Current balance of starships in exo waves?

[Diazo]

Okay.

I'm going to mull this over for a bit then, I'll probably post my thoughts in a couple hours (around lunch).

Need to take a closer look at that chart on page 1 too.

D.

[Hearteater]

Hearteater: there is "warp in the clowns,LazerGatlingIII,100" or whatever, which launches a normal wave of the specified type with a the specified base quantity.  The actual quantity spawned is not the same as the entered quantity, but it is directly _proportional_ to it.

Doh, Warp in the Clowns does not appear to work if the AIs you've picked don't send waves (two Turtles).  Any easy way to change AI types in a save, since I just went through all the trouble of setting up a test choke point?

[Winge]

Or did you mean early game exo-defense?

Yes.  I do appreciate you going over a late-game setup as well, though 

[TechSY730]

Or did you mean early game exo-defense?

Yes.  I do appreciate you going over a late-game setup as well, though 

Oh.

Well, for early game, I obviously don't have as many of the trader toys or as many higher Mk. turrets set up, but I found that if you just stick with the turret (including grav and tractor), forcefield, and mines (forgot to mention those) parts of the defense works well enough for early game. Though I typically make sure I have some bombers, bomber starships, plasma seige starships, and if I unlocked it, spire starships laying around to help with the big stuff.
I also rely quite heavily on Spirecraft Shield bearers.

And then I pray...

[Hearteater]

So I was trying to test out some fleet ships against a fixed defensive setup and a hit a few problems.  First, to keep the numbers down, I'm using a bunch Gravity Turrets and Tachyon Turrets, 150 mines, 2xMini-Forts, 25% of my cap of offensive turrets and tractor turrets, 50% of my cap of triangle ships and starships, and the full cap of Force Field Is.  So that's what I'm spawning a wave against, and I want to see how many ships it takes to crack it.  I'm using no micro at all, not rebuilding any lost mobile units, and I have 5 Engineers and Rebuilders on FRD with settings set to replace them.

Is it a bug that I can fairly reliably stop a 900 Mark IV Fighter wave with just the above?  Basically a combination of Force Field pining and the AI not liking to shoot at Tractor Beams under Force Fields causes them all to sit there while I kill them with turrets/forts from outside their range.  I can kill a hilarious number of SSBs too, doesn't have to be just fighters.  Basically, unless there is a carrier, I can kill in the neighborhood of 600-900 of anything not tractor or force field immune.

Save included for your enjoyment.  It takes a little bit for the fight to stabilize, but you can tell its over when the force fields stop taking damage.  Sometimes 50-100 sneak by, but if you wait long enough generally they'll die to sniper turrets.  Sometimes it all collapses, but there shouldn't even be a question.  That volume of Fighter IVs can kill a Force Field in something like 4 seconds, and there are only 3 they have to get through.  Note that there aren't enough tractors to hold all the Fighters, about 180 are just pinned inside the Force Field.  F3 the Fighters after it stabilizes and you'll see the have the Tractor Beams targeted, but aren't actually shooting them.

[keith.lamothe]

Not shooting them?  That's bizzare.

[TechSY730]

Not shooting them?  That's bizzare.

There are actually quite a few bugs for AI units involving having shooting orders (based on debug screen info), but not actually trying to shoot. One common variant is them getting an attack order, but not moving into range. (I posted one such example on mantis just this week)
However, this is certainly not the only example of this class of bugs.

[Jonz0rz]

You could compare the DPS and HP to that of a fighter and average the two.

EG:
HK. I

100,000,000 / 165,000
606 fighters worth of hp

+

4333333 / 1020
4248 fighters worth of dps

4854 / 2

2427 "effective strength"

[barryvm]

Yesterday, I had an exo in a 8/8 game and I found the mobs of bomber/spire starships a lot scarier than the HK's accomanying them as they were quite impossible to destroy before they reached the homeworld.
They pretty much incapacitated my golems and waltzed through my defences until they were stopped by rams.
This seems pretty balanced since they are supposed to counter golems/spirecraft and I quite like the change.
They add extra complexety (and danger) to the exo waves now.

