Proposed update for the Orbital Mass Driver

[chemical_art]

Send a cap of bombers against a guard post with shield, and if said post doesn't have more then 30 or so defenders, the bombers will toast the shield enough to knock out

false stuff!

Do it all the time.

Every time there is a fort hidden under a shield and there are 2 or 3 dozen enemy units under said shield, you get the situation I've described. A cap of similarly marked bombers will toast most of the shield, if not all the way. A second wave will toast it enough for sure.

[Kahuna]

Non spire shields don't regen, period.

They don't regen. They're repaired by engineers.

[Kahuna]

Whether or not the laser reduction occurs to the OMD itself, it should be removed I think, since it simply makes no sense.

Does make more sense than OMD having Turret hull but IC not.

A fast, strong ship that could puncture shields will be the ultimate pain in the but for a player

Not any more painful than Raid SSs, Eye Bots or Vampire Claws

[KDR_11k]

I am also saddened by the lack of at least moderate speed FF immune fleet ship with good cap damage and somewhat OK cap durability. (we have other FF immune stuff, but they tend to have TWO OF the following: slow, have poor cap durability, or have poor cap damage. I would like at least one fleet ship with FF immunity and only ONE of those weaknesses. If balance is a concern, give it some other weakness not on that list (other than the one selected), but it would be at least useful for tricky raiding situations then).

Yeah, I could see that becoming a balance issue especially in the hands of the AI. FF-immunity means it must be more feasible to stop the ships before reaching their destination.

That said I've been able to dish out some serious damage using all four marks of infiltrators on an AI homeworld, since they are cloaked until they reach their target and come in quite large numbers they can wail away for a while before the AI can kill them. Took about a quarter of a Wrath Lance's health down in one wave and most things aren't quite so dangerous to get close to.

[chemical_art]

Non spire shields don't regen, period.

They don't regen. They're repaired by engineers.

I'm looking at AI forcefields right now.

Immunity: Repair

I was wrong about there being no regen time though. They regen over 2 hours.

[chemical_art]

A fast, strong ship that could puncture shields will be the ultimate pain in the but for a player

Not any more painful than Raid SSs, Eye Bots or Vampire Claws

Those three things have absolutely terrible health and not that great of dps. All they are fast and have something that makes targeting them difficult, and have at least one counter that counters them really, really hard. Raider---> Sniper turret or gravity turret. Eyebot---> tacyhon + lightning turret or antimissile turret. Claw tachyon + lightning turret or military station.

[Kahuna]

Those three things have absolutely terrible health and not that great of dps. All they are fast and have something that makes targeting them difficult, and have at least one counter that counters them really, really hard. Raider---> Sniper turret or gravity turret. Eyebot---> tacyhon + lightning turret or antimissile turret. Claw tachyon + lightning turret or military station.

All ships have a counter and should have.

New raider bonus ship:
Cap: 58
Health: 175000
Engine Health: 200
Armor Type: Composite
Speed: 120
Damage: 6000
Reload: 3
Attack Range: 4000
Ammo Type: Laser
Abilities: Radar Dampening Range 3000
Immunities: Mines, Tractor Beams, Force Fields
Damage Bonuses: 3 Turret, 3 Structural, 3 Ultra-Heavy

Fleet ship version of Raid SS. Balanced and awesome. Also nasty if used by the AIs.

[Lancefighter]

See, my problem is that if you are going to want to destroy and OMD on a particular world, you are going to want to assault the ENTIRE WORLD.

Is it not feasable, primarily, to take the planet on with your entire fleet? If it is, then consider heavy use of YOUR ENTIRE FLEET to cloak in and blow it up.

If it is not possible to do that, then take what you need and either trigger each guard post and do some sort of offense by defense, or consider raiding each guard post somehow.

I am just saying that I feel you are placing a lot more emphasis on the OMD than is actually there.

[chemical_art]

Those three things have absolutely terrible health and not that great of dps. All they are fast and have something that makes targeting them difficult, and have at least one counter that counters them really, really hard. Raider---> Sniper turret or gravity turret. Eyebot---> tacyhon + lightning turret or antimissile turret. Claw tachyon + lightning turret or military station.

All ships have a counter and should have.

