Higher Mark Railpods - Why upgrade?

[Toranth]

Ok, so I was playing a game where I acquired Neinzul Railpods by hacking a Backup server.  When I went to upgrade units to Mk II and Mk III later in the game, though, I suddenly realized (right after I clicked on the buy Mk II button, of course) - why?

Here's a table, showing each Railpod mark, a single unit cost, and the maximum damage you could do with 999,999 max resources (1,000,000 times Dam per Cost).

Mark	Cost	Damage	Dam per Cost	Max Damage
1	26	9,360	720	719,999,280
2	50	18,600	744	743,999,256
3	100	28,000	560	559,999,440
4	150	37,200	496	495,999,504

As you can see, Mk II Railpods are only a 24 million damage increase over Mk I - about a 3% increase. 
Mk IIIs start heading down, only 78% of the Mk I, and Mk IVs are worst, at only 69% of Mk I.  That's 75% and 67% of the Mk II, respectively.

The answer is pretty obvious if you look for it - Cost slightly less than doubles from Mark I to Mk II, while damage goes up a little more.  The Mk III is twice the Mk II cost, but only 50% more damage, while the Mk IV is three times the Mk II cost (about 6 times the Mk I) but only twice the Mk II damage (4 times the Mk I).  And to top it all off, the Mk IV actually has a 2 second base production time.

Now, with most ships the increased ship cap makes up for the non-linear increase in cost, as does the supra-linear increase in performance.  However, the Railpods are suicide units that always die in two shots.  This means increase health, armor, etc, do nothing to increase performance of the Railpod.
Further more, because the have such low cost and production times, the limiting factor is resources, not cap.  Therefore, having more units is only useful in the initial burst, a very small portion of overall damage (less than 2% if initial burst was all 4 marks).

So, by upgrading to Mk II, you gain about 3% max damage for spending 2500 Knowledge.  By upgrading to Mk IV, you'll get a about a 5% total increase in damage, 2% from burst and the rest of spamming Mk IIs - while you'll have spent 6500 Knowledge and require a Fac IV.

I consider this a problem.

Now, what to do about it?  Two ideas that come to mind are to adjust the cost or the damage.
If the cost was made constant, then the Mark increase become purely linear: Mk II is twice Mk I, and Mk IV is four times Mk I (I assume Mk I damage would be reduced to re-balance Mk IV).
To adjust damage dealt on a per-mark basis, what comes to mind would be to make the number of shot an individual Railpod can survive vary.  If the Railpods survived MK shots or Mk + 1 shots, the efficiency always increases as Mark increases, meaning there would always be an advantage to unlocking a higher mark.

For Shots = Mark, the damage is (1, 2.07, 2.33, 2.76) times Mk I respectively.  Makes Mk II VERY valuable, while Mk III and IV are less valuable but still noticable increases.
For Shots = Mark + 1, damage is (1, 1.55, 1.56, 1.72) times Mk I respectively.  Makes the Mk II to Mk III step pretty worthless, unless also going to Mk IV.
For constant Cost, the damage is (1, 2, 3, 4) times Mk I.  Makes the Mk IV very powerful, indeed.

Neither of these ideas seems all that well balanced, but the alternatives all seem to rely on having purely arbitrary values for Cost and Damage at each Mark, as opposed to the usual 1, 2, 4, 6 costs and 1, 2, 3, 4 damage ratios.

Feedback?  Any other ideas for balancing a unit that, oddly, seems to only have 1 Mark that would ever be usable at any given time?

[Chthon]

Your table doesn't take a few things into account.  9 mobile ship docks can easily build an entire cap of Mk I and half a cap of Mk II continuously as they fire at max rate.  Add in a few engineers and you can easily reach Mk III and Mk IV caps all filled at the same time while they are in combat.  Doing this you get a much higher DPS than you would otherwise get with just Mk I.

Basically, you are unlocking higher overall DPS if your economy is ready for it, not more efficient use of an economy.  I feel the balance is fine the way it is.

[Toranth]

Your table doesn't take a few things into account.  9 mobile ship docks can easily build an entire cap of Mk I and half a cap of Mk II continuously as they fire at max rate.  Add in a few engineers and you can easily reach Mk III and Mk IV caps all filled at the same time while they are in combat.  Doing this you get a much higher DPS than you would otherwise get with just Mk I.

Basically, you are unlocking higher overall DPS if your economy is ready for it, not more efficient use of an economy.  I feel the balance is fine the way it is.

