Bonus Ship Ommission File

[Faulty Logic]

Devils Advocate:

Deflector Drones; park near important structures ==> Raid starship attack quartered.

Teleport Raiders: that data center way over there? Gone. For cheap.

Infiltrators: if only there was an important ai structure under a lot of forcefield protection...

TDLs, SBSs: countered hard by gravity.

Maws: killing a ship once per 6-mark seconds is OP? It isn't even an unconditional kill.

Grenade launch: use them defensively against big waves: they shine.

Miniram: not really a combat ship. Drop a cap of these from a transport next to structure you want dead. Add cloakers for insurance.

Autocannon: shear numbers, and cheapness. Attracts a lot of enemy fire before dying. Armor damage is an occasional bonus as well.

Teleleech: I really want a couple of those <AI ship class>. Now I have them.

Raider: shot soak, with actual firepower.

Electric bomber: great dps, survivability.

Muniboost: low cap, flagships and mil stations do the same thing.

Bombard: sitting ducks for 30 seconds after they fire.

Beam frigate: usually doesn't get its full power.

Shield Bearer: alright, maybe a little better than most.

Electric shuttle: agreed, definitely UP.

Armor: was this ever supposed to be a big, core mechanic? Some ships have it, some ships counter it. I hardly think it needs a huge rework (the game is just fine with it being only occasionally important).

End Devils Advocate.

[Toranth]

Today I unlocked a Spire Shadow Frigate and saw a really neat modular weapon called the Zenith Polarization weapon or something, that did more damage based on armor.  It seemed cool til I remembered that armor is rarely ever a concern, where I'm constantly fighting ships with bonuses applicable to the modular weapon types.  When will that weapon even be useful?  When I'm about to face an exo-wave or something?

With the Armor Polarizer, you picked a bad example. 
Polarizer Modules have an average multiplier of about 20 against other fleetships, which means a Mk I DPS of about 11,000.
Polarizers also have the odd feature that they become better weapons as the enemy becomes stronger.  Your DPS doubles when shooting at a Mk IV fleetship, and 22,000 DPS is not bad at all for a Mk I module.
Unfortunately, about 33% of all fleetships have NO armor, and that results in an abysmal 2,200 DPS.
That said, I agree that some of those ships often don't serve a purpose right now.  But that doesn't mean 'never', and especially in AI hands they can become a lot more interesting to deal with.


No, I think such a 'banned ships' list, like the 'banned AI types' list, would just help keep people from dealing with things they find make the game not-fun.  *cough*Eyebots*cough*

[Wingflier]

Erm... I thought the point of the game was to be fun 

[keith.lamothe]

@Wingflier

The polarizer module is one of the best choices for light mount in multiple nebula scenarios, due to the need to take down starbases or other really big stuff.

But yes, armor needs redone, it's on the list, I just didn't want to dig up a huge chunk of balance pavement that soon before an official.  We did the "shields are now armor" change a little before 4.0 and it was a balance disaster.  I'm glad 4.0 wasn't the official very long.

And sure, those focused buff/nerf polls don't address everything, because they're focused.  There's also a place for less-focused polls, like the 6.0 one that led to a pretty wide variety of changes.

[Wingflier]

Yeah I'm not complaining, and I don't mean to come off that way.  I asked for this really just to give you more time to do whatever you need to.  When you can choose which bonus ships stay in the game, balance becomes much less of a concern for the player.

Is it a quick fix?  Sure - but since it's optional, I don't see what the problem is, and it gives you more time to develop other things.

[TechSY730]

Devils Advocate:
(longish list)
End Devils Advocate.

Yes, no ship is truly useless and no ship lacks a practical counter, even though there are OP and UP ships.

Even the electric shuttle, if you can get a bunch of them in range of 40+ ships needed to get max DPS, can really start dealing some nice damage. Sure, there is the issue where they don't really have a durability or speed to afford to get close to 40 or more ships, and they try to always "stack" on top of their target instead of being content to get within a certain fraction of their range of their target, compounding this issue. But when they can get their shots off on top of large groups (admittedly, this happens a bit too infrequently, which is why they are UP), they can deal some nice damage.

[Hearteater]

My biggest issue with Electric Shuttles is they get suicidally close to targets.

[rabican]

Devils Advocate:

snip

End Devils Advocate.

Mostly agree. Although haven't tested electric shuttles in huge numbers since the cap change. AI using them in swarms in sometimes rather painful, i imagine all caps of them might be decent in player hands.  And TDLs are much harder to completly shut down with gravity than BS because of the rather large range of drone explosions.

About etherjets : Here is how i use them. MK II+ just in fleetballing, mk I stay unbuild, apart from couple of ships near each CMD that is likely to get attacked. If things get really bad i quickly build cap of them and just send things away from my valuables. Cheaply shuts down SSBSs pretty well which is pretty nice.  I also now and then use mercs for this, but that ain't that cheap

[Kahuna]

Deflector Drones; park near important structures ==> Raid starship attack quartered.

With auto kite you can't "park" them. The AOE where they reduce laser damage is so small it same as if it didn't exist. Also.. Raid Starships never get close to my Command Stations. They're a bit too fragile and too expensive (yet cheap) for what they do atm. They are useful when blobbing however.

Teleport Raiders: that data center way over there? Gone. For cheap.

Yeah that's a good point. They seem a bit meh though. Even when AI sent 1000 of them I destroyed all if them in few seconds. They almost destroyed a force field though. Gonna have to try them again.

