Liking the new plasma starship

[Hearteater]

Yeah, when Starships rule, who cares what your bonus pick is or what an ARS gives you.  Fleet ships available in a given game massively impacts how you play a game and I'd hate to see that go away.  Plus massive 1-2k fleet battles are extremely fun to watch .

[TechSY730]

The problem is that starships are in every game (that doesn't have starships off, and that leaves some pretty gaping utility holes) and making them much more powerful will cause them to overshadow the fleet ships again.  The game has already gone through a phase like that and it wasn't pretty.  If you want superweapons there are already 3 kinds: Golems, Spirecraft (which are closer to mini-superweapons), and Fallen Spire.

The only problem with that is that spirecraft are curretly not "mini-superweapons" but more of limited availibility hyper special purpose stuff. Very useful in the cases they are built for, but generally inferior to starships and often even fleet ships in average usefulness.
Though that is more of a problem with spirecraft rather than with starships.

[Wanderer]

Anyway, my plan is to bring most starship knowledge costs in line with fleet ships, and keep them roughly in the same ballpark of cap-stats (except much easier to keep alive and much higher in m+c construction cost).  The alternative is to keep their knowledge costs as-is and make them into mini-superweapons, but I don't want to do that as that would probably bring in another age of gangs of starships conquering the universe with no support from fleet ships.

And things like the enclave starships, the Riot III, and the Zenith/Spire need more specific attention.

Sounds good, and I completely agree.  I don't want starships to be super weapons.  I want them to support my fleet, not replace or marginalize it.

And for reference, it has been exclusively Plasma Siege that have killed all four ZPGs.  Only takes them 4 shots at Mark I.  At Mark II they kill in just two shots which is 8 seconds from 100% to dead.  And with their range, it is just brutal.  When the Exo had a Mark IV...yeah.  That wasn't pretty.

Mention to your friend to drop the ZPG in the corner of the system under its own protection.  Don't place it near the cmd center, as that's one of the primary goals of all ships, plasmas included.  Get it out of the main firing line.

By preference, drop it on the homeworld, but that's another story.

[Wanderer]

The problem is that starships are in every game (that doesn't have starships off, and that leaves some pretty gaping utility holes) and making them much more powerful will cause them to overshadow the fleet ships again.  The game has already gone through a phase like that and it wasn't pretty.  If you want superweapons there are already 3 kinds: Golems, Spirecraft (which are closer to mini-superweapons), and Fallen Spire.

The only problem with that is that spirecraft are curretly not "mini-superweapons" but more of limited availibility hyper special purpose stuff. Very useful in the cases they are built for, but generally inferior to starships and often even fleet ships in average usefulness.
Though that is more of a problem with spirecraft rather than with starships.

I'll agree with this.  The only spire 'superweapon' really is the martyr, and that's a one-shot.  Otherwise they're just more starships, at best.  If the mobile Ion cannon can get fixed and the siege tower can get reviewed for base firepower and an overhaul, I could see them being in the superweapon category.

[Eternaly_Lost]

The problem is that starships are in every game (that doesn't have starships off, and that leaves some pretty gaping utility holes) and making them much more powerful will cause them to overshadow the fleet ships again.  The game has already gone through a phase like that and it wasn't pretty.  If you want superweapons there are already 3 kinds: Golems, Spirecraft (which are closer to mini-superweapons), and Fallen Spire.

The only problem with that is that spirecraft are curretly not "mini-superweapons" but more of limited availibility hyper special purpose stuff. Very useful in the cases they are built for, but generally inferior to starships and often even fleet ships in average usefulness.
Though that is more of a problem with spirecraft rather than with starships.

I agree with that as well, but I also put Golems into the list. Well they are powerful, they seem to me to be complete glass cannons, if I don't watch a Golem, I found that it has died to some random threat or wave that I was not fully paying attention to. Sure when you get them into the very specalized case that is good for them they do ok, but most of the time they feel like they are taking too much of my attention to use unless I just stick them on my Homeworld and forget about them until it time to go for the Homeworlds. And I play on Epic. They not only die too fast, but are very much irreplaceable meaning that I have to stick them with the other irreplacable stuff that I can't lose until I am ready to use them.

Spire fleet is a good superweapon as you can leave them somewhere and rebuild them, so I am very happy to use them and send them to their death on a 20,000 ship threat ball to slowly clean it up. Not so much for the other superweapon as only the martyr seems to be able to do anything.

[Hearteater]

There are a couple of threads on improving defenses of super-weapons, including golems and possibly H/K and Mothership.  It is often tied into armor reworks.

[TechSY730]

I think Kieth has mentioned in the past somewhere that it is becoming hard to make things durable in the average case. Even if you set HP and armor of a ship to int32.MaxValue (or whatever type is used for HP and armor), and give it command grade armor, a good sized late-game fleet complete with golems, spirecraft, and spire captial ships (for humans) or Mk. V ships, Mk. V starships, hunter killers, and maybe even a mother ship or two (for the AI) will be able to chew through that pretty quickly.
Average damage * average fleet size has grown sort of out of control, and now its near impossible to make any sort of super-ultra durable ship that can stand up well on its own, if for no other reason then sheer data type restrictions.

