Frustration with units ignoring exo-shields.

[liq3]

This is the second game it's happened. It's very frustrating. I feel there's nothing I could do. If anyone has any suggestions, please share.

Basically I'm playing Realistic Hubs 80 planets against 2 Diff 8s, one Rand Harder, one Rand Moderate. Playing with these settings, means I often get large waves that completely wipe out my wormhole defenses, so I'm often left with none. This means units that can ignore force-fields slip past. These then take out at least one harvester which I can do nothing to stop. In both games they managed to take out 2-3 harvs, and well, they just rushed me, and the amount of ships they attacked with combined with my crippled economy (no harvs) meant death.

First game was against a Shadow Master (moderate one) and Spec ops. This meant infiltrators and lots of units coming into my system. By the time I realised what was happening, I was down 5-6 harvesters and I was dying, with no economy to stop it. This is simply because the infils bypass the exo-shields, ruining my economy in a fraction of the time the other units would. This happened around the 40 minute mark.

The second game was similar. I kept getting hit by large waves, lots of parasites and stuff that fighters counter. I didn't have tech for fighters 2 (silly me), but in the end I don't think it'd have helped. At the crunch, around the 1h20m mark (just killed an extra planet... so many waves), I got hit by a "168 unit cross planet attack" that turned out to be 1,200+ ships (bug?). A few of them were eye bots and vamps. About 2 minutes into the attack, I had absolutely no harvesters. They were all dead. All the attacking units were stuff like parasites and raiders - nothing that can kill exo-shields quickly - with a few ignore shield units, which were maybe %1 of the force. Due to my simple lack of economy I lost any chance of surviving. I had no resources to produce fighters with to counter the massive amount of raiders and cruisers. My slim chance got obliterated to nothing.

I think exo-shields should block all units personally. Up the ongoing cost by 50% (or even double it), it'd be worth it.

Also, I wasn't sure to put this in the Suggestion forum or not, so move it if you wish.

PS: The second game, AI were mad bomber and unknown. Never found out, gave up when I had nothing to fight with and a 1000 ships pelting at my home station.

[Revenantus]

Infiltrators and other force field immune ships are specifically balanced to be immune against force fields, so I'm definitely against changing exo-shields in that manner. Also, that would introduce another nuance that new players would have to come to terms with, and I'm all for consistency in these cases.

Perhaps this is a case of over dependence on exoshields? Have you tried tractor/gravitational turrets and mines? There shouldn't really ever be a single perfect counter in a strategy game, so making exoshields effective against all units isn't ideal.

I think that we should instead of considering changing any game mechanics, consider whether forcefield immune ships should be made weaker? Personally I haven't had major issues with them, though I generally play on a slightly lower difficulty than you. Do other players find them to be overpowered?

Moving to the Suggestions forum for further discussion.

[liq3]

Perhaps this is a case of over dependence on exoshields? Have you tried tractor/gravitational turrets and mines? There shouldn't really ever be a single perfect counter in a strategy game, so making exoshields effective against all units isn't ideal.

They're supposed to keep my harvs alive at a great cost in resources (literally 1/3rd cost). All they do is buff the harvs HP. They don't counter anything. They just give me time to kill the enemy units, that's it.

As for defences, mines won't work, and neither will gravi turrets because they would both be overwhelmed by the normal units. The only time this is even a problem is early game when I have a few hundred ships breathing down my neck (home planet), and a few FF immune ships slip out and take out my harvs while I'm fending off the 500+ ships going for everything else.

I think that we should instead of considering changing any game mechanics, consider whether forcefield immune ships should be made weaker?

Vamps and Eye bots are already incredibly niche (partly due to unit caps). I already think infils should be nerfed.