Poll: Worst Ship Of The (time interval) Award (II)

[keith.lamothe]

I figured anything with a half-decent base + x6 against a triangle type (especially bombers) would be more or less ok.  Guess not

[TechSY730]

I figured anything with a half-decent base + x6 against a triangle type (especially bombers) would be more or less ok.  Guess not

The acid sprayer's bonus vs. bombers is appreciated, but not enough to redeem the rare usefulness of the other bonuses.

Basically, except for certain hull types (like the ones bombers have), half-decent with x6 bonuses is not that great.
Now, 3/4-decent base + 3x bonus I would be more willing to try. Or possibly 2/3-decent base + 4x bonus.

Anything more extreme then that is usually (again, bombers are an important exception) usually leads to crippling overspecialization

EDIT: Wha, I became a Master Member, when did that happen? Oh well, time to celebrate that.  (why don't we have a "party" or "celebrate good times, come on" smiley)

[keith.lamothe]

On the one hand, there's the opinion that high bonuses but low base damage leads to underwhelming ships (even if the bonuses include some common ships). 

On the other hand, voiced a couple months ago was the opinion that after the big 4.0-5.0 rebalance ship types feel way more "same-y" than they did in the 3.0 days.  In the 3.0 days, for example, the infiltrator had like a 100x bonus against fortresses (not a hull type, mind you, literally "fortresses").  I assumed that sort of thing tended to make for hyper-specialization and confusion why ships could not, generally speaking, hurt other ships. 

But then I wondered if we'd leveled it out too far with the general nothing-does-less-than-30k-cap-dps-in-just-about-any-circumstance rule (which does have some exceptions even now) based on the feedback from a couple months ago. 

Now the "specialized" ships of today (which would have been really tame fare compared to the normal 10x, 20x, etc bonuses of 3.x) are seen as underwhelming.

I don't know what to think

[TechSY730]

On the one hand, there's the opinion that high bonuses but low base damage leads to underwhelming ships (even if the bonuses include some common ships). 

On the other hand, voiced a couple months ago was the opinion that after the big 4.0-5.0 rebalance ship types feel way more "same-y" than they did in the 3.0 days.  In the 3.0 days, for example, the infiltrator had like a 100x bonus against fortresses (not a hull type, mind you, literally "fortresses").  I assumed that sort of thing tended to make for hyper-specialization and confusion why ships could not, generally speaking, hurt other ships. 

But then I wondered if we'd leveled it out too far with the general nothing-does-less-than-30k-cap-dps-in-just-about-any-circumstance rule (which does have some exceptions even now) based on the feedback from a couple months ago. 

Now the "specialized" ships of today (which would have been really tame fare compared to the normal 10x, 20x, etc bonuses of 3.x) are seen as underwhelming.

I don't know what to think

Sadly, the balanced area between crippling overspecialization and "everything feels the same" is rather narrow, as you are finding out the hard way. 

[Wanderer]

I believe the significant issue there is that while an over-specialized ship LATER can be useful as a counter to things the AI has done, it's rare you want a specialized ship early.  Infiltrator 100x fortress is a great example.  There's what, 4 seeded in the galaxy?  How much do I really need an anti-fortress specialist in the beginning of the game unless I'm fighting the fortress baron?

However, now I've got a weak, non-generalist ship being over 1/4 of my fleet cap.  Meh.  Ships need decent generality + a specialty if that's the route you wanted to take, or leave them as underwhelming with particular improvements and understand that we're gonna whine about 'em being weak and sucky in ARS's unless we actually NEED that specialty.  Not being able to pick a ship means that overspecialization + RandomNumberGod = crappy stuff, dependent on need.  Why do I need something that hammers swarmers and close combat if the AI enemies never open those up, as an example.

[chemical_art]

Hyper specialization can work if either:

A. The specialization is useful in every game
B. There is a "backup" role, of either good damage against common fleet ships, or a niche role that is useful universally
C. GREAT damage against a broad range of specialization so that odds are some bonus ship is absolutely devastated even if against "normal" ships it is not, and said ship is not expensive

For example, the acid sprayer does 6x damage against an uncommon set of ships. Well, my concerns are of the "polycrystal, heavy, ultra-heavy" ship types, and thus I don't care so much if it does damage against ships that don't threaten these things, since these things threaten defense.

I think part of the problem is that certain hull types are universally more threatening then others, both on defense and on offense. Part of what make raiders feared is that they have heavy armor yet are not of the heavy or ultra heavy class.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, I think I see the point.  Two general questions come to mind; the answers aren't easy/obvious, but I think they're good ones to consider:

1) How much dps does a cap of ships need to be able to do "in the general case" (not relying on bonuses, but not considering defensive counters like armor vs high-rof) to be "I won't complain if I get this from an ARS" useful?

