

Yaqael 3 hops from HW, mkII CSG-E, FortI, Ion eye, barracks


And from the northeast cluster:

Murdoch 4 hops from HW, mkII, cluster-gateway, distro*2, barracks, 4m/4c

Ordrepu 5 hops from HW, mkIV, Data Center, distro, IonII

Ritol 5 hops from HW, mkIII, CSG-D, counter attack post, IonI, barracks, 3m/4c


So, priorities...

Well, I've got a bead on most of the CSG rings now, so I really want to find those AI homeworlds to figure out what I need to do positioning-wise to take them down without triggering deepstrike threat.

But that would require some pretty deep scouting and I don't particularly want to burn knowledge or lots of time transport+scout+tachyon-busting to get that deep.  I'd rather have some more muscle first.

Muscle means knowledge, ARS, fabs, and advanced factory.  All those are available here in the cluster (no, I really did not pick this seed knowing what it would give me), but I don't want to get the "loseable" capturables first, so I want to go for the other ARS in this cluster.

But it's on the far end of the MkIV planet in the cluster.

That, in turn, is one of the 2-hops-from-HW planets and needs to go down so I can secure my HW permiter without leaving a mkIV on alert.

The mkIV does have good m+c, but I don't want to take planets just for that.  So I'll probably nerf it into oblivion.

Before I do that, I'll take the immediate HW-neighbor that leads to it (Waydarkael).

Time to roll.

I want to try something out, so I'm dumping 4000 K on the mobile repair station.

58:04 initial fighter wave deployed to Waydarkael to draw fire

Sending mobile builder through to start forcefield construction, detaching engineers from homeworld to speedbuild it.

Sending rest of fleet through to cover building.

58:23 forcefield online

58:42 Waydarkael command down, AIP now 75

Special forces are in system, pulling back to let Terry do the work.

Scratch that, can't pull back, SF has 13 blade spawners.  Spawners have medium hull, time for the fighters to kill.  Sending in most of the rest to get the job done.

58:58 40 marauders join in the fun

*facepalm* Bringing the MRS units through that I forgot.

59:29 last blade spawner down

Somewhere in down my Waydarkael command station came online

Moving fleet to engage marauders; placing defensive turrets.

AI remnant smashed between my fleet and the marauders.  At least the marauders won't alpha me now.

Taking damage from marauders, but starships are fine, so accountants unconcerned.

1:00:00 auto-aip, now 76

Gonna stop there for the night, but the start has been fairly promising.  Of course, the challenge of this one is nothing to what I've seen y'all tackle (no pun intended) lately

I'll probably go for less detail later on, am just getting into the swing of it.

State of the galaxy:

[Oralordos]

Well... it has been quite a while since one of the developers has posted an AAR. I think it may actually have been when I first started.

[Wanderer]

Diff: 7.3/7.3; I'm no superman

Wuss.   

- Rodhagcen (second HW neighbor) MkI Co-Proc; neighbors:

I hate it when border worlds do that...

11:39 all fleet ships done building.  Starship additions considered and rejected.  I'm targeting a mkI planet, what could go wrong?

*blinks* You.  Of ALL people... asking THAT question?  Oh no.

On the other planet, spire blade spawner died.  Somehow my fighters (not in FRD) interpreted their leftover orders as "get in range of the fort and die horribly".  Their mission, whatever its origin, was achieved.  Thankfully I only left the fighters, the accountants were worried for a moment there.

Lt. Ito, of the Kamikaze brigade, reporting for duty on Iwo Jima island, sir!

Transport reaches destination at half health, deploys fighter to draw ion fire; deploys bomber to kill ion
... Somebody forgot that units now have to reload after exiting a transport.  General unload button mashed.
AI courteous destroys the transport for me, resolving unload request in a rapid fashion.

Ah, the Trojan Horse tactic.  I love that one.  "Are you SURE you wanna shoot me?  Hoookaaaaaaay...."

45:30 Terry informs accountants that cheeto supply is high.  Starship construction resumes.
49:25 No more cheetos, starships paused again.

I think my accountants have sang this song before.  Must be a real hit at numbercruncher's kereoke.

54:35 raids were doing well, met untimely demise from all at about 75% health to 0 in something like 3 seconds.  Not sure what happened.

At a guess?  Self-destruct guardian.  They're usually the cause of random 200+ ship losses if I don't see 'em coming.

