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

[Aeson]

Microfighters are good minesweepers (not in the same way that Fighters make good minesweepers), and a cap of Microfighters is essentially an extra cap of fighters in terms of health and damage potential. Kind of useless as a counter to anything stealthed and not at a wormhole or resource node, because the tachyon emission range is tiny. They are good against anything a fighter is good against, with the added bonus of minesweeping. If you find you don't need minesweepers or extra fighters, you don't need them. If you do need extra fighters, or non-sacrificial minesweepers, Microfighters are a decent choice.

There's also the saturation of a wormhole with tachyon coverage, and in a pinch you can use them in an attempt to find cloaked ships by flying very close to them. There are certainly better ways to get stealth detection, but these have the benefit of always being selected in a drag box (scouts may or may not, depending on whether or not you made them brave) and quick to produce.

[keith.lamothe]

(not in the same way that Fighters make good minesweepers)

Facecheck!

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, 37 voters is about as high as we usually get when evereyone has weighed in, so the results:

AI Guard Posts (the normal ones, not the homeworld core guard posts)   13
Decoy Drone (human-side, not AI-side)   13
Spire Starship   9
Missile Silo   8
Neinzul Enclave Starship IV   8
Regenerator Golem   8
Spire Gravity Ripper   8
Zenith Starship   8

Will do something with the top 3, not sure about the ones with 8 votes yet, may do some and not others.

Thanks for the feedback

[TechSY730]

Ok, 37 voters is about as high as we usually get when evereyone has weighed in, so the results:

AI Guard Posts (the normal ones, not the homeworld core guard posts)   13
Decoy Drone (human-side, not AI-side)   13
Spire Starship   9
Missile Silo   8
Neinzul Enclave Starship IV   8
Regenerator Golem   8
Spire Gravity Ripper   8
Zenith Starship   8

Will do something with the top 3, not sure about the ones with 8 votes yet, may do some and not others.

Thanks for the feedback

Actually, if you go by some ways to count "nth place" when there are ties, only three are in the 1st through 3rd place.

1st: AI Guard Posts (the normal ones, not the homeworld core guard posts)   13
1st: Decoy Drone (human-side, not AI-side)   13
3rd: Spire Starship   9

With the second place "consumed" by the two way tie for 1st.
Not sure if you would be willing to buy that for an excuse for less work or not. 

Anyways, I am saddened that the Zenith starship didn't make it (it was tied for the fourth place number of votes) as I still think it needs help more than the Spire starship.
But I do hope this means a chance for the Spire beam mechanic in general to get reviewed.

[Wingflier]

Unfortunately I just missed the voting phase.

I would have put the Zenith and Spire Starship, as well as the Neinzul Enclave IV Starship, which costs way too much knowledge to be of any real value.  I believe I made a Mantis report on how to make the Enclave IV Starship more applicable and realistic to the game.  The idea was to, more or less, lower its knowledge cost, but require the player to own an MKIV Factory before it could be used.  If no MKIV Factory was owned (or it was destroyed), the Enclave IV would become inoperable.  It couldn't be built and existing ones would be destroyed, or something simple like that.  Then there would be a new Tier 5 Neinzul Enclave, which would be called "The Neinzul Mothership", which would be similarly expensive to the current MKIV Enclave, but it would have MK5 Drones, and it would have its own Neinzul Mothership model, which would be really neat.  It could operate without an MKIV Factory.

[Aeson]

I'm personally opposed to requiring possession of Advanced Factories to make use of Neinzul Enclave Starship Mark IVs. The reason is that the only reason I ever get Neinzul Enclave Starship Mark IVs is when I cannot afford to take and defend an Advanced Factory but want to build Mark IV fleet ships. If Enclave IVs became Enclave IIIs with slightly better drones and a higher build rate, I would not find them particularly worthwhile.

I don't think Enclave IVs are supposed to be something you consider unlocking every game; rather, I think that they are there if you really need (or really want) Mark IV ship production capability and cannot take or cannot defend either of the worlds with Advanced Factories. The knowledge price is a bit steep, but it's the price for getting a mobile, replaceable Advanced Factory.

If I get an Enclave IV, it's usually during a Fallen Spire game, since it's then that I am least able to protect an Advanced Factory, and it is also then that I can most afford to take (but not always hold) additional planets to strip the knowledge from them, or perform knowledge raids to gain the Enclave IV. Yes, it's pretty difficult for me to justify fielding an Enclave IV in a non-Fallen Spire game, but in a normal game it's also a lot easier to defend the half a dozen or a dozen worlds that you'll take before hitting the homeworld, and at least one of those will probably include an Advanced Factory.

