Question: balancing purpose of caps on high-energy defenses?

[Radiant Phoenix]

Wouldn't a low-DPS tarpit-type fortress help clear out threat?

You put it in a system with no other damaging defenses, some of the AI threat sees, "ooh, squishy!", and comes in to squish it. Your fleet shows up before they can escape, and you have a fight.

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Huh, did lightnings get a range nerf recently? Last time I've used them they had quite respectable range, at very least far exceeding that of the flak.

Miniforts do their job. The fact that you aren't seeing single ships stray into your systems is because of them. Without MFs you'll see single frigates or such come into your systems and snipe your undefended CS.

I always use military command stations. I don't think lone missile frigates are going to pop them.

[KDR_11k]

Then make it a lone railcluster or something else that can't be translocated.

[Diazo]

Yes, the AI is tricky in that way, they'd come in, translocate your mini-forts away and kill your command station. 

Was an unpleasant surprise when I was trying to test them out. I have to give the AI points for it though.

D.

[Radiant Phoenix]

Then make it a lone railcluster or something else that can't be translocated.

I wasn't even considering translocation. I was just considering HP and DPS.

A railcluster is stronger than the command station, but the frigate isn't.

Also, what determines immunity to translocation?

[KDR_11k]

Unit size and some arcane magic.

[Radiant Phoenix]

Unit size and some arcane magic.

That should really go in the tooltips for ships.

[ZaneWolfe]

I don't see the value in reducing the caps on the existing forts as outweighing the cost of "nerfing without cause" those players who rely on forts (there's more than just one of them, appearances aside).  If we wanted per-planet-cap forts, we could add per-planet-cap forts.  If we did then we might make them 1-per-planet and take 1 away from the normal fort cap of the same mark and possibly alter the K cost accordingly (it's possible they could stand to cost more K per unit, dunno).

Once more my inexperience with AI War shines though. I just realized I cut the caps down to about 1/3 - 1/2 what they are now. ~faceclaw~ Still, its not a terrible idea, though I have heard several better ones in this thread (Riot Control Fortress? GIMMIE!!) Right now the existing caps on forts are 5/4/3, so why not bump the K cost up some and then make them per planet cap rather than galaxy cap? I have heard multiple times that forts are REALLY good for their K cost (I'm more fond of Mod Forts personally, but probably because I like the other modular toys like SPIRE!) You could easily give them a decent increase in K cost to move them over to per planet caps. This way, you don't nerf chokes while still allowing multi ingress points another tool. And given their costs, NOBODY is going to put even 1 of each on every single world they have.... Well, there is probably at least one person who has that much energy, but I still doubt it would be done. (Cinth, Cinth, Cinth. HA! Nothi- Wait... What is that soun- OH CRAP!)

[Zeyurn]

1 fort per planet per type would be too little in my opinion.  2 per (like mini-forts) would be fine with a 1 per for mk 3s, and the energy cost is already extremely prohibitive to even think of doing that.

In our 10/10 game I was desperate to have forts everywhere I could and I actually ran out of energy and couldn't place them all with the normal 4/3/2 cap, so if I can't even place the normal cap around the galaxy when I'm not doing crazy 'let's not care about AIP' maps I think it will only hurt people playing on diff 10 (probably 9 too) to be stuck at only 1 fort of each type on a planet.

I do like the idea of per-planet defenses, quite a bit.  It's why mini-forts are always unlocked immediately just like metal/crystal harvesters.  Especially in multiplayer just having a minimum amount of defenses at every planet at the start is better than the extra fleet I could have got.

[Faulty Logic]

Is there a mantis for the per-planet riot-control fortress?