Parasites still rule supreme

[Haagenti]

In my current game, I'm using parasites as starting specials. These outrank all other specials by a mile. It is not so much the stealing and repairing of enemy ships to keep the casualty ratio low, but more:
- they allow me the use of all enemy specials, which multiplies my tactical possibilities. In fact, I have pushed for the AI level to go to 400 just to get its new special
- if the enemy has cloaked specials, I gather enormous amounts of them, because they are parasited by me and recloak before they can be killed by their old friends. I currently have 1500 Etherjets, 500 Raptors and 500 EyeBots, but only because I use the Is and IIs to break IV wormholes: send in a 200 or so, fire on the lightning turrets, and after each lightning blast send 200 more: they die by the thousands, but it saves a lightning missile and I have no other use for them
- they allow me to increase the number of cruisers (IMO the most important unit in the game after Parasites) over and above the number I can build: I now have 400 IIs, 400 IIIs and 300 IVs (the Is die too fast to build a collection) and this is still growing. So I can now maintain one fleet to defend against cross-planet raids, and two to kick ass in enemy territory.
- The combination with EtherJets still works like a dream: grab-and-convert. The nerfing of EtherJets has helped a little, but since I parasite more EtherJets than I ever need the casualties really don't matter: I can easily fly 150 EtherJets into the midst of an enemy cross-planet raid, grab 50 or so IV cruisers and drag them to 100 Parasites, 10 Engineers and 100 fighters waiting for them. When the dust settles, I have another 40 IV cruisers

[Fiskbit]

This makes me feel like parasites shouldn't be able to let you get more than your ship cap for something (entirely ignoring whether you have researched or even can research that ship). You'd be able to steal enemy ships that you don't have researched without the side effect of these ludicrously-sized fleets. I don't understand why you can only build ships if you have less than some number, but can steal as many as you want.

[Admiral]

I still like my parasites, but their power really heavily depends on the ships the AI is using against you. I'm not as tactically advanced as H but I love having fleets of Engineer IIIs at all my planets.

In the current (1.014G) game I'm playing, the only interesting ship I have been able to capture is some Teleporter with a multiple attack. Another that I have a lot of (and which are useless) is MicroFighters, and still another (useless one) is something about a Deflector that can't be hit by "lazers".

I have found the best type of ship to pair with the parasites are those little shield ships. Then you can send your parasites out front with a bunch of those, and they will get lots of hits in and not die.

Finally, I really think a "Defend mode" would improve the tactical possibilities of all sorts of ships, including the parasites.

[Admiral]

This makes me feel like parasites shouldn't be able to let you get more than your ship cap for something (entirely ignoring whether you have researched or even can research that ship). You'd be able to steal enemy ships that you don't have researched without the side effect of these ludicrously-sized fleets. I don't understand why you can only build ships if you have less than some number, but can steal as many as you want.

That would entirely defeat the purpose of parasites. If that were an option, I would never research any ship whatsoever, and even ask for an option not to start with fighters, bombers and cruisers, and have an option to decline any advanced technology finds.

As it stands, the energy requirements for a large parasited fleet are huge. I put one Energy III, two II and three I on every planet I actually capture (I seem to capture many fewer than H) and losing even one planet will put me (heavily) negative to the point where I am N+1 DELETE Y'ing my fleet just to get everything working again.

Given the tactical importance of energy, I suggest we have an audible/textual alert when energy reactors come under attack.
Cheers!

[Revenantus]

This makes me feel like parasites shouldn't be able to let you get more than your ship cap for something (entirely ignoring whether you have researched or even can research that ship). You'd be able to steal enemy ships that you don't have researched without the side effect of these ludicrously-sized fleets. I don't understand why you can only build ships if you have less than some number, but can steal as many as you want.

I'm with Fiskbit on this one, parasites are great in that they give you access to a multitude of ship types that you don't have the technology to build, but the fact that there is no limit on the number of captured ships is opening up some questionable strategies.

I'd recommend that parasites only allow a player to exceed the ship cap for a given ship type by 20%. This would allow them to retain their usefulness, but within appropriate limits.

[Admiral]

"Appropriate" to whom?

If you don't like Parasites, and want to set personal limits, delete any ships you capture above the limit. Problem solved! Or, better yet, don't use them in the first place - disable them in the start options.

Parasites are weak, easily destroyed, and would lose most of their purpose if limited in how many they can capture. They would need new AI to say "don't attack ships of type X if you could attack ships of type Y" because X is at the cap. Furthermore, they would need AI that says "stay out of range of being attacked if there is nothing that can be usefully be recaptured." All in all, limiting their abilities in this manner will have many second (and further) order effects on their utility and purpose.

My two cents...

Cheers!

[Fiskbit]

Admiral: Right now, you never have to research any spacedock ships (beside parasites (well, and scouts)) because you can just steal them. My suggestion is purely a limitation, so I don't see why this feature would change your research habits.

I see the purpose of parasites to steal enemy ships, and nerfing them such that they can't do it beyond unit caps (or not far beyond unit caps, as Rev has suggested) seems reasonable considering that right now you can get endless armies of what sounds like game-breaking size. In my last game, I'd built Mark I-IV of all 10 available spacedock ships (parasites included) and was pumping out starships, all supported by two mark II reactors per world I owned. It was pretty tight, but I was getting by, and my fleet was absolutely massive and could tackle anything, and this was without using parasites that much (just as a normal unit and to capture mark III engineers). Throwing nearly 90,000 more energy on each world..frankly, I can't imagine a fleet that size being balanced in any way. Furthermore, unit caps exist partially to keep you from creating fleets of a single ship that you consider the best (without unit caps, my fleet would be thousands of deflector drones and snipers, with some fighters/bombers along for the ride to cover ships the others can't kill) and to keep fleets reasonably sized. In setting terms, it also makes sense as the number of ships of a type that you can keep serviced.

