AI War - A Guide to Golems

[Orelius]

Since I haven't seen any comprehensive guides for ships or their general use and utility, I figured I'd start by making one for golems.  I'll be covering the seven golem types in this post.  I may expand to spirecraft and later fleet ships and starships if enough people find this useful.
The Golems will be rated on a scale from one to five based upon both their usage in player hands and their dangerousness in the hands of the AI.

Armored Golem
Statistics:
Cost: 30,000,000 M/C
HP: 500,000,000 (50,000,000 or 250,000,000 under AI control)
Range: 13,000
Armor: 100,000
Attack: 1,000,000x5 / 2 seconds (Flame Wave)
Armor Piercing: 999,999 (Ignores armor)
Speed: 88
Hull: Ultra-heavy
Attrition rate: 120:00

Under Player Control: ++++
The Armored Golem is one of the most powerful straight-up combat ships you can get.  With its half billion hp and 100,000 armor, the armored golem’s incredible tankiness means that it’s unlikely to go down in a fight.  It also happens to have a great range and a powerful attack that pierces all armor, so it’s excellent for both assaulting AI systems and defending yours.

Under AI Control: +++++
The Armored Golem is one of the most dangerous ships the AI can have at its disposal.  While its survivability is severely gimped by the hp reduction, it can and will punch through your force fields and other heavy defenses like a chainsaw through butter.  You’re going to want to use ships that have high armor pierce or armor rotting so your ships can do more than a paltry 20% damage against it.  When defending against one, you’re going to want to isolate it from the rest of the ships and focus it down with everything you’ve got.

Counters: Ships with high armor piercing (polarizers, etc.), armor rotting ships (armor rotters, autocannon minipods), extremely hard-hitting ships/structures(Bomber Starships, Spire fleet ships, AI Fortresses, AI Hunter/Killers, etc.), Stacked Forcefields (non-hardened).

 Artillery Golem
Cost: 10,000,000 M/C
HP: 100,000,000 (10,000,000 under AI control)
Armor: 0
Attack: 100,000,000 / 30 seconds (Artillery)
Range: 1,003,000
Armor Piercing: 999,999 (Ignores armor)
Speed: 64
Hull: Ultra-heavy
Attrition rate: 120:00

Under Player Control: +
It’s essentially useless to a player save for the occasional “snipe off a really powerful ship” gimmick that does not occur often.  It’s certainly nice to have, but you shouldn’t go out of your way to get it.  It’s also very fragile despite its 100,000,000 hp, as it has no way to defend itself against most ships.

Under AI Control: +
The Artillery golem also happens to be just as useless to the AI, too.  Most of the time, if you see an AI artillery golem, it’ll probably be safely sitting about doing nothing.  In the rare case where it actually decides to attack you, be sure that your golems or other valuable ships are not there when it is, since it’ll really put a dent in them if not kill them outright.  Just put your starships through the wormhole first, and then rush towards it to kill it and your ships will be fine.

Counters:  A stiff breeze, Fleet Ships

Black Widow Golem
Cost: 25,000,000 M/C
HP: 80,000,000 (8,000,000 under AI control)
Armor: 6000
Attack: 140,000 x50/ 4 seconds (Shell)
Range: 19,000
Tractor Beams: x100 @ 12,000 range
Speed: 160
Hull: Ultra-heavy
Attrition rate: 120:00

Under Player Control: ++
One of the more mediocre golems that a player can have, the Black Widow Golem really isn’t that good of a golem compared to the rest.  While pretty strong in combat, it’s not a good idea to use it extensively because of the tendency of tractor beams to get a hundred ships to fire upon the golem.  It’s a nice golem to get, but certainly not a vital one.  Of course, one can try to pop in and out with the golem to separate the ships from their group, which would make it more effective.

Under AI Control: +++
Under AI control, the black widow golem can really screw with you by taking a hundred of your ships to be killed on other AI worlds, alerting them and bringing on the pain.  However, with its paltry 8,000,000 health, it’s trivial to focus down with starships or even basic fleet ships.

