Sniper under FF doublecheck

[Hearteater]

They aren't invincible, they just aren't targeted first automatically.  You can manually destroy them just fine.  I've done so several times.  Normally you don't want to because all those ships inside the carrier aren't attacking you, so why let them?  If you have defense in depth, the Carrier can even separate for the rest of the enemy letting you destroy them piecemeal.

[Solarity]

Invincibility x3765 says otherwise.  Anyway, all my sniper turrets and spider turrets target carriers first.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm interested in the carrier feedback but you may want to start a new thread on that so other people know that's the subject and join in   I'd love to simplify out some of those rules, it's just a tough nut to crack because most of the obvious solutions un-solve the "it crashes the game due to out-of-memory if you pop a ton of carriers all at once" problems we were seeing in some cases before.  Maybe I could make carriers that are forcibly destroyed with a lot of AI ships already there "metabolize" the internal ships into a few really nasty guardians instead

[Cyborg]

Do you agree with the turret numbers I gave for a rebalance?

And, a picture from the game I'm playing right now.

[keith.lamothe]

Do you agree with the turret numbers I gave for a rebalance?

I think we're getting somewhere but there are a few issues:

I think they should be priced according to their DPS.

For attack ones, sure.  Tractor and Grav turrets aside.

Let's use the fighter as a base.

I'm not sure the fighter is a good starting point because its cap-energy-cost is about half of the average for fleetships.  They're intentionally cheap in both m+c and e so that you can almost always use them as cannon-fodder.

flak turrets 3428 DPS/600 power

You may have already factored this in, but bear in mind each shot hits 4 targets in most heavy-fighting cases.  Also, the 600 cost vs 300 has more to do with them having a cap half as large as normal.

sniper is 2400 DPS/500 power

These do have a 6x multiplier against some stuff and have max armor-piercing.  On the other hand, they actually have 20% more count at cap than normal, so the energy cost is a bit much.  Their m+c cost is ridiculously high, though.

lightning is 88 DPS/1000 power

As you said the aoe.  But also, only one can fire every 1.1 seconds per mark per planet, so it's not fully applicable.  Thematically, these being massive energy drains works, but it doesn't need to be that high.

Counter sniper 0 DPS/4000 power

Goodness that needs to come down.  They're way more situational ever since the AI stopped using turrets.

Anyway, I think bringing the flak, sniper/spider, lightning, and counter-sniper down would be fine.  Not sure about the others, but some closer examination of their dps would be good; I do agree that the energy per dps cost should be at least as good for something without engines as for something with.

And, a picture from the game I'm playing right now.

Hahaha.  "2 Ships massing for CPA", why?  They were the only ones inebriated enough to want to attack that.

[Mánagarmr]

I know you must be saying, "but cyborg, what about the multipliers and the lighting turret aoe?" True, so maybe those numbers aren't as bad as they look for some of them, but having used lightnings before, they are very situational.

The second you come up against a pure Neinzul wave, you'll revise that statement.

[keith.lamothe]

I know you must be saying, "but cyborg, what about the multipliers and the lighting turret aoe?" True, so maybe those numbers aren't as bad as they look for some of them, but having used lightnings before, they are very situational.

The second you come up against a pure Neinzul wave, you'll revise that statement.

A pure Neinzul wave?  Sounds like a situation to me   (ba-dum-tish!)

Lightning turrets do a tremendous amount of total damage against large groups, but if you're stacking more than 30 of a given mark level on one planet then the per-planet throttle on them won't let them all through in their 18-second reload cycle.

Actually, I'm seriously thinking about taking that throttle off of lightning turrets and electric shuttles in favor of the chain-lightning max-targets-hit-per-shot mechanic that's already being used on the shuttles.  The shuttle can hit up to 200 targets but if there's fewer than that they can spend the leftovers hitting stuff again, up to 5 times for one target.  The upshot is that it gets max dps on any target set size >= 40, but can't do arbitrarily high amounts of total damage if you somehow pack 20k AI ships into one's range.

