Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

[LaughingThesaurus]

We really need a way to repair the starbases in the Nebulas. I keep looking at the damaged one and trying to send Engs into repair it. A module that replaces a shield on the Champion with a repair beam would be wonderful. Otherwise it is forced to sit at the starbase that is almost dead to stop the AI from destorying it well the troops very slowly take over the world. Very slowly in fact, I would like to see it go faster somehow.

I'm afraid that might end up being OP, though.
Well, first of all, champions don't have resources, and thus wouldn't be able to repair anything. Second of all, if you're microing and defending diligently, you can end up protecting all the starbases without any more than one casualty. Sure, they get damaged pretty badly but it's more about surviving. It seems more tense than if you could just fix them no problem. Maybe a middle ground would be something like giving them a very long regen timer? I mean, if it took no damage for 30 minutes it'd be back to full or something.

[zebramatt]

Heh
I think if you change the idea of 'scrapping' to 'warping' I at least won't feel like I'm actually killing myself and getting rewarded for it. I can agree to that. Beta is beta, I shouldn't have thought that explosion effect was final. =p

It's no explosion, it's ninja smoke !

It's a good point - if the Champ's 'porting away, he should have his own animation for that!

[LaughingThesaurus]

Dude. Zebramatt. Ninja space ships are the bomb, okay. I don't need a teleport effect anymore.

[Eternaly_Lost]

We really need a way to repair the starbases in the Nebulas. I keep looking at the damaged one and trying to send Engs into repair it. A module that replaces a shield on the Champion with a repair beam would be wonderful. Otherwise it is forced to sit at the starbase that is almost dead to stop the AI from destorying it well the troops very slowly take over the world. Very slowly in fact, I would like to see it go faster somehow.

I'm afraid that might end up being OP, though.
Well, first of all, champions don't have resources, and thus wouldn't be able to repair anything. Second of all, if you're microing and defending diligently, you can end up protecting all the starbases without any more than one casualty. Sure, they get damaged pretty badly but it's more about surviving. It seems more tense than if you could just fix them no problem. Maybe a middle ground would be something like giving them a very long regen timer? I mean, if it took no damage for 30 minutes it'd be back to full or something.

The issue with a regen is that the AI ships that have to destory the Starbases, as my champions never seem to make any ground by themselves, takes forever to do so.

A repair beam that that drains from a normal player should be possible, as well as one that is very slow but free. Plus, it means that unless you do something, the Starbases are not going to get better on their own.

A question, is the ships launched by the Starbases effected by number of homeworlds? And is it really suppose to take  3+ hours a Nebula or am I doing something very wrong? I only got 2 of the hostile starbase destroyed at the 2 hour mark and I think it going to take another hour to get another one.

[keith.lamothe]

A question, is the ships launched by the Starbases effected by number of homeworlds?

No.

And is it really suppose to take  3+ hours a Nebula or am I doing something very wrong? I only got 2 of the hostile starbase destroyed at the 2 hour mark and I think it going to take another hour to get another one.

In my tests with both released scenarios they tended to take 25 to 30 minutes, with very little of the starbase damage being done personally by me.  I would just focus on taking down the enemy ships (generally the mid-tier ones first to get them off my ally's "bombers", and then the high-tier ones to get them off my ally's mid-tier ships).  And if I could get away with it, getting the attention of a group of enemy ships and leading them on a chase into my ally's starbases for proper chipper-shreddering.

[TechSY730]

A question, is the ships launched by the Starbases effected by number of homeworlds?

No.

And is it really suppose to take  3+ hours a Nebula or am I doing something very wrong? I only got 2 of the hostile starbase destroyed at the 2 hour mark and I think it going to take another hour to get another one.

In my tests with both released scenarios they tended to take 25 to 30 minutes, with very little of the starbase damage being done personally by me.  I would just focus on taking down the enemy ships (generally the mid-tier ones first to get them off my ally's "bombers", and then the high-tier ones to get them off my ally's mid-tier ships).  And if I could get away with it, getting the attention of a group of enemy ships and leading them on a chase into my ally's starbases for proper chipper-shreddering.

Took around 40 minutes for me, with 3 retreats of my hero for repairs. (I realize now it would of been faster to scrap it, which just doesn't seem right... I would support the 20-30 second cooldown from last respawn idea Keith proposed, possibly with a 10 or so second paralysis time after a respawn to make "scrap retreats" and "suicide retreats" less viable)


I would agree that disparity between average experience gained for nebula missions and average experience gained for "normal" activities (guard posts, command stations, etc) seems a bit absurd right now.

