Poll: Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (IV)

[keith.lamothe]

I would love to turn the upgraded havesters into a sort of human equivalent of guard posts (I'd love doing modules too, but that's a bridge still farther) but I don't know that it would really work out.  Not for a time like now, dev-cycle-wise, at least

[CodeMichael]

After AVWW then
btw, modular harvesters should also roll up manufactories, soo many choices.

In the meantime, I don't think anyone is going to pay the cost for exo shields unless they do something magical like mount sniper turrets.  Personally I cant see buying exo-shields, even cheaply, over just about anything else.  If they increased production by even a small amount then they might suddenly have some appeal in those games where I need every resource I can grab, but that doesn't seem like something you'd want to do.  As it is, I don't see how to improve them without significant work, just drop them IMO.

[TechSY730]

As it is, I don't see how to improve them without significant work, just drop them IMO.

I can go with that. Drop them, but keep them around in game data for later work. Just make them un-researchable and un-buildable, and "hidden" in the "F1 to see all the ship types in the side view" thing. (I think that the reference tab exports straight from the ship type definitions, so you can't globally blacklist it there if the user asked for no filters. But that is not really a big deal, as Mk. V basic turrets are currently under a similar issue)
Those with exo-harvester sheilds already in the game will get scrapped, remains of them scraped, and if a player has them unlocked, they will get their knowledge refunded to them, and their "research" state is reset to locked, (and it will stay that way now that it is un-researchable)
Once we can figure out a better way to improve variety with harvester upgrades, and you have the time to implement it, these can be added back in with some modified form (like as one possible module or something)

In the mean time, buff the HP of higher Mk. harvesters (though not to the same degree of the current HP of exo-forcefields, that would be kind of OP) to get a similar effect (along with any other economic buffs deemed necessary)

[TechSY730]

New poll results snapshot:
(Cutoff is those with >= 5% of the vote)

1st place with 18 votes: Harvester Exo-Shields
2nd place with 16 votes: Metal/Crystal Harvesters
3rd place with 12 votes: tie between Mobile Repair Stations and Warp Jammer Command Stations
5th place with 10 votes: Metal/Crystal Manufactories (converters)
6th place with 9 votes: Neinzul Enclave Starships
7th place with 6 votes: Zenith-Starships/Spire-Starships


P.S. where did 4th place go? Remember, 3rd place was a 2-way tie. By convention, both of them hold both the 3rd and 4th place, but are reported as 3rd place

[TechSY730]

(Sorry for triple post)

Interesting that 1st and 2nd place are economy related stuff.
This leads me to wonder if player economy is underpowered overall. If so, that would certainly explain the difficulty spike and/or pacing issues the game seems to start encountering at around mid-game.

EDIT: I am not wining about game difficulty. Rather, what I am saying that even at difficulty 7, the game pace frequently slows to a "unfun" crawl at around mid game because the AI starts putting up end-game like levels of resistance (when measured relative to your defensive and offensive capabilities at that stage) even if you keep your AIP at a reasonable level. So basically, the AI starts "locking you down" too early, due to the "fight off major AI assualt (CPA, exo-wave) using everything you have, lose most of what you have, rebuild, economy tanks due to rebuilding, rebuild progress gets stalled by normal waves, by the time you finish rebuilding, the AI starts its next assualt that takes out most of what you have" cycle starting too soon. This cycle gives you VERY little time to go on any serious attempt at offense, especially deep striking. Thus, bringing your progress winning to a near standstill.
I'm not saying that this cycle shouldn't be in the game, it absolutely should be. I am saying that it should start later than mid-game if a player is managing AIP correctly and on a "standard" AI difficulty (around 6-8, inclusive). Right now, short of ridiculous things like "only 4 planets captured" games, or deliberately slowing your pace to even larger extremes, it is almost certain you'll hit this cycle at mid-game.

EDIT2: Awesome! 1500 posts, and it devolved into a rant. Go me.

[orzelek]

(Sorry for triple post)

Interesting that 1st and 2nd place are economy related stuff.
This leads me to wonder if player economy is underpowered overall. If so, that would certainly explain the difficulty spike and/or pacing issues the game seems to start encountering at around mid-game.

I wrote something along these lines in harvesters vs econ stations thread but it went unnoticed there.
And since econ stations are the go to place for many players.. it maybe simply way to compensate for:
1. Things are costly
2. Things die quickly so you rebuild them often

[Hearteater]

Yeah, I suspect the prevalence of early Econ II/III unlocks are hiding some of the economy issues.  My off-the-cuff Harvester I-III changes actually increased base Harvester income by 20% (from 20 to 24) because I feel they are too weak at present.

[TechSY730]

(Sorry for triple post)

Interesting that 1st and 2nd place are economy related stuff.
This leads me to wonder if player economy is underpowered overall. If so, that would certainly explain the difficulty spike and/or pacing issues the game seems to start encountering at around mid-game.

