Golems and repairing

[origami]

So I've been playing around a lot more with different types of golems and testing the advice in this threads and others.

In this game, what do you call "player attention?"  Other games call it 'micro.' 

At any rate, it seems like golems ar extremely powerful micro -> power converters.

The more you pay attention to them, the better they work, up to a point.

Still, I'm going to turn them off for a while because they seem to encourage bad habits for me.

[chemical_art]

Armored Golem for life!

[Toranth]

Armored Golem for life!

Really?  I find almost any other golem more useful - Hive and Botnet slaughter hordes of AI ships; Artillery destroys tough things (other golems, Guardpost/Guardians) usually in 1 shot, from infinite range;  Cursed can do major damage to anything in a system, or scatter it among lots of targets, plus it is quite cheap;  Black Widow can instantly neutralize 200 ships, and are decent at killing others;  only the Regenerator is worse than the Armored, in my opinion.

Armored is tough, sure, but all golems are.  It's got good firepower, but short range and it can't scatter the attack much.  It's also very expensive to repair.  And finally, it gets toasted by Armor Rotters and their ilk.  So, that's why the Armored is my second-least-favorite golem.

Of course, that's kind of like saying "This lottery ticket didn't win me ask many millions as the last one". 

[Kahuna]

Armored Golem is "meant" to take damage.. so it should be much cheaper to repair. Then it would be about as good as Widow.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9460

[chemical_art]

Armored golem is the most expensive but due to its massive hp it is actually the cheapest to repair, because its hp per m + c is highest...so for example for every 100k you put into the armored goelm you get more hp then you would any other golem, and this is before accounting for its heavy armor. Unless the ai has armor rotters I pay more in attrition then I do in actual damage it suffers unless it repels a wave alone. On damage with its high damage bursts and low reload rate it delievers the most consistent amount of damage, slaying most fleetships at 5 per second or most starships in less then 4 seconds. It can hit anything great, and is strong enough to go into a wave headfirst and smash it alone.

However, the greatest thing about the armored golem is that its insane dps and health causes its firepower to go to the roof. This plays havoc with ai logic...to the point the ai will attack the golem before anything else, even a command station. In short, the golem is a tank that takes a beating and gives it in return.

[chemical_art]

HP cost comparisons of golems:

Cursed golem   : 3 million resources, 60 million hp.       1 : 20 ratio of resource to hp
Artillery golem  : 8 million resources, 100 million hp.      1 : 12.5 ratio
Black W golem  : 10 million resources, 200 million hp.   1: 19 ratio
Botnet golem   : 20 million resources, 100 million hp     1 : 5 ratio
Armored golem : 20 million resource, 500 million hp      1 : 25 ratio

Armored golem is the most efficient per hp, and the runner up attritions twice as fast. The golem has over 15 times the armor of any other golem as well.

[chemical_art]

DPS of golems:

Cursed Golem : [10k armor piercing] 160,000 x 20 per 2 = 1.6 million per second
Black W golem: [no armor piercing, 200x paralyze] 140,000 x 50 per 4 = 1.75 million per second
Armored golem: [999k armor piercing] 1 million x 5 per 2 = 2.5 million per second.
Artillery golem: ...long story short, it kills a non artillery immune thing every 8 seconds
Botnet golem: ...long story short for anything that can be reclaimed, it kills 25 of them per second

Armored golem has the highest dps of weapon fire that can attack anything.

[keith.lamothe]

DPS of golems:

Cursed Golem : [10k armor piercing] 160,000 x 20 per 2 = 1.6 million per second
Black W golem: [no armor piercing, 200x paralyze] 140,000 x 50 per 4 = 1.75 million per second
Armored golem: [999k armor piercing] 1 million x 5 per 2 = 2.5 million per second.
Artillery golem: ...long story short, it kills a non artillery immune thing every 8 seconds
Botnet golem: ...long story short for anything that can be reclaimed, it kills 25 of them per second

Armored golem has the highest dps of weapon fire that can attack anything.

Hive Golem: All of it.  All the DPS.

[Toranth]

DPS of golems:

Cursed Golem : [10k armor piercing] 160,000 x 20 per 2 = 1.6 million per second
Black W golem: [no armor piercing, 200x paralyze] 140,000 x 50 per 4 = 1.75 million per second
Armored golem: [999k armor piercing] 1 million x 5 per 2 = 2.5 million per second.
Artillery golem: ...long story short, it kills a non artillery immune thing every 8 seconds
Botnet golem: ...long story short for anything that can be reclaimed, it kills 25 of them per second

Armored golem has the highest dps of weapon fire that can attack anything.

Hive Golem: All of it.  All the DPS.

Yeah, 140 million DPS does kind of beat the other golems... with a baseball bat.


While the Armored Golem has good resource/HP costs it has high resource/sec costs, and its short range REQUIRES that it go toe-to-toe with things that can shoot back.  Cursed Golems, on the other hand, have the extreme range precisely so that they won't need to get shot.

I suppose it's a playstyle difference.  I prefer not to risk my uniques, so I don't usually use Armored in the circumstances it would stand out - Wormhole assaults, for example.  I'd rather suicide a raid/riot squad to do some clearing first, then send in the important stuff.  Looking at the numbers... It's pretty well balanced.  Each golem is good at what it does.

