Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

[KDR_11k]

In my experience the special forces don't do all that much to stop a champion, a steady stream of MkI ships is more like targeting practice than an actual threat. Well, maybe if you use a beam-specced spire champ you may have trouble gunning them down but with enough multi-target weapons you'll rip those spec forces apart before they even get in range.

BTW, what exactly do SF rally guardians do now?

[rabican]

Some random thoughts about things in expansion :

Z Medic Frigates

That cap dps seems to be hell of a lot more than any other fleet ship versus their favored target. Or maybe my math just sucks. Also along with reprosseccor its the lowest cap ship without reclaim immunity. Not sure if that is intended, couple of hundred zombified of these might make interesting things happen to your economy.

Other than that, pretty great ship, repair aspect isn't that great in close fights but great in supporting offensive fleet for extended periods of time.

Repossecor

Haven't noticed resource refund thingie working at all.

Shadow ships

Overall balance is uh , pretty problematic for these. Low aip game they absolutely dominate the game. Higher, not that much but still great ship. Not sure if overall balance needs much changes, although pretty overpowering , they are great fun to use.

One thing i might be worth tweaking is increasing the Reinforcement pulses more when champions are in play.  As this is where champions shine most, taking out even heavily fortified systems out without any real cost.


Shadow shield projector

This is especially early on ridiculously good.  More problematically its the first activate skill that you get and better than any of the latter skills you get. By a lot.

I would suggest increasing its hadow charge cost to 400-500 range instead of the current 200. This way you can have worse, cheaper abilities later on.

Zenith - Human Shadow ships

Spire, neinzull, human(zenith, the three classes of the shadow vessels. Zenith and human are so similiar in modules and skills that there is no difference between the two hull types.

Neinzull Shadow ship

The vampirism is pretty sick but doesn't really matter as its not big deal if the ship dies.

Insanity inducer has some  targeting issues(i think),  i only get half the amount of expected kills per volley, or less. With 6 mark IV inducers i should  be getting 24 zombies per volley, but in practice the number seems to be between 4-12.   

Ship modules

Most of these modules for shadow ships stink of math and balance. With couple of expections (subverter, insanity inducer, photon lance, bays,  plasma siege and maybe translocator & missile ) All the other modules might as well be the same. 



Some bad ideas:

Ship abilities , pretty simple things, fairly sure easy to accomplish

Neinzull :
<insert name here> : Spawn X (15 * hull type mark + ship level or something) of neinzull younglings.

 : Make temporary (1min mayhaps) cloacking super booster.

Spire :

:(with spirecraft enabled)  consume an spirecraft asteroid to instantly produce a  of computer controlled (zombified or ally faction) spirecraft of random type.

: Eat up a friendly ship,  regain health and spawn number of drones based on ship health/cost.

Human :

: Build a shadow turret. Self explanatory, longer duration and cheaper than current shadow ablities.


Zenith:

: Make a shadow simulcarum of your champion. Computer controlled and self attritions fast.


General:

: Mini nuke X (X0k, not martyr grade) of damage in large area. Needs high shadow cost.

: temporary gravity, armor inhibitor, black hole effect.


I heard something about 4th grade shadow ship hulls, so here are some ideas for those:

Forget about nebulae balance, and add some range and crazy **** in modules.

(mod edit: one thing as per profanity policy)

[KDR_11k]

I'm wary of demanding nerfs for the champion since they're supposed to be used as a player's entire arsenal so they must be capable of doing things on their own. Currently the AI's bonus strength isn't properly balanced for the champion strength so the game's difficulty can go wonky in both directions.

[Faulty Logic]

Zenith siege engines are absolute brutality in the hands of the AI. A decent sized threatball had enough to one-shot a champion cruiser. Under quintuple ability shields. And when the special forces captain gets his hands on them... let's just say that spire dreadnaughts have died. Yes, plural.

[Vihermaali]

I send in my shadow destroyer and it takes out all guard posts that don't have a forcefield.

Have the AI's special forces not rudely interrupted this process?  They don't respond on all planets, but I imagine you would have hit one of the CSG planets by now.

Special forces as in guardians (gravity, artillery etc.)? Yeah they are nasty, but with my upgraded mlrs + lasers (6 of both) gravity guardians seem to fall fairly quickly, artillery dies almost instantly and rest I usually ignore. I try to fly from post to post and pick off nastiest guardians while I'm at their guard post. Eventually AI sends all ships in the planet after my shadow ship (or I fetch them myself by flying around a lot) and after that point I need to do things in more traditional way (or fly until death) unless its a low level planet (in which case I just stand still under a FF and kill everything as they come).

Only real threat in this game this far (in addition to forces with EMP guardian wandering in) has been those cross-planet attacks where ships get released, so like I said in a previous post, I guess I really should ramp the difficulty up to see the true balance.

My Ai War history: I've completed 1 solo ~7diff game, one co-op ~7 diff game and one co-op spire campaign where we conquered 95% of the galaxy planets. Several failures and in-completes.

[Mánagarmr]

Special forces as in guardians (gravity, artillery etc.)? Yeah they are nasty, but with my upgraded mlrs + lasers (6 of both) gravity guardians seem to fall fairly quickly, artillery dies almost instantly and rest I usually ignore. I try to fly from post to post and pick off nastiest guardians while I'm at their guard post. Eventually AI sends all ships in the planet after my shadow ship (or I fetch them myself by flying around a lot) and after that point I need to do things in more traditional way unless its a low level planet (in which case I just stand still under a FF and kill everything as they come).

