Poll: Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (IV)

[keith.lamothe]

If you managed to get a few hundred mother ships in a carrier, you could probably make it spawn a few H/K if you pop it early.

Then again, if you managed to get a few hundred motherships to spawn, you probably got bigger issues then worrying about when to pop carriers.

Motherships cannot be put in carriers due to the never-scrap flag.  Conceivably they might go in a carrier guardian because that's a transport and doesn't require scrapping the ship first, but that would just be because I forgot the cannot-be-transported flag on the mothership.

Anyway, if the carrier had a bunch of motherships, if early-popped it would probably spawn mostly motherships back out

[chemical_art]

That makes me wonder, is there a way outside of the EXO-waves to get an H/K to spawn? Like the AI just decides to send one of them rather then a wave of ships? Or is that the only way to get them?

It's the only way   For most of the past year they were defined in the game but could never spawned.  Then someone asked if they could be included in exos.  We get strange requests, sometimes

^.^

There was a bit of a silver lining. It prevented the exos from getting a dozen golems quite so quickly.

But yeah, I just wanted to see them roam.

[Nic]

Oh, right, forgot about the carrier logic.  Have you actually seen an H/K from one of those?  I wasn't aware that 1000 of any ship that can fit in a carrier would add up to that much.

As far as I can tell this only happens when you have multiple carriers filled with mk5 ships popped on a single planet.

[Wanderer]

When I first posted my mantis issue, this sort of dynamic turret firepower adjustment came to mind. However, I now realize how finicky, and in the right hands, exploitable that would be. I think a properly chosen denominator for a better "rough approximation" of "turrets being stationary consideration" may work just as well in most cases.

Yes, imagine me creating a small run of AoE turrets towards the one or two possible primary targets in a whipping boy and THEN letting the rest of the raid run headfirst into the turret ball.   I can seriously abuse the 'not in range of wormhole' dynamic to inane degrees, with a little offsetting of the turrets and semi-predictability of the enemy.  Add in the new Harvester Cloakers and I can practically guarantee a minimal number of vectors in a choke system.

[keith.lamothe]

Yes, imagine me creating a small run of AoE turrets towards the one or two possible primary targets in a whipping boy and THEN letting the rest of the raid run headfirst into the turret ball.   I can seriously abuse the 'not in range of wormhole' dynamic to inane degrees, with a little offsetting of the turrets and semi-predictability of the enemy.  Add in the new Harvester Cloakers and I can practically guarantee a minimal number of vectors in a choke system.

You see?  This is why there can be no nice things

[Wanderer]

Yes, imagine me creating a small run of AoE turrets towards the one or two possible primary targets in a whipping boy and THEN letting the rest of the raid run headfirst into the turret ball.   I can seriously abuse the 'not in range of wormhole' dynamic to inane degrees, with a little offsetting of the turrets and semi-predictability of the enemy.  Add in the new Harvester Cloakers and I can practically guarantee a minimal number of vectors in a choke system.

You see?  This is why there can be no nice things

Heh, I could make it worse.  Keep the AoE's out of range and use AoE Minefields for the approach vectors.  Half the raids wouldn't even make it to the actual turret ball.

Though, now that I think about it, I might start doing that ANYWAY.  Hrm, need a BHG to make it work right though so the waves won't retreat on entry....  Hmmmmmmmmmm......

Well, as long as I'm dreaming and maundering possibilities, what's the chance I might ever see a tazer turret?  We got the tractor turrets from the Riots, what about a tazer one?  Hmm hmm?  Cap of 10 seems fair, same K price as Riot II (4000).

[keith.lamothe]

Well, as long as I'm dreaming and maundering possibilities, what's the chance I might ever see a tazer turret?

Possible, but don't count on it any time soon.

We got the tractor turrets from the Riots, what about a tazer one?

Tractor turrets were in 1.0, Riots didn't happen until around 3.060, iirc

[TechSY730]

On the note of threatballs.

Inspired by this post and others demonstrating insane threat balls, I am wondering if a reduction in the amount of firepower the AI waits or should go down. As mentioned in Keiths post, if the AI did decide to come in with that threat ball, even though they might not of won, they would of done severe economic damage.

Right now it is chosen such that the AI waits until it has a reasonable chance to win. While this is a great idea, frequently, this will cause stagnation due to good players tending to have well defended planets.

Instead, maybe the firepower ratio to wait for should be sized such that the AI will wait until it has a reasonable chance to do a good amount of damage. Frequently, even if the AI can't win, taking out a large percentage of the stuff on the planet can be quite damaging to the player, and will open the door for future AI threat or even AI threat balls on other wormholes a chance to come in and "finish the job"
Even if no such threat comes along in time before the rebuild, a significant amount of resources will have to be spent to rebuild everything, which may help tip the balance towards the AIs favor in the long run.


(This would be in addition to the AI no longer severely underestimating turrets)