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

[Volatar]

I ran the game's sims. I then extracted just the cutlasses from the .xml and refortmatted them for easier reading.

Here is the info.

[eRe4s3r]

Thanks for the hint with fighters - in my tries i went straight MK3 cruisers and fighters and bomber starships now die quickly enough - but the ai has a real problem with the way shields are now

But - Number games (especially to balance speed and range) have no place in a tactical situation, the problem is increased because ships fire too early and waste an entire salvo (which is usually the ONLY salvo they get against starships) and do 0 damage.

I tested this now repeatedly and my 400 fighters do 0 damage (or maybe 5+ hits) to a starship that barely scratches their fire arcs, which is problematic to say the least. Because starships do not attack my fighters they literally try to out run me.

Instead of speed i think a dedicated anti-starship weapon needs to exist - one that is not a ship. That way the AI would get a good defense against starships as well (which right now, the AI has even more a problem with than the player)

[Volatar]

Instead of speed i think a dedicated anti-starship weapon needs to exist - one that is not a ship. That way the AI would get a good defense against starships as well (which right now, the AI has even more a problem with than the player)

Sounds sort of like an Ion Cannon for starships only.

Sort of like... the Death Star...

[eRe4s3r]

Indeed 

[Valarauka]

Railgun Turret! Sniper-range, extremely slow reload (like 1 shot per minute?), massive single-target damage...

[Kjara]

Haven't tried the version yet, but do weapons that ignore shields(snipers, etc) hurt shields when going out?  This seems somewhat counter intuitive(if the shield doesn't interfere on the way in, why would it on the way out). 

An alternative solution to having shots hurt shields would be to have different shot types degraded by various amounts on the way out.  Missiles could be slow/large enough to only be degraded somewhat (the shields have to be setup to allow ships to enter/leave), while lasers could be highly degraded(20% damage or so).  This would reduce the effectiveness of the mass turrets/offensive units under shields.

[Fiskbit]

I actually really like that. Reducing the effectiveness of things under the field is also way more forgiving, since the current method would hurt your own field rather than simply making take longer to kill the enemies. I think I'm all for this idea, though perhaps ignoring shot type and just acting on all shots equally.

[x4000]

Haven't tried the version yet, but do weapons that ignore shields(snipers, etc) hurt shields when going out?  This seems somewhat counter intuitive(if the shield doesn't interfere on the way in, why would it on the way out). 

Ships that have the green circles around them are the only ones that hurt the forcefields.

Also, new version:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1364.msg8701.html#msg8701