Bonus Ship Types

[keith.lamothe]

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.

I'm a little confused, "not having a super unique role" does not imply "is a ball of dps and HP and absolutely no other distinguishing factors".  But there are times where you don't really care about that last ARS type's distinguishing factors, you care about its dps and HP because you needed more of that more than you needed its particular specials.

If, with that particular bonus type, no one ever cares about anything other than its base-cap-dps and its cap-hp... yea, that'd be a problem.  It'd need at least often-relevant hull bonuses or something else about it that's not generic.  But I'm not aware of any type considered to be that bad off

[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.

I'm a little confused, "not having a super unique role" does not imply "is a ball of dps and HP and absolutely no other distinguishing factors".  But there are times where you don't really care about that last ARS type's distinguishing factors, you care about its dps and HP because you needed more of that more than you needed its particular specials.

If, with that particular bonus type, no one ever cares about anything other than its base-cap-dps and its cap-hp... yea, that'd be a problem.  It'd need at least often-relevant hull bonuses or something else about it that's not generic.  But I'm not aware of any type considered to be that bad off

It was meant more as a counter push for saying "this gimmick isn't used, but that's ok, because it gives more HP and DPS" isn't really a good argument. It could be applied to almost any combat ship (before ships won the buff units polls, they still provided bonus health and dps).

And for the generic unit, it was just meant as an imaginary unit. Having a unit with no perks but the best HP and base damage might win battles, but would it encourage strategic thinking? Would it be a game changing? I doubt it, so it shouldn't be an primary factor to fix units that aren't performing, but rather an secondary focus used to enhance its primary focus.

For the case of deflector drones, for example, the dps was increased a bit as a result of the unit's short lifetime expectancy, but it was secondary for it being refined with more aura range and health to fulfill its role of defending other units against lasers. So although dps and health was buffed, it retains its original role, so its fun and strategic.

[Diazo]

The thing is, while their are exceptions, even the fleet ships who's primary role (as I see it) is to increase your fleetball's dps are different.

Take the MLRS and Laser Gatling.

Both are those are pretty much DPS increasers really.

However how I'd use them, both in terms of the commands I give them and the other units I unlock to work with them, will be quite different.

Now, I acknowledge that there are units that lack that differentiation and are too similar to another unit, but those are rare enough I can't actually name on off the top of my head.

Maybe Space-Tanks and Bombers? Space-Tank's niche is supposed to be bombers with better survivability, but with how the game's evolved they don't really have that. But another cap of bombers is still a nice addition to my fleet.

Really, if this is going to go any farther I'd need to sit down with a list of all the bonus units and pick the ones that are the "same", but my gut feeling is that there would be few enough of those to make chasing this any farther worth Keith spending dev time on it.

D.

[LaughingThesaurus]

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

I'm not really calling it cheese so much as it seems against the spirit of the game for me. If rerolling for the best circumstance was intentional, there may as well just be a 'choose your bonus ship' menu before the game starts after you grab your home planet. You know what? I still need to finish a game of AI War on a reasonable difficulty. Now that the guard posts actually don't counter their counters, I feel like I must just roll up a game and hit start immediately and just deal with the cards I'm given.
I remember when I first played this game. I didn't know you could choose your homeplanet. Those were the days...

[RCIX]

I'ma back off from being quite so aggressive :p I do think a lot of ships are suffering from role perception at least. I honestly don't know what use most of the ships I listed is for. I mean, at least looking at stuff like a Vorticular Cutlass i can see that it's supposed to be really good at killing stuff it can reach, the same cannot be said of a Polarizer or a Autocannon Minipod

oh and i'm really annoyed at sniper ships for no reason

As for weak units, where's that discussion?

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.

I think what I was stabbing at is formalizing this; MLRS and Laser Gatlings sound reasonably close to this already, but if you took a few of the most challenged ship types (armor ships and tanks come to mind here) and defined them as "Heavy/Light [fleetship", doesn't it sound a whole lot more obvious what they are supposed to do?

