Why would I research these things?

[Traveller]

There's a lot of things on my research list that I almost never see a reason to research, but expect I might want someday in special circumstances (non-raid combat starships, EMP mines, fortress III, warp sensors, any turret for which a controller might exist until I've scouted the whole map).

And then there's a short list of things that I can't imagine EVER wanting.  Maybe you guys can help me out, tell me if I'm missing something.  I'm playing on difficulty 7, currently struggling on 7.3, but plan to make it to 8 before too long.

• Flak and lightning turrets.  I hate researching turrets anyway, thanks to the insanely powerful controllers, but I always expect to deal with lots of little ships with MLRS instead.  If I run into missile immunity problems, I turn to fortresses.  Even a full cap of both Flak and Lightning seems pretty weak, and I usually don't even bother capturing their controllers.  Am I missing something here?  Are they stronger than I think--even when you have to pay knowledge for mark II and III?
• Area mines.  I guess this is kind of the same issue with hitting lots of little guys, but I get almost nothing out of mines.  These cost 2,000 knowledge.  If you stack your whole cap on a wormhole, and somehow they ALL go off, you're sitting on 15 million potential damage--but that's insane, there's no way you'll trip all of them, and it doesn't seem like their radius is big enough to justify it.  Killing an average mark III fleet ship is around 400,000 hit points, that needs eight mines.  Is that a realistic range to expect to hit?  I keep expecting that a big minefield will deal maybe 100,000 hit points per ship, am I estimating too low?  Also--I know it helps hit mine avoidant ships, but how often do you ever run across those, with them grouped up with something these mines can hit?  (In any other game, I'd get these for offensive purposes, but the AI is always too smart to lure into my traps.)
• Harvester Exo-Shield.  Costs 750.  If mines didn't auto-rebuild, I could see the convenience here, but I can't remember the last time I even cared if my mines got shot at.  Let me think a bit:  Harvester Mark IIs produce 30 metal a second.  If I have to rebuild a harvester, let's say I have to wait two minutes to get the system all cleaned out and fire them back up, plus 1600 metal to rebuild.  That's a total cost of about 5000 metal that the shield /might/ save me from, if they attack in small enough numbers to only kill unprotected ones.  Even if I would otherwise lose a hundred harvesters a game, it saves me about 500,000 metal.  Considering that you still have to invest to build these things, and comparing the cost for those potential savings to a distribution node, it's a pretty bad deal.  The ONLY advantage I can see here, is a tactical advantage from stalling your enemies while they dink around shooting harvesters...but isn't the AI too smart to fall for that at higher levels?
• Decloaker.  I can understand tachyon emitters on defense, because you need to hit cloaked ships where your turrets are.  But I've never had a problem with the enemy's cloaked ships refusing to reveal themselves by shooting me when I'm attacking.  If I need to detect something that moves when defending, I just pop up a tachyon drone.
• Riot ships.  These are the most expensive to research, more than twice as much as the others, and I just don't understand why.  They have 1/5th the health of most other starships with only double the cap, and their modules' damage output just doesn't make me gleeful.  Any time I've wanted to use one to take out small fry, it just gets ripped to shreds.
• Scout Starship III by itself.  Scout Starship II is cheap and good for dodging ion cannons.  Scout III gives you enough raw numbers to put eyes on every planet you could ever care about.  But it always feels more like "Scout Starship I is free, II is 250 knowledge, and mobile counter-missile coverage is 5,500 more."
• Economic Orbital Command Stations.  This is the big one, and actually the main reason I decided to write this post.  WHY?  It gives no buffs at all, and has no game changing tier 3 advantage.  Ooo, at tier 3 you can get 100 extra metal per second (and a few hundred extra from your home base substations)...at the cost of THREE PLANETS WORTH of knowledge!  Seems like a rip off.  Military III gives you planetary tachyon (see: why do I need a decloaker), Logistics III prevents teleportation, Economic III gives nothing.  It's not even the best at salvage!  If Economic stations wanted to be useful, they could say "build prices are 10%/20% cheaper", and suddenly they are potentially worth their price and also tactically interesting, since they are weak but you still want one near your front lines (wait, warp gates...nevermind).  Alternately they could just be cheaper to research--"do I drop 9,000 knowledge on sweet military stations, or just 4,500 on worse-but-still-okay economic ones".  I just don't see why anyone would research these, ever, in their current state.  Especially since there are so few places to even use them (borders have to be military, corridors should be military or logistics, dead ends are okay).

