Eligible Exo-Wave leaders

[TechSY730]

The change with the warbirds being allowed to be in and lead exos again made me ask, what ships are eligible to be the leader of an exo wave group?

[TechSY730]

Oh, and if warbirds are becoming eligible for exo waves again, will beam starhips become eligible for them?

[keith.lamothe]

Any ship that's eligible to be included in an exo is eligible to be a leader; the leader is just the ship with the highest cost in the group (if there are multiple at the same cost, a random one is picked from that set).

Beam starships have been eligible for exos since exos were, I believe   They're in the same cost-set as Core Starships.  And warbirds are now, too.

[TechSY730]

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD





Tangentially related to exos, have you thought about allowing motherships to spawn during the final "push" of the spire campaign once you complete it?

Think about the epic showdown of 8 super-dreadnoughts vs. 5 motherships, plus a whole bunch of other stuff.

Now I understood that you disabled motherships during the "triumphant push" for a few reasons. One, to ensure that the spire would win. Two, to not make it an instant loss if the AI makes it to you before the Spire can take out both AIs. And Three, because of their core shield gen properties.

To deal with one, careful tuning of the mothership spawn rate would take care of that. So long as the mothership's spawn rate (adjusted for firepower and durability) is less than the spire spawn rate (adjusted for firepower and durability), the Spire will eventually win. (Basically, make it such that once both start spawning, the number of motherships spawned over a time T does not overpower the number of super-dreadnuaghts + dreadnaughts spawned over time T) This may be a tricky ratio to find, but it would be epic.

Do deal with three, you can make a separate version of the mothership that does not have CSG properties, but is otherwise identical, and have that spawn during the "final push"

Not sure what to do about two though.

[keith.lamothe]

Motherships aren't actually disabled during that time, they would just auto-die shortly after spawning due to the kill-all-CSG's logic involved in that phase.

The main reason they don't spawn (except for the homeworld defensive exo) is that the exo budgets don't get nearly high enough where the normal lead-ship portion (1/3rd of the budget) is enough to afford one of those babies.  The defensive ones only get that high because they're "funded" from a percentage of all the city-provoked FS exos up to that point in the game (from the last defensive exo, if there's already been one).

[TechSY730]

Motherships aren't actually disabled during that time, they would just auto-die shortly after spawning due to the kill-all-CSG's logic involved in that phase.

The main reason they don't spawn (except for the homeworld defensive exo) is that the exo budgets don't get nearly high enough where the normal lead-ship portion (1/3rd of the budget) is enough to afford one of those babies.  The defensive ones only get that high because they're "funded" from a percentage of all the city-provoked FS exos up to that point in the game (from the last defensive exo, if there's already been one).

So even when the AI is "panicking" about the huge swarm of massive Spire stuff headed their way, they still don't get enough "exo-points" to afford motherships? That seems a little strange.

As I mentioned, the kill-all-CSGs logic could be sidestepped by having a version of the mothership that doesn't have CSG properties, and use that during this time.

[keith.lamothe]

So even when the AI is "panicking" about the huge swarm of massive Spire stuff headed their way, they still don't get enough "exo-points" to afford motherships? That seems a little strange.

No, it's getting tons and tons of those total, it's just using them to send frequent attacks rather than large individual ones.

As I mentioned, the kill-all-CSGs logic could be sidestepped by having a version of the mothership that doesn't have CSG properties, and use that during this time.

But the normal mothership would need to be made ineligible for exo seeding during that time; there is no such mechanism to make eligibility conditional at this time.

[TechSY730]

So even when the AI is "panicking" about the huge swarm of massive Spire stuff headed their way, they still don't get enough "exo-points" to afford motherships? That seems a little strange.

No, it's getting tons and tons of those total, it's just using them to send frequent attacks rather than large individual ones.

Makes sense, even though it seems like it should prefer quality over quantity for some of the last resort waves.

As I mentioned, the kill-all-CSGs logic could be sidestepped by having a version of the mothership that doesn't have CSG properties, and use that during this time.

But the normal mothership would need to be made ineligible for exo seeding during that time; there is no such mechanism to make eligibility conditional at this time.

Oh, that's too bad. Well, nothing lost by suggesting.

[c4sc4]

Random Question, if Motherships ships have CSG properties and if you have CSG disabled in the ship types when you start a game, will Motherships still spawn?

[TechSY730]

Random Question, if Motherships ships have CSG properties and if you have CSG disabled in the ship types when you start a game, will Motherships still spawn?

Yes. I had a game going with CSGs turned off, and the mothership still reared its ugly head when I invaded the home. No escaping it. 

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the normal CSGs are there to force a certain number of planet captures (and thus AIP) before you can win the game.  The mothership's CSG is there just to make sure you can't win without killing it.  Otherwise to fulfill its "defensive" purpose it would have to just camp the AI Homeworld forever.  I could make it do that, but I think you wouldn't like it very much, depending on where the wormhole exits were placed on that particular homeworld   Being forced to engage that thing from maximum range is... extremely painful.