Reports of failure

[Ktoff]

Yeah, but the Raid Starships suck hard at deep striking plus they are really really expensive. I get a full complement of autocannon Minipods Mk I and II for roughly  84000/12000. One MkI raid starship  alone cost a good 80000 crystal. And thanks to the cloaking I can fly my lowpower minipod fleet anywhere and kill stuff when I feel like it. The little fleet is usally dead by the end of the raid, but considering the trail of destruction they leave behind, its well worth it. Maybe it's just me using the starship wrong, but I find them too weak and too expensive to do any real raiding...

[TechSY730]

Yeah, but the Raid Starships suck hard at deep striking plus they are really really expensive. I get a full complement of autocannon Minipods Mk I and II for roughly  84000/12000. One MkI raid starship  alone cost a good 80000 crystal. And thanks to the cloaking I can fly my lowpower minipod fleet anywhere and kill stuff when I feel like it. The little fleet is usally dead by the end of the raid, but considering the trail of destruction they leave behind, its well worth it. Maybe it's just me using the starship wrong, but I find them too weak and too expensive to do any real raiding...

Yea, raid starships do suck at deep striking without some sort of transport or escort. With transports however, they become quite a force to be reckoned with.
Actually, now that I think about it, almost nothing in this game in the current balance is decent at deep striking (sans support),have a decent chance of coming back alive, and be cost effective. That might be a balance issue that needs to be looked at.

[Ktoff]

If you take out Tachyon stuff along the way and have no forcefields to contend with, the minipods are superb deep-strikers. Even on a MkIII world you can kill two or three targets befor half of your fleet is gone. More if you take out Ion cannons. In any case, deep-striking shouldn't be too easy, I doubt that a rebalance will favor deep-striking.

I will try the transport-raidship combi. But I still fear that they'll get killed quickly, especially as the transports expire after 3 jumps or so :-)

[TechSY730]

I will try the transport-raidship combi. But I still fear that they'll get killed quickly, especially as the transports expire after 3 jumps or so :-)

Oh, wow, you are looking at that kind of deep striking (>3 planets)? Yea, nothing in the game can really cost effectively do that right now, and still come back alive. If you drop the come back alive requirement, then yes, mini-pods become quite useful.

Personally, when I had to deep strike like that, I just neutered every planet along the way to the target, and then group moved like half of my offensive force to the target. Worked out pretty well, and I even suffered minimal losses.

[Ktoff]

Well, I had trouble doing any kind of scouting so I did not have to neuter the planets, just get rid of tachyon stuff. And for that (lots and lots) of minipods were very useful. Depending on the level of the planet I could get 2-5 planets tachyon-free with one MkI and MkII group (once they die, by the time I switch back to my planet they have been rebuilt). Also nice for taking out data centers in otherwise uninteresting chunks of the galaxy.

[Ranakastrasz]

Actually, now that I think about it, almost nothing in this game in the current balance is decent at deep striking (sans support),have a decent chance of coming back alive, and be cost effective. That might be a balance issue that needs to be looked at.

Actually, that sounds intentional, considering that deep striking ought to be something you should not undertake lightly, and the fact it does not increase AI progress, due to bypassing planets (aside from, I think 3 or more planets deep)

[zoutzakje]

If I remember correctly, there has been some balancing a while back to stop people from deep striking. I believe chris said something about it being much easier than it should, so he changed some stuff. I could be wrong though, my memory is not as good as it used to be.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, deep-striking (more than 4 hops out, I think is the threshold, might be > 3 ) was too easy so it was made harder.  It's still possible but if you need to project your power to a particular region of the galaxy there's a definite incentive to claim a planet within 3-4 hops of the target planet.  But going 3 hops out shouldn't be too hard, with the right tools.

[Ktoff]

Yeah, well, I do remember mounting a sortie with 6 raid starships and flying out 7 or 8 systems, popping command stations (dyson sphere) or data centers and coming back without losing one of the ships or, if I was unlucky, one of the MkI. This was way too easy.....