Should black widows have tractor beams?

[keith.lamothe]

This is why the siege starships has been revamped so many times. It really does not seem to have a role decided, or if it did, It became invalid over time, and had to be replaced with some other role, without thinking it out.

The original dreadnought did have a thought-out role: engine-damage.  But as other things changed, the result was that it was OP, so it was nerfed.  Much later it was redone into the Siege Starship, which actually had one of the most deliberately-thought-out and sharply-defined roles of any unit in the history of this game, and people were very happy about it.  Then the Bomber Starship was made normally available instead of fabricator-only, and suddenly there were two Siege Starships.  Then Chris took exception to the long-range-siege role due to wanting to achieve something different in the overall tactical picture.  If the Bomber Starship weren't there we could have just shortened the range of the Siege and things probably would have been fine.  But we couldn't do that and it got a big nerf that made the name no longer fit.  Now we're in the process of defining a new role.  Alternatively we could just remove it, but I think there is room in the game for a "Golem-Killer" starship, at least when you're playing with one or more sources of exo attacks.

Anyway each time the role was thought out, the thing that gets it is that the game around it doesn't stop changing.  Sure, we could stop changing the game... but we don't want to.

[realcoolguy]

Sure, we could stop changing the game... but we don't want to.

I think this is Arcen Games in a nutshell

[Ranakastrasz]

This is why the siege starships has been revamped so many times. It really does not seem to have a role decided, or if it did, It became invalid over time, and had to be replaced with some other role, without thinking it out.

The original dreadnought did have a thought-out role: engine-damage.  But as other things changed, the result was that it was OP, so it was nerfed.  Much later it was redone into the Siege Starship, which actually had one of the most deliberately-thought-out and sharply-defined roles of any unit in the history of this game, and people were very happy about it.  Then the Bomber Starship was made normally available instead of fabricator-only, and suddenly there were two Siege Starships.  Then Chris took exception to the long-range-siege role due to wanting to achieve something different in the overall tactical picture.  If the Bomber Starship weren't there we could have just shortened the range of the Siege and things probably would have been fine.  But we couldn't do that and it got a big nerf that made the name no longer fit.  Now we're in the process of defining a new role.  Alternatively we could just remove it, but I think there is room in the game for a "Golem-Killer" starship, at least when you're playing with one or more sources of exo attacks.

Anyway each time the role was thought out, the thing that gets it is that the game around it doesn't stop changing.  Sure, we could stop changing the game... but we don't want to.

Oh yea, I didn't think of that. The main issue is that as technology becomes obsolete, due to, say, a counter, it has to be redesigned or scrapped. Kinda like in Ender's game where the rules of the game started changing when Ender came on the scene, with new tactics making formations and similar obsolete, or in "Shards of Honor" (Vorkosigan) with the plasma mirror shields, that reflected plasma based attacks back at their source, making plasma weapons obsolete (caused Crown Prince Serg' flagship to destroy itself when dropping it's shields to try to knock out a shuttle with maximum firepower). IRL, Fortresses and castles became ineffective when sufficiently powerful siege weapons were invented, today we use bunkers, and in the future, we apparently use huge force-fields for protection.

Here, We had radar dampening, and the superior (or at least easier to produce) bomber star-ships, which forced the siege starship to be redesigned.

I realize now that I was incorrect in saying that they were not planned out. They were, but they were not designed with the goal of never becoming obsolete by a counter/superior technology/strategy.

[zebramatt]

As for the rename of the current incarnation - Sweeper Golem?  Push or Pull Golem?  Pied Piper Golem?  Terry Tate Golem?  Crasher Golem?  Darn the RNG gave me this golem Golem? (Terry Tate sounds like a good unlock code for the cheat anyway).

Hm. Might be onto something there with the Pied Piper.  What about "Ratcatcher Golem"? 

[Nalgas]

Darn the RNG gave me this golem Golem?

I think that honor goes to the Regen Golem.  I get far too many of those seeded on my maps lately, and they're so resource-inefficient to run compared to just cranking out more ships.  I usually don't even bother repairing them unless I have extra resources and want to use them as a distraction to keep AI ships from entering a system while I move my fleet somewhere else.

Bomber starships are good for heavily damaging large ships,

...and so are siege starships, or whatever we're calling them today.  In fact, they're even better at it than bomber starships are in a lot of situations.  They kind of suck at it in others, but their base damage is much higher, and even with radar damping they still have better range against most things.  They're not as durable, and their speed is terrible, so they have to be used differently, but they have their uses.

Actually, it's funny that you said that bomber starships are good for damaging large ships because that's what siege starships are better at than bomber starships.  Bomber starships are better at attacking large structures like guardposts and fortresses, but against other starships and golems and things like that, siege starships are where it's at.