Parasite/Leech Balance Discussion -- Thoughts?

[Echo35]

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.

This is probably also too much micro, but how about making reclaimed ships only able to be at half health max, or have them lose health over time like Neinzul ships? That would make them good for attacks, but useless afterwards, so that a player could not stack up a huge fleet of reclaimed ships.

[Lancefighter]

put them back to the old method of last-hit reclaimation.

[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.

[NickAragua]

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).

+1 to this idea, although the self-attrition part is unnecessary. Damage done by parasites is so pathetically low that even a 10x multiplier would mean that any zombie ships are worthless except to absorb one or two shots from a ship with the right damage multipliers.

[x4000]

Tons of good ideas here, thanks for all that!

Here's what's in so far:

* Zenith viral Shredders are now immune to reclamation, as they unintentionally could multiply from 1 captured by a player to hundreds or thousands.
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting.

* The parasite line of ships has had their stats rebalanced in general, and linearized.  They now have a lower attack speed, but massively higher attack values (which they now need).
** Thanks to lovekawakawaii for suggesting.

* Leech Starships now cost 2x as much energy to run, and their stats have been linearized also.  They also now have 10x fewer shots, and do 10x more damage than before.
** Thanks to lovekawakawaii for suggesting.

* All mark V ships are now immune to reclamation (this was always the intent, but a few slipped through before).
** Thanks to Toll for reporting some of the lapses.

* Ships with the reclamation ability are now only able to reclaim ships that are, at most, one mark level above their current level.  So mark I ships can reclaim mark II ships, and so on.
** Thanks to Wingflier for suggesting.

* When reclamators damage an enemy ship, it will only be reclaimed if at least 50% of the damage to that ship was done by the parasites of the current player.
** Thanks to superking for suggesting.

What else I'm considering if this isn't enough:
Making it so that reclamation can only happen if your ship cap for the specific ship type is less than 20% of the total ship cap for that type.  Thus, as people pointed out, you can then only do so much with reclamators, you still need the higher-mark ships to be directly built, etc.

I've started with the above only, though, to make sure it's not too overboard.  I was sorely tempted to do the last bit along with the rest, though.  Parasites were SO far out of balance it's not even funny, because they could circumvent such an enormous part of the economy as well as the need for Advanced Factories, etc. 

Getting some free ships, including some ship types you otherwise wouldn't have, is cool  Circumventing large parts of the economy, and advanced factories entirely, is not cool.

Let me know how it seems in the next version!

[Suzera]

I don't really care too much about parasites and mostly just used the leech starship mk 1 as "free" ships that I didn't care about, but I really like the changes that just popped up on the notes wiki.

[x4000]

Thanks!  Glad you like them.  Lots of awesome suggestions from folks, I wouldn't have thought of some of this stuff.  The shiplevel+1 thing is really a favorite of mine.

[Mánagarmr]

Not so hot on the increased energy cost really. Energy is already tough as it is, but I can understand you want them to make a bigger hit on you. The reclaim ability limited to MK+1 is awesome though. There were usually no reason to unlock any higher levels of the Leech Starship.

Good things so far!

[Wingflier]

Thanks!  Glad you like them.  Lots of awesome suggestions from folks, I wouldn't have thought of some of this stuff.  The shiplevel+1 thing is really a favorite of mine.

Thanks, I thought it solved the problem without being too complicated ;p

[Fleet]

Is it realistic that parasites would do 50% of the damage to a ship, if they are part of a mixed fleet of triangle ships? Seems like the others would out-DPS them...although maybe the new parasite increased damage per shot makes up for this.

I do like the Mk+1 idea for reclamation, it gives meaning to different Mk Parasites. This of course means, the Mk IV parasite should work on the Mk V ships!!

[Lancefighter]

I think thats the point - if you want to capture something, you should be TRYING to capture it, not rolling over a planet and getting free ships on the way

[x4000]

Sure thing, Wingflier -- elegantly simple, my favorite sort.

Fleet -- I'm honestly not sure, that's going to take some playtesting.  I may need to tweak some percentages, or their damage output.  But the goal is that they will convert ships a lot less of the time, maybe only 5% or even slightly less than before.  But certainly more than 1-2% of the time.  We'll see if that happens, or what.  

EDIT: And, Lancefighter is right, part of the goal is fewer accidental captures, more intentional ones.  But even so, if you have them mixed in it should capture a small percentage of the enemy ships... meanwhile doing more meaningful damage in general.

[Echo35]

I like it. I'd have to play test it to see really, but it seems pretty solid.

[HitmanN]

To put it simply...

Nice.

[Fleet]

Fleet -- I'm honestly not sure, that's going to take some playtesting.  I may need to tweak some percentages, or their damage output.  But the goal is that they will convert ships a lot less of the time, maybe only 5% or even slightly less than before.  But certainly more than 1-2% of the time.  We'll see if that happens, or what.  

Based on their damage output in .46, they definitely do 50% of the damage