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

[Cinth]

It's dependent on the strength of the ship.  If there are clear lines between strength levels in fleet/SS/guardians/superweapons then it could work.  Overlap could produce undesired results.  Or it could be targeted to higher marks of problematic ships?

I don't quite know how this would help Kahuna's initial issue with a CRE raid of 5k Mk 4/5 ships though (not to mention the two starship oriented AI types).

[Toranth]

It's dependent on the strength of the ship.  If there are clear lines between strength levels in fleet/SS/guardians/superweapons then it could work.  Overlap could produce undesired results.  Or it could be targeted to higher marks of problematic ships?

I don't quite know how this would help Kahuna's initial issue with a CRE raid of 5k Mk 4/5 ships though (not to mention the two starship oriented AI types).

A Core Plasma Siege Starship should have a strength value of 480.  If that were working correctly, then for the Core PSS to be in the carrier, there would have needed to have been more than 1000 ships MORE POWERFUL than 480 strength.  That seems unlikely to me.

[Cinth]

It would only take 1 ship out of 1001 to put it in a carrier by that logic.  480 is still smaller than 481 (number pulled from no where).

[Toranth]

It would only take 1 ship out of 1001 to put it in a carrier by that logic.  480 is still smaller than 481 (number pulled from no where).

There will be 1,000 units outside of the carrier to start with, so if the "prioritize strong units to stay outside" logic was working correctly, it would imply that there were 1,000 units stronger than strength 480, that took the 1,000 slots assigned for outside first, leaving the Core PSS to go inside the carrier.
It is possible other things messed up that accounting - were there already AI units in the system?  Does the process account for human units?  I dunno.

Mostly, though, I just think there should be a flat rule of NO STARSHIPS slapped onto the carriers.

[Cinth]

It would only take 1 ship out of 1001 to put it in a carrier by that logic.  480 is still smaller than 481 (number pulled from no where).

There will be 1,000 units outside of the carrier to start with, so if the "prioritize strong units to stay outside" logic was working correctly, it would imply that there were 1,000 units stronger than strength 480, that took the 1,000 slots assigned for outside first, leaving the Core PSS to go inside the carrier.
It is possible other things messed up that accounting - were there already AI units in the system?  Does the process account for human units?  I dunno.

Mostly, though, I just think there should be a flat rule of NO STARSHIPS slapped onto the carriers.

Only in a vacuum.  There are a lot of factors that determine whether  or not any wave will be packaged into a carrier.  The biggest being the size of the wave and how many units are already flying about the galaxy.  It might just be me but it seems like the AI likes to keep its numbers of free floating ships reasonable 
So at any point when the AI wants to package ships into a carrier, only 1 needs to be stronger.

Your flat rule would hurt the 2 starship AI types.

[Toranth]

It would only take 1 ship out of 1001 to put it in a carrier by that logic.  480 is still smaller than 481 (number pulled from no where).

There will be 1,000 units outside of the carrier to start with, so if the "prioritize strong units to stay outside" logic was working correctly, it would imply that there were 1,000 units stronger than strength 480, that took the 1,000 slots assigned for outside first, leaving the Core PSS to go inside the carrier.
It is possible other things messed up that accounting - were there already AI units in the system?  Does the process account for human units?  I dunno.

Mostly, though, I just think there should be a flat rule of NO STARSHIPS slapped onto the carriers.

Only in a vacuum.  There are a lot of factors that determine whether  or not any wave will be packaged into a carrier.  The biggest being the size of the wave and how many units are already flying about the galaxy.  It might just be me but it seems like the AI likes to keep its numbers of free floating ships reasonable 
So at any point when the AI wants to package ships into a carrier, only 1 needs to be stronger.

For the AI doing redistribution of free units into carriers, I see, you're correct.  I was thinking more about the creation of waves, when the entire batch of units is determined virtually THEN shuffled into carriers based only on that group.
I still think there should be a flat rule, just because having a carrier with 16 units suddenly dump 16 Core Starships or Spire Capital ships, or even H/Ks, on you isn't fun.  So while it may mess up the redistribution of free units a bit, I think it'd be worth it.

