Reclamation gone mad

[atomjack]

Is it just me, or has the reclamation gone slightly weird in the last couple of betas? In a game I had recently, nearish the start of the game, I faced a wave of 600 raiders with my fleet comprised of the triangle ships, vampire claws, and a smattering of starships including 3 leech I starships. At the end of the battle I had ~250 raider mk Is in my fleet, which seems a trifle unlikely. Are leech starships now doing reclamation splash damage or something?

[Minotaar]

There were serious improvements recently, both to the leech starships and to the efficiency of the mechanic itself, so it seems quite possible, but I didn't quite expect suce a performance from just the 3 leeches. I use Merc Parasites in almost all my games now, and I usually can reclaim a full cap of ships from a wave with a little help from those. Reclamation might need to be toned down somewhat, that I agree with.

[Cyborg]

I haven't felt like they are overpowered. I'll take a look again.

[keith.lamothe]

If a ship with parasite damage dies but doesn't have enough parasite damage to be reclaimed, its parasite damage "hops" to a nearby allied ship (if any).

What this does is make it so that it's much less likely that parasite damage will be "wasted" because of order of firing, specific autotargeting selections by the parasites, etc.

It's possible that it's overpowered, but from what I've heard the result was roughly 2x-3x the amount of reclamations people were seeing in efficient applications of reclamators before the change, which is about what I wanted.

As long it doesn't become one of those "I always stack tons of reclamators because it's obviously optimal" or "reclamation lets me beat any challenge this game throws at me" situations I think it's fine

It's better than "wow these reclamators really stink"

[Diazo]

Well, it makes for interesting fights sometimes.

A couple times I've sent Minipods (high cap fleet ship with cloaking) into a system on a raid, the tachyon guardian is down but the AI's spawning a sentinel frigate on the warp point so they get decloaked unexpectedly.

A couple minutes later I'm wondering where my raiding force is and the AI ship count in that system has grown by 100-150 ships.

It's certainly powerful now, I'm not sure it is into overpowered territory but my next game is probably going to be all about reclamation to test it out.

D.

[zoutzakje]

perhaps if you play a game with all parasite types only, that would be overpowered. But it rarely ever happens that you find so many ships with the reclaim ability in a single game, so I wouldn't worry about it to much. Leech starships are pretty useful now though, I now actually have a reason to build them, which is what they lacked in the past.

[rabican]

Ah so thats what is going on. I was wondering how my leech starships kept reclaiming bullet proof fighters with their shell immunity.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah so thats what is going on. I was wondering how my leech starships kept reclaiming bullet proof fighters with their shell immunity.

Easy: bank shots

[TechSY730]

The only true OP reclamation stuff is the zombie guardian and the botnet golem. Parasite starships might be really good now, but IMO, not to an OP degree.

The botnet golem is OP by virtue of it being a golem. The zombie guardian has OP damage as a workaround that zombie reclamation stuff do not follow the same reclamation bonus by mark logic that normal reclamation shots do, so it has ludicrously high attack power to work around that. It would be nice to see that changed so that zombie guardians could have a sane DPS but still have a good reclaim rate.
There is the bug where "spillover" from zombie reclamation shots is normal reclamation damage, giving the chance that zombie reclaimer might start normal reclaiming some stuff.

[Cyborg]

The golem is not overpowered, and last I checked (within the last month) Leech starships are not, either. We are dealing with a game that has potentially thousands of units per wave; let's not get upset over a couple of hundred reclamation rewards.

[TechSY730]

The golem is not overpowered, and last I checked (within the last month) Leech starships are not, either. We are dealing with a game that has potentially thousands of units per wave; let's not get upset over a couple of hundred reclamation rewards.

Sorry, I meant the golem is OP like all golems are, which basically means they aren't OP at all, but rather just a very strong unit. They just sort of look OP when placed against the more standard units.

Still would like zombie guardians to be looked at though.

[Martyn van Buren]

Do newly reclaimed units follow rally orders? As in, with reclamation more effective now, am I right to think that if I beachhead a world and I'm using nanoswarms I might want to build a stationary rally post with an frd order to use the reclaimed units as extra suicide troops? Or is there a simpler way to get reclaimed units into FRD mode automatically?

[TechSY730]

Do newly reclaimed units follow rally orders? As in, with reclamation more effective now, am I right to think that if I beachhead a world and I'm using nanoswarms I might want to build a stationary rally post with an frd order to use the reclaimed units as extra suicide troops? Or is there a simpler way to get reclaimed units into FRD mode automatically?

I think the logic is as thus:
If there is a rally point (either type) on the planet they were reclaimed on, they will normal move to it (and in the case of a redirector rally post, this implies following the order it gives). IIRC, that can be turned off by a control option)
Failing that, if there is a non-engineer ship with repair capabilities (like MRSs or fortresses) on that planet, they will normal move to that, and then move back to where they were once fully repaired. IIRC, both the move there and the move back can be turned off via control options as well.
Failing that, they will simply sit in place where they were reclaimed, following normal idle logic for that unit type. (which may imply moving to a regen chamber for younglings, or going into FRD if on an allied planet with the auto-FRD control turned on)

[Tridus]

In a fallen spire game today I was able to face a wave of 600 Zenith Bombard II's, and using a Botnet Golem I wound up with 300 of them zombified. That particular wave it only worked because I could park the Golem under a Spire ship's forcefield (that many Bombards would flatten it normally), but it was crazy awesome. Other times I was able to use a Botnet and Black Widow at the same time while attacking planets and that resulted in a ton of zombies.

I also used parasites and leech starships earlier in the game, and I found them pretty good but not insanely so.

[Wanderer]

The parasites are now excellent in human hands, the balance is great there.

In the AI's hands... it's inane.  I'd personally like to bring to light two ideas.

1) Nanites need a 'timeout'.  I don't know if they currently have one but if they do it needs to be shortened.  A parasitical nanite should only last for a single system.  I'd like to see nanites be 'lost' on a wormhole transfer.

2) If you fleet wipe right now against a parasite AI, you're going to be fighting 50-75% of your own fleet.  This seems like overkill.  What are options to tone this down a bit for the AI who doesn't have true fleet caps?