Does anybody use the Spire Mini-Ram?

[Wingflier]

Sorry for all these threads but I've recently been trying a lot of the bonus ship types, and I'm interested to hear other people's opinions.

One thing that separates AI War from most other RTS games (and what I love so much about it) is that there are a vast amount of options for use of any unit, build, or strategy, so sometimes I like to hear ways of using ships that perhaps I hadn't though of before.

Specifically, the Spire Mini-Ram.  My experience so far with them has been "meh".  They do a lot of damage, but I don't know if it justifies their slow speed, their high metal cost, and the fact that their attack actually hurts themselves.

They seem good on wormhole defense, but that's the problem - most waves only send 1 or 2 starships.  This is obviously not a huge deal.

On places where the Rams might be useful like Exo-waves and Cross-Planet attacks, you never know where those are going to come from, so with their slow speed, they once again often become obsolete.

Perhaps the best use for them I've found so far is going into a heavily populated, untouched enemy planet (MKIV preferably), and "stirring up the hornet's nest" as I like to call it.  When the enemy responds with its entire force, the Rams kill most Guardians as they come through the wormhole.

Still, I've found the ship type to be underwhelming for the reasons listed above.  Most the time they seem to die before they even reach their target and/or if they do reach their target, they weren't that necessary to begin with.  What are your thoughts?

Also - Eye Bots.  I haven't tried these yet, because I'm trying to figure out a use for them.  They have the "Scouting" ability, and can pass through force fields, but aside from that their damage seems pretty underwhelming.  I'm not sure why you would need these.  I remember there was a discussion about them about a year ago, but I don't recall if we came to any meaningful conclusions on them.  What are your thoughts on these as well?

[Diazo]

Having not actually used either of these but just from looking at their stat here are my thoughts.

The Spire Mini Ram is somewhat odd I agree. Due to being designed to attack big units they are going to be almost useless early game but I would build my fleet around them at the end game during homeworld attacks. Note they are FF immune and use the 'Ram' ammo. Core Guard Posts, the AI fortress and even the AI Home Command are not Ram immune (although the command station has a 0.001 attack modifier), the amount of trouble core guard posts underneath forcefields gave me my last game would make these worth taking even if I did not build one until the 10 hour mark, that's how much easier I think they would make homeworld attacks.

As for Eye Bots, these are raiders who can cloak and scout. Note that they are immune to insta-kill which means ion cannons can not kill these. With the small ship cap that is still quite limiting but they are as cheap as a fighter so sending a wave of these in to clear the ion cannons before the rest of your fleet warps in might make sense.

Again, would have to actually use them to see how well they do in reality but that's what I get from the stats.

D.

[chemical_art]

Mini-rams:

One of those units I don't want at the start, but would be great as a third or later pick from the ars.

Eye-bots:

Welp, time to reroll with the advanced ars.

[rabican]

eyebots are good for raiding/neutering/softening kind of things. If it weren't for flak/laser guardians just evoprating whole fleets of them and their slow speed(relative to most stealth ships) they would be the raiding fleet ship when ai has gravity drain as bonus ship.  They are the best thing for those rare occasions when there is something bad under FF with gravity drain/guarrdian.  On fleet ball they do pretty good  damage very cheaply. You lose whole caps in seconds if you face the wrong things(which there aren't that many ,them being immune to missle frigates ) tough but they are cheaper to replace than fighters. 

In conclusion : Eyebots are good.

[Wanderer]

Not all ships are created equal, as you've noticed.  Some ships are meant more for the AI than the Player.

Mini-Rams fall into this category in my mind, as they'll hammer your large ships.  They can be pretty useful if you chokepoint defense the exo waves but otherwise meh.

Eyebots are another one of those.  Cloaking, ignoring forcefields, laying waste to your command centers under ffs, etc.  Now, they can be pretty useful if you've cracked open some tachyon guardians and want to raid out a few guardposts in a MK IV or something.  They're handy raiders, but you've got to get into a raiding mindset and use them almost completely independent of the main fleet.

[sol_ilya]

I have not played with eyebots in my fleet, but in my current game i have spire mini rams and I enjoy them a lot. They have appeared in third addon and with Spire compaing from this addon they are great. I have exoattacks every 35 minutes(with 1-2 spire cities). That means 5 detachments with about 5 straships in each including Spire Towers - altogether ~25 starships. I already know systems they go through. So I have not lack of targets or difficulties with choosing system what defend. They also very good in defeating annoying Spire stealth ships if they are nearby and those Spire Blade spawners. They are ships that can destroy enemy capital ship by the quickiest way. That can be very usefull also in tough situation.

In coclusion: spire mini ram is good.

[PokerChen]

Spire mini-rams and eyebots are both good. I'd say that only eye-bots are more dangerous against the AI.

There are normally two uses for my mini-rams: wormhole ambushes using turret-forcefields to direct targets into them (rather than the other way around), or running them with neinzul enclaves to intercept incoming guardians/starships. ...like baiting french knights into english woods.

Wanderer: They should be better at non-chokepointed defenses - it's a limitation of the build-system, that we can't have spaceports directed to split forces equally between (A) and (B). A switching waypoints system, if you will.

