Poll: What bonus ship types need to be more useful for the AI?

[keith.lamothe]

Nomination thread was here: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13305.0.html

Just wanting to get another round of this in before 7.0 hits, since these changes are typically quite simple to do and unlikely to cause crashes, etc.

To reiterate: this is if you think the ship needs to be more useful to the AI.  The other poll is for buffing for player usage.  Though it's likely that a winner will be buffed for both unless there's a pressing reason to make it one-sided or the buff in question is inherently one-sided (like metal, crystal, energy, or knowledge costs, etc).

Anyway, up to 3 votes per user, poll will close automatically in 2 days.  I'll probably do something with the top 5 winners, but we'll see.  Any item that doesn't beat the "None of the above need a buff!" is not a winner

Thanks for the feedback!

[Faulty Logic]

Anyway, up to 5 votes per user

I assume the forum ate this as well. I'm only seeing 3 votes.

[keith.lamothe]

Anyway, up to 5 votes per user

I assume the forum ate this as well. I'm only seeing 3 votes.

I'm just on a roll today aren't I.  Or you are.

Anyway, just a lazy copy-pasta from me, it was supposed to say 3.

[TechSY730]

Aw, I was just going to vote the exact same 5 ships that I voted for in the human version of this poll.

Oh well.


Anyways, oddly enough, armor boosters are more useful to the AI thanks to all the fun new offensive toys they have gotten recently. Still need to be more useful, but not as bad as humans have it. However, because of this, they were one of the ones not to get their vote copied over.

[Qatu]

 It's been a while since i used them, but i seem to remember grenade launchers having lower DPS than any triangle ship when they hit max targets. They were pretty sad. But the most important thing to change about grenade launchers is their sound effect if it hasnt been changed yet. It was th emost grating sound imaginable.

[Tridus]

Railpods were nominated because the AI won't repair them to let them keep shooting (like a player could), or spam space docks and use them as bullets in the space dock artillery (also like a player could). They just show up, shoot a couple of things, and then the entire wave kills itself.

[LaughingThesaurus]

What if railpods were also accompanied by engineers?
(I know I've just been full of great ideas today)

[Histidine]

Railpods could get the LTF treatment (second one this expansion x_x) and become human-exclusive (or perhaps just not eligible for waves; is that possible?).

Or maybe just make the wave multiplier for them really, really high. For extra lulz, replace the starships in a Railpod wave with warheads.

[chemical_art]

Younglings by defeat come in greater numbers due to their nature. Railpods could get this modifer as.well.

I dont want them oncreased.too much though because there is no way to counter.them aside.from hiding under shields. You cant stop them in any way from dealing their damage.

[keith.lamothe]

I dont want them oncreased.too much though because there is no way to counter.them aside.from hiding under shields. You cant stop them in any way from dealing their damage.

I'm pretty sure counter-snipers (either turrets or scout starships or cloaker starships or whatever) would work, but yea, once they launch they... well, launch.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, here's how it came out in the changes (this is for both the AI and human polls; the overlap was striking) :

* Grenade Launcher, in honor of winning BOTH polls:
** From having no vs-hull bonuses to having 3x vs Light, Composite, CloseCombat, and Swarmer (same as the Flak Turret, which is basically a stationary grenade launcher).
** From 80k+20k cap-m+c cost => 70k+10k.
** From 30k cap-e cost => 20k.

* Armor Booster, in honor of coming second in the for-humans poll and doing decently in the for-ai poll:
** Now increases the armor of all boosted ships to a minimum of 1000, before piercing and the multiplicative part of the boost are applied.
** Base Cap Health from 4,921,000 => 7.5M (so about 50% of fighters, though the armor boosters have a much lower cap and thus higher effective durability).
** Base Cap DPS from 28.5k => 40k (so about 80% of a fighter, since it also has 6x bonuses).

* Etherjets in honor of doing well in both polls:
** Base Cap Health from 4,939,200 => 10M (about 2/3rds of Fighters, and jets are a high caps ship, so effective durability is much lower).
** Base Cap DPS from 58.8k => 80k (about 60% more than Fighters, but makes Bonus DPS only about 9% higher than Fighters)
** Cap M+C cost from 9k+27k => 9k+18k.
** Cap E cost from 30k => 20k.
** So the point of these is still the tractors and the cloaking, but they should hold their own a bit better in a fight now.

* Anti-Armor Ships, in honor of doing well in both polls:
** Base Ship Cap from 392 => 240 (Fighters have 192).
** Base Cap Health from 5,488,000 => 15M (so near Fighters, but with somewhat higher cap means somewhat lower effective durability).
** Base Armor from 150*mk => 0.
** Bonuses (vs Heavy, UltraHeavy, Polycrystal, and Structural) from 2.4 => 5 (base dps is already 52% higher than Fighters, this makes bonus dps 26% higher than Fighters).
** Armor Piercing from 10k*mk => Max (kinda in the name, right?).
** Base Move Speed from 24 => 28 (so now same speed as Bombers).
** So the point is that it ignores armor and is effective vs heavily fortified stuff, while no longer being curiously flimsy.

* Raptor, in honor of doing well in both polls:
** Base Ship Cap from 192 => 96 (so half fighters).
** Base Cap Health from 4,939,200 => 7.5M (so half fighters, but with the lower cap has somewhat more effective durability).
** Added Bonus vs Artillery (already had Light, UltraLight, and Refractive).
** Bonuses from 1.8 => 6 (base DPS was 33% more than fighters, but bonus dps was 60% lower, now will be 11% higher).
** Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 0.
** Base Engine Health from 50 => 100.
** Cap M+C cost from 16k+80k => 16k+40k.
** So the point is still the speed and the cloaking, but more up to date in terms of combat stats.

* Raider, in honor of doing well in both polls:
** Base Ship Cap from 392 => 240 (so 25% more than Fighters).
** Base Cap Health from 10,290,000 => 15M (so like Fighters, but slightly lower effective durability due to cap).
** Armor from 150*mk => 0.
** Base Cap DPS from 49k => 65k (so now 32% more than Fighters).
** Vs-hull bonus types from Heavy, UltraHeavy, Artillery, Swarmer => Light, UltraLight, Artillery, Medium,
** Bonuses from 4 => 5 (so bonus DPS now 10% more than Fighters).
** Armor Piercing from 10k => 0.
** Base Move Speed from 36 => 60 (so quite a bit faster than the normal 30-40 range of fighter-likes but nowhere near the 130+ league of Raptors and Raid Starships).
** Cap M+C cost from 16k+47k => 12k+30k.
** So these have be re-imagined a bit to be fast high-ish-cap raiders but not cloaked, with increased durability (since they're not cloaked) and designed to take down non-hardened targets.