Are Orbital Commands also affected by the Shield damage reduction?

[Wingflier]

As the topic says, is every unit, including Military Orbitals, affected by the in-shield 3/4th damage reduction?

Also, does the AI get this penalty as well?

Thanks.

[x4000]

Yes, every ship is affected without exception.  However, it depends on the type of forcefield.  All of the big player-created force fields have this effect (and say so).  All of the AI force fields, and smaller ships like the riot shields, shield bearers, etc, don't have this effect even for the humans.

[superking]

iirc keith buffed the military command station weapon by 4x to compensate for presence of FF (it still sucks though )

[Lancefighter]

8x, actually 

[Spikey00]

Which I am somewhat scornful of; the structure itself does such minor amounts of damage that it's essentially worthless in combat value beyond its planetary attack boost.  Even if the structure was given more damage output, I would keep it out of forcefields.

I'm mixed with forcefields reducing firepower.

[Wingflier]

I think it would be nice if we made an exception for the Military Orbital Commands under the influence of a Forcefield.  Leaving your Command Station out in the open, even to increase its firepower, is just asking to get it destroyed.  The Military Orbital Command stations do not have enough health to withstand any kind of dedicated attack, and can even be killed by stragglers in many situations (it doesn't do very much damage to bombers at all, ironically).

I think the health on the Military Orbitals either needs to be increased dramatically, or they should be able to fire for full damage under forcefields.  Right now their purpose seems somewhat confusing, especially since the Logistic Orbital operates in full capacity under a Force Field, and even gives provides more minerals for the player to boot.

[Lancefighter]

a military commands job is NOT to shoot stuff

a military commands job is to provide tachyons and attack power boosts.

[winthrowe]

I gotta reread that tooltip.  I knew about the tachyons, but didn't realize it upgraded attack power. 

[Wingflier]

a military commands job is NOT to shoot stuff

a military commands job is to provide tachyons and attack power boosts.

Great, except that the attack boost is only 20% at level 1.  And the tachyon is also good, but I can just build a tachyon turret if it's that important (it's a good practice to keep these around anyways).

1.2x damage is not nearly as useful as slowing down the entire enemy army by half, and increasing your units' speed by double!  The amount of extra damage you can do to enemy units while they are crawling around the planet is much higher than 20%.  So regardless of what you say, a Military Orbital should actually do a decent amount of damage on its own, and (in my opinion) be a lot harder to kill than it currently is if it is going to have any kind of role in the game.

[Lancefighter]

a military mk3 DOUBLES the effectiveness of any turrets on the planet.

Basically, you are getting more out of your turret shipcaps by having a military station.

Sure, it might not seem useful.. but *shrug*.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I have to agree that a logistical mk i is better than a military mk i 95% of the time.

Logistical probably needs to scale its buff/debuff aura with its unlock.

[Wingflier]

I think the general idea was that, if I'm understanding it correctly, Military Orbitals were supposed to be the choice of planets that had heavy "turret" defense, especially on the wormholes, making them that much more powerful and scary if the enemy got caught.

Logistic Orbitals were probably better suited for planets with a "standing army", or, for example planets with an Ion Cannon since they already instagib anyway, and it gives them plenty of time to kill everything.

However, the problem with this is that, especially at Mark 1, the "damage boost" from Military Orbitals is so insignificant, while the slow/speed boost from the Logistic Orbitals is so huge, that at Mark 1 there doesn't even seem to be a contest between the two.  If, for example, the Military Orbital was like a Fortress in its own right (which in my opinion it should be), then it could be somewhat of a standalone defense, allowing you to free up shields for use in other places, and taking pressure of planets that were constantly being raided by small forces.

At this point, its role seems to only shine when upgraded, but the cost of upgrading it is so expensive (5,000 for MKII alone), that I fail to see how you are going to afford this and the knowledge for turrets/defenses necessary to even get the kind of use out of it you would need, at least if you want to have any kind of army to attack with.  I could possibly see some use for it in games with more players, if one person were to take the "defense building" role, and simply built MKIII Military Orbitals on "chokepoint" planets with a ton of upgraded defenses to make an nearly impenetrable gauntlet; but that same guy could spend all that knowledge on just upgrading mobile forces and building MK1 Logistics instead, and defend almost as well with a force that could also attack...

Suggestions:

1.  Make them powerful "stand-alone" defenses (not as powerful as a Fortress, but definitely strong enough to withstand small attacks) but remove any resource bonuses it gives, making them purely "self-sufficient" after being built (maybe a small energy cost, but I don't think that would be necessary).  

2.  Make them give more of an attack bonus at level 1 (Maybe 1.4x would be nice).

3.  Make them do full damage even while under a shield.

4.  Make them cost less knowledge to upgrade.

I personally like the first option the best because it gives them a very "defined" role, and fills something that I believe is missing in the game.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Yeah I'd love if a military station could reduce your need to deploy forcefields. Except that you're probably deploying it at a chokepoint where you expect lots o enemies so you need to forcefield it anyway. Hmph.

Honestly theyd pretty much have to be Fortress-grade for that.

IMO, logistics mk I needs to lose the ability to slow enemies, that should be Mk II.

[Lancefighter]

Make them project a mk1 forcefield, (or, mklevel of station).

I'm fairly sure people wont scoff at extra forcefields.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

thats probably more complicated than it sounds, since you'd have a Command-grade forcefield. Hehe.