Current balance of starships in exo waves?

[keith.lamothe]

a)  To do equivalent damage, it takes 4,248 fighters to match the DPS of an H/K.
b)  To do as much damage in a single salvo, it takes 3,187 fighters.
c)  If you had Fighters vs H/K 1-by-1 until the fighters killed the H/K, it would take 24,510 fighters.
d)  If you had a group of fighters vs 1 H/K, it would take a group of 1,093 fighters to get the kill.

Which of these numbers is more indicitive of the usefulness of one unit vs another?
I'd think either a) or d) would be the most useful, depending on your viewpoint.

All of those are good points to keep in mind.  I would say a) is closest but it doesn't factor in the H/K's health.  4248 fighters would have a lot higher total health than 1 HK, though their dps would diminish over time where the HK would stay at 100% dps until it died.

Is your idea to cram as much damage into an Exo as possible?  Or to 'match' the most 'equivalent' number of ships?

Ideally, I'd like for any exo-composition from a budget of X to have the same overall "threat to the human player" as any other exo-composition with a budget of X.  Rather than having the actual threat vary wildly depending on what it rolls.  Does that make sense?

Would you be threatened more by 5000 mkI fighters or 1 mkI HK?  AOE defenses are fair game, but assume that infinite-aoe like warheads or martyrs are not in play.

Raid starships, for one, could probably stand to cost more in exos

[Aeson]

The answer to your question on which is scarier depends on what I have when I engage the AI force.

If my fleet is not present, and I need to rely on static defenses, then the H/K Mk 1 is much scarier than the fighters, since it is better against static defenses than the 5000 fighters are, and also has a hull type that most (all?) turrets perform poorly against. Additionally, AOE attacks aren't particularly helpful against a single ship, and tractor beams will not hold an H/K in place where everything can pound on it. Fighters, on the other hand, can get caught on tractor beams and are far more threatened by turrets than the H/K is, and the over-all damage potential of the fighter force will decay over the course of the battle (unless I somehow manage to get all the damage to spread evenly across all 5000 fighters).

If my fleet is present but I don't have any static defenses for some reason, I would lean towards saying the fighters are more scary, although this case is more of a toss-up, depending on fleet composition (if I have lots of polycrystal/close combat/medium stuff and I won't want to face fighters, while if I have lots of ultra-heavy or command-grade stuff will make me less inclined to face the H/K; similarly, if I have lots of anti-light stuff but relatively little anti-command grade, I'd rather face the fighters than the H/K, while if I have lots of anti-command grade but little anti-light, I'd rather face the H/K).

If I have both my fleet and my static defenses, then I'd say that I fear both of these options roughly equally, although I think the fighters would be somewhat easier to deal with. So I guess in this case the H/K is slightly more frightening than the 5000 fighters, but not by a whole lot.

[Diazo]

OKay, I've made it home and it is time to crunch some numbers.

First however, Snow gets a relative strength of infinity, it wins hands down.

This is why snow wins, always.

Having said that, let's take a stab at this.

First, I play normal, so fleet ships have a strength of 2 for me. The other easy stuff is:

Regular cap fleet ships (fighter/bomber/most of them): 2 * Mk
Zentih/Spire SS: 192 * Mk
Flagship/PlasmaSiege/Leech/Bomber SS: 96 * Mk
Raid SS: 64 * Mk

Now, the oddball stuff, this is me looking at the data files and going "that sounds about right", nothing actually methodical here.

Guardian: 40 * Mk
Guardians have roughly 25,000DPS and either 400,000 or 1,100,000 HP in general. That's about 25 fleet ships to match dps, but only 5 to 10 to match health, so leaning towards firepower call it 20 fleet ships at 2 RelativeStrength is a Mk I guardian.

Spirecraft are going to be wierd, it looks like only Implosion, Siege tower and Sheildbearer can be exowaved.

