Parasite/Leech Balance Discussion -- Thoughts?

[Winter Born]

I should clarify: leech starships are what I see as the core problem here, moreso than parasites themselves.

And having abilities that vary based on what ships you hold is... possible, but not something I'm inclined towards.  It just feels a bit abstract, to the point I worry it will be confusing.  But perhaps I'm overly wary on that one, not sure.

Right now there are five ways to get MkIV ships
Leach SS them (zero knowledge cost)
Mercenary Parasite (zero Knowledge cost)
ordinary parasite type fleet bonus ships
Enclave SS (20k knowledge cost) and spend the Kn to unlock through MkIII for each ship you want to build
Take and Hold and Advanced Factory and spend the Kn to unlock through MkIII for each ship you want to build


Leach/Parasites used to have to be the actual ship killer to capture an enemy ship, leading to random results in a mob fight to the point the wiki used to recommend a separate parasite fleet to be used to capture enemy ships.

right now Leach SS fire 300x40 every 4 seconds meaning it can tag for reclamation a large percentage of an attacking wave very quickly.
changing the number of tags it can fire while increasing it DPShot would mean it would tag fewer ships but not really change its effect on capping high tier ships w/o Kn cost.


I think it would be reasonable to be able to tag up to +1 of your mark level of leach/parasite.

If a particular Leach/Parasite can only tag +1 to get MkIV you can spend Kn to upgrade the  LeachSS/parasite fleet bonus ship of your choice, or buy the MkIV mercenary parasites.

I don't think thematically it would be confusing to only be able to "Leach" control of ships slightly (one Mk level) more advanced than what the player had spent the knowledge to understand.

[Vinraith]

Enclave SS (20k knowledge cost)
Take and Hold and Advanced Factory and spend the Kn to unlock thru MkIII for each ship you want to build

Not to nitpick, but shouldn't that be:

Take and Hold and Advanced Factory and spend the Kn to unlock thru MkIII for each ship you want to build
Enclave SS (20k knowledge cost) and spend the Kn to unlock thru MkIII for each ship you want to build

Surely finding a factory is preferable to dropping 20 Kn to unlock one?

[Lancefighter]

in his defense, the enclave ss is mobile, rebuildable, etc. It just costs a damn lot

[Winter Born]

Enclave SS (20k knowledge cost)
Take and Hold and Advanced Factory and spend the Kn to unlock through MkIII for each ship you want to build

Not to nitpick, but shouldn't that be:

Take and Hold and Advanced Factory and spend the Kn to unlock through MkIII for each ship you want to build
Enclave SS (20k knowledge cost) and spend the Kn to unlock through MkIII for each ship you want to build

Surely finding a factory is preferable to dropping 20 Kn to unlock one?

Oops will edit the above post

Main point  that only being able to leach/parasite Mk+1 works for me thematically and would make the Adv Factory a little more desirable.


ty

[Vinraith]

Enclave SS (20k knowledge cost)
Take and Hold and Advanced Factory and spend the Kn to unlock thru MkIII for each ship you want to build

Not to nitpick, but shouldn't that be:

Take and Hold and Advanced Factory and spend the Kn to unlock thru MkIII for each ship you want to build
Enclave SS (20k knowledge cost) and spend the Kn to unlock thru MkIII for each ship you want to build

Surely finding a factory is preferable to dropping 20 Kn to unlock one?

Ooops will edit the above post

ty

Not that the intended way of getting Mark IV's being second to last is much better, of course, but it does make it crystal clear that Leech/Parasites are the single major problem here.

[Winter Born]

[snip]

Not that the intended way of getting Mark IV's being second to last is much better, of course, but it does make it crystal clear that Leech/Parasites are the single major problem here.

agreed

[superking]

correct me if I'm wrong but parasite fleet ships are not the problem, the problem is the tagging characteristic of the leech starship

suggestion: X% of a units health must be damaged before it counts as tagged for reclamation. MK IV units would need many more hits from the leecher to be tagged.

[Ozymandiaz]

It's perfectly valid not to want Advanced Factories if you're relying more on starships, or you're just unlocking widely-but-not-deeply.  However, not needing them because the parasites are an easier way to get mark IV units... that's trouble.

My gut reaction would be to just make the leeches/parasites unable to reclaim mark IV or V units.  It's simple, it's easy, and it keeps the baseline of parasites/leeches working without letting them be so exploity.  I think it's a good change, thought parasite-lovers will of course complain.

