Parasite rebalance discussion.

[Shardz]

2. Parasites tag ships for reclamation with 100% effectiveness, but instead of those ships being reclaimed when their health reaches 0, they are destroyed leaving remains that have to be recovered by a RR before being usable.
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I vote for this idea!

Yep! I like this idea the best, too! This won't give you an immediate edge in battle and it won't reduce the parasite's effectiveness and usefulness ultimately, either. You still have to command the battle all the way through to the end and win to claim your prize (cleanup on aisle five!). This also gives synergy to the Repairer with more functionality as they sit around 95% of the time doing nothing anyway (on quiet planets). Now we just have to decide how the AI's Cleaners will handle these wrecks knowing you'll be back to add them to your fleets. Does the AI even make Cleaners? I haven't seen them make one yet.

Things that make you go HRRMMMMMM! 

[Spikey00]

An appropriate and interesting suggestion--though would it affect turrets, as they already leave wreckage behind?

[I-KP]

What about supply (for the Rebuilder)?  Parasites wouldn't be much use in areas without supply which kind of makes them even less useful than they are now.

[bongotron2000]

Now we just have to decide how the AI's Cleaners will handle these wrecks knowing you'll be back to add them to your fleets. Does the AI even make Cleaners? I haven't seen them make one yet.

It probably wouldn't be too difficult for the AI to make cleaners, as they could use the same logic as the human ones and it would be in their interest to not have these ships reclaimed. It is, of course, yet another thing for the AI to think about. Though now you mention that, maybe the AI could even make rebuilders to reclaim its own ships back. That really does make you go HRRRRRMMMM!

Actually, if the AI was using parasites itself, it would have to use rebuilders anyway. To stop things getting too complicated and confusing, maybe it should be the case that remains can only be reclaimed by whoever destroyed the ship or turret, not just anyone, with cleaners being used to remove them altogether. (I think this is already the case).

An appropriate and interesting suggestion--though would it affect turrets, as they already leave wreckage behind?

I imagine that this would affect turrets too. I quite miss being able to steal turrets. It was probably a bit too powerful before reclaiming AI turrets when attacking a system (especially with Leech Starships) as the reclaimed turrets did much of the work clearing the AI from around the wormholes. Allowing turrets to be reclaimed again with a bit more effort and delay might balance it out a bit.

As a further defense against this being too powerful, the rebuilders could stop working if they get decloaked by a tachyon emitter and automatically attempt to retreat to a safer place where they can't be seen.

What about supply (for the Rebuilder)?  Parasites wouldn't be much use in areas without supply which kind of makes them even less useful than they are now.

Good point. The rebuilder would need supply, otherwise this would be exploitable. The wreckage would stay until it was either reclaimed or cleaned.

Slightly crazy idea follows:
Transports could collect ship remains (probably not turret remains) and take them back to a system with supply to be reclaimed. This could be a researchable ability, probably quite a cheap one, and could be enabled/disabled by the use of normal operations/low-power modes respectively.

Even if parasites were less useful in areas without supply, I still think that they are useful. The way I look at them is that you are sacrificing raw firepower for the ability to gain not just free ships, but entire populations of new types of free ships without needing to spend research points on Mk2 and Mk3. It's almost like getting extra Advanced Research Stations and even Core Fabricators and Advanced Factories but without the worry of having to defend those, which is incredibly valuable. Something that valuable really needs a few downsides

[I-KP]

You need Parasites to be useful out of supply because a good number of the hard battles are conducted in 'out of supply' situations, there'd be no point having Parasites if they're never around for the important battles; I doubt few would pick them as their Special if this were the case.  They would simply become a weak swarm that left wreckage everywhere (which you cannot use until the hard battles are already won).  That's just backwards.  Leaving wreckage is a nice idea but you'd have to make the Rebuilders not require supply and that probably breaks that rules a fair bit and opens up more oportunity for exploits.  The object here (I think) is to make Parasites desireable once again and not simply replace one nerf with another.

[Spikey00]

I'm less confident of the idea--mainly because of the extra trouble players would have to go through with constructing reclaimers, ensuring the enemy AI doesn't clean them (impossible, as they are cloaked ships so players would need anti-stealth everywhere), "dibs on reclaiming" vs allies, and the worry about the planet being in supply, on top of the "what do I do with them when I reclaim".

Perhaps the best method of change is for minimum damage required upon an enemy ship before it is reclaimed at XX% HP; however, I still prefer how it worked before without all the complications--now players will have to worry about, "well, how can I maximize probability of converting units (in swarm) without risking parasites to bad unit hit-types" instead of having them mixed with other fleets for protection and knowing that they will always be reliable  in reclaiming.

