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

[x4000]

I'm worried about potential sniper turret overkill, I can see the fallowing situation happening as it seems to happen with many other ships already:

One enemy enters -> snipers fire to overkill because why not? there is only one unit after all -> dozens of enemy ships enter and cuddly hug  the planet while snipers are reloading because they just waited all their shots on one auto-cannon.

For most units this isn't a big deal, because they have a quick reload, but a sniper volley will be a terrible thing to waist with their horrendous reload times.

There is overkill logic in there that specifically prevents this.  Ships only overkill a very small amount to account for repairs and regen, etc.  Otherwise in the scenario above you'll see them fire just (for example) six shots and then the rest of the turrets will sit there doing nothing.  That might actually perplex you, until you see those shots hit and the ship dies.  Then another ship enters, and then other sniper turrets that did not fire on the first immediately target it, etc. 

That logic has been in there for a looong time, although I think there were a couple of bugs that may have partly disabled it sometime recently in the past.  But based on my recent play experiences this weekend, I feel pretty confident saying it is working at the moment.  If there are some specific cases where you see it not working, please feel free to post a save as a bug so that we can look into it, though; sometimes there are edge cases.

[x4000]

I have mixed feelings. The changes made to turrets effectively nullify them in most short-duration skirmishes at wormholes. Primary wormhole defence will no longer benefit from them. The main reason for this is that it takes so long for sniper fire to even get in range (in most cases) targets will already be eliminated by short-range turrets and closer ships. After firing off a salvo of wasted shots, they are then out of the battle for an entire minute. Using the old model, this was less of a deal because a waste salvo was quickly followed up on six seconds later. Chances are good they would be contributing to the battle eventually.

This is a really good point, actually.  Snipers do evaluate which targets are going to die, but other ships ignore incoming sniper shots when determining what ships to hit (for reasons of timing -- but other snipers do evaluate what other sniper shots are incoming).  So that is a real problem, because the other ships will nullify all that nice overkill-prevention that the snipers were specifically doing.  The solution there, as Trezamere suggests, is definitely to make the sniper shots faster, I think.  In fact, I think I'll make it so that they hit instantly, which would be a nice unique thing for them.

That will keep them more relevant, will fit with the style of their unit (and be a nice extra benefit to them, which they are in need of), and will prevent any targeting issues as you noted there.  Perhaps should call their new ammo style "railgun," heh.  Good idea!

[Buttons840]

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.

[Signata]

Ha, yeah I was thinking the same thing when I responded to Trezamere: railguns! Relativistic rounds are always a good thing to have in a science fiction setting. Increasing the speed also makes the increased damage explainable, too. It doesn't really matter what you are flinging if you fling it fast enough. A fleck of paint becomes lethal, eventually.

Another thing this will indirectly counter, which is, I believe outside of area-electric, the first real threat to teleporters. No more zapping all over the place escaping fifty slow sniper rounds all over the planet. Anyway, I think this would be a great tweak. Due to the diminishing of the "whittling away" effect I mentioned with front-loaded power shots on escaped strays, it could definitely make sniper turrets a part of the turret buffet again.

[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.

[RCIX]

6 posts in a row!

[ShadowOTE]

I didn't bother to read anything other than patch notes, so this might already have been addressed, but what happens if you play a backdoor hacker and have a golem on your home planet?

[RogueThunder]

I didn't bother to read anything other than patch notes, so this might already have been addressed, but what happens if you play a backdoor hacker and have a golem on your home planet?

If it doesnt work. It should. XD You so desurve it if you have a damn backdoor hacker.

[Signata]

I think, from what I understand, in many cases your golem wouldn't work anyway because it requires proximity to warp gates to function. Of course, if you still have warp gates around your homeworld, then it would work fine. The two requirements are supply and warp gates. So in that particular case it might be strategically valuable to keep one warp gate functional if you have golem. I'd bet in most cases though, by the time anyone gets a golem they've already cleared out everything around their homeworld.

[Volatar]

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

[sebcw1204]

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. sniper turrets.... now they waste thier shots. they shoot, then their target gets killed, and now they have to wait 60 seconds for ANOTHER shot that gets kill stolen form them. sniper turrets were pretty useless before, now they are even MORE of a waste of rescources. if he doesnt want sipers to act as real snipers (stealthy, slow firing, high range, HIGH or SPECIFIC damage) ho should just remove the standard snipers and just have a couple of sniper turrets to research (engine killing sniper turrets, and mabye a weapon damaging turret or some sort of specialized damage)

[Nemo]

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.

[rubikscube]

snipers are suppose to be threatening, now 50 snipers do 90,000 damage not counting bonuses

We as a player use snipers to (in my case but i believe more people too) SOLELY to get those lone low health gatling or cloaked ships,

As in enemy planets, if you make ai worlds snipers much more powerful, i believe this is very good as this makes most planets needing a beach head with counter sniper.

snipers should destroy a eyebot or such in 3 to 5 hits.

[Giegue]

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?

[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).