Concerning the Neinzul Combat Carrier

[Wingflier]

Some observations:

1. Is seeded on the map when "cloaking" is disabled, and can be chosen by players as the bonus ship. However, if picked when cloaking is disabled, does not appear in the Starship Constructor, and therefore can't be built. (bug)

2. Probably shouldn't be selectable with the rest of your fleet (so make it like the Neinzul Enclave Starship) because it is extremely fragile, its weapons are weak, and you probably want to produce from a good distance away. Also, this allows you to select all the Neinzul ships around it quite easily instead of having to do it manually.

3. It's weapons are laughable, remove them. This will allow the player to use the "FRD" mechanic so that produced neinzul ships instantly become useful, while the Carrier itself doesn't fly into battle and die.

4. Shrikes can not "pause", which means they are unable to hold fire...which means their cloak ability is almost useless.

5. The Mobile Repair Station can do everything this ship can do, but better because it has access to your entire fleet. Also, it can repair. Shrikes alone are not a good enough to justify using this ship (especially because whether or not you get more Neinzul ships later is a crapshoot). I suggest giving it the Neinzul Regeneration Chamber ability to further accent its role and give it a distinct advantage over the MRS.

Until all these changes are made, the NCC won't be viable imo.

[pheonix89]

Some observations:

1. Is seeded on the map when "cloaking" is disabled, and can be chosen by players as the bonus ship. However, if picked when cloaking is disabled, does not appear in the Starship Constructor, and therefore can't be built. (bug)

2. Probably shouldn't be selectable with the rest of your fleet (so make it like the Neinzul Enclave Starship) because it is extremely fragile, its weapons are weak, and you probably want to produce from a good distance away. Also, this allows you to select all the Neinzul ships around it quite easily instead of having to do it manually.

3. It's weapons are laughable, remove them. This will allow the player to use the "FRD" mechanic so that produced neinzul ships instantly become useful, while the Carrier itself doesn't fly into battle and die.

4. Shrikes can not "pause", which means they are unable to hold fire...which means their cloak ability is almost useless.

5. The Mobile Repair Station can do everything this ship can do, but better because it has access to your entire fleet. Also, it can repair. Shrikes alone are not a good enough to justify using this ship (especially because whether or not you get more Neinzul ships later is a crapshoot). I suggest giving it the Neinzul Regeneration Chamber ability to further accent its role and give it a distinct advantage over the MRS.

Until all these changes are made, the NCC won't be viable imo.

Speaking as the person who suggested it, it kinda got nerfed in between suggestion and implementation. The Shrikes were supposed to be along the lines of a fighter, it was supposed to have a regen chamber function, and I wanted it to have weak weapons, but be quite durable even for a bonus starship.

[keith.lamothe]

1. Is seeded on the map when "cloaking" is disabled, and can be chosen by players as the bonus ship. However, if picked when cloaking is disabled, does not appear in the Starship Constructor, and therefore can't be built. (bug)

Yep, can fix that.  The logic for the bonus ship types is done more by inference than I remembered at the time, and the inference doesn't detect "is a ship that builds cloaked ships".

2. Probably shouldn't be selectable with the rest of your fleet (so make it like the Neinzul Enclave Starship) because it is extremely fragile, its weapons are weak, and you probably want to produce from a good distance away. Also, this allows you to select all the Neinzul ships around it quite easily instead of having to do it manually.

3. It's weapons are laughable, remove them. This will allow the player to use the "FRD" mechanic so that produced neinzul ships instantly become useful, while the Carrier itself doesn't fly into battle and die.

The weapons are designed for point-defense (counter-drones) but I can remove them, and that would enable the non-military selection.  But then we'll need a brave toggle, etc.

4. Shrikes can not "pause", which means they are unable to hold fire...which means their cloak ability is almost useless.

Didn't realize they didn't have a pause, can fix that.