EDIT: I am not wining about game difficulty. Rather, what I am saying that even at difficulty 7, the game pace frequently slows to a "unfun" crawl at around mid game because the AI starts putting up end-game like levels of resistance (when measured relative to your defensive and offensive capabilities at that stage) even if you keep your AIP at a reasonable level. So basically, the AI starts "locking you down" too early, due to the "fight off major AI assualt (CPA, exo-wave) using everything you have, lose most of what you have, rebuild, economy tanks due to rebuilding, rebuild progress gets stalled by normal waves, by the time you finish rebuilding, the AI starts its next assualt that takes out most of what you have" cycle starting too soon. This cycle gives you VERY little time to go on any serious attempt at offense, especially deep striking. Thus, bringing your progress winning to a near standstill.
I'm not saying that this cycle shouldn't be in the game, it absolutely should be. I am saying that it should start later than mid-game if a player is managing AIP correctly and on a "standard" AI difficulty (around 6-8, inclusive). Right now, short of ridiculous things like "only 4 planets captured" games, or deliberately slowing your pace to even larger extremes, it is almost certain you'll hit this cycle at mid-game.

To prevent this topic from going off-topic and/or becoming flame bait, I think I will move my "pacing concerns" to a new thread if anyone else want to continue discussing it. Let me know if anyone else wants to continue discussing it.
There are already some old threads that cover this topic nicely, but I would like to avoid necroing old stuff.

[LintMan]

I almost wish Harvester II and Harvester III were more special purpose so you'd actually keep build lower Marks just like with ships.

On the one hand, it would add decisions, on the other hand I remember what it was like in the between 1.0 and 2.0 days to have build harvesters manually (even via ctrl-click or whatever it was to build all metal or all crystal at once) and I think it would just slow things down to make it no longer "the game can take care of it for you because it's so simple" (bait set).

I totally agree with Keith, here.  I'm very happy to not have to manage the harvesters and can just be confident they'll be kept up to their best tech level and will be automatically rebuilt.  Heck, I'd like to see the command stations work the same way (in terms of auto-upgrading, that is).

About exo-shields, I'm not sure I'd use them even if they were K-free and resource cost free - if they still drew energy.  The energy cap is a huge limiting factor for me, and I'd rather be able to place more turrets or ships than have a harvester shield.  Especially when many of the times I lose harvesters, it's to an AI fleet that will also easily take down the exo-shields (unless exo-shields are a lot tougher than I remember).  If the exo-shields came with a built-in turret of some type, then I'd consider them.

[keith.lamothe]

I'd like to see the command stations work the same way (in terms of auto-upgrading, that is).

They cannot, because they have caps and there's no automatic upgrading approach that wouldn't sometimes frustrate the player.  This is why I don't want to make harvester II and/or III have caps in exchange for being a lot better, etc, because then they couldn't be auto-upgraded either.

[LintMan]

I'd like to see the command stations work the same way (in terms of auto-upgrading, that is).

They cannot, because they have caps and there's no automatic upgrading approach that wouldn't sometimes frustrate the player.  This is why I don't want to make harvester II and/or III have caps in exchange for being a lot better, etc, because then they couldn't be auto-upgraded either.

That's what I figured, but you could always get rid of the command station caps, too.   

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, as suggested the relative rankings aren't gonna change, so calling this one as it stands.

It will probably be post-5.030 before I get to changing these, but thanks for the feedback

[TechSY730]

Ok, as suggested the relative rankings aren't gonna change, so calling this one as it stands.

It will probably be post-5.030 before I get to changing these, but thanks for the feedback

NOOOOOOOO!!!!

But then again, the changes to the winners of this poll will, in many respects, require quite a bit of thought about how to make useful and/or will have major implications to balance and pacing throughout the whole game.
Changes like these I can understand waiting an extra version or so just to make sure all concerns and side-effects are "hashed out"

[Volatar]

Just throwing some crazy thoughts out there, how about modular harvesters (this game needs more modulare units)?  Instead of flat bonuses or penalties you could add refineries (more resources) or defenses.

Keep the base harvesters where they are.  MkII would have 2 modules, Mk II would have 4.  Max refinery modules would put resource extraction where it is for mkII and mkIII today.  A shield module would give the harvester a force field and radar dampening.  A cannon module would be able to attack with a range slightly greater than the radar dampening range (not very large to prevent them from becoming full turrets).  I would lock cannons to a max of 2 and effectively require radar dampening from shields to be useful.  The cannons really should only be powerful enough to take out a mkI or mkII ship before the health of the shield fails.  The nominal build would be 2 refineries, a shield and a cannon, but you could mix and match for greater or lesser effect.

The hard part would be wanting to micromanage that.  A galaxy default with a per-planet config could work, but I'm not sure the design is set up for that.

We already have the template system set up for Riot Control Starships, so it isn't a gigantic stretch.

[Ricca]

Speaking of the Riot Starship templates, can we have it so the player-made templates can be stored in the game settings so they can be automatically loaded when a new game's started?