Energy Managament and Fortresses

[Diazo]

Alright, here's what's prompted this thread.

In my current game I am playing with a multi-ingress defense and you don't get much more powerful for defense then fortresses.

I wanted a fortress Mk I and II on each of my 4 fortress worlds. But at 90,000 and 120,000 energy for a Mk I and II, that is 840,000 energy for the fortresses alone.

I play a single homeworld start so I only get 150,000 energy from a collector so that is 6 systems dedicated to the fortresses alone.

Even with my 4 ingress worlds, I am only planning to take 10 systems by the time I set my defensive line up.

That leaves 4 energy collectors to support the rest of my empire, turrets, mobile fleet, everything.

Now, this makes Fort's Mk II and III essentially unusable due to the number of Metal Converters I would require to support them so I simply can't use Fort Mk II as it stands.

Even the Mk I forts I have built (only 2 of them so far) are crippling my economy. I control 6 systems at the moment and I can't build a 3rd fort due to energy restrictions.

To me, this does not work as the fort's might as well not exist as the energy requirements for using them are too high.

Because of that, I would like to request a decrease in the energy requirement of forts so that they actually become an option to use on a single homeworld start.

What are other peoples experience with this? Especially people playing multi-HW start and so getting the higher energy collector generation?

D.

[Cinth]

I guess I could speak up since you asked for multi HW starts.

If I run flat out fortresses (Mk I-III) and all the Mod-forts, I'll run out of energy supporting everything.
I play defensively so Mk I-II turrets, Mk I-III forts and Mod Forts. Each mini-fort costs about as much E as a Flagship does. If my starting selection of fleet ships included many high energy ships then I have to cut those numbers until I can get more systems under control.

Because of this, I have taken to running without Forts early and unlocking Mk III turrets. I'll run a half cap of each turret with Mod Forts and mini forts to cover the early game.

Energy gets tight on this end too. I've just worked around it for now.

[Faulty Logic]

Fortresses have such a high energy cost (as well as metal and crystal) because they are very cheap in terms of firepower-for k. They are not supposed to be deployed at full caps, except by really big empires. Generally, fort IIs or IIIs are improvements rather than new units. I see no problem with the current state of forts.

[Wanderer]

Also, on Multi-HW you get a higher cap of fortresses, so the problem basically balances out the same in single vs. multi, particuarly when you consider you'll need double the forts to handle double the waves.  Really where Multi-HW will get an edge there is in the free energy/world without invoking AIP costs.  The wave sizes are supposed to counter-balance that.

To seriously run 5+4+3 Fortresses, you'd have to have a MASSIVE empire, just to build 'em, nevermind power 'em.  180k ea at III, 120k ea at II, and 90k ea at I.  In reality you're looking at 2 Matter Converters each to power 'em up at MK I.

For 200 + 200 M/C / second, which is basically a 4/4 world with Harvester IIIs.  For one MK I Fort.  Ow.

However, it's not the new energy system that's the problem.  Fortresses have ALWAYS been very heavy on the energy and could easily bankrupt an empire.  What IS different however is that now you can't power other things down to feed them.  The turret battery on 4 different planets not being used?  Power 'em down and feed the fortresses, turning on only the battery you need at a particular time.  Pre-built yourself some cloaker starships?  That's 20k in power you could have been using elsewhere.

The only real difference is now you can't power down un-used ships.  I no longer pre-build myself 15+ transports so they're available when I want them in powered down mode.  They wait. 

Fortresses have (and I hope stay) as cheap K for heavy firepower at exorbinant expense.   Bringing 5 of the MK Is online is nearly an achievement in itself.  Feeding the full armada?  Yeeeee... no.  That's some ugly right there.

[Cinth]

And I can agree with the above. I loves me some forts

With 16 HW I can support full caps of Mk I-III forts and Mk I-II turrets with just the Mk I fleet. I still have just a little wiggle room for SS, FFs or Mod Forts. Usually just the FFs and as many Mod Forts as I can squeeze out

[rabican]

I usually use fortresses when i play defend multiple points . I only take CSG planets, if possible.  Don't always build all 5  and unless playing i-dont-care-about-aip game  i don't unlock MK IIs. Some matter converters are usually needed at some point, but with AS nebulaes the amount has lessened considerably. Fortresses are awesome and fine as is

[Kahuna]

I never use fortresses because of this. Their energy cost needs some buffing (made lower). Last game I had 5 planets, 5 energy collectors and 1 matter converter. I didn't have too much resources and barely had enough energy power all turrets, mines, MarkI ships, MarkII Bonus ship (Space Tank), 3 ARS ships, the "already unlocked starships at the beginning of the game" () starships, MarkII Raid Starships and MarkII Riots.

[Cinth]

We are back to were we have to make choices.

[rabican]

We are back to were we have to make choices.

Exactly. If fortress E cost was lowered it would be the best unlock, everytime.

[Faulty Logic]

That's a bit of a strawman, but I agree in essence.

