Need help dealing with spire railclusters

[keith.lamothe]

I cant seem to figure out what the game calls spire railclusters (for the warp in clowns cheat), apparently nothing from bonusspirerailcluster to railcluster work. help?

spirerailcluster

And yes, I would agree that spire railclusters are somewhat OP right now. At least a cap of standard fighters should have about 50% chance of winning an equivlanent mark cap of sprie railclusters.

I wouldn't go that far, since railclusters are bonus types and fighters are triangles.  But if fighters and railclusters stay mutual counters, I think the fighter-cap should inflict at least 50% casualties on the railcluster-cap in the process of dying.

[Lancefighter]

Hm. So a cap of spirerailclusters is .. 5 ships. I mustve not noticed that when i sent in '100' that it ended up as 3 or something? I swear i tried 'spirerailcannon'

I sent in 1000 fleet points worth of spirerailclusters, and they very nearly lost to just mk1 fleet/spire/zenith starships. (12 starships v 40 railclusters) (granted, under tons of tractors that mightve pulled some agro)

When I threw in bombers and plasma starships, they seemed to do fairly well. they dont seem that strong? I dunno. Railclusters are good at killing small stuff, sure. At a cap of 5.. (mind, I was testing 8x cap of railclusters v 1x cap of starships)

For comparison, the same setup of starships lost to a 1000 points of fighters. (900 something)

[keith.lamothe]

I sent in 1000 fleet points worth of spirerailclusters, and they very nearly lost to just mk1 fleet/spire/zenith starships. (12 starships v 40 railclusters)

(...)

(mind, I was testing 8x cap of railclusters v 1x cap of starships)

Well, 3 caps of starships, just not all the same type.  But yea.

[Bognor]

Surely there are many tactics/strategies no-one's suggested to the OP yet:

• Put two or three Space Docks with engineer support near the wormhole and churn out Fighters and Space Planes to immediately replace any that are destroyed.  They're cheap enough that you can do this.  Select the Docks, hold "V", and right-click near the wormhole to have all ships built immediately move to battle.
• Use Gravity Turrets to increase the time your dps-dealing turrets have to shoot the Railclusters before the Railclusters can return fire.
• Try using Mark I Riot Control Starships with Tractors and Shields to pull a fraction of the Railclusters away from your defenses, so you don't have to deal with all of them at once.
• Augment your defenses with mines - they're extremely cheap - and Lightning Turrets - they're very powerful.
• You haven't told us whether you have spirecraft enabled, but Spirecraft Siege Towers should make decent counters.
• Strike the heart of your problem by neutering the planet that's producing the border aggression.  If its defenses seem too tough, consider taking out guard posts one by one by putting whichever fleet ships get a bonus against a target guard post in transports, moving the transports right up to the guard post, scrapping the transports to immediately unload their contents, then just whaling on the guard post until it goes down.

[Chris_Stalis]

Bognor, thank you for the suggestions. I'll try applying them. Here's my comments in order,

Put two or three Space Docks with engineer support near the wormhole and churn out Fighters and Space Planes to immediately replace any that are destroyed.  They're cheap enough that you can do this.  Select the Docks, hold "V", and right-click near the wormhole to have all ships built immediately move to battle.

Hmm... I had never considered this as a strategy. I tend to keep construction efforts in my home planet exclusively so I can pump ships out in a centralized manner. This will likely be expensive, but I'll see if it helps out any.

Use Gravity Turrets to increase the time your dps-dealing turrets have to shoot the Railclusters before the Railclusters can return fire.

I have yet to get a handle on using gravity turrets. It seems that, unless I place the turrets right at the point where the burst of ships happens, they don't do much good for me. As I prefer to defend near my "exit wormhole" (the one that would lead to a planet I'm guarding with this mil base), that's not terribly effective. Still, I can always experiment.

Augment your defenses with mines - they're extremely cheap - and Lightning Turrets - they're very powerful.

I'm still getting a feeling for how to use these effectively. Do you have any links on tips for how to pick where to put them? Is it just "ctrl+click+pray"?