Err, when I do it, each MSD produces a max of 5/sec or 45/sec Railpods total.  That's about 4 seconds to produce the full 192 Normal cap of a given Mark of Railpods.  However, under combat conditions, each Railpod fires as soon as it spawns then again (dying) 2 seconds later, for a total lifespan of just over 2 seconds.  You'll never have more than 75% of a cap alive at the same time.  I was actually hovering around 100-110 alive at a time, or about 2/3s.

So, while higher marks may increase your damage per second, they end up with less overall damage.  I would be unwilling to trade a 4x DPS for a 1/6 time I can do it: 67% damage is a huge decrease.  It's almost 250,000,000 damage less!  That's more than 2 Artillery Golem shots, that's 100 seconds of Armored Golem combat.  Etc.


I suspect income level may affect perception.  I did all my math based on a fixed 999,999 of both metal and crystal, without counting income.  Let's see where the break-even point is, aka how much income you would need to continue indefinitely.
Assuming 45/sec as your production rate (9 MSDs only):
Mk Is require about 1200 income/sec for Mk Is.  That's... reasonable, actually. 
Mk IIs require about 2250 income/sec.  This is usually the size of my midgame economy.
Mk IIIs require 4500 income/sec.  This is a major chunk of most Fallen Spire games.
Mk IVs require about 7000 income/sec.  This is... a lot.  Even for a Fallen Spire game.

So, Mk Is are sustainable using MSD production rates, but the higher Marks (especially Mk III and IV) aren't.
To me, we have a ship where the Mk I is fine, but there is little to no reason to upgrade.

[chemical_art]

perhaps rail pods should be like scapegoat in that their cap increases over marks?

[Aklyon]

perhaps rail pods should be like scapegoat in that their cap increases over marks?

That could be an interesting direction.

[Zeyi]

perhaps rail pods should be like scapegoat in that their cap increases over marks?

That could be an interesting direction.

Could also be an interesting pattern to have in future full grown neinzuls.

[Toranth]

perhaps rail pods should be like scapegoat in that their cap increases over marks?

Certainly, increasing the cap would help when you have production rates above 65/sec.  Using MSDs + Docks + Engineers can get that high or higher, and without more units, you'd end up wasting production cycles.  Higher caps would also help with initial burst damage.
However, Railpods are basically a way to turn Resources into Damage at a high speed.  Higher caps doesn't change that conversion ratio.  And I think that's where the higher Marks should demonstrate improvement: in the Resource to Damage conversion ratio.

[chemical_art]

Perhaps a hybrid method then? A blend of increasing stats without increased cost and increasing caps. Of course it would be as large an increase in stats as units which only increase one or another.

[Chthon]

Your table doesn't take a few things into account.  9 mobile ship docks can easily build an entire cap of Mk I and half a cap of Mk II continuously as they fire at max rate.  Add in a few engineers and you can easily reach Mk III and Mk IV caps all filled at the same time while they are in combat.  Doing this you get a much higher DPS than you would otherwise get with just Mk I.

Basically, you are unlocking higher overall DPS if your economy is ready for it, not more efficient use of an economy.  I feel the balance is fine the way it is.

Err, when I do it, each MSD produces a max of 5/sec or 45/sec Railpods total.  That's about 4 seconds to produce the full 192 Normal cap of a given Mark of Railpods.  However, under combat conditions, each Railpod fires as soon as it spawns then again (dying) 2 seconds later, for a total lifespan of just over 2 seconds.  You'll never have more than 75% of a cap alive at the same time.  I was actually hovering around 100-110 alive at a time, or about 2/3s.

So, while higher marks may increase your damage per second, they end up with less overall damage.  I would be unwilling to trade a 4x DPS for a 1/6 time I can do it: 67% damage is a huge decrease.  It's almost 250,000,000 damage less!  That's more than 2 Artillery Golem shots, that's 100 seconds of Armored Golem combat.  Etc.


I suspect income level may affect perception.  I did all my math based on a fixed 999,999 of both metal and crystal, without counting income.  Let's see where the break-even point is, aka how much income you would need to continue indefinitely.
Assuming 45/sec as your production rate (9 MSDs only):
Mk Is require about 1200 income/sec for Mk Is.  That's... reasonable, actually. 
Mk IIs require about 2250 income/sec.  This is usually the size of my midgame economy.
Mk IIIs require 4500 income/sec.  This is a major chunk of most Fallen Spire games.
Mk IVs require about 7000 income/sec.  This is... a lot.  Even for a Fallen Spire game.