I see you have not met the Special Forces yet then.

[Vihermaali]

Special forces as in guardians (gravity, artillery etc.)? Yeah they are nasty, but with my upgraded mlrs + lasers (6 of both) gravity guardians seem to fall fairly quickly, artillery dies almost instantly and rest I usually ignore. I try to fly from post to post and pick off nastiest guardians while I'm at their guard post. Eventually AI sends all ships in the planet after my shadow ship (or I fetch them myself by flying around a lot) and after that point I need to do things in more traditional way unless its a low level planet (in which case I just stand still under a FF and kill everything as they come).

I see you have not met the Special Forces yet then.

Yes, haven't seen those yet.

[Bognor]

Z Medic Frigates

That cap dps seems to be hell of a lot more than any other fleet ship versus their favored target. Or maybe my math just sucks. Also along with reprosseccor its the lowest cap ship without reclaim immunity. Not sure if that is intended, couple of hundred zombified of these might make interesting things happen to your economy.

Actual zombies from a Botnet Golem - unlike ships you've reclaimed by other means and can control - have no energy cost.

[rabican]

Z Medic Frigates

That cap dps seems to be hell of a lot more than any other fleet ship versus their favored target. Or maybe my math just sucks. Also along with reprosseccor its the lowest cap ship without reclaim immunity. Not sure if that is intended, couple of hundred zombified of these might make interesting things happen to your economy.

Actual zombies from a Botnet Golem - unlike ships you've reclaimed by other means and can control - have no energy cost.

Was thinking more about zombies constantly repairing each other. Not sure if that would cause resource drain or not

[Histidine]

Actual sniper range on champion railguns would be nice. Nebula units/starbases could get sniper immunity/counter-sniper flares if you don't want people sitting under home base coverage sniping things from absolute safety.

On modular fortresses: All the forts can mount four different weapon types (needler, MLRS, laser, missile), and the human fort can swap out shield modules for HBCs. Except for the Spire fort, which has only three weapons (no missile module).
Perhaps it could get railguns, in line with FS ships/city structures?

[LordSloth]

Unfortunately, I haven't had the energy, internet, or sp setup ideal to get zenith reprocessor testing out of the way. I know they work and work quite well now. I wanted to see how quickly I could extract resources.

Some 20 minutes of gameplay have led me to the conclusion that the AI Missile Guard Post needs buffing. With cloaking, the Reference is close to the actual outcome.

8 Zenith Processors Mk1 can defeat one Missile Guard Post Mark IV rather handily, as in 89% win. If it is one-on-one, it turns into an 86% loss. Now, the missile guard post can do a significant amount of damage to these guys if they're uncovered early, but the time to kill is a little sad.

For comparison, a full cap of Bomber MkIII can kill a full cap of Fighters Mk1 in 72 seconds. If, for some reason, the Zenith Reprocessors didn't attack the missile post, it would take 288 seconds to kill the reprocessors, which would kill the post in 32 seconds.

It's fine for guard posts to be relatively weak, after all they bring in reinforcements, and we have guardians around. I'm perfectly happy with their health so far. I do wish they came with some more firepower however, and that it scaled up a bit more clearly, instead of having reload times reduced.

[TechSY730]

Unfortunately, I haven't had the energy, internet, or sp setup ideal to get zenith reprocessor testing out of the way. I know they work and work quite well now. I wanted to see how quickly I could extract resources.

Some 20 minutes of gameplay have led me to the conclusion that the AI Missile Guard Post needs buffing. With cloaking, the Reference is close to the actual outcome.

8 Zenith Processors Mk1 can defeat one Missile Guard Post Mark IV rather handily, as in 89% win. If it is one-on-one, it turns into an 86% loss. Now, the missile guard post can do a significant amount of damage to these guys if they're uncovered early, but the time to kill is a little sad.

For comparison, a full cap of Bomber MkIII can kill a full cap of Fighters Mk1 in 72 seconds. If, for some reason, the Zenith Reprocessors didn't attack the missile post, it would take 288 seconds to kill the reprocessors, which would kill the post in 32 seconds.

It's fine for guard posts to be relatively weak, after all they bring in reinforcements, and we have guardians around. I'm perfectly happy with their health so far. I do wish they came with some more firepower however, and that it scaled up a bit more clearly, instead of having reload times reduced.

3728: Guard Posts have pathetic firepower (despite its name, this issue is also about the guard post durability)

[keith.lamothe]

Oh yea, basically all the non-core guard posts are spitball-guns mounted on cotton candy, except the shield generators.

[Mánagarmr]

I remember back in the day when a Special Forces guardpost would SHRED anything you threw at it, forcing you to use long range bombardment to take it down...

[Histidine]

I just had a really, really bad experience with the Epsilon Eridani nebula scenario.

So I'm helping out with my Zenith Shadow Destroyer, covering my allies, pushing them back to their large starbase.
Unfortunately it pretty much stalemates there (the EER don't spawn fast enough or in a sufficiently coherent bloc) to really threaten their large starbase.

Then I get myself killed (I had let my shields drop carelessly earlier).
By the time I can clear out the AI forces in the way and get back to the nebula, the EER have lost two or three of their small starbases. Nothing I do from there stops the Sorrow's Fang from getting critical mass and steamrolling what's left of my allies.