Energy Collector Health

[Draco18s]

2. Frigates are much more suited for the "defensive" role.  In other words, I think Frigates should be the counter to the "primary" Triangle ship, as their inherent attributes seem much more suited to that.

Back in 1.0 (maybe even as late as 2.0) frigates did counter bombers.  But they shouldn't.

Yes, they're a defensive unit, but fighters have always always always been the counter to slower moving bombers.  Check real world history.

[keith.lamothe]

Check real world history.

To quote (iirc) Shrugging Khan: "This is a space game with maximum velocities, therefore your argument is invalid."



But yes, a common scifi and even non-scifi aero/space combat trope is that:
- bombers are small stuff that can hurt big stuff, and most of the big stuff has a hard time killing them efficiently
- fighters are small stuff that kill bombers (relatively) efficiently

And there's usually some escort/space-superiority craft that might be able to tickle capital ship defenses but is good at keeping enemy strike craft off the bombers there to do the job.

[Wingflier]

Yes, they're a defensive unit, but fighters have always always always been the counter to slower moving bombers.  Check real world history.

Fighters would counter Bombers much better in the new iteration, and also be significantly faster than them.  Bombers would move slower than Fighters in the new Triangle setup (and also have a much lower cap, but be more powerful individually).

[KDR_11k]

One issue with the bomber's balance is that while there are several targets that are so dangerous that they require specialized approaches that approach is practically always "use bombers". Need to break a forcefield? Bombers. Fortress? Bombers. Spec ops post? Bombers. It used to be that spec ops posts required using missile frigates but at some point that balance was changed to require bombers (and then with the econ boost and damage inflation you could just throw a fleet blob at it even in the early game).

2. Frigates are much more suited for the "defensive" role.  In other words, I think Frigates should be the counter to the "primary" Triangle ship, as their inherent attributes seem much more suited to that.

Back in 1.0 (maybe even as late as 2.0) frigates did counter bombers.  But they shouldn't.

Yes, they're a defensive unit, but fighters have always always always been the counter to slower moving bombers.  Check real world history.

I think that should have been fixed with a unit rename, not necessarily a re-balance. They were that way even in 3.0 IIRC. The game described that relationship as being natural, frigates being anti-armor, bombers armored and fighters fast to close in but knowing the game there were probably multipliers involved too. Frigate and bomber should have switched names, the bomber being a frail but powerful armor piercer and the frigate something heavy that excells in heavy hitting with the fighter maintaining the interceptor role and failing against the sheer firepower and armor of the heavy Frigate while ripping up the bombers.

When I was an RTS mod designer I often interacted with the Zero K team, they have a massive hate towards any form of multiplier. While I don't think multipliers should be completely removed it's still a better idea to use the natural properties of units for balancing rather than fairly arbitrary damage modifiers. Now granted, AI War uses significantly simpler combat rules than the Spring RTS engine but especially the armor mechanic the game has now that's pretty much laying fallow could have been used for an effective balance. Also the large engagement sizes should allow using overkill as a balancing mechanism.

I've never tried to balance more than a small handful of units though.

[Coppermantis]

I always justified the triangle in my head with the comparison Frigates=Boats. The name is probably what did it. In real life (say, WWII) dive bombers could hurt waterships pretty badly but were weak to fighters, yet most boats would have AA that could take down fighters. Obviously not true 100% of the time but it makes some sense.

[MaxAstro]

2. Frigates are much more suited for the "defensive" role.  In other words, I think Frigates should be the counter to the "primary" Triangle ship, as their inherent attributes seem much more suited to that.

Back in 1.0 (maybe even as late as 2.0) frigates did counter bombers.  But they shouldn't.

Yes, they're a defensive unit, but fighters have always always always been the counter to slower moving bombers.  Check real world history.

He's not saying that Frigates should counter Bombers, he's saying that Fighters should be the primary Triangle ship.

I think KDR_11k has hit the nail on the head.  There are several targets in the game that only bombers can effectively kill... ever.  It doesn't matter how many fighters you have, that SuperFortress is not going down until you send Bombers at it.  There are not, as far as I am aware, hi-priority targets that can only be countered by fighters or frigates.  So this tends to inflate the importance of Bombers.  You need a Mark IV bomber-equivalent in every game, and you almost never need high-mark fighters or frigates.

I will say that Wingflier's idea works best if the AI's defenses are changed to be less schizophrenic.  I think on the big things that encourages blobbing is that AI tends to mix and match units a lot.  If I saw a guard post defended by almost nothing but fighters, I would send frigates after it.  But if I see a guard post defended by some fighters, some frigates, some bombers, and a few other ships... The natural response is to blob it, because there is no obvious "good strategy".

