So, Enclave Starships

[Faulty Logic]

Seriously, the AI needs some mobile tachyon patrols.

The AI has them. Tachyon astro trains.

The combination of tachyon guardians and sometimes unlocking tachyon fleetships give the AI a reasonable defense against cloaking. Though I wouldn't mind terribly if all eyes got planetary tachyon emission (they're called eyes, after all).

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?

Hmm. I've reconsidered. Just have the rate of drone spawn be faster than they are now (without engineer support).

[Hearteater]

Might be viable to give Special Forces a Tachyon Guardian.  Their movements are more limited so hopefully the re-picketing isn't as bad.  Could either be a large range or whole system burst (like EMP Guardian).

Optionally, maybe cloaking needs marks, so we can give Scouts Mark whatever so they don't get decloaked by stuff that is really meant to decloak combat stuff.

[keith.lamothe]

I certainly can make scouts immune to tach bursts and planet-wide tach (without getting into more complex implications of multiple levels of cloaking), so that would solve one problem.

After that, the main thing would be to give the AI something to counter cloaking without just turning it off for the entire planet.  Those harder counters are ok in specific circumstances (homeworld, hacking) but if they're a common enough thing on other planets to make cloaked-ship-production tricky then it'd be a bit like the sledgehammer and the ant.

Anyway, mobile tachyon guardians that do sweeps iff human cloaked ships are on the planet (to avoid CPU drain) could be done.  They would show up in reinforcements on said planets.

[KDR_11k]

Scout pickets are at the edge of the gravity well anyway, nothing short of a planetary tachyon blast should usually uncover them. I don't think the AI's patrols should have a huge range, just something you need to dodge if you want to maintain stealth (and they'd come to investigate places where human ships have recently cloaked or decloaked).

[Hearteater]

If the AI doesn't scout the edge of the system, that's where I'll move my units to hit.  It probably should have around a 20-30k Tachyon Range and make a small circle around the center of the system that reaches out to system edge.

[keith.lamothe]

My current guess on the tachyon thing is to:

1) have a mobile tachyon guardian that spawns in reinforcements in response to cloaked human ships (probably not scouts, though, otherwise picketing causes these) and:

2) When it doesn't have a destination point, the game:
- picks the nearest cloaked human non-scout
- computes a "signal strength" based on how far away the guardian is from that cloaked ship.  This would floor out when distance was about the radius of the inner grav circle.
- computes a random angle within +/- X of the actual angle to the cloaked ship, with X being like 85 at minimum "signal strength" and like 30 if pretty nearby
- sets a destination point for that guardian at that angle that's maybe 5000 range units away.  Once it gets there, it does this again.

3) If people want this: Give the human tachyon drones (and tachyon emitters, which could just become mobile) the same behavior, if set to FRD or something like that.  So you could find those hiding eyebots without microing a sweep of the entire grav well.


Anyway, the idea is that they'd eventually find your mobile space dock (or whatever) if you didn't have a goodly force out there to kill the mobile tachyons before they got too close, etc.

[Radiant Phoenix]

I have used Neinzul starships plus cloaker starships as mobile space docks, but only in defender mode, and only once I'd cleaned out the AI for two planets out.

[TechSY730]

If the AI doesn't scout the edge of the system, that's where I'll move my units to hit.  It probably should have around a 20-30k Tachyon Range and make a small circle around the center of the system that reaches out to system edge.

I think the idea is that since the scouts try to go outside the outer edge of the gravity well, it would be unlikely that the AI would try to decloak there.
It wouldn't be a good place to stage cloaked military, because outside even the "inner edge" of planet space, non-scouts suffer from a crippling speed penalty, which gets even worse when outside of the outer edge.

[TechSY730]

My current guess on the tachyon thing is to:

1) have a mobile tachyon guardian that spawns in reinforcements in response to cloaked human ships (probably not scouts, though, otherwise picketing causes these) and:

2) When it doesn't have a destination point, the game:
- picks the nearest cloaked human non-scout
- computes a "signal strength" based on how far away the guardian is from that cloaked ship.  This would floor out when distance was about the radius of the inner grav circle.
- computes a random angle within +/- X of the actual angle to the cloaked ship, with X being like 85 at minimum "signal strength" and like 30 if pretty nearby
- sets a destination point for that guardian at that angle that's maybe 5000 range units away.  Once it gets there, it does this again.

Anyway, the idea is that they'd eventually find your mobile space dock (or whatever) if you didn't have a goodly force out there to kill the mobile tachyons before they got too close, etc.

If this happens, would you consider giving the "static" decloaking methods of the AI get a nerf, in similar ways to what I have described above?

3) If people want this: Give the human tachyon drones (and tachyon emitters, which could just become mobile) the same behavior, if set to FRD or something like that.  So you could find those hiding eyebots without microing a sweep of the entire grav well.

Yes please, though I think giving tachyon drones and decloakers this behavior would probably be better. Immobile decloaking tools do have their uses.

[keith.lamothe]

Yes please, though I think giving tachyon drones and decloakers this behavior would probably be better. Immobile decloaking tools do have their uses.

True, the emitters should stay put once planted, otherwise it's hard to guarantee your wormhole coverage or whatever won't wander off.

