Bonus Ship Types

[keith.lamothe]

Because of what they end up doing. Chameleons end up = bomber, eye bots end up doing... what exactly? Also, I picked on them because they looked raider like =p

Respectfully, I suggest that eye bots are far more interesting than you think

And far more interesting than chameleons.

[RCIX]

Well yeah. I have better examples in that case, namely MLRS and Sniper Ships (copy of MLRS turrets that doesn't even work out AFAIK and ultimately failed unit concept respectively). Hell, it might be easier to list which units I think are kind of poorly balanced/don't really have a niche:

MLRS
Laser Gatling
Anti-Armor
Tachyon Microfighter
Armor Ship
Bulletproof Fighter
Infiltrator
Autocannon Minipod
Raider
Space Tank
Chameleon*
Impulse Reaction Emitter
Spire Armor Rotter
Zenith Polarizer
Sentinel
Sniper
Armor Booster
Mirror?

Disclaimer: may possibly be including a few good types here

[laughingman]

Eye bots end up doing a lot of things for me, and I'm always glad to see them in one of my games. Unless the AI has them.
They're immune to missiles, force fields, and insta-kill. They're cloaked and have a decent amount of damage. I use them to assassinate things under force fields that would take whole caps worth of ships to defeat otherwise. They also shut down MLRS and Missile Guard posts completely. They're incredibly useful.

If you're looking at everything from a min/max perspective, then it's hard to see what utility a ship might have that' s not related to its raw stats. I'm happy with the wide variety of ships and while some of them may need to be tweaked I don't see the need for a major overhaul of ship types.

[RCIX]

Well thats the problem, that one specific example may be usable but I can (and did) come up with half a dozen to a dozen other ships that mostly just feel wrong to use (not really a useful niche if they were even useful as a combat unit)

[laughingman]

I would suggest that perhaps the other units have roles you haven't considered, much like the eye bot.

I haven't used too many on your list, but the ones that jump out to me are the Sentinel Frigates, Infiltrators, and Bulletproof fighters. Sentinel Frigates are great at attrition while your fleet is around doing the bulk of the fighting. Because they tend to flee any engagements they stay alive pumping out damage for a much longer time than other ships. Infiltrators have force field immunity and cloaking if I remember correctly, and fulfill many of the same special roles an eye bot would. Bulletproof fighters are immune to 1/3 of the basic triangle along with all other shell-based ammo.

I'm not saying some fleet ships aren't underwhelming. I'm definitely not saying I don't have favorites. I am saying that there is more to most of the fleet ships than is apparent at first glance.

[KDR_11k]

Infiltrators are ace. Cloaked ships with a serious bonus against Ultra Heavy and such, plus really cheap to replace. Getting Mks 1-4 of them gives you a fleet that can uncloak and do tens of millions of damage to an UH target even when facing very heavy resistance and then you just send the next wave. Wrath Lance giving you trouble? Try Infils!

Like, who the hell uses [..] Eye Bots?

The AI, much to my dismay.

[Diazo]

That's sort of a specific solution in a general problem thread. Here's what I'm thinking, if I was to get somewhat comprehensive:

 * Take Raiders and make them a core type, buff them appropriately (also possibly transition them into a low cap unit type for perf reasons)
 * Take Eye Bots and whatever the hell else is raider-like, and consolidate them around the idea of "more caps of raiders, with maybe minor extra features"
 * Take Autocannon Minipods and Space Tanks and turn them into Light/Heavy Bombers (with minor extra features)
 * Take MLRS and Anti Armor and turn them into Heavy/Light frigates (with minor extra features)
 * Take Tachyon Microfighters and Armor ships and turn them into Light/Heavy fighters (with minor extra features)
 * Obtain a list of bonus types the community thinks is "design challenged" and fix those up (only here because I haven't the time or knowledge to dig through all of the rest to figure out what is dumb)

The point in this case would be that it's samey. All those other types were originally intended to be something else but failed at it. I'm fine with samey if A: it works, and B: preferably, if it's loud and proud about it. See: Chameleons and Electric Bombers riding on the strength of "we are another cap of bombers to smash fortified targets with".

And here's where we are going to disagree violently.

I like the fact that the majority of fleet ships are not samey. I acknowledge some are, but the majority are not.

I am vehemently opposed to anything that cuts down on the variety of fleet ships we have.

