Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (IV)

[Hearteater]

Mobile Repair Station is another unit than needs help.

[TechSY730]

It seems like many other people have echoed what I wanted to say anyways, but here I go anyways.
Mobile Repair Station: 1 minute is too long of a cool down and self-repairs too slow, especially for its 4k knowledge cost (I have some Mantis issues about these, 6066 and 6064)
Neinzul enclave: Self-construction rate is too slow overall, self-construction rate should go up over marks, needs more health
Etherjet-tractor: Can you double check its cap HP? It seems low at the moment, even for a ship that is supposed to be on the fragile side of things
All the ships in the release notes of 5.028 that you said need a more serious rebalancing effort: For reference, you mentioned the Spire Gravity Drain, Spire Gravity Ripper, and Spire Armor Rotter
Bomber starship: It's HP is less than that of the Plasma seige starship. It seems odd that the starship that is supposed to be the most fragile military starship isn't. Other than that, bomber starships are pretty good. They could use some minor bonuses similar to that of bombers, but their unboosted DPS is pretty dang good even by starship standards. I wouldn't mind it losing some speed though, if for no other reason than to make them easier to manage in a fleet.
Mk. II military starships in general: Aside from the fleet starship, 5k knowledge is of questionable worth for Mk. II starships, especially when Mk. III and Mk. IV fleetships are only 1k more (6k). It gets even worse for Mk. III, at a whopping 7k. Can this be brought down to 4k and 5k? Though I could live with 6k for Mk. III as well.
Non-military starships: There needs to be some sort of "treated like a military ship" similar to that given to scout starships.


Plasma Seige starships: Actually, this is not a request for a buff, but a request for a nerf. Applying 10k engine damage in a AOE manner is sort of OP. Can this be changed such that only its direct target gets the full 10k engine damage, and everything else gets a significantly smaller percentage of it? Also, their "damage stuff under forcefields" effect seems to damage under construction Zenith trader stuff. Isn't most of the stuff that is capturable (which is most of the zenith trader offerings) supposed to be immune to this effect?

[TechSY730]

Also, for people talking about how the armor booster from the Zenith trader isn't worth it. They do suffer from a similar problem that the armor booster fleet ship has, they don't do squat to ships with 0 armor, and a similar fix should occur for them (give them a minimum armor to boost to). However, they do have a wonderful purpose. The Zenith armor booster can boost things that are immune to armor boosting. So fortresses and hardened forcefields can get their armor boosted, where normal armor boosters cannot do that.

Oh, and on the topic of armor booster fleet ships, 6028: Armor booster still tries to boost armor of modules

[Cyborg]

The cost for losing a harvester is 80 seconds in resources + 150 seconds lost income for each occurance.    Cost = ( 80sec + 150sec ) * x,  where x = # times destroyed
The cost for the Exoshield is 80 seconds in resources + 0.5 * income for all the time it runs.  Cost = 80 + 0.5y.  where y = time the Exoshield exists.
Setting the two equations equal to each other and solving gives
y = 300 + 460(x-1)
or
x = (160 + y) / 460

Not that it matters, because we all know that this unit is a burden on the player, but I'm surprised you are measuring resources in seconds rather than straight efficiency, as the time might not be a big deal if you have a good economy or a lot of savings.

[Diazo]

I'm looking at this and thinking to take away the K cost and have them available at game start, but leave the half resource gain intact, or maybe even increase it, along with an armor increase to help it survive FF immune ships. (Or even give it an attack? Half the power of a basic turret just so it can fight off that lone ship that slips through?)

The logic behind this being that exo-shields are for high risk deposits, such as that one that is only 8000 range away from a hostile wormhole, not for every deposit you have.

I would probably not unlock exo-shields for only 2 or 3 deposits even if they had the resource penalty removed, I have better things to spend my K on.

But if it did not cost me any K and I could keep that harvester from being destroyed every (other) wave, I would build it even if I was significantly reducing that harvesters output.

I suppose it depends on what the exo-shield is supposed to be, a smallish survival upgrade to protect your harvesters from leakers that slip though, or a high-cost high-survival upgrade for only a few specific harvesters?

I have nothing to add on the other ships brought up in the thread at the moment.

D.

[Cyborg]

What is bad about the economic impact is you are losing the benefit of your high risk deposits in addition to making the game feel that much slower. It takes so much time to get money in this game. I know I'm one of those people that is always poor in this game, but there's nothing worse than having to go watch a movie because your income isn't as fast as your gameplay.

[Ranakastrasz]

How about hardened shields? They really dont seem like anything other than a purchased Shield capacity boost, unless the attacker has near-infinite damage and armor piercing, in which case they suck.
Why not just add a way to purchase additional shield capacity? It makes more sense....

[TechSY730]

I like hardened shields. Yes, they have a very similar role to normal shields, but they fair much better against things with no armor piercing. You would start noticing the difference if the AI was allowed to use them, and then you would start to see how their armor can make an impact in combat.