Counters:  Ships with a bonus to Ultra-Heavy (Bombers, Raiders, etc.), Hard hitting ships (Bomber Starships, Zenith Bombardment ships, Zenith Electric Bombers, etc.)

Botnet Golem
Cost: 40,000,000 M/C
HP: 36,000,000 (3,600,000 under AI control)
Armor: 6000
Attack: 20,000,000 x50/ 2 seconds (Energy Burst) (Reclaims all ships that it hits)
Range: 12,000
Speed: 88
Hull: Ultra-heavy
Attrition rate: 120:00

Under Player Control: +++++
The Botnet Golem is perhaps one of the most valuable golems a player can have.  With this golem, one can convert entire enemy waves to mindless slaves to defend your planets in a hearbeat.  It is also particularly useful in clearing threat.  After plopping in your support fleet, insert the botnet golem and you’ll have several hundred zombie bots that will make the planet even easier to take.  However, it’s very fragile, so keep it supported at all times.  Also, it’s not very useful if the AI is using neinzul or spire ships because of their immunity to reclamation, so be sure not to combat said ships with a botnet golem.

Under AI Control: ++
Surprisingly, the botnet golem is really underwhelming when the AI has it, which is an unbelievably good thing because it can chew through your fleet and make it its own fleet within seconds.  It’s also even more fragile than the human version is, so just snipe it off with starships and you’ll be fine.  AI botnet golems never ever spawn with waves so you’ll only have to worry about it if a planet spawns with one.  If you do manage to piss one off, you’re really in for it unless you hide all your fleet ships away.

Counters:  Non-Reclaimable ships (Starships, Core Ships, Neinzul Ships, Spire Ships)

Cursed Golem
Cost: 10,000,000 M/C
HP: 60,000,000
Armor: 6000
Attack: 160,000 x20/ 2 seconds (Energy Burst)
Range: 603,000
Armor Piercing: 10,000
Speed: 128
Hull: Ultra-heavy
Attrition rate: 40:00

Under Player Control: +++
The Cursed Golem is a sort of glass cannon.  It has an incredibly fast attrition rate that will probably kill it before AI ships do.  It has an incredible range and a powerful long-ranged attack.  Be sure to use gravity or tractor effects to supplement this attack.  It’s also rather cheap to repair, so be sure to do so regularly.  Leave it off when not in use.
Under AI Control: N/A
The AI doesn’t have cursed golems.  It’d probably be too broken to imagine without its fast attrition rate.

Counters:  Leaving it on too long

Hive Golem
Cost: 40,000,000 M/C
HP: 48,000,000
Armor: 0
Attack: 100,000/ 2 seconds (Flame Wave)
Range: 8000
Radar Dampening Range: 10,000
Speed: 88
Hull: Ultra-heavy
Attrition rate: 120:00

Under Player Control: +++++
The Hive golem is one of the best golems a player can have.  In short, leave it on to get  500 wasps, then release those wasps to wreak untold amounts of havoc on an AI world.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  The golem has to be on to charge wasps, so be sure to have the resources to repair it.  It can also be used to defend against enemy attack waves, and does so extremely well.  Just unleash the wasps on a planet and it’s a death zone for three minutes, after which the drones die off.

Under AI Control: N/A
The AI doesn’t have hive golems.  If it did, you’d never be able to win.

Counters:  Forgetting about it

Regenerator Golem
Cost: 60,000,000M/C
HP: 200,000,000 (20,000,000 under AI control)
Armor: 0
Attack: 600,000/ 2 seconds (Laser)
Range: 23000
Speed: 88
Hull: Ultra-heavy
Attrition rate: 120:00

Under Player Control: +++
The regenerator golem is a very good supplement to your fleet and is one of the best ways in combat to regenerate your ships.  It is able to immediately reinforce your fleet and essentially store ships because the regenerating ships comes solely from the golem’s HP.  It’s also not very cost efficient, with the highest cost to repair out of all the golems.  It’s useful in clutch situations and when defending, but the cost of using it may be prohibitive.

Under AI Control: +
Under the AI, a regenerator golem isn’t nearly as effective, as you can simply bring it down with a few seconds of focus-fire.  Its hp will also deplete very fast since it has only 1/10 of the hp a normal regenerator golem would, making it a very not dangerous golem to encounter.

