Poll: Buff Spirecraft Health?

[_K_]

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 would actually approve if starships were scaled down a bit. Lower HP*DPS, lower resource cost, same K cost.

[Histidine]

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?

D'oh, I knew I should have checked DPS instead of assuming it had a similar ratio to HP.

Yeah those numbers don't actually look too bad (although bear in mind that all the mechanics that benefit low-cap ships apply doubly so to new starships). A slight nerf to starship HP might work.
Or maybe buff golems instead

[Wingflier]

I'd rather we wait awhile and let the Starship changes settle in before we go reverting anything. They were literally just changed 2 weeks ago, now we want to change them back.

[contingencyplan]

I'd rather we wait awhile and let the Starship changes settle in before we go reverting anything. They were literally just changed 2 weeks ago, now we want to change them back.

I'd agree --- it's too early to really talk numbers because we don't have a firm grasp on what we're addressing.

Golems seem to be the soft upper limit on "power." So let's ask some starting questions to figure out where that limit lies: [1]

First, @Keith: How much "MORE POWER!" [2] are Golems supposed to be vs. human-constructable, as far as their intuitive / design-wise balance point? I'm not asking for hard numbers; just if you were telling someone about Golems when they first came out, you'd say "They're X more powerful than anything you can currently build!"

Second, @Everybody else: what is the floor of "MORE POWER!" for Golems for them to be worth taking? In other words, at what point (generally speaking) would Golems, in and of themselves, not be worth taking a planet for (all other things being equal)?

Third, as far as Spirecraft, a MkI combat-centric Spirecraft should generally be equivalent to what Mk Starship?

As a related question, what Mk should Golems be considered compared to starships --- e.g., MkVIII, MkXX, or what?


I would switch sides (from my "BUT... BUT... I HAVE EXOS ON!" approach) and note that starships are part of the core game, so we shouldn't nerf them just because they impact superweapons. I tend towards liking the new starship values --- I still don't uber-micro them in part due to Diff 7, so I'm not in a position to really talk compared to others playing better and at higher difficulties, but it's enough to make me take note rather than always throwing them into my fleetball.


[1]: For the record, I didn't intend for this to expand into an entire SuperWeapon balance discussion; I got the sense that Golems were a bit more fragile than I'd like, but I figured it was that I was doing it wrong (as opposed to Spirecraft, which seemed to go down when the AI fired its sneeze cannons.) [3]

[2]: Ideally in the spirit of Tim "The Toolman" Taylor, for those that remember Home Improvement.

[3]: Yet another reason that these should be rebuildable, just sayin'. Yes, I'm 80% joking, but it's worth noting that this would give a lot more flexibility in the relative power levels.

[keith.lamothe]

First, @Keith: How much "MORE POWER!" [2] are Golems supposed to be vs. human-constructable, as far as their intuitive / design-wise balance point? I'm not asking for hard numbers; just if you were telling someone about Golems when they first came out, you'd say "They're X more powerful than anything you can currently build!"

Answer: *grunt grunt (so I rewired it)*

Translation:  I wasn't actually working for Arcen when Golems were originally added.  They've been through a lot of changes since then.  In any event, nowadays my off-the-top-of-my-head balance target for, say, an Armored Golem is to be roughly as stat-powerful as 3 or 4 caps of MkV stuff (so on normal caps, about 300 or 400 MkV Fighters or MkV Bombers or whatever).  I haven't checked recently if that's true


Anyway, my point with my comparison of the Zenith V to the Golems was not that Golems needed to be higher, but that the combination of buffing starships, reducing their caps, and adding higher-mark versions has put their stats into a region that was never really intended for base game stuff.  Basically it makes starship fabs and the ASC into mini-superweapons.  Whether this is a problem I'm not 100% sure of yet, but it's "probable cause", you might say.  That said, I'm not rushing off to change them, as some appear concerned might happen

[Toranth]

Translation:  I wasn't actually working for Arcen when Golems were originally added.  They've been through a lot of changes since then.  In any event, nowadays my off-the-top-of-my-head balance target for, say, an Armored Golem is to be roughly as stat-powerful as 3 or 4 caps of MkV stuff (so on normal caps, about 300 or 400 MkV Fighters or MkV Bombers or whatever).  I haven't checked recently if that's true


Anyway, my point with my comparison of the Zenith V to the Golems was not that Golems needed to be higher, but that the combination of buffing starships, reducing their caps, and adding higher-mark versions has put their stats into a region that was never really intended for base game stuff.  Basically it makes starship fabs and the ASC into mini-superweapons.  Whether this is a problem I'm not 100% sure of yet, but it's "probable cause", you might say.  That said, I'm not rushing off to change them, as some appear concerned might happen

Well, a quick check says Armored Golem vs:
Fighter V:  1561  (16.26 caps) needed to kill the Golem.
Bomber V:  379 (3.95 caps) required (yay, multipliers).
Frigate V:  1588 (16.54 caps) needed.

