Author Topic: Are fortresses now a grind?  (Read 7352 times)

Offline TechSY730

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Are fortresses now a grind?
« on: October 06, 2011, 12:57:52 pm »
I understand that fortresses should be tough. In fact, I want them to be tough. They should be a major obsticle.

However, their implementation right now is turning it into less of an "several epic battles to widdle down their HP" and more of a grind.

The primary reason for this is I think that things with polycrystal armor (like bombers) counter it too hard. Fortresses have a .01 multiplier to polycrystal armor. Although this does give some ship types a chance against them, it also leads to a very grindy optimal strategy: clear out the rest of the planet, pull everything that does not have polycyrstal armor back out of the fortress' range, and send everything that does against the fortress. The .01 multiplier means those polycrystal ships will suffer very few losses, so all you have to do then is wait for several minutes as the fortress slowly loses its HP.

In other words, bombers and other things with polycrystal armor counter fortresses TOO hard, leading to grindy optimal strategies.

Not very fun.

I would not mind:
* Fortresses losing some firepower in the general case
* Fortresses not being quite so helpless to things with polycrystal armor
* Maybe reduce the AI version's HP some

This should bring it back to an epic but defeatable defensive unit without such a hard counter such that the battles become boring. Polycrystal units still should counter it, but not as hard.

Just my $0.02
« Last Edit: October 06, 2011, 05:09:35 pm by techsy730 »

Offline Hearteater

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2011, 03:04:35 pm »
I kind of feel Fortresses are ok as is.  Maybe other units adding additional variety in the techniques required to take a systems would be good, but as it stands Fortresses do require their own special handling, especially when under force fields or next to the warp point you are attacking from, and that's overall good I think.

Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2011, 04:01:47 pm »
I wouldn't mind some alternatives for dealing with them. Right now it really is just 'select all bombers, click fortress, wait'. When they are under a shield it's basically the same, except that it takes longer. However I don't necessarily want to start losing my own forts as easily either, so it's kind of a trade off.

Offline Lee

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2011, 04:25:03 pm »
I agree with the OP. My vote would be to lower the damage on the fort and change the hull-damage modifiers. As it is I end up handling all forts the same way: bombers in, take a nap, fort gone. The fort kills other ships so fast that using them to try and kill it faster just doesn't work. Taking a fort quickly by sacrificing non-polycrystal ships should be an option.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #4 on: October 06, 2011, 05:45:32 pm »
I'm happy to make some changes here, even ai-forts-only changes as they are all (iirc) different ship definitions.

But first: y'all figure out what you actually want done ;)
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Offline zoutzakje

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #5 on: October 06, 2011, 06:20:02 pm »
what I want done is have them move slowly around the planet, like they do in the tutorial. That would make for some nice challenges.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #6 on: October 06, 2011, 06:32:07 pm »
I would say basically make the changes originally posted. Make them less effective in general to give other ships a chance, but make them more effective against bombers and other polycrystal stuff so they aren't such a hard counter. The AI version's HP could use a little reduction, but that's not as big a deal.

Zoutzakje's idea making the AI versions some could be interesting too.

EDIT: How about this for a first "pass" of this concept?

Either the number of shot per salvo or the damage per bullet should be halved (but not both), polycrystal multiplier increased from .01 -> .25

That may be a bit high for the polycrystal multiplier though.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2011, 07:11:16 pm by techsy730 »

Offline Nethris

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #7 on: October 07, 2011, 05:33:10 am »
Unless given special movement logic (unlikely and probably not worth it I'd guess) giving AI fortresses move speed just results in them eventually drifting over to be in range of whatever wormhole you're using, reducing your options without really being interesting.  I don't remember exactly when they became static like they are now, but that's why that happened.

I would say basically make the changes originally posted. Make them less effective in general to give other ships a chance, but make them more effective against bombers and other polycrystal stuff so they aren't such a hard counter. The AI version's HP could use a little reduction, but that's not as big a deal.

Zoutzakje's idea making the AI versions some could be interesting too.

EDIT: How about this for a first "pass" of this concept?

Either the number of shot per salvo or the damage per bullet should be halved (but not both), polycrystal multiplier increased from .01 -> .25

That may be a bit high for the polycrystal multiplier though.

Remember you're effectively removing armor effects when you boost the polycrystal multiplier like that.  Mk2 and above bombers are getting 80% armor reduction right now, so half damage and a .25 polycrystal multiplier would be in the 60x to 62.5x increased damage vs bombers range rather than around a 12.5x increase.  Note that the in game reference is showing mk3 forts doing 3306 damage per shot against bombers and 3906 against bomber starships before armor rather than the 4000 I expected, which makes no sense so I'm not sure I trust it that mk2 bombers are getting 80% reduction against mk3 forts.  Either way, giving fortresses 5k armor piercing to be able to ignore the 4800 armor of mk4 bombers might make more sense as a first step, and then increase the multiplier if that's still not enough damage.  Or maybe 2.4k -> 4.8k armor piercing for mk1 -> mk3 forts.


I'm not quite sure what role you're hoping AI fortresses will play though.  Currently they more or less prevent you from using non-polycrystal stuff around them until you kill them, which at least forces you to pay some attention to them when making attack plans.  They're just really really boring to remove.  Playing with the damage seems like it would just change how much it costs to remove, and possibly whether you throw the entire fleet at them or just the bombers/polycrystal stuff, which doesn't seem like it would make them more interesting.  If you just want them to be less boring to get rid of, reducing health while increasing their polycrystal bonus by about the same factor as you reduce their health by would do it.