Counters:  Attacking


Comments/Criticisms are welcome and appreciated!  Feel welcome to voice your opinions on the matter, as this is really a working draft of a guide.

[keith.lamothe]

Very interesting   We'd certainly like to see no "useless" golems (at least for player purposes, and preferably not for the AI either, though it's ok if the AI isn't deadly with them all), so I'm interested in whether people agree particularly on the types they find very poor.  Personally I really like the artillery golem since I like enormous guns that happen to have engine attached (hint 1: I was the one to add the Siege Starship. hint 2: I was not the one to take it out), but in practice I can see that the numbers just don't add up to something useful.

Funny about the botnets: when I was implementing exos for the first time (fallen spire attacks) botnets were eligible to be chosen as exo ships.

That lasted precisely one test.

Good grief, I think even the Devourer Golem was afraid.

[Orelius]

It certainly does explain why botnet golems are listed to have 1 million firepower. 

In any case, after some more play, I've found that AI regenerator golems don't work at all, or at least I don't see them working.  When destroying nearby ships on the same planet, no new ships spawn from the golem.

[Hearteater]

Just random thoughts:

* The AI golem botnet hp seems really low: 3.6 million is nothing.  Actually, a several of them seem pretty low.  The Core Starship has 25 million hp and does 120k/sec dps on top of a x2.6 attack boost to allies.  Yeah golems are more dangerous, but they don't seem that much more dangerous.  Is 10% health really necessary?  Would 20% make AI golems more interesting without making the tedious or ridiculous?  Ok, maybe not the Armored  .  I'm sure I'll be on the receiving end of some shortly in my current game.

* I know it probably isn't technically feasibility at the moment, but if anyone could use different ammo types (in the real-world sense of ammo), the Artillery Golem could.  He could still fire only once every 30 seconds, but it will either be the single target big hit he has now, or a mini-lightning warhead depending on the target he selects.

* I think I've mentioned it before on the Black Widow (on mantis I think), but how about making her tractor beams into paralyzer beams.  They would permanently paralyze their targets as long as they are held, in addition to dragging them around like normal tractors.  Given her firepower, being able to negate 100 fleet ships is a pretty minor thing.

[Wanderer]

I'll agree with some of these.  However, Hive Golem's usefulness goes to nearly nil (along with blade spawner) once the AI gets gravity into play.  Gravity Drains, Guardians, etc.  Pretty much shuts them down.

The regenerator golem I personally believe to be a 4* craft, not 3*.  It's also relatively powerful in exos, particularly if you happen to run into one or two on the AI homeworlds and you don't have golems of your own.  Regenerating core ships HURT.

The only time I've been impressed with Artillery Golems is when I'd get caged at the wormhole entrance and needed to land heavy firepower on distant guardian posts.  Again, that whole gravity thing shutting down alternate methods, like Raid Starship.

The black widow isn't strong enough to survive solo, especially not against a heavily camped wormhole, which is when you'd want it to pop through, grab some ships, and drag them back.  It's basically an oversized spire tractor (honeycombs!).   Overall the spire ships pretty much overpowered the golems.  They're good in a fleet as additional support, but they're not flagships.  They get wrecked too easily.  Well, everything except armored, and I've seen those go down in a blaze of glory a few times too, even being a little protective of them.

[Orelius]

I'll agree with some of these.  However, Hive Golem's usefulness goes to nearly nil (along with blade spawner) once the AI gets gravity into play.  Gravity Drains, Guardians, etc.  Pretty much shuts them down.

You haven't seen them in action then.  The wasps have enough health, numbers, and attack damage to completely overpower worlds even if they have a few gravity guardians and other assorted gravity effects.  If the AI has gravity drains en masse, then hive golems are still very useful for defending planets and supplementing a raid.  The only other thing than mass amounts gravity effects that can stop a hive golem raid are probably fortresses or excessive numbers of Mark IV or Core ships.

The regenerator golem I personally believe to be a 4* craft, not 3*.  It's also relatively powerful in exos, particularly if you happen to run into one or two on the AI homeworlds and you don't have golems of your own.  Regenerating core ships HURT.

