Refleeting is still way too long

[Draco18s]

I disagree with this, mostly because most low-mark fleetships are cheap.

Most.

Here's my current fleet.  The singles-all-by-their-lonesome are Mark V



ONE lightning torpedo frigate mk1 is worth more than most mark 4 starships.

[Toranth]

I disagree with this, mostly because most low-mark fleetships are cheap.

Most.
[...]
ONE lightning torpedo frigate mk1 is worth more than most mark 4 starships.

 
I may be missing something.  Almost all Mk I starships cost 100,000 MC per unit, and 200,000 cap MC.  The Lightning Frigate Mk I is 130,000 MC each for 260,000 MC cap.  That's a more expensive, but not that much.  Mk IV starships cost about 600,000 MC each - five times the cost of a Mk I Lightning Frigate. 

How are you finding that LT-Fs are that expensive?

[Draco18s]

It's that a single one by itself is half a cap of units.  It's not that it's intrinsically more expensive than a bunch of fighters, but that it is very expensive for a single unit.

Its that for a single controllable object it is very expensive and when I run out of resources half way through building one I have exactly 0 new units.  Unlike a quarter of a cap of fighters.  Which because I was always low on crystal was a huge problem.

[Qatu]

 Wow, this topic sure exploded since i made it yesterday! I hadn't played with lots of starships in a while and now i remember why, losses mean such long waits that after a few times of waiting a few minutes instead of playing, i decided to put the game down and make this rage post.

 Summary, usually with fleet ships, refleets arent too bad, except at higher difficulty it's a slightly frustrating how many ion cannons are around and 1shot my expensive stuff. But playing with lots of starships can get really aggravating considering how long it is to get replacements.

 Anyway, I don't have any ideas or suggestions for this topic, just hoping that by the next expansion something will have been found to reduce the time spent not playing.

ps: i recommend everyone follow the instructions in this following topic to start with desired ships, it's the most fun thing:http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,14137.0.html

[Shrugging Khan]

A disclaimer to my oft-quoted post back there:

I toss around minor flotillas of fighters, cutlasses, younglings (TIGERS!) and autobombs like there's no tomorrow. Some ship types are simply MADE to be slung at the enemy, never to see home again.

[Tridus]

Although they won't help against failing to notice a nuclear eye (ouch!), Protector Starships help this problem by making your ships so much more durable. I lose a lot fewer ships between those and Enclaves creating drones to suck up fire that a full refleet just doesn't happen that often.

[Draco18s]

I lose a lot fewer ships between those and Enclaves creating drones to suck up fire that a full refleet just doesn't happen that often.

Enclaves only here.  But by god I love them.  I throw my whole fleet through a wormhole and the Enclaves do most of the work.

[LordSloth]

Focusing on Starships:

If you group and place your starships slightly different than your fleetships, then Cloaker Starships MK1 help a lot in preventing free shots on your Plasma Siege and Heavy Bomber starships from missile guardians and snipers and bombards. You'll still take damage but only when you're in range to shoot back. Even if you decloak, you're still protected from sniper shots and dark matter.

Ever since the introduction of Champions, I've been using Riot Starships a lot more frequently, combined with saved designs for rapid and convenient re-tasking. Mark 1 Riot Starships with lasers, a shotgun, and a forcefield are quite helpful when combined with Neinzul Enclave Starships. The long range helps support the drones in a fashion that machineguns cannot and also can help with chasing down kiting ships like Zenith Bombards. I also save a completely blank design for mostly convenience, but it can be used in a pinch to reduce your unit count in an eye system. Occasionally when dealing with a threatball, I'll switch to a shield+tractor combo.

Drones are scrappable, fortunately, and you can stop the spawning by putting them on standby.

If you've got a lot of expensive low cap ships, you might need more cloaker support.

But to reiterate the key point, sending the expensive fleetships, combat starships, and indirect combat starships in different blobs/groups helps a lot in letting you be selective with when the enemy is engaged, rather then letting the AI choose an opportunity of convenience.