Siege Tower:  35 * Mk
Implosion Artillery:  15 * Mk
Shieldbearer:  50 * Mk

Spirecraft are weird, and with the recent starship changes generally in need of buffs I think.
Anyways, Siege Tower is straightforward, dps/health comparison to the starships.
Implosion is odd with it's %HP damage. It has 1/18 the HP of a Bomber Starship and if the target has 60million HP left it does the same DPS. Not much has 60 million HP in the game though so I wanted to set this at 10 * Mk, but late game exo-waves will probably have a lot of high HP stuff that the player defends with so I went with 15 * Mk.
Sheildbearer: Defensive unit that has 75% the HP of a bomber starship and  less then half the HP of a Zenith. Call it half as useful as a Starship.

Golems, again, just numbers that feel right. I want a real hard look at these from others though, I essentially never see golems in my games and on paper only gets me so far.

Armored: 5000
Artillery: 10000
Black Widow: 3500
Regenerator: 5000

Armored golem has (depending on which SS you look at) 13 to 15 times as much HP with really high armor and 15 to 25 times as much DPS. Call it 20 times more dangerous then a SS.
Artillery: 20% as much HP and way less armor, but 10 times the DPS on a system-wide reach as compared to an Armored golem? Call this twice as dangerous.
Black Widow: Less then half the HP, significantly less ARmor and DPS then an armored golem, but it does have that engine damage. Kind of just tossed this number up.
Regenerator Golem: I assume this got the same changes as the players golem did recently. So, 80% as much HP but no armor and 1/8th the DPS on it's own. However, is a free 400million shield to all ships in the system, call this one pretty dangerous.

And hunter/killers (and mothership). Again, thoughts? I've never faced one of these.

Hunter/Killer: 7680 * Mk
Mothership: 25000

Not that much HP, but crazy high DPS. Looking at the SS, only 3 to 4 times as much HP, but up to 50 times the dps worst case? Call this 40 times more dangerous the the starships.

So ya, watch for edits to this as I ponder it, but that's my stab at this.


Regular cap fleet ships (fighter/bomber/most of them): 2 * Mk
Zentih/Spire SS: 192 * Mk
Flagship/PlasmaSiege/Leech/Bomber SS: 96 * Mk
Raid SS: 64 * Mk
Siege Tower:  35 * Mk
Implosion Artillery:  15 * Mk
Shieldbearer:  50 * Mk
Armored: 5000
Artillery: 10000
Black Widow: 3500
Regenerator: 5000
Hunter/Killer: 7680 * Mk
Mothership: 25000

D.

[keith.lamothe]

If I have both my fleet and my static defenses, then I'd say that I fear both of these options roughly equally, although I think the fighters would be somewhat easier to deal with. So I guess in this case the H/K is slightly more frightening than the 5000 fighters, but not by a whole lot.

Ok, that's good to know.  Again, mainly I'm looking for "general case" threat, rather than specifically considering what parts of the defenders forces are where.

OKay, I've made it home and it is time to crunch some numbers.

Thanks very much, I think that's definitely a good first pass.

Mothership: 25000

Bear in mind that the current ratio of FighterI to Mothership (on normal caps) is 6:262144 or 1:~43691, and what you're proposing is 2:25000 or 1:12500.  That would decrease the mothership's relative cost by over 70%.

Of course, in practice I think current exos don't generally include any fighters below mkV. On normal caps the ratio of CoreFighter to Mothership right now is 32:262144 or 8192, and in your model would be 10:25000 or 2500.  In that sense, it decrease's the mothership's relative cost by just under 70%.

I guess what I'm saying is that (with the exo budgets scaled down to the strength scale, of course) you'd see motherships a lot more often than you currently do

[keith.lamothe]

One thing to bear in mind is that it may be functionally incorrect for me to be using the fighters as a base of comparison.  They may be getting drowned out by the "unit count squeeze" during exo compositions.

Probably to do this we'd need some real-world exo composition logs from various representative scenarios in 6.013.  If you turn on Advanced Logging it will chug these logs out when the exo is actually launched (the timer ticks down and disappears, or on-spawn for the chase exos in FS).

That way we could see what it's actually buying.

Obviously I can generate a lot of these myself, but I'd like to see player submissions so I'm not putting my own bias on it by selecting the test cases.

