Spire Shield Bearers

[Sigma7]

I built a Spire Shield Bearer, but after deploying it in combat, basically regretted it. 

Basically, the unit is immune to repair (which may be fine), but doesn't regenerate.  As such, the only thing it does is absorb 14 million hitpoints before dying, which is something that could be emulated with a large number of regular shield bearers, or simply by having a blob of engineers to repair units that get damaged.

The stats are a bit off as well.  Notably, they're faster than base triangle units, causing it to receive hits well before the main forces arrive.  They also have armor piercing and damage bonuses, which is odd for a ship that doesn't attack.

So, am I missing something with the bearers, or are they really overrated?

[TechSY730]

You are not the only one to be underwhelmed by Spirecraft shield bearers. For a "one time damage absorbers", their current form has two big shortcomings.
One, its HP seems too low. Sure, 14 million HP may seem like alot, but when you consider it is supposed to take all the fire that would normally be spread across a fleet, along with the inability to repair them, 14 million does not last very long at all.
Two, once they get to low HP, their force-field size shrinks to near uselessness. For normal, repairable force-fields, this shrinking can be a good thing, as it hopefully allows other force-fields to start taking the "punishment", buying time for the weakened one to be repaired. Of course, since Spirecraft shield bearers cannot be repaired, this is nothing but bad news.

To combat point one, that should be easy, just bump up the HP even more.
To combat point two, I propose that there should be a "minimum force-field radius", that instead of the 1 or 0 radius that a normal force-field has at HP 1, the Spirecraft shield bearer would still have a decent sized force-field radius at HP 1. Naturally, that relation of HP to force-field size should still be linear, which would cause a Spirecrat shield bearer force-field radius to decrease slower.

[Fleet]

Here is my related report.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2035

[Red Spot]

A single mk1 Spirecraft SB has ~the same health as a cap of mk1 SBs.

Allow it to be repaired and it is extremelly OP, allow it to get higher HP and I will never lose any fleetship
That said .. please buff them

When I use a cap of mk1 SBs and start 'blobbing', it takes in average about 4-5 planets for them to really wear down, or about 6hours on defence. Seeing what their aid allows me to gain in new minerals I'd say they are perfectly balanced.

If not, I'd also like Martyrs to be repairable

[zebramatt]

You could give them a relatively slow regeneration ability, up to 75% max health or something?

Or maybe total regeneration but at a logarithmic rate, so 0-25% could be quite fast, 25%-50% slower, 50%-75% slower still and 75%-100% really slow?

[Red Spot]

Perhaps if they get a really steep pricetag, they could in return allow some slow repair/regen. You will earn the Rs back anyway so its hardly even a penalty.

[TechSY730]

As X4000 has repeatedly said, they are NOT going to add passive regen. It just encourages people to put the game at +10 and wait for them regen all the way so they can get another full HP Spirecraft shield bearer without another asteroid, which is almost as overpowered as making them repairable.

One solution would be to give Spirecraft shield bearers an insanely high cost (like maybe Superfortress level costs, or more), but keep their mining enclosures (the things that build them) at the same cost. This way, building one is still somewhat cheap, but if you want to repair an already deployed one, you're going to have to shell out a bunch of money in return.
However, I doubt that they will go for that either.

In any case, I stand by my original suggestion of a ">1 minimum force field size" mechanic.

[Sigma7]

In that case, I'll propose a change in description to avoid any confused usage.

[zebramatt]

As X4000 has repeatedly said, they are NOT going to add passive regen. It just encourages people to put the game at +10 and wait for them regen all the way so they can get another full HP Spirecraft shield bearer without another asteroid, which is almost as overpowered as making them repairable.

Surely that's as much a matter of scale as anything. If it took half an hour for them to get to 25%, two hours to 50%, five hours to 75% and twelve hours to get up to 100%, I for one would rather find another asteroid than put my game on +10 and get blown to bits by the AI waiting...

There's probably a happy medium in there somewhere.

Incidentally, I do think a minimum radius is a good idea. Although it occurs to me that there's really no reason why they need to have their radius diminish anyway. If they had two thirds the starting radius they do now, for example, and continued to not be repairable (nor regenerate), then they'd offer distinctly different options to a normal force field.