Poll: Buff Spirecraft Health?

[sojourner]

There have been good ideas posted here both for making the Siege Tower live up to its name, and for changing its name to something for a brawler/tank approach. Why not get the best of both worlds? Boost the siege tower dps significantly(possibly primarily through siege appropriate bonuses), and create a new spirecraft focused on survivability. A medium-high dps, no bonus short range attack, with at least 4x health.

Side note, I also agree that all combat spirecraft should have their health boosted. Their health in general is ludicrously low for irreplaceables, especially sometimes unrepairable irreplacables.

[keith.lamothe]

So I was looking at the numbers with a view of bringing the combat spirecraft (namely the Siege Tower, Ion Blaster, and Implosion Artillery) back to their originally intended space of "more individually powerful than starships, less individually powerful than golems".

Turns out that could be a bit tricky

I wonder how many of you have already noticed that a MkV Zenith Starship has 90% of the HP and 91% of the (bonus) DPS of a Black Widow Golem?  And almost as much armor (5000 vs 6000)

Even compared to the Armored Golem it's got 36% of the HP and 80% of the (bonus) DPS.  Though the golem has rather more armor, putting the Zenith's effective durability closer to 8% of the Golem's, but not against everything.

Granted, MkV Zenith Starships are only available from fabs (and exos), but there are MkV versions of the spirecraft too.

[Radiant Phoenix]

So I was looking at the numbers with a view of bringing the combat spirecraft (namely the Siege Tower, Ion Blaster, and Implosion Artillery) back to their originally intended space of "more individually powerful than starships, less individually powerful than golems".

Turns out that could be a bit tricky

I wonder how many of you have already noticed that a MkV Zenith Starship has 90% of the HP and 91% of the (bonus) DPS of a Black Widow Golem?  And almost as much armor (5000 vs 6000)

Even compared to the Armored Golem it's got 36% of the HP and 80% of the (bonus) DPS.  Though the golem has rather more armor, putting the Zenith's effective durability closer to 8% of the Golem's, but not against everything.

Granted, MkV Zenith Starships are only available from fabs (and exos), but there are MkV versions of the spirecraft too.

Then drop two zeroes off of the damage and toughness of normal ships. (i.e., not Fallen Spire, Champions, Golems, or spirecraft)

[keith.lamothe]

Then drop two zeroes off of the damage and toughness of normal ships. (i.e., not Fallen Spire, Champions, Golems, or spirecraft)

Excellent, it'll be in tomorrow morning's patch!



Not really, as plenty of said ships don't have two zeroes to drop (in damage, at least), among other issues.

[Histidine]

I wonder how many of you have already noticed that a MkV Zenith Starship has 90% of the HP and 91% of the (bonus) DPS of a Black Widow Golem?  And almost as much armor (5000 vs 6000)

*in Neo voice* Whooaa... duude.
Now I know why I've been wanting to see a rescale of Zenith/Spire Starships to cap of two.

[keith.lamothe]

I wonder how many of you have already noticed that a MkV Zenith Starship has 90% of the HP and 91% of the (bonus) DPS of a Black Widow Golem?  And almost as much armor (5000 vs 6000)

*in Neo voice* Whooaa... duude.
Now I know why I've been wanting to see a rescale of Zenith/Spire Starships to cap of two.

Why would it be better if the cap were 2?  A cap would still be very comparable to a golem.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I mean
Um
There's really no way to spin this well. If all the mk V ships are the AI's unique tech at work, humanity is so screwed if they actually can reach golem caliber. Good thing you can't get the AI tech level to mk V, right?
...right?

[Radiant Phoenix]

Then drop two zeroes off of the damage and toughness of normal ships. (i.e., not Fallen Spire, Champions, Golems, or spirecraft)

Excellent, it'll be in tomorrow morning's patch!



Not really, as plenty of said ships don't have two zeroes to drop (in damage, at least), among other issues.

Other than some things that only do damage at all so they can say they do damage (which could just have their reload speed multiplied when you run out of zeroes to drop), what does less than 100 damage per shot?

[keith.lamothe]

Other than some things that only do damage at all so they can say they do damage (which could just have their reload speed multiplied when you run out of zeroes to drop), what does less than 100 damage per shot?

There are probably some things, but the most recent example I could think of was the laser gatling with a base high-caps attack power of 150.  So greater than 100, but going to 1 or 2 would be a pretty significant change for it even if everything else scaled.

[LaughingThesaurus]

On the bright side, something that does 1 or 2 damage can't really be affected by enemy armor!

[PokerChen]

Drop 1 zero then. The lowest damage in-game (wiki-caps) are the Riot Control modules and the viral swarmer, at 400 per shot. I'm pretty sure this is the lowest value, when I zoomed across all of the ships in the prior wiki-update phase.   The laser gatlings are 600 comparatively, and minipods on 560 - AFAIK all units have 1+ trailing zeros. Then you can enter in the mark-V flamethrower (formerly known as the "siege" tower) where the mark-V zenith starship is.

[Histidine]

I wonder how many of you have already noticed that a MkV Zenith Starship has 90% of the HP and 91% of the (bonus) DPS of a Black Widow Golem?  And almost as much armor (5000 vs 6000)

*in Neo voice* Whooaa... duude.
Now I know why I've been wanting to see a rescale of Zenith/Spire Starships to cap of two.

Why would it be better if the cap were 2?  A cap would still be very comparable to a golem.

Well, it'd make the single-ship comparison half as bad at least   

I don't remember if this was already discussed/tried during the starship rebalance period, but perhaps the balance target for starships should be around 1.5-1.6x same-mark fleetship cap, instead of 2x?

[Radiant Phoenix]

One thing that would have to be done with this change is to rebalance superweapon costs in exo-waves.

[Bognor]

The Ion Blaster still has targeting weirdnesses (to the point that I think just giving it a different weapon may be the best way forward; ion stuff is really weird).

I could be misunderstanding the problem, but if it's specifically an ion issue, couldn't you achieve almost the same result by (1) changing it to any other weapon type (railgun?) (2) giving it arbitrarily high damage (like a Botnet Golem), and (3) giving it targeting restrictions the inverse of Miniram's?  I guess targeting would also have to consider mark level.

[keith.lamothe]

I don't remember if this was already discussed/tried during the starship rebalance period, but perhaps the balance target for starships should be around 1.5-1.6x same-mark fleetship cap, instead of 2x?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.  Their current DPS target is about 0.5x a fleet ship type and the current HP target is about 2x a fleet ship type.  You mean nerfing the latter?