\
While I can see how a regenerator golem can be really good in certain situations (Namely, high-economy clutch situations), oftentimes, the cost of repairing the ship can simply cripple your resource banks.  I'm still considering the "rankings", since as of now they're pretty arbitrary and just reflect how useful I find the ship.
Thing is, AI regenerator golems don't really function the way they're supposed to.  I have not yet seen an AI regenerator golem that has actually regenerated any AI ships.  Even, the whole repair-from-health thing would only result in regenerating another 20ish core ships due their high amount of hp .

Overall the spire ships pretty much overpowered the golems.  They're good in a fleet as additional support, but they're not flagships.  They get wrecked too easily.  Well, everything except armored, and I've seen those go down in a blaze of glory a few times too, even being a little protective of them.

I agree!  The amount of spire ships one can get from a few cities is enough to contest the power of homeworlds.  In one of my recent 25 hour mega-expansion games, four spire shipyards worth of spire ships (not that much at all) were able to swoop in and systematically destroy all of the guard posts on a home world and the planets leading to it.  Granted, the fleet didn't make it out alive and I had to resort to trickery with SC penetrators to get in the final blow.

[zoutzakje]

I agree with most of this. Perhaps you could also mention that the Botnet is not capable of firing upon any MK V ship, so never bring them with you on core/homeworld assaults. I made that mistake once.
Cursed Golems are 5* in my humbe opinion. together with the botnet it's my most important asset to win the game. Once the enemies near an enemy's planet wormhole are cleared, enter with the cursed golem and have it take out anything at any range. his relatively high speed makes him able to move away from most enemies before they can shoot at it. And most important, it's capable of taking out FF's, fortresses, ion cannons, orbital mass drivers, etc without any trouble. This golem saved my butt many times. plus it's very very cheap to repair compared to any other golems. I'd rather repair my cursed golem 5 times than I'd rebuild my whole fleet a single time.

[keith.lamothe]

Overall the spire ships pretty much overpowered the golems.  They're good in a fleet as additional support, but they're not flagships.  They get wrecked too easily.  Well, everything except armored, and I've seen those go down in a blaze of glory a few times too, even being a little protective of them.

I agree!  The amount of spire ships one can get from a few cities is enough to contest the power of homeworlds.  In one of my recent 25 hour mega-expansion games, four spire shipyards worth of spire ships (not that much at all) were able to swoop in and systematically destroy all of the guard posts on a home world and the planets leading to it.  Granted, the fleet didn't make it out alive and I had to resort to trickery with SC penetrators to get in the final blow.

Yea, spire capital ships are the top-of-the-line superweapons, and correspondingly have the most punishing AI response to your even getting the stuff needed to build them.  But once you have enough of them the normal AI forces simply cannot stand against you.  Golems and Spirecraft (the asteroid-built stuff) are still superweapons but a step down from that, with the Golems being more powerful than spirecraft individually but much more restricted in availability, and neither provoking nearly the sheer magnitude of AI attention as the fallen spire stuff.

[Wanderer]

Overall the spire ships pretty much overpowered the golems.  They're good in a fleet as additional support, but they're not flagships.  They get wrecked too easily.  Well, everything except armored, and I've seen those go down in a blaze of glory a few times too, even being a little protective of them.

I agree!  The amount of spire ships one can get from a few cities is enough to contest the power of homeworlds.  In one of my recent 25 hour mega-expansion games, four spire shipyards worth of spire ships (not that much at all) were able to swoop in and systematically destroy all of the guard posts on a home world and the planets leading to it.  Granted, the fleet didn't make it out alive and I had to resort to trickery with SC penetrators to get in the final blow.

Yea, spire capital ships are the top-of-the-line superweapons, and correspondingly have the most punishing AI response to your even getting the stuff needed to build them.  But once you have enough of them the normal AI forces simply cannot stand against you.  Golems and Spirecraft (the asteroid-built stuff) are still superweapons but a step down from that, with the Golems being more powerful than spirecraft individually but much more restricted in availability, and neither provoking nearly the sheer magnitude of AI attention as the fallen spire stuff.

