Bonus ship group bonuses and group penalties

[wyvern83]

Do group bonuses and penalties apply to different marks of the same bonus ship type?

For example if I have 1 mk.I autocannon minipod with an mk.II or mk.III autocannon will they get the cluster attack bonus?

Or if I have a mk.I sentinel frigate with a mk.II and a mk.III sentinel frigate will they be penalized for having more than 1-2 in a system?

(also there are a number of units what are not yet in the wiki, sentinel frigates being one of them)

[keith.lamothe]

The bonuses/penalties are computed per-mark with no cross referencing.  So the attack power of an autocannon mkI is unrelated to the number of autocatnnon mkIIs in the system (same with sentinels).  Does that make sense?

[wyvern83]

Awesome, yes it does.

I plan on trying out sentinel frigates in one of my games as a starting location and had noticed the grouping penalty. I look forward to using small mixed mk. groups of sentinel frigates as pseudo starships with my attack groups.

[keith.lamothe]

That should be interesting   Haven't tried them as a starting bonus ship myself, I think that may be a bit more challenging as they tend to be a good pick for contributing significantly to the defense of multiple systems, but not as good as other types at lending a good "punch" to your main attack fleets that you need to do initial expansion, get territory for knowledge raiding to unlock more stuff, capture ARS's to get more bonus types, etc.

[wyvern83]

Conceptually my plan is to also go for Raids, the idea being is that Sentinels build faster and coupled with a transport I could use them to snipe guard posts and other targets while I waited for the Raids to finish. A pair of each mk. should equal 2-3 mk. 1 Raids. I would only have to use them this way till the Raids were ready.

However your point is still valid as this would require knowledge that isn't going to higher ship caps in more fleet oriented spaceships like say bulletproofs or bombers. I'm just interested in exploring a possible early "starship" effect as I'm convinced this is the underlying reason behind the cluster penalty. I haven't done much with starships yet so assisting during starship construction may be more efficient in the end.

As part of a solo multi-planet start it might be more closer to more conventional setups in terms of fleet "punch" depending on how many and what your other options were. The seed I'm considering atm for a multi-planet start has Sentinel Frigates as a starting choice which is part of the reason I thought of this idea.  Their defense advantage as you point out would be very useful in this case.

Thanks for your help and your speedy reply. I'll be sure to post my experience when I get around to trying it and let you know way it was. Anyone else is welcome to try it as well as it might be a week or two before I have the time to do it myself.

[keith.lamothe]

I'll be interested to hear how it goes

[superking]

10k energy costs make them terrible 

[ShadowOTE]

well, that an declining efficiency...

[Nihilus]

You could always just use 1 instead of 2, since at .55 per, that's only a 10% increase overall for having 2. Or at least only use 1 at a time for long-term defense, definitely.

[wyvern83]

I ended up playing a coop game with Sentinel Frigates but since we both took 3-4 planets on a spokes map I'm not sure how much they helped given the map layout. 10,000 energy is a lot more in the beginning then I had anticipated. I found that I didn't build them right away as I was more concerned with getting more ships quickly.

I still think it could work but I'll have to give it a try single player - single planet next time I play.

Is the penalty that harsh? I thought it was more along the lines of a cumulative - 0.02 percent. Or am I looking at the numbers wrong?

[Nihilus]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. A cumulative x0.55, which bottoms out at 2% of the listed damage.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I'd need to check the code to make sure but I think it's

Power(shipCount) = shipCount * Multiplier(shipCount)
Multiplier(shipCount) = 1 * (0.55^(shipCount-1))

Ship Count	Multiplier	Total
1	1	1
2	0.55	1.1
3	0.3025	0.9075
4	0.166375	0.6655
5	0.09150625	0.45753125
6	0.050328438	0.301970625
7	0.027680641	0.193764484
8	0.02	0.16
9	0.02	0.18
10	0.02	0.2
11	0.02	0.22
12	0.02	0.24
13	0.02	0.26
14	0.02	0.28
15	0.02	0.3
16	0.02	0.32
17	0.02	0.34
18	0.02	0.36
19	0.02	0.38
20	0.02	0.4
21	0.02	0.42
22	0.02	0.44
23	0.02	0.46
24	0.02	0.48
25	0.02	0.5
26	0.02	0.52
27	0.02	0.54
28	0.02	0.56
29	0.02	0.58
30	0.02	0.6
31	0.02	0.62
32	0.02	0.64
33	0.02	0.66
34	0.02	0.68
35	0.02	0.7
36	0.02	0.72
37	0.02	0.74
38	0.02	0.76
39	0.02	0.78
40	0.02	0.8
41	0.02	0.82
42	0.02	0.84
43	0.02	0.86
44	0.02	0.88
45	0.02	0.9
46	0.02	0.92
47	0.02	0.94
48	0.02	0.96
49	0.02	0.98
50	0.02	1
51	0.02	1.02
52	0.02	1.04
53	0.02	1.06
54	0.02	1.08
55	0.02	1.1
56	0.02	1.12

[drum]

i can see why they have declining efficiancy, it allows them to be used in small amounts in many places and be powerful without being op when used in groups, nice for diversity, but shirley the energy costs go against this purpose?

i mean its 10k energy for a fancy moving turret basically. 

could easily reduce the energy cost to 1k without any problems i reckon.

[keith.lamothe]

As I think about it, 10k does sound high; though it has a fairly high attack power iirc (in Jan/Feb I buffed it to like 4x of what it used to be).

It also functions as a warp detector, iirc, though that's not a 9k energy ability.

[wyvern83]

Wow.. That makes it very clear, thanks for posting the numbers. Look's like one per mk. per world is the way to go with these guys.

I'd love to see the energy cost reduced abit even though a very light production of Sentinel Frigates is for the best initially given the drop-off effect and the low number of worlds you'd have starting out. When you only start with a single mk. II plant usually, the idea of throwing away a third of it right away is very off putting. (though I build a mk III plant immediately in any case)