Community Brainstorm - The State of Fortresses

[Wingflier]

As before, this is a brainstorming only thread.  No criticizing is allowed; critiques can be done in the next (Poll Thread).

Please write down your idea in a neat, legible, and respectable way, or you're encouraged to explain why you like someone else's ideas as well.

Once all the ideas have been presented, the most popular ones will be taken to a Poll Thread and voted on by the community.

I'll give you an example in my next post of how a Brainstorm Suggestion should look.

[Wingflier]

Current Problem - Fortresses in their current state are rather boring in that they tear everything apart except Bombers (and other Polycrystal hulls), to which they do basically nothing (0.05% normal damage).  Many people think that Fortresses could be a lot more interesting and diverse in the way that they are countered.

Hypothesis - If we make Fortresses more interesting to combat, without lowering their overall power, the game will be much less mindless and more interesting than before.

Solution -
1. Change Fortress Reload Speed from 6 seconds to 30 seconds.
2. Increase Fortress number of shots by a multiple of 5.
3. Remove Polycrystal Immunity.
4. Change Fortress Hull Type from Ultra-Heavy to Composite.

Explanation:
Fortresses in their current state have to be hard-countered by Bombers because they do so much damage to everything else.  However, this is problematic for 2 reasons:
 
1. Bombers are the biggest threat to your base, therefore wouldn't you want your Fortresses to kill them the most?
2. Bombers already seem to be the most useful Triangle ship by far, therefore it would be more ideal to have another Triangle Ship counter the Fortress instead.

By changing the Fortress reload speed (by a multiple of 5) and the total number of shots (by a multiple of 5), the Fortresses still do the same amount of damage, it's all just frontloaded into its first shot, then applied again every 30 seconds.  To give a good comparison, a 30 second reload is not unreasonable for a defense, as Lightning Turrets (which are much more vulnerable) shoot once every 30 seconds as well.

Since the Fortress Hull Type has changed, the way to counter it is to absorb its first wave of shots with something cheap, then send Frigates in to fire off several rounds before backing out of range before it can fire again.  In other words, the way you counter the Fortress is a lot more interesting (and skillful) than it was before, and will cause you to lose a lot more units if you aren't paying attention.  The Fortresses' new front-loaded power can be countered by sending in a "diversionary squad", then carefully monitoring its reload time between attacks.

The new Fortresses would look like this:

Fortress MK1 - Damage 160,000x150. Reload Speed 30 seconds.
Fortress MK2 - Damage 280,000x200. Reload Speed 30 seconds.
Fortress MK3 - Damage 400,000x250. Reload Speed 30 seconds.

...and so on.

Conclusion:
Changing the Fortresses in this way will not reduce their power in the player's hands, in fact it will probably make them more powerful since they can hit Bombers now.  However, against the computer, the player has to carefully prepare and plan their course of attack against Fortresses, and pay special attention against them, as opposed to the current "fire and forget" system in place now.  In addition, Bombers' extreme overusefulness will be reduced a bit, and Frigates will become significantly MORE useful than they were before.

[Lancefighter]

Current theory - Fortresses need to somehow fill a role that isnt available in all games.

Lets discuss what the terminology fortress means - Google tells me "A heavily protected and impenetrable building"

Do fortresses need to deal massive damage? Does nothing else in the game deal damage? I think that maybe to many things deal damage. I dont really think changing their damage really needs to be done though.

Instead, lets make them do something else. One role that nothing really does particularly well at the moment is *defending turrets*. For the moment, current defense methods tend to be 'put turrets outside of a forcefield and hope they dont die'.
I propose that fortresses are a heaavy defense that is mainly focused on providing safety to other damage dealers - A giant impenetrable wall. Primarily one that doesnt reduce damage of turrets under it.

I would also propose that the forcefield be non-shrinking (and non-solid), and can be destroyed independently of the fortress, but that might be going a tad far.

Currently, your only choice for defending turrets with a non-reducing forcefield is spire cities or modular fortresses. Spire cities are incredibly expensive and cause huge ai response, and modular fortresses are probably not the easiest to acquire.

