Is the Zevastator incorrectly balanced?

[Tridus]

I've been driving actually to try to get clarity. Having the OMD murder starships because it is !fun! for me is not a reason at all. So I'm driving to actually hear the other reasons why the OMD should as a global defense cost the player's economy a couple hours of economy if it stumbles upon it, and how it will make homeworld attacks all the harder adds to the fun and not just !fun! factor.

Well, all I wanted was an OMD that was strong enough to make you actually have to think about dealing with it.

I'm still going for 10 million per salvo. That is enough to one shot a plasma siege.

I'd be okay with trying that, given the huge range on it. Still a large buff over it's old 1.8.

[Diazo]

Okay.

In interests of getting a balance tweak to the OMD into the next patch, I'm going to ignore everything else (although the AI HW discussion is probably worth its own thread at this point.)

Now, you can run into the OMD in the early and mid game so it has to be able to be handled with an early to mid game fleet.

A flagship has 10million HP per mark and the Zenith SS has 36million per mark.

What about giving the OMD an attack of 12million damage every 20 seconds (cutting its rate of fire in half)? That still one-shots most Mk I starships, but not any Mk II starships and is still high enough to pose a threat to the Zenith Starship as it can 3-shot a Mk I.

That should be low enough rate of fire that even though it would cost you 2 or 3 starships to do so, you could brute force an OMD with a starship fleet in the early/mid game.

Then on the Core/Homeworld attacks that 12million is still high enough to be a threat to high mark starships because there is (probably) going to be other problems around that mean you can't target the OMD first or the OMD is protected by forcefields/gravity/etc.

D.

[LordSloth]

Here's a proposal to throw out there:
OMDs cannot seed on AI homeworlds or randomly on subcommander worlds. They can seed on core worlds, regular worlds, and specific subcommanders.

[chemical_art]

I like both LordSloth and Diazo's proposals.


Diazo's suggestion finds a good balance.

LordSloth's proposal can allow OMD's to be strong without dealing with the quaqmire that AI HW and some specific subcommander worlds have with their own global defenses.

[TechSY730]

Not sure about not having it seed on AI homeworlds, as that is sort of where the AI needs them the most.

Unless there is already a brutal pick and/or core guard post out there that does well against "big stuff" in a large-ish range, in which case, then yea the OMD would be redundant, and should be removed from AI homeworlds.

[TechSY730]

I like both LordSloth and Diazo's proposals.


Diazo's suggestion finds a good balance.

LordSloth's proposal can allow OMD's to be strong without dealing with the quaqmire that AI HW and some specific subcommander worlds have with their own global defenses.

Wait, would you like to see both implemented simultaneously, or one exclusive-or with the other? Or some compromise between the 2?

[chemical_art]

Unless there is already a brutal pick and/or core guard post out there that does well against "big stuff" in a large-ish range, in which case, then yea the OMD would be redundant, and should be removed from AI homeworlds.

Core wraith post. Starships lower caps make them more likely to be annihilated, while their increased health doesn't matter.

[chemical_art]

Wait, would you like to see both implemented simultaneously, or one exclusive-or with the other? Or some compromise between the 2?

Any of the above 


I like both of their concepts

[TechSY730]

A flagship has 10million HP per mark and the Zenith SS has 36million per mark.

What about giving the OMD an attack of 12million damage every 20 seconds (cutting its rate of fire in half)? That still one-shots most Mk I starships, but not any Mk II starships and is still high enough to pose a threat to the Zenith Starship as it can 3-shot a Mk I.

Um, isn't that even less DPS than the old OMD had?

[chemical_art]

Um, isn't that even less DPS than the old OMD had?

Old OMD had 1.8 million per 10 seconds.

New proposed is 12 million per 20 seconds.

About a 333% increase in dps compared to old one.

[Tridus]

Not a fan of that. Too low, and a 20 second reload is way too low for anything that isn't going to be one shotting stuff.

[chemical_art]

Not a fan of that. Too low, and a 20 second reload is way too low for anything that isn't going to be one shotting stuff.

Why does it have to one shot things?

Damage is damage, and in the case of starships, grave economic damage.

[TechSY730]

The damage still sounds a bit low to me for a 20s reload rate. So how about 12 million with a 10 or 15 second reload time. That should still be slow enough to be "reactable" against, or even "brute forceable" against, but still have the DPS to be threatening against a large cluster of higher mark starships.

Also, while losing a starship means grave economic damage, merely repairing a starship isn't all that painful economically. That's why either a strong burst damage or a high DPS is preferred in my eyes, without at least one of those, it won't do it's job of forcing that choice of avoiding starships or major economic losses.

[Tridus]

Not a fan of that. Too low, and a 20 second reload is way too low for anything that isn't going to be one shotting stuff.

Why does it have to one shot things?

Damage is damage, and in the case of starships, grave economic damage.

It doesn't have to one shot things. If it's not, it needs to fire faster than every 20 seconds.

The idea that if you just sit around for a while it might eventually kill something is what we had with the old one (aka: a joke).

Why does it have to be something you ignore?

[chemical_art]

Why does it have to be something you ignore?

 I don't, but you do think so.

I consider something that can kill a cap of units in a minute globally attention worthy.