Plasma starships vs non-combat stuff.. cloaked, under forcefields.

[ZaneWolfe]

I like the uniqueness and role of the plasma siege effect on forcefields, but a general rule "if unarmed and doesn't drop remains, immune to plasma siege forcefield effect" would be nice.

I disagree. The AI should have ways to kill your space docks, energy collectors, science labs, etc. The plasma siege is an effective, while still counterable part of the AI arsenal, and I think the game is better for it.

I'm going to have to agree with Faulty here. Usually I argue on the player's behalf, but really that is exactly what plasma siege weapons were designed to do. Devistate shields, forcefields, and everything they are protecting. Such weapons are one of the few ways the AI can death heavy, possibly fatal, injury to the player using heavy shield defenses,  outside of exo weapons and/or massive numbers of bombers.

Or maybe hardened forcefields prevent aoe damage from bleeding through them. That also sounds pretty reasonable.

Sold!

Hmm... This does seem rather reasonable. As it stands hardened forcefields do seem rather weak, and this would be a fairly powerful buff to them. Perhaps AIP-On-Death items should leave remains, but can only be rebuilt by using manual targeting. Sure you can get them back, but lose them again and its going to hurt even more.

On the topic of remains, is there a reason completed Trader Toys do not leave remains? After all the trouble of both having the Z-Trader come to the right place, and then the expense of building such items, you would think they could at least drop remains when destroyed. Myabe have completed trader toys drop remains, which rebuild into 10% versions of the item. Make them require manual targeting, due to both expense and to make sure they don't get rebuilt in the middle of a battle and you lose them permanently.

[Lancefighter]

I like the uniqueness and role of the plasma siege effect on forcefields, but a general rule "if unarmed and doesn't drop remains, immune to plasma siege forcefield effect" would be nice.

I disagree. The AI should have ways to kill your space docks, energy collectors, science labs, etc. The plasma siege is an effective, while still counterable part of the AI arsenal, and I think the game is better for it.

I'm going to have to agree with Faulty here. Usually I argue on the player's behalf, but really that is exactly what plasma siege weapons were designed to do. Devastate shields, forcefields, and everything they are protecting. Such weapons are one of the few ways the AI can death heavy, possibly fatal, injury to the player using heavy shield defenses,  outside of exo weapons and/or massive numbers of bombers.

Hey man I am perfectly fine with plasma siege destroying forcefields. That is wonderful. The problem is that there are zero ways to prevent damage to units under the player's singular defensive building. That is a problem.

[ZaneWolfe]

Hey man I am perfectly fine with plasma siege destroying forcefields. That is wonderful. The problem is that there are zero ways to prevent damage to units under the player's singular defensive building. That is a problem.

You missed the other half of the post. Where I agree with Faulty again. This time about Lancefighter's idea.

Or maybe hardened forcefields prevent aoe damage from bleeding through them. That also sounds pretty reasonable.

Sold!

Hmm... This does seem rather reasonable. As it stands hardened forcefields do seem rather weak, and this would be a fairly powerful buff to them.

Hardened FF is the other type of defensive structure. Sadly it trades having 500M armor for having only 1/4 of the HP. It... doesn't work IMO. Adding in that it negates the 'siege' part of plasma siege weapons, and suddenly it becomes DRASTICALLY stronger. To the point where maybe the trade off is worth it. It requires both debate and science though. Mostly science. Because SCIENCE!!!!!

Oh, IDEA. Probably crazy broken idea, but IDEA!!!! Perhaps we remove the armor entirely, and leave it at around 1/3 to 1/2 the HP. BUT! It negates both 'siege' effects as well as FF Immunity. Suddenly it provides an extremely good cover and can't simply be bypassed by ff immune units like Raid Starships. Give it Command Grade hull type. Sure it wont be of much use against mass bombers, as those get both Command Grade and Structure as bonuses, but it helps to defend against both plasma siege and helps to cover against ff immune units. Given that you have to pay K to just unlock MKI, where normal ffs are unlocked from the start, hardened ff really should provide something special for the drawbacks of not having nearly as much HP as the same MK of normal ff.

[Lancefighter]

Well, the problem is more that armor cannot mitigate damage past 25%. So a hardened forcefield is *always* worse than a regular one right now.