... The fact that I've been playing with bouncer subtype ais a lot influences things in a way that probably overvalues non-combined arms tactics and surgical strikes against guardians and guard posts before aggroing everything with massed firepower, but the cloaker/riot advice should still help with letting you guarantee that starships fight when advantageous w/o needing to babysit.

My bomber starships are that fast I have them hang back with the enclaves, cloakers, and riots, and move forward only to engage stuff outside of fleetball range that needs dealing with (zombards, tractor platforms), but plasma siege starships often move with the frigate-slow main fleet once I've thrown subtlety out the window. By hang back, I mean just a bit, not at the wormhole out.

If you're dealing with a bouncer AI you really need to fleetball a lot less until you thin the system down, primarily because those guardians can turn out nasty.

Some other things I occasionally do: Mobile Space (Repair) Docks, Forward (mini)fortresses (for ARS hacks and repairs), MK3 engineers and Regenerator golems. Really, just turn on that beautiful regen golem and fall in love as both fleetships, starships, and at least Spire Frigates come back to life.

[Qatu]

...Champions...

 Hummmm yeah sooooooo, I've stopped playing with champions, but I can see how you see things different with them since they are free, extremely strong, replace a bunch of startships on their own, and when doing missions unlock another couple free planets worth of resources/energy/knowledge and ~50 inexpensive starships...

 As for riots I had to unlock mk3 with gravity since i was vs blade launchers, and losing a couple of those is extremely expensive!

[Cyborg]

I don't know about this. It looks to me like certain game setups and play styles lend itself towards rebuilding or not. I'm playing a game with kahuna right now that has some seriously defended home worlds. We are going to set up a beachhead and (reluctantly) use some warheads, which we both do not want to do. Fighting the AI with our fleets is simply not feasible when the enemy planet has a wrath lance as well as several other toys. You are right only in that all of the fleet ships can be repaired, except some of our fleet ships are spire related. They come from fabricators and hacking designs.

Yes, if we chose autobombs, neinzul ships, and similar we could be rebuilding in under an hour. But we didn't. We also have most all economic unlocks.

I think kahuna is a good player, and I'm not so shabby myself. We both have hundreds of hours between us of playing this game. I was one of the first people to complain about the Netflix factor of this game, and it was concerning rebuilding. It seems to me that the main punishment in this game for a failed attack is the real-life hours lost in trying to either rebuild or just reload the game. I'm not proposing that we rework everything at this point, but I think we need to listen to folks like Qatu and think a little bit more about the way this game is played and how long we really should be waiting to rebuild.

Just going to plug my space station idea here and suggest that there are different phases of the game which require more or less resources to play. Having another knob we could tune on our own would be nice for those of us that feel like two real life hours of rebuilding is excessive.

[TechSY730]

I don't know what I do differently, but I have never had a 2 hour "real-time" refleet time.

Maybe it is because I try to retreat before I get a total fleetwipe? Maybe it is because if I do get a total fleet wipe, I often don't wait for a complete refleet to attack again. (I don't need that full cap of starships and Mk. III ships before I am ready to attack again, at least some). Maybe it is because I am trying to experiment with some ships on the defense and some on the offense?

I honestly don't really know why I have never felt the "full pain" of a refleet, or at least not to the degree of some of the players on here.
As such, I am not really qualified to speak to ideas to "fix" this.

EDIT: Of course, the fact that I usually have hours between each planet capture may have something to do with this.

Also, I am not trying to state that I am better than players who do get huge fleetwipes taking an hour+ to rebuild. Given my somewhat hyper-defensive, slow playstyle, it may just be something that isn't as needed in this type of play. In other, more active play-styles, this issue may be much more prominent.

[LordSloth]

...Champions...

 Hummmm yeah sooooooo, I've stopped playing with champions, but I can see how you see things different with them since they are free, extremely strong, replace a bunch of startships on their own, and when doing missions unlock another couple free planets worth of resources/energy/knowledge and ~50 inexpensive starships...

