Zenith Viral Shredder Balance Feedback

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, a larger multiplayer group really has to work together very well to make good use of the linear increase in their ship cap, knowledge, energy, and (not linearly increased, but increased) resources, because the AI certainly gets a linearly increased stick to hit them with

But there is some fairly serious cheese you can pull off with the multiples of ship caps you get, etc.  Have y'all tried having all players unlock Riot mkIIs and building to all caps with tazers on all of them, and having them (with some defense, preferably both the onboard shields and supporting forcefields since you're getting so close, and maybe a grav turret to ease the timing) camp the wormhole of an incoming wave?  Past a certain low number of players that's probably a 100% lockdown of those AI units unless they're immune to paralysis.

[Entrenched Homperson]

No we haven't.... *evil grin*. I'll have to try that. At least not in the games I've played. The group might have advanced a little without me. We all got Sentinels once from an ARS. We pwnt that game. Yup.

Pwnt.

For bonus ships I would probably go:

Autobombs
Paralyzers/Anti Armor
Sentinels/Yng Tiger

I know some people will disagree with me, but for how I play their the best. Autocannons and Spire Tractor Platforms almost make the list.

[Nalgas]

The comp has maybe a 30% chance of getting an uncounterable ship type at the wave sizes they send first wave. Like 900 triangle ships first wave around 5 minutes, plus bonus ship types. We try and stack at least 7-10 shields on the targeted CCs but if they have bombers or something which ignores shields there is very little chance of survival. This is at 7 difficulty.

Wait, wait, wait.  What the heck are you doing that you're getting an uncounterable wave five minutes into the game on difficulty seven?  I routinely play with 4-6 people, and while we may lose the vast majority of the time on 7/7, it's been a long time since it's been quite that early.  It never, ever sends the waves anywhere near that soon for us (more like 15 minutes, not five), for one thing, and like, it tells you where they're going.  You yoink half the warp gates ahead of time to direct the waves to a couple defensible points, split up your fleets between the systems that are getting attacked, throw down some turrets and stuff to help each other out, and nothing's really a threat until a while later.  Bombers shouldn't really be that much of a problem even with just some tractors to slow them down and half a dozen people crapping out fighters in their general direction.

[Entrenched Homperson]

Okay, well maybe I exagerrated a little. But we've lost wave 1 with ample preperation. I'm not saying its impossible but certain ship types are hard to counter.

Wave 1 has been around 2500 ships for us, generaly split between 2 players. We use grav turrets, tractor turrets. That's on average.

[superking]

its usually bad news if the AI gets spire unlockables

[Huaojozu]

its usually bad news if the AI gets spire unlockables

Especially Tractor Platforms. Maws are slow to eat your ships and can be focused by Bombers before doing too much damage (and they release the ships back) but it only take a few Tractor Platforms to completely mess up your fleet. You just have to hope your ships can kill their tractorer before its too late.

[keith.lamothe]

Iirc you can "break" a tractor hold on one of your ships by moving a friendly forcefield over the tractor-held unit.  So if it's problems with AI tractor ships popping out of one of your wormholes, grabbing the garrison, and running back to AI territory you can probably stop that with some standard generators.  If it's an on-the-offense thing then some Riots might be able to help, though their shield radius is fairly small.  Spire capital ship shields tend to be wider, though.

But yea, the honeycombs-of-doom are fairly devastating.

[Gudamor]

And a final emergency "Oh god it's heading right for the Raid Engine/Neinzul Nest!" response is scrapping the tractored ships.

"Self-terminate. That's an order. I'm sorry."

[Nice Save]

But I like the level of "disorganization" I can inflict on the AI forces by just sending a never-ending stream of nanoswarms (and autobombs, if I have those too) through a wormhole at one of their planets

I do like the thought of sending a steady stream of nanoswarms on FRD mode to an AI world for 5 or 10 minutes, then stopping the stream and letting all the free marked-for-reclamation ships come to your defences. Mail order fleet!

[mindloss]

I'm playing a game now where the AI got tractors as its first unlockable. I've been impressed by the AI before, but this is the first time I've ever actually felt like there's a malevolent force that specifically hates ME and it's living in my computer.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm playing a game now where the AI got tractors as its first unlockable. I've been impressed by the AI before, but this is the first time I've ever actually felt like there's a malevolent force that specifically hates ME and it's living in my computer.

The honeycomb of doom strikes again!

[TechSY730]

I got the "Honeycombs of doom" in my game too.
With judicious application of preferred targets, their disruption is less annoying, but still pretty damaging.

Hey wait, how did this turn from a discussion Zenith viral shredders to a discussion about Spire bonus ships, especially Tractor platforms?

Anyways, back on the original topics, I could live with a damage nerf for shredders in exchange for a less steep penalty for having a bunch of them. How about my original 3x per ship cap growth idea, with a damage nerf in proportion to that?

[Entrenched Homperson]

I think a health nerf would be more appropriate, with 3 or 4x per cap. They are pretty beefy.
Honestly, if they had half the health they could still do what they do, as long as they replicate quickly. Mark 1 is fine, but the scaling could be brought down.