My thoughts on current balance

[KDR_11k]

I liked the Neutron hull back before the Zenith/Spire ship changes but maybe that was because the Spire could just snipe the frigates before they got to fire (been cruising around raiding stuff with two of each ship type). I don't think there are many things with Neutron bonuses around. Anyone know what the bonus distribution is for Neutron and Medium?

Perhaps the nastiest would be a special hull type that absolutely nothing gets bonuses against. Maybe high mark starships could use that instead of their regular line type.

[Faulty Logic]

[awesome starships changes]

When does 5.074 come out? Hours? Days? Weeks?

Are starship stats supposed to be able to support a primarily-starship stategy? (don't unlock fleet ships mkIII, but still use the mkI-2 fleet, including ARS ships)

[LordSloth]

Thinking about the Bomber starships, one of the things I considered using them for is hunting down fleeing hybrids, since they're actually faster. For that matter, Raider Fleet ships also work well, despite being slower they are fast enough. With the various K cuts, I'm much more likely to invest in Heavy Bomber Starships for purposes of hunting down Stealth Battleships, Tractor Guardians and the like. Looking forward to playing with them some more now that the opportunity cost isn't so high.

Some brainstorms I haven't really thought long about (current mental processing time: 15 seconds):
Give Heavy Bomber starships a small paralysis effect, saving fleetships from tractor guardians, for instance.
Give Heavy Bomber starships (AI too, for gravity turrets) immunity to gravity effects, making hunting down gravity guardians much much easier, as well as giving a base (non-spire) starship that can bypass gravity drill effects. They don't have the shield penetration or radar dampening of Raid Starships, so they probably won't replace it.

Give Transports Mk2 immunity to gravity effects, and update the tooltip so I have an idea what the non-neinzul "repairs slowly" rate is.

[Mánagarmr]

I'm having trouble finding a niche for the Bomber Starship actually. It's range is too short to be an artillery piece, and when it needs to get that upfront and personal, I'm a tad worried about it's well being. But I haven't tried yet, so enough theorycrafting

[keith.lamothe]

[awesome starships changes]

When does 5.074 come out? Hours? Days? Weeks?

Today, possibly tomorrow, maybe even Friday, depends on how long the thing I'm currently working on takes me.

Are starship stats supposed to be able to support a primarily-starship stategy? (don't unlock fleet ships mkIII, but still use the mkI-2 fleet, including ARS ships)

Hmm.  I'd say it's not explicitly designed to either support or invalidate that approach, whereas I would say it should invalidate a "I literally never build fleet ships" approach.  So if it doesn't work, and not-works in a spectacular fashion I'd want to hear about it, but I imagine the viability would vary greatly (from "not" on 2xPeacemaker-on-snake-map to "actually pretty good" on a lot of stuff) depending on the scenario and that's fine with me.

[Lancefighter]

I wouldnt really say starships make fleet ships obsolete, and I would also not really say that using starships alone is even valid.

If I'm not mistaken the main role of the flagship is still to munitions boost a fleet, something they do really well... Its just that I think using only starships OFFENSIVELY, the majority of the time, should be valid. This might not be how keith or chris things, but for the moment I've been vocal enough to be able to maintain this, for the most part.

I also dont really think this method will be viable at all as I go up in difficulty, i expect to be required at some point to break out of the habits i formed.


On bomber starships - I think they are somewhat valid most of the time? Atm, they are really strong anti-guardian and anti-starship starships. I think if dreadnaughts have been repurposed to general dps, they still can fill the role of precision, on demand response... I almost use them as I might a raid starship, which may or may not be a good thing. (i dont use raid starships much, really). They can usually easily get in somewhere and blow what they want to blow up, within very reasonable timeframes. Sometimes they do require a distraction though.

I think I lobbied for a lot of survivability on bomber starships, making them usually able to function as a frontline heavy dps if you are engaging the right targets.

And uh. "2x peacemaker on snake map" makes me want to kill myself. Like. Damn peacemakers. Nothing invalidates an entire starship fleet like an OMD.

[Toranth]

Spire starships suck.  Their beam doesn't rotate to match the target's current position, so 90% of the time it's firing off into empty space.

This is part of their design and balance.  Massive damage, but hard to target.  Primarily, it means you need to position your beam-firerers (is that a word?) directly in the path of the targets, or directly astern.  Leads to some interesting choices, sometimes.

What I *do* have a serious problem with is the fact that the beams (supposedly hitting everything in their path) reach out to the target, then STOP.  If my beam has 10,000 range, why did it stop at the first target, a mere 1,000 distance out?  I am forced to micro all my Spire ships, to force them to target distant enemies, just so I can take advantage of their special mechanic.
You can see this fault on the AI side during the Shattered Pillar nebula scenario:  those poor Shadowblades never do full damage to anything.