[DrFranknfurter]

Little thought: allow armour to mitigate damage to 0% but have armour piercing be the minimum damage a ship can do to a heavily armoured target, that way a bazillion points of armour can still be injured by anything with a token amount of piercing. Give most ships 1 point of armour piercing and they can still kill a hardened forcefield... eventually.

Also, I think I'd use hardened forcefields more often if they unlocked a different set of spire shield modules, now anything that unlocks modules feels like a buy one get one free offer. That or if the spire shield modules were unlocked via a new tab 'mods' so you didn't have to buy one thing to get another.

Back to plasma though, I think quite a few structures were given immunity to them a long while back... I'd assume those that were left out had a good (balance/cheese) reason for being left out. I can imagine spacedocks loop building younglings boosted by engineers being part of that cheese so which ships did the OP actually want to be immune? All irreplacables should be IMO, just to reduce annoying problems but anything you can easily rebuild (having planets auto-build engineers/rebuilders/energy collectors means most things should get replaced anyway after the battle). Space docks leaving remains... would give you the false sense that everything is OK when actually its build orders are reset after being rebuilt.

[Lancefighter]

The OP wants plasma siege to go back to being dreadnoughts.


But since that has been out of the picture for about 2? years now, I would settle for just "stop letting plasma siege destroy pointless stuff under my forcefields". Its a pain in the ass to rebuild space docks, research ships, etc. Thankfully engineers are automated now..

I was then reminded mere moments later that a plasma siege will destroy Spire Civilian Leader outposts under a forcefield far before the forcefield takes meaningful damage.

How about this - Plasma Siege under-ff splash will now paralyze instead of damage structures. This will prevent any sort of 'spacedock cheese' or the like. Hardened forcefields (and in my opinion, modular shields in general) will prevent this, through some sort of 'this forcefield was designed for combat' lore. Also, we should go ahead and mark any forcefield that does not prevent enemy movement (the light blue ones) as "hardened", and all hardened forcefields should not decrease in size... (am I going overboard here). Maybe change the name to "combat" forcefield or something.

[Draco18s]

Well, the problem is more that armor cannot mitigate damage past 25%. So a hardened forcefield is *always* worse than a regular one right now.

I thought it was supposed to have 1/4 the HP for "essentially infinite" armor, so that 99% of attacks would be dealing 1/4 the damage.

[Bognor]

Well, the problem is more that armor cannot mitigate damage past 25%. So a hardened forcefield is *always* worse than a regular one right now.

I thought it was supposed to have 1/4 the HP for "essentially infinite" armor, so that 99% of attacks would be dealing 1/4 the damage.

Armor stops up to 80% of damage, not 75%.  So a hardened force field has 25% of the hit points of an equal mark regular force field, but takes 20% as much damage from most units, making it somewhat better in most situations - but much worse against units with essentially infinite armor piercing or gigantic single shot damage.

[Kahuna]

MarkI Bombers vs MarkI Force Field
MarkI Force Field destroyed in: 20,000,000/468,480=43s

MarkI Bombers vs MarkI Hardened Force Field
MarkI Hardened Force Field destroyed in: 5,000,000/(468,480*0,2)=53s

aka Hardened Force Fields are better.

[Kahuna]

[...]but much worse against units with [...] gigantic single shot damage.

Why?

[Draco18s]

[...]but much worse against units with [...] gigantic single shot damage.

Why?

Damage > Armor

I don't know how much bigger, but there is a point at which the armor value is subtracting off less than the 20% maximum reduction.

But yeah, if they also got immunities to the plasma siege effect, I would love the everloving shit out of them.

[Kahuna]

MarkV Plasma Siege Starships vs MarkI Force Field
MarkI Force Field destroyed in: 20,000,000/1,000,000=20s

MarkV Plasma Siege Starships MarkI Hardened Force Field
MarkI Hardened Force Field destroyed in: 5,000,000/(1,000,000*0.2)=25s

[MaxAstro]

Honestly, the slight increase in survivability hardened force fields have has never been enough for me to justify unlocking them.

Immunity to plasma siege attacks would definitely make them worth grabbing, though.

[Draco18s]

25% longer survival time for the shield is unimportant if that 6.25% splash kills everything under it in three seconds.

[Kahuna]

Honestly, the slight increase in survivability hardened force fields have has never been enough for me to justify unlocking them

So you never unlock additional Force Fields? Time to crank up the difficulty.

6.25% splash kills everything under it in three seconds.

Splash damage has nothing to do with the Force Field type/health. Or?