Other suggestions in the past have revolved around not letting parasites/leeches capture above their mark level.  But that also winds up making the mark I leeches/parasites close to useless.  And with only having up through mark III leech starships, it would also have the same effect as my other, less-drastic change above, in most games where the parasite bonus ship class isn't unlocked.

On one side I just captured 1 (only 1) mk IV zenith shredder. It turned into 1500 . On the other they are not as useful if you play against an AI that does not have too many unique units. And without a mobile repair station the units you capture just end up dying instantly anyways, unless you only capture units at incoming waves. I enjoy the leech starships, I often get up to the Mk II when playing against an AI like the zenith descendant to be able to bolster my own forces on the go. I hav eto forgot one MK III unlock for the starship, but I get approx the same benefit back form the captured units. After all if I loose em I need to capture more, and to do that I generally need to raid for units. Mk IV waves are generally not part of any normal AI War game

If mk level based rules are deiced upon, how about:
Leech/parasite capturing based on mk level like : current leech/parasite MK level +1? Will make the mk I a tad more useful, and you can unlock mk II to capture mk III ships. Or even unlock the mk III to be able to get mk IVs. But only a fabricator or a factory for Mk IV(/V) leech/parasites can get you mk V units.


All in all I rather like them as is, I use them, but not heavily, my main force is always my own fleet ships and starships. I am ok whit not getting MK V ships be reclaimable tho (unless some changes like above are implemented).

[Wingflier]

Wingflier's suggestion strikes me as being pretty valid. However, it may just mean leech starship upgrades get bumped up the list near the top of the list of "wants" along with the MRS and other generally useful goodies, without solving the core problem - it's cheaper to unlock through leech 4 than to upgrade all your core fleet types to equivalent levels.

Perhaps, but then again unlocking the actual MKIII/MKIV Variants of ships is a very solid and reliable way of getting that ship type, where with Parasites (especially if they can only capture a tier above), you are only hoping you get what you need.  If, for example, you are to lose your entire force before a massive CPA or you need to reinforce units quickly (say for an AI Homeworld attack), I would much rather have the blueprints for the actual ship(s) than for Parasites, which in several situations, can be quite useless (not to mention extremely expensive and quite fragile to boot).

I'm not saying it will solve the entire problem, but it should be a step in the right direction.

[HitmanN]

I'll chime in my my opinions regarding leeches and parasites. I didn't read all the posts that were already made, so if someone already mentioned these... well... shucks.

Leeches and parasites.

They're too effective at what they do, basically.

You know, the idea that you can shoot with a gun to capture an enemy is just pretty darn cool in itself.

Shooting with hundred guns to capture hundred enemies.. well, it just gets ridiculous.

A blob with leeches/parasites plus an MRS can just roll over just about anything, constantly replenishing its ranks from the AI. You could say that by building a parasite, you get one or more ships for free if you use 'em right. Even more so with leeches. You shoot once with it, and in a potentially good situation get, what, 20 ships for free?

Yeah, I know 'free' is a relative term, since repairing the captured stuff costs resources 'n so forth, but that's quite beside the point. It's not the cost that's off, it's the ability to procure stuff so easily and quickly, and at the same time causing equally many losses to the enemy. You have guns that do a factory's work for you, basically. Things like that should be special. Like "Hells yeah, I managed to capture a ship from the AI!!11", not rolling over enemies with a blob and pondering why the fleet doubled in size suddenly. Well, maybe not THAT inefficient, but I'm sure you get the point I'm trying to convey. Placing limitations isn't really the way to go here once again, I think. You should be free to capture high Mk things if you want to. It just should be harder and/or slower than it currently is.

I'm not really sure how that could be achieved, but I'd start looking at the rate of fire/captures and things such as the leech's ability to mark multiple things at once. Too quick, too easy, too many successful reclaims in too short time.

I know people who like reclaimers will definitely throw a fit over the idea of weakening these, but this is a special feature unit and needs special attention. Weapons and ability to reclaim are hard to balance altogether, since they are not directly comparable. Reclaiming produces ships, weapons destroy ships.