TDLs, SBSs: countered hard by gravity.

I can't take Gravitational Turrets with me when I'm attacking. TDLs push enemies way too far. Drones need to tractor 1 ship less and explode faster. SBSs blades do quite a lot of damage.. but so do Snipers and Sentinels. Maybe they're not as op as I thought. TDLs are too powerful though.

Maws: killing a ship once per 6-mark seconds is OP?[/quote]
When the AI sends 20 of these WITH few hundred other ships yes.

Grenade launch: use them defensively against big waves: they shine.

AOE needs to be a bit bigger.

Miniram: not really a combat ship. Drop a cap of these from a transport next to structure you want dead. Add cloakers for insurance.

Hm good point.. AIP free missiles for AI home world attacks.

Autocannon: shear numbers, and cheapness. Attracts a lot of enemy fire before dying. Armor damage is an occasional bonus as well.

Hmmm. What can they do? Destroy Ion Cannons, Force Fields and Swarmer hull ships which are semi rare. Turret multiplier is useless for the player.

Teleleech: I really want a couple of those <AI ship class>. Now I have them.

Too expensive.

Raider: shot soak, with actual firepower.

Hmm I guess

Electric bomber: great dps, survivability.

Cap health is "only" 9.975.000. Vs Missile Frigates 1.662.500 health. "Expensive bomber that delivers a tremendous payload" well it's not that tremendous since their DPS is 120.333 (which is good) but only 3 multipliers. Basically they're good against Bombers, Force Fields and Ion Cannons. Doesn't sound that useful. I think they need more health and 1 more multiplier or higher base damage.

Muniboost: low cap, flagships and mil stations do the same thing.

A cap of MarkI and II Flagships can't even boost 90 Missile Turrets. 3 MarkI Munitions Boosters can do that. Also MarkI Flagship boosts only +40% while MarkI Munitions Booster boosts +80%. MarkI Military Station boosts only +19%.

Bombard: sitting ducks for 30 seconds after they fire.

Sitting duck for 30 seconds yet their dps is rly good. Their alpha strike is insane (which is not the problem) AI has a bad habit of having 30 of these on all of it's planets. Then when you try to destroy them they all fly away in different directions and destroying all of them takes forever. I haven't used these myself but in AIs hands they're overpowered.
In waves:
960 Bombers=lold
960 Fighters=easy
960 Missile Frigates=hard
200 Zombards=gg

Beam frigate: usually doesn't get its full power.

Maybe I just had nightmares because I played vs 10 diff Zenith Descendant.

[Kahuna]

Even the electric shuttle, if you can get a bunch of them in range of 40+ ships needed to get max DPS, can really start dealing some nice damage. Sure, there is the issue where they don't really have a durability or speed to afford to get close to 40 or more ships, and they try to always "stack" on top of their target instead of being content to get within a certain fraction of their range of their target, compounding this issue. But when they can get their shots off on top of large groups (admittedly, this happens a bit too infrequently, which is why they are UP), they can deal some nice damage.

I may have discovered the zen of electric shuttles:
Counter-Missile Turrets+Electric Shuttles=388.800 DPS. Add MarkIIs for +777.600 DPS = 1.166.400 DPS + Military Command Station + Turrets. They would still be horribad on offense but they could be used exclusively to defend. I haven't actually tried this yet.
They should do 75% damage under Force Fields and have a bit more health.

[KDR_11k]

I think it has been brought up before, the key problem with AOE lightning is that the damage to each individual target is significantly lower than the damage that target will take from a single shot from another source thus that other source that does the actual killing won't actually kill in fewer hits. The lightning damage just slightly increases the overkill of the final shot.

Deflector drones suffer because weapon types are given out fairly randomly, a few key ones may get special attention (energy bomb, missile, dark matter, railgun, beams) but lasers aren't one of them. Laser weapons are randomly scattered among the unit types and overall rather exotic. Deflectors are a unit you rarely have that counters units the enemy rarely has. One of these rarely has to go, either lasers have to become way more common or the deflector needs to go into the Sup tab instead of being a bonus ship. Of course the third option would be to make them work on something more common like flame waves, energy bombs or just plain old shells.

[Faulty Logic]

I can't take Gravitational Turrets with me when I'm attacking.

Spire gravity drains or RiotIIIs w/grav modules.

I did mention I was playing DA; I actually agree with you on most of your analysis, but I don't think any fleetship is completely out of whack.

[Kahuna]

Teleport Raiders: that data center way over there? Gone. For cheap.

I just noticed Data Centers are immune to Minor Electric ammos.... -_______________- Co-Processors, Raid Engines and Distribution Nodes are too. Thus there are almost completely useless. I'm a sad panda. Bye bye plans about beating 10 diff Raid Engine. Gonna have to think of something else
Keith! You need to remove the Minor Electric Immunity from those! Or give Teleport Raiders some other ammo type! TpRaiders being able to destroy those would probably make them good.

[Wingflier]

Yes teleport raiders...that can't actually raid anything ;p

I've been complaining about teleport raiders and their even crappier raider counterparts for a long time.  Nobody listens to me.

[KDR_11k]

Minor Electric is only found on teleporters in the first place. Yeah, it's a pretty common immunity and teleporting isn't as useful as it may sound (maybe it is in the hands of the AI but when a human uses them that teleporting won't get you anywhere useful that isn't defended because the AI defends everything).