Paralyzers too weak?

[RCIX]

I tried the Zenith paralyzer now. In a fight with ~80 fighters, 170 mkIs were getting shredded if not for the nearby cruisersfrigates lobbing shells at them. I was under the impression that they could at least freeze a comparable size group. Surely they need to be boosted some?

[x4000]

Like munitions boosters, these are meant to be used in concert with other ship types -- on their own, they are indeed too weak to do very well.  But, when paired with other ships they act as something of a force multiplier and can be pretty devastating in theory.  Now, I have not played with them enough to know if they are perfectly balanced or not, but that's the general intent there.  The fact that they lose against a smaller force when they are by themselves is no surprise, at any rate.

[RCIX]

But they can't freeze enough ships to be useful (unless i build them *all*) and they'll easily get picked off.

[x4000]

Well, again, I'm not sure that the balance is perfect.  But I arrived at the current balance through some testing, and in my tests this was what felt right so far.  Basically, they won't freeze everything, but they'll freeze at least a third of the opposition at a time if you have them in equal numbers to the opposition -- and really, having 1/3 fewer ships shooting at your ships is an enormous advantage.  This isn't like shield bearers or decoy drones (which take damage), or counter-shooters (which only block certain kinds of shots), or even force fields (which take damage and don't block all kinds of shots).  Rather, these make the enemy ships affected completely useless during the interval in which they are frozen.  It's a deceptively powerful ability, for that reason.  Still might be on the weak side, I don't know, but that's not what my past testing had indicated so far.  At the moment, I just need more data.

[RCIX]

I'll take your word for it

Maybe they're just not my cup of plasma...

[Darloth]

I tried them quite heavily in a multiplayer game, and they made for a rockier start than usual - having essentially no extra damage in my initial combat fleet made taking worlds more difficult than usual. On the other hand, they're proving very handy a little later - my fleet takes less damage from a wide variety of things, almost any truly dangerous threats can be neutralized a lot sooner than if I had to actually kill it, and I have small squads of them here and there keeping astro-trains paralyzed, which is amusing if nothing else. They work very effectively to kill turret-trains, since you can freeze them within your own turret radius.

In short, they don't make the best starting ship unless you have a specific strategy for using them, but as an upgrade you happen to run across in game I think they'd be just fine.

[x4000]

That's very good information -- thanks Darloth!  I will move this to the strategy forum, as I think it has relevance there.

[soMe_RandoM]

having strong mix of parilzers and units or turrets make them more effective. they are best work when you use them with spiders thus it an hard hitter. get an co op with parilzers and spiders and take on one of the mark 4 planets with the weaks link.(no sheilding if no inflitrators at start or similar) then intercept get spiders to damage the engines of the enemy before it hit parilzers then or get the mobile ships left with the parilzers then spiders then when you decide to take out the core ships yust send in the parilizers sending them off. then cherry picking the core ships off. i would love to do this with anyone willing to play as spidders or parilizers. you can do this solo but it takes way longer and if the planet that mrk 4 is close to home planet then co op is best suited as the spidders you would need would heaps like 80. before you attack. be weary of the others

[Sizzle]

Holy run on sentences batman! 

Sounds quite complicated / involved.  I tend to go for simple tactics, because simple works and doesn't tend to fall apart.  Also it usually involves less micro, which is a good thing in my book.

[soMe_RandoM]

Holy run on sentences batman! 

Sounds quite complicated / involved.  I tend to go for simple tactics, because simple works and doesn't tend to fall apart.  Also it usually involves less micro, which is a good thing in my book.

some units need effective micro management but i dn think it intentional but it a major part of the mechanics of the game as it involves the limitations of of the human player and the huge difference between. Ai and human play (i might start new topic on what ppl think about Ai difference.

[Sizzle]

some units need effective micro management but i dn think it intentional but it a major part of the mechanics of the game as it involves the limitations of of the human player and the huge difference between. Ai and human play (i might start new topic on what ppl think about Ai difference.

Microing is not really intended as a major part of the mechanics of the game.  It does exist, and those that wish to do so may, but x4000 doesn't really want / intend it to be *required* to get good performance out of units.  If something gets to the level of "if you want to make this unit decent to use, you must micro it", then something is wrong, and it should probably be looked at by Chris and/or Keith.

For more of what the intent is on Microing ships, see:

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Microing

A good quote from there is : 'microing [is] not something that should be required for expert AI War play'.  And I agree.  Overall positioning of ships and some tactics, is not micro in my opinion, but any tactic that requires micro to do well (to the point where it's considered *the* way to use the unit), maybe should be built in as part of the AI of the unit, or else adjusted in some manner.

[soMe_RandoM]

might be . but it is an flaw the ai dont have that the humman player do and that low power mode that humman players can advoid shooting thus to:
1. target more apropiate units thus meaning long reloads or AOE (electric shuttles) are best manage and should not be left at the mercy of the AI as it does every thing it can to make AOE & long reloads units useless. eg send 1 space tank to long reload units. takes damage then gos away so the laser gattilings can own the units with fast shooting.
2.to adviod detection. as invis is realy good having it perimate when you want to have an task force attacking planets through huge number of warps away is an givin then thus meaning some units need to be on low power + you then doing that at that moment need to manage power before so units dont have to be scraped because of the sudden power jump.

as what i mean by micro managment is all the buildings ecter in the game need to individualy placed ecter to gain best from the ships other wize it still would work but not recomended as the ai might not do thoes things at that moment but if you see anything like that at all then it worth to pay attention to the units for that moment when the ai decides to attack your units and if that have to select 1 unit to set off the electric shuttles (micro 1 unit) thus meaning you minimized the damage capibilitys of the infinate damage that could be caused from electric shuttles. when they are verseing you & large numbers.