So, Mk Is are sustainable using MSD production rates, but the higher Marks (especially Mk III and IV) aren't.
To me, we have a ship where the Mk I is fine, but there is little to no reason to upgrade.

Perhaps the difference here is I use ultra low caps.  Maybe that plays a difference in how it works for me.

I do agree though that producing multiple marks of them constantly for a sustained attack is resource intensive.  I would even go to say resource prohibitive.  However usually it doesn't take long to render a system void of all ships that are vulnerable to railguns, not cloaked, and have no radar dampening.  Furthermore, an initial salvo of them can easily wipe out all tachyon in the system allowing MSDs to sneak in without being seen.

[Vyndicu]

I think everyone is forgetting one tiny thing.

Spoiler:

Ahh so that one way to do "spoiler". Neinzul railpod can be spammed to distracted GSC, showdown boss, to stay in solar system chasing neinzul railpods. And they are the only "cheap" build time unit that can reliable hit GSC without being shot at.

Most "cheap" neinzul, heck make that every other 3-5 second built ships, don't last very long in any real practical application to deal dps. However neinzul railpods are an unique except to this because the mentioned AI ships do not have snipe immune. Even the AI's armor simply don't do anything. I grant this is a very "specific" use case.


I do agree that perhaps allow mark 3/4 to do 3/4 respectively shot instead of 2 shots like current. Would that make the resource conversion to damage decent? No other stat/cap changes just number of shots. It has the benefit of actually draining your economy even less because mark 3/4 will live longer (mark 3 last 4 second and mark 4 last 6 second).

Napkin math ahead:

Mark      Cost      Damage      Dam per Cost      Max Damage
1           26           9,360          720                     719,999,280
2           50           18,600        744                     743,999,256
3           100         28,000         840                     (Sorry can't figure out to get max damage for 3/4 shots)
4           150         37,200         992                     (ditto)

[Toranth]

Perhaps the difference here is I use ultra low caps.  Maybe that plays a difference in how it works for me.

I do agree though that producing multiple marks of them constantly for a sustained attack is resource intensive.  I would even go to say resource prohibitive.  However usually it doesn't take long to render a system void of all ships that are vulnerable to railguns, not cloaked, and have no radar dampening.  Furthermore, an initial salvo of them can easily wipe out all tachyon in the system allowing MSDs to sneak in without being seen.

Yeah, Ultra Low caps makes a difference.  I tried it out on a quick 7/7 playaround, and it felt different.  The caps are lowered to 48/Mark, while the costs and damage are quadrupled - aka, damage/resource stays the same.  However, the production rate of the Mobile Space Docks still caps out at around 5/sec each, so I could build almost a whole mark-cap per second.  In that case, unlocking Mk IIs was a good thing, because it let me keep my MSDs busy.  However, the increased cost/sec is atrocious.  Just keeping the Mk Is going require almost 4500/sec.  The Mk Is + Mk IIs was an amazing 13,500/sec. 
Mk I-IVs all together?  58,500/sec.

So, I can see how you might get the extra use out of having Mk IIs unlocked.  In that case, though, I'd still recommend using only Mk IIs (at 9,000/sec resource usage) for both more damage and more sustainability.  But Mk III and Mk IV are still sub-optimal, by the same percentages.  You just burn through your resources faster on low caps.

I think everyone is forgetting one tiny thing.

Spoiler:

Ahh so that one way to do "spoiler". Neinzul railpod can be spammed to distracted GSC, showdown boss, to stay in solar system chasing neinzul railpods. And they are the only "cheap" build time unit that can reliable hit GSC without being shot at.

Most "cheap" neinzul, heck make that every other 3-5 second built ships, don't last very long in any real practical application to deal dps. However neinzul railpods are an unique except to this because the mentioned AI ships do not have snipe immune. Even the AI's armor simply don't do anything. I grant this is a very "specific" use case.

I do agree that perhaps allow mark 3/4 to do 3/4 respectively shot instead of 2 shots like current. Would that make the resource conversion to damage decent? No other stat/cap changes just number of shots. It has the benefit of actually draining your economy even less because mark 3/4 will live longer (mark 3 last 4 second and mark 4 last 6 second).