2) For a human-controlled ship, how desirable is a bonus against hull type X, in the general case (not depending on particular AI unlocks)? 
- More to the point, I'd like to be able to "weight" each hull-type-bonus by desirability with the total of the values adding up to 1.0 (the idea being that having a bonus against everything is the same as having that as your non-bonus dps and no bonuses), as that would help better balance the "bonus choices" rather than making (say) a 6x bonus always "cost" the same amount of base-dps in the balance question regardless of what, exactly, the bonus is against.

[chemical_art]

A couple of radical ideas:

-Make each triangle ship its own class. Starships from the start that mimic these roles can follow (bomber and sieges starships) can also use these unique roles
-Make most bonus ships useful against one of these classes; ships that follow their own unique effect (paralysis, etc) do not need any bonus damage whatsoever
-Ships that do not get a bonus against these triangle ships get significant dps increase
-Further divide up the "ultra heavy" hull, so that all "big" ships are not countered by the same few things

Example: Space tanks are moved from polycrystal to neutron
Result: This would make tanks more dangerious: You can't count on fighters to cream them as you would bombers: You would need missile frigates. Less cookie cutter-y

Example: Move armored ships to a new class, to something that fleet ships cannot counter but to something starships can easily counter:
Result: You can still use fleet ships alone, but not at full effect. Starships on the dps role can fullfill a role fleet ships cannot.

Example: Black widows are no longer "ultra heavy" but now "raiders (or something like that)
Result: Bombers do not cream them, but other craft can.



 

[chemical_art]

To synthesize on my two posts:

For example: The inflatrator

It at one point, as posted here, had 100x bonus against fortresses. That could work with even 1/10th that! If...
1. It's hull type was moved to "raider", which would also contain it's starship's name sake; and this armor took 1% of fortress damage
2. It had a 10x damage bonus against forcefields, turrets, and guard posts hulls (these guard posts would be broken into two or three unique hulls, or even *gasp* moved into the "turret" category. Triangle ships don't really need a damage bonus against posts.)

It would need no other damage bonuses. It would the universal "base inflatrator". It wouldn't be useful at all against mobile craft, but that is ok because it destroys immobile things that are both tough (fortresses and shields) and common (guardposts and turrets)

[chemical_art]

To anyone industrious:

A list of the different units, by hull type, would significantly help with Keith's request.

I, for one, am not industrious

[HellishFiend]

Keith, if I may offer an observation you may or may not have picked up on already: people (myself included) seem to like it when bonus ships are capable of completely changing or altering one's strategy, rather than simply being a superfluous addition to the existing fleet and offensive/defensive strategies.

Perhaps that should be put to discussion or kept in mind when thinking about the roles that ships provide and how to alter them.

[TechSY730]

After looking at the spreadsheet, hull types are spread among the various fleet ship types actually pretty well, so I am not going to compare usefulness based on rarity or lack thereof

OK for hull types bonus usefullness. Will add and update as I think of and find out more

Useful because there are very important things with it:
Structural, Command-station

Useful because things with it tend to be durable and are commonly used:
Heavy, Ultra-Heavy (I fully agree with chemical-art and GUDare that heavy and ultra-heavy is currently overused, thus making bombers a little too valuable)

Useful because many ships with this, if allowed to do their thing, WILL be annoying or even dangerous:
Polycrystal, Ultra-light (for raid starship alone), Close-combat

Somewhat useful because many ships with this, if allowed to do their thing, MAY become annoying:
Artillery, Composite (S gravity drains, S gravity rippers, and Z beam frigates have this), Refractive (eye-bots, ether-jets, and raptors have this) (Eye-bots would of put it in the category above, except that they are slow, and have a hard counter with counter-missile turrets)

Not so useful due to things having it tend to be fragile anyways: (Though as GUDare points out, something with AOE could make good use of these bonuses)
Swarmer, Light, Ultra-light (for everything but raid starship)

Almost useless to humans because the AI almost never uses them:
Turret (The AI does not use turrets anymore. I think a few odd specialized AI only ships or structures have this, but those are rare)
Scout (The AI carriers might have scout armor, but other than that, the AI does not use things with scout hull)

Not great but not bad usefulness:
Everything else

EDIT: Here is a list of hull types guaranteed that the AI has in every game
Structural, Command-station (structures)
Light, Artillery, Polycrystal (triangle ships)
Neutron (engineers)

Not sure about guard posts, especially since that not every type is guaranteed to spawn every game, even though chances are, at least one of each will.

[Wanderer]

1) How much dps does a cap of ships need to be able to do "in the general case" (not relying on bonuses, but not considering defensive counters like armor vs high-rof) to be "I won't complain if I get this from an ARS" useful?

I use Missile Frigs as my baseline most of the time, which on normal/normal mk I is a little shy of 100k, as my generic anti-whatever ship.  If I'm not beating that, I'm most likely going to ignore that ship except as fleet filler.  So, I'd say in the 125-150k range for being non-triangle.  Bombers are actually pretty low on the DPS scale but that huge boost to FFs and Heavy's is really what you care about with 'em, as well as fortress killers.