So, do any of you ever research these?  What makes them viable?

[keith.lamothe]

Flak Turrets, Lightning Turrets, Harvester Exo Shields, Decloakers, and Scout Starships are all things I think many people don't research.

Area mines + line-place can be extremely devastating, so it's possible you just haven't seen their potential.

Riot Starships are possibly the most overpowered unit in the game, actually.  They certainly have been at some times in the past (though Martyrs may contend the point).  Rule #1: they aren't about the damage,  The mkII tazers used to be able to lock down almost arbitrarily large numbers of ships, and even now can substantially reduce the dps of a huge swarm coming through a wormhole.  But the core of the line is their ability to ridiculous amounts of engine damage across fairly absurd ranges.  Kite, kite, kite like your life depends on it and that planet will look like an AI parking lot.

Econ command stations may not be as necessary with recent economic changes, but previously they were used in conjunction with harvester upgrades to have an econ that can actually keep up with losses.

[Aklyon]

Riot Starships are like spider turrets: if its not dead, it will be stalled very soon. But unlike the turrets, they have their own shields and more engine-killing shots per salvo than you can shake a moderately sized stick at. Also tazers or tractor beams, like keith said.

[Traveller]

Just looked up line place.  You're right, I hadn't seen the potential!  I'll have to experiment with that--I played some very early after AI War's release, and then haven't been back in a while, so the line place tool is not something I'd heard of!

I'll have to give riot starships a try in my next game.  I'm seeing lots of love for them in AARs, too.  I think I just didn't realize how powerful the upgraded modules were.  (Those Martyrs though, whew--definitely my favorites.)

Ahh Spider Turrets.  I'll do anything at all to capture a Core Spider Turret Controller.  They are my favorite things.

[Bognor]

I always research Advanced Warp Sensors.  See here for why.

Also, combat starships seem like a very good deal to me, especially 1000 knowledge for Mark II.  Seems much better value than 2500 for Mark II fleetships.  Then again, I tend to end up in economic trouble...

And Faulty unlocked all the combat starships to Mark III in a recent big 10/10 win, here.

[Kahuna]

Faulty unlocked all the combat starships to Mark III in a recent big 10/10 win, here.

Thats not exactly recent. Also with 2 champions and 10 resistance that does't tell much IMO.

[Draco18s]

Area mines will not get triggered by mine-immune units, but if they're triggered by something else, they sure as hell will damage mine-immune units.

Riots are super overpowered.  It used to be worse when it was possible to perma-stun-lock units with 4+ tazers (one more than one player's cap worth of mk2s), but there's a hard limit now that prevents it.  Even so they are INCREDIBLY powerful.  They're one of the first things I unlock, along with Enclaves.  A good module layout looks like this:
Tazer if it gets it.
2 shields (the tazer takes up a slot that the large shield would use, so get two small ones instead)
ALL THE LASERS that will fit

Flak and Lightning turrets have their use, but I don't use them.  Flak's good against the various shield-immune melee units, but the AI gets them so rarely.

Everything else I pretty much agree.

[Kahuna]

Flak and lightning turrets

Mark I Flak Turrets do 124800 dps and since each shot is able to hit 5 targets that means they will do 624000 dps with no multipliers. Add the multiplier and the dps jumps to 1872000 (vs Laser Turret: 1080000)
Mark I Lightning Turrets do 2019840 dps.
Bombers do 468480 dps.

Usually the top 3 damage dealing turrets are Missile/Sniper, Needler and Lightning Turret. Flak Turrets are better than MRLS Turrets in every way unless you need to counter Zenith Starships (basically Neutron=Zenith Starship). So when it comes to countering stuff Flak Turrets the fourth best turret.

