Erratum for Release Description

[Haagenti]

Where it reads:
-Ion cannons now fire 4X faster, and have 4 simultaneous shots instead of just one, which makes flooding them with low-level ships vastly much harder.

replace "vastly much harder" by "<expletive deleted> impossible"

[darke]

For reference, I deny any knowledge of complaining about how "wimpy" or "boring" the original Ion Cannons were, nor asking for even higher Tech Levels of Ion Cannons in any thread on this board.

(And on that note I need to remember to respond to that thread at some point when I have more then 2 nanoseconds to spare...)

[x4000]

Do you feel like it's too much of a problem, Haagenti?  I am curious as to everyone's thoughts on the balance here.  It is definitely way harder now, and flooding them is very difficult, but I've managed to pull off gate-raids in the tutorials, and planet-hops, with a few hundred Mark I ships against an ion cannon.  It just makes it oh so much harder now...

[Haagenti]

It certainly still can be done. I also tend to play at higher difficulties, and that means the Ion Cannon is *one* of your problems at a planet, among an enemy fleet of 500 already being in place, significant reinforcements, legions of snipers and all that. And it has just become a very significant problem.

I think that a start on any level next to one or two Ion Cannons in the first three planets makes life pretty hard (it might be worth to code that you cannot start next to  level IV or an Ion Cannon?)

[x4000]

It certainly still can be done. I also tend to play at higher difficulties, and that means the Ion Cannon is *one* of your problems at a planet, among an enemy fleet of 500 already being in place, significant reinforcements, legions of snipers and all that. And it has just become a very significant problem.

I think that a start on any level next to one or two Ion Cannons in the first three planets makes life pretty hard (it might be worth to code that you cannot start next to  level IV or an Ion Cannon?)

I actually really like the fact that the starting worlds can be upgraded ones, I think that adds a lot of variance and interest to the maps.  But, in thinking about this more, I do agree that the ion cannons on those worlds are an unnecessary hardship.  I'll make it so that any higher-level planets next to player start positions will no longer contain ion cannons.

[Kalzarius]

It certainly still can be done. I also tend to play at higher difficulties, and that means the Ion Cannon is *one* of your problems at a planet, among an enemy fleet of 500 already being in place, significant reinforcements, legions of snipers and all that. And it has just become a very significant problem.

Only 500?  Our 30+ hour game we have going has 3500 ships (on average) or so with frequent 500-ship reinforcements.  Legions of snipers...  I think we saw 114 at some point.  Now that got noisy.  I'm glad the sniper turret sound has been changed.  That old one just got really annoying.

I do not look forward to entering a system with an ion cannon.  It will death for sure.  It's hard enough to get our fleets to those ion cannons in the first place.  Now we'll have no ships below Mark III by the time we get there.

[Haagenti]

Only 500?  Our 30+ hour game we have going has 3500 ships (on average) or so with frequent 500-ship reinforcements.  Legions of snipers...  I think we saw 114 at some point.  Now that got noisy.  I'm glad the sniper turret sound has been changed.  That old one just got really annoying.

I was only considering the first 6 hours or so of a game. After that I tend to have enough II/III/IV ships or other tactical options to be able to defeat them.

Once you start encountering 50+ snipers and 50+ sniper turrets per planet, many I ships are becoming sniper fodder, so I tend to use them more for defense.