About Zenith Mirrors. That reflect doesn't seem to do anything in any situation and their dps is quite bad. They have a lot of health though.. so they're pretty much just cannon fodder. Shield Bearer is better for soaking damage. Also Shield Bearer's short range is actually a good thing. It's almost the same with Bombers and Fighters. That means when using the attack move they will be close to each other. The bombers and fighters will be protected by Shield Bearer's shield. That's why Deflector Drones are absolutely worthless. It has 13000 range.. and it's laser protection about... 100?? 1000? It wont even protect the Missile Frigates (which don't need protection from Laser Guardians (which have bonus vs polycrystal) unlike Bombers (just an example))
The Zenith mirror can only reflect shots within its normal attack range, and cannot reflect missiles. Thankfully, their normal attack range is pretty darn high. However, if you can't seem to get any mirroring of shots, that would be a bug worth reporting. Wouldn't be a first time where a ship is rendered near worthless by a bug making its gimmick not work.
I would agree with the deflector drones though. Their laser protection radius could use a nice buff.
Electric Shuttles don't seem to do much. They're like mobile localized attritioners. The problem is that they don't destroy anything they just weaken the enemy ships (total cap dps=1920*200?). And because they don't help at destroying the enemy ships as much as some other bonus ships the enemy dps doesn't drop as fast. So my ships will be destroyed before Electric Shuttles have done their job. Electric Shuttles might be very good if want to focus on unlocking a lot of/all marks of most/all ships.. in other words if I'm going to build a huge fleet (instead of heavy defenses or whatever).
Electric shuttles, similar to the attrition, suffer from the "1 damage against a million ships is worthless, 1 million damage against 1 ship is pretty good" effect. Ok, it's not quite that bad, electric shuttles with their chain lightning thing can actually rack up some DPS against individual ships, but the net effect is that they won't get many kills or have a very visible effect, even if they numerically contribute a lot to a battle. This makes judging their effectiveness tricky.
And Grenade Launchers.. well.. they made me cry. I don't know how I could make them more useful than any other ship.
The 2 AI bombers were that close to each other all the time (since they came trough the wormhole). Yet the other bomber didn't take/barely took any damage. Same thing with the Parasites.
The "AOE damage decay" of the grenade launchers could use a double check, for sure.
The Electric Bomber, on the other hand, suffers from being a low-cap ship without insta-kill immunity and having a low speed. They also have less cap-health than Bombers and half the armor. They have a better range, but a Chameleon beats them by about 10%. Their DPS, while good, is actually lower than Chameleons too. They have slightly better hull multipliers than a Chameleon, but given a slow speed and shorter range, Chameleons are straight-up better at delivering the damage.
Give the E.Bomber insta-kill immunity and possibly some radar dampening, maybe in the 5-6k range (it has a 6400 attack range itself) and I think it would turn into a solid choice. Another option would be Gravity Immunity, which is in very short supply among fleet ships.
Yea, all low cap fleet ships should really have insta-kill immunity. Radar dampening for them may be a nifty idea. Not sure about gravity immunity though. I sort of like the fact that very, VERY few fleet ships have gravity immunity. Kieth has stated that the gravity is supposed to be hard to counter with only lower "tier" stuff. (Though this does mean gravity is very powerful, and thus needs to be balanced carefully, something I think could be done better than it is now. See the nerf nomination thread for my views on this)
Electric Bomber's damage bonuses aren't very useful. Basically it's good vs Ion Cannons, Force Fields and Bombers and it's countered by Missile Frigates. And it's cap health is lower than Bombers'. So a cap of Electric Bombers will be destroyed faster than a cap of Bombers.
I would agree with giving it another hull type bonus, though I think that
hull type distribution needs some balancing all around.
How much less HP does a cap of Z Elecs have than a cap of bombers? If it is only a small ratio less (like, say 90% ratio, which would be 10% less), then I'm OK with that, and in fact, is sort of understandable with the low cap fleet ships. If they fall short by a good amount, then yea, they could use an HP buff.
Actually...Kieth, what is the HP balance goal of lowish cap fleet ships?
Poll