[Balance] Tractor Turrets

[eRe4s3r]

Lo, i am in a fairly end-game kind of game (15+ hours) and i noticed something really annoying.

Tractor turrets survive about 6-40 times as long as normal MK4/Mk3 turrets - which leads to entire defenses wiped out, except tractor turrets (via long-range bombardment with missiles/laser turrets)

Imo tractor turrets should receive EXTREME damage when shot at by other turrets.

The situation i am talking about is fairly dense IV worlds (Core worlds) which have insane amounts of turrets (the rings fill entire screens) but most of em are tractors MK3 - obviously destroying them would be the logical alternative, but when a bombardment starts its easier to clean the ENTIRE DEFENSE including a MKIII shield than the tractor turrets (because every turret that can't shoot back is a good turret) but tractors survive so much pounding it would take about 6 times as long to destroy them instead of the defenses AROUND them.

I know this was done to make them survive longer when players have them, but atm they just survive way too much.

Ps.: With the bombardment ship this issue seems to be much smaller - but i still think that tractor turrets just have too high HP for the power they have (MK3 versions essentially are blocking any non-cruiser unit from hitting it)

[x4000]

This is by design -- they are essentially "walls" in the traditional RTS sense, and so last a bit longer.  Otherwise, they don't really provide much in the way of protection/prevention, right?

[eRe4s3r]

Indeed, but they block bombers.. and thats something thats really annoying to have 

I know they are akin to walls but when i can deadlock MK3 bombers in a MK3 tractor defense and destroy them with 0 losses then that is bad...

I am actually of the opinion that tractors make defense much too easy since they are the last thing to die in fact - if you have reclaimators you can sustain a defense against deadlocked ships without them EVER becoming free or breaking through. I faced 170 MK2 bombers once and besides destroying my "close combat" rings they never even could touch my forcefielded Mk3 tractors due to their shot power dropping with range and since missile turrets and lasers (both Mk3) are so powerful and have high range - this makes these kind of defended wormholes impenetrable (unless a cross planet raid comes with vastly more troop selection ie - beam frigates / bombards

Against marauders this is not a problem, but since the AI does these Raids they are essentially a "no threat" unless you are on your 6th planet with 8 hops and want to hold it as a path blocker for the ai traffic (and not just defend a certain building in which case holding is easy ,p)

Ok granted, i have my defenses figured out pretty well so i know how to defend against 500-1000 ship attacks but the AI is not able to counter-act this (ie, shift warps to other places)

- Speaking of this,
Suggestion
why not give the AI the ability to "loose" raids ie - not "warp in" in a fortified metal grinder every single time (because destroying selected warpgates allows you to build impenetrable (by raids) defenses)

I think the ai should send in a scout ship of some kind first to gauge the defenses and maybe do a "trial" raid but when it fails with 100% losses for the ai and 0% losses for the player then that raid access should be red-flagged for hours to come.

What i am actually saying is, the game is not hard enough because the ai is not smart enough - if raids have no chance of success then maybe the ai should add these ships to a CPR force instead - or even a mobile defense force that responds to attacks, but does not attack itself alone (like sf post traffic, just smarter)

[HellishFiend]

eRe4s3r , it sounds to me like you're trying to remove the tower defense portion of the game....

[x4000]

The "holding bombers at arms length" thing bothers me, too.  But I have a different solution (one which might actually trigger me to increase tractor turret health before too long, but we'll see).  From 2.200:

-The AI is no longer able to issue movement or attack orders to its ships if they are stuck in tractor beams.  This lets low-level autotargeting make better short-term decisions.

-Ships that stuck in tractor beams now always have at least a 25% chance of hitting the tractor beam that is holding them if they would normally be able to hit the tractor beam from closer range.  This makes tractor beams no longer so instantly fatal to bombers and other shorter-ranged ships.

-Ship bonuses against turrets no longer ocunt against tractor beams or ion cannons.  This levels the playing field a bit for all ships with these, without making some ships absolutely useless against them and others ridiculously overpowered against them.


That should be a lot more interesting.  Preventing stalemate situations is a chief goal of mine.  Having historical data with flags of the sort you are describing is not a direction I'm going to take the AI unless it's a last resort, though.  I've detailed my design philosophy for the AI on my blog in the past, if you're interested.  Both the AI and human players are supposed to be able to fall into traps every so often -- just not perfectly inescapable single-unit ones, which is what the tractor beams had unfortunately come to often represent.  Hopefully these new changes will address that issue, and then we'll see how things look once more time is spent with them.