Poll: Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: Player-side (I)

[Cyborg]

 

That's how I roll on high levels.

[keith.lamothe]

Particularly since opinion is divided (on the "fun" issue, mainly), if the botnet wins (and it looks like it will), I won't just apply a bruteforce nerf or whatever.  I'll probably start a thread where we can go back over previously suggested approaches and perhaps some new ones, and probably do a yes/no poll on whether to actually do the favorite.  Or something like that, it doesn't have to be a complicated process, but I don't want to wind up with a less-fun game.

[Giegue]

but the botnet is so much fun to use!

if you need to do anything, just make them rare or something.

[Hearteater]

Got my first suggestion ready: Instead of 20million x50 attacks, why not Instant Kill x50?  You no longer need to worry about its dps, and it is more than balanced with insta-kill immunities.  Balancing the number of shots upwards would even be reasonable if it wasn't feeling right at 50/second.

[chemical_art]

I'm of the boat of making the botnet a unique minor faction (one in a match), and tailoring a special challenge to using it.

Those who love it keep it in its goodness, those who don't see those who do jump through hoops to use it.

[Coppermantis]

Maybe make botnets only seed on higher levels of Broken Golems. That way if you want to have potential access to Botnets you have to put up with bigger Exos.

[unclean]

Personally I think the other golems are all really fun, so no harm if the botnet just gets taken down to their level.

I mean it's fun and all, but having every game be
>find botnet
>botnet eats every wave, forever
gets old after a while

[TechSY730]

Personally I think the other golems are all really fun, so no harm if the botnet just gets taken down to their level.

I mean it's fun and all, but having every game be
>find botnet
>botnet eats every wave, forever
gets old after a while

Exactly, this is why I think the botnet golem is past the OP to a fun level and into an OP to the point of breaking a huge chunk of the game level.

[PokerChen]

Got my first suggestion ready: Instead of 20million x50 attacks, why not Instant Kill x50?  You no longer need to worry about its dps, and it is more than balanced with insta-kill immunities.  Balancing the number of shots upwards would even be reasonable if it wasn't feeling right at 50/second.

On the Botnet and its apparent power:
- One thing to keep in mind is that it is the only Golem that cannot help you at all in a homeworld or core-world assault (unless Raid Engines are involved).
- - It can only fire at mark I-IV non-zombie, reclaimable fleetships, so its DPS is really just for show and threat-firepower calculations. (I remember that we covered this last year. )
- - The maximum HP for a valid fleetship is 2~4M (Electric Bombers, Shield Bearers, Sentinel Frigates, Mirrors don't count). Most ships it fights have 500K or less. One can remove a zero with essentially no ill-effects.
- Similarly, if you go and put insta-kill on that golem, the only gameplay effect is the addition of 3 ships to the non-target list (Sentinel Frigates/Bullet-proof Fighter/Eyebots, it cannot hit Neinzul or Spire ships due to their Reclaim immunity).
- Given the binary nature of its valid targets (and I've used Botnets a lot), if the AI gets multiple immune unlocks they become progressively more difficult to use offensively. If a player switches off schizo waves (how many high difficulty people play with it off?) and face such ships / face Youngling or Spireling AI, you suddenly have a useless golem on your hands.

- So, Botnets are very OP if the AI has no such unlocks (majority of games), which won't improve by adding insta-kill since triangle ships are always reclaimable.

- A straight up DPS decrease to sane levels makes the Botnet suffer from a mark-dependent decrease in utility. Putting it under glass is actually a "good-idea", but we don't want to nerf its conversion into oblivion when the player wants to protect his golem.

I would suggest alternative solutions:

- Change the nature of its reclamation targetting logic to something more like a massive Maw (vacuums ships and converts them), and then drop its (now generic) DPS to ~5M + decrease the conversion rate... (20 per second?) This shifts the Botnet back towards combat and away from insta-gib. It will now also suffer better from FF-firepower decrease without affecting conversion.

- Also, we could try not having AI waves be 99% fleet-ships. Add more starships to each wave, perhaps by having the numbers scale better with AIP, say 1 per 40 AIP. Or, have starship-heavy waves.

- EDIT: Aside from the other proposed changes to its zombie-mechanics, of course.

[PokerChen]

Separately, I wanted to make a note about the Hive golem in the midst of of all these 10/10 Games and Botnet-OP-defense...

- Hive Golems have up to 140M burst DPS, which is more powerful than Botnets once you account for overkill. One can be devoted to defense in the same way and defend against a lot of ships in combination with Riot Tazers.