You haven't told us whether you have spirecraft enabled, but Spirecraft Siege Towers should make decent counters.

I don't know what would be necessary to produce those. Is that special ship type I would get at map start?

Strike the heart of your problem by neutering the planet that's producing the border aggression.  If its defenses seem too tough, consider taking out guard posts one by one by putting whichever fleet ships get a bonus against a target guard post in transports, moving the transports right up to the guard post, scrapping the transports to immediately unload their contents, then just whaling on the guard post until it goes down.

I have actually just started learning to use this trick in this round of games. Still getting better at it, but my neutering efforts are improving. (I will make Bob Barker proud)

The case in this thread is the worst I've heard about them, but it's not the only feedback I've received that they're OP (in both human and AI hands).

Holy crap, admin comments. I've... never seen that in a game I've played before >.>

I'm a little nervous about being noticed and adding (even slightly) to a consensus for a design decisions, as I know I'm not very good and I could just be stupidly noobish about this. What I will say, though, is that the x20 shots they get feels overpowered when I'm on the receiving end of it. If the ship was more of a glass cannon, I'd cringe but know that the AI isn't going to stockpile them. But as it is, these ships fly in and amidst the chaos of the fight, steadily eat away at every single one of my defenses on the map. And as my turrets fall, the damage gets more and more concentrated so that the effect cascades. My defenses are never going to be very large in number, so my only hope is to very quickly concentrate fire with my lasers and any fighters nearby and pray the AI didn't bring enough to target everything in the first volley.

Actually, as I type that, I realize that I kinda strongly feel they should have a massive damage reduction against turrets (like, 0.01 multiplier). It seems their design is to total the light craft on the map... should they also be overwhelming defensive structures? I dunno... totally don't know enough theorycraft to justify that idea, it just feels like a step in the right direction.


Thanks to all for the comments, though. I'll keep struggling along and see if I can do a video recording of when I get those "wtf" moments. It always makes more sense when there's something to point to

[Mánagarmr]

Holy crap, admin comments. I've... never seen that in a game I've played before >.>

I'm a little nervous about being noticed and adding (even slightly) to a consensus for a design decisions, as I know I'm not very good and I could just be stupidly noobish about this.

You'll notice that happening a lot. Keith likes to get dirty when it comes to his game design. So he trawls the forums a lot.

Also, don't worry about complaining about things. If they are OP, they'll get a nerf (after consensus discussion), if you are noobish, people will point out strategies for you to try. So never be afraid to say anything about anything around here. As long as you behave, no one will smack you over the head. This is a very, very friendly community.

As for the actual problem at hand, I've yet to face any Railclusters honestly. They're too new to have showed up in any of my games so far.

[Bognor]

As I prefer to defend near my "exit wormhole" (the one that would lead to a planet I'm guarding with this mil base)...

Oooooooohhhhhh... I think that's your problem right there.  Generally people defend the "entrance" wormhole, where enemy ships warp in.  That's why people like worlds that don't have too many wormholes.  You don't want to let the nasties fly around, taking down your harvesters and causing chaos on their own terms.  You want all your turrets and mobile ships to hit them the moment they appear.

Gravity Turrets: I make a triangle with two of these and the wormhole as the corners.  Enemy ships' anticipated path - generally from the wormhole to the command station - would pass through the middle of a line joining the two Gravity Turrets.  They're set up so that their ranges just overlap the wormhole.

Mines: Right up against the wormhole, and between the wormhole and the command station (or other priority target, such as Advanced Factory).

Spirecraft:  Only available if you have the Light of the Spire expansion enabled and chose "Spirecraft (easy)" or whatever as a minor faction when setting up the game.

Exit wormhole: If you're worried about ships getting through, try parking a forcefield over the wormhole, such that ships would need to either pass through or destroy the forcefield to get through.  Railclusters can't do the former and would take a long time to do the latter.  (You could also rebuild your Military Command Station near the exit wormhole.  It will fire shots that push back enemy ships.  No need to manually destroy the old one if you want to build a new one - game will take care of it.)

