Feedback Requested: Immunities Discussion

[x4000]

From this mantis post: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1405

Now that the new armour class system makes damage bonuses transparent, it would be nice if immunities could be reviewed; there is nothing intuitive about vampires and teleport raiders- surely two of the units MOST suited to attacking structures- are unable to even target them.

Allowing the likes of cutlasses & vampires to target most structures and units again, albeit with unfavourable attack bonuses, would do wonders to making these units more player-use friendly, and would remove that situation where the players command station & cryo pods are surrounded by 1000+ idle cutlasses because for some reason they cant attack. wouldnt a stiff penalty vs structures be better?

This is an interesting discussion, and needs some thought. I'll make a forum post so folks can discuss more. Here are the thinking points:

BLADE IMMUNITY
Right now, anything with health higher than a certain amount (a few hundred thousand, I think) is immune to blades. For three reasons:

1. Cutlasses damage themselves as they attack, so when big structures are near they tended to all die pointlessly. Now that they no longer have damage penalties against structures as much, that's less of an issue, but still something. Perhaps if they didn't target anything they have a penalty against, or had no penalties (I can't remember if they presently do or not).

2. Zenith Viral Shredders are hugely problematic. When they find something high-health, they can just latch on and make infinite copies of themselves faster than the enemies can destroy them. The blade immunity on high-health ships prevents this runaway breeding. I'm not sure what to do with that one.

3. Vampire Claws are just as problematic. When they have something high-health, they latch on and suck the life out of it so fast that enemies can't kill them.

MINOR ELECTRIC IMMUNITY
This was put in place to prevent insta-gate-raiding (and other similar raiding) with teleporting ships, which you'll notice all use the minor electric ammo type. With most structures (but not gates) having so much more health now, this is less of an issue anyway, and probably it could be relaxed some.

But having the teleporting ships all be ship-to-ship specialists does seem to make sense in a lot of fashions, so I'm not sure a change is warranted.

[x4000]

I should also note that I'm not going to be super active in this thread until next week.  But I wanted to get others thinking about it, hopefully with less ire than the fleet ship vs starship discussion.

[superking]

MINOR ELECTRIC IMMUNITY
This was put in place to prevent insta-gate-raiding (and other similar raiding) with teleporting ships, which you'll notice all use the minor electric ammo type. With most structures (but not gates) having so much more health now, this is less of an issue anyway, and probably it could be relaxed some.

But having the teleporting ships all be ship-to-ship specialists does seem to make sense in a lot of fashions, so I'm not sure a change is warranted.

I think many players would be in favour of the teleport raider being attuned to raiding instead of, obscurely, defence against bombers; not only is there the issue that teleport battlestations already occupy the crown of 'teleporting defence', but that with tiny weak attacks that are literally 100% blocked by fighter & frigate armour of the same mark at MK I, and mostly blocked at higher MK, it dosnt make a great deal of sense to have the TR counter heavily armoured bombers  

I think the TR's super low health makes them poorly suited to combat vs other little ships in general, I wonder if they wouldnt be better as an anti structure/artillery/heavy with super high armour peircing (imo, all minor electric should be completely armour peicing like the electric shuttle, not just to remain thematic but because the TR has a weak attack easily deflected by almost any armour and the teleport battlestation is now significantly weaker than it used to be (where they would pop into existance at point blank range, thus ignoring shields, and blow everything away)

I 100% agree that warpgates should remain minor-electric immune, but imo not command stations- they are protected by immunity gaurdposts, sometimes FF, often large garrisons and decent HP already and should be legitimately countered by TR

1. Cutlasses damage themselves as they attack, so when big structures are near they tended to all die pointlessly. Now that they no longer have damage penalties against structures as much, that's less of an issue, but still something. Perhaps if they didn't target anything they have a penalty against, or had no penalties (I can't remember if they presently do or not).

I was thinking, shouldnt cutlasses actually be specialised anti structure seige units?

• they are too slow to catch mobile units that are moving. this makes them useless at interception & defence against all but slower units like Z bombardment & tanks
• they inflict high damage & suffer high damage
• they are well armoured and difficult to stop in large numbers
• they are brutally countered by fighters
• they are used by the Mad Bomber along with the other 'brutally attack sturctures/FF' types

to me, all these attributes suggest they should be seige units, slowly and frighteningly closing on your command station while everything pours fire on them. the unique powers of close combat units- ignoring shields- surely make them ideal for this role. as they are, they are little use against fleetships. Maybe rebalance them so their attack is more modest, since as is they put out crazy damage, and give them a bonus only against structure/command grade so they autotarget them on FRD?

