Oh boy, I managed to miss 2 full semi-patches worth of stuff, things sure move quickly around here
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I guess I'll comment on things individually.
* Amendments/Fixes to some of the Spire/Zenith Starship changes from last version
** The change in the last version where the Spire Starship and Zenith Starship were effectively mkII/III/IV instead of mkI/II/III has been reverted.
** The AI now pays more for these in exos than it did before, since the cap reduction made them individually stronger than they used to be.
** Waves including these now get one mark lower than they used to, due to the lower ship cap and higher individual strength. This can result in a wave not having Spire or Zenith starships available to it at all.
I'm glad to see this. There was really no reason to have spire/zenith be that much stronger than everything else. Hopefully this will make spire ships less unstoppable (in both player and ai hands).
* Added a new type of important capturable structure: the Advanced Starship Constructor.
** These are very similar to Advanced Factories, but instead of mkIV fleet ships these can produce the mkIV version of a starship you already have the mkIII of.
** The Scout Starship and Enclave Starship already have mkIV versions at the normal starship constructor and are not on this one's menu.
** The Cloaker Starship and Riot Starship do not have mkIV versions (the former because it didn't seem necessary, the latter because otherwise no AI ship would ever have working engines again).
** But all the other types (Flagship, Zenith Starship, Spire Starship, Heavy Bomber Starship, Plasma Siege Starship, Leech Starship, and Raid Starship) now have mkIV versions. Like with fleet ships, they are not unlocked directly but are available at the advanced production structure when mkIII is unlocked.
** These try very hard to not seed on the same planet as an Adv Fact.
Looks good to me. Although... come to think of it, you might want to move the Enclave MK.IV to the new "advanced starship factory" and redo the K costs for the enclave line.
* Added Core Fabricators (specifically, in the "Experimental Starship" category) for producing the mkV versions of the Flagship, Spire Starship, Zenith Starship, Plasma Siege Starship, Leech Starship, and Raid Starship.
** Also, the experimental starship category of fabricators now seeds an extra fab at the beginning of the game (so from 2 => 3, on single-HW games).
* The Heavy Bomber Starship mkIV is now produced at the Advanced Starship Constructor, and no longer produced at the bomber-star fabricator (that now produces the mkV variant).
So these are basically like what the MK.IV heavy bomber (or equivalent) fabricator was before, right? Sounds good.
* Heavy Bomber Starship:
** Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).
** CapHealth from 28M => 36M.
** Base CapDPS from 140k => 120k (would have dropped it more, but generally getting a feel that these felt underpowered previously).
** Cap m/c cost from 340k/60k => 170k/30k.
** Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.
I like it, this guy really needed some help before. I was using spires instead of these for attacking structures and big stuff because they did so much more damage, are gravity immune, and with the higher marks were more durable as well.
My big question on the starship redo is how build times are affected. Starships are already a bit slow coming out in the early game, I'm just curious how they're going to be speed-wise. Though if you lose them less often, it may not matter. At any rate, I'm looking forward to testing them out
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Guardposts
And since I didn't comment on guardpost previously, here are some of my thoughts on those.
I was initially dissapointed with the removal of the passive guard post, however, the spire shield post does practically the same thing only 20-30x better, and those are still there, so I realised it was kind of a moot point.
When I first saw an arachnid post (it happened to be a MK.IV adjacent to my homeworld) I was seriously questioning your sanity (20m damage O.o), but as it turns out, they have short range and are easily avoided (in addition to not being able to shoot most stuff). Also, my concerns about the damage will be far less important now that all starships are more durable. However, the Orbital Mass Driver is now terrible against starships and such (though to be honest, I'm not sure it was ever any good :p), and it could definately use some looking at.
In general, I feel that having the damage multipliers at 6x makes the guardposts too inconsistant (player turrets have 2.4x multipliers). For example, if you attacked a needler post with a cap of fighters and a flagship, the flagship will be completely obliterated, but the fighters don't even seem to care that they're being shot. And while it won't be nearly as bad now (due to starship changes), It was a bit silly watching starships getting 1-2 shot by guard posts that counter them (granted, they were mark I's against Mk III-IV's, but still).
Also, I noticed that the base damages are rather high. I'm concerned that if this "high damage, low shot count" trend continues, armor isn't going to be nearly as useful as it was intended to be. It's not really an issue so far, but better to voice concerns early, right?
The only post I would reccomend immediate changes to (beyong general multiplier/damage adjustments to make things more "even") is the MRLS post. It's currently too good against raids (which aren't being changed). Adjusting it to be similar to how it was before, gaining damage primarly through more missiles instead of base damage increases would help in this regard (due to the raid's armor). However, this may be a case where the current damage multipliers are just too high and that's throwing things off (or maybe I'm complaining too much when the real issue is that I don't pay attention to my ships :p). I'm not really sure, but that was the one interaction that really stood out to me.
Well, that and transports, you need to send a lot more "dummies" now than before, but that's whatever.