Though the pre-throttle behavior tended to be sub-optimal with their long reload times.  So maybe if I change the throttle to 1 cycle (they'd all fire pretty fast) so they don't all alpha strike everything coming through a wormhole in one frame...

But perhaps some folks prefer lightning turrets that can hit _everything_ in range, even if they can't have them all fire in a short span of time.

[Hearteater]

But also, only one [Lightning Turret] can fire every 1.1 seconds per mark per planet, so it's not fully applicable.

Wait, what?  So there is never a reason to have more than 17 Lightning Turrets in a system, because at 18 second reload you would always have a Lightning Turret ready to fire every 1.1 seconds.

[keith.lamothe]

But also, only one [Lightning Turret] can fire every 1.1 seconds per mark per planet, so it's not fully applicable.

Wait, what?  So there is never a reason to have more than 17 Lightning Turrets in a system, because at 18 second reload you would always have a Lightning Turret ready to fire every 1.1 seconds.

Electric Shuttles have a 1.1 second delay, Lightning turrets have a 0.9 second delay, so the math is slightly different, but yes.  No reason other than redundancy in case some die.  And that's per mark, so you can have a mkI lightning turret, mkII lt, mkIII lt, mkI electric shuttle, mkII es, mkIII es, and mkIV es all fire at the same time.

[Hearteater]

Are those the only two that have those delays?  That seems odd, especially on the Electric Shuttles because if I recall they have a cap of 200 targets while the Lightning Turret has no cap.  It also doesn't seem like it would be for performance reasons since Flak Cannon, which is AOE, has a 7 second CD while Shuttles have a 20 and Lighting Turret an 18 so its not like they would be firing all that often relatively.

[keith.lamothe]

Are those the only two that have those delays?  That seems odd, especially on the Electric Shuttles because if I recall they have a cap of 200 targets while the Lightning Turret has no cap.

Yes, it wasn't our intent to leave one capped and not the other. 

It also doesn't seem like it would be for performance reasons since Flak Cannon, which is AOE, has a 7 second CD while Shuttles have a 20 and Lighting Turret an 18 so its not like they would be firing all that often relatively.

The flak turret mkI's shots only hit a maximum of 4 targets (mkII is 5, and so on).

Basically lightning is supposed to be much wider scale aoe than most of the other forms, but balanced in another way.

[Wanderer]

My wish is that their power requirements weren't so ridiculous. I actually have to power them down when I'm not using them.

What cost would you suggest?

For reference from the code numbers, since I don't know what numbers it's actually showing you at any given time:
Right now sniper/spider-turrets have 250 base energy cost, and most other turrets 150.  Compared to 100 for most fleet ships (mkI ships all get 1/2 energy cost).  Last time we really redid turret balance we made them 3x as powerful as roughly equivalent fleet ships, though I don't know if that's at all the case anymore.

Anyway, I'm open to suggestions.

Going back to this discussion, it's not the energy cost per-se that concerns me (though lightning is way over on energy for the dmg  they can handle), it's the build price.

It costs 18k m+c (mostly crystal) to build a sniper turret mk1.  In comparison, they're half as powerful and immobile compared to sniper fleet units, and those only cost ~4k pure metal.  Getting sniper turrets up early is nearly impossible if you don't want to wreck your econ.

In comparison, A cap of missile turrets (the LRMS) cost 2200 to build, have roughly equivalent range if you're not outer system placeing, RawMaxCap at 529,200/sec.  Max Weighted  (including the multipliers and averaging across all the hull types) is 814,153.846/sec.

Snipers are 18000 to build, RawMaxCap at 280,800, and max weighted at 604,799.999.  That's WITH the 1.2 multiplier on having to build more of them.  So cap cost: LRM: 215,600.  Sniper: 2,106,000 

They're the last turret I ever build, besides lightnings (I don't like those because they die far too easily against a mob, their greatest usage).  Their DPS/Material is just waaay to low.  Most turrets come in around 3.0 DPS/Material.  Snipers come in at 0.287/Mat Weighted.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for the reminder about sniper/spider m+c, I have been meaning to change that.