New raider bonus ship:
Cap: 58
Health: 175000
Engine Health: 200
Armor Type: Composite
Speed: 120
Damage: 6000
Reload: 3
Attack Range: 4000
Ammo Type: Laser
Abilities: Radar Dampening Range 3000
Immunities: Mines, Tractor Beams, Force Fields
Damage Bonuses: 3 Turret, 3 Structural, 3 Ultra-Heavy

Fleet ship version of Raid SS. Balanced and awesome. Also nasty if used by the AIs.

Interesting, but you'd need to make the base dps half and increase the multipliers to 6. Right now it has about 66% the base health of the triangle ships, but 300% the base dps. I'm ok with it having an extra 50% dps both with and without bonuses, but 50% bonus damage and 300% base dps is a bit much...everything else is fine I think.

Opps, no, not that greater range then dampening. The SSB has shown just how infuriating that situation for anything except paper ships in that situation. Increase that dampening to 5k and I'd be on board, or lower the HP another third.

[TechSY730]

Those three things have absolutely terrible health and not that great of dps. All they are fast and have something that makes targeting them difficult, and have at least one counter that counters them really, really hard. Raider---> Sniper turret or gravity turret. Eyebot---> tacyhon + lightning turret or antimissile turret. Claw tachyon + lightning turret or military station.

All ships have a counter and should have.

New raider bonus ship:
Cap: 58
Health: 175000
Engine Health: 200
Armor Type: Composite
Speed: 120
Damage: 6000
Reload: 3
Attack Range: 4000
Ammo Type: Laser
Abilities: Radar Dampening Range 3000
Immunities: Mines, Tractor Beams, Force Fields
Damage Bonuses: 3 Turret, 3 Structural, 3 Ultra-Heavy

Fleet ship version of Raid SS. Balanced and awesome. Also nasty if used by the AIs.

Interesting, but you'd need to make the base dps half and increase the multipliers to 6. Right now it has about 66% the base health of the triangle ships, but 300% the base dps. I'm ok with it having an extra 50% dps both with and without bonuses, but 50% bonus damage and 300% base dps is a bit much...everything else is fine I think.

Opps, no, not that greater range then dampening. The SSB has shown just how infuriating that situation for anything except paper ships in that situation. Increase that dampening to 5k and I'd be on board, or lower the HP another third.

Agreed. With these proposed dps/bonus changes to bring it into line with fleet ship balance targets, and making radar dampening >= range, this would be a fine new fleet ship type, and give some sort of recourse to "worse case" style defensive setups (both for the AI and the humans) without being overpowered.
Not sure how feel about both tractor immunity and FF immunity with that sort of speed, but thankfully 120 speed isn't crazy high (what is the Raid SS speed?). And like the raid starship, it doesn't have grav immunity, which is a good thing.

Actually, this would be a good thing to adapt the existing "raid fleetships" to be, to make them match their name finally.

[Wanderer]

I don't want to interfere with the conversation, but I'm looking for a worst case scenario save that I can hand off to everyone that isn't core/hw that explains what I'm trying to say about OMD's and the requirement for Raid SSs to have a shot in hell against them.

I regularly include the Neinzul Factory ships and Flagships into my standard armada right now, because nothing says love like Fighters that survive the first strike.  In general though I agree with Kahuna, a flock of bombers will not take out an OMD on a planet.  Four maybe.  I have other things I'd rather do than wait until I've rebuilt the bomber flock four times.

This MIGHT come back to the whole economics discussion though, which is why I want to wait until I have a real scenario for the issue that can be tested.  My current 9/9 game (at 16 hours in, mind you) I'd feel rediculously hard pressed to remove an OMD under glass on anything over a MK II planet if Raids didn't work.  There is nothing in the base arsenal that could remove them in a reasonable fashion otherwise.

@Keith (I know you're watching just letting us hash it out): What would the difficulty codewise be of swapping OMD's to a different set of stats based on minor faction selection?  Basically, I'm thinking of a different OMD being seeded should a superweapon faction be selected.

[Kahuna]

Those three things have absolutely terrible health and not that great of dps. All they are fast and have something that makes targeting them difficult, and have at least one counter that counters them really, really hard. Raider---> Sniper turret or gravity turret. Eyebot---> tacyhon + lightning turret or antimissile turret. Claw tachyon + lightning turret or military station.

All ships have a counter and should have.

