Prerelease 3.087 (Bugfixs and balance tweaks)

[x4000]

New version now out: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,4472.0.html

[Doddler]

What did you try?  You're probably right about it being unbeatable, but I thought it could be made less utterly lethal by using swarms of immune-to-forcefield units to focus-fire the heavy beam cannon IV modules themselves (and then the IIis, and then the shotguns).  Or did it just take too much firepower to do that?  Or did you not have any significant number of immune-to-forcefield units?

I had the avenger plot on for the second AI player, which I saved till last.  After winning the game, I created a blockade to stop the Avenger.  I had 2600 ships there, my ship cap in all ship types (Fighters/Bombers/Frigates/Mirrors/Snipers/Parasites to IV, Spiders/Electric Shuttle/Autobomb at I), Flagships and Light Starships, and about 250 or so Mk III turrets (basic and laser).  As you can tell from my ship types, I had nothing that could penetrate the force field.  The Avenger came through the portal and wiped the entire fleet in 30 seconds.  It would fire all its beams in a single direction and destroy every ship in that arc, taking out 100-300 ships per shot.  When all my ships were dead, the Avenger had taken only 10k damage to its forcefield (which is odd cause those bombers should have practically one shotted a force field of 80k health).  For some reason it looked like there were multiple forcefields stacked, but I couldn't be sure.  I then broke a Mk III Zenith reserve and fell back to my homeworld.  They took the forcefield down to 40k health before the avenger destroyed my homeworld.  My home command station was protected by dual Mk III force fields, but the avenger took down the force field in what looked like 3-4 volleys from his main gun from an incredible range.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah yes, that would explain it.

The forcefields are stacked, there are 4 of them.  Things that normally have bonuses against forcefields don't have such bonuses against them (which allows starship forcefields to be something more than tissue to bombers).  They're supposed to have more than 80k health each.  The Avenger itself has a base health of 80,000,000, and the shields each have 80,000,000; I think all that gets multiplied by 5 before the game finishes loading, though those might be exceptions.

As for forcefields, it's balanced to be able to cut its way through a full cap of MkI, MkII, and MkIII forcefields with 40 engineers repairing them, in roughly a minute.  That is, ah, perhaps a bit excessive.  But on the other hand I don't want it to be possible to just indefinitely hold it off with regenerating forcefield bubbles.

Perhaps I could drop it to two shields and give bombers more of a bonus against them, so that they're realistically destroyable, and maybe drop the IV cannon count from 4 to 3... I may nerf it a bit more drastically, actually, so it doesn't take forever to find a level where it's at least possible, and then buff it up a bit to the right level of stark terror.

[Doddler]

I think part of the trouble is that you are probably at your most vulnerable when you destroy a homeworld, you usually sacrifice a huge number of ships against the homeworld to bring it down.

And yeah, you're right about the times 5 thing, it had 400m HP when I fought it.  To be entirely honest, the thing probably could have not fired a single shot and I'd have been unable to take it out before it reached my homeworld.

[keith.lamothe]

I could just make it a lot slower

[Doddler]

Maybe if it moved a LOT slower (like speed of 1 instead of 5) and the shield/hull were vulnerable to bombers you could take it out.  And uh, maybe a few less Mk IV beam cannons... :p like for example 4 beam cannons total instead of 6, maybe of each level.

Also, a couple things with it, AI engineers will still try to repair the Avenger even though they cannot.  And uh, for some reason the tool tips on the beam cannons of all levels say it does only 50k attack.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I was thinking speed 1, which should work since we added some code not long ago to make sure really-low-speed stuff (like an 18% engine health slow ship) moves at least one world unit per move-cycle.  Might need to bump it back up to 2 later.

Currently it mounts 4 MkIVs and 4 MkIIIs, might change that to 1 MkIV and 7 MkIIIs or something like that.  I can also have it use different configs at different difficulty levels (and player counts), but I want to find a decent baseline first.

The beam cannon strength is the power per beam; a MkIV fires 40 beams at once

[Doddler]

The beam cannon strength is the power per beam; a MkIV fires 40 beams at once

Oooh, I see.  That wasn't immediately obvious from the description.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, it explains itself by hitting you in the face

I could get it to note the Simultaneous Shots x40, though; it's not using the same field for that so it didn't pick up on it.

[orzelek]

Hmmm... wait.

Sanity check... 40 beams from MkIV heavy turret of 50k attack each. Omg times 4 - that needs to hurt.

PS Is the single Mk IV heavy cannon that player can build similar in fire power? Or it has only one beam?

[keith.lamothe]

Times 4?  Oh, right, 4 cannons

And the Mk IV mounted on the Avenger is almost a complete copy of the player-built one, they get their stats in the same code branch, just a few differences like immune-to-nuke and whatnot.  So yea, the player built one has the same punch, and is thus quite helpful when facing the avenger, though it would have to be protected by multiple forcefields to have a chance against the return fire.

[Doddler]

No wonder it wiped out everything I had so quickly.  4 beam cannons at 2 million damage per shot is 8 million damage.  With fast and dangerous mode on, thats 16 million damage every... 2 seconds?  Haha, that's so impossible to beat, no wonder it could wipe out all my Mk IV ships in a single blast. 

[keith.lamothe]

The reload on a Mk IV is 4.25 seconds, I believe.  But yea, it's pretty high

And don't forget the 4 Mk IIIs it mounts, and the 4 Riot Shotgun IIs, and the superfortress gun

[triggerman602]

are you sure this thing is balanced?

[keith.lamothe]

Did I ever say that it was?

No, that's the just the initial setup, just been waiting on feedback to figure out what to change.  As is going to slow it down from 5 to 1 and remove two of the Mk IV cannons.