Poll follow-up: the future of gravity.

[chemical_art]

I find the exos for building cities in general too intense. So intense to the point I build 50 merc fighters (so I can scrap them), and wait till I have max resources, with the hope that I can build the city within 30 seconds so I don't die from the AI response.

[keith.lamothe]

I find the exos for building cities in general too intense. So intense to the point I build 50 merc fighters (so I can scrap them), and wait till I have max resources, with the hope that I can build the city within 30 seconds so I don't die from the AI response.

The exo happens when you start the city, and doesn't check for another pulse for like an hour, iirc, so you get all the AI-death you're going to get regardless.  Unless you take quite a while to build it.

[chemical_art]

The exo happens when you start the city, and doesn't check for another pulse for like an hour, iirc, so you get all the AI-death you're going to get regardless.  Unless you take quite a while to build it.
[/quote]

Ah, OK. Might want to make that a bit more clear in the journals. I get super parnoid so I min-maxed it because it was so intense.

[TechSY730]

The exo happens when you start the city, and doesn't check for another pulse for like an hour, iirc, so you get all the AI-death you're going to get regardless.  Unless you take quite a while to build it.

Ah, OK. Might want to make that a bit more clear in the journals. I get super parnoid so I min-maxed it because it was so intense.
[/quote]

Yea, the whole "an additional exo is spawned on the start of city construction" thing took me by surprise first time as well, and cost me the game that time.

[Diazo]

The early game exo-raid I faced (building the first city) spawned 6 to 8 Mk IV raids quite often when it picked its units.

Ow! Haha.  How many sniper shots is it taking to kill one of those?  Iirc snipers hard-counter the raids but the mkI-vs-mkIV thing is probably not favorable.

I will admit I did not look at the numbers specifically, but the Raids were surviving long enough I had to selected all my turrets and priority target them so they would die before my command station.

Now, Speed Racer AI and all that but sill it is a concern of mine.

D.

[Hearteater]

Sniper Turrets crush them very effectively.  24 Sniper/Spider turrets kill 1 Mark I Raid Starship every 6 seconds.  It can stress your caps a little if you have to deal with a lot of Mark III Raid Starships, but it isn't unreasonable.

Also, I'd really prefer if AI Raid Starships had the same stats as human Raid Starships.  I'd even say the human Raid SS could have its health come down.

[Winge]

I think the percentage method could work, although it will probably require a lot of balance.  However, I do think it will be an improvement once the tweaks are done.  Out of curiosity, where would the Gravity Drill fall on that chart?

The early game exo-raid I faced (building the first city) spawned 6 to 8 Mk IV raids quite often when it picked its units.

Ow! Haha.  How many sniper shots is it taking to kill one of those?  Iirc snipers hard-counter the raids but the mkI-vs-mkIV thing is probably not favorable.

I will admit I did not look at the numbers specifically, but the Raids were surviving long enough I had to selected all my turrets and priority target them so they would die before my command station.

Now, Speed Racer AI and all that but sill it is a concern of mine.

D.

Unless I am mistaken, Speed Racer ignores gravity...so, Gravity Turrets wouldn't help you anyways.

[Diazo]

The early game exo-raid I faced (building the first city) spawned 6 to 8 Mk IV raids quite often when it picked its units.

Ow! Haha.  How many sniper shots is it taking to kill one of those?  Iirc snipers hard-counter the raids but the mkI-vs-mkIV thing is probably not favorable.

I will admit I did not look at the numbers specifically, but the Raids were surviving long enough I had to selected all my turrets and priority target them so they would die before my command station.

Now, Speed Racer AI and all that but sill it is a concern of mine.

D.

Unless I am mistaken, Speed Racer ignores gravity...so, Gravity Turrets wouldn't help you anyways.

No, Speed Racer does not ignore gravity. The Spirecraft leading the exo-waves do however.

Having said that, my sniper turrets should have had time to get a couple shots off on the raids in system, but it was not effective enough as my command station just fell over and died if I did not focus all my turrets on the raids.

D.

[Faulty Logic]

The proposed solution seems unnecessarily complex and unintuitive. I would try just multiplying all the gravity values (except home ff) by 4. So a mkI grav turret makes the entire enemy fleet move slower than a plasma siege starship (32 on normal style), and you can still get reduction to 8 speed with the mkIII turret.

[orzelek]

Could we consider removing special exo waves speed invulnerability after gravity effects are nerfed?
This special is something thats most annoying about exos (not counting the Speed Racer) - and lead ship is not always readily killable.

[keith.lamothe]

Could we consider removing special exo waves speed invulnerability after gravity effects are nerfed?
This special is something thats most annoying about exos (not counting the Speed Racer) - and lead ship is not always readily killable.

The rule whereby the follower ships match speed (+5) with the lead ship is basically required for exos to really work at all.  Unless it just always picks a siege starship or something similarly slow as a leader, there'll often be huge chunks of the exo just left way behind.  Or did you mean something else?

[Hearteater]

I think he means put the "set all follower ship speed to leader ship's+5" rule BEFORE applying the Gravity Turret effect.  This would need to happen across all ships in the Exo before gravity effects, so gravity effects on the lead ship would not affect what speed followers were set to.  Instead, followers would need to be independently affected by gravity.

[orzelek]

Could we consider removing special exo waves speed invulnerability after gravity effects are nerfed?
This special is something thats most annoying about exos (not counting the Speed Racer) - and lead ship is not always readily killable.

The rule whereby the follower ships match speed (+5) with the lead ship is basically required for exos to really work at all.  Unless it just always picks a siege starship or something similarly slow as a leader, there'll often be huge chunks of the exo just left way behind.  Or did you mean something else?

I meant the part where there is no way to slow them at all. At least the lead ship should be vulnerable to gravity (unless it's inherently immune to gravity effects). They are also immune to stuff like logistic station which has global enough effect that it should work on lead ship.
And slowing the lead ship would then slow whole exo - it would be one way of trying to make in depth defense possible.

[keith.lamothe]

I meant the part where there is no way to slow them at all. At least the lead ship should be vulnerable to gravity (unless it's inherently immune to gravity effects). They are also immune to stuff like logistic station which has global enough effect that it should work on lead ship.
And slowing the lead ship would then slow whole exo - it would be one way of trying to make in depth defense possible.

Right, one of the things I'm planning to do as part of this is remove immunity-to-gravity from any unit that has it.  It was needed (despite the original idea that grav turrets would have no corresponding immunity) because grav stuff was so incredibly powerful.

[Hearteater]

You could make them instead of immune, reduce the magnitude by X amount.  Also allows more granularity in that ability.