* Terry busts through the wall

"Hey, boss!  There's a MkV Tackle Drone Launcher Fabricator on that planet!"

Which wall, the fourth one?   

Boatmurdersuo (no, I didn't make it do that, this is actually entirely stock-game planetnaming, and that's all Chris) 4 hops from HW, mkIII, IonIV, IonI, 4m/2c

Blatant lies!!! Funnily enough the first thing I saw when I popped to the end to grab your map was that planet.  I was thinking that's a perfect planet to stuff into my custom planet list.  That's hysterical that it's from the default though.

I want to try something out, so I'm dumping 4000 K on the mobile repair station.

This should be interesting.  I'll take 2 to 1 odds that the MRS comes down in Research price here shortly... 

Sending mobile builder through to start forcefield construction, detaching engineers from homeworld to speedbuild it.
Sending rest of fleet through to cover building.
58:23 forcefield online
58:42 Waydarkael command down, AIP now 75

You... beach-headed just to drop the initial FF construction onto the border world?  That's a very interesting choice there.

That Tackle Drone Launcher looks like they're standing you in really good stead.  Sounds like they're rather fun to use.  I'll have to ARS myself up a few here.   

[Volatar]

using this as my soundtrack instead),

I literally (in the old fashioned actual literal sense of the word) shoved my hand into my mouth to keep myself quiet when I clicked that as everyone else is asleep. I did NOT expect that link to lead THERE.

That also prompted me to notice that the list has 3500 views. That's a WHOLE LOT of not-me. Suddenly I have become self-conscious of my music listening choices.

Unit Cap Scale: Low (playing on low-end hardware)

On vacation on your laptop I assume?

Going to be watching this AAR closely. I want to see how you play.

[Faulty Logic]

Because Keith can't perform his usual amusing observations, I will attempt to fill in.
Edit: I got triple-ninja'd, naturally.

Auto AIP: 1 every 15 minutes

Interesting. AutoAIP is the one aspect that I haven't really tinkered with.

My bonus ship type: Tackle Drone Launcher! Bwahahaha!

The reaction is appropriate.

Murdertic [...] Boatmurdersuo

The default name generator loves to use the "murder" string. Once, I had a planet named Archmurdermurder, and, even more ominously, Murderusoon. Clearly, this is indicates that the planetnamer is in collusion with the AI.

4:59 First TDL rolls off the line, commissioned as the TCS "Terry Tate".

  But what does TCS stand for?

- Spire Blade Spawner.  Lovely.

Experience the low-cap problem firsthand and die!

12:40 command station down, AIP = 30

Consider me flabbergasted. I stay home for hours.

On the other planet, spire blade spawner died.  Somehow my fighters (not in FRD) interpreted their leftover orders as "get in range of the fort and die horribly".  Their mission, whatever its origin, was achieved.  Thankfully I only left the fighters, the accountants were worried for a moment there.

The AI works in mysterious ways.

... Somebody forgot that units now have to reload after exiting a transport.  General unload button mashed.

Wait, what? When was this implemented? Do they have to reload if the transport is destroyed?

26:45 guardians down, but so are all my fighters, retreat before the accountants get too worried.

Yeah, fighters always seem to die first.

*facepalm* and only then do the harvesters start building.  Accountants frothing at the mouth.

Paranoid merchies. Just because there is a massive AI fortress, they think it is dangerous.

54:35 raids were doing well, met untimely demise from all at about 75% health to 0 in something like 3 seconds.  Not sure what happened.

Human raid starships lack the Immune to Random Evisceration tag the AI versions have.

"Hey, boss!  There's a MkV Tackle Drone Launcher Fabricator on that planet!"

One of the best fabs...unless you already have TDLs. And even then, lets you save the k of unlocking higher marks. Or you could go all-out and launch 20 drones per volley.

Hmm.  If this were an exo game, the IREs would be a slam dunk.  EtherJets are fun but more fragile than I'm looking for here.  So not wanting to take the hacking antagonism to pick a non-default, spiders it is.

Spiders: riot control fleetships. I still miss the 4.0 anti-starship arachnids (like Z bombards, except really fast, and reloaded every 7 seconds)

I want to try something out, so I'm dumping 4000 K on the mobile repair station.

MRSs? I have literally never unlocked them. When they were OP back in the day, they were also possessed by the AI and not immune to reclamation.

accountants

Minions of the AI.

Looking forward to you hitting the HWs after everything you have done to them.

