Prerelease 1.202O (Cutlass/FF/Fort balance, Big GPU efficiency+, more new art)

[tals]

The game as it is is fully functional so if you don't like changing you could just hold off updating and do it yourself less frequently. I love the beta cycle in the game and so far all the changes have been for the better

[CautiousChaos]

I had to laugh a little last night.  I'm being chased around by a fortress. 
-cc

[x4000]

Oh yeah.  SuperFortresses no longer have the monopoly on chasing you around.

[Kalzarius]

I had to laugh a little last night.  I'm being chased around by a fortress. 
-cc

Just throw a Spire starship at it.  It may not be the most powerful starship (the Zinth is, contrary to the Spire's description), but according to its stats, it should wipe the floor with it.  Unless, of course, it has some unmentioned bonuses versus starships.

[Kalzarius]

Ships that are firing out from under allied force fields (which are protecting them), now damage all the protecting force fields by 2x the amount of damage they are dealing to the enemy ships.  Thus it becomes much better to place the turrets and other stronger ships outside of force fields unless you want to hurriedly repair them after an assault, while leaving weaker ships and defenseless ships under the force fields for maximum protection.  This also acts as a serious nerf to the player practice of clustering hundreds of turrets under a force field to make an unstoppable force.

Unstoppable?  A single Spire starship (weaker than the Zinth) can take out a Mark III forcefield in under 30 seconds.  How's that unstoppable, especially considering how much health the starships have and how you'd need 1000+ turrets to take one out in the time it would take them to remove the forcefield from their way?

We recently took on a planet using 4 each of Zinths and Spires.  We just went straight past their defenses (just like they do whenever they raid us with their spire and zinth doomsday force) taking minimal damage, took out their mark III force field in four seconds, and eliminated their warp gate and command station.  Then we destroyed the special ops command post and let the trickle of escapees get destroyed by the 2500 ships in wait.  It's nice that we can outrun anything that can hurt us, and the ships that do catch up die in one shot. 

We don't use shields anymore because starships can wipe them out so quickly -- and seeing as how that's what we're most frequently attacked with, shields were already pretty ineffective at this point.  Personally, I find these recent changes a little extreme.  What would be great is if the shields could be balanced in a way that they could be useful to us again.

[eRe4s3r]

5 Words - Lightning Shuttles and Bomber AI Type

I would kindly request shields to be changed back

Doubters play against Bomber AI type at dif 7.6 and say to me again that shields are overpowered.
OR give me something that is actually effective against bomber starships - And isn't 1 shot killed by them.

Actually, i request a tutorial how i am supposed to defend my command station from a wave of 3 bomber starships with the changed shields. (as it is now when playing against bomber - i have a concentric ring of 3 MK2 shields and 2 MK1 shields around my command station with a LOT of missile MK2 turrets. These manage to serve as enough defense to give my fleet a chance to destroy starships before they take apart my command station (and the bomber ai definitely goes straight for the command station) i've seen that happening plenty of times.

Any Turret not under a shield dies nearly instantly from these starships. And ships are much too slow to catch them and destroy them, i am confused.

I have the same experience as Kalzarius, shields were already entirely useless to defend against spaceships - and if you faced against the bomber ai type, shields covering huge amounts of missile turrets would become the only way to actually hold the command station at all until your fleet catches up.

If not for a change back, i really want to hear a tactic to defend against 3 bomber starships with the shields as they are now. One that is confirmed, not a theory

[x4000]

Force fields should still be quite viable, especially in concert with gravity turrets being placed a bit away to slow the starships down.  It may be that starship's bonuses are out of whack with the current methods of force fields working, which I would need to address separately.  I think a rebalance there could be very good.  But there were just too many exploits possible with the old way the force fields worked.  The goal of the new method is to make them still be useful for actually protecting structures, but not as a force multiplier for force fields.

Regarding the Mad Bomber AI Type, about the only thing it has going for it is its offensive capabilities, as it is pretty skeletal on defense.  The bomber starships may need to be adjusted somewhat against turrets, but this is a separate issue.  The old method of handling force fields basically allowed them to work as an incredible force multiplier, so players could do things like putting them over a wormhole with 200+ high level turrets under them, and they would chew through 10,000+ units.  This sort of exploit is simply game-breaking, and the only way to solve it is to not have turrets be effective under force fields (unless I were to increase the footprint size of turrets significantly, but that seems a little strange).