[Mermel]

Step one:
Make the modular fortresses the standart ones, reduce main gun firepower, add support effects, more with higher marks.
I'm thinking of abilites like gravity drain, tachyon coverage, maybe armor boost and of course the repair (If these were modules providing the effect, even better... )

Step two:
Add a new supersized version of the modular-concept fortress, using basically the same control mechanics as spire cities.
You have a main central part with the option of building different types of support structures. These get stacking boni in categories like offensive, defensive, support and may have a limited selection of weapons to build on.
A defensive support structure might only house shields or countermeasure cannons for example.

With only three different types of support structures, there are 27 different combinations of possibly unique challenges, far more so, as different support platforms may be targeted individually, giving the option of taking out subsystems of the fortress.

As an interesting side effect: The Ai that uses modular fortresses as command stations, would get a lot more interesting )

For me, these changes would make fortresses a really interesting game aspect, more than just basically a big turret and a no fly zone. If theres one of these things, you got to think about how and when to bring it down.

And if anyone imagines it too powerful, there is still the option of just redesigning superfortresses that way, making them extremely expensive as they are and a real obstacle in both ways. You really notice a system with a superfortress inside and will go around it as long as possible.
But in the end it's up to balance anyway

edit:

but that might be going a tad far.

I'm so far out

[Shrugging Khan]

Non-firepower-reducing force field fortress (with reduced firepower?).

Yes please.

[Draco18s]

Non-reducing FF-generators that protect a limited type of unit (aka non-mobile units aka turrets)?

Yes please.  That even kills two birds with one stone.

[Lancefighter]

I really dont want to see them being too limited - Sure, it might be a fairly small forcefield, but I dont think it should be limited to just command centers or something.

The other option I can think of is "absolutely impenetrable forcefield", in which nothing can shoot out, but absolutely nothing can enter. This would provide an alternate mechanic for a forcefield, but would also mean anything inside isnt useful at planetary defense until the fortress is destroyed.

[doctorfrog]

Trying to economize words here and come up with ever-crazier ideas. These are three separate ideas I'm crammin' into one post:

Part 1 - Baby Teeth:

• Fortress Militia Drones: give fortresses a basic set of teeth against bombers, that have to be picked off before bombers can move in and do their damage. Drones are only launched when the Fortress is threatened, and slowly respawn over time.
• To complement the Militia, fortresses should harbor a nominal, unknown set of typical AI units, only launched when the fortress is threatened. They do not respawn, but new reinforcements may be drawn to fortresses as they enter the planet.

Part 2 - Rock, Paper, Bomber:
A certain amount of micro is now required in dealing with Fortresses, specific to the holy trinity of fleet composition:

• Fortresses now have destructable turrets mounted on their walls, and have slow-respawning Militia as in Part 1.
• Fighters beat Militia, but are beaten by turrets.
• Bombers beat fortress walls, but are beaten by Militia and turrets.
• Frigates beat turrets (and in fact out-range them), but are beaten by Militia.
• Fortresses may have variable strength in numbers of turrets or Militia, or wall "thickness."
• A rusty idea to begin with, so I'd encourage more refinement. The real idea here is to introduce a small amount of micro in specific instances without dragging down the entire game.

Part 3 - Fortress Flavor:
Invent and implement fortress themes the way we did with AI Eyes, to make them more variable as threats, more enticing as prizes, or just plain more flavorful. Examples:

• Mobile Menace/Technodrome Fortress: fortress is capable of very slow movement, able to traverse up to one system hop, essentially a potential beachhead to deal with. Once on the other side, the AI is more likely to send CPA to that planet.
• Alternative Technodrome Fortress: When the fortress is 'annoyed,' a countdown appears, and three randomly selected player-owned worlds are highlighted. The Fortress will teleport with a sizeable attack force (from Dimension X) to ONE of these three planets.
• Arcane Research SuperFortress: fortress appears to manufacture unusual fusions of both AI technologies, and launches them against you mercilessly. When captured|destroyed, the top-secret research inside bestows the ability to build a MkIII line of ships that you already|don't yet have, but only on that planet.

[Varone]

The main role of a fortress is now to provide fighter cover for an entire planet and is a general anti-bomber structure.