Eye-bots: The most annoying (non-OP) AI-emplacement, aside from a badly-placed gravity drill, are ion-cannons and eyes under FFs. Remember that they do have missile+sniper+instakill immunities, which encompasses practically every AI long-ranged weapon bar fortresses.
I reckon Sentinel Frigates are better picks, but if you needed stealth, eye-bots are your assassins.

[Hearteater]

Eye Bots are immune to speed boosts, but I can't recall if gravity effects are included.

[Bognor]

... we can't have spaceports directed to split forces equally between (A) and (B) ...

If you have two powered Space Dock Intra-Galactic Warp Gates, any ships generated by your Space Docks will be split equally between them.  I haven't tried this, but presumably each Warp Gate could be set to have it's own rally point.  So you could direct forces from your Dock equally between (A) and (B), albeit with 60 seconds of stun time.

[PokerChen]

... we can't have spaceports directed to split forces equally between (A) and (B) ...

If you have two powered Space Dock Intra-Galactic Warp Gates, any ships generated by your Space Docks will be split equally between them.  I haven't tried this, but presumably each Warp Gate could be set to have it's own rally point.  So you could direct forces from your Dock equally between (A) and (B), albeit with 60 seconds of stun time.

Tempting, for a partial solution... mathematically, it usually leads to a build-up of units at the places where the enemy is not attacking as strongly (we can micro that away but that's the same as one exit).

However, 60-seconds downtime is not what I need from reinforcing Mini-rams sent to stop an incoming Exogalactic Strikeforce!^(TM). What I need is a force-organisation diagram that I can transmit to my Spacedocks, asking them to automatically replace losses so as to fill up taskforce-A with 30% of our available Bombers and taskforce-B with 70%. That kind of pipe-dream.

[Valorian_Nova]

I am curious if anyone has tried using the Mini-Ram's with cloaker starships?  Admittedly it would still mean taking out tachyon guardians on route with raid ships and such but could it be used effectively to make Mini-Ram's more worthwhile to use? 

[Faulty Logic]

Both ships (eyebot/mini ram) are best for cloaked raids (though the mini-ram needs cloaker starships). They are both excellent for attacking an AI HW. And both of these are a terror in AI hands.

[LordSloth]

Well, since we're on the topic, I take minirams in about half of my co-op games. I love 'em.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind:
1). Minirams and full sized rams can both be cloaked
2). Minirams can be transported.

The easiest way to deliver a load of minirams is to 1). Kill the tachyon guardian 2). Load up your minirams into the transport, and group move the cloaker starship with the transport. This way, you avoid having to unlock higher tier cloaker starships, you avoid ships stringing out and leaving rams uncloaked, and you can pull them back in a jiff if you need.

I've considered combining them wth neinzul enclave starships and mark 3 engineers, but haven't really felt the need for that many.

They also do solid structural damage, iirc. So while they can be used to attack units under shields, they're equally good at taking down the shields themselves, though horribly, incredibly resource inefficent. A cap of Mk1s deal something like 45 million hp damage to a forcefield. In other words, it's a horrible waste of resources once you actually need minirams for something, but early in the game it can save you quite a bit of bomber time to just take out a train station or forcefield like that. Fine on a 7/7 game.

[Kahuna]

Sorry for all these threads but I've recently been trying a lot of the bonus ship types, and I'm interested to hear other people's opinions.

Bah! No need to apologize!

I've tried Spire Mini-Rams few times and well.. they're "meh". They're expensive (for a suicide unit), they take long time to build (25 seconds x19), they're slow AND can only damage "big guys".  -_______________-  <--- Meh face. I tried them vs Exos a while ago but they didn't do enough damage and rebuilding them took way too long. MarkI Ram does 800k damage and takes 25 seconds to rebuild. Thus it's dps is 32000 + the time it takes to hit the target with a speed of 56.. *insert "meh face" here*

EyeBots.. hmm.. I guess they're good in some situations and vs some AI types. If someone was crazy enough to play against Raid Engine they could be used to pop the REs. Put a cap of MarkI and IIs into a transport and use the transport to get past the tachyon guardians and boom RE popped. A cap of MarkI EyeBots costs only 19600! And MarkII's cap cost is only 35200. So it doesn't matter if they get owned. EyeBots could also be used to pop Alarm Posts, Attritioners or Planetary Cloakers. Or even Ion Cannons even though they don't have damage multiplier vs Ultra-Heavy. A cap or MarkI and IIs would destroy a MarkV Ion Cannon in about 5 seconds. MarkIII IC in 3 seconds. Oh I didn't take into account the armor.. oh well w/e. Also thanks to their 3 damage multiplier vs Heavy and ForceField immunity they're very good at destroying Hybrids.. and perhaps even Super Hybrid! omg! I only thought about this now! They could be used to destroy Super Hybrids! Destroying the Super Hybrid with a cap of MarkIs and IIs would take about 36 seconds. They're very fragile so I might have to send them 2 caps 2 times. Would still be cheaper than sending Fighters, Bombers, Missile Frigates and Starships.

I used to think Eye Bots are absolutely horrible.. but now I think they might actually be very good in some situations. I haven't really tested them in action yet.

[snelg]

I got mini-rams in my latest campaign from the last ARS. They seemed decent at what they did but the AI had so many spire maws they tended to just disappear.

It's been over a year I think since I saw the eye-bots but remember them being able to get things done without a fleet blob which was nice.