So, Enclave Starships

[KDR_11k]

If you assume a full attrition scenario (units keep shooting until they die) the effectiveness of each Mark goes up by the square (so a MkV is 25 times as effective as a MkI by dealing 25x as much damage before dying, provided there's no crazy overkill going on). Of course it's only linear in situations where their force will not fight until death so only the DPS comes to bear. Still, it's why fighting MkV AI fleets is so hard, you have to kill them all and thus both their HP and DPS matter.

Anyway, a replaceable FacIV may have use cases but we're talking about a situation where the pre-spawned FacIVs are dead (since it's only 20 AIP to claim one while >10000K would require taking like 80 additional AIP, paying for the EncIV from your regular K budget would cost you at least two MkIII unlocks and those are the things you need to actually get value out of your EncIV) and I for one always fortify my FacIV as much as my home command and reload a save if it gets overrun.

Besides, the EncIV is pretty expensive to build too.

Price is an advantage of the swarmers, you can churn out a full cap of MkIV Infiltrators pretty cheaply.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, how about this:

1) Move the ability to produce I/II/III + IV-with-advFact to the Mobile Repair Station, and rename it to Mobile Space Dock or something like that (with it keeping the repair beams and everything else)

2) Change the Neinzul Enclave Starship (mkI through IV as now) to only have drones, and do do the auto-drone deployment (without modules) described before.  Make it much more sturdy as a sort of midrange combatant; possibly even give it weapons (if not, a brave toggle).  Adjust the K cost down to 0/1000/2000/2000 or something like that; obviously with those changes a new pricing would be necessary and isn't necessarily obvious at this stage.
- The one specific objection I remember to the auto-drone thing was the inability to use engineers to accelerate the drones in that case, and I could make engineers work for that if really desired.


Of course, that would mean losing the ability to produce MkI units in the field for no K cost (the current Enclave mkI).  And losing the option to unlock mkIV building capacity through K, but I'm honestly not willing to bring down the total K expenditure currently required to obtain that "advFact substitute" by more than 2000 or 3000 K (so a bare minimum of 15,000 K), and I don't think anyone's willing to pay that much.

[Faulty Logic]

1) Move the ability to produce I/II/III + IV-with-advFact to the Mobile Repair Station, and rename it to Mobile Space Dock or something like that (with it keeping the repair beams and everything else)

2) Change the Neinzul Enclave Starship (mkI through IV as now) to only have drones, and do do the auto-drone deployment (without modules) described before.  Make it much more sturdy as a sort of midrange combatant; possibly even give it weapons (if not, a brave toggle).  Adjust the K cost down to 0/1000/2000/2000 or something like that; obviously with those changes a new pricing would be necessary and isn't necessarily obvious at this stage.

Yes. This would be awesome.

- The one specific objection I remember to the auto-drone thing was the inability to use engineers to accelerate the drones in that case, and I could make engineers work for that if really desired.

I strongly desire this.

[Mánagarmr]

Not a bad suggestion, that last one. But that does increase the utility of the Mobile Space dock, but seeing as some people complained that it was only marginally better than unlocking engies, that's probably not a bad thing.

[keith.lamothe]

- The one specific objection I remember to the auto-drone thing was the inability to use engineers to accelerate the drones in that case, and I could make engineers work for that if really desired.

I strongly desire this.

Ok, my main concern is balance: if an enclave I + a cap of mkI engineers can produce drones 20x as fast, how can the enclave I be balanced such that it is "awesome but not OP" in that case but not UP without engie support?

In theory one could say that bringing engies along would just be part of the deal, but that sounds like asking for too much micro.

[Hearteater]

I like those changes.  How would the Mobile Space Dock handle cloaking and building ships?  Would it be a cloaked ship builder because that would be...interesting.

I'd rather just not have engineers work on the Enclave.  They are already require extra effort to deal with, I don't really want to feel the need to cart around engineers too.  Up the cap on the Enclave instead so we can just bring more if we want to produce drones that fast.

[TechSY730]

- The one specific objection I remember to the auto-drone thing was the inability to use engineers to accelerate the drones in that case, and I could make engineers work for that if really desired.

I strongly desire this.

Ok, my main concern is balance: if an enclave I + a cap of mkI engineers can produce drones 20x as fast, how can the enclave I be balanced such that it is "awesome but not OP" in that case but not UP without engie support?

The fact that there is a minimum time until the next "thing" can start production after the previous "thing" finished, for any "queued" based producer?
Because of this, there is a maximum rate a "queued producer" can output units, no matter how many engineers are on it. This way, a cap of Mk. I engineers might not make it 20x as fast, but only, say, 3x as fast (with a cap of Mk. I engineers - 1 being 2.99x as fast, -2 being 2.8x as fast, -3 being 2.5x as fast, or something like that, due to curve an asymptotically bounded by a constant rate that this minimum time implies)
This way, the base build time of a drone can be quite low, and because of that and the rule mentioned above, adding more engineers would start hitting strong diminishing returns very fast.

[KDR_11k]

Also engies are specifically designed to die quickly in enemy territory, the Enclave should probably not encourage taking them with you.

[keith.lamothe]

I like those changes.  How would the Mobile Space Dock handle cloaking and building ships?  Would it be a cloaked ship builder because that would be...interesting.

It would probably need to decloak while actually producing (that is, releasing) units, so if you wanted it in "stealth repair mode" you'd need to clear its queue.  Or we could have stand-down mode not disable its repair beams so you didn't have to fiddle with the queues as much, etc.

