Proposed update for the Orbital Mass Driver

[Wanderer]

Either attacking with waves of bombers or using an armored warhead. The damage bonus for the OMD was suggested against Ultra-Heavy so it shouldn't affect starships.

I'm assuming that was a joke and you weren't actually recommending using an AIP increaser as a standard removal method for a single defensive unit (particularly one that usually hides under glass).  I've been drinking all night and that seems like a hysterically bad idea to me.

[KDR_11k]

Standard? No. A "when everything else fails" method. Also the armored warhead only costs 2AIP these days and OMDs are fairly rare and don't respawn.

[Burnstreet]

Standard? No. A "when everything else fails" method. Also the armored warhead only costs 2AIP these days and OMDs are fairly rare and don't respawn.

Ever tried playing a Peacemaker AI? 1 or 2 OMDs on every planet.

I support buffing the OMD against Superweapons, against starships it is good enough.

[KDR_11k]

And they are all too protected to use smaller fleet ship raids?

[Hearteater]

Anyone recall how much the Laser Reduction is from the OMD?  I forgot to take that into account, since Raid Starships actually use Lasers.  If it is the same as Deflector Drones that should be -75% damage, which means x4 as many shots to kill.  So Turret armor would effectively make them the next best thing to invulnerable to Raid Starships (352 shots to kill!).  Right now the reduction effectively negates the x4 hull multiplier, leaving the Raid Starship I at 18 shots to kill.

[keith.lamothe]

Laser-reducer is a boolean flag, so anything that has it has it the same as any deflector drone (-75%)

Sneaky, that OMD...

[Hearteater]

Is it like a force field, in that anything covered by it is protected, or does the attacker need to be within range of the "protection"?  Because if it is the latter, Raids might actually out-range the reduction radius.  If it is the former, the OMD is always protected.

[Lancefighter]

its anything near the omd.

[relmz32]

is there anything else the player gets from the start/can unlock with K that lets us hit !@%^#*& $#!^ under glass?

If the answer is yes, and it is reasonably low-cap(high individual dps), then ok.

If the answer is yes but it is high-cap (so low individual dps, and weak to eyes), then that is probably more annoying than it is worth with an eye involved.

If the answer is 'no' then please don't make OMDs in their natural habitat (under a forcefield/ spire shield guard post) any worse to deal with.

[Lancefighter]

mk1 emp- > do whatever you want for 30 seconds. Honestly, if there is ever a last ditch solution, its that.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Standard? No. A "when everything else fails" method. Also the armored warhead only costs 2AIP these days and OMDs are fairly rare and don't respawn.

Ever tried playing a Peacemaker AI? 1 or 2 OMDs on every planet.

I support buffing the OMD against Superweapons, against starships it is good enough.

I'm with this guy. Superweapons are absurd, murderous, crazy things that OMDs can't scratch the paint against. OMDs rip apart starships like they're made of tissue paper.
Really, recommending armored warheads is absurd when you think about not only how that can snowball, but how warheads are not just child's play. Using it is supposed to be a big decision because of the permanent increase in AI Progress that they provide... and the game itself strongly recommends that any warhead only be used by advanced players. So... given that OMDs spawn in on difficulty 7, do we need to be advanced players to actually make headway in some situations? Is that it?
And, attacking waves of bombers and stuff, I've already made the point of that basically being 'box everything and go' in the end. All you're doing is boxing bombers instead of raiders and making it take longer.

I don't like the idea of making raiders useless against OMDs. Making them much weaker but still fairly strong against OMDs would be ideal, for me. If I lost my whole raiding party but killed the OMD, I'd be reasonably happy. Raid Starships are rather powerful swiss-army-knife style solutions for everything, but I really think that making them weaker is a different subject entirely. We don't need OMDs buffed to the point that you have to use advanced AIP incrementing tactics... or make the decision to kill them in 10 minutes instead of 2 minutes with no real difference in the level of danger that you experience.

[Lancefighter]

once upon a time, glorious aars were written about blowing up OMDs. Now, I honestly just box my starships and blow them up.

But really, I kinda think they should deal like 30m damage. Per shot. At the current reload time. If I get hit by a flying asteroid, i expect it to hurt. Even a golem should feel that. And yes, it instakills starships I'm glad you noticed. Thats the point.

As for dealing with them? Meh. Like I've said, there are options. Worst case being emps. I dont really think this would change anything.. But it would make people notice them a lot more.

[LaughingThesaurus]

One-shotting starships isn't my problem. My problem is the alternative solution to OMDs being either send masses of ships, or incur AIP penalties left and right by using advanced things like warheads that probably should not be mandatory on difficulty 7 unless you screw up royally. If you, say, had a raiding fleet ship or something by default, then I'd be fine with OMDs doing a hundred million damage. I'd have a reasonable way to actually kill them.

[Lancefighter]

well.. it kinda goes back to the whole 'what is the point of an ion cannon/eye/etc'

You have to engage them in a specific way - An ion cannon must be dealt with with either starships or high mk ships, or incur heavy losses. An eye must be dealt with in small numbers, or stuff happens. An OMD must be dealt with without starships.

I dont really understand the issue here.

[KDR_11k]

Eyes limit the number of units you can bring but usually not so much that you cannot send a few mark-caps of bombers in.