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

[superking]

Most of these changes are excellent, another solid and extremely fast release!

I am not certain about the new golem mechanic, I suppose it will require playtesting to reallly be able to comment but I personally quite liked the previous mechanic of AIP cost (minus the 3x AI reinforement). without an AIP cost, I see amassing golems being common even with higher costs, because costs only equal time.

The repair change sounds great, the slow repair speed on most ships was one of the few remaining areas of annoyance

* Acid Sprayers have been completely rebalanced.
          o They have 10x more base damage, and 10x less bonus against Zenith ships.
          o They now have 50% of Zenith bonuses against starships and resources, 40% of Zenith bonuses against engineers, and 25% of Zenith bonuses against turrets.
          o They now have 10x lower shields.

sounds good! I was thinking that it might be interesting to make the attack of acid ships proportional to the max HP of the target, but this sounds workable

* The ship cap of sniper turrets has been doubled, and their cost has been halved.
          o The cost of spider turrets has also been halved, but the cap of spider turrets is the same.
          o These changes don't affect the AI, but make the sniper turrets more useful for human players.

This sounds good on all accounts. Snipers were fairly redundant before, hopefully this will turn things around. Is the cap of mobile snipers changed? they are surely in need of love as well (iirc sentinel was better in like every way)

 I was thinking that spider turrets should cost 100 energy not 50, because they are really quite powerful if you can afford them.

* Sniper turrets now have the reclamation ability, which lets them work like very weak, slow parasites. They're unlikely to capture a ton of units with this, but the reclamation ability does provide some minor more incentive to use them. This ability also applies to the AI, unlike the cost shifts.

eh.. I cant say I like this one, it just means players will mega spam snipers purely for the reclamation, since even 0.001% HP reclaimed is a free ship on death- I certainly will, and I dont much like this change. The sniper turret series currently only has two MK, where every other turret has 3- its crying out for a spiritual MK III parasite sniper turret, and then it can be buffed enough to be powerful.

Well, they have to actually finish off the ship if I recall, so their capture rate is going to be really low in general, and focus fire might actually be a help there.  Of course, I actually could be remembering wrong, too.

Now is a good time to get this cleared up, as I have read the tooltips and I remember some of them being unclear. Does the reclaimer have to make the kill, or when the ship is killed by anything does it respawn with half the damage that reclaimers did to it during its lifetime? (which would be odd if it was repaired...could respawn with greater then max health?)

But main question is about the reclaimer having to make the kill or not, I would like clarification.

Looking at the code... it appears they do not have to make the kill.  Wow, that makes sniper turrets a lot more useful.  Of course, probably those ships just get killed instantly if they are in the big fray, but still.  We'll have to keep an eye on this, the sniper turrets might be OP now.

Perhaps a certain % of a ships HP should need to be lost to a reclaimer before it is successfully reclaimed- that'll prevent the thing where you hit hundreds of ships for 0.001% damage in the knowlege you'll still get them all at the end

[x4000]

First, the changes, which I'm keeping in this thread to keep the discussion all here for now:

Updates in 3.168:

    *  There is now a sizable cluster penalty on fortresses, making them not very useful when clumped together too much on one planet.
          o Of course, with multiple players or multiple levels of fort this can be gotten around, same mechanic as with sentinel frigates.

    * Golems no longer require supply.
          o This change was unpopular with players, and given the prevalence of Orbital Mass Drivers probably not needed, anyway.
          o Golems do still require the proximity of AI warp gates, however, as that is important for avoiding the most exploitable aspects of golems.
                + Any ship (including the AI exo-galaxy wormhole) with the "Warp Gate (Wave) or Warp Gate (Full)" abilities will work just fine for this proximity requirement, as a note.

    * 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.

    * Sniper turrets no longer have the reclamation ability, as that was definitely overpowered.

    * Fixed a longstanding bug with the Zombie reclamation ability (botnet golem) that was causing ships it reclaimed as zombies to come in at half health at most.

