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

[Draco18s]

6.25% splash kills everything under it in three seconds.

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

Nope.  Read what the plasma siege does.

If it hits a forcefield, it will also damage up to 25 units covered by the force field directly for 6.25% of the original shot damage each.

That damage bypasses the shield and any armor the shield provides entirely.

[Kahuna]

Hunter/Killer vs Mark II Force Fields

MarkI Hunter/Killer vs MarkII Force Field
MarkI Force Field destroyed in: 40,000,000/8,666,667=46s

MarkI Hunter/Killer vs MarkII Hardened Force Field
MarkI Hardened Force Field destroyed in: 10,000,000/(*0.2)=58s

Hardened Force Field wins.

[Kahuna]

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

Why?

Damage > Armor
Damage=(Attack of Attacking Ship) x (Attack Power Boosts) x (Attack Multiplier) - ((Targets Armor) x (Armor Boosts) - (Attackers Armor Piercing)) but to never be less then (Attack of Attacking Ship) x 0.2

I forgot this. So fixed that for you.

Hardened Force Field would lose vs Mark V Spire Starship.
EDIT: Oh crap it would lose vs Mark I Spire Starship too. Spire Starship does 960000 damage so 768000 armor would be needed to reduce the damage to 20%.

This discussion has been enlightening. Thanks. Though I still prefer Hardened Force Fields.

EDIT 2:
Ouch.
MarkI Spire Starship vs MarkI Force Field
MarkI Force Field destroyed in: 20,000,000/960,000=21s

MarkI Spire Starship vs MarkI Hardened Force Field
MarkI Hardened Force Field destroyed in: 5,000,000/(960,000*0.48)=11s

[Draco18s]

Damage > Armor
Damage=(Attack of Attacking Ship) x (Attack Power Boosts) x (Attack Multiplier) - ((Targets Armor) x (Armor Boosts) - (Attackers Armor Piercing)) but to never be less then (Attack of Attacking Ship) x 0.2

I forgot this. So fixed that for you.

Yep.  That.
Ignoring armor piercing I think it reduces to "(Damage * 5) > (Armor * 4)."
I just couldn't work out the precise math, so rather than be slightly wrong and misleading, just "definitely wrong, with explanation."

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, Hardened are better against some of the traditional FF-killers (bombers, bombers, bombers, and more bombers) but substantially less effective against things that have enough damage or AP to ignore armor.

Their point isn't to be better than FFs (though if you're about to take 10,000 bombers to the face they're obviously preferable) but to provide a way of getting more FFs and also have a tactical wrinkle.  You may even consider HFFs to be across-the-board-inferior but still be willing to plunk down 500 K to get HFF mkIs earlier than you'd be willing to plunk down whatever it is for FF mkIIs.  And once you've unlocked FF IIs and FF IIIs you may want to go for HFF IIs (and possibly IIIs) just to get MOAR HPS covering some critical point.

Anyway, I'm willing to increase HFF health from 1/4 of normal FF health to 1/3, thus making HFFs about 167% as effective vs bombers and 33% as effective vs its counters.


On the plasma-siege thing I'm willing to make science labs immune to the while-under-ff splash, just to avoid annoyance (it doesn't cause much else to lose those).  And possibly space docks, though those probably just need to leave remains instead (though then someone will want those to remember their queues until rebuilt, and that would be a pain in the infrastructure).  But the overall effect isn't something I want to be simply blockable, HFFs or otherwise.  If the AI can get starships in range of your home command station it should be able to hurt you.  So the defense is not letting it do that, which is left as an exercise for the reader

[Kahuna]

500 K to get HFF mkIs earlier than you'd be willing to plunk down whatever it is for FF mkIIs.

It's 1000 K for Mark I HFFs.
2000 for Mark II FFs and HFFs.
4000 for Mark IIIs

[keith.lamothe]

500 K to get HFF mkIs earlier than you'd be willing to plunk down whatever it is for FF mkIIs.

It's 1000 K for Mark I HFFs.
2000 for Mark II FFs and HFFs.
4000 for Mark IIIs

Ah, ok.  My memory ain't so great

[Kahuna]

Also I just realized AI Flagships and Munitions Boosters can greatly reduce the effectiveness of HFFs. More damage = less damage mitigation if the damage gets high enough.

EDIT: Btw HFFs don't seem to be immune to Armor Boosts.
EDIT 2: Why Lightning Turrets have 20000 armor but Flaks have 0? Flaks should have 20000 too.

[Draco18s]

Yea, Hardened are better against some of the traditional FF-killers (bombers, bombers, bombers, and more bombers) but substantially less effective against things that have enough damage or AP to ignore armor.

It's just so marginal that it's almost always better to get regular FFs.

On the plasma-siege thing I'm willing to make science labs immune to the while-under-ff splash, just to avoid annoyance (it doesn't cause much else to lose those).  And possibly space docks, though those probably just need to leave remains instead (though then someone will want those to remember their queues until rebuilt, and that would be a pain in the infrastructure).  But the overall effect isn't something I want to be simply blockable, HFFs or otherwise.  If the AI can get starships in range of your home command station it should be able to hurt you.  So the defense is not letting it do that, which is left as an exercise for the reader

Per spacedocks:  Could you make them have a production queue, which gets copied when the spacedock dies (and then copied back on rebuild), but have a 0 construction rate and immune to assists?