[Aeson]

"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)"

How much will the MRS/MSD cost? Because if it goes up to something similar to what the Enclave IV currently costs, no one is any more likely to use it than they are to use the Enclave IV. 14000 on one unlock is a bit too high, but something like 3000/5000/9000 for Enclave II/III/IVs isn't as bad. I still think that just making Mk III fleetship unlocks cheaper would go a long way towards making the current Enclave IV more useful, though.

Also, if the MRS/MSD cost goes up much, perhaps consider splitting it into an MRS unlock as at present and an MSD unlock that costs the difference.


"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."

Mini-hive golems would be reasonably unique. Would the drones on these still be based on what turret unlocks you've taken, and if so would there be some kind of 'basic' drone unlocked with the Enclave? Also, would the drones be something like "build up to X drones, deploy when ordered" or would they be produced the same way as at present?


"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."

What about giving it something like the Penetrator's cloaking ability? "You can only produce ships while cloaked, and to deploy the ships you must decloak and then cannot cloak again for X minutes and Y seconds. Ships produced get stored as if loaded into a transport, and unload as such." You'd have your cloaked ship production, but you can only produce ships while under cloak and lose the cloak while deploying stuff and for a little time afterwards.

[keith.lamothe]

How much will the MRS/MSD cost?

Either its current 3000, or back up to the 4000 that it was before yesterday's change to 3000.  Depends on how balance feels to folks.  It won't allow building mkIV without an advanced factory.

The mkI enclave is already free, so putting mkI production on the MRS shouldn't cost anything extra.  And I think the person saying that the ability to produce mkII/mkIII in the field shouldn't cost more than the ability to produce those mkII/mkIII ships to begin with had a point.  Conceivably worth an extra 1000 K (so back up to 4000 total), but I'm not sure about even that.

Mini-hive golems would be reasonably unique. Would the drones on these still be based on what turret unlocks you've taken, and if so would there be some kind of 'basic' drone unlocked with the Enclave? Also, would the drones be something like "build up to X drones, deploy when ordered" or would they be produced the same way as at present?

The mkI needler drone at least would be unlocked by default.  Possibly just mkI of the 4 types, though their stats are going to need adjustment anyway due to different numbers probably being on the field than before, etc.

Mechanically we could just have the drones spawn immediately like the spire blade spawner, but I figure it will be more pleasant for everyone (except the AI) to use the hive golem mechanic of producing them internally and you just unload to release.  Though I figure that will create a desire for some kind of toggle to "instantly unload enclaves".

What about giving it something like the Penetrator's cloaking ability? "You can only produce ships while cloaked, and to deploy the ships you must decloak and then cannot cloak again for X minutes and Y seconds. Ships produced get stored as if loaded into a transport, and unload as such." You'd have your cloaked ship production, but you can only produce ships while under cloak and lose the cloak while deploying stuff and for a little time afterwards.

That could work for the Enclave drone thing, but that doesn't have cloaking anyway.  It wouldn't really work for the mobile space dock since all its stuff would be produced like a normal space dock (instant deployment).

[ZaneWolfe]

I rather like the idea of Enclaves becoming mini-Hives or carrier, but I do have a minor objection. If you are going to remove the ability to build MIV units from the new mobile space dock could you at least give me at MSD MKII or something similar so I can still get my MKIV fleetships? And perhaps something similar for starships? I know that most people won't use it, but I actually do get the Enclave MKIV. I know that it will still cost at least 15k worth of K to get, but given that I have 4 exo sources and rather high levels of AIP in my games, I never get to keep those neat little capturables unless they are behind my choke. (I am really looking forward to a hack that lets me keep/move/ect Fabs) Three of my exos show up at the same time every time and one of them is FS. And while the obscene K costs make such things of little to no value for the majority, if you are cheating for K (like me) or playing FS (like me and several others) you CAN make use of their gimmick.

I like the Enclave MKIVs, they allow me to build larger (and more powerful) fleets of normal ships so I can have a strike force of that isn't just either FS units or starships. This gives me a mobile defense force for dealing with things that can bypass my choke. I have learned the hard way that no choke is perfect and with things like minor factions, Counter Attack posts, and certain AIs, I need to have some kind of mobile force that can cover my backside. The Enclave MKIV gives me a big enough, strong enough, fleetship force to manage these things so I don't have to constantly pull my main force back whenever something happens/is going to happen. Plus they can rebuild the units I am losing while the fight is going on, so even against a Counter Attack from The Core I can put up a fight without having to pull the main fleet back.

tl,dr- Please leave something that can produce MKIV without an advanced factory (and maybe add something similar for starships) even if it costs 15000 K. It may be gimmicky. It may be useless is many, if not most, cases. But there is at least one player who gives them some love, and I am willing to bet that I am not the only one.

[Kahuna]

cloaking "tiers"

Awesome. With these tiers I'd support that mantis post.

[Hearteater]

I know that most people won't use it, but I actually do get the Enclave MKIV. I know that it will still cost at least 15k worth of K to get
<snip>
if you are cheating for K (like me)

Wouldn't it be easier if there was just a cheat code that unlocked Mark IVs at Space Docks if you have Mark III unlocked?  That way you could play your game and we wouldn't have to deal with trying to balance a unit that so far has resisted all attempts.