[TechSY730]

I'm still unsure about the mothership. Sure, the hunter killer Mk. V beats the mothership in terms of DPS easy (btw, I still think that the H/Ks should lose their bonuses), but the mothership beats it in terms of durability. However, at "only" 800,000,000 health, the and the H/K Mk. V only a little behind at 500,000,000, the H/K mk. V seems more threatening right now. This seems off. IMO, they should both have roughly the same amount of "scariness", with the H/K V being scary with DPS (but still great durability) and the Mothership being scary with durability (though still great DPS). If anything, it seems that the Mothership needs a buff. I know HP values can go higher, as the planetary armor booster and armor inhibitor both have a whopping 2,000,000,000 HP! Something more along that order of magnitude seems reasonable for motherships.

Then they can truly earn having a tie with H/K Mk. V for most "expensive" ship. (Which under Dazio's suggestion, would put it at 7680 * 5 = 38400)

[TechSY730]

One thing to bear in mind is that it may be functionally incorrect for me to be using the fighters as a base of comparison.  They may be getting drowned out by the "unit count squeeze" during exo compositions.

Probably to do this we'd need some real-world exo composition logs from various representative scenarios in 6.013.  If you turn on Advanced Logging it will chug these logs out when the exo is actually launched (the timer ticks down and disappears, or on-spawn for the chase exos in FS).

That way we could see what it's actually buying.

Obviously I can generate a lot of these myself, but I'd like to see player submissions so I'm not putting my own bias on it by selecting the test cases.

I'd love to, but when you did the log renaming a while back, I deleted my old logs. And funnily enough, I won my then current game before the next exo arrived, and haven't played long enough on my now current game to encounter my first one yet. So I don't have any exo logs on hand at the moment. 

[chemical_art]

I'm still unsure about the mothership. Sure, the hunter killer Mk. V beats the mothership in terms of DPS easy (btw, I still think that the H/Ks should lose their bonuses), but the mothership beats it in terms of durability. However, at "only" 800,000,000 health, the and the H/K Mk. V only a little behind at 500,000,000, the H/K mk. V seems more threatening right now. This seems off. IMO, they should both have roughly the same amount of "scariness", with the H/K V being scary with DPS (but still great durability) and the Mothership being scary with durability (though still great DPS). If anything, it seems that the Mothership needs a buff. I know HP values can go higher, as the planetary armor booster and armor inhibitor both have a whopping 2,000,000,000 HP! Something more along that order of magnitude seems reasonable for motherships.

Then they can truly earn having a tie with H/K Mk. V for most "expensive" ship. (Which under Dazio's suggestion, would put it at 7680 * 5 = 38400)

Don't discount the MASSIVE range of the mothership. If you don't engage it in a knife fight from the get go, it will annihilate you before you get in range.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the mothership is a beast.  HP and DPS numbers don't tell the whole story there.

That said, the mkV HK may give it more of a run for its money than I'd have thought.

[Toranth]

Regular cap fleet ships (fighter/bomber/most of them): 2 * Mk
Zentih/Spire SS: 192 * Mk
Flagship/PlasmaSiege/Leech/Bomber SS: 96 * Mk
Raid SS: 64 * Mk
Siege Tower:  35 * Mk
Implosion Artillery:  15 * Mk
Shieldbearer:  50 * Mk
Armored: 5000
Artillery: 10000
Black Widow: 3500
Regenerator: 5000
Hunter/Killer: 7680 * Mk
Mothership: 25000

Well, this really changes the balance in the Exowaves, alright.  Let's see

Fleetships:
Old:  Most range from 1 to 64, with some very low cap fleetships (SSB, Railclusters) starting around 96 and going up to 512.
New: 2-10

Starships:
Old:  Start at 128 (Flagship), and the new Mk Vs end at 2048.
New:  64-480    (Raid really should be higher.  Much higher)

Guardians 
Old:  96-512
New:  You omitted, so I'll guess.  Something between Fleet and Starships.  Say, 10*Mk?  Probably not more than 20*Mk.