Unrelated to this... I haven't been around much the last few days, but I've had a bit of personal tragedy over the weekend that I've been dealing with.  Basically, my wife was pregnant with our first child (which we were super excited about), but she miscarried.  It's something that happens a lot, unfortunately, but still quite difficult.  I was on the fence about whether to mention this on the forums at all or not, but I figure it is better to be open about what's going on rather than just mysteriously dropping off for days and then coming back a bit more moody.

Anyway, I should be mostly back in the saddle tomorrow, and will be moving toward the next official release this week.

[Kalzarius]

Force fields should still be quite viable, especially in concert with gravity turrets being placed a bit away to slow the starships down.

Gravity turrets are great and all, but there aren't enough and they don't last long enough to be effective (at least in the case of mark I gravity turrets, they're dead before the starships even get into range).

My biggest problem with starships right now is that they are the most powerful units in the game and can outrun everything than can do them appreciable damage.  Personally, I think they should at least be slowed down to cruiser speed.

Unrelated to this... I haven't been around much the last few days, but I've had a bit of personal tragedy over the weekend that I've been dealing with.  Basically, my wife was pregnant with our first child (which we were super excited about), but she miscarried.  It's something that happens a lot, unfortunately, but still quite difficult.  I was on the fence about whether to mention this on the forums at all or not, but I figure it is better to be open about what's going on rather than just mysteriously dropping off for days and then coming back a bit more moody.

Anyway, I should be mostly back in the saddle tomorrow, and will be moving toward the next official release this week.

My condolences, man.  And don't feel any need to rush.  Family's more important than work.

[eRe4s3r]

*Self Moderation*

[RCIX]

I'm a total noob here but Dreadnoughts say they are:
 * good vs. other starships
 * long range

Why don't they help?

Plus, Cutlasses are second-to-none at taking out starships, i had a Dreadnought break through my lines at my home planet (didn't actually look like he was going after my command station though), sent like 10 mk2 cutlasses after it and bye-bye dreadnought.

[Huw]

Chris, I'm so sorry to hear that.  I'd actually guessed you were having a baby from previous comments you've made so I'm really sad to hear this news.  Please take all the time you need; don't worry about us lot, we can whine amongst ourselves!

[Fiskbit]

eRe4s3r: I just tried a game against 2 level 9 mad bombers. The starships weren't that big of a deal; I found that throwing fighters at them did a great job of taking them out without much damage done, and though I didn't get a chance to build them because of the constant onslaught in that one hour game, dreadnoughts should do a great job of stopping them in their tracks before they become a problem. Mad bomber AI types are an especially good reason to invest in mark III fighters.

Really, the only real issue I had in the game was the cutlasses, because as much as they've changed recently, I still have no way of countering them. Something needs to be able to deal noteworthy damage to them, and I recommend it be bombers and fighters.


Chris: I'd like to again let you know how sorry I am to hear about what happened. Echoing what Kalzarius and Huw said, take your time and don't feel the need to push yourself. I'm sure everyone else here has similar feelings.

[RCIX]

Chris: I'd like to again let you know how sorry I am to hear about what happened. Echoing what Kalzarius and Huw said, take your time and don't feel the need to push yourself. I'm sure everyone else here has similar feelings.

Certainly!

[x4000]

Thanks, for all the condolences, everyone who posted here and who PM'd me.  I'd respond individually, but... you know.

At any rate, it's been several days of dealing with first the possibility of this, then the almost-certainty of it, and then yesterday the certainty of the thing.  Oddly, yesterday was the easiest of those days.  Anyway, life must move on at some point, and to an extent it is easier to just focus on work and such.  My wife is a student teacher and so doesn't have the option of much time off, so she's back at work today and so should I be.  Where exactly my productivity is going to be, I'm not sure.

With regard to starships and turrets and so forth, I'm really not interested in a debate.  I'll take a look at the numbers versus turrets, and it's also quite possible that starships need to be a bit slower on average.  For a while there the only thing they had going for them was their speed.  I'd also point out that dreadnoughts can be pretty deadly against them.  As for dealing with incoming cutlass attacks, I'll take a look more at that, too; until recently, they were weak against Fighters, Bomber, and Cruisers.  I'll have to run the numbers anew to see what they are with the new boosts.

[liq3]

As for dealing with incoming cutlass attacks, I'll take a look more at that, too; until recently, they were weak against Fighters, Bomber, and Cruisers.  I'll have to run the numbers anew to see what they are with the new boosts.

I'm gonna take a quick guess and say Fighters will get something like +20%, with cruisers and bombers about -50% each. These are simple guesses based on HP, so.