AI War Beta 6.012 "Darkened Sky, Altered Starship" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

A really simple change would be to restore its ability to hit fleetships. Then its a decent brawler or raider, but not as good as the dedicated ships (zenith and raid, respectively).

Yea, makes sense.  Originally it was more of a convenience to make sure it wasn't wasting shots on fleet ships, and I think that's true when the flag's used on something like an Artillery Golem or Spirecraft Penetrator, but in practice it doesn't really work out that way with this unit.

That's in for the next release, along with a 25% dps buff.

[Lancefighter]

What if we made it into a bonus ship? It would just be like the zelecbomber's big brother.. in starship form!

[TechSY730]

A really simple change would be to restore its ability to hit fleetships. Then its a decent brawler or raider, but not as good as the dedicated ships (zenith and raid, respectively).

Yea, makes sense.  Originally it was more of a convenience to make sure it wasn't wasting shots on fleet ships, and I think that's true when the flag's used on something like an Artillery Golem or Spirecraft Penetrator, but in practice it doesn't really work out that way with this unit.

That's in for the next release, along with a 25% dps buff.

Can you give it the "prefer large targets" flag like the plasma siege does, so that way it does try to avoid overkill on the "weak" fleet ships?
EDIT: I will thus hold my feedback on the Bomber starships until next version...


Also, not sure what you guys are talking about with starship fragility. Generally, when I send in starships to a planet that is no more than 1 or 2 marks above the ship, they tend to survive unless I was stupid about when to retreat or if I let that planet reinforce to max ship counts.
And even then, with max reinforced planets or 2 or 3 marks above the starship mark, but not both, I tend to get good survivability if I mix them in with fleet ships.

Of course my Mk. IIs starships die quickly when trying to take on a near fully reinforced Mk. IV planet or the AI homeworlds, but I would expect pretty much any cap Mk. II units (short of a hunter killer, of course, but those don't count ) to have similar troubles.

[Diazo]

Interesting.

First results of the new ships are positive, and the RNG continues to hate me so everything is good.

As I do want to continue my Fallen Spire game, I booted a quick game to play around for an hour. I also took the Spire Corvettes to see what they had done.

I stuck the diff at 10/10 to get a lot of AI ships on board quickly but I left the AI type at random all from my last game.

Oops.

The RNG rolled up a Heroic AI type and one Shadow Destroyer to the face at the 7 minute mark, I was starting another game to try again.

This time around I was able to get my hour of playtime in and I liked what I was seeing.

Even at the cap of 1, the Spire and Zenith were able to pull off solo ops, even against systems a couple hops out. I did not test it against a Mk IV system, but I only got Zenith Mk I and Spire Mk I and II unlocked.

I tried bringing the other starships along and the flagship held up okay. The riots however were too fragile, even with double shields. The spire corvettes were borderline. I ran the corvettes with no shield modules as I had not unlocked FFs Mk II and they were too fragile without shields to survive along with my spire and zenith.

However the dps the corvettes put out was nice, if I ran them with a fleet blob as fleet ships rather then starships I expect they would have been much more effective.

I used the bomber starships to take a fort out also, but otherwise I couldn't really justify them. I was already running one matter converter at the time so while I did not feel the bomber starship was a waste of resources, it was only really useful for the polycrystal hull vs the fort, otherwise it was just more dps, limited by only being able to attack large targets.

Raids were raids. I never used them to take out a guard post, but I did use them to take out an Ion Cannon under an FF that was in range of the fort so my bombers could actually attack the fort without dying.

Did you know a Spire Starship Mk II can tank 2 shots from a Mk III fort if it is at full health? Nice! I used this to decoy the fort so all of my raid SS survived to get away.

So, overall I think the starship changes were positive. I need to play a full game with them to see, but the Fallen Spire beckons.

On other changes, the starting resource boost. Did not even notice, but I was on diff 10, I went a little nuts on defenses so it just kind of vanished.

No comments on the dark spire change, they were not enabled.

D.

[ZaneWolfe]

You know, for as long as I have seen these forums and played this, and even after reading through older archives, seeing a major member of the dev team actually respond to my posts still kinda floors me... Wait... Are you/the AI using the brainwashing machi- Screw it. The answer would only upset me/make me more paranoid...