Wasn't there also talk at some point about nerfing MRS's? For instance, if they couldn't be brought to battle as easily as they currently can, and maybe if reclaimed ships started with full engine damage and couldn't move or somesuch, then running over everything with a Reclaimablob(tm) wouldn't result in the captured ships becoming so battle-ready right away. You'd need to pay much more attention to successfully capture stuff. Then again, sounds like adding more microing, which isn't necessarily good either.

Aye... problematic. But as it is leeches and parasites can do a Factory's work for you very efficiently in many situations. And not just Mk4. Actually, you're better off not building full caps of any commonly available shiptype, so that you have space for captured ships. Better save the resources for something else than building ships from Factories and forfeiting the captured stuff because caps are full.

Did I repeat myself there somewhere? I think I'll stop here before I do.

[lovekawakawaii]

Here's a suggestion: make the lower levels of leech starship have more power but fewer shots so they can't reclaim quite as much and you have to spend knowledge to get up to the effective power level it has now

[PineappleSam]

I'd rather not mess around with ship caps, so 2 quick suggestions would be:

1] Reclaimed ships are zombies, and ships spawned by those zombies are zombies (Z shredder).
2] Reclaimed ships have x10 damaged done by reclaiming ship, but self attrition as the ship fights with itself for control. Ships spawned by reclaimed ships also self attrition (Z shredders again).

But if ship caps are the way to go, what about something like:

3] The ship cap for reclaimed ships must always be below the number of active ships with the reclaim ability. A rough formula would be:

X = Sum of (1 / max ships in cap) for each living ship with reclaim that hasn't been reclaimed.
So if mk.I parasites had a ship cap of 73, and you had two of them, X = 1/73 + 1/73 = 0.027, which would be adjusted every time a ship with reclaim was created / destroyed.

Y = Sum of (1 / max ships in cap) for each living ship that's been reclaimed.
So if mk.I bombers had a ship cap of 202, and you had five of them, Y = 1/202 + 1/202 + 1/202 + 1/202 + 1/202 = 0.025, which would be adjusted every time a ship with was reclaimed or a reclaimed one was destroyed.

If Y > X, if a ship would be reclaimed then instead it isn't. Perhaps a small amount of resources is gained instead of simply not getting anything... as if the ship had spawned and you imminently scrapped it?
With the 2 parasites that have reclaimed 5 bombers you'd be able to continue reclaiming, but after the 6th bomber (Y = 0.029, which is greater than X = 0.027) reclaiming wouldn't work until you either built more ships with reclaim or scrapped a bomber.

The numbers for ships caps are wonky, and a 1:1 ratio might not be perfect, but here's what I have so far!

[Wingflier]

I posted a suggestion in Mantis that I believe is a significant nerf to Parasites, especially in terms of deep-raiding enemy planets.  This, coupled with only allowing them to capture enemy ships within 1 Mark of their own, would go a long way towards fixing the problem.  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1845

[Echo35]

On one side I just captured 1 (only 1) mk IV zenith shredder. It turned into 1500 .

I've done that before. Parasites always seemed a little too exploity to me. It's so much cheaper to build a parasite fleet and simply reclaim all those nice ships rather than building them yourself. What I've done in the past is simply research up Parasite Starships and whatever special Leech Ship I started with and MRS's. Make a fleet out of that combo and you can get whatever the heck you want

[Arcain_One]

As stated; the omni-present leach starship is the main problem here and the biggest problem with it is it can mark many ships quickly with its insane multishot.
The easiest solution would be to cut the number of shots (perhaps to 1/7 ?) but this might not be the best nor only solution, but its a start.

Putting a smaller cap on reclamation was my first thought but I think this would remove much of the point of the parasites.

Increasing the energy cost of reclaimed ships  might help with the sheer numbers but this idea is instantly down voted by one of the same reasons why ship are not upgraded (too complicated for the player to figure out which ships are or are not reclaimed and to micro manage because of it)

Having all reclaimed ships dormant and self building (without being allowed to be helped) might be an idea to give some time and effort cost but this might only serve to make more micromanaging.

Increasing the resource cost and/or energy cost of parasites or leech starships (I think expecially leech starships). For the parasites this could ruin balance so I'm thinking this may not be needed but this could be a balance for the leech starships.

As x4000 had already stated not giving the player a leech starship at all would revert to some players only choosing parasites (or would it now, I'm just speculating that it might not be so severe now) but it still could be an option to consider. We could also consider having the MK I leech starship not unlocked at the begining of the game (might help some).

Can't think of anything else at the moment.