[Bognor]

Sorry RCIX but all your comments in this thread mystify me.  For me, the variety among the bonus ships is literally the single most fun part of the game.  I really look forward to seeing what I can get from ARSs and Fabs, and to trying out new ships (there's still a bunch I'm yet to play).  I think there are plenty of differentiations that you've overlooked.  A few that come to mind:

• Heavily armored ships like Armor Ships and Space Tanks become especially strong at high marks, as they get more hit points AND more armor (I see this as a good thing - keeps things interesting)
• Some fleet ships deal their damage in few, big hits (Frigates, Zelecs), whereas MLRS and Laser Gatlings distribute their damage among many small hits, minimising damage lost through overkill (at the cost of being weak against armor).  So they're ideal to mix in with big-hitters, finishing off almost-dead ships so your big hitters can keep big hitting.
• Snipers are awesome.  They have an incredible set of hull bonuses (light, medium, polycrystal, close combat) so can just about always find some way to inflict bonus damage, at least on offense.  They also have decent first strike capability, so they can duck through a wormhole, pop all the hybrid-related structures or whatever, and duck back out, taking minimal losses.
• Space Tanks are awesome.  They're stronger overall than bombers (better DPS and range), and their bonus against polycrystal makes them great for defending against potentially troublesome bomber waves. (I'm using Snipers and Space Tanks heavily in my current game.  Their almost complementary sets of hull bonuses make them a great combo.)
• I'm not convinced Raiders are really that superior to Space Planes.  Raiders have double the hit points and superior range, making them better in a fleet ball.  Plus their high armor piercing means that even low-mark Raiders are at least somewhat effective against core ships.

[Wingflier]

@Bognor - to be fair I don't think RCIX is off as many of the people in this thread are making him out to be.

In his list he included:

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?

While most of these are USEABLE, they are inferior to many other, better ship types which excel in more situations.

Let me put it like this:  If each bonus ship could be rated on a scale of usefulness from 1 to 10, most of them would probably fall into the 5-7 range. A few of them would fall into the 8-10 range. And then the rest would be 4 or below.

The problem is that the player always has access to the best ones, the ones that fall into the 8-10 range. You can start the game with one, and you can ARS hack to keep getting them.

The AI can get a ship that falls anywhere ON the scale.

This has already been mentioned before, but the problem with the current state of balance is that ship's resource cost is given such a high value of a unit's worth.  That all looks good on paper, but when you're actually out fighting with your Fleetball (aka, 90% of the game), how cheap a unit is, or how fast it can be produced, is completely irrelevant. What's most relevant for a ship to have is staying power, damage, and survivability in a fleetball. Therefore, a lot of the cheaper, more expendable units like Laser Gatlings, Microfighters, Minipods, and many more are not that useful. In fact, the best units in the game are usually the ones that are expensive as balls compared to the others, such as the Railclusters, Medic Frigates, Stealth Battleships, Spire Corvettes, Spire Maws, and such. These are not powerful because they're cheap or they build quickly, they're powerful because they contribute the most to your fleet, they survive a lot longer, and can be repaired between engagements.

For the vast majority of the game, even on higher difficulties, players with MKII Harvesters (which I consider a mandatory unlock) are going to have plenty of resources to do whatever they want. Therefore being able to build cheaply, or reproduce quickly, pales in comparison to sheer survivability, range, and power.

Enclave Starships are probably the only exception to this because they can reproduce on the frontlines BUT even those have a fundamental design flaw in that the MKIV Variety is so knowledge-expensive that nobody uses them.

Even if you are to use Enclave Starships, the Neinzul Swarmers are much more effective and well-suited for that type of cheap, fast-producing role than are the other non-Neinzul ships of that category by leaps and bounds (which makes them kind of useless).

[_K_]

When i am taking an ARS, i am often looking to simply improve my fleetball strength. Gimmicks may sound fun, but often i would rather have a simple boost to my fleet (with some simple damage or defense gimmick, eg MLRS, Bulletproofs) than an highly specialised ship that wouldnt be as useful in a fleetball (arachnid, acid sprayer).

Since the probabilities for all fleet ship types are equal, i dont want to see extremely gimmicky ships outnumbering dumb combat ships.
I want to have combat fleet, maybe with a few specialists; not a freak circus.

