Poll: Consensus on the New Plasma Siege Starships

[PokerChen]

...some AI ships actually are smart enough to focus fire my botnet and ignore all the zombies. Ouch.

That problem used to persist to a lesser degree for botnets in combination with the non-paralysing black-widows at 100 tractors. When get you one of each, keep them together.

Well after reverting to an autosave (yes yes I'm lame for save scumming, shoot me!) a wave came in on a world where I had my hive golem, which I thought should be easy. And it would have been, if I had actually remembered to use the hive golem, or even to take it off low power mode. Instead I just left it in the ship pile near the wormhole and guess what the wave decided to focus fire? Yeah at that point I decided it was time to stop for the night...

Storyline conclusion: There's consequences with down-grading the ship-AIs and comms on all of your ships in order to prevent the AI from uploading "hot-fixes" to them BSG-style.

[BobTheJanitor]

Yeah, who needs artificial intelligence when you've already got real stupid? 

[Kraiz]

After reading over the whole 2 1/2 pages of the thread, I've just got the following comments to put in:
1:  I haven't tried the new Plasma Siege Starship.  Intend to do that after making this post.
2:  I really like the idea of some "Deployable" weapon systems. Heavy, high-yield high-cost barely mobile weapon systems that can fill a variety of roles.  I remember playing Supreme Commander 2 with the UEF Jackhammer Siege Tanks.  They were useful in that I could place them as base defense turrets, move them up behind my army as a close-range artillery helper, or park them just out of enemy defenses range and have them go to work.  Their versatily was counteracted by their need for setup/pack up times and slow movement speeds.
2:  The sound of the AoE in forcefields sounds very interesting, but as mentioned before me, it doesn't seem like a very "Base" starship.  However, as I have yet to try the ship, I'll reserve further elaboration on this until I have tried it and can speak for myself on the mattter.

[BobTheJanitor]

Well the changes to Siege Starships (at least the changes within the last year or so) came about because of the desire to not have starships that could act as long range killers and to instead encourage up-close fleet on fleet battles. So I doubt we're likely to get anything like that back again. That was the last design that I don't think any players were really complaining about, but in fairness it did mean that it was better to snipe down guard posts and force fields from across the system and just use your fleet to screen the attackers as they came to you, instead of fighting in a series of small battles across the planet.

So my guess is that anything that can still blow up guard posts while hanging out well outside their range is probably going to get the thumbs down, whether it has a setup time or not. Although it is probably possible to do something like this (as long as you have supply on the planet). You can bring in a mobile builder and throw up long range turrets on AI worlds. That definitely has a setup time. Although the effectiveness may or may not be that great. I've never seen a reason to try it.

[Wingflier]

Although it is probably possible to do something like this (as long as you have supply on the planet). You can bring in a mobile builder and throw up long range turrets on AI worlds. That definitely has a setup time. Although the effectiveness may or may not be that great. I've never seen a reason to try it.

I think that's the reason they consider "beachheads" balanced.  There is a significant resource/time/knowledge investment in doing it, therefore preventing players from really being able to exploit the ability to take a planet from long-range.

As you pointed out, using long-range siege ships and screening them with your fleet is a very simple and safe way to slowly destroy a planet without much risk.  The game's AI and mechanics aren't really designed to handle long-range sieges, which I suppose could be more of a flaw with the game itself, but it would probably require a significant overhaul if that were to become a viable strategy.  Personally, I don't mind most things in the game being relatively close-range, but I do think the "Siege" tag on the newest ship is a bit misleading considering the range has been so severely reduced.

[keith.lamothe]

but I do think the "Siege" tag on the newest ship is a bit misleading considering the range has been so severely reduced.

There is something to that, but one thing to remember is that not all siege engines are long-range.  The Bomber Starship, for example, I tend to think of as the "Battering Ram Starship".  The previous Siege Starship was more like the "Trebuchet Starship" and I have tremendous affection for that kind of long range enormous gun with something like an engine tacked on the back... but it wasn't really compatible with the design goals for how a mobile fleet attack on an AI planet can play out.

It'll probably wind up with roughly missile-frigate range, we'll see.

[Shrugging Khan]

If it would cause problems in siege scenarios, then I'd make it fire Antimatter shots. In that way, it really is very close to the bombards...but different enough to be interesting.

[Hearteater]

Not sure if it is intended for the Plasma Siege to still have engine damage.  Probably doesn't need it after the likely 5.024 changes Keith's mentioned here.

[BobTheJanitor]

If it would cause problems in siege scenarios, then I'd make it fire Antimatter shots. In that way, it really is very close to the bombards...but different enough to be interesting.

Is this ironic humor that I'm missing, or were you gone for so long that you missed the ship's previous incarnation as the "Antimatter Starship"? That was the whole point of changing it again, since antimatter shots have targeting limitations, and the ship itself has targeting limitations, and the overlap left them able to shoot like 3 things per world.

[Commiesalami]

If it would cause problems in siege scenarios, then I'd make it fire Antimatter shots. In that way, it really is very close to the bombards...but different enough to be interesting.

Is this ironic humor that I'm missing, or were you gone for so long that you missed the ship's previous incarnation as the "Antimatter Starship"? That was the whole point of changing it again, since antimatter shots have targeting limitations, and the ship itself has targeting limitations, and the overlap left them able to shoot like 3 things per world.

It was able to hit guardians, starships and I'm pretty sure hybrids.  And having a 5x Mk1 Antimatter starships could generally take out most mk2 or 3 guardians in 1 - 2 volleys, that's an immense amount of fire support for you fleet ships. 

Not sure if it is intended for the Plasma Siege to still have engine damage.  Probably doesn't need it after the likely 5.024 changes Keith's mentioned here.

I'm not sure why it had engine damage, considering that most guardians & starships had 100,000 engine health.  The ship would die long before the engine would.  I sense a very likely bug being that a shot from a plasma siege starship would destroy all the engines in a large area, making riot ships very obselete very quick.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm not sure why it had engine damage, considering that most guardians & starships had 100,000 engine health.

The original Dreadnought type did a lot of engine damage, and part of that was inherited by the Siege, and then by the Antimatter, and now the Plasma Siege.  It's not likely to engine-kill a starship but it does slow it down (if it's in the range I remember).

I sense a very likely bug being that a shot from a plasma siege starship would destroy all the engines in a large area, making riot ships very obselete very quick.

No, it doesn't do that, it only spreads damage

[Shrugging Khan]

Not sure if it is intended for the Plasma Siege to still have engine damage.  Probably doesn't need it after the likely 5.024 changes Keith's mentioned here.

I was aware of that...but still serious