Laser Gatling V:  2039 (7.5 caps).
Zelec V:  89 (4.68 caps).
Zenith Polarizer V:  224 (2.33 caps).


Reference vs Zenith Starship V:
Fighter V:  190 (1.98 caps)
Bomber V:  216 (2.25 caps)
Frigate V:  75 (.78 caps)

Laser Gatling V: 749 (2.75 caps)

The armor makes a BIG difference here. 

[keith.lamothe]

Out of curiosity, how does it look from the golem-attacking-something-else side of the picture?

[chemical_art]

Out of curiosity, how does it look from the golem-attacking-something-else side of the picture?

They are fearsome, yes, but aside from the armored most fall quickly to a dedicated defense unless it has meat shields.

[KDR_11k]

I'm not sure what the role of the Siege Tower really is. The name itself would imply something that's slow but nearly impossible to take down before it reaches the fortress it's after and then either deals grievous harm itself or allows an army to bypass the defense it's being used against. What it seems to be used as is basically the SC variant of a starship.

The ion blaster's problem is the same as the ion cannon's, the AI ships you care about are usually mark 3+ so marks 1 and 2 are practically unable to instakill stuff (also with LotS adding so many starship-like fleetships the instakill ability is even less useful). With Spirecraft you need to search for rare asteroids to get those marks and then they're so valuable you wonder if it's worth spending those rare resources on an ion blaster. I'm not sure how many people bother building an ion blaster when they expect it won't be able to instakill things.

Comparing SCs to golems, while golems have varying roles they are almost all fierce combatants (only the regen golem is not). The armored tanks damage but also roasts stuff. The cursed provides enough sniper support to wipe out entire planets. The black widow disables AND kills things. The artillery obliterates single targets. The botnet will annihilate any force that is reclaimable. Tank, reclaimer, riot, light or heavy sniper, they are all powerful battleships that can kill medium sized armies solo.

Meanwhile SC have middling to nonexistent combat strength, perhaps in part because higher marks are fairly hard to get your hands on. Many of their roles are very limited in scope and they are useless outside of their role. The one thing SCs excel at is cheese, be it martyring a whole threatball or assassinating AI HW structures with a penetrator. However even that cheese is fairly narrow as a role.

The other two superweapons, the fallen spire and the champion, both offer a lot of direct firepower. The FS is all about straight up combatants while even a weirdly configured champion will retain enough firepower to do a lot of damage.

EDIT: Speaking of rare resources, what are the seeding rates of the various asteroids?  Are MkIV-V SCs as rare as proper golems? How far out do you have to venture from your home to get the various levels and does the difficulty ofacquiring them match the gains from the higher marks?

[TechSY730]

Um, I use ion blasters. Sure, I don't waste my time with Mk. I ion blasters, but I am willing to get Mk. II and Mk. IIIs
It's true that the most dangerous stuff in the game tends to have insta-kill immunity, but that doesn't really change the fact that the overwhelming majority of the time you will be facing stuff that isn't immune to insta-kill. Those 4 kills per 2 seconds (or whatever the rate is) can actually start adding up, especially with thinning out reinforcements or backing up your wave defense. (Keep in mind, the kill tracking for insta-kill stuff is broken currently, so you can't get the game to get you any hard numbers to tell just how much or little they are contributing)

They are somewhat "squishy", but they generally have enough range that it isn't a huge problem.

[Hearteater]

Make SC Ions paralyze for 4 seconds minus one for each Mark over the kill threshold of the target.  So an Ion I would paralyze a Mark IV for 1 second, and a Mark V for 0.  But an Ion II would paralyze for 2 seconds and 1 second against a Mark IV and V respectively.

[kasnavada]

I'm sure everything has been said above... but martyr, jumpship, ram, scout look OK.

However, compared to recent modification to starships, the other "models" are now really weak, due to paper-thin hit points. Their hit point should increase to "regular" ship level (aka : 10M for lvl 1, or a bit more, if, like the bomber, thay are supposed to take some damage, siege tower comes in mind). That should not come for free, I'd be in favor of a rise in costs too.

