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

[Ozymandiaz]

Just one comment on the hybrid icons; other starship has an icon that turns in the direction the starship does. Any plan for the hybrid to get that?

Its a minor thing, I know, just that I spend most of the time in the far zoomed out state


Edit: Bonus question; is the marauders (the evil ones )supposed to nuke the AIs new guard posts?

[eRe4s3r]

The Marauders attack everything that you can attack without forcing it. So yeah.. that seems intended behavior (though i think if they manage that it means marauders are too strong and not the GP's to weak ;P)

[keith.lamothe]

I think you're heading in the right direction for the Dreadnought/Siege Starship; however, I feel like the massive range of some of the heavy defenses completely cripples them.  For example, earlier I sent in three of them against a single Fortress.  My starships did a huge amount of damage to it very quickly, but one of them also died from two volleys.  I had the same problem for one of the new guard posts.  I think it was a Missile one, but I don't remember.  I ended up taking large amounts of damage before even entering firing range.  I turned and fled to the exit wormhole back into safe territory and lost one on the way back.  To be fair, there were a few Mk 3 ships firing at it while it fled, but it wasn't being fired upon while closing to range with the guard post.

I think increasing their range significantly might be a good way to improve them.  Their damage seems sufficient to obliterate most turrets and such, but some of the other defensive units can vastly out-range them.

Thank you for the feedback Actually this sounds like almost exactly the experience I was intending; sending sieges in without cover is like moving slow artillery on their own wheels/treads up a road covered by alert enemy artillery (i.e. not tactically advisable). There are several ways to deal with this, here are a few:

1) Clear out all the outranging stuff before sending the sieges in.
2) Load the sieges into a transport and don't unload them until they're at the proper range to fire.
3) Place the sieges under a Forcefield or a Riot's onboard forcefield (or even just a bunch of forcefield bearers).  This drastically cuts the siege's attack power but drastically increases its survivability in most cases.  The Riot FF doesn't even cut the attack power (which is a rather nice advantage of them) but it doesn't have nearly the capacity of the larger units.

[Ozymandiaz]

The Marauders attack everything that you can attack without forcing it. So yeah.. that seems intended behavior (though i think if they manage that it means marauders are too strong and not the GP's to weak ;P)

Well, I did soften the plane up a bit, and kinda killed teh command center

[superking]

500k hp at MK I is horribly fragile for a starship with 200 shields, even the MK I sentinel frigate has 600k 

[Burnstreet]

I should read in-game descriptions more... yesterday in a game with two friends we were cought twice by a deep counterattack wave.
Is it by design that both waves were about as far away from the fronts as possible (10 and 11 hops) or was it just bad luck? In any case, it spiced up things a bit.

One thing that we had was one CPA announced as 7k+ ships, when the countdown stopped only 4k were added to tthe thread and no messages of anything put in baracks. It's a 3 player game at about 800 aip (T3), diff 7. Is that supposed to be  like that?

My biggest challenge with all the toys you've given us is producing enough energy, I am currently at 2m, constantly running short, and I didn't yet activate a golem and don't have many starships (just raid line + flag/zenith).

currently we're building up a super terminal defense... got >2k turrets including 2x all beam cannons, 3 OMDs, shield booster, shild inhibitor, 2 MK1 forts, black hole gen, wonder how far we can get with that (never really tried before).

[Ozymandiaz]

I have been trying out the Preservation Warden now. I have killed like 15 of them the last 20 minutes. There seem to spawn an awful lot of them. Is tehre supposed to spawn a ton of them all the time?

Not sure if my save will say anything useful, but here it is. I have just been "deep striking" a bunch of them since the constant waves was starting to get annoying

[Fleet]

Thank you for the feedback Actually this sounds like almost exactly the experience I was intending; sending sieges in without cover is like moving slow artillery on their own wheels/treads up a road covered by alert enemy artillery (i.e. not tactically advisable). There are several ways to deal with this, here are a few:

This sounds reasonable, given that enemy units will target other ships around the Siege Starship, if both are present. Can you comment on what targets the AI will prioritize, if there is a Siege Starship in with a modest group of fleet ships? (can I be assured that my Siege ship won't just be picked off?). Lets say I'm attacking a missile post, and my Siege Starship is the only thing even in range, with my fleet ships close be to protect from AI fleet ship. Would the Missile Post still prioritize my fleet ships, even though only my Siege Starship is going any damage whatsoever?

[Joe]

Thank you for the feedback Actually this sounds like almost exactly the experience I was intending; sending sieges in without cover is like moving slow artillery on their own wheels/treads up a road covered by alert enemy artillery (i.e. not tactically advisable). There are several ways to deal with this, here are a few:

1) Clear out all the outranging stuff before sending the sieges in.
2) Load the sieges into a transport and don't unload them until they're at the proper range to fire.
3) Place the sieges under a Forcefield or a Riot's onboard forcefield (or even just a bunch of forcefield bearers).  This drastically cuts the siege's attack power but drastically increases its survivability in most cases.  The Riot FF doesn't even cut the attack power (which is a rather nice advantage of them) but it doesn't have nearly the capacity of the larger units.

Thanks, I'll try the transports and forcefields out.  I had tried clearing out the long range stuff first with my Raid Starships after my previous attempt, but I felt that at that point, I might as well just use the Raid Starships to clean up the sector if I hadn't already bought the Siege Starships.

[Giegue]

they're more like post-seige starships aren't they. I've never used them that way, I've always stuck with Raid starships.

[Fox Soul]

This update made my minefield OP'ed.  



It nearly gave me the same laugh when I designed my autobomber strategy.

[keith.lamothe]

500k hp at MK I is horribly fragile for a starship with 200 shields, even the MK I sentinel frigate has 600k 

Yes, they are intended to be horribly fragile, this is part of the point.

As for them being post-siege, well, if you want to use them *safely* without significant support from other units, then yes, you will have to wait until the long range defenses are down.  If you want to use them in the heavy action you'll have to protect them

[keith.lamothe]

Thank you for the feedback Actually this sounds like almost exactly the experience I was intending; sending sieges in without cover is like moving slow artillery on their own wheels/treads up a road covered by alert enemy artillery (i.e. not tactically advisable). There are several ways to deal with this, here are a few:

This sounds reasonable, given that enemy units will target other ships around the Siege Starship, if both are present. Can you comment on what targets the AI will prioritize, if there is a Siege Starship in with a modest group of fleet ships? (can I be assured that my Siege ship won't just be picked off?). Lets say I'm attacking a missile post, and my Siege Starship is the only thing even in range, with my fleet ships close be to protect from AI fleet ship. Would the Missile Post still prioritize my fleet ships, even though only my Siege Starship is going any damage whatsoever?

There isn't any special targeting logic used against the Siege Starship (it does use some special logic to pick its own targets), so I honestly don't know whether you'll see them get picked off in a given circumstance.  But the auto-target logic does not really pay any attention to how much damage a given ship is actually doing or can do, since the whole system of questions about base dps, multipliers, range, immunities, etc is so complex.

Generally count on having to protect them, but the AI doesn't have any code saying "if(obj.Type == SiegeStarship) killkillkill;"

[superking]

I guess the mine shipcap should be lowered now 

[Vinraith]

I guess the mine shipcap should be lowered now 

It has been. Fox Soul must have loaded a save game from before the change, all his individual mines got turned into minefields. I had a save like that, and ended up 500 or so over cap.