Your flat rule would hurt the 2 starship AI types.

How so?  Aside from the general potential cheesiness of the AI being able to protect specific units from damage inside a carrier.
Starship Commander sends a few extra starships, up to a few dozens at high AIP/diff.  Starship Fanatic gets more because it replaces the normal units, but even so you're going to cap out at a few hundred.  Even if you somehow had a wave of 2000 starships, the game is capable of handling it.  So for that very rare circumstance, the rule still works - and for all other cases, it is an improvement.

[TechSY730]

I'm with Toranth. A no starship and up in carriers rule (preferably, no guardians and up) seems like a good idea. The cases where you can expect 1000+ starships or even guardians and up seem extremely rare, certainly rare enough that any sort of memory impact from not being able to "consolidate" these seems miniscule.

Maybe in a 8+ HW game with starship focuesed AI types, but in that sort of case, you should be expecting memory issues anyways, even with carriers.

[Draco18s]

How about a new "Command Ship"?  That is, a carrier for starships.

For that odd edge case scenario where it's needed.  Maaaaybe also can contain carriers containing other ships...for those times when the game just can't handle 76 million units.

[Cinth]

I'm with Toranth. A no starship and up in carriers rule (preferably, no guardians and up) seems like a good idea. The cases where you can expect 1000+ starships or even guardians and up seem extremely rare, certainly rare enough that any sort of memory impact from not being able to "consolidate" these seems miniscule.

If I figure out how to get a 10/10 SSF game started...

Maybe in a 8+ HW game with starship focuesed AI types, but in that sort of case, you should be expecting memory issues anyways, even with carriers.

That's not entirely true.  I play 16 HW games at high AIP and am able to play them to completion.  I actually try and force memory errors all the time and it is getting to be a rare occurrence (Keith is good at doing something with the ones that I can reproduce reliably). 

@Toranth: Even in a fixed wave of 2001 units, only one needs to be stronger than 480.  Though you are correct about the AI commander types, don't underestimate what the player can force the AI into doing

[Hearteater]

Doesn't it try and leave about 1000 free, so it should spawn something like a 1k carrier, a 200~ carrier, and 801 free ships? I didn't think it has been "while ships >= 1000, put 1000 ships in carrier" for a long time.

[Cinth]

It depends on what is on the other end too (your forces).  If I pack 20k ships on one planet then almost every wave would arrive in a carrier (anecdotal evidence though).  It's been a long time since I watched how waves arrived (or even cared that they did).

[Kahuna]

This happened again.
!FUN!

[TechSY730]

Something I was thinking is tweaking how the "splash through" damage scales over mark. Given that lower mark starships feels about right, how about changing the formula so that higher marks weigh more towards hitting more targets under the forcefield over how much damage to each individual things under forcefields. Like, maybe Mk. V plasma sieges would only deal like 2x the damage per hit unit compared to Mk. I, rather than 5x, but increasing the max number of units under the forcefield the PSS hit accordingly per mark.

Some other ideas I have heard.

*Give home command stations a resistance (NOT immunity) to this (like home command stations can have like 90% resistance or something (meaning, it only takes 10% of what the formula would otherwise state), Mk. IIIs like 75% or something, Mk. Is 40%, things like that)
*Make hardened forcefields give a resistance (again, NOT immunity) to things it covers

I still do think that starships and up (and maybe guardians and up) should not be allowed in normal carriers.

[TechSY730]

I have to ask Kahuna. I know you have posting many issues (which is good, EDIT: Good not because there are issues, that is bad, but good in the fact you are willing to give feedback about them), but are you happy with 8.0 overall?
Or do you still feel like it is "buggy" and "unpolished" to the point of being a shadow of the SlimDX (3.X) days?

[tadrinth]

Waves now prioritize the highest-strength units to be deployed "loose", if there are so many that a carrier is required.

I'm seeing the opposite of that behavior.  I just checked and with a wave of 5k bombers, it starts with 800ish bombers loose and zero starships.  The starships are the very last thing to deploy out of the carriers, I paused it right as they showed up and there's <400 bombers left.