[contingencyplan]

Haven't caught up on the thread (just wanting to wind down with playing the game instead of debating it ), but something I noticed:

EDIT: Speaking of rare resources, what are the seeding rates of the various asteroids?  Are MkIV-V SCs as rare as proper golems? How far out do you have to venture from your home to get the various levels and does the difficulty ofacquiring them match the gains from the higher marks?

In my 120-planet game (X map, 7/7, Rand(Easy + Medium) --> Mine + Vicious Raider, all Exo sources on, FS, 3 Champs)...

I got 2 Titanite (highest-level asteroids).

In the Whole.

Dang.

Galaxy.


Next level down is Adamitite at 9.

Granted, this is one data point, but still, I was surprised. And I know that things don't entirely scale for 120 planets, but 11? Seriously? < 10%?

So the first question is are there any ships that are / are not worth spending my 11 highest-end asteroids for? That is, are there any "must-have" or "don't bother" ships?

Are there any ships worth spending 20 AIP just for them?

In my specific case, Titanite ships are worth about 4x as much as a Golem by rarity. I have to take the 2 planets to use them, and if they die, then that's it. At least in this seeding I got 9 Golems (+1 Botnet): 3 Cursed, 3 Regen, 2 Arty, 1 Armor.

I honestly don't see anything in this list worth writing home about (based on intuition; no numbers crunched unless otherwise indicated):

• Scouts --- 3 jumps round-trip? I'll just pound at the Tachyons if I have to; in my case, whole galaxy's scouted with Scout II and Scout SS II's. If I need more monitors, I'll unlock Scout IIIs; at least I can easily reposition them.
  
  
• Shield Bearers --- ABSOLUTELY NOT, given that I can't repair them and they'll get nuked by an exo anyways. I'd rather defend with Champs + Golems.
  
  And so help me, if somebody makes the argument that I have other toys to defend against the exos, I SWEAR, BY THE BIG COMPUTER IN THE SKY...!
  
  
• Jumpship --- could be useful to get out of a jam, but it's easier and more AIP cost-effective to just pound at the AI with my Champs + Golems; besides, I play a higher AIP game anyways.
  
  
• Attritioner --- I'm playing on low caps. From what I can tell, it doesn't scale based on caps --- less damage to spread around ---, so useful, but nowhere near worth 20 AIP or 4x as valuable as a Golem.
  
  
• Ion Blaster, Penetrator --- alright, now we're talking. Except... Ion Blaster MkVs have less range than a Plasma SS MkI and the same cap-health, and Penetrators have 70% of the attack and 50% of the health of an Arty Golem (and I got 2 of them in the galaxy as well). Now, I'm not factoring in top-DPS or armor or anything, just a quick comparison, but still...

Taking the rarity : power ratio (which is a flawed relation, I'll agree) + the fragility of the lower marks + destructibility (yes, it's my schtick, but ONE DAY I'LL SHOW YOU ALL! ), this'll probably be the last game I play with Spirecraft, I'm sad to say.


A random thought as I'm finishing up the post: essentially require that Spire Asteroids be brought back to the home base, at which point you can build a Spire Fab of your choice appropriate for that asteroid. You could have chase exos or general exos spawn due to either the taking of the asteroid or the construction of the Fab, or something similar. I realize this is kinda encroaching on Fallen Spire, but I think it still kinda fits thematically and would make Spirecraft a lot more interesting without requiring a huge amount of balancing (especially considering the recent SS buffs).

edit: Hell, just maintain a counter of some sort. I'm sure y'all can figure out something "interesting" (i.e., "Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die") to do with it.

[Bognor]

Are there any ships worth spending 20 AIP just for them?

Maybe you already know this, but you don't actually have to own the planet to mine the asteroids.  You don't even need supply.  In practice you just need to get a bunch of engies and a constructor in there and have them survive long enough to rush-build whatever you want, and then escort the spirecraft back to safety.

[contingencyplan]

Are there any ships worth spending 20 AIP just for them?

Maybe you already know this, but you don't actually have to own the planet to mine the asteroids.  You don't even need supply.  In practice you just need to get a bunch of engies and a constructor in there and have them survive long enough to rush-build whatever you want, and then escort the spirecraft back to safety.

Actually, no, I didn't know that, so thanks. Still seems like trading the 20 AIP for a significant amount of tedium and babysitting. How's your experience been in applying this tactic?