So maybe 1/3 of current health, 0.03 vs polycrystal, 5k armor piercing?  Would do about 5x as much total damage to bombers compared to currently just from the armor piercing, which is probably fine.  The mk3 forts under 2 core forcefields I'm seeing at AI home command centers would be more of a pain to deal with (since core FFs don't reduce damage and that's over 400 million hp of FFs before hitting the fort if they spawn next to it), but that might be tolerable even with just the base game since that is just on the AI home planets.  Do be careful if drastically increasing damage to bombers that forts don't become a real pain to remove without golems or other expansion stuff.  Removing the EMP immunity and making them immune to repair would at least make EMPs or multiple assaults viable, though the fortress baron AI would be really painful if those were your best options.  Are you thinking of applying this stuff to superfortresses too or just leaving them alone to make them different?  I'd be even more careful with adjusting damage on those since they have so much range.

Offline Kittens

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #8 on: October 07, 2011, 06:14:38 am »
Please don't let fortresses kill my bombers as well as everything else.

I can't use anything other than bombers in their range, they take a while to remove, that's fine. What they effectively do is create a no-fly zone for your bombers' escorts.

I guess if the complaint is that they take too long to kill, just cut their health by factor X and multiply the polycrystal multiplier by the same factor X. So... what Nethris said, but I wouldn't put any armor piercing in.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #9 on: October 07, 2011, 07:01:29 am »
Please don't let fortresses kill my bombers as well as everything else.

I can't use anything other than bombers in their range, they take a while to remove, that's fine. What they effectively do is create a no-fly zone for your bombers' escorts.

I guess if the complaint is that they take too long to kill, just cut their health by factor X and multiply the polycrystal multiplier by the same factor X. So... what Nethris said, but I wouldn't put any armor piercing in.

Not quite what I am suggesting. What I am imagining (but still haven't nailed down exact values for) will still let bombers survive a long time against it, but not long enough such that you can just target the fortress and just leave it for several minutes.

Then again, I guess that's the controversy. Is that style of fortress desirable? I say no, but from what I have seen, others say yes.

Offline Hearteater

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #10 on: October 07, 2011, 11:05:40 am »
Having just dealt with a Fortress Baron, with 2xCore FF and Fortress III, making them hit Bombers harder makes me nervous.  The problem is, until I broke down the Core Force Fields, I wasn't damaging the Fortress, so reduced health on the Fortress wouldn't matter.  You can read about it here.

If Fortresses take too long to kill, then lower health makes the most sense.  AI Forts have a x6 more health than player forts anyway.  I don't think they should really have their damage against polycrystal increased much.  After playing with the numbers I've found giving Forts Armor Penetration will make them wreck Bomber Starships compared to Bombers.  Bomber Starships have half the armor of Bombers and so Armor Penetration hurts them a ton more.  I think that would be a mistake.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #11 on: October 07, 2011, 11:15:49 am »
Having just dealt with a Fortress Baron, with 2xCore FF and Fortress III, making them hit Bombers harder makes me nervous.  The problem is, until I broke down the Core Force Fields, I wasn't damaging the Fortress, so reduced health on the Fortress wouldn't matter.  You can read about it here.

I'm not saying make the fortresses hit bombers that much harder. Just hard enough that you can't send your bombers in and then just "take a nap" until the fortress is gone. Some variety in strategy should be needed. Bombers should still be a pretty solid counter to fortresses.

Offline NickAragua

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #12 on: October 07, 2011, 12:07:51 pm »
Having just dealt with a Fortress Baron, with 2xCore FF and Fortress III, making them hit Bombers harder makes me nervous.  The problem is, until I broke down the Core Force Fields, I wasn't damaging the Fortress, so reduced health on the Fortress wouldn't matter.  You can read about it here.

I'm not saying make the fortresses hit bombers that much harder. Just hard enough that you can't send your bombers in and then just "take a nap" until the fortress is gone. Some variety in strategy should be needed. Bombers should still be a pretty solid counter to fortresses.

You can't just "take a nap". If the fortress has buddies, then your bombers are likely to get wasted while they spend the five minutes slowly bringing the fort's HP down one percent at a time. Meanwhile, if you bring in escort ships, they get slaughtered by the fortress. Making the fortress more effective against bomber type things is not going to make it less "grindy" to take out, it'll make it more so, because now you can't actually damage the damn thing especially if it's hiding under a force field - and it's not like you've introduced a different way to take the fortress out.

Thus, my vote is to just cut fortress HP so that you're not spending half an hour trying to kill it even though you have a full cap of MKI - III bombers.


Offline TechSY730

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #13 on: October 07, 2011, 12:49:09 pm »
Thus, my vote is to just cut fortress HP so that you're not spending half an hour trying to kill it even though you have a full cap of MKI - III bombers.

You're probably right, that seems like the simplist way to deal with it.

How about make AI versions have 3x-4x times as much HP as the human versions (down from 6x), but otherwise keep it the same?

Offline Hearteater

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Re: Are fortresses now a grind?
« Reply #14 on: October 07, 2011, 01:10:17 pm »
That would be my vote.  I'd probably go with x4 health.  Mantis?