Prerelease 3.185/6/8 (Minefields, Seige Starships, Fixes)

[CogDissident]

So, after playing a game where my siege starships and minefields featured prominently, I have to say this is my favorite update yet (other than the one that put in my favorite fleet ship, z beam frigates). The siege starships are powerful from a distance, and good at taking out the new extra-healthy special forces posts.

[keith.lamothe]

Glad you're liking it

Yea, the sieges have all kinds of caveats, but if they can safely sit still and just shoot at something big, they shine

[superking]

oh ok - I assumed few would be included with every neinzul wave in the same manner that mad bomber waves always include a bomber starship as a discouragement from the old 'I have 5 lightning turrets, all your neinzul are belong to us' but if the electricity thing isnt actually implemented that would indeed be rather pointless

[keith.lamothe]

Well, in theory we could make younglings immune to aoe but I'd need to get police protection first

[Ktoff]

with the new update minefields become more dangerous. So i thought... let's dismantle this minefield(s). I take a decloaker and lots of clean-up drones with me and while i see the location of the cloaked ships, i cannot dismantle them. I can, however, let my other ships fire on the mines to destroy them. The remains were then dutifully removed by my clean-up drones.

As i did not feel the need to deal with mines (appart from circumventing them via transports) this is probably standard behaviour, but how do you properly clean-up a minefield. Shooting at it takes forever....

[Spikey00]

Do they have THAT much HP?  I'm relatively sure that that bunch of fighters and bombers have been firing away at those for half an hour.  Even so, why are they not decloaked when there's a scout starship there?

I'm fairly sure those are cloaked tachyon emitters, and thus immune to minor electric there spikey

[Lancefighter]

o.0 no, definitely not half an hours worth of combined dps from those, but i cant think of any other cloaked building (thus immune to minor electric) that wouldnt uncloak to shoot.
They do seem to be shooting tachyon beam thingies though from the screenshot you provided? i dunno what other options there are.

Maybe engineers, but i mean, even those should die quickly..

[Spikey00]

I recall that they were still shown as the "blue cloak bubble" even if they did not have a tachyon beam to reveal it; assuming it's something to do with the tractor turrets.

[Joe]

I've been using Siege Starships a bit since my last post.  They do seem quite good with a personal Transport chauffeur.  I wanted to note that their damage dealt to different types of Starships seems to vary pretty wildly.  Against the Light Starship and its upgrades, the Siege Starships will obliterate them in a few volleys (using five Mk Is).  Against Raid and Leech Starships, the damage seems pretty pitiful.  I think I was doing between 5-10% per volley.

[Lancefighter]

I recall that they were still shown as the "blue cloak bubble" even if they did not have a tachyon beam to reveal it; assuming it's something to do with the tractor turrets.

Odd. I cant think of anything else that would quite do that effect.. What if you hit them with some major electric?(lighting warheads..)

[Spikey00]

Well as we played on they sort of disappeared off to somewhere, but I am definitely sure they survived a ton of minutes of beating before I noticed they were suddenly gone.  I'll see what I can come up with in that past replay when I have time.

[Diazo]

In one of the recent patch notes I remember something about the cloaked warp point "guard posts" that die when the command station is destroyed being made vulnerable to emp and their HP dropped from 2 billion to 20 million or so.

Now that I go and look for it, I can't find that specific change, but I'm sure I remember a change of some sort to them that may have done something wierd that you saw.

D.

[Lancefighter]

It wouldnt be a guard post, they would never be uncloaked. If emp'd, they would be visible.. but its generally futile to shoot them last i checked.

[Spikey00]

Quite hilariously, the culprits were some AI space tugs...  oddly nothing but EMP missiles could decloak them.

Sheesh, and I thought it was some sort of AI super weapon, supposedly one George Bush was after.  :\

[eRe4s3r]

I never knew the AI could have space tugs at all... What were they tugging and where to? ;P