[keith.lamothe]

I'll admit I'm a bit crosseyed at the intent of this expansion.  It's one hell of an answer to wall-clock, I'll give you that.  It just seems so... secondary... to core gameplay that it's definately not what I'd expected.  I'd honestly expected a secondary faction to be 'on the board' with you or something similar.

Yea, and the offroad approach was not my first one, but it was the only one I could think of that accomplished everything I was going for (hero units, places for hero units to grow, more guerilla-fighting, more scripted/journal'd bits, meaningful stuff to do during refleeting without bringing the wrath of the AI down on you, not being insanely long to implement).  And to some extent the other factions do come "onto the board" once their scenario is complete, though it is limited to avoid massive AI reprisal.

Fallen Spire worked "on the board" because the whole theme was getting in the AI's face and bringing the wrath down.  The all-out-war/sky-blackening-fleet side of the envelope was pushed pretty well in LotS, and here I wanted to push on the other side with the guerilla/single-unit side, and I really didn't see a lot of "room on the board" for much of that.

That said, yea, I can understand why folks would look at it and go "hurh?"   I think it will turn out pretty well in the end but there's a long way to go.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Something I'm actually curious about is if the number of spawned ships actually goes down per starbase. It seems like the enemy is almost as strong as they always were, without more starbases to produce units from. How does that actually work?

[keith.lamothe]

Something I'm actually curious about is if the number of spawned ships actually goes down per starbase. It seems like the enemy is almost as strong as they always were, without more starbases to produce units from. How does that actually work?

The main starbase produces groups of ships, the other ones produce single ships (and only the smaller two kinds, thus shorter build times).  As starbases are destroyed, the production rate of all the main starbases (enemy and ally) goes up.  That rule helps speed up the conflict once someone makes progress.  The production rate goes up somewhat more for the side that lost the starbase.  That rule helps keep it from being too much of a snowballing effect where the first side to lose a base is guaranteed to lose.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Ahh, gotcha. I was wondering like, why I felt like I wasn't feeling like I was making much headway into stopping enemy production as I went on into enemy territory. But I mean, that's also the kind of thing that benefits me if I mess up and keeps the fight more interesting, so, no biggie.
At least I wasn't seeing things.

[keith.lamothe]

Ahh, gotcha. I was wondering like, why I felt like I wasn't feeling like I was making much headway into stopping enemy production as I went on into enemy territory. But I mean, that's also the kind of thing that benefits me if I mess up and keeps the fight more interesting, so, no biggie.
At least I wasn't seeing things.

Hitting their production does actually help, though, because the "inbetween" spawns become less frequent and your ally fleet gets more focused, speeding up their doing something about the other enemy bases

[LaughingThesaurus]

Now that you mention it, I remember that. The ally forces seemed to get more of 'all attacking at once' time. Subtle.

[Eternaly_Lost]

A question, is the ships launched by the Starbases effected by number of homeworlds?

No.

And is it really suppose to take  3+ hours a Nebula or am I doing something very wrong? I only got 2 of the hostile starbase destroyed at the 2 hour mark and I think it going to take another hour to get another one.

In my tests with both released scenarios they tended to take 25 to 30 minutes, with very little of the starbase damage being done personally by me.  I would just focus on taking down the enemy ships (generally the mid-tier ones first to get them off my ally's "bombers", and then the high-tier ones to get them off my ally's mid-tier ships).  And if I could get away with it, getting the attention of a group of enemy ships and leading them on a chase into my ally's starbases for proper chipper-shreddering.

My time is in the hour marks for a side world, granted this is at 9/9 but there is very little progress going either way. The AI destroys all the ships on my side and I destroy all the ships AI side and the bases just very slowly lose hp almost randomly depending on were the last group died. Very very slowly. Are you talking about 20 minutes at +10 or something? Because based on what I was watching, I don't see this being done in less then 4-8 hours per nebula. If the goal is 30 minutes, something is very wrong. I could see it being harder on 9/9, but not this slow. I got a level 13 hero that had all the upgrade I can get now unlocked and it has points left to spend. That is with managing the hero to target the AI units that do the most damage to my own side ships.

[Oralordos]

I've only done one mission and that was before the second one came out. It took about an hour to beat. Mostly because I was paying far more attention to my fleet than my champion. This was at 7/7 by the way.

[keith.lamothe]

Are you talking about 20 minutes at +10 or something?

No, I'm testing starting off at the beginning of a game with an offroad wormhole on my HW, and when the scenario is done the game-timer reads 25 to 30 minutes (the next scenario that I'm working on comes in considerably under that, but the first two are pretty similar time-wise).

The enemy group-spawns (not individual spawns) are a bit bigger for each scenario you've won previously, but the impression I'm getting from you is that this has been happening from all the scenarios.