Area mines

608 AI ships destroyed in 1 second.
(ps. Ignore the orange arrows.)

EMP mines

(non-raid combat starships, EMP mines, fortress III, warp sensors, any turret for which a controller might exist until I've scouted the whole map).

I'm not sure about Flagships. I think they cost too much Knowledge to unlock. I mean I unlock Military Command Stations for the damage buff anyway. Sure Flagships' damage buff would be useful on offense but meh. I have better use for the Knowledge. They seem too expensive.

I like Bomber and Plasma Siege Starships. They're tanky and do a lot of damage. They're cost a LOT of metal though.

Fortresses are overpriced and cost too much energy. Though I'm sure they're good on 7 difficulty level where you can capture 20 planets and thus have unlimited amount of energy.

Warp Sensors are useless.

Hacking Turret Controllers was nerfed and holding all Controllers is impossible on high difficulty levels. Also by unlocking Turrets you get more DPS and cannon fodder than you would from the Core ones.

Scout Starships are good for decloaking AI ships which makes Decloakers useless. They're also pretty good at scouting planets Mark I Scouts can't.. so there's usually no need for Mark II Scout Drones either. You can also put Scouts in Assault Transports (which are a must unlock) and thus scout a couple of extra hops.

Harvester Exo-Shields are useless.

Economical Command Stations are useless. Logistical Command Stations are pretty much useless. Military Command Stations are very good and by far the most useful Command Station unlock.

Riot Starships are very good but I haven't unlocked them recently since they're ssooo expensive. They're very good though. I think I should try them again.

[Draco18s]

Except also MASSIVELY shorter range.

So even in an ideal situation units won't be in range for as long and will begin the race already being able to fire upon them.

[keith.lamothe]

Except also MASSIVELY shorter range.

So even in an ideal situation units won't be in range for as long and will begin the race already being able to fire upon them.

On the other hand, they can be put under forcefields with only a 1/4 loss in dps, and with adequate grav-turret coverage you can keep the enemies in range for quite a while.

In general I prefer the standard-four turrets (needler,laser,MLRS,Missile) for general purpose defense but if max dps (as at a chokepoint primary-attack-vector wormhole) is an issue the flaks and lightnings certainly have a place.

[Kahuna]

units won't be in range for as long

They will. These Tractors will stop 2870 AI ships and the Force Fields will protect them.

[TechSY730]

Now that there is yet another economic mechanism in place (scrap), is the econ command station now fully redundant with harvester upgrades?

EDIT2: Though I do use econ stations on planets quite distant from the frontlines that aren't on a common route and thus don't need a logistics station.

If so, what should take their place (if anything)?


And I would take issue with the idea that Logistics are mostly useless. They can be great on inner planets that are along the path from your production to your front lines, or for things you are trying to defend where keeping ships as far away as possible for the most amount of time is more useful than extra firepower (like melee ships, FF immune ships, or plasma seige starships against something fragile you need to defend). Military starships can only keep so much stuff away at one time after all.

EDIT: Oh, and exo-harvester shields can be useful on planets that you want to keep just for resources. Admittedly, the cloaking effect that makes AI ships almost always ignore them, while intended as a buff, has turned out, IMO, to be a nerf instead as the AI ships will now focus on other things, like the command station, which losing will cause all of the harvesters to go away anyways.


EDIT3: Oh, and has the command station analysis been reanalyzed after the scrap changes, now that each one of the classes of command stations work with scrap at different rates and efficiencies?

[doctorfrog]

Anyone else feel like the mine icons are a little big?

[Traveller]

What are peoples' feelings on mini-fortresses at higher difficulties?  Fortress I and II are things I don't mind giving up, but mini-fortresses are literally my first unlock every single game.  Not because of any impressive DPS, but because of their healing ability, and their "two per planet" thing.  Fast to build, nice for beachheads...

Do assault transports trigger raid engines or other such angry behavior?  Is it any different between "assault transport carrying scouts" and "assault transport carrying military units"?

Seems like everyone on the forums plays exclusively on 8+, and it's such a different game up there... I think I need to start playing higher so I can take advantage of the advice!

[Aklyon]

I play on 7 (or lower, but lower is mostly for lol), Traveller.