AI War - A Guide to Golems

[chemical_art]

In a pinch, the fancier health things could be for player versions of ships, while the ai simply gets a boost in raw health and/or armor.

It would avoid headaches for the player as well. I can imagine now exo waves with golems that cannot be killed due to mechanics when they should have and instead go smash command stations.

[keith.lamothe]

In a pinch, the fancier health things could be for player versions of ships, while the ai simply gets a boost in raw health and/or armor.

But then the AI ship autotargeting is dumb and causes bug reports and so on.  Less so than player ships having that problem, but still something I really try to avoid.

It would avoid headaches for the player as well. I can imagine now exo waves with golems that cannot be killed due to mechanics when they should have and instead go smash command stations.

Yea, I probably won't be buffing the AI versions much, except perhaps the health on the regenerator golem or whatever (and making sure it's working).

[TechSY730]

Yea, I probably won't be buffing the AI versions much, except perhaps the health on the regenerator golem or whatever (and making sure it's working).

I would say that the non-exo versions of AI golems need buffing. As many have pointed out, 10% HP of regular versions is a bit too easy to deal with.

Just IMO, it just seems distasteful to me to give the player golems a new defensive mechanic without giving the AI versions the same mechanic (though perhaps, the AI versions having lesser magnitudes of the new stat)

[Wanderer]

There are other ways to beef up golems and make them into the powerhouses they're meant to be, and not really need to get into any 'new' complex mechanics.

1) They are capital ships, let them fight other capitals.  Give all of them Command-Grade 5.0 or higher boosting.
2) Make Hive Swarms ignore gravity, or only be 1/2 affected by gravity.  They can go slower if necessary to remove some of the OP this might cause, just make sure they can still catch raiders eventually, please.
3) Give Artillery an AoE effect similar to lightning turrets.  Also let it HAMMER FFs of any kind.  At least Zenith Bombards can target smaller ships with their 30 second wait.  The Arty Golem is quite picky about what it can shoot.  Sometimes that's good though, it waits for a zenith starship to enter the system instead of firing on a Fighter III.  It's just kinda silly most of the time unless you're base killing.  Either that or give it a support craft mechanic, though I know that's a new function.  Perhaps a set of short range anti-fighter guns as well as the heavy cannon?
3a) In particular for Artillery, make them H/K killers.  Use an old tool with limited usage as a counter to one of the massive new AI toys.  (On further thought, with the 'higher price' of an H/K, this may be less useful)
4) Give Black Widow dampening of 10000 (this is purposely LESS than the tractors hold targets at).  Increase # tractors to 200-250 (scaled to ship volume settings).  It's built to detain and stall.  It should not be getting smacked around by its own prey.
5) Cursed is actually fine as it is, glass cannon.  Heavy, Ultra-Heavy, Structural boosts would be good for both this and Artillery, along with the previously mentioned command-grade boost.
6) Regenerator Golem needs more speed.  One of the problems for player usage is it hangs back with the Missile Frigates.  You can't keep it with a strike team.  It doesn't need more health per-se, as that would affect its usefulness (though a small bump to 300k would be nice), what it needs is armor.  A LOT of armor.  You don't dare bring it under 40% if you want to keep it around, and in a reasonably sized fight you can get there QUICK.  Also, it should auto-power down at 20%, not 1%, though you should be allowed to turn it back on.

This would be a nice, smallish buff to them that would make them a lot more attractive.

[chemical_art]

When I was referring to the player only tactics, I was referring to the maximum damage percent per second.

Golems require micro because they drop so fast. If they were limited to 10% max damage per second. It wouldn't require any refinements on the golems that much. Yes, you could use them to lead a wormhole charge as a tank, but that would give a 10 second window at the heavy cost of repairing the golem.

The other damage mechanics, except for the armor change of minimal 10% damage, seem to intensive on the cpu.

[TechSY730]

4) Give Black Widow dampening of 10000 (this is purposely LESS than the tractors hold targets at).  Increase # tractors to 200-250 (scaled to ship volume settings).  It's built to detain and stall.  It should not be getting smacked around by its own prey.

Wouldn't do what you think it would do. Tractored units with ANY range > 0 are always allowed to hit what is tractoring them, regardless of distance. This rule is to prevent short range ships from becoming helpless in the face of tractoring units. Just imagine how upset you would be if you chose a very short but still non-zero range ship, and the AI got spire tractor platforms. It would make your bonus ship near useless without this rule.

Not sure if the black widow should be made an exception to this rule. The rule in general needs to stay, to prevent, admittedly logical, but still degenerate situations like the one described above.

[Hearteater]

Yeah, that's why I suggested the BW get paralysing tractors.  Although another option would be for her to tractor them and pull them into her, somewhat like a Maw.  Then later unload them somewhere easy to deal with them.

[TechSY730]

Yeah, that's why I suggested the BW get paralysing tractors.  Although another option would be for her to tractor them and pull them into her, somewhat like a Maw.  Then later unload them somewhere easy to deal with them.

A psuedo-maw golem, except transports instead of "digests"? Sounds cool, and it would fit with the "Spider theme". Though a full maw mechanic for it (digesting and all), would also fit that theme.

[Philo]

I kind of agree with everything except the Artillery Golem. Having a fleet and then the artillery golem just snipe off stuff is so great. And fun.