Stuff about the Spire Starship not being as nerfed as I thought.

I've only just caught up on the patch notes and will admit the last one I saw was before Valley was done. So this sounds like it was a big mistake on my end. Ill get some game time in and see what it feels like now.

If it's balanced a starship nowadays, it has to stop being a bonus ship because otherwise drawing it as a bonus type would be a raw deal: you'd be getting substantially lower cap-DPS than a fleet ship type.  It'd have lower K-costs for upgrades, sure, but that's not the role of bonus types.

This makes me thrilled, but I was drawing conclusions from this line in the patch notes.
"Note that these are really considered a "bonus fleet ship" for balance purposes, they're just built like a starship."
Which even after seeing your reply still sounds like it is supposed to be a fleet ship.  I am just going to take your forum post to mean "Ignore that line, it is some lies from the AI to mislead you."

You mentioned that your early game relies on starships.  That's fine, and that should still work.  If you fill your (now reduced) starship caps and need more, just unlock more.  The knowledge costs are quite reasonable   Or are you unlocking mkIII of flagship, zenith, spire, bomber, AND siege (maybe leech and raid for good measure, not to mention riots which weren't really changed) in that early game and still not being able to build enough for your purposes?  Later in the game you can get an ASC and really rake in some extra power with the mkIV versions.

Of course, end-game you won't (probably) be able to take out the AI HW in one or two strikes with an only-starships-blob.  But you're not supposed to be able to do that.  Though I suspect that if you took in mkI/II/III/IV of all combat starships, plus mkI of all your fleet ships and mkII of all your ARS-unlocked fleet ships (since II is free for those), you could do it in a lot of cases.  Without having spent any K on fleet ships.

Yeah I use them early but I do use the fleet ships, they are mobile defense force, so my starships can do the smashing and the exploding of AI stuff. Late game, given that I have never turned off the FS campaign since I first tried it, I have even bigger "starships" to do the smashing and the exploding of AI stuff. So basic starships join the defense fleet as well. I am thinking now they might just be better at it...

That's a fair point that I neglected; I can reduce the corvette's knowledge cost by maybe 2000 total to compensate for the module techs (though you do get other stuff for those module techs).

I would really appreciate this. I'm a huge fan of the Spire toys and I've taken a liking to the corvette, but even though all the things I get for the mod techs are stuff that I would almost certainly get anyway, the fact remains that unlike any other bonus ship, the corvette is NOT something that is useful as soon as you get it, unless you got it late enough that you already had the needed tech. And if you start the game with it? Its a huge investment of K to get it going as you need Mark II Lasers, Spider Turrets,  HBC MarK II, and FF Mark II just to get full use out of your Mark ONE corvette. There is nothing else in the game you have to invest that much K into to get the full benefit of at the start of the game. (At least not that I can recall.) Perhaps rather than just dropping the cost for the core unit, you could boots the power of the modules, or better still make the cap higher (maybe 4?) without dropping the stats. You still have to invest a ton of K into it, but you suddenly get something worth every bit of K you spent.

On a somewhat related note, anyone got the data on how the modules for the corvette compare to the structures you get them from, as well as against the FS mods?

[Bognor]

Its a huge investment of K to get it going as you need Mark II Lasers, Spider Turrets,  HBC MarK II, and FF Mark II just to get full use out of your Mark ONE corvette.

Not really.  You need either Mark II Lasers or Spider Turrets to get the most out of the small module slots, and either HBC Mark II or FF Mark II to get the most out of the large module slots.  And a Corvette with mark I small modules and mark I forcefields is still a formidable force, and requires no knowledge.

[Marmu23]

 Soooo.... is it possible the damage numbers in the newest version for AI guard posts are like... really too high? The amount of damage they put out means I had to go refill my troops constantly, and raid ships are suddenly pretty hard countered by some posts.

 It was fun for the first couple planets but it was just grating after a while.

[Diazo]

Soooo.... is it possible the damage numbers in the newest version for AI guard posts are like... really too high? The amount of damage they put out means I had to go refill my troops constantly, and raid ships are suddenly pretty hard countered by some posts.