The big plus, in my opinion, to parasites is getting ships from the AI that you can't get otherwise, in addition to getting ships for free. Being able to use them to ignore any sort of unit cap is much akin to ships at docks not having a unit cap, allowing you to build as much as you want. The mark III reactor should make energy management trivial in most any game, but you're consistently on the brink even with that and the others, which really says to me that these things are way overpowered (I argue game-breaking. With unlimited ships, how much strategy is left in the game?). I feel limiting the number of ships you can capture based in some way on that ship type's cap, as well as possibly reducing or eliminating previous nerfs to parasites (cost and build time), would probably be a reasonable way to go.

[Revenantus]

"Appropriate" to whom?

The suggestion isn't based on a personal preference, so you can take it to mean, 'appropriate in general'. I don't dislike parasites at all - in fact I enjoy using them, I'm just very aware that lack of any limitations is creating some potential balancing issues.

Parasites are weak, easily destroyed, and would lose most of their purpose if limited in how many they can capture.

As Fiskbits points out, they in fact retain most of their purpose in providing you with access to any ship type you can capture. Limiting the number of captured ships per types eliminates the potential for creating overpowered 'superfleets', but still allows you to have a huge variety of captured ship types in that fleet that you would otherwise not have had access to. Maybe even allowing them to exceed the ship caps by as much as 50% could be pretty powerful.

They would need new AI to say "don't attack ships of type X if you could attack ships of type Y" because X is at the cap. Furthermore, they would need AI that says "stay out of range of being attacked if there is nothing that can be usefully be recaptured." All in all, limiting their abilities in this manner will have many second (and further) order effects on their utility and purpose.

The first suggestion could well be implemented if required. The second seems unnecessary as I'd want my parasites to continue fighting even if there was nothing to capture purely for the purposes of destroying the AI ships. I could manually order my parasites to flee if I wished.

[x4000]

I think I'm agreeing with the sentiment that these should not be able to push ships over the cap.  I don't want to make parasites useless, but they also really need to not be the defacto obvious choice.  The fact that some people refuse to play with any other starting ship because it "just doesn't make sense" is kind of telling to me.  Having access to hundreds or thousands of other ships that you otherwise could not build is still a really huge advantage even if they are kept to the general ship caps, I think. 

I don't even think that having a 20% buffer is needed, you are already able to capture ships that you can't build any other way, and replace downed ships that you can build for free, which is of immense value.

I very much understand the emotional reaction when a favorite ship is nerfed, but I think this is unbalanced at the moment.  On the plus side, if these sorts of caps are instituted then I don't think the 25% damage threshold discussed elsewhere would be particularly needed.

And in answer to the don't-kill-this-if-I-already-have-too-many logic, I would suggest that parasites are basically there in order to fight, first and foremost.  They have as good a general ratio of strong-to-weak types as any other ship class (Mark I parasites are strong against 17 other classes of ships and only weak to 9 when in equivalent numbers based on relative pop caps), so even with no reclamation ability at all the parasites would be a formidable (if uninteresting) choice.  Not that I am suggesting that, I'm just saying they are not pushovers in battle.

[Admiral]

Admiral: Right now, you never have to research any spacedock ships (beside parasites (well, and scouts)) because you can just steal them. My suggestion is purely a limitation, so I don't see why this feature would change your research habits.

The research habit change was because, as I understood/read it, Rev suggested that there be a limit of no more than 20% more than your limit for any ship type you have researched.

So, if you haven't researched it, no limit.

Hence, I would never research anything but parasites!

[x4000]

Admiral: Right now, you never have to research any spacedock ships (beside parasites (well, and scouts)) because you can just steal them. My suggestion is purely a limitation, so I don't see why this feature would change your research habits.

The research habit change was because, as I understood/read it, Rev suggested that there be a limit of no more than 20% more than your limit for any ship type you have researched.

So, if you haven't researched it, no limit.

Hence, I would never research anything but parasites!

Oh, I see!   I understood him to mean that the cap is there regardless of whether or not you have researched it or not.  See my later notes.

[Fiskbit]

Yeah, Chris' take is what was intended. Also, Rev was pointing out in IRC that this would necessitate proper ship caps for ships that can't be built, since right now core ships and the like have ship caps that are throwing off the relative ship strengths.

[x4000]

Yeah, Chris' take is what was intended. Also, Rev was pointing out in IRC that this would necessitate proper ship caps for ships that can't be built, since right now core ships and the like have ship caps that are throwing off the relative ship strengths.

Oh, crud, do they?  I'll need to fix that.

[Revenantus]

Yeah, Chris' take is what was intended. Also, Rev was pointing out in IRC that this would necessitate proper ship caps for ships that can't be built, since right now core ships and the like have ship caps that are throwing off the relative ship strengths.

Don't mention resource costs when he let's us build core starships, they cost 0 metal and crystal and take 10 seconds to build, we could have a good thing going there...

[x4000]

Yeah, Chris' take is what was intended. Also, Rev was pointing out in IRC that this would necessitate proper ship caps for ships that can't be built, since right now core ships and the like have ship caps that are throwing off the relative ship strengths.

Don't mention resource costs when he let's us build core starships, they cost 0 metal and crystal and take 10 seconds to build, we could have a good thing going there...

That I would notice, haha.