Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (V)

[Commiesalami]

I think the metal/crystal manufactorums (The ones that convert one resource to another) need a boost.  I understand having each individual one only convert a small amount in order to allow for optimization, but in order to be able to convert large amounts of resources you tend to need 50+.  I think a reduction in their build time and cost are in order to simply let players be able to build large amounts in order to more quickly react to economy overflows.

[bonreu]

Teloport seems alittle bit much in AI hands when they can throw waves at you and ignore your defences, maybe some kind of unlocked turret thing that prevents teloporting near by it would make it so they dont pop in and kill your command center.
but not the point of the thread, id say that that the deflector i belive it is, the one that reduces the power of lazers, is missing its nich. aside from a couple of guadians that i focus down to start with and some bonus ships nearly nothing uses lazers. and if you want a long rang attacker there are better choices out there by far.

[Martyn van Buren]

I don't know about a nerf to AI teleporters --- they're a rare unit and you can turn them off in the lobby, and they add an interesting wrinkle to fleet defense when you're up against them.  That kind of variety is good and contributes to the kind of defense-in-depth situation we've been talking about trying to encourage elsewhere.  Not everything needs to have a simple out-of-the-box counter, and there are Mk III logistic stations if you really can't deal with them.  I think the current balance, where there's no clear best answer, is good. 

[zoutzakje]

we can vote for any human ship/ structure right? anyone remembers the ''cleanup drone needs a purpose'' topic? well, it does lol. Right now it is only helpfull when playing against Mine Enthousiast, and even then i think it's still a bit underwhelming. I can't come up with any ideas for improvements atm though.
starship knowledge costs need a look at.
and infiltrators have already been nominated, which is good. Right now, they make good cannon fodder, but that's all i think can think of doing with them.

[CodeMichael]

Spire Mini rams still feel useless to me.  They just aren't useful enough as a one shot ship.  They make starships a non-issue, but generally starships aren't a big problem anyway.  And not being able hurt hunter killers is a real problem for me (I'm not saying they should be able to, just that I'll take a ship that can over them because of it).

I hate using teleporting units, but I think that's probably just a personal problem.  Still Teleporting battle stations do seem to be the weakest of the bunch.

Tachyon Emitters don't seem to do that great a job and they're radius is so tiny.

I'd like to see a higher ship cap with Spire Maws and lower nom nom capacity, they just don't feel effective right now.

[PokerChen]

I'd like to see a higher ship cap with Spire Maws and lower nom nom capacity, they just don't feel effective right now.

Does this count as a nom-mination? Hopefully:
"Update 5.03x - Children of the Cookie-Monster"

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with everyone regarding decoy drones, but not because of their lack of power in the player's hands.  Add the support style AI to any game, and you'll see how brutal decoys can be in the AI's hands.  They don't need a buff or nerf, they need to be glared at until the targetting mechanics for them are better understood.

On a broader level, is it possible to just give the AI an experimental unlock every 500 raw AIP or so? The Experimentalist AI will have instead an extra fleet-ship unlock. We don't really see them enough in games to accurately gauge their balance. I'm leaning towards not buffing Decoy Drones as well, having played a support corps(9)/sledge hammer(9) - perhaps their caps needs to increase for players, but not necessarily for AI (Depends on how Support Corps AI spawn these).

1) Neinzul Factory Ships.  Their K prices, enforced Engineer III investment, and tin-plating make them more of a novelty ship then something you could use with heavy strategy.

Okay, who else has tried to speed-run a normal AI with Neinzul enclave starships? I haven't encountered too much problems in keeping them alive - cloaking them is usually sufficient. The IIIs and IVs will stay alive rather well, it's only the Is that are paper-thin.

Separate issue: I noticed that the only real bottleneck in using mark-IV fleet ships is the initial construction... Once you have the cap roaming with your fleet, replacements are relatively much rarer since lower mark ships will usually be targeted and taken out first. Replacement being lower means lower priority for replacements being built where the fight is. So Neinzul Enclave-IVs could use some production boosts with mark increases.

Spire Mini rams still feel useless to me.

Try Spire Mini Rams-Vs Spawning from an AI super-terminal! My hacking ended rather soon after they overwhelmed the Fortresses and HBCs. The Raw stats, again, don't seem to be the problem. What if they did 0.1 to command grade instead?

[TechSY730]

The military starship K costs could certainly use adjusting. However, I didn't nominate them for worst unit because if you do get a Mk. II or Mk. III starship, they can actually start dishing out good damage. Maybe not enough to be worth their knowledge cost, but still performs well enough for me not to consider them one of the worst units.

And how could I forget about the cleanup drones. I'll second that nomination, and add that to my list of four nomination (or rather, list of five now)

[Hearteater]

Cleanup and Tachyon Drones should be merged and the AI made to aggressive repair mine fields (or repair anything actually, I've never seen an AI engineer do anything at all).  That would solve two problems: Cleanup Drones are useful and Tachyon Drones are improved.  The new Sweeper Drones would need a higher cap than the Tachyon Drone and probably should get some more Tachyon range.  And they should be able to destroy intact-minefields they detect fairly quickly (assuming nothing destroys them while they are clearing the minefield).