[Shelly]

Just some ideas.

Zenith Viral Shredders could create a copy which lacks the ability to create other Zenith Viral Shredders (could be to much of a nerf because never used them and don't know how they work).

For the Vampire Claws attacks on the same target could give you diminishing health returns (every sequential  attack gives less health) (again never used them).

[Lancefighter]

as for shredders, its really no that bad :\ their best friend at the moment is something like sentinel frigates or electric bombers......
but in general, yes, a ship that becomes stronger by virtue of attacking is annoying.. especially when if you are careful, you can make a thousand shredders at short order.

the actual blade immunity itself id like to see removed from many things, but because of shredders and vampires, Id prefer it wasnt.. What if those two become a completely different damagetype (or, they stay blades and the cutlass becomes something else) My reasoning is that I dont particularly see a reason to use cutlass over vampires or shredders, because both of them are more useful - the cutlass loses hp each attack, the other two GAIN hp per attack.

ill admit that I havent really used minor electric weapons in a while, with the major enemy that uses them being the core starship.. Way back in the day, tele raiders were decent at killing ships, and stations were better at killing turrets.. then stuff was changed around for the minor electric change (turret immunities, etc) the two ships became essentially the same.. except one is in spam form

[Wingflier]

This is roughly on the same topic, and I wanted to address it as well.  Because some Starships have become to immune to missiles in 4.0 (or maybe they always were, it's not really relevant), they have also become immune to the only defenses that do bonus damage to them.

Specifically Leech and Raid Starships in the original game, there is simply no turret defense that is currently able to deal even a negligible amount of damage to them.

Was this intended?  Should the only counter to these ships be a mobile army?  I find the fact that there is no defense against the Raid Starship particularly disturbing, since out of all the Starships, that is probably the one which you are least able to respond to with your Fleet.

edit:  Looking at the defenses again, I see that Heavy Beam Cannons also do extra damage against Ultra-Light, but once again I was wondering whether it was intentional that I need to spend extra knowledge (and have such a low cap on) a turret counter to certain Starship types.

[Lancefighter]

raid and parasite stars have recently become unimmune to missiles.

[Winter Born]

This is roughly on the same topic, and I wanted to address it as well.  Because some Starships have become to immune to missiles in 4.0 (or maybe they always were, it's not really relevant), they have also become immune to the only defenses that do bonus damage to them.

Specifically Leech and Raid Starships in the original game, there is simply no turret defense that is currently able to deal even a negligible amount of damage to them.

Was this intended?  Should the only counter to these ships be a mobile army?  I find the fact that there is no defense against the Raid Starship particularly disturbing, since out of all the Starships, that is probably the one which you are least able to respond to with your Fleet.

edit:  Looking at the defenses again, I see that Heavy Beam Cannons also do extra damage against Ultra-Light, but once again I was wondering whether it was intentional that I need to spend extra knowledge (and have such a low cap on) a turret counter to certain Starship types.

Raids lost their missile immunity in a recent patch.
Leaches have such small guns I think if they lost missile immunity they would be much less usefull in a defensive role (my use for them). HBC and Laser turrets are their main opponents

[Wingflier]

This is roughly on the same topic, and I wanted to address it as well.  Because some Starships have become to immune to missiles in 4.0 (or maybe they always were, it's not really relevant), they have also become immune to the only defenses that do bonus damage to them.

Specifically Leech and Raid Starships in the original game, there is simply no turret defense that is currently able to deal even a negligible amount of damage to them.

Was this intended?  Should the only counter to these ships be a mobile army?  I find the fact that there is no defense against the Raid Starship particularly disturbing, since out of all the Starships, that is probably the one which you are least able to respond to with your Fleet.

edit:  Looking at the defenses again, I see that Heavy Beam Cannons also do extra damage against Ultra-Light, but once again I was wondering whether it was intentional that I need to spend extra knowledge (and have such a low cap on) a turret counter to certain Starship types.

Raids lost their missile immunity in a recent patch.
Leaches have such small guns I think if they lost missile immunity they would be much less usefull in a defensive role (my use for them). HBC and Laser turrets are their main opponents

Ah alright, thanks for the update.  That IS good news!

[Winter Born]

This is roughly on the same topic, and I wanted to address it as well.  Because some Starships have become to immune to missiles in 4.0 (or maybe they always were, it's not really relevant), they have also become immune to the only defenses that do bonus damage to them.

