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

[Wanderer]

How can people vote for decloakers but NOT tachyon drones? :p:p:p Have they given up any hope of balancing for those little guys?

Basically?  Yes.  Either they're too strong or they're pointless.  With a boost to the decloaker, we can get an idea of where Keith is willing to bring them to and then request that the little dudes be brought up to say 1/3 efficiency.

Right now, the decloaker has too small a radius (and too short a lifespan) for 1000 K in research.  I'd personally like to see the decloaker swapped into the Tachyon Drone and the decloaker itself redesigned somehow.  Until then I'll just use Scout Starships in ramming mode detection methods.

[Mánagarmr]

The Tach drone and the decloaker are the same ship. They fulfill the same role, and therefor one of them should really be removed and the remaining one changed to fulfill the intended role. That's my personal opinion at least.

[keith.lamothe]

Have they given up any hope of balancing for those little guys?

The question is: what is unbalanced about them?  They're free (in knowledge terms, and iirc the m+c and e costs are low) tachyon emitters.  That's what they are, and they fill that role (about as well as a free gimme unit might).  Sure, I could bump their tachyon range from 1500 to 2000 because Scout Starship Is have 2000, but I doubt that would make them go from bad to good in anyone's books.  I could also bump their health up to that of, say, a fighter I or whatever, but that's not going to stop them from being isnta-gibbed in any significant combat; there are two kinds of durability for small near-the-wormhole units: under a forcefield, and not.

[topper]

The Tach drone and the decloaker are the same ship. They fulfill the same role, and therefor one of them should really be removed and the remaining one changed to fulfill the intended role. That's my personal opinion at least.

How about changing one of them to have a penetrator-like once per 30 minutes planet-wide tachyon pulse? That gives them very distinct and separate roles.

[keith.lamothe]

The Tach drone and the decloaker are the same ship. They fulfill the same role, and therefor one of them should really be removed and the remaining one changed to fulfill the intended role. That's my personal opinion at least.

I think the current structure (but probably not the current numbers) actually makes sense: you start with the "free" ability to cover X wormholes with tachyon beams, and you can spend K to unlock the ability to cover Y more.

There are other unlockable sources of tachyons, and there are bonus ship types that provide it too, but each has their cost.

Of course, that's speaking only of the defensive static use of a tachyon emitter, in which case the tach-drone/decloaker are just redundant (conceptually, not cap-wise) with the tachyon-beam-emitter/stealth-tachyon-beam-emitter.

The difference comes in their mobile use.  And there, honestly, I don't know how useful they are.  Scout Starships seem to thoroughly outdo them in terms of the "tachyon ship to bring with my fleet" role.

Frankly, I'd be ok with just removing both the tach drone and the decloaker and increasing the cap on the tachyon-beam-emitter and stealth-tachyon-beam-emitter and calling it a day.  Maybe removing the tech prereq on the tachyon-beam-emitter (iirc it has one, I may be misremembering).

Or we could do that but bring the Decloaker back as a K-unlocked AIP-free tachyon warhead (keep the tach warheads as the K-free option).

Or maybe something else.  In general I don't see any obvious "make these things more useful" approach that doesn't get unbalanced (giving them like 40,000 tachyon coverage), silly (giving them a bunch of other abilities), or overly complex (giving them some kind of auto-hunt-cloak-signatures behavior).

[Wingflier]

The Tach drone and the decloaker are the same ship. They fulfill the same role, and therefor one of them should really be removed and the remaining one changed to fulfill the intended role. That's my personal opinion at least.

How about changing one of them to have a penetrator-like once per 30 minutes planet-wide tachyon pulse? That gives them very distinct and separate roles.

Please this idea.  I personally think the "clicking a decloaker around the system for 10 minutes until you find something" is a horrible mechanic and I would do anything to be rid of it.  Half the time I'll just fire off a Tachyon Missile, take the AIP gain and be done with it.  But I don't think the player should be punished because they don't want to play the space version of minesweeper in the midst of their battle for galactic conquest ;p

[PokerChen]

The question is: what is unbalanced about them? (...)

This.

The Tach drone and the decloaker are the same ship. They fulfill the same role, (...)

There is practically no situations where you'd want to have just 2 tachyon ships in a defensive situation. When the AI has a cloaked ship-type, you'd better respond with more than just 2 tachyon drones unless you have only 1 planet. When they don't, you never need it over a scout starship (stealth guard posts). Clutch cloak-detection for a surprise wave when you don't already have scout starships built? Only argument for its existence.

Topper's idea is more interesting. If we made *both* tachyon drones and decloakers unlockable through knowledge:
- The tachyon drone can have the decloaker's current role, give it a gun, and switch the support AI to use this one.
- The decloaker can have something more special, but I'm not quite sure on a tachyon warhead ability. We could potentially militarise it, but the sprite doesn't look all that menacing. We could give it the ability to reveal chameleon units (I was just fighting a camouflager and hacked their Super Terminal - those hidden ships just kept building up; it got very unsettling to have hundreds of mark-Vs just sitting there, immune even to a Counter-Spy )

[Mánagarmr]

Well, aside from the cap, the Decloaker and the Tach drones are essentially in function the same. I'm however quite against giving any of them a system-wide pulse as that would completely negate the Tachyon Warhead since that costs AIP.

[Hearteater]

Tachyon Drone: Give them a much larger tachyon range (largest in the game basically) but prevent them from traveling through warp points.  They become ideal for sweeping your own systems, and replacing the need for Tachyon Emitters when you only have a few planets.  Sweeping your own planets is one of the biggest complaints for new players about stealth, and these are a K-free method of doing the job fairly easily.