That is what I see your proposal as, you want to cut down on the variation between the fleet ships in the name of making them useful by making the more samey to make it easier to make them useful.

No, no, no and no.

I realize I'm being rather blunt here, but I don't think I can be clear enough in a text based format how much I am against this.

D.

[TechSY730]

(See: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12781.msg140955.html#msg140955 for reference)

The MRLS and the laser gattlings are easy to use, general purpose ships that fit well into a "fleet ball" (these two are actually my favorite bonus ship types, because of how easy they are to use without sacrificing too much combat ability)

The sniper and the sentinal are awesome if managed properly; not always moving them with the rest of the fleet but instead letting them hang back sometimes is a crucial part of this.

The armor ship is one of the most durable fleet ships both armor rating and cap HP wise, which is nifty. Granted, their low speed makes it hard to take advantage of that.

IIRC, shell ammo is the most common ammo type in the game, so the bulletproof fighter having an immunity to it is actually pretty nifty. Granted, there isn't much distinguishing them from a generic standard fighter clone otherwise.

The infiltrator is useful like the eyebot is, just with a different set of immunities and other stats (especially speed).

Although it doesn't have FF immunity, the minipod can be even better against lots of important stuff not under FF because of their bonuses and the armor rotting, and they do pretty good against FFs themselves too.

Ever since the AI exclusive stuff got good energy costs associated to them, impulse reaction emitters are actually pretty decent now.

The Z mirror is a pretty neat "revenge" unit, though I do feel that it's cap HP has not quite been adjusted considering the damage bonus it receives. The damage bonus it takes also tends to boost it up target priority lists, compounding the issue.

The anti-armor, Spire armor rotter, armor booster, and the Z polarizer I am withholding too much judgement on until the armor rebalance/rework is complete.
Though the Z polarizer, even in its current state, can be very good if you are fighting lots of low cap ships, starships, or other things with high armor.
I can think of one change to make armor booster much, much better without having to wait for a armor rework first is giving them a minimum to boost too


I will agree that the raider, tachyon microfighter, and the space tank need help though. (though I would also add the raptor to that list)

[keith.lamothe]

RCIX,

I've been very grateful for your feedback in the past, so please don't take this the wrong way, but I think some frankness is necessary here.

MLRS
Laser Gatling
Anti-Armor
Tachyon Microfighter
Armor Ship
Bulletproof Fighter
Infiltrator
Autocannon Minipod
Raider
Space Tank
Chameleon*
Impulse Reaction Emitter
Spire Armor Rotter
Zenith Polarizer
Sentinel
Sniper
Armor Booster
Mirror?

Disclaimer: may possibly be including a few good types here

There's quite a few good types in there.


It's not that all of them are where they should be, but more of them are than you seem to have realized (or, honestly, appear to want to realize, which is my main concern here).

There are all kinds of things that when I look at the game as one person I think would be much better off changed.  Sometimes I'm even right.  More often I'm corrected by this community   Generally there's something worth changing, but it's not often exactly what I thought.

So when I see you come back from a relatively long hiatus and propose... well, I don't think you'd dispute that these are some pretty big changes... well, I treat it with the same skepticism I would if I suddenly had another flare of "you know, just rounding up armor and all the hull bonus type things into a weapon-type vs armor-type system would be a lot better" or whatever

[TechSY730]

To be fair, I can kind of see where RCIX is coming from. A lot of the units, although useful, don't have a lot of in-game guidance about how they are useful or what their "gimmick" is good for/against; which can give a bad first impression that their "gimmick" is more or less useless.

Now I don't expect hand holding or detailed strategy from the game engine or the unit descriptions, but some figuring out some "soft-handed", indirect guidance/hints of how the more esoteric ship types could be useful, or what kinds of things they would be good against.

[Diazo]

Okay.

I just went back and read the opening post to this thread again and I think there may be a perception issue along with everything else here.

Take the MLRS for example. It is a straight up combat ship that deals damage and that's pretty much all it has.

But in exchange it does something like 180% the cap damage of both the fighter and the missile frigate (each, not combined).

Laser Gatling are essentially the same. A damage dealer with no real gimmick except having a high cap, but it does good dps.

Having a bonus ship that is good at dealing out damage and nothing else will tend to not have its contributions noticed when the giant fight in the fleet ball is happening. It's doing a lot of damage, but when you have several mixed types of ships in the fleet ball you don't see this.

