(This next part I think I'll write a little differently, for fun).
I liked it 
Heh, yeah, I wanted to have a little more fun than just writing down what happened. It amused two of us at least.
Raids see a lot of drama in this game 
Noticed that, 'eh?
Yea, it's tricky. There's a flag on the space docks that makes them not select when you hit their control group button, so you can use that feature as you'd expect. But if I did that for a mobile ship like the enclave... it's kind of a "which kind of bug reports do you want today, Keith?" situation. I guess some kind of modifier could work, but ctrl-0, shift-0, and alt-0 all have other meanings.
Fair enough. I'd almost like to see the ships not end up in a ctrl-group at all comparitively... but I get your drift. It causes havoc one way or another.
Hearing "oops" from your tactical officer is a bit like hearing it from your surgeon.
*snort*laugh* Yeah, that's about how that one ended up.
Yea, the drones are not all that strong, you basically have to use them against stuff they have those 5x bonuses for if you want significant offensive power (either way they still help increase the number of targets the AI might shoot at).
Well, the fact that they're facing things usually a minimum of one MK higher isn't helping their cause. I was curious, and I'd actually intended to see how well MK II/III could perform with a few different turret upgrades going, I just never got there.
Congrats pulling off that rebel-colony rescue, that was a long haul in a pretty nasty galaxy.
Yeah, sorry I never posted up the map for that one, luckily I had a few posted earlier. That was brutal. Amusing, but brutal. They made me WORK for them. And then work some more. The hammer that came down on that planet from waves reminded me why single choke is so damned important (even if multi-planet), damn the torpedos. You just don't have the frickin' firepower without a VERY responsive fleet... which I didn't have, I was spread out all over the damned place so I couldn't respond to two places... ever.
The alert window should probably just say "You put your foot in it!" Except that wouldn't get it across with appending to the metaphor that said pile contained a nest of wasps with hollow-point depleted uranium ammo for stingers.
Yeah, that was just unobservant. I'd scouted it earlier and just completely missed the MK V guardposts on it, primarily since my scouts never lived when they reached it and I got carried away trying to drive myself into those 'last few planets' with scouts.
Hmm, you've mentioned this before but I'm not sure I understand: how do you know that they're dying before capture and that the maw is still expending the "charge"? The vacuum process should be instantaneous: it's recharge comes up and it decides to vacuum something, and that something is vacuumed.
My guess is that the "if something is trying to escape via wormhole or transport, have all in-flight projectiles aimed at it immediately resolve" rule is causing said targets to die. Since each ship tracks "how much health would I have after all shots land?" I can use that as a filter to have the maws prefer other targets, but I'm not sure I'm right about what's actually happening here.
AH! When a Maw starts its tractoring, you get a small red line if you zoom up to what it's trying to capture. Eventually, that ship will disappear, and the maw increases its internal count. Now, how I know they're dying is I watch that particular ship's health drop like a stone while the red line is on it. It dies, and the Maw never increments... or if it does, it gets at best a mostly dead ship, instead of a nice healthy bit of prey.
It's not near wormholes where I can track that kind of thing, they're usually too congested. Where I see this happening is mostly in mid-system fights against a ship line. That and usually I don't dare get the maws near the wormhole without huge amounts of FFs, they're apparently primary targets and once you start hitting critical mass of long range ships (Beam, Frigate, Anti-Armor, etc) they alpha strike MK Is. They're always late to that party, mostly because usually the FF's are dying in droves at that point anyway.
Score after new modifications:
AI: 2 Wanderer: 0.
Woot woot! Though the AI got its south bridge handed to it on a platter by Faulty Logic in that other thread. It was a very close finale, granted, but a sub-9-hour win on 10/10 is something else.
Yeah, I saw that. Very impressive. I'm a little chagrined, to be honest. I'd not realized botnets could actually stop this level of wave.
On carriers: I really do like that waves "change shape" when carriers get involved, and I think the lower overall firepower (compared to what the contents would be doing to you) compensates for the increased overall durability and other carrier-specific propoerties. I'm not totally averse to having carrier-dumped units come out damaged corresponding to how much damage the carrier had taken (so 100% health if they were deployed normally by a full health carrier, etc), but I'm also willing to drop the carrier offensive power. They don't have to be steamrollers of doom, I just want you to care roughly as much about 1000 units in a carrier as you do about 1000 units outside a carrier (which, incidentally, may mean "steamrollers of doom")
On special forces guard posts: yea, gonna do something different there. For now my AIW working copy is in a lot of flux so it'll be a few days before I can get another beta out, but hopefully will make these a bit more sane soon.
Well, you have to remember too, the carrier is balanced to fighters. The majority of filler for those particular carriers tended to be tigers, autocannons, etc. High Cap ships that pop when you sneeze. Popping them and getting them into AoE degradation was a primary goal. Shove a stack of bombers in there and I'd agree with you.
