Regen and Widow Golems

[Faulty Logic]

Are both too weak.

The widow has about half the armored's dps, but that's fine, because it also has excellent engine damage and paralyzing tractors. The problem is its health, given it has to be at least near the battle. That, combined with the extremely irritating tendency of its tractor victims to get off a shot before paralysis sets in, make the widow effectively very fragile.

Proposed: stop the ships from firing before paralysis, if possible, and double the health.

The regen golem is near worthless. I rarely bother to even repair them, if I should happen to capture a planet with one for another reason. Its dps is nothing, its health middling, and its main purpose too niche to be useful. Because repairing the golem is usually more expensive than replacing whatever unit was manually, it's only really useful in key battles and maintaining a reclaimed fleet. In key battles, it is worse than any other golem, especially given the AI's preference for targeting golems.

And the fleet of reclaimed ships can be saved with careful conservation/micro anyway.

Proposed: give it actual dps, at least 25000 (a quarter of the armored), and make that damage reclamation. Bump its regen time down to half an hour, or fifteen minutes. Halve its cost.

[Toranth]

To me, the Widow is kind of niche - Great for handling AI fleets of less than 200 tractorable, paralyzable fleetships.  Terrible for anything else.  I think your changes would help a bit, especially the preventing the first-shot bit.  However, I'm not sure how it would help in the overall, since 500 ship fleets will still tear the Widow apart.  I'd rather see the Widow get a significant upgrade in the number of tractor beams it has.  500 at a minimum.  Remember, the Dire Widow Guardian has 1050 paralyzing tractor beams.

As for the Regen Golem, I'm pretty sure it is always better to regen a unit rather than replace it.  That was my result from back when I did a bunch of testing with Railpods (that have a terrible HP-to-Metal ratio).  However, I'm not sure if the Regen Golem's repair costs are the same now as they were then.
As for usage, I find it to be almost always useful for any fleet that uses high-mark units - especially for AI HW attacks and Human HW defense.  There, is basically provides several extra caps of high-mark units.  Everywhere else, it helps provide a multiplier to mobile fleet defenses... but isn't too useful on the attack (although you can always have it chew on Wormhole GPs for the HP).

The faster regen time and lower cost sound OK, although it might make Regens owned by the Golemite AI especially annoying early in the game.
However, I think reclaimation damage would be too powerful, especially with that DPS. 

[Qatu]

 For the widow i would prefer if it lost the tractor beams, had increased range, increased number of shots, lowered damage per shot, increased engine damage. That would make me really happy about it. As is even though it's fun it's just not effective.

 Regenerator is extra useful for AI Homeworld assault as noted in previous post, but I just don't enjoy using it at all. Like the hive golem if I micro it to get the most out of their special abilities I get great results but the ratio of fun/effort is really not good for those so I dump them in a corner somewhere and forget I have them.

 On the other hand artillery, cursed, and armored are just so good and quite fun too. Artillery way too good really but whatever right?

[Hearteater]

I'd certainly agree Widow could use more Tractors. I could also see her getting Radar Dampening or possibly Cloaking.

For the Regen, asside from increasing damage, what about "Vampirism" or "Converts Enemies To Resources" for its attacks?

[Vacuity]

The Regen golem already gets vampirism.

[MondSemmel]

I like the Regenerator Golem. To name two benefits which weren't mentioned so far: it also regenerates otherwise semi-irrecoverable ships, in particular Spirecraft and reclaimed ships (but also Zenith cache ships, ships from lost Fabricators, etc). And it helps keep your fleet alive a bit longer, not just during a homeworld assault, but also while hacking (so you can hack a bit more).

Haven't found a use for the Widow, either.

[Vyndicu]

Haven't found a use for the Widow, either.

I agree on most stuff about Regen golem but really nothing for widow?!

