Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (VIII)

[keith.lamothe]

I started the nominations for poll VII over three months ago.  Where'd all the time go? (sees Ancient Shadows on steam) Oh, right.   For those of you who may be curious, the expansion has thus far sold decently well; nothing mind-blowing, but it's not looking like we're gonna lose money on the deal either.

Anyway, need to get this ball rolling again so we can keep the polishing going.  FYI: discussion and thinkering about the Armor-Redo is ongoing, but that doesn't need to dominate what we do here.

So: what most needs a buff?  Anything human-usable is fair-game this time around, though the poll will probably only have 2-3 votes per person.

For reference, previous winners (in the sense that they got buffs as a result) :
I - Vorticular Cutlass
II - Acid Sprayer
III - IRE, Space Plane, Vampire Claw
IV - Harvester Exo-Shield, Harvester, Warp Jammer Command Station, Mobile Repair Station
V - Neinzul Enclave Starship (buffs, can now build drones), Armored Warhead, Manufactories, Teleport Battlestation, Riot MkIII (new modules)
VI - Zenith Reserve, Decloaker, Captive Human Settlement, Spire Armor Rotter
VII - Spire Archive, Human Home Forcefield Generator, Zenith/Spire Starships

=== 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: Zenith Reprocessor
*Nomination: Infiltrator

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]

infiltrator , laser gatling ---> such low damage and armor piercing that they be horrid vs anything with armor.

Wouldn't be a problem if their damage vs unarmored targets was great but it really isn't.

[Lancefighter]

*Nomination: Flagships
*Nomination: Hardened forcefields

Could throw down paragraphs worth of "because blah", but ultimately pointless for the moment.

[KDR_11k]

At least infils ignore FFs.

*Nomination: Special Forces Rally Guardian

If it goes into your territory it increases the SF cap by 5% until it dies. It might as well not be there.

*Nomination: Counter Dark Matter Turret

Dark Matter is pretty much only a token weapon for things that should be military but don't have any real firepower.

*Nomination: Deflector Drone

Lasers are such a random weapon type that the effect isn't worth it. They don't have a specific role like energy bombs or pose a major threat like flame waves.

*Nomination: Tachyon Drone

Yeah it's free but it has a cap of two and a range so short that you might as well not even try. If you need tachyons there's no way around unlocking something better because this thing's just too pathetic.

*Nomination: SF Guard Post combat capabilities

The SF guard post used to be dangerous but it stagnated while everything else got exponentially more powerful. Now it's just another guard post that's pushed over.

[Volatar]

*Nomination: Raiders

Not the worst ship ever but currently quite weak.

*Nomination: Anti-Armor

Currently not very useful.

[TechSY730]

*Nomination: Teleport raiders
   Almost everything would would like to raid with them are minor-electric immune

For the low cap ships, I think that previous discussion of slightly nerfing cap-HP of low cap ships and slightly buffing the HP of high cap ships would do wonders. (Again, not by a huge amount, I would say no less that .8x adjustment for the low stuff, and no more than 1.2x adjustment for the high stuff, scaling for how above and how below cap they are of course)

EDIT:

Oh yea,

*Nomination: Spire Teleporting Leeches
   Still a bit on the expensive side, and unlike the teleport raiders and the teleport battlestations, they don't have a decent cap amount or cap HP to make up for their teleportion "stun" time, nor do they really have the DPS to give them other usefulness (though as a reclaiming unit, that is understandible)

[TechSY730]

One more (though I will probably think of more)

*Nomination: Spire Gravity Ripper
  Their effect is actually really nifty, but their low cap, and their only one shot per salvo, means they won't be slowing very much down at all. I think just something like 1/3x per bullet damage but giving them 3x bullets per salvo will fix that.

[KDR_11k]

*Nomination: Astro Train

Main purpose: Causing false alarms by throwing a pebble at a command station.

[TechSY730]

*Nomination: Astro Train

Main purpose: Causing false alarms by throwing a pebble at a command station.

The regen trains and the speed booster trains are actually pretty annoying, and can really make an impact on battle. The rest though, yea, they aren't doing much.
And for all but the turret trains, their weapons are like fleas. For turrets trains, if it consintrates all of its bullets on one object, a Mk. II turret train might muster enough power to take out 1 Mk. I turret. 
(Granted, that is more than the other trains can claim)


The tachyon beams are a legitimate threat they all share, though.

[TechSY730]

*Nomination: Zenith Reactors
   Actually, in single player, single HW mode, these are still quite desirable, as energy pressure is still maintained in that case. However, as I noted in the "nerf bat" poll, in multi-HW or co-op, energy seems to be too abundant, making it not all that useful in those cases.
   Also, is there a reason why their HP is so low for something that causes AIP on death even if in human hands? Against a plasma seige starship, if the "FF penetrating splash" hits the Z Reactor each time, then it only take 3-5 hits for it to go down (depending on various circumstances), making it annoying to defend, enough so that capturing randomly seeded ones is often times not worth it.

Not a nomination, but if the power collectors get a nerf, then the matter converters should get a buff.
Actually, would it be possible to make the converters more "granular", such as make each one generate only half the power, but only cost half as much (both to build and per second)?

[KDR_11k]

The fabricators and advanced factory also have rather pathetic HP, probably a leftover from the times when 400k HP was a lot.

[TechSY730]

The fabricators and advanced factory also have rather pathetic HP, probably a leftover from the times when 400k HP was a lot.

That is almost enough for me to nominate these as well, but not quite.

[keith.lamothe]

The fabricators and advanced factory also have rather pathetic HP, probably a leftover from the times when 400k HP was a lot.

The fabs have been buffed health-wise semi-recently, but yea.

[Cinth]

*Nomination: Zenith Reprocessor

Screw Wheaties, these guys eat champions for breakfast.  When the AI rolls these guys, it is trouble for any and all hulls they have bonuses against. I'd rather deal with SSBs (you guys think those are OP?) than a mass of ZRs.

[Wingflier]

You know Adv. Factories are made out of paper when you've got a Spire Modular Fortress with T2 Shields sitting on top of it, the enemy doesn't even have eye bots, infiltrators, or any bonus ship like that, and the planet hasn't been attacked for at least an hour...you come back to see that that the Factory has spontaneously disappeared without warning.