[keith.lamothe]

6) Harvesters, still far too weak.  It takes me 5 minutes to have my econ at 1 mill/1mill with these at level III in the opening part of the game.  That's just wrong for the cost.  Sheesh.  Please, buff these.  Maybe we can add a mechanic where each MK III harvester will pump out a MK V patrolling zombie fighter or something, or just a random unlocked fleet ship.

Was this a "let's see if anyone thinks I'm being sarcastic" check?

[zoutzakje]

yeah, I already didn't take that one serious Keith
I was used to playing with a crap economy (logistics commands only) and now with the new harvesters I suddenly find I'm having a hard time getting out of resources. While with economics command station you won't get any of it's effect until you actually get some new planets, the overbuffed harvesters can get me to maxed resources easily when I have only got my homeworld.
With my playstyle, most 7/7 games have become a walk in the park now. I'm tempted to NOT upgrade my harvesters to mk III, just to make it somewhat more challenging.

[TechSY730]

It's pretty amazing that the combination of the extra resources on the homeworld and the fact the harvesters don't have a cap unlike econ stations was enough to throw how they were balanced (average of 4 total resource spots per non-HW planet, which is actually correct, and make that equivalent with the corresponding econ station) completely off.

I guess we (or at least Keith) really underestimated the importance of those two factors.

[Bas92]

And for the same knowledge cost as well. Both the econ station and metal/crystal mark harvesters cost 9000 knowledge (mark II + III).

I vote for a cap. Right now mark I/II harvesters are useless when you have mark III harvesters while every other mark I ship in the game never loses it's usefulness (well, on 60-120 planets at least).

[TechSY730]

And for the same knowledge cost as well. Both the econ station and metal/crystal mark harvesters cost 9000 knowledge (mark II + III).

Oh yea, they have no cap but are still balanced and knowledge costed to the same degree of something with a cap. That is another factor as to why Mk. III harvesters seem OP right now.

Oh yea, and the fact the Econ stations have an opportunity cost (if you use an econ station, you don't get the benefits of the other station types), but harvesters don't, but they still give the same average rewards per new planet.

I vote for a cap. Right now mark I/II harvesters are useless when you have mark III harvesters while every other mark I ship in the game never loses it's usefulness (well, on 60-120 planets at least).

You mean like having a cap for Mk. III and Mk. II, but leave Mk. I uncapped, like we do with the command stations?
Yea, that could work, but one, what is a good cap?
IIRC, the cap for MK. II stations is 6, and the cap for the Mk. III stations is 4. Thus, if we want to keep the parity with econ stations thing going, that would mean Mk. II harvesters would have a cap of 12 each (avg. 2 harvesters of a single type per planet * 6 planets), and Mk. III harvesters would have a cap of 8 each (same, but * 4 planets)
The caps may need some fiddling to properly account for the larger number of harvesters on homeworlds (like add an extra 4 to each cap or something)

Two concerns,
One, this would complicate auto-harvester rebuild logic and auto-harvester upgrade logic (where do you want your Mk. II and Mk. III harvesters when you unlock a new one, how should it choose?)
Two, this would remove one of the distinguishing factors of harvesters vs. econ stations

[Hearteater]

Any form of caps or features that cause lower Mark Harvesters to be built would require nodes remember what Mark was built there so we only have to make the decision once.  Here is my previous suggestion on them, although honestly maybe even drop the Mark II completely so there are only two marks of Harvestors: cheap and quickly replaced, and high-output but expensive and slow to replace.  Then let the Harvester Shields cover players who want durable.  Although note that the Mark II example I list below is not cloaked so they still draw off enemy ships.

I almost wish Harvester II and Harvester III were more special purpose so you'd actually keep build lower Marks just like with ships.  Something like:

Harvester I: 24 resources/sec, 2,000 resources, 40k health, 2:00 build
Harvester II: 24 resources/sec, 5,000 resources, 60k health, 4:00 build, Armor: 500, Radar Dampening 2000, Immunity: Sniper, Knowledge: 1,250 (each)
Harvester III: 48 resources/sec, 10,000 resources, 40k health, 8:00 build, Knowledge: 2,750 (each)

This would make Mark II's better for combat systems were their radar dampening/sniper immunity can keep them alive.  Mark I's would be slightly better for trash systems or places you expect even the Mark II's defenses won't keep them alive.  Basically any place you'll be rebuilding them a lot.  And Mark III's are great economically, but you don't want them dying so you'd save those for non-combat systems.  Ideally if we build specific Marks of Harvesters on each node in a system it would remember and rebuild them if they died.  So on a whipping boy I could build Mark II's mostly, but on that one node right next to the incoming wormhole I can just put a Mark I since I know I'm going to lose it every wave anyway.

[keith.lamothe]

If folks want to start a new thread on harvester suggestions that might be good   For what it's worth, I would rather remove the II/III upgrades than make them capped, because a smooth auto-build experience is really important for those.  Any solution that involves people having to pay attention to constructing individual harvesters (unless there's enemy ships on the planet) isn't really going to fly for me.