Napkin math ahead:

Mark      Cost      Damage      Dam per Cost      Max Damage
1           26           9,360           720                     719,999,280
2           50           18,600         744                     743,999,256
3           100         28,000         840                     840,000,000 - 840 = 938,999,160
4           150         37,200         992                     992,000,000 - 992 = 991,999,008

The Max damage is basically 1,000,000 times the Damage per Cost (minus 1*Cost).
That's a damage ratio of (1, 1.03, 1.17, 1.38) compared to Mk Is.  A very slow increase in damage, one I would not call worth the 2500/4000 Knowledge costs.



I thought I'd compare to the other two suicide units, Autobombs and Nanoswarms.

Autobomb, formerly known as the Awesomebomb:
Costs are averaged, as not balanced between M/C.  As with the other types, double cost for total M+C cost.

Mark	Cost	Damage	Dam per Cost	Max Damage	Max AoE Damage	Ratio to Mk I
1	50	16,200	648	324,000,000	3,240,000,000	1
2	100	32,400	648	324,000,000	3,240,000,000	1
3	200	48,800	488	244,000,000	2,440,000,000	0.75
4	300	65,200	434.67	217,333,116	2,173,331,160	0.67

Autobombs are pretty close to equal to Railpods.  They can do 1-10 AoE damage, and are at 90% of Railpod damage when hitting 2 targets.  Railpods get 2 shots, so this makes some sense.  However, Autobombs can hit up to 10 targets, giving a potential max damage of 4.5 times as much.
The efficiency fallout is also pretty similar (1, 1, .75, .67) vs (1, 1.03, .78, .69).  This just confirms something I've long suspected, that higher mark Autobombs are not all that useful.
Autobombs do hit caps much faster than Railpods, both to the lower cap (96) and to the required travel time to reach a target.  The required resources to maintain a 45/sec are also much higher (2250/sec for Mk I).

Nanoswarms, aka the Doomshrooms. 

Mark	Cost	Damage	Dam per Cost	Max Damage	Max Hits	Max AoE Damage	Ratio to Mk I
1	20	3,240	324	162,000,000	4	648,000,000	1
2	40	4,320	216	108,000,000	6	648,000,000	0.67
3	80	4,880	122	61,000,000	8	488,000,000	0.38
4	120	5,200	86.67	43,333,290	10	433,332,900	0.27

Nanoswarms are not meant to be damage dealers.  This is a good thing!  Their single damage falloff is huge.  Including AoE, however, it matches the ratios of the Autobomb with (1, 1, .75, .67) vs Mk Is.  However Nanoswarms have special effects - 10xMk engine damage, 100xMk Armor Damage, 3xMk sec Paralyze, and Reclamation at Dam * 8 * (2 ^ (Diff in Mks)).
And the Paralyze and Reclamation are where the Nanoswarms shine.  But, this is Math!  How much do they shine?

How good is the Reclaim Damage per Cost?  (This table does not include AoE)

Target Mark	1	2	3	4
Ship Mark
1	25,920	12,960	6,480	3,240
2	46,080	23,040	11,520	5,760
3	58,800	29,400	14,700	7,350
4	89,020	44,510	22,255	11,127

And the Reclaim Damage / Cost vs Normal Damage at Mk I ratios.  This should be a rough comparison to the other non-reclaimers.  (This table does not include AoE)

Target Mark	1	2	3	4
Ship Mark
1	8.00	4.00	2.00	1.00
2	10.67	5.33	2.67	1.33
3	12.05	6.02	3.00	1.50
4	17.12	8.56	4.28	2.14

They shine quite a bit in the Reclaim department.  The Reclaim Damage done goes up significantly with each Mark increase, no matter the Mark level of the Target unit. more than doubling between Mk I and Mk IV.  If you include AoE, it goes up 5.35x between Mk I and Mk IV.  That's efficiency, and when combined with the longer Paralyze (12 seconds!), higher mark Nanoswarms are almost always worth it.


So, suicide unit comparisons:
Falloff ratios for damage/cost are actually pretty similar between all three types, but AoE chance plays a big role in that, as it requires the Nanoswarm to hit max targets to get that ratio.
Nanoswarm does terrible normal damage, but dominates with the reclamation.

Nanoswarms are always worth upgrading, for the special effects, especially the Reclamation being so dependent on Mark.
Railpods still don't look to be worth upgrading.
Autobombs are also not worth upgrading, unless you have a very large economy and are sending Autobombs over long distances (Great Intersellar Autobomb Cannons) where you're concerned over wasting production cycles not producing more Autobombs.

