Mark V Plasma Siege Starships one shot Command Stations under Force Fields

[Kahuna]

So a ~5000 ship Core Raid Engine wave arrives at my planet. 4 Carriers and ~1000 ships. All Mark IV. A Carrier crawls in range next to the Force Fields protecting my Command Station.. I focus it down with everything that kills "Heavy".. at this point there are only a couple of hundred AI ships left.. my defenses barely took a scratch.. the Carrier is almost dead and then it unloads a Mark V Plasma Siege Starship which one shots my Command Station (which was protected by 4 Mark III Hardened Force Fields). So I easily stopped ~5000 Mark IV ships and then a single Mark V Plasma Siege Starship one shots the Command Station.

..Infuriating to say the least. This really needs to change.

Before this happened.. when the wave had just arrived at my planet.. I sniped a Mark V and a Mark IV Plasma Siege Starships. It was impossible to kill this Mark V Plasma Siege Starship before it got a shot off.

[TechSY730]

Yea, the forcefield "splash through" of the plasma seiges works great for lower marks of them, but sort of becomes OP on higher mark of them, for both sides really, even by Mk. V standards.

Maybe have the amount of "splash through" be sublinear over mark? Maybe have higher mark forcefields let less damage "bleed" through? Maybe let overlapping force fields let less damage "bleed through"? Some combination of the above?

[Kahuna]

Edited.

[Kahuna]

Or higher Mark Levels of Command Stations could be made immune to the Splash damage. Maybe only Mark IIIs, Warp Jammers and Home Command Stations?

[Draco18s]

I've been saying this for ages.

The "one shot" thing would be true for mark 1 plasma siege and a mark 1 command station if the command station had ~50 less health.  That's how the mark 5 ruined your face so easily.  Sublinear wouldn't even make a lick of difference: the base mkar 5 damage with the mark 1 splash amount would kill any command station in one hit.

There was talk of having Hardened force fields not-do the splash, but I don't recall if that happened or not.

[Hearteater]

So basically Plasma Siege become "Raid Starships" effectively. They are slower, but have a higher range. Raid Starships in AI hands are deadly, and good for the game I believe. But they have a counter. They can be killed quickly, primarily by Sniper Turrets. So the solution to this problem is either a change to make Plasma Siege not a thread to a shielded CS or giving us a tool to protect ourselves. I think I prefer having a tool so we can have an additional threat to shielded Command Stations. Options I can think of:

1) Reduce AI Plasma Siege range some so we have more time to kill them
2) Reduce AI Plasma Siege speed, again, so we have more time to kill them
3) Strengthen Command Stations health and armor to withstand more shots (armor increases don't affect Raid Starship lethality, health increases do)
4) Make Plasma Siege shots strike the first FF they contact, allowing for an intervening FF that DOESN'T cover the CS to absorb and therefore protect the CS

I dislike #1 & #2 because I don't like the AI having different versions of the same ship the player can build. I do like #3 because I think I'd like CS to be a bit beefier in general so it isn't so much "FF or insta-death". A lot of the time I find CS (even the Home CS) are so fragile that even a brief opening gets them killed. Maybe this is necessary to allow the AI to threaten us, but I think I'd prefer more tankiness on the CS in exchange for leakier defenses. The you don't go from "zero damage taken" to "dead" when the AI brings just that one extra ship you aren't prepared for (Plasma Siege V in this case). Of course I'm ok with you still losing if you aren't prepared, but maybe it should take 2 or 3 shots instead. Living with 10% health actually feels like you accomplished more than a 100% shutdown because you know you were at your limit.

Option #4 adds an interesting mechanic to the game and provides room for more growth in the future. If we need to start intercepting deadly projectiles from certain ships, we could add Force Walls for players to setup. We start getting a slightly more interesting battle field. I don't think it is as friendly to new players, but I also don't think that should stop us.

[Toranth]

Well, the best solution to Kahuna's immediate problem is very simple:  Don't put Starships in Carriers!
Starships, Guardians, Spire Capital Ships, Nemesis Champions - these do not belong in carriers, for exactly the reason Kahuna discovered.  Magical pop-up super units are not fun.

[chemical_art]

Well, the best solution to Kahuna's immediate problem is very simple:  Don't put Starships in Carriers!
Starships, Guardians, Spire Capital Ships, Nemesis Champions - these do not belong in carriers, for exactly the reason Kahuna discovered.  Magical pop-up super units are not fun.

Given all the optimizations that have gone into the game, is it possible that the game has "matured" enough that MK V starships and larger units can be exempt from the carrier logic?

[Qatu]

 It's also frustrating when they are in exos and they take 1-2 turret reload to cross the planet and sit on player command station, bypassing gravity turrets in the process.

[Hearteater]

Assassinating the lead ship is extremely helpful in dealing with Exos. You can identify the leader by mousing over each ship. Most will indicate their speed is being boosted to some value. The leader's ship will not be boosted and is exactly 5 (iirc) below the speed everyone else is boosted to.

[tadrinth]

Having carriers prefer to unload their highest strength ships first would probably also mostly solve the issue.  Either it'll unload starships first and you'll get a shot at them, or they'll be the first to die as you focus fire the carrier. 

Might be technical limitations against doing that, though. 

[Cinth]

9 times out of 10, those ships weren't in the carrier to begin with.  What you get is the equivalent strength of the ships in the carrier when it pops.  Well... it's true when you have 1000s of ships in a system.

[Hearteater]

I thought that got removed when the carriers were changed to partially unload?

[Cinth]

Ok... scratch what I said.  That went out when carriers started passing damage to the ships inside.
@Hearteater: Close. When that change went in, you could still pop carriers and cause them to deploy thus getting compression.  The partial deployment was exempt from compression though.  Yeah, I had to dig through patch note in the 6.0 series to find that one.  So many changes so little physical memory (to bad we can't upgrade the RAM between the ears, eh?).

The one item in the 7.0 note I could find that might have relevance here is:
Waves now prioritize the highest-strength units to be deployed "loose", if there are so many that a carrier is required.

If this is still true then maybe it can be adjusted further.

[Hearteater]

That change should mean starships rarely (if ever) get put into carriers, because you'd need > 1000 starship+ sized units before they started to pop into carriers.