About that Human Home Forcefield Generator...

[TechSY730]

All these people "complaining" about the new FF and all the various flippery that is spawned on the home planet. Why, "back in my day", all we had was the homa command station, a Mk. I FF (an actual one that cut into your FF ship cap), a shipyard (the fleet ship one), a Mk. II energy reactor (from before the energy revamp), and that's it. (EDIT: Oh yea, and two Mk. II engineers, two Mk. II scouts, and one Mk. I science lab like now) I'm pretty happy with what we have now. (Not saying it can't be improved upon, but I feel like they are already being pretty generous to us).

I don't usually have a problem with early game FF immune stuff. I generally can detect FF immune stuff "early-lish" thanks my early game scouting, and I can usually deal with it with the proper unlocks and well placed turrets (in particular, grav turrets, tractor turrets, tachyon turrets (if needed), and turrets around my wormhole AND my command station).

[Kahuna]

I don't think it needs to be buffed BUT since lot of people do. Giving it markI ff gen health and markI hardened ff gen armor would make it awesome. Or even mI ff gen health + mI hardened ff gen health + mI hardened ff gen armor.

[kasnavada]

I personnally don't have any problem with the forcefield being weak. IMO It's supposed to be weak. It gives me a sense of "hu-ho, the AI just took over the universe and we are so badly prepared, move it guys !!!!"I could have an issue with the fact that it's not rebuildable, except that if it dies, the home station probably also is dead.

On "bad" starts, early wave / possible stealth raid on the planet and stuff, the first things I do is I supplement the homefield with 4-6 regular forcefields and turrets, and there is just no way the starting homeworld should have that kind of firepower. Even if a few turrets on the homeworld could make sense (after all, war was starting all over).

I would be interested with the reasons why people think it's weaker than supposed to.

[Diazo]

Odd, the home command station is immune to vampire claws? When did that happen?

Quite a while ago (months ago) vampire claws were zooming in and popping my command stations left and right, made me somewhat paranoid about them and then they get nerfed at some point and they are just cuddly little bunnies now. 

Well, not quite but they are nothing like they used to be.

On the home forcefield generator, it is supposed to be a "oh crap, something slipped through" last line of defense, not a primary defense which is why I am okay with it's current health.

Which is why ships that bypass it are the big problem in my opinion. If enough ships get through to flatten your home FF and kill your command station that just means the AI won this game. However if a single ship at 15% hp slips through and takes out your home command because the rest of your fleet is fighting at the wormhole that's not really a win for the AI, that's just cheap. (Well, in my opinion.)

I don't actually know how the targetting works but is it possible to change the targetting priority so that the home FF gets targeted before the home command? That might be all that's needed here.

D.

[topper]

You could make the home command station itself generate the force field, such that no additional structure is necessary. This removes the need for fancy transferring of damage or AI attack priority. This way the home station cannot fall without the shield falling, yet it leaves the other structures still vulnerable.

Alternatively, I also support buffing the existing HFF with local gravity and/or simply allowing the HFF to leave remains and be able to repair fully to its initial health and radius.

On a semi-related topic of home command station defense, can you PLEASE make Home command stations auto-repairible regardless of the large project auto-assist cutoff? It's so annoying to have to set my home planet's cutoff to 3334 (as 3333 is the rate the home command station repairs at), and to have to explain to new players why they should do something similar, or at least why their engineers aren't auto-repairing THEIR MOST IMPORTANT STRUCTURE IN THE GAME.

How about setting the construction/repair cost of the home command stations really low. With the whole "cannot repair if taking damage" function, this does not seem too exploitable.

[Varone]

I'm going to guess that it was a lot of players that don't play on high difficulties that chose for the buff so my proposal is to increase its health based on the difficulty of the game.

9+ has what it has now
8+ has 2x hp
7+ has 3x hp

and so on, or something like that.

[keith.lamothe]

My current inclination is to:

1) Make the home cryos and settlements immune to plasma-siege-splash.  Nothing to do with this specific ff-gen.
2) Make the home ff-gen also generate a gravity well about twice or three times its current ff radius, of strength equal to a grav-I turret.
3) Make the home ff-gen also generate tachyon coverage the same size as the grav well.
4) Not related to the ff-gen, but make the home command's repair cost multiplier really really cheap so the engie-auto-cutoff doesn't impact it.

Which is why ships that bypass it are the big problem in my opinion. If enough ships get through to flatten your home FF and kill your command station that just means the AI won this game. However if a single ship at 15% hp slips through and takes out your home command because the rest of your fleet is fighting at the wormhole that's not really a win for the AI, that's just cheap. (Well, in my opinion.)

Actually, if your home command station doesn't have sufficient defenses to kill a single ship at 15% hp (even a raid starship) fast enough then it's not cheap, you were cheap

[Hearteater]

Sounds good to me.  On #4, this mantis issue mentions very briefly that the large project cutoff isn't accounting for repairs being 1/10th construction.  Is that still true?  Or was it just a player perception?

@Diazo: Note that only the Home Command Station is immune to Vampire Claws.

[keith.lamothe]

Sounds good to me.  On #4, this mantis issue mentions very briefly that the large project cutoff isn't accounting for repairs being 1/10th construction.  Is that still true?  Or was it just a player perception?

That's actually a side-effect of the bug where the repair-boost on engies and such was decreasing the total cost of repairs (so a "repair gun" with a 2x multiplier would actually cost 1/2 as much to run on a per-health-repaired basis).  A bug which I just found and fixed   We'll see how much "ack, my economy disappeared!" this causes, though.

[TechSY730]

Sounds good to me.  On #4, this mantis issue mentions very briefly that the large project cutoff isn't accounting for repairs being 1/10th construction.  Is that still true?  Or was it just a player perception?

I have since learned that the base repair rate is actually 1/4 (25%) of the construction cost (though this get multiplied and divided all over the place based on repair rates and other factors EDIT: due to a bug the Kieth just mentioned he fixed). Still, it is something that is worth looking into.

EDIT2: Wait, is the base repair rate supposed to be the rate listed on the unit? And what about the base repair cost, aka, the cost of repairing a unit from 1HP to full HP?

@Diazo: Note that only the Home Command Station is immune to Vampire Claws.

Don't military command stations also have fusion cutter immunity?

[Hearteater]

They might actually.  I looked briefly at the wiki, but I wasn't sure the immunity list was correct because Home Command Station doesn't list Blade Immunity, but in game last night I checked and it is immune to Blades.  I could also be going blind or insane.

[chemical_art]

Home command stations have many immunities military com stations have.