Black Widow golems I've found only to be really useful in camping out with a Super Terminal. Put the golem under a forcefield and let it tractor everything from the terminal. Also some good uses for similar under the forcefield stuff for defense.
But I don't really find it specially powerful. Either have it like "mount" itself on a place like a big siege weapon that tractors everything and is much more resistant to damage when it's mounted or... I dunno, just make the tractored troops do 20% damage against it or something.

A siege golem would be kinda cool though even if it were a new one.

Edit: Actually now reading through the thread I agree that paralyzing tractors would be the coolest and the most logical thing to go with for the Black Widow golem.

[Wanderer]

Yeah, that's why I suggested the BW get paralysing tractors.  Although another option would be for her to tractor them and pull them into her, somewhat like a Maw.  Then later unload them somewhere easy to deal with them.

A psuedo-maw golem, except transports instead of "digests"? Sounds cool, and it would fit with the "Spider theme". Though a full maw mechanic for it (digesting and all), would also fit that theme.

I likes that.  It makes sense about the tractoring, though it spoils a good idea.  In reality if the spire tractor grabs 50 ships and they're not bombers it's living to fight another day anyway (at least from the tractor'd ships), so I never really noticed that piece of the mechanic.  However, I'm not sure if the tractoring 'always can shoot' mechanic ignores dampening or not.  If it doesn't ignore dampening, it would still work.

I do like the maw idea, but it'd need a pretty high intake (2-3 ships/sec or so, perhaps it could be 5 marks/sec so it's not coreworld abusive) for that to be a powerful enough mechanic.

[Burnstreet]

My Golem rating and some thoughts:
Cursed ***** its range and speed make it the ultimate tool for conquest, defense and pacifying neutered worlds. Could maybe use some more staying power.
Armored **** firepower, HP - what do you want more?
Botnet **** your own devourer, with a bonus - though useless in the endgame, stops AI from Border-agressing into a world because of its high firepower (I consider this a bug). Could maybe use some more staying power.
Hive *** useful to block the AI from border-agressing into a world when full (same bug here), useful in defense when in a pinch, situational on the offense, the wasps get eaten in seconds on highly filled MK IV or Core worlds. I nearly never use it on the offense.
Black widow *** nice firepower, very fragile
Regen ** useful if you have many fleetships you can't replace (it can't revive spire asteroid ships, not sure about golems) or have too many resources. Needs some boosting.
Artillery * sounds nice in concept, but I find I keep mine in a safe place and use it very seldomly. can't use its range on guard posts due to radar dampening, can't fire on HKs due to them having command grade armour, can't fire on anything immune to antimatter ammo, limiting its usefulness quite much, even though its DPS is not much better than the rest. Seems to need some time before it fires after switching it on?

Minor factions:
Devourer: nice gimmick, annoying at times when your units frd into it.
Dyson Sphere: situational, depending on where it is and how fast you can free it. Dyson gatlings not being able to fire on Core units quite much limit their usefulness lategame.
Miner Golem: just a distraction

I have only encountered AI golems late in a spire campaign game after having founght some HKs from Spirecraft Hard Exos. Once you have a spire fleet that can kill HKs without many losses, Golems are simply food. We didn't even notice the mothership dying since we we busy killing the much more dangerous 15 HKs of different levels arriving with it.

Some more suggestions:

• Give the golems 15k radar dampening so that they can't be oneshotted by Bombards from halfways through the system.
• A T3 transport for Golems and other capital ships would be nice. Spire DNs fit into a transport and they are even bigger...
• Show the stats of the finished golem on its broken form (there's a ticket for that already, I believe)
• To protect them from going from full HP to 0 in a few seconds, they could get an emergency shield: if the Golem is damaged by more than 50% of it's health in 10s, it goes low power and gets a 500m HP personal shield that lasts for 15s. After these 15s the golem is powered on automatically. Powering it back on before the 15s end deactivates the shield. The hive golem does not have this shield to prevent abuse. Shield activation should be signaled by a message so that the user can try to rescue the golem immediately.

[Hearteater]

I thought Arty Golems ignored radar dampening, or am I thinking of a different unit?

[zoutzakje]

yeah I believe one of the recent patches (was it 5.018?) involved giving radar dampening immunity to the artillery golem.

[Silver]

I love hive golems. So amazing for defending your worlds or taking the brunt first enemy salvo when breaching a new world. I'd even rate them higher than the armored golem (decent for clearing guardposts where you can't/don't want to bring a full fleet in but a little underwhelming otherwise).
The black widow, sadly, seems almost useless. She simply cannot handle anything- 200-300 smaller ships are a serious threat, larger ships absolutely destroy her, she's not that great at hunting guard posts either.
Artillery-sounds great on paper but if you've got the beachhead secured, you can probably use sniper turrets and the like for smaller targets and bombers for larger targets.
Regen/botnet-haven't met these yet.

My personal ranking:
Hive- 9/10
Armored-7/10
Black Widow-2.5/10
Arty-2/10
Cursed-6.5/10 (basically, a flimsier armored)

[PokerChen]

Artillery golems being bad rated?!  I think you should definitely try:
- Sniping AI eyes and fortresses. With 4 shots to kill the former, it's faster unless you can take all the guard-posts in under two minutes. Under 1 minute if you power up two golems. I find the ability to take down spire shield guardposts and high level forcefields at range to be very useful in exposing defenses.
- Firing finishing blows in combination with implosion artillery. Wormhole guardposts and all the big ships. They ignore radar dampening.



The black widow golem's role as a tractor platform exceeds its abilities to fight, and can probably deceive people into driving one into a heavily defended tech-IV/V system... albeit I've lost more botnet golems than black widows.