2) For a human-controlled ship, how desirable is a bonus against hull type X, in the general case (not depending on particular AI unlocks)? 
- More to the point, I'd like to be able to "weight" each hull-type-bonus by desirability with the total of the values adding up to 1.0 (the idea being that having a bonus against everything is the same as having that as your non-bonus dps and no bonuses), as that would help better balance the "bonus choices" rather than making (say) a 6x bonus always "cost" the same amount of base-dps in the balance question regardless of what, exactly, the bonus is against.

Here's an example:  If you're going to have an artillery damage multiplier, don't do it for AoE ships.  The primary one of those we care about is the missile frigate.  In this case, the artillery multiplier is probably useless.  Now, AoE multipliers for Swarmer or Close combat, on the otherhand, would be HUGE... because you would be laying waste to the hundreds of the little buggers that are coming up on you.  For single-shotters... who cares?  It's useless.

Sometimes it really comes down to that too.  The only thing in ultra-lights that are dangerous are the leech and raid starship.  Leech really isn't all that dangerous by itself, it's just a damage soak.  Raid is deadly, but that's because of speed+ff ignore.  If you catch it, it melts to normal fleet, don't need the bonus.

So, by Class:
Artillery:  Nearly pointless multiplier on anything that doesn't have LONG range and doesn't AoE (I'm looking at you, Lightning Turret).

Close-Combat: Again, not really caring about these, except in cases of Blade Spawns.  Nothing else in teh list of Close Combat ships is so heavy duty I need specialized boosts against them.

Command-Grade: Oh for the love of god do we need boosts on these.  I think bombers are literally the only ship with this boost, but I might be wrong.  If for nothing else than killing wormhole guardposts.

Composite: Beam Frigate and Gravity Drain/Rippers are in this category.  Dangerous ships with heavy impact on your fleet. Needs to have range 8k to matter, to beat out the Grav Drain, 10k by preference to beat out the Beam Frigate.

Heavy: What ISN'T Heavy?  Beachheads, Gatlings, most Guardposts (in particular spire shields), most of the SpireCrafts (particularly the dangerous ones).

Light: Pah, there's nothing in the light list that requires bonuses.  Almost all of them die, one at a time, if you sneeze on them.   Maybe if it was AoE.

Medium: Blade Spawners need to die, as do a few guardians (Zombie).   The Sentenel frigate and teleporters also exhibit this armor type, but no teleporter hits hard enough for me to worry about a ff falling, and Sentinels don't usually have the #s to need a significant boost against them.  Meh, nice to have, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.

Neutron: Electric Bomber, EMP Guardians, Impulse Emitters, Mirrors...  There's a lot in neutron that's dangerous, IF the AI pulls these up.  Most times you won't even care.  A missile firing neutron guy?  Sounds great.  A shortranged one with no armor and slow?  Not really.  EMP Guardians you're almost always hunting down with Raid Starships anyway.

Polycrystal: Bombers, Tigers, StarBombs, Tanks.  Two of those are always in the AI's arsenel.  Poly bonus = goood.

Refractive: A non snipe, non missile refractive multiplier would be nice in a turret.  As a ship?  Not really.  There's nothing in refractive that gives me pause except Raptors, and they shatter if you sneeze on them (meaning you caught them).  The Vampire Guardian is also in this list, but they're just annoying to kill, not highly dangerous.

Scout: AI Carriers.... your milage may vary here.

Structural: This probably doesn't need to be expounded on.  Structural = FFs.  FFs = Player survival and permanent problems for players on offense.  Anything else is just gravy.

Swarmer: Pah, it all dies when you sneeze on it.  Silly little bonus.

Turret: Utterly unimportant to me, as AI craft if it doesn't have long range or gravity ignore it still probably isn't a signficant concern.

Ultra-Heavy: Every golem ever, so important if you're playing a golem exo game.  Otherwise, Maws and SSBs can be a serious threat if the AI gets them.  Otherwise, meh.

Ultra-Light: Really only if it has wicked high speed or long range, otherwise there's nothing in Ultra-Light that doesn't die to your standard fleet pretty easily.

[keith.lamothe]

To anyone industrious:

A list of the different units, by hull type, would significantly help with Keith's request.

I, for one, am not industrious

Of all of them?  Sure, I can do that.  So can anyone by use of the reference tab export   But if I get a chance I'll do it later tonight if someone else hasn't.

[TechSY730]

To anyone industrious:

A list of the different units, by hull type, would significantly help with Keith's request.

I, for one, am not industrious

Of all of them?  Sure, I can do that.  So can anyone by use of the reference tab export   But if I get a chance I'll do it later tonight if someone else hasn't.

I could do it, but I don't have the latest SVN version (what will be 5.027) in front of me like you do.