Decloaker: Make this a full-on Starship that hunts cloaked ships.  Give it toughness and a reasonable punch.  A good hull multiplier vs Refractive armor makes them good against nearly every cloaked unit.  Their tachyon radius would be smaller than a Tachyon Drone, but larger than a Scout Starship.

Bonus: Tachyon Drones and Decloakers on FRD automatically patrol their system if an enemy is stealthed.  Use a pre-set pattern (spiral or some-such) that they just follow.

[PokerChen]

On a user-interface note, grouping one of these as a military selection will be *very* useful.

[TechSY730]

- The decloaker can have something more special, but I'm not quite sure on a tachyon warhead ability. We could potentially militarise it, but the sprite doesn't look all that menacing. We could give it the ability to reveal chameleon units (I was just fighting a camouflager and hacked their Super Terminal - those hidden ships just kept building up; it got very unsettling to have hundreds of mark-Vs just sitting there, immune even to a Counter-Spy )

Well, here is a series of posts made earlier about how to deal with this sort of thing:

How do you deal with a combination of camouflaged and cloaked units? I am apparently playing against a Camouflager AI, and one of my systems has six camouflaged Eye Bots hanging out, invisible despite a Mk III military CC. My understanding is that it's intentional that tachyon beams don't penetrate camouflage... however, I am at a loss as to how I should reveal and clear out these buggers if they don't attack by themselves.

I think a Spirecraft Attritioner should damage them, if you have Spirecraft available.  Eyebots have low heath so they should fall in a reasonable time.  Otherwise, they're probably not a huge deal - I often have cloaked raptors or whatever lurking in my systems, but they don't seem to cause problems.  Six Eye Bots would take a very long time to take out a Mil III station.

Well, camouflage units currently take the appearance of space junk, so you can try looking for debris floating around where it doesn't seem like there should be. (IIRC, the only place you can find "real" debris is near metal and crystal points)


If you don't have the spirecraft enabled, or you don't have an attritioner to spare, you can try a detonating lightning warhead near where you spotted the camouflaged units. (Unless what is camouflaged is immune to area damage, in which case you are kind of hosed. I've already made a mantis post about that.)

However, I'm not sure how that would interact with cloaking units. The AI tends to keep cloaking units in stand-down mode (formerly low-power mode), so they don't reveal themselves by firing until they get to their target, if they feel it is safe to make an approach to their target (if they don't they may try to retreat. If they don't think they can retreat successfully either, then they will just sit their, in stand-down mode, cloaked you until you reveal them or they feel its safe to attack or retreat). This means that even if you get close, they might not fire and reveal themselves (like normal, non-cloaked ships, which the AI will have fire upon stuff when you get close)

[topper]

Well, aside from the cap, the Decloaker and the Tach drones are essentially in function the same. I'm however quite against giving any of them a system-wide pulse as that would completely negate the Tachyon Warhead since that costs AIP.

A planet-wide tachyon pulse would trade AIP for three things: time (wait 30 min to re-fire), K cost (probably increased), and resource cost (they would need to be expensive to avoid quick scrapping/rebuilding). The scout starship already gives you planet-wide coverage for no AIP, but at a huge micro-managing time cost.

There should be a balance point where they become a choice you can make to get out of tough situations at a steep non-AIP cost.

[Minotaar]

How I see the decloaker:
- Health about 2-3mil
- Guns with major refractive bonuses so it can clear some cloaked stuff by itself (Maybe move it off to the Starship Constructor then, would make sense). It shouldn't be good against anything else though. Also not against making it into a purely support unit with cosmetic weaponry.
- Increased build-cost to starship levels, about 40k-50k each
- Planet-wide Tachyon pulse on death, maybe 30s-1min of duration (so that we don't need any new mechanics and it straight up costs money to do)

Basically, I want the Tachyon warhead to be the thing you go to when you have an emergency and cloaked units aren't a major part of the AI fleet, and the Decloaker for constant counter-stealth operations. So if you only need the warhead a couple times in a game, and don't want the other bonuses the decloaker provides, you're getting a better deal on it than the 1000 K for the decloaker.

[Mánagarmr]

How I see the decloaker:
- Health about 2-3mil
- Guns with major refractive bonuses so it can clear some cloaked stuff by itself (Maybe move it off to the Starship Constructor then, would make sense). It shouldn't be good against anything else though. Also not against making it into a purely support unit with cosmetic weaponry.
- Increased build-cost to starship levels, about 40k-50k each
- Planet-wide Tachyon pulse on death, maybe 30s-1min of duration (so that we don't need any new mechanics and it straight up costs money to do)

Basically, I want the Tachyon warhead to be the thing you go to when you have an emergency and cloaked units aren't a major part of the AI fleet, and the Decloaker for constant counter-stealth operations. So if you only need the warhead a couple times in a game, and don't want the other bonuses the decloaker provides, you're getting a better deal on it than the 1000 K for the decloaker.

That sounds sensible. My only trouble is the planet-wide tach blast on death, as that's fairly exploitable. Simply scrap it to get your AIP-free warhead. Or if it doesn't trigger on scrap, send it to its death and get your blast that way. It could be hard to balance something like that.

[Martyn van Buren]

How about giving the decloaker a once-per-30s/1 min counter-spy shot in addition to its other abilities?  Btw, can the counter-spy fire on cloaking units while they're decloaked by tachyons?