AI War Beta 7.023-4 "So A Carrier And A MkIII Lightning Warhead Walk Into A Bar

[RockyBst]

Yeah, okay, fun as it is these really need a per-unit damage cap. For evidence, see: Taking out 6 golems with one Mk III lightning warhead, then being able to take out most of their 28 buddies and supporting ships with a dozen Mk II Martys. Really is absurdly unbalanced currently.

I like the idea of a cloaked ballistic missile submarine starship by the way, maybe 500 knowledge. Just a nice bit of extra fluff which saves you having to micro cloaker starships. 

[tadrinth]

Armored warheads are just cloaked now.  They also got a big HP boost, up to 200M (20% of an armored golem after the recent buffs).  I don't think they're supposed to need transport. 

Lightning Warheads are cloakable using a Cloaker Starship, so as long as you micro them carefully, you should be able to get them close.  Worst case, use a Sensor hack to cloak them instead, which trumps global tachyon sources like the AI Home Command Stations.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I'm gonna put the damage-per-unit cap on the lightnings/martyrs, and increase the AIP of the armored warheads.

One thing I think I'll also need to do is make it so armored-warhead kills don't generate salvage.  Otherwise it seems like you could basically ignore the AIP cost as long as you scored enough salvage with its kills, even at "1 million metal * mark" costs.  Amd when you can score 10s of millions of salvage in a single shot (such that even a 10% efficiency station would recoup more than the cost of the warhead in less than 4 minutes)... well, seems like it would become AI War: Warhead Command

[Draco18s]

Well.

A ton of warheads won't help you against massive AIP.  Once the AI was throwing autobombs at me it was game over (or anything with enough DPS to eat through a ton of force fields).  I couldn't maneuver 20 billion DPS quickly enough to deal with it.

[keith.lamothe]

Well.

A ton of warheads won't help you against massive AIP.  Once the AI was throwing autobombs at me it was game over (or anything with enough DPS to eat through a ton of force fields).  I couldn't maneuver 20 billion DPS quickly enough to deal with it.

Why was maneuvring necessary?  A MkIII Armored Warhead should have the range to kill those autobombs just detonating straight out of the silo, before they could threaten the ff net.

[Draco18s]

Why was maneuvring necessary?  A MkIII Armored Warhead should have the range to kill those autobombs just detonating straight out of the silo, before they could threaten the ff net.

If they were newly built, yes.  Problem was I had a line of autobombs coming in from the top and I'd prebuilt all of my bombs to the left.  When I set one off to take care of the left incoming line I didn't grab the newly built one fast enough to detonate it close enough.

I also had problems with long range stuff chewing through layers of FF so fast that when they hit a nuke I'd build (in prep to give myself 1 warp gate) I thought the nuke killed my Home station (which, in a multihomeworld game means you lose).  We're talking 20 force fields that go from full health to empty in the space of about two seconds.

[keith.lamothe]

If they were newly built, yes.  Problem was I had a line of autobombs coming in from the top and I'd prebuilt all of my bombs to the left.  When I set one off to take care of the left incoming line I didn't grab the newly built one fast enough to detonate it close enough.

I also had problems with long range stuff chewing through layers of FF so fast that when they hit a nuke I'd build (in prep to give myself 1 warp gate) I thought the nuke killed my Home station (which, in a multihomeworld game means you lose).  We're talking 20 force fields that go from full health to empty in the space of about two seconds.

Hmm, seems like if you can keep all the enemies coming from one wormhole you can camp the wormhole (with a silo or two right there) with the warheads and kill long range stuff before it comes through to your side, etc.

Anyway, not very important, I was just wondering if it was a simple matter of building a silo, setting an FRD point to an AI HW, and setting it to loop build the mkIII armored's   And using the mkIs and mkIIs for defense, presumably.

[Faulty Logic]

One lingering major annoyance with the combat spirecraft: speed boost immunity. Is there a reason for it?

[keith.lamothe]

One lingering major annoyance with the combat spirecraft: speed boost immunity. Is there a reason for it?

Immunity?  What immunity?

(it just suffered a sudden and decisive accident, along with its cousins, the armor-boost immunity, and munitions-boost-immunity)

Might need to put a max munitions boost on them, but the sheer immunity seemed unnecessary.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, all the warhead revisions (and other changes) I'm intending for the hotfix are now in.  Hoping to release it before 10am eastern time tomorrow.  So if anyone wants to squirrel away the "Warhead Command" version now's the time

[Fleet Unity]

Thank you for removing the speed immunity on the spire craft these things were so slow it took them a long time to get from planet to planet that's why I usually just left them close to a wormhole I knew the enemy would come from as because by the time they got there the enemy ships usually would be gone or on another planet! It will be nice that the Zenith STM or command station that boost speed, attack will now work on them!

[Draco18s]

Hmm, seems like if you can keep all the enemies coming from one wormhole you can camp the wormhole (with a silo or two right there) with the warheads and kill long range stuff before it comes through to your side, etc.

Yeah, that was the idea.  I just made the AI angry before I did that. :X

Even at 10,000 AIP though a full cap of warheads was not sufficient to deal with waves.  Blew up an entire cap at once and had to double check that something actually DIED (a couple of carriers took the damage before the free single units).  For a short while I thought that something was oddly not listing its AOE immunity.

[Kahuna]

Q: Avenger?
A: Limburger Plane

Fixed that for you.

[Kahuna]

Otherwise it seems like you could basically ignore the AIP cost as long as you scored enough salvage with its kills

Change the "x Massive ships en route to your planets" to "x Massive Distribution Nodes en route to your planets".

[keith.lamothe]

Otherwise it seems like you could basically ignore the AIP cost as long as you scored enough salvage with its kills

Change the "x Massive ships en route to your planets" to "x Massive Distribution Nodes en route to your planets".

We could replace the graphics for the Armored Golem and the H/K and such with stuff like a giant cooked turkey on a platter, to take a page from Wile E Coyote.