[x4000]

Next, a few points in response to various posts above:

1. There are two differences between using a golem and a fortress on deep defense (or a ton of turrets or whatever).  First, the golems are way more powerful as a single entity, with way more health.  This makes them far harder to kill. 

Second, when it comes to all those turrets and fortresses, you wind up using up a ton of your ship cap on that one planet, rather than all over the place, which in turn costs you a lot of knowledge (one of the permanent resources.  By contrast, golems cost you nothing permanent at this point, not even knowledge.  The only possible permanent cost you could claim with them is the opportunity cost of not using them elsewhere, but that presupposes that you'll capture them as a matter of course as part of the game.

Oh, and I guess third, bombers and various AI ships have weaponry aimed at letting them occasionally take down a fort, whereas golems are specifically designed not to have those sorts of resources.

2. Part of the reason for making golems only function near AI warp gates is so that there is always the prospect of triple-size waves against them when they are not in enemy territory stirring up reinforcements instead.  Those waves often will have a similar effect to the reinforcements, scattering from the planet and causing havoc elsewhere.

3. You guys convinced me on the offensive thing, the OMDs really already solve the problem I was then trying to solve with supply.  So that's why that went away.  Really, now golems are just all kinds of awesome, they can do everything most people would want to do with them, just not act as the ultimate camping defense.

4. Totally right on the sniper turrets being overpowered.  Eventually I'll add leech turrets, but not right now (I should be on Tidalis, these set of changes in 3.168 took all of 10 minutes), and they likely won't be sniper-ranged, as that seems OP in general.

5. As part of the sniper changes, you'll notice the attack buffs, hopefully that will make them more useful on defense.  It vastly increases their damage chance right at the start of an engagement, and doesn't affect their damage chance over a longer multi-minute engagement whatsoever.  Also, they now feel more sniper-ish (rubikscube made a good comment that made me think along these lines), and reduce the amount of clutter and calculations going on during battles on AI worlds, at least slightly.

6. The fortress cluster penalty?  Yeah, with so many fortresses possible now, and Buttons840 mentioning how those could be used somewhat exploitatively, that was inevitable, no?

7. RCIX, I also had thought about making golems dangerous to friendly ships, but that's just fraught with a lot of issues, I decided.  But that was something I spent a lot of time thinking about yesterday, trying to find a model that would work, etc.  In this case, I think simply removing the supply restriction handles the current issue well enough, anyhow.


Thanks for the thoughts, everyone.  I'm going to be out a lot of today, but will respond when I can.  Hopefully this solves most of the issues of serious contention, and this won't turn into some giant debate while I'm gone. Really, I feel like the golems are on pretty solid ground at the moment, and the snipers.  But I guess we'll see what people think in practice!

[Buttons840]

2. Part of the reason for making golems only function near AI warp gates is so that there is always the prospect of triple-size waves against them when they are not in enemy territory stirring up reinforcements instead.  Those waves often will have a similar effect to the reinforcements, scattering from the planet and causing havoc elsewhere.

Golems will still be great on defense as a "nullify that wave for me" unit.  If a wave is coming, there must be a warp gate adjacent.  When the wave is 10 seconds out, warp in the Golem in FRD mode.  10 seconds later, when the regular sized wave has been destroyed, move the Golem away from the front lines and it's wave penalty will never really be a problem.  I suppose a wave might spawn during the 20 seconds the Golem is in action, but one 3x wave once in a while will never be a problem, especially when you have a Golem.

So Golems still lead to super defense against waves, and the only possible threat is CPAs.  You can still move the Golem from planet to planet cleaning up each planet in seconds.  CPA's don't usually go deep into friendly territory without lingering on a fringe planet for awhile.

In my view, if you removed the need to have Golems adjacent to warp gates, this wouldn't change anything.  Golems would still nullify all waves, and CPAs would still be a bit of a challenge.

