Leech Starships

[Wingflier]

Does anybody know why you would upgrade a Leech Starship past level 1?

As far as I know, it is the ONLY Starship that doesn't get any extra health, damage, attack speed, movespeed, or almost any benefits from being upgraded.

The only benefit you get from upgrading the Leech Starship is that it fires 20 extra shots per upgrade, yet is almost twice as expensive to build (not to mention the research cost is huge).

The first Tier Leech Starship already shoots 40 shots simultaneously, very rarely will you need more than this, and when you do it's not worth the literally massive amount of resources to have.

Am I missing something?  Why are the T2 and T3 Leech Starships so bad?

[rubikscube]

Maybe you don't need it to be better, just think of increasing ship cap fore the mk1 leech starship ( and i just noticed what you said about the health)


As the developers said before and gaming history, it's kinda of a different model of leech starship, it doesn't have to be all much better, all stats maybe more balanced overall (guns in fps , spells in rpg)

But it does cost so much more (60 k more per mk level, wow) but you indeed get the bonus of it's feature, more ammo.

adding half of the current ammo per shot makes it , well, 1.5 as effective unless you really need firepower of a leech . so adding 60k for 20 more shots is reasonable.

Then it's the ship cap, you only get so many ships and if you have the knowledge, well, that's better than nothing,.

Just be thankful it's not like mk2 bombers get reduced speeds.

[Wingflier]

The thing is that the MK2 and MK3 Variants of the Leech Starships have 800,000 health....

800,000 health on a Starship is laughable after the first 20 minutes of the game.  Honestly, it's health should at least be in the millions by Tech 3.

[Rustayne]

I have to agree.  Most of the other starships see increases in hp along with various upgrades.  Now while x20 more shots is nice, I believe their HP should go up as well.  It would follow the flow of all the other starships.

[superking]

the number of shots means they can effectively infect 50% more ships, but yeah I think the main benefit is just that you can field more of them

[Ozymandiaz]

Aye, its mostly to get more leeches.

I rather like the leech star ships as is tho, but would not complain if later MK levels was a tiny bit more robust 

[x4000]

In the last official release, leech starships accidentally had the same health at later marks. In the latest betas, they get significantly more health with each mark level. It was oriinally an oversight, heh.

[rubikscube]

oops, i rely on the wiki too much then. but i wouldn't complain if it had low health, as leech starships should never be used in a wormhole offense, or alone, teaches you to cover them

[Wingflier]

Thanks x4000, your presence in the forums and passion for the game really shows the community how much you care about it and us.

Thank you.

[x4000]

My pleasure!  Thanks a ton for your support, as well.  We wouldn't have a company without you guys.

[soMe_RandoM]

They are awesome ship i think they pay for them self as you are talking about an Star ship that reclaims. so it cost effective if you use it on an low level planet, and send it to recruit units after when the ai spawns and having an MRS & Auto FRD for mobile military then it works well. after an while when you reach the ship cap of 1500 the ships are scraped giving you extra C/M income for short while. if i could get full fleet of leeches then i would and send them off into high level planets Mrk 2-3 and tear up the place. They are also effective if core ships are wondering around by them self thus giving easy pickings if it type allows. This ship is awesome but if there better ships or equal then it should not be used. But if the ship is spider then it an almost must where you go past an system and send these unit on attack move following around taking the ships out. Spiders Are close to my favorite ship, also parasites need and are built in that way so that you are forced in an sense to pay the tech to get the unit straight away instead of on defenses. Because of the damage output + the effects and energy cost. Spiders I prefer as they make the Parasite star ship strong picking of the units 1 by 1.