  I apparently should have been a little more clear.  When I said spire ships, I meant the fleet ships, not the human buildable flagships.  Yes, those are flagships, but I was more talking about what the AI had available to it for response... particularly when spire fleet/asteroid ships are part of exos coming at you for daring to get them on Hard.

[keith.lamothe]

I apparently should have been a little more clear.  When I said spire ships, I meant the fleet ships, not the human buildable flagships.  Yes, those are flagships, but I was more talking about what the AI had available to it for response... particularly when spire fleet/asteroid ships are part of exos coming at you for daring to get them on Hard.

So, do you mean the bonus ship types (the sort that unlock from an ARS, and you start with one) that start with the word "Spire", or the asteroid-built Spirecraft?  Or both?

[Wanderer]

I apparently should have been a little more clear.  When I said spire ships, I meant the fleet ships, not the human buildable flagships.  Yes, those are flagships, but I was more talking about what the AI had available to it for response... particularly when spire fleet/asteroid ships are part of exos coming at you for daring to get them on Hard.

So, do you mean the bonus ship types (the sort that unlock from an ARS, and you start with one) that start with the word "Spire", or the asteroid-built Spirecraft?  Or both?

Standard fleet (ARS) ships are enough to hammer down unprotected golems with Spire Expansion on.  Toss in Implosion Artillery into the Exo waves and you've got hammers just waiting for a Golem.  They're fun to play with but they take a lot longer to get going than even the first exo hits you (without a golem yet) if you're playing at tight level.

Example: Recent 9/9 game with hard golems, I was around an hour in and just finishing consolidating the 6 wrapper worlds to my homeworld, and hadn't even scouted a broken golem yet, and an exo warning popped.

Later in the game a weakened fleet lost two golems (artillery and widow) when a heavy duty exo wave came in.  I didn't have FS on for this game, so I'm sure it was just a golem exo.  That's partially the fault of some decoys that insisted on visiting along with it as threat, but they're just NOT that strong.  They are almost never worth putting yourself out of strategic position for unless there's something else you want as well, or it's a botnet.

[keith.lamothe]

Something tells me that golems are likely to have a run-in with the buff-hammer before too long.  At least the non-armored ones.

[Hearteater]

Golems (H/K and Motherships) probably need some better defenses, rather than just more hp or more armor.  Thoughts in regards to that:

Powered Armor - Normal armor allows a ship to stop up to 80% of a shots incoming damage.  A ship with Powered Armor stops up to 90%.  This makes them much tougher against units that can't piece their armor, but armor rotting or max piercing makes them no tougher than normally armored ships.  The Armored Golem would be a good candidate for this, along with up to a 50% health reduction since it would be taking half the current damage from all non-armor piercing sources.

Deflection Screen - This is an additional armor-like value that, while generally small, can reduce incoming damage to zero.  It is applied before any armor and just reduces the damage directly, down to zero.  So "Deflection Screen: 2000" would reduce all incoming damage by 2000 before armor.  Good for trimming the damage of smaller ships.  I could also see some small ships having Ignores Deflection if they are designed to be the swarm that takes down the giant.

Dispersion Field - This caps the maximum damage/second the unit can take at 5% of its maximum health.  So for the most part no amount of firepower can kill it from full health in under 20 seconds.  This could be tracking by having a "damage taken" pool.  When damage is taken, this pool goes up by that amount.  Every 0.2 seconds, the pool is reduced by 1% of the ship's maximum health, down to zero.  Once the pool reaches a size of 5% of the ship's maximum health it becomes immune to damage until the pool falls below that threshold.  This would allow a single large hit (say, from an Artillery Golem) to punch through the field since the pool wouldn't be over the 5% mark until after that massive damage was applied to (and probably destroyed) the target.

Damping Field - This heavily reduces damage the more damage that is taken in a short period of time, but in a much less "all-or-nothing" way than the Dispersion Field.  Effectively some percentage of all incoming damage becomes temporary shielding that reduces incoming damage.  The temporary shielding works just like the Deflection Screen, but its value starts at zero.  Every time the ship loses health, a percentage of that amount is added to the shielding to stop additional attacks.  The temporary shielding loses 10% of its value (minimum of 500) every second.  So with Damping Field 30%, if the ship were hit for 120k damage, it would gain 36k Deflection Screen.  After one second, that Deflection Screen would drop 3600 points.  Then 3240, and so on.  After 41 seconds it would be gone.