[chemical_art]

Fair enough, but it comes with a slow reload rate, cost in resources from attrition, and is useless to gravity, so it still isn't as reliable as the armored.

[Toranth]

Fair enough, but it comes with a slow reload rate, cost in resources from attrition, and is useless to gravity, so it still isn't as reliable as the armored.

In the end, they all die to the H/Ks anyway.

[chemical_art]

Fair enough, but it comes with a slow reload rate, cost in resources from attrition, and is useless to gravity, so it still isn't as reliable as the armored.

In the end, they all die to the H/Ks anyway.

It's the only thing aside from the mothership that can stop an armored true enough.

I forgot hives took either 8.3 minutes or 16.6 minutes to fully stock up (can't tell if the hive recovers a wasp at 1 / sec or 1 / 2 secs), but during that time the armored golem gives out 500 million or 1 billion damage over the same amount of time, lol.

But that alpha with the hives, oh my, if the foe is not surrounded by gravity or immune to blades, that hurts!

[Kahuna]

Fair enough, but it comes with a slow reload rate, cost in resources from attrition, and is useless to gravity, so it still isn't as reliable as the armored.

In the end, they all die to the H/Ks anyway.

It's the only thing aside from the mothership that can stop an armored true enough.

I forgot hives took either 8.3 minutes or 16.6 minutes to fully stock up (can't tell if the hive recovers a wasp at 1 / sec or 1 / 2 secs), but during that time the armored golem gives out 500 million or 1 billion damage over the same amount of time, lol.

Hive Golems aren't used like that Sending 1 wasp at a time would be useless. You use it only when you really have to and when it has a full load or at least 1 or 2 hundred wasps. It's by far the best Golem at clearing the AI homeworlds and stopping exos. Even H/Ks. Actually it's the only Golem that's good vs exos Oh and an Exo will own an Armored Golem

[chemical_art]

Fair enough, but it comes with a slow reload rate, cost in resources from attrition, and is useless to gravity, so it still isn't as reliable as the armored.

In the end, they all die to the H/Ks anyway.

It's the only thing aside from the mothership that can stop an armored true enough.

I forgot hives took either 8.3 minutes or 16.6 minutes to fully stock up (can't tell if the hive recovers a wasp at 1 / sec or 1 / 2 secs), but during that time the armored golem gives out 500 million or 1 billion damage over the same amount of time, lol.

Hive Golems aren't used like that Sending 1 wasp at a time would be useless. You use it only when you really have to and when it has a full load or at least 1 or 2 hundred wasps. It's by far the best Golem at clearing the AI homeworlds and stopping exos. Even H/Ks. Actually it's the only Golem that's good vs exos Oh and an Exo will own an Armored Golem

Lol, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

Of course you only send the wasps in when the hive is full, and that process takes between 8 to 16 minutes. What I was driving at is that you are paying a princey sum in attrition for those minutes of time compared to accomplishing the same thing in less then 5 minutes with the armored golem, and that the armored golem could charge the exo head on. In addition, with exo waves usually breaking up into groups, the armored golem can defeat one battlegroup of the exo wave then move to another planet and do the same, while the hive is left with overkill defending on world and helpless to defend the next. The armored golem is hardly short ranged: at ~12k range it can somewhat kite most things to devasting effect and I do that when I want to clear worlds. It won't outrun enemy craft, but since all craft swarm to kill it the golem can run away and extend the time the full force even reaches it, and kills most things before a second salvo is sent. Using this para kite I managed to slay 500 V ships in my homeworld while the command station was left untouched.

It all comes to play style though. If you want the golem which every 5-10 minutes which gives a limitted "I win" button and hides the rest of the time the hive is great. If you want the golem which can run around kiting exo waves while the rest of your fleet and command station are safe while always giving intense dps you pick the armored golem.


Or you have your cake and eat it too and get both 

[Faulty Logic]

I happen to like every golem but the regen.  In order of ascending awesome, excluding Mr. Botnet:

Regen: gah. Every time I find a regen instead of a different golem, I am sad. The only time I find them good is when you have two of them, teleporting engineers, and excess resources. And still, I would rather have other golems.

Armored: The armored is my second least favorite, because it doesn't really solve problems that the fleet cannot. However, when I want to glass an AI system with no casualties beyond metal and crystal, this is what I turn to.

Cursed: Long-range fleetship killer. Best simple boost to fleet power outside of a hive. And is really cheap to use.

Widow: insta-neutralizes 200 ships, and kills stuff fast. Excellent for removing those bombers from the home forcefield or grabbing a bunch of ships from a wormhole blob. I never notice the engine damage, though.

Artillery: problem structure? Gone. Duplicates of this one, however, are not nearly as useful as the first one.

Hive: If every golem were a hive golem, the AI wouldn't stand a chance. Just one of these can repel the first and second exo-wave on its own. You can use it to defend multiple planets as well, you don't have to release the full load when unloading. On offence, it is, essentially, an AIP-free nuke you can use every 16 minutes. Which also works on the AIHWs. Also is the only golem to stand a chance against an HK.