Spirecraft:
Old: 1536 Mk I to 8192 Mk V
Siege Tower New: 35-175
Implosion Artillery New:  15-75
Shieldbearer New: 50-250

Golems:
Old:  16384 (all)
Armored New:  5000
Artillery New:  10,000
Black Widow New: 3500
Regeneration New: 5000

Hunter/Killer:
Old: 32,768 to 262,144
New: 7680-38,400

Mothership:
Old: 262144
New:  25,000


Overall, your point values have dropped by about a factor of 10 for most things.  If the Exowave budget was reduced similarly, what would we see?
Fewer Golems, and many fewer H/Ks.  More Spirecraft.  Fewer Starships.  Lots more fleetships.

Here's the section on how Exowaves are formed, from the Wiki.

Fifth, it populates the individual battlegroups within the armada, splitting the points evenly between them. Each battlegroup:

• Sets aside 1/3rd of its budget for a single command ship of the largest affordable tier&sub-tier that has eligible types. Leftover points carry on to:
• Sets aside 1/3rd of its budget for mid-sized escorts (it tries for 3 ships of 1/8th of the escort budget, 4 ships of 1/16th, 6 of 1/32nd, and 12 of 1/64th). Note that escorts don't actually have to be smaller than the command ship, but it is mathematically likely. Leftover points carry on to:
• Sets aside 1/3rd of its budget for pickets, which can only be drones, cutters, or corvettes (the three smallest tiers, basically "fleet ships", though stuff like Zenith Electric Bombers and such are bigger than this). For each of the 9 sub-tiers within the picket range, it cannot pick more than 32 ships (16 on normal caps, 8 on low). Leftover points carry on to:
• While leftover points remain, try to pick more escorts.

It then actually picks specific ship types within the designated tiers.

To get a Black Widow Golem as Leader, the total budget would need to be over 10,000.  If it didn't quite make it there, you'd have:
3333 points for the leader
3333 points for 25 ships (tries for 4 tiers)
3333 points for little guys.

With no leader of more than 500-ish points, this gets awkward fast.
There'd need to be an entirely new way to form Exowaves as well as the new prices.
Any pricing scheme that doesn't take this into account is going to hit the same problems (including my first attempt).

[keith.lamothe]

Regular cap fleet ships (fighter/bomber/most of them): 2 * Mk

Fleetships:
Old:  Most range from 1 to 64, with some very low cap fleetships (SSB, Railclusters) starting around 96 and going up to 512.
New: 2-10

By "Regular cap" I assume he meant "types with a cap of 96 on Normal".  Railclusters and so on would have a much higher value.

Guardians 
Old:  96-512
New:  You omitted, so I'll guess.  Something between Fleet and Starships.  Say, 10*Mk?  Probably not more than 20*Mk.

He omitted them from the list at the end but the body of the post says 40*mk.

Overall, your point values have dropped by about a factor of 10 for most things.  If the Exowave budget was reduced similarly, what would we see?
Fewer Golems, and many fewer H/Ks.  More Spirecraft.  Fewer Starships.  Lots more fleetships.

Maybe, but remember that each exo battlegroup has a maximum number of ships it's allowed to pick before it's restricted to picking higher-cost stuff so it can avoid causing undue CPU load.

Without that even exos as they stand would have a lot of fleet ships.

That said, you're probably right that this would play merry havoc with the current composition rules.  But I think those could use a good working through anyway.

[Diazo]

Okay.

First, the current exo costs do not line up with the Mk level procession on everything else, so I averaged the 5 marks out to get the Mk I data for this table.

Ship Type: Ship name
Current ExoPoints: From Chart on page one, current cost in points
RatioToFighter: Currently in game, this many of the ship equal one fighter.
MyFirstRun: My values from the table in my previous post
RatioFirstRun: Ratio to one fighter in my previous post
PercentDiff: Comparison of RatioToFighter divided by RatioFirstRun, a value of 1 would be the costs are the same.
Table is all for lowest mark, so multiply by mark level for higher marks.