The more I think of it, the more it seems the AIP for repairing a Golem might actually have been worth it.  Ironically.  


Again, I'd like all operational restrictions removed.  They're artificial restrictions and do nothing to stop most over-powered strategies.


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.

[Tusoalsob]

I think they are more ufn now in higher difficults the AI incresmant was to mutsh to get then and in low difficultys you didn't need them but got them for fun only .


But as a bit more disadvantege you can get them mileral anf crystal costs like enerators, so you whoud have up pay some more upkeep for them, then i think the 3X wave mod is ok, it mostly is there to stike when you freed a sytem and then an ai wave is spaning there ^^. 

Or it whoud be optionla to spam an Anti Golem CPA that only heads for the golem and is send from the Ai to destroy it or damage it. In such waves there shoud be only ships capebel of making damage to a golem.

[superking]

remains rebuilders & cleanup drones still have LoS, atm you can just build a bunch of them and teleport around the map scouting the AI homeworlds

sniper changes sound decent

I'm going to try out the golems later today, got an armoured golem to repair 9 hours into an 80 planet game. will report back on its performance 

[Affine]

   * Previously there was just a single "engineering rate" for ships that could assist construction or do repairs. Now there are separate repair rates and construction rates for engineers.
          o This lets them do construction at the same rate as always, while doing repairs much faster than in the past, which in turn makes them more viable once again as an alternative to Mobile Repair Stations.

If you're aiming for it, something that'd make me happier using engineers for repairs would be this.

[rubikscube]

wait, so are you gonna make a reclaimation sniper or not?

so it's current attack is 10x (1800)but takes 60 seconds to reload? ( i doubt any ship should have a reload time over 30 seconds)

suddenly, you made sniper turrets not even as approachable than before the whole sniper buff.

you made attack power of 1800 per minute, still not "sniper like" even though you can just build more but compared to basic turret 1800 per 10 seconds, make reclaimation ability and low damage again, or make it have another special ability, make new bonuses against ships, or make it higher power.

in case of higher power, make it reload 30 seconds and attack of 5000 and above. make snipers a real threat, on hostile planets it "focus fires" and destroys 20 or less fighters on a mk3 planet. and my snipers are only good against ships that pasted my wormhole defense which it never should.

[Kalzarius]

    *  There is now a sizable cluster penalty on fortresses, making them not very useful when clumped together too much on one planet.

Sizable? Yes. Extreme? YES.

My typical frontline defense has four fortresses.  To pull this off now, one of those marks has to have their attack power reduced to 20% (with two of them, that's the equivalent of a single fortress running at 40% capacity -- less than half) and I have to spend 12,000 knowledge where I used to only have to spend 4,000. So I spend 12,000 knowledge for less power than I used to get with 4,000.  There's something terribly wrong with this picture.

[Signata]

I think what is wrong with the picture is that you have four fortresses in one spot. Not even the Fortress Baron plays that way.

[superking]

I think what is wrong with the picture is that you have four fortresses in one spot. Not even the Fortress Baron plays that way.

lol

[triggerman602]

    * 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.

[Volatar]

Alright, I have been stewing overnight on the Golem changes, and I decided I think they are a good idea.

I really like the sniper modification. Should make them much funner to use.

[Sizzle]

I will never update every again.

Instead of stomping your feet,  I'd suggest saying something like:

1) what you don't like about the change
2) why you don't like it

 and

3) a constructive suggestion as to what would make it better for you considering why the change was made in the first place.

x4000 is quite helpful in explaining why he makes changes,  just saying "no I hate it" without any further details doesn't make his job any easier.

[rubikscube]

his idea is similar to mine, before it was 180 damage , 6 second reload
after was 180 damage, 6 second reload, plus reclaimation and half cheaper
after after was 1800 damage 6 second reload, half cheaper


indeed it was better than before, but since you spoiled us with parasites, and we want it implemented, we have to tweak the sniper a lot.