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

[LaughingThesaurus]

The AI already can potentially have invisible ships that have force field immunity that slip right by your defensive line if you aren't careful.
...but point taken.

[Tridus]

We really don't need more forcefield immune stuff. Too much of that and there will be calls to make something that defeats forcefield immunity.

[Martyn van Buren]

Out of curiosity, what do people do with etherjets?  Never really used them.  Do you use them like the AI does to clear threat --- i.e., build some serious defenses, and then pop a cap of etherjets in to grab some threat ships and pull them through the wormhole?

[Faulty Logic]

I mostly use them as a reserve force, to pull enemy ships away from things I don't want enemy ships near.

[keith.lamothe]

I mostly use them as a reserve force, to pull enemy ships away from things I don't want enemy ships near.

Seems like a natural Riot-assistance role.  Pity the riot's shields probably can't cover many of the fragile etherjets.

[Histidine]

Make Etherjet tractor paralyze Widow-style

We really don't need more forcefield immune stuff. Too much of that and there will be calls to make something that defeats forcefield immunity.

I concur. Every raiding unit and its mom already has forcefield immunity as it is.

[KDR_11k]

I guess nobody votes raider because nobody uses it and nobody cares either. We already have a plethora of raider units in the bonus ship list but AOE ships like the grenade launcher are rare.

[chemical_art]

I worry about the consequences if a huge blob of ai sf get hydras. it may be very difficult to kill.

[keith.lamothe]

I worry about the consequences if a huge blob of ai sf get hydras. it may be very difficult to kill.

I think you'd still prefer it get hydras compared to some other stuff.

Hydras actually only have 10M*mk cap-hp, btw, while triangle ships get around 15M.  And while their cap isn't normal it's not super-low either. So they've got some nastiness but they're not invincible death machines.  Just death machines.

[Jonz0rz]

Out of curiosity, what do people do with etherjets?  Never really used them.  Do you use them like the AI does to clear threat --- i.e., build some serious defenses, and then pop a cap of etherjets in to grab some threat ships and pull them through the wormhole?

I use them as really really inefficient cannon fodder. It's too annoying to try and micro them so I just blob them with everything else.

Occasionally I'll use merc etherjets as a money-sink if I have the devo golem turned on, since he can't eat cloaked ships.

[DrFranknfurter]

I think most ships are already well-balanced, but not all as fun to use. Suggested uses for each ship may encourage people to try raptors/raiders/etherjets for long enough to grow to like them.

Not in the list as it's not overly important but:
I'd like Impulse reaction emitters and polarisers to get a better description. Perhaps with damage shown being actual minimum (according to the formulas on the wiki) perhaps add the max damage against a preferred target to the description. "Does x against 100 energy, up to x against 10k energy", ditto with anti-armour, "Does x against 100k armour, without the armour piercing ability it would only do 0.2x"

(I'd like the armour mechanic to get some love, perhaps up the max mitigated damage or make it a value between 0 and 100, %mitigation (always useful then). It seems like hull-type is doing most of the work atm and I can understand wanting to ditch it for simplicity... If it was ditched perhaps those two could go back to being shield related? Shield-booster boosting force-fields/champions/mod-forts/ffbs and Anti-armour doing x10 damage against hardened structures/force-fields... 'Shield piercer'? ...Just thinking aloud... armour boosting seems almost as odd as laser-attracting, unless it's via decoys or it's 'boosting the hull polarity')

[LaughingThesaurus]

Etherjet tractors are excellent for, say, stealing a few AI ships of threat from a planet and dragging them into your ground. I fairly often will use tractor beams to drag ships into my fleet/turret alpha strike if they won't go in on their own. It's especially good if you've got cloaked tractor beam vessels, because then you can just pull AI ships with impunity.

[TechSY730]

Speaking of ether jets, has anyone tried to use the "ships with full tractor load rally" option recently? When I tried it last, it was so buggy (especially when combined with FRD) that it might as well not of been there.

[Kahuna]

Speaking of ether jets, has anyone tried to use the "ships with full tractor load rally" option recently? When I tried it last, it was so buggy (especially when combined with FRD) that it might as well not of been there.

Never used it because all ships that have tractor beams are bad. Well.. Riots are good but I don't use tractor modules and tractor platforms are good too but they're slow. So the only ship left with tractor(s) is EtherJet.

[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.