I think the easiest fix would be to make them like the Zenith Beam Frigate - the beam always goes max length, and just slowly hits every target in the path rather than instantly hitting the first 9.

[Lancefighter]

Spire beams will deal their damage to the first target they hit (unless its a commandcenter, or has similar targeting logic, they ignore those)

Its very similar to heavy beam cannons (and I want a line of HBC starships now ): ), but it deals a lot more damage. In some cases, youll see a spire starship rip through a hundred neinzul younglings...

[keith.lamothe]

What I *do* have a serious problem with is the fact that the beams (supposedly hitting everything in their path) reach out to the target, then STOP.  If my beam has 10,000 range, why did it stop at the first target, a mere 1,000 distance out?  I am forced to micro all my Spire ships, to force them to target distant enemies, just so I can take advantage of their special mechanic.
You can see this fault on the AI side during the Shattered Pillar nebula scenario:  those poor Shadowblades never do full damage to anything.

The beam does full damage to the target it hits; if it kills that it punches through to the one behind it and applies the remaining damage for that frame, etc.  It just draws to the ship that it stops on.  I have sometimes seen a bug where the beam will stop on the first hit target regardless of what happens, but I haven't seen it in a while.

I think the easiest fix would be to make them like the Zenith Beam Frigate - the beam always goes max length, and just slowly hits every target in the path rather than instantly hitting the first 9.

The zenith "heat beam" is a totally different mechanic, and does not hit every target in the path, it randomly picks 9 on the line (if there are <= 9, it hits all of them, but only once each).

[Lancefighter]

wait what? You nerfed zenith beams? When?

[keith.lamothe]

wait what? You nerfed zenith beams? When?

You mean when were they changed to only hit a limited number of targets?  Version 4.066, January 12th, 2011

[Toranth]

What I *do* have a serious problem with is the fact that the beams (supposedly hitting everything in their path) reach out to the target, then STOP.  If my beam has 10,000 range, why did it stop at the first target, a mere 1,000 distance out?  I am forced to micro all my Spire ships, to force them to target distant enemies, just so I can take advantage of their special mechanic.
You can see this fault on the AI side during the Shattered Pillar nebula scenario:  those poor Shadowblades never do full damage to anything.

The beam does full damage to the target it hits; if it kills that it punches through to the one behind it and applies the remaining damage for that frame, etc.  It just draws to the ship that it stops on.  I have sometimes seen a bug where the beam will stop on the first hit target regardless of what happens, but I haven't seen it in a while.

Well, the easiest way to see it when there's a moving Shadowblade that shoots at something.  Especially a forcefield.  It'll stop at the forcefield's edge, and even if the field dies or the Shadowblade moves off, the beam stays the exact same length.
As for the Spire Beam, if it stops at the first target it fails to kill, how is it different than the HBC beams?  Don't they work the same way, aka, if some of the beams in the fan kill the target, the rest move on to the next target?
The Spire Beam description "Fires a coherent beam of light for two seconds that strikes all enemy units in its path." seems to describe it as a buffed version of the ZBeam's weapon...

[keith.lamothe]

As for the Spire Beam, if it stops at the first target it fails to kill, how is it different than the HBC beams?

A lance is always only 1 beam, not a fan, and it actually fires once per frame for 2 seconds (damage divided amongst the frames) rather than just once on the first frame.

The Spire Beam description "Fires a coherent beam of light for two seconds that strikes all enemy units in its path." seems to describe it as a buffed version of the ZBeam's weapon...

It means "all enemy units in its way"; I can change the description to that if it helps.

[Fluffiest]

I can't help but feel that, of all the starships, the Heavy Bomber is the least exciting. Every other starship has a role that fleetships just can't fulfill*, whereas Heavy Bombers just seem to do the same thing Bomber fleetships do, only less well.

They're tough and reasonably fast, and do high damage per shot (and high damage per second), at quite short range. They can't be deep-strike raiders, the Raid Starship already does that. Are they specialised anti-starship and anti-Guardian assassins, then? Could be a nice role for them, especially if they're also adept at taking on other big threats (hybrids, golems, spirecraft, even Hunter-Killers, Avengers, and AI Champions) that show up against particular opponents.

* Well, ok, there are quite a few fleetships that can reclaim, but you're not guaranteed to get any of them whereas the Leech Starship is something you can always have.

[TechSY730]

I think that the acutal complain Lancefighter is trying to communicate about the Spire beams is that after they fire, even if their target dies or moves out of the way (or the ship that fired moves), the beam will still appear to only go as far as the original distance to the target (which means a really short beam if it fired on something close)

Now, whether the actual hitbox of the beam will start extending again to the next target (or max range, whatever comes first), I can't tell, but I can tell you for sure that if it does, how the beam is being drawn does not reflect that.