For the vast majority of the game, even on higher difficulties, players with MKII Harvesters (which I consider a mandatory unlock) are going to have plenty of resources to do whatever they want. Therefore being able to build cheaply, or reproduce quickly, pales in comparison to sheer survivability, range, and power.

Wait what? I dont remember expericneing this or reading about in any high-level AARs. Are we even playing the same game?

Higher difficulties are exactly where unit costs actually start to matter. You suffer higher losses there, and your economy is much weaker as well, since you cant take many planets. Upgraded harvesters, while still superior to econ stations, scale best when you have many planets, they dont help as much in high-difficulty games.

Fleet downtimes become noticeable, and they actually start mattering, as the AI on those difficulties usually doesnt just sit there.

What's most relevant for a ship to have is staying power, damage, and survivability in a fleetball. Therefore, a lot of the cheaper, more expendable units like Laser Gatlings, Microfighters, Minipods, and many more are not that useful. In fact, the best units in the game are usually the ones that are expensive as balls compared to the others, such as the Railclusters, Medic Frigates, Stealth Battleships, Spire Corvettes, Spire Maws, and such.

What if i told you the small spam ships are less survivable because they have higher HP/ DPS ratio and lower armor, and as result are higher in target priority list? Spamships are actually tanking for your other ships. They are not doind the best job at this though, especially since this results in their DPS vanishing quickly, but that's a point for discussion in that other thread we have.

[RCIX]

Sorry RCIX but all your comments in this thread mystify me.  For me, the variety among the bonus ships is literally the single most fun part of the game.  I really look forward to seeing what I can get from ARSs and Fabs, and to trying out new ships (there's still a bunch I'm yet to play).  I think there are plenty of differentiations that you've overlooked.  A few that come to mind:

I like variety, I think variety is great. It's like wingflier said; you CAN use stuff like snipers and space tanks, but would you be better off with a set of specific choices? Probably. That comes a bit from a min-maxing perspective, and not the one of trying to play in a specific playstyle though.

I'll give you an example, i just picked Autocannon Minipods in a campaign. I Look at them, okay they're supposed to be raiders of some kind, with a quasi-bomber leaning. Great, right? Except, not, because they don't have bonuses against most guard posts and don't shoot through force fields. And in a fleet blob they're wasting one of their primary benefits of speed (unless you don't use group move most of the time, but who does that :O ). In the end I guess they're okayish beause they do extra FF damage and counter a lot of stuff the bomber does, but I'd really rather have Electric Bombers (which drops the pretense of raiding and is just a really good tanky bomber) or Chameleons (because then its another cap of solid bomber and they are safe if i power them down so i can keep them as a reserve).

I'd like to distinguish ships that are just poorly balanced, and ships that are poorly filling their role. Tachyon Microfighters are a really great example of the latter. They're fighters, but supposed to reveal stuff. How hard is it to carry a single decloaker in your fleet?

Summary of things I have a problem with:
 * Swarm ships in general feel like pure cannon fodder. I'd be fine with this being their role largely, but then I'd like to see them balanced that way (higher cap health, lower cap DPS).
 * A number of units feel gimmicky (as of now, refraining from listing many examples for fear of picking units that actually work)
 * The vast majority are being outshined by a few types

...I think that covers it.

[Wingflier]

I like variety, I think variety is great. It's like wingflier said; you CAN use stuff like snipers and space tanks, but would you be better off with a set of specific choices? Probably. That comes a bit from a min-maxing perspective, and not the one of trying to play in a specific playstyle though.

The game's economy just isn't designed (in its current state) to reward tedious micromanagement like that.

Yeah, you can do your fancy Snipers in and out of wormholes trick. You can send your Tanks against Bombers and Frigate waves, and watch gleefully as they evaporate them.

Meanwhile, I'll just take my whole fleetball of less specialized ships (Like _K_) said, and just right click across the planet. Am I being much less efficient than you are? SURE! But I'm also accomplishing my mission a lot faster, and since I have infinite resources, there's no reason to do all that tedious micromanagement to begin with.