- A lot of the Botnet's resident power is invested in the zombies that it creates. 25 ships per second is nothing. It's all in the 100s of ships that patrol your systems and distract the AI from targeting important things. When I include the Devourer Golem in my games, I would actually go for Hive Golems instead. Once you kill the AI-gravity stuff, that Hive Golem will help you clean house on an AI core planet + incoming Core Raid Engine wave, and leave you space to assault the home planet directly. Botnets can't do that.

- They are functionally similar in the creation of temporary ships that will help you kill things. Hives are hard-countered by gravity and fortresses, just as Botnets are hard-countered by ships it can't shoot. Neither of these situations occur often in wave defense, and on offense gravity is still a lot rarer than things immune to reclamation.

- Yet, we're not complaining at the moment about Hive Golem stats. I guess most people don't like the cookie monster.

Best solution? Botnet Golems are only available when you have the Cookie Monster enabled.

[Wanderer]

- A lot of the Botnet's resident power is invested in the zombies that it creates. 25 ships per second is nothing.

Since I'm currently watching a colossus eat my fort, I figured I'd comment on this.  I disagree that the 25 ships/second is nothing.  What they do is immediately distract the wave's firepower from more 'permanent' targets, as well as the botnet itself.  It's continuously adding more to its 'theoretical' firepower, as well, if you consider its generated zombies as part of its DPS.  That distraction, however, is nothing to shake a stick at.  It's a significant distractor to the wave's CF'ing abilities and how badly it'll hurt your economy.

[PokerChen]

- A lot of the Botnet's resident power is invested in the zombies that it creates. 25 ships per second is nothing.

Since I'm currently watching a colossus eat my fort, I figured I'd comment on this.  I disagree that the 25 ships/second is nothing.  What they do is immediately distract the wave's firepower from more 'permanent' targets, as well as the botnet itself.  It's continuously adding more to its 'theoretical' firepower, as well, if you consider its generated zombies as part of its DPS.  That distraction, however, is nothing to shake a stick at.  It's a significant distractor to the wave's CF'ing abilities and how badly it'll hurt your economy.

Yeah, I overstated there - but continue the quote -> it's a comparative between the botnet itself and the number of zombies it generates.

The last time we discussed golem balance, before we wrote the wiki - the discussion settled around the uncapped nature of player zombies and dyson gatlings on defense. Once the zombie ball got rolling, most AI waves and reinforcements will end up feeding this troll. By then it really didn't matter whether the botnet golem was generating 10 ships per second, or 25 ships or 50 ships. If we felt like it, we can routinely sweep adjacent mk-IV planets to end up with more ships that were nearly as powerful as the dyson gatlings.

Since then, we capped the dyson numbers - but we haven't fixed the zombie numbers. It's not like any other player assets, which are capped. I strongly feel that this, above all, is the problem with the botnet golem. Not its stats or conversion rate.

On the distraction side of the botnet, a team of 4 Neinzul Enclaves can also pump out ~16 dones per second, extending the lifetime of important ships. So can hive golems. This side of the botnet is not unique, and not IMO overpowered. The others are, however, limited to a set number per battle, whereas botnets can just keep going and going.

[TechSY730]

The reason I didn't nominate hive golems is, well, because I forget about them until it was too late. 


I would agree with possibly making starships have more of a role in waves. Not sure how to approach that though without having their numbers in a wave computed like the other ships (but possibly with a cap, a higher one than the one now), or something like 6291: New AI Modifier - Exo Wave Like Wave Composition

[Kahuna]

The reason I didn't nominate hive golems is, well, because I forget about them until it was too late. 


I would agree with possibly making starships have more of a role in waves. Not sure how to approach that though without having their numbers in a wave computed like the other ships (but possibly with a cap, a higher one than the one now), or something like 6291: New AI Modifier - Exo Wave Like Wave Composition

I was going to nominate the Hive Golem but later I removed it from my list. They could use a slight nerf though. 2 of them can wipe out an AI home planet almost completely. 1 wasp has 280000 dps. Anyway.. it wouldn't have got many votes so whatever. Maybe in the next poll(s).

[snelg]

Perhaps something like making the botnet golem just tag ships for reclamation by something else would help? But that would still be the same result most of the time I guess. Except it can't work on its own.
Another idea would be to have it automaticaly reclaim all ai ships that die in the current system without having an attack of its own. That way you can still get a lot of ships from it, but you still need to do the work for it.
Perhaps making reclaimed ships take a while to respawn (or be stunned for a while, perhaps invulnerable too during that time?) would make them less of an instant boost?

Just throwing ideas out there.