I dont feel like my champion does things in nebulas.

[Soyweiser]

I had some success using the main spire gun and kiting. The ships follow you in long lines while the lance blasts rows of them away.

[keith.lamothe]

And it had very few weapon hardpoints. Id much rather just use the human destroyer with 12 hardpoints over the like 6 on the spire destroyer.

FYI, there are two kinds of hardpoints: one for small modules, one for large.  The small ones are balanced as 1/18th of a cap's worth of dps, and the large ones as 1/4th (shields are a bit different, of course).  The Spire champion trades 4 small for 1 large at each size-step, so it actually comes out ahead in terms of raw power, but of course that depends on what options you have available.

As for the original topic:

In some scenarios you're mostly just one guy on the battlefield.  The biggest individual mobile ship, but still just one guy.  That's part of the fun, for me: having to participate in a battle that isn't all about me, but still having a decisive impact on that battle.  Projected shadow shields are really important, yes, but going in with a human frigate with 6 mlrs modules and killing the enemy's mid-tier ships so they don't kill your ally's low-tier ships (the ones that are designed to kill starbases) makes a very substantial difference in a lot of cases.

In other scenarios it's much more about you, particularly the neinzul mourner one, and to a lesser extent the gray spire one (seen that one yet, Lancefighter?).  The SP-vs-CA zenith one is... well, basically just crazy.  But there it's pretty important that you help your ally get the enemy bases down quickly.

I'm sure all these could stand further balancing, particular for later runs when you've got bigger stuff.  There's scaling in place but it's always an iterative thing to get that to work right.

[Lancefighter]

I think I've done gray spire? I dont remember waht they are called very well. I mentioned to spikey00 on irc that I encountered the colonyships one though :p

Last game I did epsilon eridani remnants, shattered pillar zenith, grey spire, shattered pillar/citadel descendant., so yes, I did. Oddly, dyson gatlings are one of the more resilient of the ships in my fleet.
Sadly, the devourer golem popped into one of my fortress worlds while I wasnt paying attention (busy microing my hero), and destroyed my entire fleet in about two shots. It was a really sad day.


Anyway, back on point: Yeah, the grey spire one was probably the one in which I felt I was actually doing something. I definately do feel I am just 'a guy on the battlefield'.. I just cant help but think that if I could maybe force my allies to attack something, they could just finish the damn nebula in a few minutes, instead of chasing down every last light ship for a half hour.

Could maybe we get some sort of commands we could give them? Can the champion ship maybe have beacons of some sort we could place, similar to how they can place shields, that call for help of some sort? Maybe force the allies to actually do something, instead of trying to fill their quota of miles flown without firing a single shot?

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, you've done the gray spire one.  I just wanted to make sure you'd gotten to see the "Reclaimed Dyson Gatling" unit   And yea, I figured the lord of the colony ships would get a kick out of the other one.

As far as the ally actions: the low-tier nebula-faction ships are hardwired to make a beeline for an enemy starbase if there are any, since they're the ships best equipped to hurt starbases.  The other nebula ships are less focused, but were changed to at least not prefer non-starbase targets to starbase-targets necessarily.  Anyway, you can probably do what you need to do in the scenarios with enemy starbases simply by keeping your ally's low-tier ships alive, by shields and killing the stuff that comes after them (especially the stuff with bonuses against them).  Those low-tier ships should be as focused on the enemy starbases as you could want.

[Lancefighter]

So thats why you favor mlrs modules...

[Spikey00]

Blessed be are the enlightened Dysons and those who were graced by the presence of the beautiful blue pills, for their brilliance and immaculate architecture and aesthetics are forever imprinted in space and time.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I don't really agree with this. From what scenarios I've played (the ones you are describing), it plays a lot like a game of anti-DotA/LoL. You snipe off enemy ships and escort your fleet to the enemy bases, for a big attack on it, rather than killing off enemy creeps to get strong enough to team up with other champions and go for the towers. I haven't even played with abilities, and I had a fairly easy time getting a grasp of how it worked, and I felt significant. If I didn't kill off waves of enemy ships, then my side's ships would be outmaneuvered or outgunned, or at very least, slowly picked off so that they don't stand a chance against the starbases.

I do understand the idea of not feeling particularly involved, however. I mean, it's sorta YOUR scenario, you should be able to directly shift the flow of the battle by being particularly powerful, or at least having reasonable control of the battlefield. As a player, I didn't really ever feel like I had much control over what was happening, but the support I provided with my champion is without a doubt invaluable.
What if you were named a general, and were able to control the neutral-ally ships in the nebula? That might allow the player to at least feel more involved in what was going on. Before really thinking about that though, is it really a problem that you're just a strong guy supporting the other faction's cause? I don't think it's actually a big deal.

[pheonix89]

I've found that nebula scenarios tend to be much more interesting once you get exotic weapons. Doom accelerators, for instance, are absolutely amazing mixed with other weapons to start the damage train. For those who haven't gotten them, they act like Neinzul Vulture guns with a much better base damage. Polarizer and IRE turrets are absolute murder on star bases and the heavy ships. And the rail clusters are actually pretty lethal against single targets, although their jokes compared to a full lance strike. But combining them with Doom Accelerators is ridiculous, given that they like to hit multiple foes and accelerators need damage to the target to work.

[KDR_11k]

Games where your action unit can't touch the enemy base(s) include Glory Days (descended from Rescue Raiders) where you simply cannot hurt bases and have to get your units to the enemy base to win and Air Mech (descended from Herzog Zwei) where bases are often heavily fortified and would kill your hero unit in seconds if you tried marching in there without adequate tank support. However both of these allow you to influence your units far more, in AirMech you have to build and order them around and can at any time pick them up and drop them elsewhere while in Glory Days you have to purchase the units and can grab infantry to airdrop elsewhere.

So in short allow the champion to pick up allied ships and carry them around .

[Lancefighter]

Had a silly idea - What if your ally's main command center thing had a engineering beam? not just repair, but also able to refit modules.

As it stands, I already bring engineers to the wormhole to refit as soon as I figure out if I need to (or to swap my champion out of 'ai ship killing' mode).. Why not let us do it innebula? I mean the only answer i can figure is "what if we used jumpships to get there".. to which I have no good answer.

[KDR_11k]

At leas5t it would alleviate the problem of taking a full loadout of paralyzers into the nebula before realizing that absolutely everything in a nebula is paralyzer-proof.

[LordSloth]

You know how there are mobile command station cores if a co-op ally gets his homeworld blown?

Something similar to that for each champion could provide a workaround for engineers having to assist allies or work on queues. You could restrict it to functioning only on home command stations but allow it to move to different homeworlds at great risk, or you could make it an entirely mortal control unit, and have the champion turn rogue if it was destroyed.

[mithrandi]

Also, decimated is a much cooler word to use

"Decimate" should properly mean "reduce by one tenth", though, despite the more modern usage of "wipe out".

[LaughingThesaurus]

If you decimate something ten times, though, then you've wiped it out completely. Seems like too much work to me.

[Faulty Logic]

Actually, 34.86% of whatever remains after being decimated ten times.