[laughingman]

I use Starships in all of my games. Once I have an economy that can support them, I'll usually unlock the Mark II versions of the basic combat ships. They're great for clearing out AI Eye worlds in most cases: Fleet and Leeches to draw defenders away, Bombers and Raids to snipe guard posts, and Plasma for general battlefield chaos. If you're careful, you can keep them alive for a long time. Mobile Repair stations make them even more lethal, but you should be using those anyway.

If Starship knowledge costs were all in line with the Raid Starship, I think people would find them a lot more attractive. I'll usually get Raids and at Mark III because they are so useful, and Bombers because when you want to make it dead RIGHT NOW you can't ask for a better ship.

Starships aren't superweapons, and they're not meant to be. They're supposed to be supports for a fleet, and in most cases they do the job pretty well. I wouldn't want them to be super-durable because that would ruin the Battlestar Galactica-style storylines I invent.

[Hearteater]

The maximum size of health, armor and damage are irrelevant when the makers of the game can any number of new defenses.  New defensive mechanics or just some tweaks to armor itself could be sufficient to solve the problem.

[chemical_art]

Starships aren't superweapons, and they're not meant to be. They're supposed to be supports for a fleet, and in most cases they do the job pretty well. I wouldn't want them to be super-durable because that would ruin the Battlestar Galactica-style storylines I invent.

As a BSG fan, I scratch my head at that. It would seem the opposite. You would have a very, very few and powerful starships with a BSG storyline.

[laughingman]

Sorry, I meant the original BSG. The starships were outnumbered by a fair margin by the fighters. Perhaps my memory is faulty? It's been a long time since I've seen it. It's probably better to say "inspired by" anyway.

 I watched the first season of the new BSG but not much after that. Again, it's been a while, but Galactica did a lot of running from superior firepower in most of those episodes, using a lot of fighters to cover them. Galactica is very powerful, but would get chewed up quickly without a screen to keep the enemy away while those big guns did their work.

I don't remember them going toe to toe against those Cylon star-shaped based (base stars? It's been so long since I've watched it) and expecting to live. If they had missile frigates, bombers, and an Artillery Golem, though?

[zoutzakje]

regarding super weapons, golems feel good as they are now. A lot of them have gotten a buff recently, making especially the black widow more useful. Giving them any more of a boost would make Golemite AI type go from 'hard' to 'red'. Yeah they die fast. anything does. If you want them to live, micro manage them at all times. That's unavoidable unless you give them 2 billion hp or something, which I don't support.

Some of the Spirecraft could perhaps use some sort of adjustment, but I'm not particularly sure which ones and how. As long as the martyr doesn't get hit with the nerf bat (again, though last time was before I had ever used them ), I'm fine with it.

as for starships, well I've always wanted them to be a support to your fleet ships. Never a super weapon kind of thing. To me starships will feel right when they will often make me at least put some thought in it whether I should unlock higher marks of those or my fleet ships, instead of pretty much fleet ships all the time.

[orzelek]

When it comes to creep of power ... there is already quite neat solution someone else invented for that.

Take a look at how shield damage absorption works in Sins. Basically by default you have about 20% or so but it raises when ship gets shot and falls down with time. In larger fight target of focused fire will quite quickly get to max allowed reduction (depends on type/level but goes above 75%) and it gives it much better survivability against swarm type but still doesn't make it invincible.

Something like that could work here for starships/etc. They would be still quite vulnerable when fighting each other and other large targets but would be somewhat protected from getting quickly evaporated by stray 100 ship wave.. you would have at least time to notice that. (Also bombers and starships.. bad combination for some).

[TechSY730]

When it comes to creep of power ... there is already quite neat solution someone else invented for that.

Take a look at how shield damage absorption works in Sins. Basically by default you have about 20% or so but it raises when ship gets shot and falls down with time. In larger fight target of focused fire will quite quickly get to max allowed reduction (depends on type/level but goes above 75%) and it gives it much better survivability against swarm type but still doesn't make it invincible.

Something like that could work here for starships/etc. They would be still quite vulnerable when fighting each other and other large targets but would be somewhat protected from getting quickly evaporated by stray 100 ship wave.. you would have at least time to notice that. (Also bombers and starships.. bad combination for some).

So some kind of increased armor under periods of short lived spikes in DPS being taken?

I believe Hearteater proposed something like that.

So this would in effect make a "focus fire penalty" by penalizing short lived spikes in DPS, especially when that DPS comes from small contributions from many different sources.

[keith.lamothe]

I am familiar with the SoaSE mechanic for dealing with focus-fire, and it is interesting, but if dps were heavily dependent on the recent "history" of what had hit a ship that would mess a lot with the autotargeting logic that tries to throw as many shots at a target as will be needed to kill it and then move on even if it's not going to die until the shots actually hit.  Armor Damage actually violates this a bit but it's in the direction of more shots being thrown at the target than necessary, rather than less, and "overkill" is way less noticeable than "underkill".