Prerelease 3.093 (Huge golem rebalance, MRS buff, planetary summary fixes)

[x4000]

Golems are the answer to "what should I spend my money on if I already have a huge fleet?"

The answer to that would be mercenaries imo. ^^

Or did the way mercs and their ship-caps are handled change recently?

That is one answer, yes.  But golems are another.

Excuse me? I wasn't talking about broken golems. I was talking about golems that have been in a fight and need repairing.

Ah, okay.

Golems are the answer to "what should I spend my money on if I already have a huge fleet?"

That's what mercenary ships are for! What is the point of introducing another unit to fill this role when mercenary ships are probably the most under used units in the entire game?

In fact, what you are advocating is specifically what I am trying to avoid: picking up golems "as a matter of course" and having them be just this awesome thing that doubles your effective power (or better) for no particular drawback.

If you are specifically trying to avoid this then what are they doing in the game? What is the point of a unit that makes life a misery for "coolness"? I didn't say that they should have no drawbacks by the way, they definitely should, but they should be something manageable.

In my opinion it should behave something like a fortress. It should have weaknesses and strengths. And for a massive ships it should bloody well have better strengths than weaknesses.

A lot of players who are more advanced use mercenaries quite a bit.  But, having simply 3 ships that are mercenaries is less interesting (and, in aggregate, less powerful) than having huge numbers of ships.  Also: for the artillery golem in particular, actually the numbers you are saying sound right about perfect to me in terms of time to repair.  It's meant to be a one-use sort of golem, unless you bring it home and spend hours repairing it.  It's waaaay overpowered to be used in any other way.

Golems aren't only about the "cool" factor, but they are something that are meant to be used only in more extreme circumstances.  People can't seem to stand any ongoing AIP cost, so the time/resource cost for them either has to be extremely large, or they have to not be repairable at all, or a similar concession has to be come up with.  Costing a lot is not a particular "weakness" to a ship of this sort -- it's just a prerequisite that you be pretty wealthy in terms of resources in order to be able to use it twice, and that you can only use a given golem once or twice every 3-4 hours or more if it's getting busted up a lot.  Having a golem in every battle would be disastrous, but that doesn't mean that they serve no function as they stand.

Fortresses are different in that they cannot leave the planet they are on.  Thus, they cannot be used to offensively wipe out the AI in repeated uses.

[eRe4s3r]

Objection - as long as you are in supply fortresses are able to be used as offensive force and even defense/turret cleaners. 5 fortresses generally don't face many things that can kill them all at once or quicker than 45 seconds. Which is the average build time of 1 fortress with maximum t2 engineers.

Not only are fortresses an offensive asset (EMP - move in with fleet and build fortresses the same time - have fun) and now you even got a combat fleet that can repair itself without fragile repair ships.

They can't change planets, but scrap and rebuild takes only 45 seconds. ^^

And speaking of that, you asked me what to spend money on when you have a huge fleet.. well offensive fortress use is one of these things

[Ginnungagap]

I just want say thank for doing updates frequently as much.

[TheWordWillSetYouFree]

I just don't see the point of having golems be that expensive! Maybe they should have their attack halfed, be non repairable and regenerate so that they need about 1 hour to regen to full health from 10% health?

Keep their AI cost at startup, quarter the damage they take from firing and half the reinforcing multiplier.

I think this would make them more useful and balanced, and I'm being very conservative here.

[Draxis]

Not sure if this one is a bug or not - scouts have cloaking boosters, but they dont seem to boost cloaking starships or the units cloaking starhips cloak

[triggerman602]

also one thing i noticed that has probably been around for awhile is that my units rally on an allys rally point. this is really aggravating if they have it in a stupid spot and i have to continuously order my stream of units coming into the system to move to where i want them.

[Kalzarius]

Objection - as long as you are in supply fortresses are able to be used as offensive force and even defense/turret cleaners. 5 fortresses

Last time I played, I was limited to 4 fortresses.  Has this changed recently?

People can't seem to stand any ongoing AIP cost, so the time/resource cost for them either has to be extremely large, or they have to not be repairable at all, or a similar concession has to be come up with.

I'm not sure how the current figures play, as I haven't played an expansion game in a while and don't know how any of the recent changes working. Personally, I never had an issue with the AI progress increase, but then I'm used to playing in a game with 2300+ AI progress. I may be a little biased in that respect. I thought they were fine before, though, for what it's worth.

[madpinger]

It would seem the tug's new "standoffish" distance puts them just out of range for mobile fortresses repair.  So I have tugs sitting next to them with tractor beams and no repairing being done.

*edit*
Does not all ways happen,  just some times when it's at just the right spot it seems.
*edit*
The repair range on the mobile repair station rocks.   

[Doddler]

So uh, I started a new game today and found out that my Mk I frigates can no longer out range special forces posts (well they could fire on it but they would attempt to get close enough to it that they'd all die).  I can't figure out when or why that happened, they used to be in the clear even with a radar jammer (no inhibitor of any kind exists though).

Edit: Actually it seems to work if you move them to the proper range, but they will not stop like they used to if you give an attack order.  The AI seems to be doing it too, their bombards are literally flying into my fighters.

[ShadowOTE]

They're probably just continuing to close until they can actually hit the target through its shields, which is a bit different from just being "in range"

[Spikey00]

So uh, I started a new game today and found out that my Mk I frigates can no longer out range special forces posts (well they could fire on it but they would attempt to get close enough to it that they'd all die).  I can't figure out when or why that happened, they used to be in the clear even with a radar jammer (no inhibitor of any kind exists though).

Edit: Actually it seems to work if you move them to the proper range, but they will not stop like they used to if you give an attack order.  The AI seems to be doing it too, their bombards are literally flying into my fighters.

They do that all the time (which is mainly annoying for the player).

[Kalzarius]

So uh, I started a new game today and found out that my Mk I frigates can no longer out range special forces posts (well they could fire on it but they would attempt to get close enough to it that they'd all die).  I can't figure out when or why that happened, they used to be in the clear even with a radar jammer (no inhibitor of any kind exists though).

Edit: Actually it seems to work if you move them to the proper range, but they will not stop like they used to if you give an attack order.  The AI seems to be doing it too, their bombards are literally flying into my fighters.

They do that all the time (which is mainly annoying for the player).

I think it's also been reported as a bug.

This is also the case for fortresses and a number of other ships that are best left outside of the firing range of their targets, even if they'll do less damage.

[Doddler]

I never really had an issue with it before, using frigates to attack a special forces was always a sure fire trick, though I haven't played the last couple patches.

[x4000]

Yep -- apparently that is new.  Keith, that's a really important one.  Can you look into that tomorrow if you have a chance?

[x4000]

Probably something we'll look at around the time of the second expansion, but for base customers also most likely.  We had a list of around 50 taunts we were going to do, but due to time constraints we cut it down.  Simply more that we want to do with the game than we have time to do it in!