Image if you have 3k fleetship threatfleet sitting on the other side of the wormhole. You can't use your main fleet because of x, y, and z reasons. The best way to control threat is to tractor them into your defense line. Just think of train tractor to an AI mark 4 but role attacker/defender are swapped.

Riot control starship, spirecraft matyr, and a few other can do the same thing as widow golem but none of them has as much hp as widow golem does and will last longer enough to get in and out. Not to mention when dealing with a huge threat fleet most of your other options will not last long or have other limiting factor. (Maw can only grab one or two, riot control shield may not last long and can't grab as many etc...)

Fallen Spire campaign typically see 6k threat fleet or more depending on what happened (I think I manage to survive 15k threat fleet a few time due to massive hack at high AIP).

[Hearteater]

The Regen golem already gets vampirism.

That's what I get for not loading it up to check. I remember it was considered awhile ago. Of course at 6k out of 4mil every 2 seconds that's a pretty poor 0.075%/second recovery. It might as well not exist at that damage. What if Regen damage scaled with the damage it had taken, so as it got lower in health it dealt more damage and as a result healed more. I think linear might be too lower, but what about (2 - h)^4 where h = percent of current health. So at 1 health it would be dealing almost x16 damage. Or just +1 shot for each x% of missing health? Actually sounds pretty amusing, but it might be starting to get into the realm of a new Vampire Golem (maybe it can release Vampire Bats too).

[Qatu]

For the widow i would prefer if it lost the tractor beams, had increased range, increased number of shots, lowered damage per shot, increased engine damage. That would make me really happy about it. As is even though it's fun it's just not effective.

 Just requoting this since the widow golem gets really frustrating against ships like stealth battleships that dont have tractor immunity but have paralysis immunity. If the widow golem lost it's tractors and gained engine damage it would be so much more useful and fun!!

[Peter Ebbesen]

For the widow i would prefer if it lost the tractor beams, had increased range, increased number of shots, lowered damage per shot, increased engine damage. That would make me really happy about it. As is even though it's fun it's just not effective.

 Just requoting this since the widow golem gets really frustrating against ships like stealth battleships that dont have tractor immunity but have paralysis immunity. If the widow golem lost it's tractors and gained engine damage it would be so much more useful and fun!!

The Widow Golem is a very funny toy as it is right now, being an abductor without equal both in human and AI hands.  Stripping it of its tractors in favour of doing engine damage, something that the Riot starships, Spider Bots, and Neinzul Combat Carrier spider drones already do pretty well (not to mention the planetary-range Spider Turrets), would be a crying shame.

[Qatu]

 You're right that it's very unique and pretty fun, but it's also way too expensive to be effective, I'm simply trying to find a developer friendly solution because right now it's always relegated to defense duty under a force field once I get tired of it because taking it to the field implies something like 1M of repairs for every ~15 minutes it's in use in enemy territory.

Solutions:
- tractored enemies don't get to shoot back ever no matter what
or
- paralysis happens before tractored so enemies don't get a guaranteed shot from outside their range at the golem AND separate solution for stealth battleships (not tractor immune, paralysis immune, radar dampening) since once tractored the golem can never shoot at the stealth battleship while the stealth battleship constantly shoots back
or
- lots of engine damage

[Toranth]

- paralysis happens before tractored so enemies don't get a guaranteed shot from outside their range at the golem AND separate solution for stealth battleships (not tractor immune, paralysis immune, radar dampening) since once tractored the golem can never shoot at the stealth battleship while the stealth battleship constantly shoots back

Huh.  Never noticed that, but yeah, this is a problem.  I would suggest the simplest solution is to apply the same tractored rule for both ends of the beam:  If a unit has tractored something it can shoot it OR if a unit has been tractored it can shoot its captor.

The other problems (HP, too few beams) could be dealt with separately - that one you noticed is something that needs to be dealt with no matter what.

[Hearteater]

I've always regretted that tractors provide infinite range. I realize you can tractor a target from outside its range, but that seems kinda like the point to me.