New raider bonus ship:
Cap: 58
Health: 175000
Engine Health: 200
Armor Type: Composite
Speed: 120
Damage: 6000
Reload: 3
Attack Range: 4000
Ammo Type: Laser
Abilities: Radar Dampening Range 3000
Immunities: Mines, Tractor Beams, Force Fields
Damage Bonuses: 3 Turret, 3 Structural, 3 Ultra-Heavy

Fleet ship version of Raid SS. Balanced and awesome. Also nasty if used by the AIs.

Interesting, but you'd need to make the base dps half and increase the multipliers to 6. Right now it has about 66% the base health of the triangle ships, but 300% the base dps. I'm ok with it having an extra 50% dps both with and without bonuses, but 50% bonus damage and 300% base dps is a bit much...everything else is fine I think.

Opps, no, not that greater range then dampening. The SSB has shown just how infuriating that situation for anything except paper ships in that situation. Increase that dampening to 5k and I'd be on board, or lower the HP another third.

Hmm

btw I chose the same cap as the "old" Vampire Claws which WAS 58 before the cap changes. It's 56 now.

My new raider bonus ship (With 56 ship cap)
Cap DPS: 112.000
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 336.000
Cap Health: 9.800.000
Range: 4000
Radar Dampening: 3000

Fighter
Cap DPS: 97.920
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 587.520
Cap Health: 15.840.000

Bomber
Cap DPS: 78.080
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 468.400
Cap Health: 14.976.000

Space Plane
Cap DPS: 136.835
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 437.873
Cap Health: 5.022.400
Range: 5500
Radar Dampening: 3000

Eye Bot
Cap DPS: 130.560
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 417.792
Cap Health: 4.896.000

Raid Starship
Cap DPS: 102.400
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 409.600
Cap Health: 6.000.000
Range: 5500
Radar Dampening: 8000

Raider
Cap DPS: 98.000
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 392.000
Cap Health: 10.192.000

When compared to other ships I think it would be ok. It certainly doesn't have 3 times more dps than triangle ship O_o.
Whatever health needs some buffing depend on it's resource and energy costs. Also it's meant to be a fast lightweight raiding ship with a composite armor type so it shouldn't be tanky.
Also there's nothing wrong with 4000 range and 3000 radar dampening. Space Plane has 5500 range and 3000 radar dampening yet it's not op. Spire Stealth Battleships are/were op because there was always a minimum of 20 of them (ship cap 5) and they have lot of health and good dps.

[chemical_art]

Those three things have absolutely terrible health and not that great of dps. All they are fast and have something that makes targeting them difficult, and have at least one counter that counters them really, really hard. Raider---> Sniper turret or gravity turret. Eyebot---> tacyhon + lightning turret or antimissile turret. Claw tachyon + lightning turret or military station.

All ships have a counter and should have.

New raider bonus ship:
Cap: 58
Health: 175000
Engine Health: 200
Armor Type: Composite
Speed: 120
Damage: 6000
Reload: 3
Attack Range: 4000
Ammo Type: Laser
Abilities: Radar Dampening Range 3000
Immunities: Mines, Tractor Beams, Force Fields
Damage Bonuses: 3 Turret, 3 Structural, 3 Ultra-Heavy

Fleet ship version of Raid SS. Balanced and awesome. Also nasty if used by the AIs.

Interesting, but you'd need to make the base dps half and increase the multipliers to 6. Right now it has about 66% the base health of the triangle ships, but 300% the base dps. I'm ok with it having an extra 50% dps both with and without bonuses, but 50% bonus damage and 300% base dps is a bit much...everything else is fine I think.

Opps, no, not that greater range then dampening. The SSB has shown just how infuriating that situation for anything except paper ships in that situation. Increase that dampening to 5k and I'd be on board, or lower the HP another third.

Hmm

btw I chose the same cap as the "old" Vampire Claws which WAS 58 before the cap changes. It's 56 now.