If anyone can think of a way of making "staying cloaked while producing ships" balanced I'd love to be able to let it do that.  But I'm thinking it's intractably cheesy in terms of being able to sneak a space dock onto an enemy planet and just spam them forever with ships because they can never find (and thus never kill) the MSD.  I guess the AI could get some of those handy-dandy tachyon pulses but then having that trigger during a "legitimate" fight would be very annoying.

[keith.lamothe]

The fact that there is a minimum time until the next "thing" can start production after the previous "thing" finished, for any "queued" based producer?

It wouldn't be queue based, though.

Sure, I can just cap how fast it can get with engies, which is kind of what I was getting at, but the questions then are "how much faster can engies make it?" and "why are we asking you to bring engies into enemy territory anyway?"

[TechSY730]

Any reason why at least the ability of unlocking what is in effect rebuildable Mk. IV advanced starship constructor (a mark II mobile repairer/shipbuilder under this new system), but leaving their net knowledge costs to get that thing be at the 15000 knowledge? Besides some people complaining about it. 


There are already some very niche, almost gimmick like options in the game due to their sheer cost (Mk. IV Scout Starships, Mk. IV and Mk. V ions, Mk. IV beam turret, Mk. III nuke, the current Mk. IV enclave), despite them doing their jobs well if you do get them, in the vast, VAST majority of situations, are usually not worth the costs.

That's fine to me, as long as you make it clear it is supposed to be as such in game, so people don't complain about it, or at least as much. And if they do, if it is clear in game, you can point them right there and say "the game warned told you it almost always isn't worth it, and they are designed to be as such, why are you complaining that it is?" (or something along those lines).

IMO, gimmick options are fine (and can have some actual usefullness in strange situations) as long as you make it clear it is a gimmick option.

I'd say leave in something that can be a rebuildable, mobile Mk. IV factory with the proper knowledge costs, but make sure to include a "this is a gimmick option" like blurb similar to what the Mk. III nukes and the Mk. IV and V ion canons have in their descriptions.

[KDR_11k]

If anyone can think of a way of making "staying cloaked while producing ships" balanced I'd love to be able to let it do that.  But I'm thinking it's intractably cheesy in terms of being able to sneak a space dock onto an enemy planet and just spam them forever with ships because they can never find (and thus never kill) the MSD.  I guess the AI could get some of those handy-dandy tachyon pulses but then having that trigger during a "legitimate" fight would be very annoying.

Seriously, the AI needs some mobile tachyon patrols. Its weakness towards cloaking feels too exploitable and countermeasures like core eyes just feel like complete BS. Give it some patrols that the player has to dodge and that will investigate the locations where units uncloak.

[TechSY730]

If anyone can think of a way of making "staying cloaked while producing ships" balanced I'd love to be able to let it do that.  But I'm thinking it's intractably cheesy in terms of being able to sneak a space dock onto an enemy planet and just spam them forever with ships because they can never find (and thus never kill) the MSD.  I guess the AI could get some of those handy-dandy tachyon pulses but then having that trigger during a "legitimate" fight would be very annoying.

Seriously, the AI needs some mobile tachyon patrols. Its weakness towards cloaking feels too exploitable and countermeasures like core eyes just feel like complete BS. Give it some patrols that the player has to dodge and that will investigate the locations where units uncloak.

Yes.
The AI needs to learn how to use mobile tachyon emitters, or at least some way to sometimes deal with mobile cloaked ships if they get past their static counter measures.
If it does so, we can address some long standing complaints going on, like how tachyon guardians seed (reduce their seeding rate (but increase by a bit their spawn rate when spawning defenders if needed), now that the AI has other methods of going about it if those fall or are not present), and core AI eyes (they could get nerfed to a large-ish tachyon range, down from infinite, which would help with many of the HW grind complaints going on right now)

TBH, I don't think cloaking can be fully balanced until something like this is done.
I will admit though, I don't think it is as huge a balance priority as some of the other stuff going around the discussions.

[keith.lamothe]

I've proposed AI tachyon-counter stuff before, but the response was that having to re-picket systems a lot due to your picket scouts dying would be too much hassle.

And I don't think a Core Eye is substantially more BS than a mkIII military command station

[TechSY730]

I've proposed AI tachyon-counter stuff before, but the response was that having to re-picket systems a lot due to your picket scouts dying would be too much hassle.

And I don't think a Core Eye is substantially more BS than a mkIII military command station

TBH, I also think a Mk. III military station's infinite tachyon range is BS as well.

Anyways, on one of the mantis issues I linked to, Toll came up with a clever solution to that problem. (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9184#c27513)

Have cloaking "tiers". Military units, non-scout cloaked support units, and the kind had and given by cloaker starships would have tier 1 cloaking, which any decloaker can decloak. Planet wide decloaking effects would be a tier 1 decloaking effect.
Tier 2 cloaking would be for scouts, with only a few things in the game having tier 2 decloaking abilities (tachyon guardians being one of them, tachyon turrets, and tachyon drones, and decloakers with a much smaller range for the tier 2 and I guess would be others) This way, "aggresive" measure to seek out military uses of cloaking (including the global pulse thing) would only have the desired effect of countering that, without having to worry about adding more scout micro by unintentionally also countering scouts. NOTHING military should ever get tier 2 cloaking. In fact, humans wouldn't really have to worry about it much, as the AI would rarely, if ever, use tier 2 cloaked stuff, and if they do, it wouldn't be military.
And finally, tier 3 would be what is currently perma-cloaking. Only tachyon-warheads would be able to reveal these. The counter-spy would be able to shoot them, but not fully reveal them.
(Tier 4 would be camouflage maybe?)