[Diazo]

Okay.

Began a new game with a better home command placement and had no issues so far at the 3:30:00 game time mark.

I'm thinking the solution here is actually to add a minimum range check to the nearest wormhole when the home command station spawns at game start.

If the plasma siege breaks your defensive line and gets range on your home FF then I'm of the opinion there should be low HP stuff under there for it to damage.

But if it's broken your defensive line to do so it deserves to inflict damage, if it just warps in already in range that feels cheap to me.

D.

[KDR_11k]

Yeah, the siege ship was one of the reasons the home command has a few M health now, it used to die to a single siege shot when the shields were down so brownout + siege ship warps in = game over.

[TechSY730]

I'm thinking the solution here is actually to add a minimum range check to the nearest wormhole when the home command station spawns at game start.

If the plasma siege breaks your defensive line and gets range on your home FF then I'm of the opinion there should be low HP stuff under there for it to damage.

But if it's broken your defensive line to do so it deserves to inflict damage, if it just warps in already in range that feels cheap to me.

D.

Agreed.

IMO,

1. Increase the minimum range preplaced home command stations have to the nearest wormhole to be > range of plasma siege starships (how much greater is TBD)
2. Increase the health of the collector just enough such that it cannot be one shorted by the "forcefield damage spread" of the plasma siege (or if it already cannot be, ensure that it cannot be 2 shotted by that)


Together, I think that this will solve the OP's concerns.

[Draco18s]

2. Increase the health of the collector just enough such that it cannot be one shorted by the "forcefield damage spread" of the plasma siege (or if it already cannot be, ensure that it cannot be 2 shotted by that)

It's 11.2 shots right now, if the AI Plasma Siege is the same as the human one (For a Mk1, Mk2s hit twice as hard).

Still, the only things the player has that have fewer hitpoints than the collector are:

Metal+Crystal Manufactories
Engineers (Mk1s)
Scout Ships (assuming they're still there)

Everything else has 300,000 hp or more (except Engies Mk2 at 280,000).

[Diazo]

2. Increase the health of the collector just enough such that it cannot be one shorted by the "forcefield damage spread" of the plasma siege (or if it already cannot be, ensure that it cannot be 2 shotted by that)

It's 11.2 shots right now, if the AI Plasma Siege is the same as the human one (For a Mk1, Mk2s hit twice as hard).

Still, the only things the player has that have fewer hitpoints than the collector are:

Metal+Crystal Manufactories
Engineers (Mk1s)
Scout Ships (assuming they're still there)

Everything else has 300,000 hp or more (except Engies Mk2 at 280,000).

11.2 shots? My math came out to 6 shots for a Mk I, 3 @ Mk II and 2 @ Mk III. (That's on normal/normal).

Which is why if the wave had 2 plasma siege I could not do a thing to save my collector.

D.

[Draco18s]

11.2 shots? My math came out to 6 shots for a Mk I, 3 @ Mk II and 2 @ Mk III. (That's on normal/normal).

Which is why if the wave had 2 plasma siege I could not do a thing to save my collector.

D.

I loaded up the game I've been playing and looked at a Mk1 Plasma Siege, 200,000 damage (no multipliers) with 6.25% "splash."
Which works out to 12,500 damage worth of "splash" against a collector with 140,000 health.

Edit:
I think I'm on low caps.  But I don't see how a higher cap would result in fewer shots.

[Diazo]

I'm on normal/normal. Plasma Siege Mk I. are doing 400,000 a shot with a ship cap of 5. (Just alt-tabbed to my current game.)

At 6.25% splash that's 6 shots to kill the collector.

Odd that your damage is lower, I would expect to see that on High Caps if Starships are affected by the cap.

D.

edit: It's probably combat style, are you playing on Epic? That's half damage of normal which is what I play.

[Draco18s]

edit: It's probably combat style, are you playing on Epic? That's half damage of normal which is what I play.

Ooohh, yeah, that's probably it.
Yup, that is it indeed.  I play on Epic.

[Faulty Logic]

I am in favor of a simply giving a huge buff to fighters, thus nerfing bombers, and, more importantly, discouraging blobbing (because fighter firepower is basically wasted in a blob).
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9138

Also

To quote (iirc) Shrugging Khan: "This is a space game with maximum velocities, therefore your argument is invalid."

Ships are in orbit around a planet. Movement around a system map is therefore acceleration (changing your orbit relative to the other orbits) so the fixed speeds can be justified.