Autocannon Minipods in 4.0

[Salamander]

I was a fan of these little guys in the days of pre-Unity AI War, but while I was perusing the reference page in my current game I noticed that their number of kills to deaths is poor. I then checked on some of them and I see that they no longer have the old "swarm bonus" they used to get. So even though their raw attack is better (currently 8,16,32 on Marks I,II, and III respectively), they are not performing as well as they used to.

Here's a summary (Built, Killed, Lost, Kills):


Obviously they are going to die often and need to flood a target to kill it as always, but are they working as intended? Or should they get their swarm bonus back? I can add it to the tracker if they are supposed to retain their old bonus or need other possible adjustments?

[orzelek]

Swarm bonuses were removed by design. It seems that poor minipods were left with quite poor stats after that. Drop a balance suggestion maybe?

[zebramatt]

Increase their rate of fire?

[Salamander]

Added a BT issue for these. I added 3 possible suggestions, including yours Zebramatt. More damage, more RoF, or multi-shot. Maybe something else? I just want to see them be desirable for more than just 'bodies'.

[keith.lamothe]

I commented on the mantis record, but it's worth reposting here:

Ok, my first guess was to just bring back the cluster bonus for those, but when I asked Chris he brought up that it really encouraged blobbing and we really don't want to do that.  Which is very true.

So, we could just go with a big attack buff (some combination of power and shots) to bring it up to somewhere around where they were at max cluster-boost.  But that wouldn't be terribly interesting; in a lot of ways they would just be a different flavor of eye-bot or raptor.

So we're looking for more interesting ideas.  Please chime in

[Sizzle]

I like the idea of a multi-shot effect so that instead of an attack power buff, you can bring in a bunch of them and see a wall of bullets go out   makes them different from just a warm body, to something that can deal with swarm units better.

[twistedreasoning]

What about an cumulative shot effect? Like the longer they stay alive the more damage they do? Each individual one that hits a target does a set amt of dmg more than the shot before? 10, 15, 20, 25, ect. Total damage would be 70 instead of 40 in this case- you could cap the damage at some specific #. It's different... and it you could do it so it only gets the bonus against certain hull types. It would encourage you to try and keep these guys alive until the right moment, then they would go off like a buzz saw.

Just throwing something different out there!

[Lancefighter]

What if they become sort of a cloaked cutlass? dont get me wrong, they have to lose the whole 'autocannon' and probably 'minipod' bits of their name, but the unit becomes something of an exceptional suicide unit.. for causing massive alpha damage to a hostile force, or just suiciding a starship or something to bring it down.

I feel this means it more or less retains its basic use (is cloaked and does damage..) while making it completely unique. The idea being something similar to children ships - it is built, it suicides, etc. Sort of like the autobomb, except blades (and sans expansion)

[CoyoteTheClever]

How about limited swarm bonuses? The idea being that the computers of these things react with each other to provide group bonuses, but become overloaded after a certain amount are put together.

To give an example, they might get an attack power bonus of 5x if 25 of them are in a group together on a planet, but if 20 or 30 of them are on the planet, they only get a 4x bonus, and it decreases from there. This way there is an optimal amount so blobbing is discouraged, but they still get some manner of bonus for having a decent amount. This goes in with the theme of being a "minipod" which suggests to me some amount of small group tactics.

[zebramatt]

S'better but a little too reminiscent of the old cluster penalties on things like electric shuttles, which were way too fiddly to be fun.

[Ozymandiaz]

What if they become sort of a cloaked cutlass? dont get me wrong, they have to lose the whole 'autocannon' and probably 'minipod' bits of their name, but the unit becomes something of an exceptional suicide unit.. for causing massive alpha damage to a hostile force, or just suiciding a starship or something to bring it down.

I feel this means it more or less retains its basic use (is cloaked and does damage..) while making it completely unique. The idea being something similar to children ships - it is built, it suicides, etc. Sort of like the autobomb, except blades (and sans expansion)

Sounds like a suggestion for a new unit alltogether I like that my autopods stay alive rather then suicide as well


Not sure how to boost them with swarm bonus gone. I guess a flat damage bonus is ok enough.

[Epsilon Plus]

Maybe a RoF/multi-shot bonus - if they're attacking very rapidly, they're more likely to pick off low-HP units that would otherwise have a larger ship's shot wasted on them. Kind of gives them a vulture-esque role in picking off stragglers/weak units?

[NickAragua]

What about an cumulative shot effect? Like the longer they stay alive the more damage they do? Each individual one that hits a target does a set amt of dmg more than the shot before? 10, 15, 20, 25, ect. Total damage would be 70 instead of 40 in this case- you could cap the damage at some specific #. It's different... and it you could do it so it only gets the bonus against certain hull types. It would encourage you to try and keep these guys alive until the right moment, then they would go off like a buzz saw.

Just throwing something different out there!

That's a pretty decent idea. The little gun spins up and fires faster (represented by more damage, or a just a faster fire rate) the longer you stay on one target, then you have to spin down and back up for the next target. Makes them good against fat ships with lots of HP, less useful against other swarm type craft.

[bongotron2000]

What about an cumulative shot effect? Like the longer they stay alive the more damage they do? Each individual one that hits a target does a set amt of dmg more than the shot before? 10, 15, 20, 25, ect. Total damage would be 70 instead of 40 in this case- you could cap the damage at some specific #. It's different... and it you could do it so it only gets the bonus against certain hull types. It would encourage you to try and keep these guys alive until the right moment, then they would go off like a buzz saw.

Just throwing something different out there!

I like this idea. The damage could build up quite slowly and take some time to reach the limit, which would make having large amounts of minipods worthwhile, though probably encouraging blobby behavior. To discourage that sort of thing, perhaps they could act like the Zenith Paralysers but instead of paralysing ships they would cause any damage they took to be multiplied for a time, causing them to take more damage from all other shots. Higher mk levels would have a higher multiplier or longer lasting effect.

[zebramatt]

+1 for that!