Keith: He's no mere admin, he's the guy who's masterminded the game's development since Chris has been busy on other projects.  Also incredibly helpful and receptive to comments, even from newbies 

Bob Barker: And Lorena Bobbitt.

[Kahuna]

Spire Railclusters are retardedly overpowered. Just Disabled Ancient Shadows expansion until they're nerfed.

[Mánagarmr]

Spire Railclusters are retardedly overpowered. Just Disabled Ancient Shadows expansion until they're nerfed.

Thank you for this insightful post backed by facts.

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm... I had never considered this as a strategy. I tend to keep construction efforts in my home planet exclusively so I can pump ships out in a centralized manner. This will likely be expensive, but I'll see if it helps out any.

If you're just cranking out fighters, it's pretty cheap.  Fighters are really really cheap

The challenge would probably be more in keeping the space docks alive if the railclusters are going so bananas on everything.  But it could be done with proper placement.

I have yet to get a handle on using gravity turrets. It seems that, unless I place the turrets right at the point where the burst of ships happens, they don't do much good for me. As I prefer to defend near my "exit wormhole" (the one that would lead to a planet I'm guarding with this mil base), that's not terribly effective.

Yea, you may want to try a ton of defenses right on the wormhole they're coming through.  Particularly a big bank of tractor, grav, lightning, and flak turrets under a pile of forcefields (which will reduce the damage output of any of your units under them but the lightning and flak turrets get less reduction from that).

On the other hand, back on the exit-defense strategy, if you can make sure that the enemies will go straight from wormhole A to your exit wormhole, you can place a dense line of mines (area mines for bonus points, and emp mines too if there's anything that can be paralyzed coming through) running between the two wormholes.  If the enemies are going after your harvesters you can just scrap them right as the enemies start coming through the wormhole to keep them focused.

Holy crap, admin comments. I've... never seen that in a game I've played before >.>

I'm a little nervous about being noticed and adding (even slightly) to a consensus for a design decisions, as I know I'm not very good and I could just be stupidly noobish about this.

Ongoing changes based on feedback is pretty much par for the course around here   But yea, I don't generally just nerf-hammer something on one person's say-so (however much proof-by-emphatic-assertion they may utilize, to Kahuna's dismay ).  I've been watching the railclusters for a while now.  Based on Lancefighter's numbers I'm going to hold off on a stat nerf on these for now though I may still switch them from polycrystal to composite to remove the counters-its-triangle-counter dynamic.  But the stat nerf, if any, can probably wait until it wins a nerf poll.

[zoutzakje]

yeah developer comments are quite common around here (I mean, just look at Keith's post count ). Arcen Games believes community feedback is important and that's one of the reasons why I'm a big fan. We can give ideas and bug reports and if Chris and Keith like it and/or agree with it, there might actually be a chance we see the suggested stuff in the game at some point in the future.
Also, having a developer of a game you like comment on your posts feels good for some reason. I don't know why.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, having a developer of a game you like comment on your posts feels good for some reason. I don't know why.

It's the brainwashing device.  Quite effective.

[zoutzakje]

Also, having a developer of a game you like comment on your posts feels good for some reason. I don't know why.

It's the brainwashing device.  Quite effective.

oh so that's what the hybrids did to me when they kidnapped me...

[chemical_art]

Railcruisers are ununusal in that their triangle ship counter, the fighter, is what the railcruiser is strong against.
 
On defense, the Railcruiser gets no bonuses against any defenses. So turrets, shields, forts, are not vulunerable. The usual polycrystal crushers, missile, laser, and sniper turrets can pound down the cruisers.

On offense, the flagship does outperform the cruiser, with its heavier armor nullfiying the cruiser's slightly higher base dps, but then the flagship is both much more durable and gets a nice 4x bonus to dps on top of its munition boosting.


Of course the flagship does cost more then 5x the cost of a spirecruiser...so your economy will cry.

I do admit the spirecruiser's hull is unusual, the usual polycrystal strength's and weaknesses don't apply to the spirecruiser. I'd expect it on paper to have a hull missile frigates counter, like composite or neutron.

[Kahuna]

oh so that's what the hybrids did to me when they kidnapped me...

Yep.. here we go again