EDIT: I would also like to echo the sentiments of the exo-harvester shields. Half economic output is FAR to severe. Maybe like 25% reduction in output

Also, does the harvester line in general need a boost in economic output? I know that the higher marks of harvesters need a boost, a K cost reduction, a merging of the unlock tech lines, or most likely, all of the above.

[Diazo]

What is bad about the economic impact is you are losing the benefit of your high risk deposits in addition to making the game feel that much slower. It takes so much time to get money in this game. I know I'm one of those people that is always poor in this game, but there's nothing worse than having to go watch a movie because your income isn't as fast as your gameplay.

That is the point of the exo shields stats being boosted and for high-risk deposits only though, even at a reduced harvested output the lower output of the exo-shielded harvester that survives is better then the output of a non-shielded harvester that keeps getting destroyed.

Balancing required of course and it would depend on your specific game setup, but that's why I'm okay with the resource penalty staying if the K costs are removed.

Also, does the harvester line in general need a boost in economic output? I know that the higher marks of harvesters need a boost, a K cost reduction, a merging of the unlock tech lines, or most likely, all of the above.

This would require careful tweaking to keep it from becoming overpowered late game when you have lots of harvesters on the board. Actually, looking at the economic stuff in general, I think the economy is unbalanced towards the command stations. It's not bad at the Mk I level where an ecomonic command station produces 3.2 harvesters worth of resources, but a Mk II economic command is 5.7 Mk II harvesters and 8.9 harvesters worth at Mk III. (A MK III economic station is worth 16 Mk I harvesters!)

I'm not sure that's quite where it should be with a system with 'decent' resources (in my opinion) has 4 to 6 deposits and I often take systems with 2 or less deposits for other reasons. Having said that, a rework of the resource gathering system is not on the board at the moment.

D.

[chemical_art]

The problem with reducing the resources of harvesters is that they are inefficent.

Let's assume there is one whipping boy. It gets attacked on average every ten minutes. Let's assume the harvestors get popped, and it takes 3 minutes for it to recover without shields.

So on average there would be 7 minutes of the harvester being "on" with 3 minutes of it "off".

For ease of access, assume that harvestor does 2 resources a minute. So there is 14 resources per 10 minute.

Now use the shields. They take away half resources. They never get popped. What do they generate during those 10 minutes?

10 resources.


So in this imaginary scenario, exo shields, even in a perfect whipping boy situation, fails miserably. Because the problem is that the resources lost in the big picture with unshielded harvesters is small, while the resource lost with shields is constant.

The problem gets far worst if the waves are spread out in any fashion, because there is even less downtime for the harvestors.

[keith.lamothe]

On harvester shields: how OP could they actually be, even if completely free and automatic?  Not that I'm at all entertaining such kindness to the player   But possibly some simplification: have them cost some moderate amount of K (1000 or 2000) such that you'd be rewarded for not needing them at all, and just balance their energy cost so that the direct m/c cost (which is an extremely rare mechanic) can go away.  And if you're running them off the ZPG and paying almost nothing for them, well, yay for ZPGs.

Or is that just a really bad idea?

[chemical_art]

Not that OP I think. A flat K cost and energy cost would compensate, and they blow up anyway when the comm station dies.

[Hearteater]

I like that solution.

[Diazo]

On the numbers, here's how I'm looking at it for Mk I harvesters.

150 Second build time, 80 seconds to recover the build cost (technically from a different harvester, but still a cost), so 230 seconds of lost resources. Mk I unshielded gathers at 20/sec, sheilded at 10/sec.

Shielded Resources Gathered = 10res / 1 sec * Time
Unshielded Resources Gathered = 20 res / 1 sec * (Time - 230)   The 230 being the seconds to rebuild and pay back the build costs.

Calculating that out, at 460 seconds the production will equal, that's 7 minutes, 40 seconds. So 460 seconds after the harvester is started to be built is when then costs equal. To account for the time after the harvester is destroyed but before it is starting to rebuild (when enemy ships are still in the system), we double that time as well. So if the ships are in the system for 1 minute (60 seconds) after destroying the harvester, that's 9 minutes 40 seconds before the costs equal, almost the 10 minutes between waves in your example.

That's still not very good, but not as atrocious as they seem at first glance.

On harvester shields: how OP could they actually be, even if completely free and automatic?  Not that I'm at all entertaining such kindness to the player   But possibly some simplification: have them cost some moderate amount of K (1000 or 2000) such that you'd be rewarded for not needing them at all, and just balance their energy cost so that the direct m/c cost (which is an extremely rare mechanic) can go away.  And if you're running them off the ZPG and paying almost nothing for them, well, yay for ZPGs.

Or is that just a really bad idea?

Hmmm, that would make them a better option then they are currently, at least against AI's who have raid type ships (cloaking, high speed, etc.) that have a high probability of leakers. But that would be classifying the exo-shields as a smaller survival boost for a lower cost on all your harvesters, as opposed to the high-cost, high-survival shield that you only put on a few harvesters that I am talking about.

D.

[chemical_art]

I wish parasite starships had their number of shots reduced to 1 and their damage scaled upward to compensate. That would slow down their potential reclamation, but in the frenzy of macro combat it would ensure every battle had a few ships reclaimed.