Anyway, my main problem with plasma siege is that there's no static defense that's actually good at blocking them.  We have anti-sniper, anti-dark-matter, anti-missiles, and force-fields (which are pretty much anit-anything-that's-not-a-bomber).  But they only thing that works against plasma siege is needler turrets....which have half the HP that a plasma siege does base damage!  (400,000 hp / 20,000 armor vs. 800,000 damage)

EDIT: Btw HFFs don't seem to be immune to Armor Boosts.
EDIT 2: Why Lightning Turrets have 20000 armor but Flaks have 0? Flaks should have 20000 too.

1) Leave it alone.  That should be a Thing that is Valid.
2) Yesplease!  Flaks are one of my least-favorite turrets because they never survive anything.

[relmz32]

On the plasma-siege thing I'm willing to make science labs immune to the while-under-ff splash, just to avoid annoyance (it doesn't cause much else to lose those).  And possibly space docks, though those probably just need to leave remains instead (though then someone will want those to remember their queues until rebuilt, and that would be a pain in the infrastructure).  But the overall effect isn't something I want to be simply blockable, HFFs or otherwise.  If the AI can get starships in range of your home command station it should be able to hurt you.  So the defense is not letting it do that, which is left as an exercise for the reader

I think making science labs immune to splash is the easiest/best way to fix this issue. I think the Plasma Siege splash should definitely hit space docks, being able to destroy the local reinforcement point for your forces is good tactics anyways.

I am one of the people who would want the space dock to remember its queue until its rebuilt, but even if it didn't it wouldn't bother me that much.

[keith.lamothe]

Anyway, my main problem with plasma siege is that there's no static defense that's actually good at blocking them.  We have anti-sniper, anti-dark-matter, anti-missiles, and force-fields (which are pretty much anit-anything-that's-not-a-bomber).  But they only thing that works against plasma siege is needler turrets....which have half the HP that a plasma siege does base damage!  (400,000 hp / 20,000 armor vs. 800,000 damage)

How quickly the plasma siege can kill a needler turret has only a marginal impact on how fast a decent group of needler turrets can kill a plasma siege.  The starship's rate of fire is quite low.

There's also grav turrets for slowing them down to give said needlers longer to work, though I guess they're already pretty glacial.

[Draco18s]

Anyway, my main problem with plasma siege is that there's no static defense that's actually good at blocking them.  We have anti-sniper, anti-dark-matter, anti-missiles, and force-fields (which are pretty much anit-anything-that's-not-a-bomber).  But they only thing that works against plasma siege is needler turrets....which have half the HP that a plasma siege does base damage!  (400,000 hp / 20,000 armor vs. 800,000 damage)

How quickly the plasma siege can kill a needler turret has only a marginal impact on how fast a decent group of needler turrets can kill a plasma siege.  The starship's rate of fire is quite low.

There's also grav turrets for slowing them down to give said needlers longer to work, though I guess they're already pretty glacial.

It's RoF might be low, but how many turrets do you expect to be on a single (non-chokepoint) planet?  We only get a couple of them (on ultra-low I only get 24 of them!).  And while one starship can't take out a cluster that quickly, three of them can.

Also, a needler's turret's Time To Kill on a plasma siege is 961 seconds.  Even grav turret Mk3s aren't going to help.  (In those 16 minutes a plasma siege can kill 1.25 caps of needler turrets)

[Lancefighter]

On the plasma-siege thing I'm willing to make science labs immune to the while-under-ff splash, just to avoid annoyance (it doesn't cause much else to lose those).  And possibly space docks, though those probably just need to leave remains instead (though then someone will want those to remember their queues until rebuilt, and that would be a pain in the infrastructure).  But the overall effect isn't something I want to be simply blockable, HFFs or otherwise. If the AI can get starships in range of your home command station it should be able to hurt you. So the defense is not letting it do that, which is left as an exercise for the reader

Bold for emphasis. This is impossible when dealing with certain ai types (backdoor hacker), certain events (gogo raider guardian leading exo-striketeam at 300 speed!) and in cases where arent at home (spire civilian leaders. I seriously love the idea, there is just so much in the game that makes them impossible to defend)

So I guess science ships wont be the cheese of the day.. Which I suppose leaves various spacedock spam? I guess fighters are still on the table? Trying to think of other things I can spam under forcefields.. I suppose random turrets, but that feels hard with the caps in place. OH MAN MERCS wait those have caps now too dont they. And theyre mk4 now.. damn.. I suppose I could just go with some shitty high-cap unit (microfighters? laser gatlings?). Maybe minefields or rally posts? I should check to see if those are damaged through bleed. I dont suppose you see the problem yet?

Also I was pretty sure the armor formula was 1/4, did that change at some point? And does the reduced damage from armor mitigate plasma siege bleed? If it did I would totally be willing to consider that viable.

[Draco18s]

Ok, I went and did the math.  On normal caps you would need 16 needler turrets to out-dps a plasma siege starship.  It would take 90 seconds and you'd have four left.  If you lost one to anything else prior to the needler vs. plasma (that is, all else is the same, but you have 15 turrets) the fight would last 112 seconds and the plasma siege would leave with 9548100 damage taken (451,900 / 10,000,000; 4.5% remaining).

Needlers slightly out-range plasma siege starships, but it is unlikely to leave 15 turrets sufficient (I'm already assuming that for the entire fight the plasma siege never moves).

That means that 16 needler turrets need to be locked up fighting ONLY plasma siege starships per! one that arrives.*  No other turret has a bonus against Artillery.

*26 for two.  Assuming focused fire on part of the turrets and exactly zero overkill.

[Kahuna]

Give Flaks bonus vs Artillery to make them more popular? Everyone seems to hate them. I think Lightning Turrets used to have bonus vs Artillery so give it to Flaks.