 It was fun for the first couple planets but it was just grating after a while.

Can you define how much you are having to refill?

Moving the guard posts from the 'wet cardboard' category to 'noticeable threat' means that they are a lot more powerful then they were and taking them out is now expected to inflict a few losses.

Now, 'inflict a few losses' is kind of vague I realize but, especially if you are attacking a higher mark guard post, losing a dozen fleet ships is going to be expected. (Or more if the guard posts attack bonus comes into play.)

There were definite concerns when the posts were buffed about buffing them too much so that the game became un-fun, can you give us some numbers or more details?

I have not run into any of the new high mark guard posts yet personally, so I am still reserving my personal judgement, so I'm interested in what other people are running into.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

First results of the new ships are positive, and the RNG continues to hate me so everything is good.

I suppose it's ironic that the one thing about this game that has stayed consistent since before 1.0 is the RNG (in its hatred)

The answer would only upset me/make me more paranoid...

Hmm, this one appears to be catching on.

Soooo.... is it possible the damage numbers in the newest version for AI guard posts are like... really too high?

It's possible, but fyi those numbers didn't change in this version, they changed in the last one.  So they've been in play for over a week now without particular outcry (aside from a few laments about the Raid Starship, particularly near MLRS guard posts and a few others).  The hull types on some of them need to be changed so they're not countering their triangle counter (doesn't stop you from just not using their counter, but that idea causes substantial congnitive dissonance among players and we wouldn't want that).

And it's quite possible the numbers are too high.  I tried to exercise restraint when increasing them (and stuck pretty strictly to a particular target value relative to what your fleet ships can do) but we also tend to try fairly aggressive numeric changes at first with the understanding that we may need to ratchet it back down.  That approach for early balance changes tends to produce good results faster than starting with 5%-10% changes.  Later refinements are better done near those increments.


Thanks for the feedback, everyone

[Hearteater]

Personally, I don't feel Raid Starships vs. Guard Posts should be an important factor.  If Raid Starships can easily kill Guard Posts, there isn't really a whole lot of point for most of your fleet to every go on offense.  Need to kill Ion Cannons?  Raid Starships.  Stuff under Force Fields?  Raid Starships.  Data Center?  Raid Starships.  Warp Gates?  Raid Starships.  Command Stations?  Raid Starships.  Guard Posts?  Raid Starships.  If anything, Guard Posts should be one thing that they aren't good at killing at all.  Otherwise they are the answer to everything until the homeworlds.

[chemical_art]

The thing about that is that even with their armor raids are flimsy from their.very very low hp.  Their whole point is attacking isolated targets. guard posts should be included because raids are.garbage  against  fleets.

[Hearteater]

You don't need to fight the fleet ships.  You ignore them.  Just kill the Guard Posts and run.  The ships are freed and will attack your system were your regular ships and turrets will kill them. 

I strongly suspect I could clear 8/8 using just Raid Starships (and support stuff like Transports, Engineers, Cloakers, etc) on offense until the homeworlds.  The hardest part would be the initial worlds when I just don't have the Raid Starships complete yet.  That's the only reason I'm hesitant to say its possible to do on 9/9.

TL;DR: Raid Starships are hilariously strong.

[keith.lamothe]

I strongly suspect I could clear 8/8 using just Raid Starships (and support stuff like Transports, Engineers, Cloakers, etc) on offense until the homeworlds.  The hardest part would be the initial worlds when I just don't have the Raid Starships complete yet.

You write the AAR, I'll eat the popcorn.

Before the guard post changes, I'd say that'd be relatively feasible.  Nowadays you might take some fairly awful casualties on mkIV worlds.  Though getting mkIV raids would help.

[onyhow]

Started a new game on this patch...I explored half the galaxy (40/80)...and find no ARS...yeah, no ARS whatsoever withtin 5 jumps from my homeworld...found the first 6 jumps away...

[keith.lamothe]

Started a new game on this patch...I explored half the galaxy (40/80)...and find no ARS...yeah, no ARS whatsoever withtin 5 jumps from my homeworld...found the first 6 jumps away...

Yep, the RNG is still in good form.