5. The Mobile Repair Station can do everything this ship can do, but better because it has access to your entire fleet. Also, it can repair. Shrikes alone are not a good enough to justify using this ship (especially because whether or not you get more Neinzul ships later is a crapshoot). I suggest giving it the Neinzul Regeneration Chamber ability to further accent its role and give it a distinct advantage over the MRS.

I had meant to add that and just forgot, but how does that ability help very much if "getting more younglings is a crapshoot" discounts its main ability?  Would it not discount the regen chamber ability too?  I doubt that the ability to field-repair shrikes really matters, right?  Faster to just make more. 

In fact, and this is a question I need answered before I do the regen chamber thing: isn't adding a Regen-chamber effect to these an effective nerf rather than buff, because of the number of younglings it will be unable to build because they're stuck in the regen sucking up ship cap?

Until all these changes are made, the NCC won't be viable imo.

My inclination then is to just take the ship back out (the plan was for 5 or 6 bonus types for this expansion, and we've already got the other 5) or maybe do something totally different (and fairly simple) with it.

I'm guessing that this one will just get the perpetual dissatisfaction of the original Enclave Starship before we made it no longer a space dock and made it deploy drones automatically.

[chemical_art]

I'm guessing that this one will just get the perpetual dissatisfaction of the original Enclave Starship before we made it no longer a space dock and made it deploy drones automatically.

That actually was something I was considering.

What if it made "drones" that are more like their nenzul counterparts? They would be faster, have faster attrition time but greater health health, their various roles, etc?

[keith.lamothe]

What if it made "drones" that are more like their nenzul counterparts? They would be faster, have higher attrition time and health, their various roles, etc?

Right, and that was one of the options (or close to it) that I offered in this thread but the response after a while was pretty emphatically that they wanted the build queue and not the automated-drone-platform behavior.

[chemical_art]

Right, and that was one of the options (or close to it) that I offered in this thread but the response after a while was pretty emphatically that they wanted the build queue and not the automated-drone-platform behavior.

I see, I'm not sure what to do then right now. You can't just give the normal younglings to the ship, it defeats the point of getting them themselves as a bonus ship. You can't make the base youngling unit that the ship can make too strong either, again because it would then defeat the point of the other younglings.

For me, the regen is not a bonus. As someone who has heralded the importance of econ and how cost can mean everything, even I say that the saved resources from regen hardly is worth the lack of ships on the field because they are running to or in the regen chamber. I'd prefer the MRS for this very reason alone, not to mention it is more durable due to its cloak.

[keith.lamothe]

I guess I could make it a full-combatant (major buffs to health and attack) so that the building-younglings part is just a bonus on top, but I think people would still find using that special ability difficult due to the issues of having a military ship with a build queue.  The idea would be that it's supposed to be in there with the rest of the starships and the younglings produced are just there to help, but I don't think that would fly.  For one thing, at that point it may as well be a drone platform like the enclave.

[Wingflier]

This was one of my bonus ship ideas for the expansion:

1. Spire Carrier - As the name suggests, the Spire Carrier can house a small number of allied ships, healing them quickly, and sending them back out into battle. The Carrier is expensive and has a low ship cap. It can only hold a small number of ships (25) and automatically ejects them when they are fully healed (like the Neinzul Regeneration Chamber Structure). It only has moderate health and is a big investment, so you have to defend it properly. In addition to its healing properties, it fires powerful long-range missiles that are good against enemy Starships and Guardians. It is ideal for long-range raids into enemy territory, to keep your fleet healthy and your army moving.

So it's similar to the Neinzul Combat Carrier, except it can't build anything, it has moderate health and can fire long-range missiles. In this regard it's similar to IRL carriers, and fire very powerful long-range anti-starship (single-target) missiles.  The difference is that any fleet ship can go into it to be healed, though Neinzul ships will use it automatically. Because of this it has multiple roles (anti-starship, fleet support, raiding, neinzul regeneration), it doesn't require Neinzul ships to be effective, and I think becomes functionally more useful than the current NCC.

[Toranth]

I see, I'm not sure what to do then right now. You can't just give the normal younglings to the ship, it defeats the point of getting them themselves as a bonus ship. You can't make the base youngling unit that the ship can make too strong either, again because it would then defeat the point of the other younglings.