[bongotron2000]

I do agree that the whole reclaimers thing could generally too much trouble and too much of a nerf. Perhaps this mechanic could just work on turrets as these require supply to work anyway, with a more standard instant reclaim working on ships.

What about making parasites work like munitions boosters? Instead of increasing attack strength they increase 'parasite power' (or something) of other nearby ships (from a base of zero, of course), the value of which determines the probabilty of reclaiming destroyed ships and/or the health when they are reclaimed. Higher mark level parasites could have greater parasite power boosts and range of influence.

[Shardz]

After thinking about this a while and the depth that it appears to take, it does seem that it's getting overly complicated and a bit on the deep end of micromanagement ultimately. Now we are starting to look for a serum for the serum's serum of the original bite in some sort of search for a panacea for balance which is getting more blurred the more we discuss it further. While it's great to explore avenues of mechanics and hidden strategies due to cause and effect, perhaps in this case it's getting more complex than it really needs to be. After all, we have quite a bit to manage on a global scale as it is; to include scrap bickering over turrets and reclaimed units to the point where we need three units just to accomplish one task is getting a bit much in my opinion.  While the possibilities go as deep as any rabbit hole ever could, perhaps a more simplistic approach in balancing might be in order instead of trying to trump units like this just to realize the attack effect of one unit. Just my two cents.

[TheWordWillSetYouFree]

Raid and leech should be different lines.

Leech line could be improved by cloaking and increasing their attack, while the raid line would become faster and more deadly to point targets.

Anywho, I really dislike the last hit reclamation idea. Since their attack sucks anyway, ships that they do luckily kill have rubbish health when they become yours!
In my opinion it makes reclamation useless.

[Fiskbit]

Does anyone have any objections to the old way of reclaiming ships?

As for the starship lines, cloaking seems to me like it'd be more useful on the raid line than the leech one; it better complements the hit-and-run mentality, I think. Leech starships, if they can't reclaim turrets, strike me as a starship that I'd use to augment a fleet, where cloaking wouldn't matter as much. Maybe cloaking on it could be useful, though, for sneaking up on targets before trying to reclaim them. Regardless of how it's done, though, I really think splitting these ships up into two lines will work better with their abilities.

[Shardz]

I personally have no qualms the way it was with reclaiming. The last thing you want to do is play the game with a manual in one hand and feverishly clicking with the other. I made five Leech Starships for my sizeable fleet of 2000 units (around 20 starships total in the group), and I'm noticing they are always the first to die. More than likely the low hit points being the main factor, but for those kind of resources...let the buggers reclaim I say! As for the parasites, I make anywhere from 50-100 for my fleet when I send it out to take over planets and I'm lucky to get 10-20 ships back in one piece - not exactly killing the balance of gameplay on my end.

[x4000]

A few notes -- I've been watching this thread, mostly just staying out of it, and a lot of interesting things have been discussed and suggested.  At this point, here's the plan:

- Old way of handling reclamation.
- Parasites still need to be beefed up.
- Raid and Leech are definitely going to be split as starship lines, with 3 ships in each.

[TheWordWillSetYouFree]

Does anyone have any objections to the old way of reclaiming ships?

As for the starship lines, cloaking seems to me like it'd be more useful on the raid line than the leech one; it better complements the hit-and-run mentality, I think. Leech starships, if they can't reclaim turrets, strike me as a starship that I'd use to augment a fleet, where cloaking wouldn't matter as much. Maybe cloaking on it could be useful, though, for sneaking up on targets before trying to reclaim them. Regardless of how it's done, though, I really think splitting these ships up into two lines will work better with their abilities.

I agree, the leech line could become a competitor to the spire line, while raid would be in a niche market. The T3 raid should be able to run through a planet or two to kill a few data centers on the other end without much trouble.

Nice seeing a developer taking a keen interest in the community's opinion. I used to be very involved in the CoH community and relic were........ well......... just BAD.

[Spikey00]

Hm, the splitting of the raid and leech starships is a good change--I find that they are far less effective during late game.

I believe moving back to the old way of handling reclamation is perhaps a good move--perhaps it's the extra bit of complication to the parasites that won't work--which I found yesterday.

[Kjara]

What about having parasites do more damage the lower the enemy ship is(% wise-say 2-4x or more damage when the enemy is at 1% hp), and keeping that they have to get kills.  This way they won't be able to solo much(since they won't barely hurt full hp things), but will be great at picking off enemies?

Edit: if it was enough of a boost, they would still be good for picking off enemies that they can't reclaim, and would still be useful for that, just pretty useless on their own.

Edit: Formula wise I was thinking it could either be discrete(do 1.5x damage at 50%, 2.5x damage at 25%, 3.5x damage at 10% and 4x at 5%) or something continuous like (1+(100-ehp%)*3)*damage