Nominations for target of the Nerfbat of Damocles (II)

[keith.lamothe]

So, the last pair of nerf polls went pretty well.

Explanation from first nerf-poll included for background:

I've hesitated on this one because the psychological impact of "my favorite unit just got worse!" is way different than anything else getting better.  But I think there are some outliers in terms of units being so useful to the player that they actually reduce the effective field of choice ("why use A, B, C, D, or E when X is always better?", etc).  On the other hand, I don't want to just wade in with the nerf bat, so player feedback is really helpful here.

So, the details:

1) There will be two polls: one for AI units, and one for Player units, so please specify if the nomination is for AI, Player, or both.

2) Both polls will have a "None of these need a nerf!" option and basically if any item on the poll has the same (or fewer) number of votes than the "None" option, then that particular item is not going to get nerfed as a result of the poll unless I'm really persuaded personally that it needs to happen.  This doesn't mean that everything above the "none line" gets a nerf, however, that has more to do with how many such things there are, how much time it takes me, etc.

3) I'll also probably solicit more direct feedback on precisely how to nerf the "winners" than I normally do with the what-needs-a-buff poll, to make it less likely that it's going to induce excessive rage   Though I imagine if it's a winner from the AI-side poll folks will be cheering instead

Anyway: what most needs a nerf?  Anything human-usable or AI-usable is fair-game this time around, though each poll will probably only have 2-3 votes per person.


For reference, previous winners (in the sense that they got nerfs/changes as a result) :
I (Player-Side) - Botnet Golem
I (AI-Side) - AI Eye, Spire Stealth Battleship, Spire Shield Guard Post

=== One change from previous polls ===

To make it less likely I'll miss your nomination while reading a bunch of posts, please put each nomination on its own line with the string "*Nomination:" in front of it (no double-quotes), so for example, here's two of my nominations (for real, actually) :

*Nomination: Hive Golem, Player-side
*Nomination: Spirecraft Penetrator, Player-side

(neither is ever used by the AI, iirc, but
And feel perfectly free to include as much discussion/explanation of these as you like, just separate from those lines so I don't miss them.

Sorry if it feels like a silly format; it kind of is   But I think in most of these polls I've missed at least one nomination and/or munged it into something else when trying to distill a paragraph of info into a poll-choice-name.

[rabican]

TDL

Best utility in game,  godly damage, sturdy , fast , decently long range, partially ignores FF, god among ships.

[Lancefighter]

*Nomination: AI wormhole guard posts
*Nomination: Player Heavy Beam Cannons


I feel like the HBC's should become per-planet, as collections of them are just incredibly strong.

[TechSY730]

*Nomination: All gravity emitting units (human and AI)
   The mechanic, IMO, is fine, it is a question of magnitude. Even the MK. Is slow things down way too much, given how easy it is to get your hands on them, and how little they cost. (Though a mechanics change proposal that has gotten some popularity is to make it a percentage slowdown based system, but with a floor to prevent already slow units from becoming too useless in the field)

*Nomination: Gravity turrets
   In addition to the reason above, going up in mark gives a buff in slow down amount, get a buff in slowdown distance, get a buff in cap HP, and keeps a consistent cap. All of these together make the higher marks of grav turrets severely OP. At least one or two of those increases (or for the last one, consistency) over mark needs to go. Also, it should be noted, like all the other Mk. I grav units, even the Mk. I grav turret has a really crazy big slowdown for how cheap they are to get.

*Nomination: Zenith Paralyzers
   These are either underpowered or overpowered, due to their extreme fragility but the "boolean" nature of paralyzing (even just one paralysis damage is enough to paralyze, even if it is for a very short time) makes their usefulness very, very volatile (often times, depending on which "side" gets their shots out first). IMO, these ships cannot be balanced as long as paralysis is "boolean" like this; I think a mechanics change to paralysis is needed.

[KDR_11k]

*Nomination: Spire Gravity Drain (at least AI side, haven't tried them myself)

SGDs are insanely effective for preventing you from getting anywhere fast. Transports are pretty much hard-countered and require sending an unloaded force along to scrape the drains off the transport. Anything that's not simply going to crush every AI unit in a 10k pixel radius will likely be overrun by defenders while it can't move forward. And you can't simply pause, rightclick the drain to set a priority target and queue up the previous movement again, priority targets don't stick if you don't unpause between giving the attack order and overwriting it with something else (e.g. move). It doesn't even matter how many drains there are, a single one can slow everything down and more just means you need to comb through the enemy forces to check where they're hiding.

[KDR_11k]

*Nomination: AI wormhole guard posts

Halve their cap DPS!

[Volatar]

*Nomination: AI wormhole guard posts

Huh?

[TechSY730]

*Nomination: AI wormhole guard posts

Huh?

I think he is referring to their HP, which seems a bit excessive even for the purpose of discouraging destroying them directly.

Either that, or it was a joke. I can't really tell.

[TechSY730]

I would say the energy extractors, but in single player mode, they seem about right. In co-op, or in multi-HW, then things start getting out of wack...you start getting way too much energy. Not sure why this happens though; may be a perception thing. As such, I am not nominating them yet.

[Lancefighter]

Slightly joke, slightly theyre just really annoying. They dont actually do anything except annoy me. They prevent the healing of one of my units, and make them flash a lot..

Its not really a huge thing, its just that thye make giant circles on the map (i like always use z+x to move around all the time) that I cant heal while inside of.

If they had shorter range, or were actually destroyable by something less than a spire capital fleet? They just get annoying. Their only purpose is to sit there literally doing nothing.

[TechSY730]

Slightly joke, slightly theyre just really annoying. They dont actually do anything except annoy me. They prevent the healing of one of my units, and make them flash a lot..

Its not really a huge thing, its just that thye make giant circles on the map (i like always use z+x to move around all the time) that I cant heal while inside of.

If they had shorter range, or were actually destroyable by something less than a spire capital fleet? They just get annoying. Their only purpose is to sit there literally doing nothing.

Range nerf seems appropriate to me, and a minor HP nerf. (75% of their current HP?)
But as you mentioned, more annoying than OP.

[Lancefighter]

I mean if they just had 50% or less range, or even didn't shoot, I would be perfectly fine with their hp. Its just the combination of "annoying" and "brick wall" that doesnt work very well.

[KDR_11k]

*Nomination: keith.lamothe

 

[TechSY730]

I mean if they just had 50% or less range, or even didn't shoot, I would be perfectly fine with their hp. Its just the combination of "annoying" and "brick wall" that doesnt work very well.

The shooting is needed due to how the "when to put the ships on alert state/out of stand down mode" logic works. I would support half range though. The weapon is used as a "activation hack", not for any meaningful offense, meaning it shouldn't have much range at all.

[Lancefighter]

They used to be cloaked. They worked fine then, didn't they?
I mean that was 4 or so major versions ago, granted.