 As for riots I had to unlock mk3 with gravity since i was vs blade launchers, and losing a couple of those is extremely expensive!

I don't actually play with Champions. I was referring to the ability to save and apply designs for all modular ship types, which make riots more convenient to retask.

Admittedly, Regen golems do skew my results moreso, but that aside, I'm not fleetwiping nearly as often, except when (big threatball) forms up outside a chokepoint on an X map.

If you've got a single checkpoint and the corresponding fleetwipe that causes, try this:

Load your fleet into (assault) transports. Send those transports in under cloak to the limits of the deployable zone of the system. Unload them, and fly even further out, to the 'incredibly slow zone'. This works best if you have bombards, engine damage, snipers, cursed golems, etc.

If you don't have said extreme range, fly empty transports + cloakers into the system, and move them opposite the enemy fleet. Move your ships (with all important Riots) into the AI system and group move away from the incoming horde towards your transports. Since this is just a threat pile and not a strike force, you should be able to do a surprisingly good job of spreading out the enemy forces in hopes of defeating in detail. If you reach your transports, judge whether to continue with the killing, or bug out.

Option 3: I find I play this game too slowly. In an effort to encourage promptness on my part, I've put a timer in the form of Spire Civilian Leaders. This has transformed warheads from a bad idea to a net gain. If I save a half-hour, I've saved roughly 5 AIP, or I'm making it back up in the long run.

If you're faced with gigantic patrols:
Rarely: EMP Warheads.
Often: Beachheads. A fortress + missile turrets can defend itself against Zombards and bombers, while your fleet stays nearby for repair and more firepower.

As Tech says, however. I find myself playing slower than I should, perhaps, which explains a lot of my refleeting. I only really hurry up naturally in co-op, though I'm always trying to make myself a quicker player by lowering the losses suffered and trying to be a bit more ambitious.

I do sometimes end up with those 'huge swathes of territory' and gigantic threat balls waiting outside, and then I suffer from fleet wipes. I'm experimenting with things though, and doing much better at least on tackling regular systems.

[Fealthas]

I haven't played this game for a while, but I come back every 2 months or so and play 1-2 campaigns. The new hacking is fun, although I hope the next expansion includes icons.
Waiting to refleet is definitely the most annoying aspect of this game, other than that its well thought out and fun to play.
What usually happens is that I max out my fleet, and realize chucking it at the enemy fortress wont work. I start doing tactical stuff like cloaker star ship raid squads, which is very efficient, and I dont lose much. My resources pile up...but there isnt anything to spend them on. Then something horrible(Fun) happens, and my 20 million dollar fleet tries to rebuild from 2 million dollars. Its time to open up netflix.

It seems to me like this problem could be avoided if your stockpile could exceed 999999, so when you need to rebuild, you can take advantage of the time you spent being efficient.

[Diazo]

I'm not sure.

I think we are running into the power creep issue again.

The 999,999 limit is supposed to allow you to rebuild after a bad attack within a reasonable timeframe, it is not intended to allow you to refleet after every attack.

If your only option is to simply dump all your ships in and accept losing them all you have either 1) screwed up earlier and have lost the game or 2) there's something imbalanced in the game that needs fixing.

And we are seeing a lot of case 2 here. If our resource cap is supposed to allow us to rebuild after a bad attack, a handful of units should not drain it.

A single high mark starship can be over half your max resource stocks. In a bad attack, never mind a full wipe, you have to accept the possibility of losing starships.

Having said that, for a fleet of fleet ships (built at space dock), the cap feel right. You can rebuild quite reasonably as long as you've only lost fleet ships.

It is when you start losing high-mark starships and super weapons (hello Golems) that the resource cap starts to become a problem.

Even though I just said that, I don't think I'm in favor of raising the resource cap. Most of the time it feels right, it is only when you have to rebuild your entire fleet, including superweapons, that it is really a problem.

D.

[Tridus]

Or you're doing stuff like building Fallen Spire ships, in which case the cap is hilariously small compared to the costs.