Prerelease 3.089 (Golem AIP nerf, Avenger nerf, AI beam cannon nerf, auto expl+)

[ShadowOTE]

Hmm, gravity turrets? Of course, if it can just wipe them out it's not much of an inconvenience, but something along those lines might help. Alternatively, emp mines or warheads (perhaps extended engine downtime for warheads, but normal weapons downtime or something similar)? I haven't had a chance to play the avenger yet, but either of those tactics sound like they could be made into something workable.

[Kalzarius]

Put stacks of forcefeilds/engineers on the wormholes you think it will take.  It doesnt ignore force feilds right (this is just a brainstorm as  I havent fought the avenger yet, but its a technique I have taken to using on my current game on a "snake" map to help prevent teleport raiders from skipping my defended systems and rapidly knocking out my less defended interior, though some still manage to get through anyway))

I've tried that for teleport raiders (the game we're in right now tends to have 1200+ teleport raiders coming through in any single incursion), and it is not foolproof.  Several hundred of them still manage to slip through the wormhole and past the 2-3 dozen turrets placed over the wormholes, particularly during heavy battles.  And it's during those heavy battles that even the lighting turrets don't zap them.

Edit: And apparently I didn't finish reading your post to notice you already said that some still slip through.  

I still don't get how so many people have issues with Mk I and Mk II beam cannons, they're less effective against groups of ships than lightning, especially on Mk III and IV worlds. :/

I concur that this needs to be fixed.  The limitations now are far too extreme.  They AI may as well not have any for all the good one of either mark I or II will do them.  Maybe at the beginning of the game one of either would be difficult to handle, but you shouldn't be facing III and IV level worlds at the beginning of the game anyway.

[Blahness]

I concur that this needs to be fixed.  The limitations now are far too extreme.  They AI may as well not have any for all the good one of either mark I or II will do them.  Maybe at the beginning of the game one of either would be difficult to handle, but you shouldn't be facing III and IV level worlds at the beginning of the game anyway.

If you use large ships like Zenith Bombardments or starships, heavy beam cannons can annihilate them with easy. Riot starships and raid in particular die very, very quickly to heavy beam cannons.

[FrostyThePyro]

bombards out range them by alot, and I have had no issue with starships, especialy raid starships, as the riot sheild made them invulnerable to heavy beem cannons in3.087 and .088 (hanvt checked sense 089 so cant say there).

[x4000]

New version with some bugfixes: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,4536.msg30631.html#msg30631

[Blahness]

Yeah, a golem's AIP requirement is still ridiculous.  100ish AIP to fix a Cursed Golem, on top of the 400kish energy that I'm devoting to it, and it still dies easily to orbital mass drivers.  I'm not convinced that they're useful for their cost except for very rare situations (mk2 ion cannons + attrition + riot control starships + black hole machines that would destroy normal fleets)

[x4000]

Well, Cursed Golems are really not the best at this stage.  But, the general AIP cost for other golems at large is far from what I consider ridiculous.  Given the amount of damage I can do with Black Widows, Armored, or a few other, it's really something that I worry is bordering on too low as it is.  But other specific ones may need to have a lower cost, cursed among them.  It's silly to judge all of them as one group, especially by their weakest member, as they have wildly different characteristics, though.

[Blahness]

I built and used a botnet golem.  40 AIP and 400k energy (the description says 600k energy, but it lies)  later, I captured maybe 80 ships before it suicided.  Each attack the botnet golem did took about 8m hp from it.  The time, energy, and AIP invested made it not worth it, especially since it's so uneconomical to repair it.  Cursed and Botnet are my two golem experiences, and I haven't been overwhelmed so far. =P

[Draxis]

I also tried a botnet golem, and I was not impressed.  Firstly, it seemed to do 3% damage to itself every time it fired, even if all it did was shoot a T1 fighter.  The biggest problem though, was the 'zombies' it created were limited by my shipcap!  I sent my fleet in with the golem to a T2 enemy world with 2.5K ships on it, and despite almost 400 kills from the golem, most of what it killed happened to be ships I already had at the limit, so I got very few zombies.  Golems seem to be extremely situational, which is not a bad thing, it just means a lot of very risky experimentation on the part of the players to learn when it makes no sense to use the unit.

[Doddler]

Aha!  I found an Avenger exploit. You can probably tell by the screenshot.

[keith.lamothe]

Haha, congratulations   I knew about its odd susceptibility to paralyzers but was waiting until one of y'all had the guts to try it