Specifically Leech and Raid Starships in the original game, there is simply no turret defense that is currently able to deal even a negligible amount of damage to them.

Was this intended?  Should the only counter to these ships be a mobile army?  I find the fact that there is no defense against the Raid Starship particularly disturbing, since out of all the Starships, that is probably the one which you are least able to respond to with your Fleet.

edit:  Looking at the defenses again, I see that Heavy Beam Cannons also do extra damage against Ultra-Light, but once again I was wondering whether it was intentional that I need to spend extra knowledge (and have such a low cap on) a turret counter to certain Starship types.

Raids lost their missile immunity in a recent patch.
Leaches have such small guns I think if they lost missile immunity they would be much less usefull in a defensive role (my use for them). HBC and Laser turrets are their main opponents

Ah alright, thanks for the update.  That IS good news!

Raids now instakilled by Arty Guardians 
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1412

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Artillery guardians strike again!

1. Cutlasses are incredibly weak, and there is no point to choosing them.  To make them unique from the vampires, you could just make them structure shredding blades only or have some melee effect where it increases the reload time of their target. This would be rather pirate-like... Which is what I think of when I hear the word Cutlass. Or maybe they steal resources..hmm..
2. I like infinite breeding shredders. If you are going to do this, it would be better if the copy had some incredibly weak armor/hull or something. Or just put a capacity on it that doesn't exceed twice the current capacity you can build. Or put a timer on the life of the shredder. A lot of things you could do.
3. Increase the reload speed or decrease the attack? If the life steal effect is too high... Not really sure where the quandary is on this? Please expand on this if you can.

[Kron]

2. Zenith Viral Shredders are hugely problematic. When they find something high-health, they can just latch on and make infinite copies of themselves faster than the enemies can destroy them. The blade immunity on high-health ships prevents this runaway breeding. I'm not sure what to do with that one.

3. Vampire Claws are just as problematic. When they have something high-health, they latch on and suck the life out of it so fast that enemies can't kill them.

I assume that ZVSs drain health and make copies of themselves, while VCs drain health to heal themselves.

I also assume that the primary problem is that while they do what they're designed to against fleetships (ZVSs will slaughter and double their ranks, VCs will slaughter and emerge unscathed), they're basically unstoppable when attacking starships because most starships don't have the ROF to deal with them.


How about instantiating a 'latch cap' on units? Let's say that any given unit can only have "X" enemy units latching onto them. This shouldn't affect fleet battles at all, since they'll mostly involve 1-on-1 latching... but this should greatly bottleneck the effectiveness of ZVSs and VCs against starships.

[superking]

fyi guys cutlasses are not useless, they have in excess of 10x the attack of other melee types, plus heavier armour. the problem with cutlasses is that their low speed makes them weak vs fleet ships, while their massive attack makes them OP against stationaries

@ Zenith shredders: the rate of copy is proportional to how much damage they deal? perhaps give them a poor attack modifier vs structures (0.1x)

EDIT:

Idea:

make all close combat types except the cutlass unsuited to attacking structures (0.1x attack modifier) this compensates for their ability to pass through FF. Vampires will drain little health and Z shredders will do little replicating.

Keep the cutlass as a scary building destroyer, and reduce its abilities vs all other units, giving it a unique role as a seige unit

[PineappleSam]

Hmm... if shredders produced copies with the same health as the shredder that produced it (after the self hurt that comes with construction) would that solve the problem? The only downside is that you'd have to start your viral shredder fleet from scratch at some point, as eventually you're creating shredders with tiny health totals.

Perhaps that would be balanced by removing the increasing cost of viral reproduction?

[superking]

shredders are really not overpowered.. they are massively hardcountered by fighters and have a very weak attack, average speed, and against mobiles ending up with more than you started with is fairly difficult and requires fairly enterprising tactics (like tractoring enemy frigates under radius of countermissle turret, or attacking units with a damage multiplier like mirrors). iirc, they cannot multiply below a certain HP (and shredder regen is very slow) and in any case, a negative multiplier against somthing means they take a small age to multiply. imo, these are not the problem here and could easily be switched to attacking structures with a suitable modifier, same goes for the vampire.

the main problems as I understand them are

• Cutlasses attacking buildings/starships: they do insane damage and ignore FF, but if they are given a bad damage modifier against buildings they will self harm to death without acheiving anything
• Teleport battlestations: they put out insane damage and can jump anywhere, making it a little too easy to pick off buildings that are otherwise hard to reach