Anyone else feel that armored warheads are now woefully underpowered?

[Orelius]

After a recent change to armored warheads, in short, they aren't able to take down AI guard posts.  However, that was pretty much the only incentive for using them int he first place.

Now, it is essentially a more robust lightning warhead, with twice the AIP cost and a rather hefty resource cost.  Are they any more useful than they were before?

I feel that there is little point in even using armored warheads since their niche was filled by penetrators.

[keith.lamothe]

They used to cost like 20 AIP, they've got to be more useful now than they were then.  But it's certainly possible that they need more work.

And Penetrators may eclipse them in much the same way that Martyrs eclipse everything (ed: patched that, we hope), but it's entirely expected that some of the stuff in the "super weapon" minor factions (golems, spirecraft, fallen spire) will totally out-do stuff in the core game: either you're paying an arm and a leg for them, have specifically said "make the game easier" (by picking the easy version), or are getting hit by exos as "compensation".

[Orelius]

The AIP price was never much of an issue, their only use before was to wipe out all of the home command guard posts simultaneously, at the end of the game, where AIP didn't matter as much since the game would end soon, one way or the other.

The new armored warheads are too similar to lightning warheads; there's no point in using armored warheads as opposed to lightning warheads because lightning warheads can be produced faster and are much cheaper in general.

I'd suggest making armored warheads more like spire rams or something, able to bust down strong fortifications with ease instead of being slower, more expensive versions of lightning warheads.

[keith.lamothe]

The AIP price was never much of an issue, their only use before was to wipe out all of the home command guard posts simultaneously, at the end of the game, where AIP didn't matter as much since the game would end soon, one way or the other.

I really don't think it's a given that that was their _only_ use.  Sometimes you really need to hit something that a lightning warhead simply can't reach.  Dunno how that works out now, been a while since I did much with non-EMP warheads.

[Nethris]

I really don't think it's a given that that was their _only_ use.  Sometimes you really need to hit something that a lightning warhead simply can't reach.  Dunno how that works out now, been a while since I did much with non-EMP warheads.

Is there a reason they cost double AIP for the same damage now though?  The massive resource cost seems enough of a tradeoff for the extra ability to get to a target.  Even in situations that you both wanted to hit something with a lightning warhead but were worried it wouldn't get there, right now if you can at least deliver them to the system without a problem just using a mk 1 EMP on the system first would be cheaper and seems like it would get the job done in a lot of cases.