* All numbers just pulled out of the air to provide examples.

[keith.lamothe]

Powered Armor - Normal armor allows a ship to stop up to 80% of a shots incoming damage.  A ship with Powered Armor stops up to 90%.

That's doable, and something I've thought about for motherships particularly.  There's just a mathematical limit to the raw damage a ship can take when health and armor are bounded by the Int32 datatype without some other code changes.  That said, it may not be a good idea for ships to get much beefier than the ability to take 10 billion "raw" damage.  The number creep has to stop somewhere.

Deflection Screen - This is an additional armor-like value that, while generally small, can reduce incoming damage to zero.

That's also doable but a serious pain to balance, and leading to various bug reports about either ships firing at stuff they can't do any damage to or (if we fix autotargeting to not do that) ships not firing at stuff that has no obvious listed immunity.

Dispersion Field - This caps the maximum damage/second the unit can take at 5% of its maximum health.

This is something we could implement but would make the autotargeting logic severely sub-optimal and thus we'd either have to make it significantly more sophisticated (at high CPU cost) or ships would just be a lot "dumber" when dealing with ships with dispersion fields, and human players would have a lot of reason to micro the battle.  Some games do well with micro-heavy mechanics, but AIW isn't one of them.

Damping Field - This heavily reduces damage the more damage that is taken in a short period of time, but in a much less "all-or-nothing" way than the Dispersion Field.

Sort of a mix between the previous two.  Could be done, but the autotargeting would have a hard time taking it properly into account.

[Hearteater]

(on Powered Armor)
That's doable, and something I've thought about for motherships particularly.  There's just a mathematical limit to the raw damage a ship can take when health and armor are bounded by the Int32 datatype without some other code changes.  That said, it may not be a good idea for ships to get much beefier than the ability to take 10 billion "raw" damage.  The number creep has to stop somewhere.

Ideally nothing should ever do more damage than the Artillery Golem already does.  The counter to Powered Armor is armor piercing, not more raw damage.  So from a damage perspective, I don't think Powered Armor would create damage creep.  And it actually helps from the health side of things but not requiring quite as much health on the big guys.

(on Deflection Screen)
That's also doable but a serious pain to balance, and leading to various bug reports about either ships firing at stuff they can't do any damage to or (if we fix autotargeting to not do that) ships not firing at stuff that has no obvious listed immunity.

I think this might be better solved by updating feedback to players about why ships don't fire at certian things.  This is already a problem with Antimatter Starships and even Bomber Starships.  Oh, and Anti-starship Arachnids!  Maybe if when you click to target a ship and some of your selected units cannot fire on that ship, a small Immune message pops up over the target (think scrolling combat text in an MMO).  It might say, "Immune to Anti-Matter Ammo" if that is the reason one or more ships can't hurt it.  With Deflection Screens that are too strong, it might read "Blocked by Deflection Screens".  You'd only need one message per reason, not per ship or even ship type that cannot attack.

(on Dispersion Field and basically Damping Field)
This is something we could implement but would make the autotargeting logic severely sub-optimal and thus we'd either have to make it significantly more sophisticated (at high CPU cost) or ships would just be a lot "dumber" when dealing with ships with dispersion fields, and human players would have a lot of reason to micro the battle.  Some games do well with micro-heavy mechanics, but AIW isn't one of them.

Very true.  I don't know exactly how you do auto-targetting, but would a secondary target work?  So if a ship selects a target with a Dispersion/Damping Field it also picks a second target to fall back on once the Dispersion Field kicks in.  Obviously it would add some overhead, but would it be too much given the hopefully limited number of units that would use Dispersion/Damping Fields?  I seem to recall targetting selection is done via a database-like query (I can't recall the name of the system Chris mentioned), so presumably the second best target is just one step further down on the targeting list.  Obviously nothing is ever that simple in reality .