Gravity drills

[Wingsofdomain]

How do you get pass them? I can kill the planet but once I've captured it the slow is still there on both allies and enemies. Feels like a bugg. You can't scrap it either so you better destroy it before it is too late. So is it a bug huh? If it is... is it just a one time bugg or should I expect the same problem with the gravity drill on the new campaign.

[x4000]

Being able to capture them and then use them against the AI is actually a feature, not a bug -- that's part of the choice of that particular unit.  I forget the exact reason why they aren't scrappable, but there was a good reason for it I seem to recall.  Probably someone else here remembers better than I do, but I'm not averse to changing it if that original reason no longer applies.

But don't underestimate the power of having all the AI ships moving like molasses in your system.  With some sniper turrets and similar you have yourself one heck of a defended planet!

[Wingsofdomain]

oh...but the problem is that during the time it takes for our ship to move on to hte next planet we will die of age.... Friendly ships are as affected as enemy, I don't underistmate the use of slowing enemey ships, I promise.

[x4000]

Well, you can build zenith spacetime manipulators to help make it not affect your ships.  Or, in the event of a planet you really don't want molasses on, destroy it before capturing the planet.  The other thing to remember to do of course is to build warp gates -- so in most cases there's not a reason to have to have ships running back and forth across the planet unless its really unpleasantly sited.

[Wingsofdomain]

no zenith space time manipulators didn't work. Max speed is still 8.

[x4000]

Hmm, sorry, my memory on that must be faulty.  At one point they overrode it, but I think we changed that.  There was a lot of rejiggering of the hierarchy of speed boosts and penalties with 4.0-5.0.  At any rate, my suggestion is the warp gates for getting your ships where you want them as they are built, anyway.  If you're having to send ships across this planet repeatedly throughout your game, that doesn't sound optimal from just a general standpoint of logistics for defense and offense in general.  Sometimes unavoidable, I know, and you might be in one of those very situations, but I think that's why more folks haven't brought this up with the gravity drill in the last 8+ months it's been this way.

[Wingsofdomain]

But how am I supposed to defend myself from from all chamelons on the other side of the galaxy? (other side of the galaxy? sounds like a paradox) Are you supposed to have enough turrets on all planets so you don't need any fleet ships to defend.

[zebramatt]

Have two fleets?

[x4000]

Usually that's what I do, yeah -- it all comes down to playstyle, though.  But in general if you've got some big pit of molasses between your two points of interest on the galaxy, that's something that you have to adapt your playstyle to.  So that means more turrets, or more fleet ships so that you can split your fleet, or whatever.

In general I tend to have about 80% of my fleet on offense or preparing for offense except when a CPA is coming in, at which time I withdraw to areas where I can bottleneck the enemy (and a gravity drill planet is a CPA-eating machine, if they have to go through there).  It tends to work pretty well for me, but everybody plays differently.

[BobTheJanitor]

I always destroy them when I come across them. I haven't played a gravity driller AI type yet, so I rarely see one. I can't figure out how to use them effectively so I always just blow them up. And I have no clue why they wouldn't be scrappable. I thought they were, so I'm obviously clueless.

[Kruztee]

Yep, I got beat a few games back by a 6/6 Grav Miner/Sledgehammer combo.

From now on I'll just destroy the Grav Drills on sight and cop the AIP increase. They're just plain annoying. The only exception to this might be when they are on the absolute fringe of my territory and not in a busy corridor that I need to move ships through. The cons outweigh the pros for keeping them, in my opinion.

[zoutzakje]

I absolutely love Gravity Drills. It's been twice now that I won a pretty tough campaign due a single grav drill. Once I found one very early in the game. That single grav drill with some sniper and spider turrets took care of most of my defence so I could use my fleet to conquer whatever I wanted. Easiest win with tough-ish opponents ever.

[Nalgas]

They are totally awesome in some situations.  We found a planet in one game that had a gravity drill and a black hole machine in it and three basically every sniper turret and missile turret ever into it, along with a few fortresses and some other stuff, and then took out every warp gate in every system bordering every other planet we ever captured for the rest of the game.  No wave was ever a threat ever again.  Ever.  No ship could get remotely close to any of our defenses in the system to attack them before they died, and they couldn't even turn around to leave once they realized how much trouble they were in.  It was great.

It absolutely blew goats when someone's transports accidentally took the dumb way around and detoured through the system on their way somewhere because it was shorter by distance, because the pathing algorithm doesn't account for it actually taking 20 times longer in terms of travel time...

I can't think of anything that currently has higher priority than them in terms of affecting movement speed.  No matter what I've tried building in a system with them, everything's still a flat 8 speed.  I also can't think of a reason why they shouldn't be scrappable, but I missed that discussion.

[Wingsofdomain]

Well.... I still think that te gravity drills need a change.

[Ranakastrasz]

I think some more info on what buffs overwrite each other, and their actual bonuses, in tooltips would be useful, and also I would think that either ZSTMs should work in a system with a drill, but assuming it currently doubles move speed of allied ships, then it would allow allied ships to move at a rate of 16. Also, possibly improve the galaxy pathing to take into account not only enemy planets and number of jumps, but also distance between wormholes and the effects of planetwide speed modifiers. That way, your ships would tend to bypass Gravity drill planets, and prefer routing through planets with ZSTMs

mostly unrelated, I think that Group move should be applied after speed bonuses, rather than before, as In my current play through of LOTS, The shards happen to not gain speed boosts from ZSTMs, so my fleet, and especially my Shield bearers, are all pulling ahead of the shard, which is annoying, because I cannot use group move in that case.