PS: I noticed most of them are also immune to Artillery ammo, which reduces the effectiveness of the artillery golem on defence, but I guess this was done to make the artillery golem a more specific counter instead of a catch-all for high HP enemies?

[Toranth]

Yesterday, I had an exo in a 8/8 game and I found the mobs of bomber/spire starships a lot scarier than the HK's accomanying them as they were quite impossible to destroy before they reached the homeworld.

This. 

I just handled an Exowave that was led by a Hunter/Killer.  It also contained 3 Mk IV Spire Starships. 
The H/K was 32768 Exo-budget points.
The Spire Starship Mk IVs were 1024 each.
Both had about 100,000,000 HP.
The H/K had 4,333,333 DPS. 
The Spire Starships did 1,433,333 DPS each.

However.

The H/K is immune to attack boosts.
The Spire Starships are frequently found in the company of Flagship IVs, that give a 2.3x damage boost.
EACH Spire Starship was doing about 3.3 million DPS, for a total of about 10,000,000 DPS.
2.5 times the damage of the H/K, for a combined 10% of the Exo-budget points.

Who cares about silly little H/Ks when there are Spire Starships around?

[keith.lamothe]

The spire starships would generally not be getting their full dps due to the photon lance mechanic (or so I keep getting told), but yes, I see that the numbers are a bit ridiculous there considering what even a mkI HK is supposed to represent

[Hearteater]

Spire SS are better vs us than the AI because we use so much more stationary stuff, particularly Force Fields.

[Diazo]

Okay.

Using the fighter as a reference point and to account for the fighters dying during the engagement using only half the fighters dps. This assumes the fighters die linearly during combat but some approximations have to be made.

Using Normal Caps, Normal Combat style.

Fighter -> Armored Golem
DPS: 4901 -> 1
Health: 3030 -> 1 (Before Armor)
So RelativeStrength 5000 -> 1 sounds about right.

Fighter -> Bomber Starships
DPS: 295 -> 1
Health: 110 -> 1
So RelativeStrenght 250 -> 1? This one is more iffy.

Using the 192/cap = relativestrenght it would be:
Fighter -> Bomber SS
2 -> 96 (1 -> 48)

Fighter -> Spire Starships
DPS: 705 -> 1
Health: 145 -> 1
So RelativeStrenght 550 -> 1? This one is more iffy.

Using the 192/cap = relativestrenght it would be:
Fighter -> Spire SS
2 -> 192 (1 -> 96)

I'm thinking if we want to keep the 192/cap going, starships should be (192/cap)*5 or so?

That would make an HK Mk I:
DPS: 8500 -> 1
Health: 606 -> 1
So RelativeStrenght 8000 -> 1? This one is more iffy.

That puts an armored golem at 5000, Hk Mk I at 8000. Looking at their stats, the golem has five times the health and about 60% the DPS of the HK Mk I.

I'm not sure this works.

This is not really working out. :/

D.

edit: Well, going by the current ExoPoints, Hk Mk I is worth 2 armored golems. That is not that far off from the 5000 - 8000 Relative Strength I guess...

[barryvm]

The spire starships would generally not be getting their full dps due to the photon lance mechanic (or so I keep getting told), but yes, I see that the numbers are a bit ridiculous there considering what even a mkI HK is supposed to represent

This is going to end up with the hk's being buffed isn't it 

[TechSY730]

The spire starships would generally not be getting their full dps due to the photon lance mechanic (or so I keep getting told), but yes, I see that the numbers are a bit ridiculous there considering what even a mkI HK is supposed to represent

This is going to end up with the hk's being buffed isn't it 

Either that, or some sort of attack boosting cap being put back onto starship, or at least the spire starships. (Presumably a higher one than the one we had before)
That, and getting the costs in exos closer to sane.