Enclave Starships do a pretty good job of handling the Drone-Production role right now.  Those drones have decent range, decent firepower, and enough HP no to be defeated by a stiff breeze.

What would the Neinzul Combat Carrier add to that?  I dunno.  If it had custom drone types, maybe?  A melee drone, an AOE drone, a heat beam drone, an ED drone, a shield drone, whatever.  That'd put it in line with being a "Bonus Enclave", similar to the various Bonus Fighter/Bonus Bomber versions of the triangle ships (Bulletproof, Microfighter / Chameleon, Space Tank).

Add to that higher HP and armor, to make it a "Combat" version, I guess.

[chemical_art]

I was thinking that, but with current twists. suicide units that reclaim, vulture like guns, etc.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I imagined it being a fusion of auto-releasing ships to fight (as the drones are) and actual production. Neinzul ships hide in the combat carrier (and if you queue to produce units, the units pop out stored in the carrier). When enemies are around, the neinzul ships pop out and attack enemies, returning to the combat carrier to regenerate when no units are left, or if they need to regenerate. All of this being automated, and with the neinzul carrier not auto-ejecting the ships when they DO regenerate unless combat's going on. I've had issues with the regular regeneration chambers where I'd place them, and sure my neinzul ships would retreat to them when they did hit critical health, but they popped out automatically when healed. I didn't really like that so much. I'd kind of prefer them to hide out and hang out until they NEED to come out and fight.

[keith.lamothe]

I imagined it being a fusion of auto-releasing ships to fight (as the drones are) and actual production.

Yea, that would mean reworking how auto-creation is done anywhere, or how actual production is done anywhere, since currently they use the same way of tracking progress, etc.

Neinzul ships hide in the combat carrier (and if you queue to produce units, the units pop out stored in the carrier). When enemies are around, the neinzul ships pop out and attack enemies, returning to the combat carrier to regenerate when no units are left, or if they need to regenerate. All of this being automated, and with the neinzul carrier not auto-ejecting the ships when they DO regenerate unless combat's going on. I've had issues with the regular regeneration chambers where I'd place them, and sure my neinzul ships would retreat to them when they did hit critical health, but they popped out automatically when healed. I didn't really like that so much. I'd kind of prefer them to hide out and hang out until they NEED to come out and fight.

It seems highly unlikely that I would be able to get that much automation functioning to the satisfaction of a large enough chunk of the player base for it to not be a frequent source of frustration for player and developer alike

[LaughingThesaurus]

Darn.
So you can't have any kind of if enemies are around, unload, and put the released ships on FRD until they don't have a target, with a queued up enter the transport thing? I mean, that'd work such that if you explicitly unloaded the ships, it wouldn't...
okay I don't know anything about programming. You're the professional here. If somebody programs something cool then to me it's just magic. Like, literally magic.

[keith.lamothe]

So you can't have any kind of if enemies are around, unload, and put the released ships on FRD until they don't have a target, with a queued up enter the transport thing?

We could do that, but it would still be a problem for a lot of folks because of differing ideas of what kind of enemy presence should cause that response, and differing ideas of when the ships should come back for repairs (ranging from "upon 25% damage" to "never"), etc.

A unit that has to rely on significantly complex automation (as opposed to just "dump anything I produce" and maybe "don't produce if no enemies present at all") will always leave a substantial part of the playerbase unhappy with its behavior.  For a minor faction unit like the Roaming Enclaves that can be ok (though they've certainly had a rocky history on that point), but for a bonus ship type?  Recipe for pain.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well, the ships coming back for repairs thing is younglings do already with the regeneration chambers right?
But I do understand regarding the 'enemy presence' detail. Like, there could just be a single fighter that pops in and your carrier's like "SEND THE BATTLESHIPS! SEND EVERYTHING" and there's all kinds of chaos going on over a single fighter. Or like, even the carriers sending a suicide strike force out to attack something that's far too powerful for it. I can see the problem.