[Zeyi]

Fortresses have such a high energy cost (as well as metal and crystal) because they are very cheap in terms of firepower-for k. They are not supposed to be deployed at full caps, except by really big empires. Generally, fort IIs or IIIs are improvements rather than new units. I see no problem with the current state of forts.

I agree with this, if you're playing a low AIP game with few planets its kind of the point that you are restricted in your choices and unable to maintain a cap of everything.

I'm currently sitting on my HW in my current game with 3 of the new nebulae unlocked modular forts powered by matter converters. They're expensive to use but if you need forts then you probably have a larger defensive concern than your economy.

EDIT:Also, ZPGs retain their usefulness here.

[pheonix89]

EDIT:Also, ZPGs retain their usefulness here.

This. So much. Remember, the whole AIP on death thing isn't actually a weakness if you buy them off the trader and put them next to home command. If somethings punched through all those defenses its gg anyway. And on the off chance that something targets the ZPGs first, its a few more seconds to take it out.
Note: I tend to play 3HW minimum, and I always, always, put full minifort caps on my HWs.

[Diazo]

Fortresses have such a high energy cost (as well as metal and crystal) because they are very cheap in terms of firepower-for k. They are not supposed to be deployed at full caps, except by really big empires. Generally, fort IIs or IIIs are improvements rather than new units. I see no problem with the current state of forts.

I agree with this in principle.

My problem is that I still feel they are too energy intensive, at least for a single homeworld start.

I agree that you should not be able to build a cap of forts with only a system or two, but I control 8 systems. Why am I struggling to build the cap of fort Mk I's still? And forget about Mk IIs if I want any sort of mobile fleet.

With 8 systems (1 HW  and 7 captured) energy collectors are giving me 1.2 million energy. A cap of Mk I forts costs 450,000 energy and Mk II 480,000 energy. If I build both, that leaves only 270,000 energy for everything else.

Now, for a single homeworld start an 8 empire system is pretty big. I feel I should be able to support the forts at this point from a game balance perspective.

The reason I asked about multi-hw start is I believe the collectors multiply their output by the number of homeworlds. So while a 4 HW start does have higher energy requirements, when you capture a new system the new energy collector increases your energy total by 600,000 energy while in my single HW start, a new energy collector only gives me 150,000 energy.

This means that a 4 HW start can run a cap of Mk I Forts off a single energy collector and have energy left over, I need 3 energy collectors to run the same cap and don't have any left over energy at all.

I think in the end this comes back to the fact that while the new energy system is a definite improvement, it's never really gotten the polishing fixes it needs and it is showing in this specific case.

However, as we are not getting a major rework to energy before 6.0, I'd like to ask that the energy requirements of forts be lowered as a 'quick fix' so I can actually use them in my game.

Two other alternatives would be to make metal converters more efficient so I can use those to support the forts without crippling my economy, or give the forts an ongoing maintenance costs of metal and crystal as the trade off for how cheap they are from a K-for-firepower perspective.

In the end, this ends up being an opinion of how easy it should be to deploy forts I guess.

However, for a single-HW start, that question is reduced to "how many fort Mk I's can I build?", I can't see anyway of a single HW start being able to build Mk II or III forts ever as it currently stands.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

This means that a 4 HW start can run a cap of Mk I Forts off a single energy collector and have energy left over, I need 3 energy collectors to run the same cap and don't have any left over energy at all.

Not exactly: you can build 100% of your mkI fort cap (5) for 3 collectors, and a 4-HW player can build 100% of their mkI fort cap (20) for 3 collectors.

Sure, the 4-HW player can build just 5 forts for 1 collector, but they're facing (on the average) 4x the pain from the AI, too, so those 5 forts don't go nearly so far.

However, as we are not getting a major rework to energy before 6.0, I'd like to ask that the energy requirements of forts be lowered as a 'quick fix' so I can actually use them in my game.

Sorry, we're in no-changes-except-critical-bugfixes until the release.  We're literally getting into the installer build process, etc, and it's a pain to change anything at this point.  We can if we really need to (critical bug, etc) but we try to avoid it.

But even aside from that, I'm looking for some kind of consensus here before making a change like that.

The mkII and mkIII forts aren't really the normal multiples of the mkI (shots-per-salvo goes up, but attack doesn't go up linearly and cap goes down, leading to an overall reduction in cap-dps with each mark) so in the future I could rebalance them.  Energy costs don't generally increase with mark anymore so I could make those the same, but I'd also make the cap the same so I'm not sure that would actually change much energy-wise.  There's also the K cost.

[Diazo]

Right, the caps change also. Good point.

And I did not realize you guys were that locked-down on changes already.

As nothing can happen on this front for a bit, I'll take the time to crunch some numbers on it.

I still feel that it is relatively harder to get your cap of fortresses up the fewer homeworlds you have, but I'll see if I can put that feeling into numbers some time tonight.

D.