As opposed to something like the Eye Bot. It's cloaked and FF-immune and so when it goes and ganks that Ion Cannon under an FF before the rest of your fleet warps in, it really stands out. However in terms of contributing to actually taking the system I don't see either one being a clear winner as it would depend on what was seeded in the system.

D.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I do want to weigh in with a little something.

For all of those samey extra DPS sort of ships, what exactly is the problem with them? You have an extra cap of bombers. That extra number gives you much more damage, more total health of your bomber fleet, predisposes you for a loadout of bomber-like ships, and gives you twice the potential amount of bombing action. Bonus ships aren't just there, to me, to be gimmick ships with niche use. They do much more than that. They give you that extra overall firepower and push you more towards a particular role.
There's also my view that, you're possibly gaming the system as well. I actually choose my homeplanet based on what's a good position rather than anything else. I actually don't pay much mind to whatever ship I'm getting from it. You know why? Because I read somewhere that, as part of the game's design, you are supposed to work with what you are given on the fly. The bonus ship balance may be a bit off, but if you aren't actually choosing the bonus ship, you learn to work with what you have, hope that ARSs have something you want more, or you ragequit. Think in terms of roguelikes. Everything's got its trade-off, sure, but can you honestly tell me that any roguelike ever is perfectly balanced? The balancing factor is the fact that you never consistently get what you want. When you choose what you want, that's a courtesy offered by the game. It certainly doesn't have to be that way.

Long story short, I like the bonus ship variety, I really like the fact that some are really odd men out. It gives me more to adapt to, and more to play with. If you just take that stuff away and shove all of the ships into predefined roles, you turn AI War into Starcraft 2 (relative to Starcraft 1). I've got a problem with Blizzard, and it's the fact that they do the very same thing. Everything's either DPS, Tank, or Healer. You've got the siege tank that counters zerglings that counter thors that counter ultralisks that counter siege tanks rather than any sort of organic balance. Let's not bring any kind of strict roles into my bonus ships.

[Winge]

And here's where we are going to disagree violently.

I like the fact that the majority of fleet ships are not samey. I acknowledge some are, but the majority are not.

I am vehemently opposed to anything that cuts down on the variety of fleet ships we have.

That is what I see your proposal as, you want to cut down on the variation between the fleet ships in the name of making them useful by making the more samey to make it easier to make them useful.

No, no, no and no.

I realize I'm being rather blunt here, but I don't think I can be clear enough in a text based format how much I am against this.

D.

I agree with Diazo (albeit not violently  ).  I really like the fact that there are so many ship types to play around with and against (although I sometimes regret the 'against' part...).  That is part of AI War's charm to me.  There are two caveats to this:  1)  the bonus ships need to be balanced well with the rest of the ships (hence why we have the "Worst Ship" and "Nerfbat" polls), and 2) it is very difficult to determine the niche that some ships fill.  Number 2 can be fixed simply by working on the flavor text for each ship--most of these are good as-is, but there are a few that could use to be tweaked.  And, as others have mentioned, not everything needs a super unique role.  As others have mentioned, every ship adds damage and HP to a fleetball.  Sometimes, that's exactly what you want and need.

[keith.lamothe]

There's also my view that, you're possibly gaming the system as well. I actually choose my homeplanet based on what's a good position rather than anything else. I actually don't pay much mind to whatever ship I'm getting from it. You know why? Because I read somewhere that, as part of the game's design, you are supposed to work with what you are given on the fly.

That's more for the ARS's (where you have some flexibility if you're willing to hack, but it's limited), and in the lobby encouraging you to settle for "decent combination of bonus pick and position" rather than "reroll until totally ideal".  But we certainly don't call it cheese if you pick your initial bonus type with malice aforethought

Though I do suspect Diazo's approach of not picking a HW at all leads to more fun overall.  Whether it's fun or !!fun!! I can't say

[chemical_art]

And, as others have mentioned, not everything needs a super unique role.  As others have mentioned, every ship adds damage and HP to a fleetball.  Sometimes, that's exactly what you want and need.

That's a premise I disagree with. More specifically, no ship should aim for this. If you need nothing more then damage and HP, it would, to remain balanced, have no gimmicks. None. It would be the blandest ship ever. It would have no damage multipliers, etc, etc. That is not fun. So saying "this ship is OK because it adds extra damage and HP" is bland, and just as discouraging, can apply to the vast majority of ships in some sense.