[Volatar]

I want to try something out, so I'm dumping 4000 K on the mobile repair station.

MRSs? I have literally never unlocked them. When they were OP back in the day, they were also possessed by the AI and not immune to reclamation.

Do MRS's still have the tugs they used to have?

[Aklyon]

Murdertic

The default name generator loves to use the "murder" string. Once, I had a planet named Archmurdermurder, and, even more ominously Murderusoon. Clearly, this is indicates that the planetnamer is in collusion with the AI.

Are you sure the AI isn't the planetnamer though? They could've had perfectly fine names before and the AI came and hid them under names like Archmurderusoon.

54:35 raids were doing well, met untimely demise from all at about 75% health to 0 in something like 3 seconds.  Not sure what happened.

Human raid starships lack the Immune to Random Evisceration tag the AI versions have.

You'd think the accountants wouldn't have missed that after everything else they do concerning starships.

[Dichotomy]

You'd think the accountants wouldn't have missed that after everything else they do concerning starships.

Minions of the AI.

Diff: 7.3/7.3; I'm no superman

Wuss.   

See the response to sanity. I stand by my signature.

[TechSY730]

So, the AAR can sort of be thought of as an integration test? Testing from start to finish, instead of one aspect.
Well, that and for fun too probably.

Anyways, very interested in seeing how someone who has deep knowledge of the game's mechanics (all the way down to the code level) interprets and approaches various situations.

[keith.lamothe]

Well... it has been quite a while since one of the developers has posted an AAR. I think it may actually have been when I first started.

I played and AAR'd one hour of that community game Cyborg did a few months ago.  That was some nail-biting play there.  Hybrids!  Hybrids everywhere!

But yea, it's been a while.  When I put time into AAR'ing I'm contributing considerably less per-unit-time to the community than when I'm programming/designing/etc   But since we're on a change-freeze (unless something really screws up by the numbers) until after 6.0 settles, seems like a decent time

Diff: 7.3/7.3; I'm no superman

Wuss.   

Before each of us is a red-hot poker, and a white-hot one.  The difference between us is merely that I have chosen the red one, and applied it to the heel of my foot, where you have chosen the white one, and eaten it

11:39 all fleet ships done building.  Starship additions considered and rejected.  I'm targeting a mkI planet, what could go wrong?

*blinks* You.  Of ALL people... asking THAT question?  Oh no.

The Irony teams and other emergency responders were alerted beforehand and on-site, no worries

I think my accountants have sang this song before.  Must be a real hit at numbercruncher's kereoke.

Is that a cross between karaoke and kerosene?  If so, sounds like accountants being involved in it would be very interesting!

54:35 raids were doing well, met untimely demise from all at about 75% health to 0 in something like 3 seconds.  Not sure what happened.

At a guess?  Self-destruct guardian.  They're usually the cause of random 200+ ship losses if I don't see 'em coming.

Nah, SD guardians only show up on diff >= 8.

* Terry busts through the wall

"Hey, boss!  There's a MkV Tackle Drone Launcher Fabricator on that planet!"

Which wall, the fourth one?   

Any wall necessary.  Including the one behind you, if that report isn't done in 5 minutes.

Scratch that, in the DB-IT world, that could hit too close to home.

This should be interesting.  I'll take 2 to 1 odds that the MRS comes down in Research price here shortly... 

We'll see.  I kind of forgot to bring them in on the last attack, but there's a MkIV world coming up next, and they'll get a chance.

You... beach-headed just to drop the initial FF construction onto the border world?  That's a very interesting choice there.

It wasn't really necessary, but it was where I wanted the FF to cover the wormhole and the command station when it went up, so it made sense, and kept losses down.  The accountants were happy.

That Tackle Drone Launcher looks like they're standing you in really good stead.  Sounds like they're rather fun to use.  I'll have to ARS myself up a few here.   

Yea, they're probably going to need a nerf soon.  That counter-attack dropped a full cap of mkIII ships on my homeworld and I hardly even noticed except when I had to send someone in to actually kill the stragglers (though the TDLs did a decent job even there, due to the drone-explosion aoe damage, once the enemies were back against the outer limit).

I literally (in the old fashioned actual literal sense of the word) shoved my hand into my mouth to keep myself quiet when I clicked that as everyone else is asleep. I did NOT expect that link to lead THERE.

