Missle Frigate - Area Damage Immunity -> Serious Balance Problem

[carlosjuero]

I think you need to take a step back off the aggressive-o-meter and tone down a bit. Jumping on folks who don't agree with you (including one of the developers) in the manner which you have been is not called for now is it? Maybe superking could have been a little less terse and a tad more helpful, but there was no reason for you to jump down anyones throat in this thread.

I will keep my personal reservations at your play style to myself, but I do have a question - have you tried all of that with one starting planet?

Well, 6 homeworlds (or even isn't balance-breaking on its own; it's very similar to playing a 6-player game.  The difference is that the level of coordination of resources is likely to be much higher in a 1-player 6-hw game, whereas all 6 players unlocking all 3 tiers of raid starship and letting one player control them is less likely.

But if a 6-hw force can achieve a solid chokepoint defense (as on a snake map, which I believe Spymine is playing), balance goes largely out the window   We have some plans in work so that certain options will be available to challenge even the most heavily defended players.

In the meantime, it may be that the AI is not being allowed to build enough single-target turrets in a multi-hw game to properly deal with raid starship flocks.

dead wrong - its a complex map with 120 planets and i have three chokepoints

and anyway - it would also work with 3 or 4 plants (respective 27 or 36 raiders) - the raid starship is way overpowered which makes level 10 "Doom" like a walk in the park

in another game with version 3.000 i encounter about 100 leeches, 70 raider and 50 spires on every planet - i dont know if that can still happen in 3.188 - but if you think that its unfair if i use 54 raiders guess what will happen if you are the target of above starship group

@ superking: you have anything against snake maps - or are you so easy to entertain
i did notice that simple minds are ....

@dazio: i do think that the incommings are also more numerous the more planets you have - atm i have on average 10k waves
if its not coupled with player planets then we have another balance issue - you can then adress this to keith

Ohhh - and to everyone who gave constructive comments - thank you
This thread is not about what level i am playing or how many planets I play - that is MY choice and you can keep critcism concerning that topic somewhere i cant read it

Its about either changing the frigging description of the HBC (which i think is wrong) or taking the HBC out of the AoE group (at least the level 1 turret - and which i think is the correct thing to do) - especially regarding starship commander ais (thanks fruden)

[Spymine]

excuse me - i am not jumping on folks especially not on keith

second - again this thread is not about my playstyle - i wanted to point out a problem in the balancing of the game

third - to prove my point:

I needed 1 hour 46 minutes to find the first ai homeworld just by using the raiders.
The 54 raiders required 21 minutes to finish the guard posts and the hq (losing 4 units in the process)
For the Avenger station the 50 raiders required 12 minutes of constant shooting and were impervious to the resulting explosion.
I will need another 1 hour to find the second hq and then will have solved the game on the hardest level, 120 planets with 2 random hard AI's in a complex level with all ship types.

And the overall time will be around 12 hours.
If I compare this with my 100 hours for my first game i am disappointed.

And plz dont answer this with "why dont you start with one planet" - again - if your playstyle is teamwork and you have 5 friends the result will be the same in the exact same time. I just want a game which challenges me (and not play for months - which i actually did) - and if i use 6 planets i do hope i get 6 times as big waves as playing with a single planet (which i do think is the case). If that is the case, playing with one or more planets should not be the issue here.

For new people in the game it would really be helpful if the term "AoE Weapon" would be entered for all the weapon concerned - it would have saved me this thread.

Thank you

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, the avenger does need better direct fire weapons, that much is clear

[Lancefighter]

100 hours o.0

the first game i finished was around 10 hours @ 40 planets

[Diazo]

It is interesting how viable non-standard games are.

From reading forum posts, I understand the original concept of the game was 80 planets, capturing about 15 worlds and destroying both AI homeworlds about the 12 hour mark.

We have people who play it that way, but we also have people who play 10 planet really quick games all the way up to 120 planet marathons where they capture every world.

A testament to the game I think that it does support all these different games reasonably well.

D.

[Dragon]

I would like to comment about how prior to this patch, HBC were one of only two turrets that actually got positive bonuses towards shooting at raid starships.  The other was laser turrets, and their damage isn't very much when compared to HBC.  A beam cannon with the previous 1.5x multiplier would do 75,000 damage per shot to a raid starship pre-patch.  That was very significant.  Laser turrets can't even hope to come close that that level of damage.  Perhaps raising the multiplier on laser turrets would be a good idea?

[Ozymandiaz]

Ah, the avenger does need better direct fire weapons, that much is clear

Maybe, but adding more firepower to that beast is, I dunno, maybe too nasty?

I had to use my entire fleet to take it down, and lost all but my starships in the nuke, and it was a fairly big fleet at it

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, the avenger does need better direct fire weapons, that much is clear

Maybe, but adding more firepower to that beast is, I dunno, maybe too nasty?

I had to use my entire fleet to take it down, and lost all but my starships in the nuke, and it was a fairly big fleet at it

Well, yea   I'd probably replace one of the heavy beam cannons or some of its shotguns (or both) with some laser and mlrs batteries.

[Fruden]

 Here's an edge case for consideration:

On Defense (human with 6 homeworlds):
 Radar Jammer mk2
 Planetary shield booster+inhibiter
 10 force fields mk1
 3 force fields mk2
 1 fortress mk1
 2 superfortresses
 6 mass driver cannons
 19 heavy beams mk3
 6 heavy beams mk2
 5 gravitational turrets mk1
 200 laser turrets mk1
 quite a bit more stuff

VS (starship captain ai lv9):
 40 raid ships mk3
 40 leech ships mk3
 lots of mk3-mk4-core ships

 Results is defense won with a fair amount of damage inflicted by the offense. Thankfully the ai only sent about 2/3 its ship at once throught the wormhole and then trickled the rest, otherwise i'm pretty sure the offense would have wiped my chokepoint world. And it also didn't wait for a wave to combo with all those released ships, good for me!

 I have no idea how i could possibly have stopped this assault if it wasn't for the heavy beams hurting the raid ships so.

edit: version 3.1.7.2

[Sunshine!]

I think what you'll want to do these days is build a Logistics Starbase on any planet you think might have incursions.  It'll slow Raid Starships to 44, and increase all your ships speeds by 50 for a mk1, so your fleet will be able to outpace raid starships.

[Lancefighter]

Odd that - the logistics station should not be used instead of a military command post... boost military command posts?

[keith.lamothe]

I think it makes perfect sense that a military command station is more useful for most defensive situations (where you can actually force engagement), due to it's planet-wide munitions boost, and logistics stations are more useful in a minority of cases where the problem is not being able to catch the attackers.

[Sunshine!]

I really prefer the logistics command posts to the military command posts, just because if my ships are on FRD, they can then engage the attackers en-masse rather than in a trickle, and the enemies aren't going to be running around blowing up all my harvesters because they can't get anywhere while the logistics post is operational.

[RCIX]

I think it makes perfect sense that a military command station is more useful for most defensive situations (where you can actually force engagement), due to it's planet-wide munitions boost, and logistics stations are more useful in a minority of cases where the problem is not being able to catch the attackers.

Its kinda the other way around right now

[keith.lamothe]

You mean that it's usually the case that the attackers are not catchable?