Prerelease 3.168 (Huge shifts to golems, sniper turs, acid sprayers, engineers)

[rubikscube]

since we're gonna remake it, more damage is good.

[platinawolf]

Aren't sniper turrets a little out of place now that there cap is almost double any other turret?  Why not put the cap at a normal level and just buff the sniper turrets stats?  I'd suggest leaving them the way they are currently, but half the cap, and half the reload time (aka double the rate of fire).

That would also buff the AI ^^* The sniper turrets are irritating as they are, even with portable anti sniper

[Ktoff]

Seriously... It is impossible to finish a game without having like 20 intermediate updates.... :-)

I love how the game is evolving, though.

Cheers

[zebramatt]

    * Sniper attack values have been increased 10x, and their reload speed has also been increased 10x. This makes them more of a "volley" type of unit, good at dealing a lot of damage right when ships enter their field of view, but then taking quite some time before they can do it again (about 60 seconds of reload in most cases).
          o The above applies to both snipers-the-unit and sniper turrets.
          o In the case of Spider Turrets, their values were only increased 5x since that made more sense for their engine-damage-focused abilities.

I will never update every again.

I presume you're joking, since you didn't give a reason and I can't understand why you'd have a huge negative reaction to this.  But, joking or not, that sort of comment really gets under my skin, I have to say.

I might be wrong here but I think this was a positive remark; "I love the status quo so much after this update that I never want to change it." And I think it might've been metaphorical at that. You know, like when someone shakes the hand of an idol and vows never to wash it again...

But triggerman might correct me there - he might really be mad as a goat.

[superking]

I like the new golems! still very hard to use beneficially at high AIP (oh look, 400 MKIII ships reinforcing/minute) but and still extremely expensive, but much more useable!

one thing I have noticed is that the new super-fast repair speed makes repairing a golem very easy even with just a few engineers

[Buttons840]

Aren't sniper turrets a little out of place now that there cap is almost double any other turret?  Why not put the cap at a normal level and just buff the sniper turrets stats?  I'd suggest leaving them the way they are currently, but half the cap, and half the reload time (aka double the rate of fire).

That would also buff the AI ^^* The sniper turrets are irritating as they are, even with portable anti sniper

So AI sniper turrets will be brought up from the level of "completely negligible."

Right now I consider them a psychological annoyance only.  Sure, it's bothersome to realize that every minute you lose a bomber from snipers, but that's nothing in the big picture.

[superking]

^ truth

[x4000]

Exo-galaxy wormholes are supposed to also count as warp gates for Golem use. He is asking if the backdoor hacker wormhole counts also.

Should be easy enough to test, right? Cheat and give yourself a golem in a game against the backdoor hacker and see how it goes.

Backdoor hacker is just the AI type -- their specialty is that they get an exo-galaxy wormhole on your home planet.  So, this is a discussion of all the same thing, heh.

[x4000]

the engineers still have a slow auto response time. when they auto build the nodes on a riot starship, they will stay with it for much longer than they should. in fact, engineers used to respond close to at the same time. why did this change?

Throttling for performance reasons.  This was discussed at length in recent threads.

[x4000]

Aren't sniper turrets a little out of place now that there cap is almost double any other turret?  Why not put the cap at a normal level and just buff the sniper turrets stats?  I'd suggest leaving them the way they are currently, but half the cap, and half the reload time (aka double the rate of fire).

Well, my rationale was that the AI gets tons of these, spread out amongst all of their planets, and the humans ought to have something mildly similar.  Of course, the AI gets tons of everything across all the planets, but the sniper turret balance felt like a particular discrepancy.

Aren't sniper turrets a little out of place now that there cap is almost double any other turret?  Why not put the cap at a normal level and just buff the sniper turrets stats?  I'd suggest leaving them the way they are currently, but half the cap, and half the reload time (aka double the rate of fire).

That would also buff the AI ^^* The sniper turrets are irritating as they are, even with portable anti sniper

Oh yeah, that's the other reason.

[x4000]

I like the new golems! still very hard to use beneficially at high AIP (oh look, 400 MKIII ships reinforcing/minute) but and still extremely expensive, but much more useable!

one thing I have noticed is that the new super-fast repair speed makes repairing a golem very easy even with just a few engineers

Oh, good catch on the repair speeds thing.  I'll need to slow down the internal repair rate of the golems themselves to account for that, heh.  Glad they're more enjoyable, at any rate!

[x4000]

You could make the Golem like a mobile AI Warp Gate, meaning the AI could use your own Golem to send waves against you.  So when your Golem is hiding at your homeworld, then the AI can launch waves directly against your homeworld, because the Golem is there.  I'm not sure how much work that would take, but it would discourage defensive use of the Golem while not artificially placing concrete restrictions on the unit.

I thought of that, and really liked the idea of that pretty well, but:

1. It would be difficult to describe that in flavor text.
2. It takes more time to code than I have at the moment.
3. It would prevent players from ever having peace while controlling a golem -- no withdrawing it from the front lines to repair and sit silently and harmlessly; AI ships would always potentially be warping en masse against it.

So the operational limitations remain?  The Golem can move and be repaired in safety, but just can't attack without a warp gate adjacent?

I still am not real happy with that solution, but I'll make the best of it.  It will still be fun to use them on offense.

Like you say, I guess I'll see how it goes, and bring up any further ideas I might have when there is more time available for development.

Good luck with Tidalis.  I've bought it already, but haven't seen many of the recent updates; should be fun.

EDIT:  Ok, after some though I'm more happy.  I just have to get over the idea of using Golems on defense, since that is the only role I've been able to us them successfully in.  It will be fun to use them on offense, and if I lose them I'm not going to cry, because they were basically free to begin with.

Many thanks!  And glad those are becoming something you're more happy with.

gimping the spider turrets ROF is a bad idea, stopping raiders is going to be too much harder. spider's should go back to the original way, (low damage) and maby take a MODERATE gimp to their ROF.

You're probably right, I should tweak those downward somewhat at least.  I'd been on the fence with the spiders from the start.

Making sniper shots instant would be awesome! Doubly so if their new effect looks like a beam weapon. I have always been annoyed trying to track down the source of sniper shots in the past.

Well, the thing about making the shots instant is that they'll also probably be invisible.  Having an effect like a beam weapon could really drag down framerate, unfortunately.  And the answer to "where are sniper shots coming from?" is generally "everywhere," heh.

[Volatar]

Making sniper shots instant would be awesome! Doubly so if their new effect looks like a beam weapon. I have always been annoyed trying to track down the source of sniper shots in the past.

Well, the thing about making the shots instant is that they'll also probably be invisible.  Having an effect like a beam weapon could really drag down framerate, unfortunately.  And the answer to "where are sniper shots coming from?" is generally "everywhere," heh.

You could make it an option I guess. 

[x4000]

Making sniper shots instant would be awesome! Doubly so if their new effect looks like a beam weapon. I have always been annoyed trying to track down the source of sniper shots in the past.

Well, the thing about making the shots instant is that they'll also probably be invisible.  Having an effect like a beam weapon could really drag down framerate, unfortunately.  And the answer to "where are sniper shots coming from?" is generally "everywhere," heh.

You could make it an option I guess. 

Yeah, but then that takes time I don't have at the moment, etc.  Might go that way eventually if people don't like the insta-invisible shots, though, for sure.

[Buttons840]

Instead of a beam you could just draw a line, the order interface already draws hundreds without a problem when your viewing the move interface, so a brief line coming from a turret wouldn't be a big deal.

Of course, that might be confusing to see a graphic that has been reserved for the unit interface now as a part of the regular game.