Exo-waves on difficulty 8

[TechSY730]

Is it just me, or are the exo-waves at difficulty 8 significantly harder than the ones on 7.6? I'm playing with Spirecraft (hard) with a difficulty 8 AI, and the first two waves I barely managed to take out before my home was destroyed, and the third one successfully penetrated my (admittedly less defended than I wanted it to be) home, and destroyed it.

This should be interesting. I've already sort of learned what to do next time (like, unlock grav turrets soonser), but anyone else got any good tips (other than making sure my forces and a good bundle of turrets are at my home at the time of the attack, which I sort of failed to do)?

[Kittens]

Tangentially related, I rather dislike how exo waves 'cheat' their way through speed reducing effects. I know you can shoot the lead ship and slow them down like that, but it's pretty unintuitive and generates the feeling that "your defenses don't work because we say so, hah!".

Why were they designed like this? What is the reasoning here?

[keith.lamothe]

Is it just me, or are the exo-waves at difficulty 8 significantly harder than the ones on 7.6?

On 7.6 they get a 1.3 multiplier to their budget, and on 8.0 they get a 1.5 multiplier.  So harder, yes, but I don't think hugely so.

Tangentially related, I rather dislike how exo waves 'cheat' their way through speed reducing effects. I know you can shoot the lead ship and slow them down like that, but it's pretty unintuitive and generates the feeling that "your defenses don't work because we say so, hah!".

Why were they designed like this? What is the reasoning here?

The whole speed boosting thing started with the hybrids: without it, coherent mixed fleets are either impossible, potentially glacially slow, or limited to ships at least as fast as the lead ship (which is a major downturn in variety, particularly if the lead ship winds up being a Raid Starship or whatever).  So all follower ships are automatically set to lead-ship-speed + 5.  It's an advantage, but not totally out there when considering human tactics like transports, and otherwise the mechanic wouldn't work at all.

This boost makes the follower ships effectively immune to most speed reduction.  I actually added a rule at some point that they would "drop out" of the boost if engine damaged (which, I suppose, would make it really easy to disrupt the coherence of an exo's fleet ships by ambushing it with a Riot mkII with a tazer), but nothing else will override the boost.

That was all well and good, I think, but then a totally unrelated change was made to make most larger-than-a-starship ships (including spirecraft and golems) "immune to gravity".  Meaning immune to grav turrets and logistical stations.  I've never liked that change   One of the points of the grav turrets, I thought, was that the only counter to them was to blow them up.

So, if the lead ship is immune to gravity, the whole exo is effectively immune to gravity.  Unintended consequences, eh?  On the other hand, grav turrets are really one of those we-all-know-they're-overpowered-but-they're-fun-that-way units, so implicitly making exos the counter to grav-based defenses isn't the end of the world.

Anyway, there it is

[TechSY730]

That was all well and good, I think, but then a totally unrelated change was made to make most larger-than-a-starship ships (including spirecraft and golems) "immune to gravity".  Meaning immune to grav turrets and logistical stations.  I've never liked that change   One of the points of the grav turrets, I thought, was that the only counter to them was to blow them up.

Didn't you mention that you plan on revisiting gravity immunity at some point, and cutting back on the number of things that get it?

[keith.lamothe]

That was all well and good, I think, but then a totally unrelated change was made to make most larger-than-a-starship ships (including spirecraft and golems) "immune to gravity".  Meaning immune to grav turrets and logistical stations.  I've never liked that change   One of the points of the grav turrets, I thought, was that the only counter to them was to blow them up.

Didn't you mention that you plan on revisiting gravity immunity at some point, and cutting back on the number of things that get it?

I may have, but not sure what I can do there, actually.  In the end having it not be so easy to slow down exos isn't such a bad thing.  I'm curious to know if the riot mkII + tazer works as well as I think it should.

[chemical_art]

The speed thing just got a lot worst with H/K's.

In my last game they simply absorbed damage as they ran to the homeworld. Quite frustrating. I know I wanted them but I didn't imagine that they would do this. Can they be slower?

[keith.lamothe]

In my last game they simply absorbed damage as they ran to the homeworld.

Were they immune to forcefields too, or do they just gun down the ff's so fast it didn't matter?

[chemical_art]

In my last game they simply absorbed damage as they ran to the homeworld.

Were they immune to forcefields too, or do they just gun down the ff's so fast it didn't matter?

Like a knife through butter. That is with me using 3 spire building's shields and armaments.

[TechSY730]

In my last game they simply absorbed damage as they ran to the homeworld.

Were they immune to forcefields too, or do they just gun down the ff's so fast it didn't matter?

Like a knife through butter. That is with me using 3 spire building's shields and armaments.

... 

What mark level was it?

[chemical_art]

In my last game they simply absorbed damage as they ran to the homeworld.

Were they immune to forcefields too, or do they just gun down the ff's so fast it didn't matter?

Like a knife through butter. That is with me using 3 spire building's shields and armaments.

... 

What mark level was it?

The memories of that game are hazy...you see though it is not just the H/K. It also involves the rest of the force who punctures through the outer ring of defenses. Once your shell collapses the H/K can trash human defenses on their own.

An MK III can trash most things mere humans can provide. But the game I was doing had some more insane number counts. An MK V leading 5 weaker ones were the norm.

Do keep in mind this was co op.

[Kittens]

FYI, the H/K's are what triggered my initial complaint about speed reductions as well. You just have no time to kill them before they reach a wormhole, and they'll tear down any FF in their way, unless you have the majority of your Spire fleet present or similarly ridiculous firepower. In my case, that was 3 fully equipped Dreadnoughts, 6 Battleships, 12 Cruisers, 20 Destroyers and around 30 Frigates. (Oh, and my entire non-spire fleet.)

[keith.lamothe]

Just how fast are these H/K's going?  Their actual base speed is 22, which goes though various mathematical tomfoolery and probably winds up in the 30s or something like that... but from the sound of it they're going an awful lot faster than that.  Which could happen in an exo-wave if they weren't the leader... but if they aren't the leader, the only thing bigger is a mothership, which has a base speed of 10.

I mean, sure, I can slow down the H/K's if base-22 is just too much, but I wanted to check if they were being somehow led by something with like 50+.

[TechSY730]

...but I wanted to check if they were being somehow led by something with like 50+.

This could be fixed by REQUIRING the leader to be the most expensive unit in the group (or at worst, a tie).

[keith.lamothe]

...but I wanted to check if they were being somehow led by something with like 50+.

This could be fixed by REQUIRING the leader to be the most expensive unit in the group (or at worst, a tie).

Well, it already does, really.  It would be a bug, but those happen occasionally

[TechSY730]

To answer your previous question, on mid ship caps with normal speed, H/Ks get a 64 speed, which seems a bit high.

Also, are they immune to speed boosting? It seems like both these and motherships should be.