My new raider bonus ship (With 56 ship cap)
Cap DPS: 112.000
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 336.000
Cap Health: 9.800.000
Range: 4000
Radar Dampening: 3000

Fighter
Cap DPS: 97.920
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 587.520
Cap Health: 15.840.000

Bomber
Cap DPS: 78.080
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 468.400
Cap Health: 14.976.000

Space Plane
Cap DPS: 136.835
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 437.873
Cap Health: 5.022.400
Range: 5500
Radar Dampening: 3000

Eye Bot
Cap DPS: 130.560
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 417.792
Cap Health: 4.896.000

Raid Starship
Cap DPS: 102.400
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 409.600
Cap Health: 6.000.000
Range: 5500
Radar Dampening: 8000

Raider
Cap DPS: 98.000
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 392.000
Cap Health: 10.192.000

When compared to other ships I think it would be ok. It certainly doesn't have 3 times more dps than triangle ship O_o.
Whatever health needs some buffing depend on it's resource and energy costs. Also it's meant to be a fast lightweight raiding ship with a composite armor type so it shouldn't be tanky.
Also there's nothing wrong with 4000 range and 3000 radar dampening. Space Plane has 5500 range and 3000 radar dampening yet it's not op. Spire Stealth Battleships are/were op because there was always a minimum of 20 of them (ship cap 5) and they have lot of health and good dps.

Sorry, my source was using "epic" damage values compared to normal damage values, leading them to be halved.

Space plane weakness is a (sniper) turret that ignores its dampening, making it once again a hard counter (a ship whose main defense's is dampening and/or armor which has  a weakness to a turret that both ignores the dampening / armor AND gets a damage multiplier makes a hard counter). With a whooping 33% health compared to caps of fighters, and against turret that gets a whooping 6x multiplier, space planes once uncovered fall apart in puffs rapidly. In practice, one sniper shot = one dead plane in space.

Your raider lacks a "hard" counter, which is necessary for having something that is immune to so many player defenses. Most of the things its hull is weak against, missile frigates and turrets, rely on range which it counters, so in effect they are a "soft" counter. That leaves the flak turret, which does OK damage but still not a "hard" counter like how the lightning turret is against eyebots or claws (due to much smaller dps both reliably and in max, range, and lack of dampening)

I'm not saying I don't like the idea, but every "raider", like every ship that gets a bonus to its counter in the combat triangle, needs to have some key weakness against their strengths.

[Kahuna]

Your raider lacks a "hard" counter, which is necessary for having something that is immune to so many player defenses.

Good point. Radar Dampening could be switched to Cloaking. In which case Scout Starships/Tachyon Turrets + Missile Frigates/Turrets would completely own them.


Another kind of raider ship:

Cap: 48
Health: 99.000
Engine Health: 50
Armor Type: Refractive
Armor: 0
Speed: 188
Damage: 6.000
Reload: 2
Attack Range: 10.000
Ammo Type: Missile
Abilities: Radar Dampening 10.000
Immunities: Force Fields
Damage Bonuses: 1,8 Ultra-Heavy, 1,8 Heavy, 1,8 Medium 1,8 Turret

Cap Health: 5.040.000
Cap DPS: 144.000
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 259.200

Cap Total Cost: 88.800 ((1100+750)*48)
Cap Energy Cost: 9.600 (200*48)

Comparing to other ships:
MLRS
Cap DPS: 166.186
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 332.373
Cap Health: 15.200.000

Vampire Claw (LoL OP)
Cap DPS: 197.120
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 591.360
Cap Health: 8.176.000
Range: Melee
Speed: 108
Abilities: Cloaking, Vampirism, Regen Time 01:30, Target Seek Range 5,000, Armor Piercing 10,000

Infiltrator
Cap DPS: 138.666
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 554.666
Cap Health: 14.880.000


An option for adding these raiders could be buffing Autocannons and Raiders. Hell.. just make Autocannons immune to Force Fields and give Raiders 5000 Radar Dampening.

[chemical_art]

Going to bed, so can't explain everything in detail.

Now I'm going the other way, and say your ship can be buffed.

Your first idea was on the money for dps now that I learned my source was off by half. Maybe for a raider I'd give it a bit less dps in return for greater multipliers to make it not so great in fleet fights, but the total dps was right (actually, according to my source's error..on paper, the max dps  might need to be doulbed! Will check after sleep)


That ship seems more like an bigger missile bot. Doesn't wow me, but could be cool.

Your idea of a raider, a small, fast, unit that over comes shields and mines and tractors is fine, I'd simply have changed the hull to  close combat so that fighters (who are short ranged and fast) can almost sort of keep up with the raider and won't care so much about the dampening, and the sniper turret can counter the unit hard while the rest of your defenses are out of luck. I'd even keep your original idea of greater range compared to dampening, since the sniper turret nor fighters will care.