I thought you might get a kick out of that

That also prompted me to notice that the list has 3500 views. That's a WHOLE LOT of not-me.

It's possibly a lot of me, though not 3500 I'd think, unless it's counting each individual songplay instead of just when I hit the index.

By my estimate, 30-40% of Ancient Shadows (and base-game during the AS timeframe) coding has been done to those Touhou remixes   The Ravenous Shadow in AS was very nearly a bullet-hell encounter, but it doesn't really fit the game's model.

Unit Cap Scale: Low (playing on low-end hardware)

On vacation on your laptop I assume?

Nah, still here, it was just after 5 and crunch time was over for me.  Laptop is easier to relax with than the desktop.

[keith.lamothe]

Because Keith can't perform his usual amusing observations, I will attempt to fill in.

Here, you'll need this MkV Smartass software module.

4:59 First TDL rolls off the line, commissioned as the TCS "Terry Tate".

  But what does TCS stand for?

Terran Confederation Ship, my favorite sci-fi space-naval designation (just in front of RMN, probably), from wing commander.  Just a joke, here, really, as if there's any governmental structure on the player side in AIW it's way more dictatorial than a confederation

- Spire Blade Spawner.  Lovely.

Experience the low-cap problem firsthand and die!

We'll see, but even those 13 from the special forces (3+ full caps of the things) were pretty easy to kill.  The TDLs actually made it harder by pushing them out of range.  I need something mobile with sniper range.

12:40 command station down, AIP = 30

Consider me flabbergasted. I stay home for hours.

See above about white-hot vs red-hot poker.

Wait, what? When was this implemented? Do they have to reload if the transport is destroyed?

During 5.0-to-6.0, but I can't actually find it in the patch notes.  And last night I observed that the transport-dead dump does NOT actually trigger the need to reload, which I may need to fix... hard to say.

I had a planet named Archmurdermurder, and, even more ominously Murderusoon.

That last one is especially hilarious.

And appropriate, given the games you play.

Do MRS's still have the tugs they used to have?

No, as of some time in the deep past

See the response to sanity. I stand by my signature.

No argument requested, nor given.  Sanity can interfere with survival, when a galaxy full of robots wants you dead.

[KDR_11k]

The game loves murdering boats almost as much as it loves sinking ships. I once got a planet called Moatmurdered.

[Volatar]

I literally (in the old fashioned actual literal sense of the word) shoved my hand into my mouth to keep myself quiet when I clicked that as everyone else is asleep. I did NOT expect that link to lead THERE.

I thought you might get a kick out of that

I most certainly did.

That also prompted me to notice that the list has 3500 views. That's a WHOLE LOT of not-me.

It's possibly a lot of me, though not 3500 I'd think, unless it's counting each individual songplay instead of just when I hit the index.

Just when you hit the Index. It would be an order of magnitude (or more) higher were it the other way around. I'd estimate no more than 200 hits are me, even though I listen to the list constantly.

By my estimate, 30-40% of Ancient Shadows (and base-game during the AS timeframe) coding has been done to those Touhou remixes   The Ravenous Shadow in AS was very nearly a bullet-hell encounter, but it doesn't really fit the game's model.

Nice. That makes me feel special.

[Hearteater]

During 5.0-to-6.0, but I can't actually find it in the patch notes.  And last night I observed that the transport-dead dump does NOT actually trigger the need to reload, which I may need to fix... hard to say.

I abuse this feature regularly.  I call them Transport Bombs.  They probably should need to reload on exit from a dead Transport.  It may actually make sense to let normally unloaded ships resume their current reload state, and have ships released by a dead Transport have their reload reset so they must start over.  That gives a penalty to a Transport Bomb strategy, which is currently more optimal than a normal Transport unload.  Of course ships would need to not reload while in a transport, or micro'ing them in and out would be a touch too cheesy.

[keith.lamothe]

That gives a penalty to a Transport Bomb strategy, which is currently more optimal than a normal Transport unload.

Except, of course, when you want to get back in the car.  Like after I killed that ion.  Those were my worst losses of the hour by a factor of 10 or so.

But yea, I see that the alpha-strike power of the transport bomb is a bit much considering the circumstances.

I don't want to have normal-unload retain the previous reload status because it would be even more abusable than the current transport bomb.  Exit-Alpha-Back-In-and-run (often with cloakers for extra limburgerosity, and zenith bombards for true cheesemastery) was the whole reason I added the reload-upon-unload thing.