reclaimation

[rabican]

I had the bright idea of running around with regenerator golem and bunch of space planes and ran into cluster of guardians and couple of starships lurking behind wormhole. And one mk III leech starship. One. And this happened -look at the screenshot now, i don't know how to insert them in mid post-.

Did some math and one shot from mk III leech starship is enough to reclaim  587 spaceplanes. This is fine in hands of AI. Rare and avoidable if you don't blunder.

Did some more math. One volley from cap of MK III leech starships is enough to reclaim 72 mk II bombers. In practice you can fully reclaim any reclaimable wave sent at you. This is not okay.

Conclusion: Reclaimation MK difference bonuses combined with on death excess reclaimation splash cause a mess.

Suggestion : Cap the reclaim spalsh to something arbitrary. Like 2x reclaimed ship's max hp. Tone down the reclaimation damage bonuses. To maybe half the current values. On even MK fight this would mean you would need to do 25% of the damage to a ship as reclaimation damage to reclaim it.

[Wingflier]

I don't think it's that big of a deal for various reasons.

1 - the knowledge cost of getting an MK3 Leech Starship in the first place is a heavy deterrent.

2 - you can only reclaim ships you don't have, and the most powerful AI ships (such as Guardians, Starships, and Fortresses, as well as many fleet ships) are immune to reclamation.

3 - the reclaimed ships usually die in a battle later on, so it's not like a permanent force multiplier.

I think someone did a game with leeches recently to see if they were overpowered, and it turned out okay.  I think the balance for these is about perfect now.  It may look bad on paper, but in practice everything turns out okay.

[Cyborg]

I agree with wing.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, this is one of those things where balance has to be done by playtesting and "is this fun?" rather than "do the numbers look right?".  Partly because a perfectly balanced situation isn't always the most fun: sometimes having things that have a hilariously potent effect is better for the game.  So long as they do not prune the choice tree by making some choices obviously the best way to go all the time (and others obviously never a good way to go).

And in practice the leeches aren't as powerful as, say, martyrs, which are basically on the edge between "OP but hilarious so we leave them that way" and "So OP they've just got to be nerfed" (where they were before their asteroid-cost changes).

[Minotaar]

You can reclaim any wave you want with any reclamator you want as it stands. It's just not really that gamebreaking.
Though I had this idea for a game: a giant snake map, Zenith Descendant + some other type with a lot of unique reclaimables. Sit there and collect everything of every mark, then A-Groupmove to the other end and see how far they get.  You can try it out, if you have some spare time and a spare CPU