Still am not convinced to upgrade Railpods, and managed to convince myself to not uprgade Autobombs much anymore.  Oops.

[Chthon]

Yeah, I find the cost to be pretty prohibitive.  In my current game I only have access to MkV Railpods.  I'm using them for various purposes, but I have been saving up about 1 million resources so that I can use them to weaken exos that pass through the system before they hit my main choke points.  The sudden drain of resources is kinda crazy for a disposable ship, however it does wipe out most of the riff raff before my choke ever sees it.

[Vyndicu]

*snip*

Have you done the math if mark 3/4 had 3/4 shots respectively would reduce economy drainage from living longer? (mark 1/2 stay same but mark 3 will survive twice as long due to 3 shots and mark 4 will last 6 seconds) Same hp/damage stat otherwise. I believe it will make higher mark railpod more worthwhile if you can get past 5k M+C per second income.

Typically fallen spire campaign can reach crazy income I know I manage to reach about 5k M+C income with just 7 spire cities with just 40 systems.

[Toranth]

*snip*

Have you done the math if mark 3/4 had 3/4 shots respectively would reduce economy drainage from living longer? (mark 1/2 stay same but mark 3 will survive twice as long due to 3 shots and mark 4 will last 6 seconds) Same hp/damage stat otherwise. I believe it will make higher mark railpod more worthwhile if you can get past 5k M+C per second income.

Typically fallen spire campaign can reach crazy income I know I manage to reach about 5k M+C income with just 7 spire cities with just 40 systems.

If Mk IIIs survived 3 shots, and Mk IVs survived 4 shots, you'd see a total damage of 840,000,000 and 992,000,000 respectively at max resources.
The additional survival time of each mark would, as you point out, reduce the resource consumption rate.  For Mark III, you'd hit full capacity producing 48/sec, while Mark IVs would be full at 32/sec.
That's a resource drain under the current model of roughly 4750/sec or 5000/sec, and a DPS of about 2,600,000 or 2,400,000.

Since you mentioned Spire - a Spire Dreadnaught costs 1,000,000 resources and, fully equipped, does about 7,800,000 DPS.  It then takes about 2 minutes (127 seconds) to match equivalent resource expenditure from the Railpod Mk IV with 4 shots.  If you were pumping a full 5,000/sec resources into Railpods from the start, it'd take the Dreadnaught another minute or so, 3 in total, to catch up. 
Every second from then on would be in the Dreadnaught's favor.  For the Dreadnaught, that 3 minutes of resources you weren't spending on Railpods would pay for 90% of a 2nd Spire Dreadnaught.

[Vyndicu]

If Mk IIIs survived 3 shots, and Mk IVs survived 4 shots, you'd see a total damage of 840,000,000 and 992,000,000 respectively at max resources.
The additional survival time of each mark would, as you point out, reduce the resource consumption rate.  For Mark III, you'd hit full capacity producing 48/sec, while Mark IVs would be full at 32/sec.
That's a resource drain under the current model of roughly 4750/sec or 5000/sec, and a DPS of about 2,600,000 or 2,400,000.

Since you mentioned Spire - a Spire Dreadnaught costs 1,000,000 resources and, fully equipped, does about 7,800,000 DPS.  It then takes about 2 minutes (127 seconds) to match equivalent resource expenditure from the Railpod Mk IV with 4 shots.  If you were pumping a full 5,000/sec resources into Railpods from the start, it'd take the Dreadnaught another minute or so, 3 in total, to catch up. 
Every second from then on would be in the Dreadnaught's favor.  For the Dreadnaught, that 3 minutes of resources you weren't spending on Railpods would pay for 90% of a 2nd Spire Dreadnaught.

 Don't forget in case of dreadnaught they are limited by the number of shipyard so you can't get more of them than each 8 shipyard in galaxy plus you would have some overkill with the main laser + modules limitations (range, immunes, etc...). Railpod don't have most of those limitations. The only real limit to railpod is they don't have radar-dampening immune like spire's railgun module that can break radar-dampen. They both have pro and con unique to each other so straight up comparison would not work very well. They fill very different niche.

So basically you are saying that even with the extra shots for mark 3/4 railpod still would not be worthwhile due to damage/conversion? Hmm if you were going to make railpod attractive how would you go about it? Extra damage? More shots than I describe earlier?