All I can tell you, balance wise, is right now 1400 ships is a lot safer to deal with (and economically easier to recover from) than 1000 ships and a carrier with 400 ships in it. My Bomber starships, until I had gotten the waves to ensure to be under 1000, hid under the AoE FFs and had standing orders to prioritize the carrier. I'd rather replace four bomber SSs every fight than face a carrier with over 100 ships in it. They'd stroll out of the defense zone and absolutely murder my mid-range turrets... making everything from there completely hairy.
I needed some dwarves to dig me an obsidian statue pump but they were busy trying to make Human Controlled Hybrids... with AI Collars. There was even mention of a huge slingshot to fling them at wormholes.
Seriously though, their ability to escape a defense net and obliterate mid-range turrets really breaks up defenses quickly, and there's really no defense against them, they can hammer away at any grav turret put into place to slow them down VERY quickly.
Grav Is are 5k in range. Throw a planet of research at gravs and you can get to 7k range. The carrier can shoot to 6k range. So, Grav Is are out to even slow down a carrier. At 1 mill in HP a single salvo from the carrier pretty much takes it down. It needs a whole 13 shots to do it. Even the MK II Grav it only needs 26 shots, which is 208 ships (Load /
on normal. Very easy for a carrier to end up with.
So, really, to jam up a Carrier long enough to KEEP it in the defensive cordon, you need to drop over 2 planets of K into Grav IIIs so you have both the range (and time) to deal with the existing ships, pop the carrier, and then deal with the results of that. Or you need to stack Grav IIs every 1000 'range'... whatever 1000 range looks like, it's not large. Either that or kiss your mid-range turrets goodbye.
A stack of basics (the only real counter to Frigates, which ALSO chew up your Mid-Range Turrets) has a cap of 98, a health of 150,000. So, roughly, 15 mill in HP, if they're all stacked up together.
Let's take an average carrier I was seeing, which was low end. 250 ships. That's 31.25 shots, so 31 shots. That's 2.3 mill in damage. Every four seconds. Your basic turrets are dead inside of... well, round it off, 20 seconds.
In 20 seconds, your turrets have fired off roughly 4.8 million raw damage * 2. Neglecting attrition rates of the turrets. So, 10 mill in damage. Seems fair, right? Also, carriers are ultra-heavy, now getting a 2.4 mill multiplier for the damage being applied, so really it's 24 mill worth of damage. This should be an amazing counter-balance to the turret, by the numbers. And that's all computed with a MK II Carrier vs. a single cap of MK I turrets!
It doesn't work that way. What you end up seeing is your 100 basics spray their fire across the entire enemy fleet. The carrier begins to move. The basics get their second salvo off, and then the carrier's in range (usually). SPLAT. SPLAT. SPLAT. Half your basics are gone before they've even gotten a chance to reload. The basics fire again at the fleet behind the carrier, and SQUISH, that's it for them. The carrier then moves about 500 more range in and starts in on the lasers.
Eventually, about 400-500 of the inbound wave is dead and your turrets finally realize they're screwed, so they get themselves retargetted (even WITH Auto-Target Carriers turned on) and start laying into the carrier. But there's just not enough firepower left and the wave itself, since the carrier's been wailing away with impunity on your mid-range turrets, flows through and just reams the remaining mid-rangers. Even if you DO pop the carrier at this point, a fresh set of troops of some variety, probably easier now in that particular game because they were lightweights, joined up with the 'wave' that's slowly pushing down the grav-line while what's left of your turretry, the Snipers and LRMs, go to work.
Right about then, the second wave comes in.
That's a really long explanation, but it probably shows you the problem eventually.
However, the reason I specifically have not decided to go ape over them is because
I'm playing 10/10 for crying out loud. Every one of those base ships in the waves that I'm trying to clean out is MK II or better, as is the carrier. I have a hard time ever seeing a carrier appearing in a wave under the MK II threshhold, but that's another story, I'm sure it could happen given the right set of high-cap ships. The thing is at any other difficulty these ships would not be sitting on my doorstep at 50 AIP with a single world controlled, so I should, in theory, have had enough time (and K) to setup a more effective defense.
The other problem is my defensive methods. I usually string the defenses along two wormholes, so I catch escapees trying to make a break for other wormholes as well as escaping out of the wave source. Because of this, those turrets catch more flak out of the wave then normal 'looser' defensive models would, where the enemy is allowed to go wherever they please as long as it's not the CC.
Now, I've found that method, in general, to be more effective. Carriers are seriously changing that decision. It's an interesting problem, but there's absolutely no reason carriers should be adjusted because of 10/10 play. Now, if they flatline me on a 9.6, I'll go grab my picketing sign and camp your doorway.