[Eternaly_Lost]

I'm personally opposed to requiring possession of Advanced Factories to make use of Neinzul Enclave Starship Mark IVs. The reason is that the only reason I ever get Neinzul Enclave Starship Mark IVs is when I cannot afford to take and defend an Advanced Factory but want to build Mark IV fleet ships. If Enclave IVs became Enclave IIIs with slightly better drones and a higher build rate, I would not find them particularly worthwhile.

I don't think Enclave IVs are supposed to be something you consider unlocking every game; rather, I think that they are there if you really need (or really want) Mark IV ship production capability and cannot take or cannot defend either of the worlds with Advanced Factories. The knowledge price is a bit steep, but it's the price for getting a mobile, replaceable Advanced Factory.

If I get an Enclave IV, it's usually during a Fallen Spire game, since it's then that I am least able to protect an Advanced Factory, and it is also then that I can most afford to take (but not always hold) additional planets to strip the knowledge from them, or perform knowledge raids to gain the Enclave IV. Yes, it's pretty difficult for me to justify fielding an Enclave IV in a non-Fallen Spire game, but in a normal game it's also a lot easier to defend the half a dozen or a dozen worlds that you'll take before hitting the homeworld, and at least one of those will probably include an Advanced Factory.

If we get a MKV that lets you build MKIV ships without an Advanced Factory, I could very well disagree here. MKIV lets you build MKIV drones as well as ships. But if you don't have an advanced factory, then you only get MKIV drones. It is quite reasonable. Granted I always have a factory under a city in my games, so my Enclave MKIV are only used to attack with MKIV drones. But that is more done late game when I have Knowledge to waste on anything, as I have everything I need.

[Aeson]

Breaking the Enclave IV into an Enclave V that works as the Enclave IV currently does and an Enclave IV that works like an Enclave III with better drones if there is no Advance Factory or a current Enclave IV if there is one doesn't make the Enclave IV more worthwhile to me. It makes Enclave IVs cheaper, but the main reason that I go into the Enclave line is for the mobile Advanced Factory anyways, and having the extra Mark V version costs me additional energy if I decide that I might as well use everything I spent knowledge unlocking (which, for full caps of all current Enclave Starships, is already 180,000 energy; with the current energy scaling on Enclave Starships, a single Mark V enclave would cost an additional 35,000 energy, so you're looking at almost two planets worth of energy to field caps of five marks of Enclave Starships, before considering any costs associated with drones).

I have also never found the Enclave drones to be worth enough to make Enclaves worthwhile independent of their use as mobile factories. If the only reason I have for unlocking Enclave IVs is to get Drone IVs, I'd rather spend the knowledge on something that I've had more use for in the past, like additional combat starships or more fleet ships or more turrets. Drones aren't bad, but when powering their mothership costs me as much energy as three combat starships or a cap of average fleet ships, I'd sooner have the combat starships or fleet ships, particularly when the mothership doesn't do anything that its lower-mark (and more energy-efficient) predecessor didn't.

I suppose it might be helpful to have the extra enclaves for faster fleet rebuilds, but I usually find that I can't produce ships out of more than two spacedocks without bankrupting myself anyways (unless I'm playing Fallen Spire, and even then it depends on how far I've gone with it), and I don't imagine it would be different for Enclaves.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I'd kind of prefer it if the Mk IV enclave could only build drones but cost far less, and you could spend more K to unlock each individual IV ship from the enclave somehow... and they would be unlocked by default as long as there is an allied advanced factory that's alive.

[Faulty Logic]

Most of the 8-votes shouldn't interfere with other results too badly, and I support most of them getting a buff (the only exception being the spire gravity ripper).

If only one, then the regen golem; it has been underpowered since practically forever.

[chemical_art]

As for me, if the 8 votes aren't buffed, they just might surface in the next vote!

So Keith can buff them now, or wait till Darwinian theory sorts out which needs it most. Eventually, they'll be buffed one way or another 

[onyhow]

I think Regen golem might not be too hard to balance out...it's mainly about price it seems...

[Dichotomy]

BUFF THEM ALL!

High rates of change are better.

[KDR_11k]

Is this the first time an AI-only unit wins this poll?