The cost:benefit ratio of Harvester unlocks right now is very high and disproportionate. As such, even with MKII Harvesters, I no longer have a need to micromanage my units anymore, I can just Fleetball my way to victory. As such, bonus ships which perform best in Fleetballs - so expensive, beefy, powerful, medium-ranged units - are the best units in the game right now.

Assuming I just stick with MKI Harvesters, my resources will be so tight that I won't even be able to spend the Knowledge that I have, because I can't even pay for my basic necessities.

So like I said, in the game's current state, the cost:benefit ratio between the Harvester upgrades means that for a meager amount of knowledge, resources basically become a non-factor. Because this is the case, cheap but expendable ships, or gimmicky ships (or both), are fairly useless to me compared to things that just wreck in a Fleetball.

Sorry guys, but the Protoss is overpowered right now.

[KDR_11k]

Low cost is mostly a thing for disposable units, e.g. you can throw a whole ball of Infiltrators consisting of caps of all four marks (640 ships in total) away and rebuild it near-instantly so even if one wave can't accomplish the goal you can just keep sending them. I needed several waves to deal with an AI homeworld but thanks to the cloaking I could do damage to the target with every wave and eventually the targets fell. Even a point blank wrath lance won't kill that Infilball too quickly.

[RCIX]

I was planning on trying infiltrators, but I rolled a counter spy when I picked them 

[TechSY730]

And the issue of the potentially, currently OP economy of human players enters the picture again...
EDIT: I am not annoyed by this, just pointing out how complicated things can get by all the aspects of the game interacting with each other.


Anyways, to answer one of your questions RCIX, the latest discussion about "weak but numerous" ships is at http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12757.0.html

[Wingflier]

Oh, let us also not forget that on AI Planets with Eyes, which basically ALWAYS includes the Homeworlds now on higher difficulties - powerful, more expensive ships with a lower cap (like the ones I've listed), are 1,000x times more useful than high-cap swarmers.  I can literally take all of my Railclusters, Medics, Maws, Stealth Battleships, and Corvettes with me, and still have a lower cap than if I simply took my whole fleet of Laser Gatlings. Which means mundo extra firepower and health, without the fear of alerting the Eye.

Can't overemphasize how huge of an advantage this is.

Edit: I should mention that although I am always critical (I'm a perfectionist by nature, blame my mom), the current state of the game is very good. Even if the developers were to stop development on this patch, and just abandon AI War forever, it would be in a relatively decent state, with lots of replayability. There's just still a lot of room for improvement.

[Diazo]

Okay.

First, I feel most of the fleet ships are in a good place. There are some outliers, both good and bad, but it the fact that good outliers are so good that really caused this issue I think.

After the normalization a few months ago of cap health/dps, the fleet ships generally do decent DPS so that makes them all usable.

However, the good ships have unique mechanics that make them so much better then the rest that they really shine so when comparisions like this come up the few really good ships overshadow everything else.

And that is before you get into the fact that based on a players play style, the same ship can range from doing really good to doing awful in that specific game.

Now, this is not me asking for a nerf, the really good ships are good because of their mechanic, not their stats, and so are kind of binary.

By that I mean the mechanic is good or bad, there is no middle ground.

Take the tackle drone launcher. Even if you reduced the number of ships it tractors, it would still be great. Until you reduced the number it tractors so much it doesn't really do anything and becomes bad. There is no middle ground here.

D.

edit: I suppose I should actually respond to comments sent my way. 

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.

I think what I was stabbing at is formalizing this; MLRS and Laser Gatlings sound reasonably close to this already, but if you took a few of the most challenged ship types (armor ships and tanks come to mind here) and defined them as "Heavy/Light [fleetship", doesn't it sound a whole lot more obvious what they are supposed to do?

I would rather see the unit's description updated rather then changing the unit name to take care of this issue. It comes back to the fact that when you start naming things {ShipA}, {LightShipA} and {HeavyShipA}, those 3 ships by design now feel samey because they are designed to be samey.

This is what I'm wanting to avoid here.