Ship Type	Current ExoPoints	RatioToFighter	MyFirstRun	RatioFirstRun	PercentDiff
Fleet Ship	5	1	2	1	1
Guardian	92	18.4	40	20	0.92
Zenith	248	49.6	192	96	0.52
Spire	248	49.6	192	96	0.52
Flagship	128	25.6	96	48	0.53
Raid	367	73.4	64	32	2.29
Bomber	367	73.4	96	48	1.53
PlasmaSiege	367	73.4	96	48	1.53
SiegeTower	1466	293.2	35	17.5	16.75
Implosion	1466	293.2	15	7.5	39.09
ShieldBearer	1466	293.2	50	25	11.73
Armored	16384	3276.8	5000	2500	1.31
Artillery	16384	3276.8	10000	5000	0.66
Black Widow	16384	3276.8	3500	1750	1.87
Regenerator	16384	3276.8	5000	2500	1.31
Hunter/Killer	39364	7872.8	7680	3840	2.05
MotherShip	262144	52428.8	25000	12500	4.19

So. As the ship sizes go up, my previous post gets more and more out of whack.

Notably the Hunter/Killer, which I undervalued by half, and the Mothership, which I'd undervalued 4 times over.

Now, some ships need adjusting still, but others I'm not sure about.

Thoughts?

I'm thinking adjust the mothership and hunter/killer up to a PercentDiff of 1 so they are the same relative power. The same with golems.

Spirecraft and Raid Starships though I'm not sure if we want ot just stick them at PercentDiff of 1. Spirecraft are a lot weaker, relatively, to Starships now and Raids are outliers regardless.

D.

erm: I should clarify that I thought relative strength was on a different numerical scale then the exo-points listed on the first page, that is why I took 192/cap*Mk for fleet ships and starships as a starting point and then threw the numbers that I though fit out for the bigger units while ignoring the exopoint costs at the time.

[keith.lamothe]

Okay.I'm thinking adjust the mothership and hunter/killer up to a PercentDiff of 1 so they are the same relative power. The same with golems.

For the HK and Mothership, that might be wise.  My understanding is that players are pretty happy (to the extent one can be happy about a human-extermination-device bearing down on one) with when the HKs and Motherships show up and in what quantities.

On golems I'm not so sure.  The current exo costs may be out of whack.

Spirecraft and Raid Starships though I'm not sure if we want ot just stick them at PercentDiff of 1. Spirecraft are a lot weaker, relatively, to Starships now and Raids are outliers regardless.

I think the AI is currently overpaying for spirecraft by a signfiicant margin, so just computing new strength values for them fresh based on their relative danger compared to starships and golems wouldn't be a bad idea.

erm: I should clarify that I thought relative strength was on a different numerical scale then the exo-points listed on the first page

They are on a different scale, particularly on the higher end, because the exo point costs went up more than linearly with power level in most cases.  That said, the current relative strength is also listed on that table in a separate column.

[Diazo]

erm: I should clarify that I thought relative strength was on a different numerical scale then the exo-points listed on the first page

They are on a different scale, particularly on the higher end, because the exo point costs went up more than linearly with power level in most cases.  That said, the current relative strength is also listed on that table in a separate column.

Erm, to clarify my clarification, I was under the assumption we were trying to get a single RelativeStrength number that would be used for all Exo sources (FS, Golems, Spirecraft) and as you had not posted the RelativeStrength values for the Golem or SPirecraft exo waves I was just throwing those numbers out to start.

I think I've gone and confused myself. What exact numbers are we trying to compile here?

D.

[Winge]

I'm still unsure about the mothership. Sure, the hunter killer Mk. V beats the mothership in terms of DPS easy (btw, I still think that the H/Ks should lose their bonuses), but the mothership beats it in terms of durability. However, at "only" 800,000,000 health, the and the H/K Mk. V only a little behind at 500,000,000, the H/K mk. V seems more threatening right now. This seems off. IMO, they should both have roughly the same amount of "scariness", with the H/K V being scary with DPS (but still great durability) and the Mothership being scary with durability (though still great DPS). If anything, it seems that the Mothership needs a buff. I know HP values can go higher, as the planetary armor booster and armor inhibitor both have a whopping 2,000,000,000 HP! Something more along that order of magnitude seems reasonable for motherships.

Then they can truly earn having a tie with H/K Mk. V for most "expensive" ship. (Which under Dazio's suggestion, would put it at 7680 * 5 = 38400)

Don't discount the MASSIVE range of the mothership. If you don't engage it in a knife fight from the get go, it will annihilate you before you get in range.

IIRC, the Mothership can also mount modules (much like the Avenger).