Fortresses are composite hull and have a number of interceptor modules and bomber modules that build small drones that can quickly amass and harass enemy ships.
The fortresses main weapon is shell weapon with high armour piercing and rapid rate of fire with bonuses against polycrystal, heavy and ultra heavy. Same range as the AI fortress currently with appropriate radar dampening so ships can't snipe it far away.

The fortress itself has very high armour and hp.

Can also store 200 units exactly like a MK II transport. AI versions come pre-filled with ships which launch on death.

[Lancefighter]

Funny story. Fortresses used to do exactly one thing. Shoot stuff.

The we decided they should do awesome things, like.. :
-Fortresses and SuperFortresses now have fewer shots, but do much more damage and have a very long range. They also now have a big bonus against all starships, a sizeable bonus against raiders and teleporting ships, and a pretty big bonus against most cloaked ships. Fortresses also now have 500 transport capacity, making them able to protect ships until they are ready to be ejected.
-Fortresses and superfortresses now act as allied rally posts and mobile repair stations.

Then they lost half of those abilities because they were silly.

[doctorfrog]

Lancefighter, are you proposing an idea there? In this thread where we propose ideas to later be discussed and criticized?

[Lancefighter]

Merely find it slightly funny that we are suggesting ideas that were previously implemented for fortresses :p those are from the 3.000 patchlog

[Martyn van Buren]

Just asking, but personally I tend to think of a fortress (in my hands) as a super-durable turret emplacement, which seems to me like a unique and very useful role. Is this not how most people tink of them?

One more idea: what if we applied TechSY's unfreeable defender idea to fortresses and allowed AI fortresses to have a small garrison force that can't be baited out of their range? Not too much, maybe 50 ships/Mk. I feel like this could generate some interesting situations --- you might get fighters, making attacking more dangerous for your bombers, or you might get a sniper-type ship, making it a lot more unpleasant to ignore the fortress until you can get a clean shot at it.  So you'd often encounter situations where you're pushed to have an actual fight inside the fortress's attack range.

[KDR_11k]

For AI fortresses:

- The fortress makes all AI ships on the planet extremely hard to kill (e.g. adding 999,999 armor or even external invincibility, perhaps only for the 3 primary ship types on the planet)
- It has very weak main guns
- It has much lower HP but bombers don't get a damage bonus against it
- Tachyon drones patrol around it so cloaked ships can't fly at it in a straight line and need to carefully avoid the drones

The net effect would be creating a battlefield where the proper response varies depending on the enemy fleet layout since the enemy ships are much more dangerous and brute-forcing them won't work. You need to create a fleet that can pass by the external defenses and strike the much more vulnerable fortress core. What you can use depends on those ships, e.g. if fighters are heavily present then bombers and such won't help you while gravity drains would signal a need for grav-immune ships.

[Fluffiest]

If we're making Fortresses into a force-multiplier defensive structure, my suggestion for implementing this would be as follows:

Fortresses are mobile, but very slow. Every Fortress has a defense radius, larger for higher marks. 20 seconds after it stops moving, the Fortress creates a mini-forcefield around every structure (turrets, command centres, etc, but not mines) within its defense radius. These mini-forcefields don't shrink, don't reduce the damage of units under them, and can't be penetrated even by weapons and ships that normally ignore forcefields. However, they don't impede movement. The mini-forcefields could act as ablative health, or it could be a damage-reducing effect or an armour boost. Higher mark Fortresses could get extra toys, like Tachyon coverage or long-range repair beams, or just better mini-fields. They also get a gun, but that's not the main point of the Fortress - you buy it for the turret defense, and as a counter to shield-immune enemies.

Note: There's potential cheese when you place a fortress under the edge of one or more conventional forcefields, and then a turret farm outside the field but within the fort's defense radius.

AI fortresses would have to either work completely differently, or would have to spawn a little circle of turrets around them. They pick (fortress mark level) types of turrets from a restricted list (no sniper, spider, or heavy beam cannon, MK1 forts won't pick gravity or tractor), at the mark level of the planet, and rebuild them if they get destroyed. They're a natural counter to Raid starships.