So, MkII transports

[Vyndicu]

Again. I am compare a single hull to hull and weapon dps to weapon dps irregardless of their roles and what you pay for them.

I don't know if you noticed it or not. I DID not start this comparison and you are still quoting me. Although I did start on fallen spire fleet inside transport line of topic. I only joined in after few post later.

You need to put them in transports because they're really slow.

Also, Zenith starship Mk3s have more HP than any player-controlled Fallen Spire ship hull.

To put this debate to rest for once for all:

Both Zenith starship line and Spire DN have VERY different opportunity cost.

Zenith starship are designed to be brawler. Spire DN can be config for different roles.

I only made the weapon/HP ratio comparison (Vast higher baseline dps with upgrade modules dps that put Zenith starship super-high hp to shame) because of the VERY exact same reason you stated. THEY can NOT be compared on an one to one equal basis. Just like you can't compare auto-cannon minipods to a botnet golem.

[Zeyi]

Quite like the idea of buffed health, cloaking and and perhaps the ability to deploy 80 or 100 ships instantly (it can be annoying waiting for the AI to blow up a transport so that's quite a good idea.

I have always wondered about the transports immunity to speed boosts, so much so that in  my games (I play 120 planets, fallen spire campaigns mostly) that I just use lines of logistics III/IIs and Zenith Spacetime thingies (forgot their name) to my front lines and ships get there faster than a transport ever could. So I suggest removing the immunity to speed boosts for either both transports or just the transport MKII allowing for rapid movement of large groups of ships, or even rapid movement in AI territory (like combining speed boosts with transports).

I have other ideas on the subject borrowing from the spire jumpship a teleporting transport but with an increasing paralysis duration the more hops from home territory you get, so the first hop your transport stops for 10 seconds, the second 20, the 3rd 30 (or whatever maybe even just 30s each hop). Cloaking would of course be essential here and due to the paralysis ti wouldn't be OP as you would have to clear every tachyon turret.

[chemical_art]

After sleeping on this, I think Mk II transports need to fundamentally unlock options that were not avialable before. They do their current job so well that simply upgrading it won't be worth 3k within the realm of sanity.

[chemical_art]

Hmm.

While I am among the support's strongest starships V's relative power against fleetship, even I, of all people, think they shouldn't have the same HP as a spire dreadnought.

That said, remember the current philosophy of the zenith vs. the spire. Spire are built to hit so hard then enemy cannot respond, Zenith are designed to take the beating and then give it back out.

I think it is clear the number values of fleetships need to be dropped, so starships can keep their relative power while not being on the level of spire capital ships.

[Kahuna]

1) Give it cloaking (yea, I know I do that a lot, but it's a very helpful way of making a utility unit more useful to human players)
2) Go from 2x mkI health to 8x mkI health
3) Capacity from 200 => 40
4) But can unload all 40 at once
5) Make cost the same energy as a mkI
6) K cost from 4000 => 3000.
Thoughts?

It should be able to travel ~4 hops further than Mk I.
Capacity should be kept at 200. I'd be ok with 100 capacity and instant unload though.
Energy cost should be same as Mk I.
And it should cost 2000k K.

[Radiant Phoenix]

I think it is clear the number values of fleetships need to be dropped, so starships can keep their relative power while not being on the level of spire capital ships.

Yeah, two zeroes off of everything that's not a superweapon, and one zero off superweapons might be a good start.

EDIT: The zero off superweapons is so you have room to adjust upwards.

[Diazo]

Transports, hmmm.

Transports have two purposes for me, bomber drops in hostile territory and moving my slow units around my own territory.

Bomber drops:
# of hops does not matter, it is one way due to the attrition regardless.
Health matters some in getting the transport to it's target, but I usually let the transport die to 'unload' all at once.
Not reaching the target? Send some empty transports through first to soak.

Own territory:
Only capacity and speed matter.

So what would it take to get me to unlock Transports Mk II? I'm not sure. As odd as it sounds, the cloaking does not actually appeal that much.

Really, for carrying units, the Mk I is so good as it is I'm not sure what would make the Mk II worthwhile for me.

Actually, one thing that would make it worthwhile is a forcefield attachement. Not a strong one but enough that it can actually fill the "Assault Carrier" role and protect the units it is unloading for a second. How you keep that from being cheesed though? Dunno.

Really, I'm not sure what to do here, the Mk I is so good at anything I can see myself using a transport for, the Mk II just seems superfluous.

D.

[KDR_11k]

I'm still against buffing superweapons by an order of magnitude. They're superweapons, not I-Win buttons. AI War's superweapons are already some of the biggest in the entire RTS genre, the Experimentals of TA and SupCom aren't nearly as crazy. Also the margin between MkV and superweapons doesn't have to be all that big, MkV is the AI's cutting edge technology that it uses to keep the Spire Empire at bay.

Turning the transport 2 into a combination transport and support unit could be interesting, FF is only one option. Could also provide some specialized fire support to the units it carries, munitions or armor boosts, a repair beam to fix deployed stuff as well, etc.

[Hearteater]

Here is the original Assault Transport:

I'd first really rather K unlocks get a pass to make them all viable.  There are a ton I just don't bother touching.  Like Transport IIs are okay, but for 4k Knowledge, I'd really rather something a lot more impressive in terms of what it opens up.  If it were a beastly Assault Transport that held maybe 50 units instead of 200 but released them all at once, and had a ton more health and armor...then I might use them.  Throw in Missile immunity and I could see them really being useful for deep Raiding.

They honestly don't need to go many hops deeper; one or two is fine.  Extra survivability so they get through tough systems is the main issue.  Missile immunity would also help a lot.

[keith.lamothe]

Making these be for new tactics is the idea, yea.  If you just need a ship-bus, the MkI is totally sufficient.

Anyway, going more with the "Assault Transport" idea, seriously into "kick down the door and bust heads" territory.  Changes from the current mkII:

1) 100 Capacity, 100 unload per second.
2) Cloaking.
3) From 2x the health of a mkI transport => 4x.
4) An attack, that gains more shots when loaded (purely by unit count, not by what's actually in there).  So maybe unloaded it does 1/30th the dps of a mkI fleet ship cap, but fully loaded it fires an extra shot per 5 ships loaded.  That doesn't work quite right with unit cap scale but I don't think that's that big a deal (just fill it with science ships or something?) and if it is we can adjust somehow.
5) Make ships emerge with 1/2 reload instead of full reload (though if they loaded with more than 1/2 they'll still have what they entered with, not using this to cheese dps with bombards or whatever)
6) When it dies it drops a 20-second forcefield (kinda like the champ's projected field)
7) Can be scrapped in enemy territory (since we've already given it insta-unload)
K cost from 4000 => 3000.

Anyway, you'd get both the advantage of cloaking to "sneak" by keeping it stand-down so it wouldn't fire, but if you wanted to drop the cloak to activate "damage sponge mode" you can just flip it back out of stand-down so it opens fire on whatever is nearby, thus dropping the cloak.

Of course, someone will find a way to cheese this (I can envision some kind of continual building and scrapping to generate obscene ff coverage), but to some extent that's inevitable with a unit that's worth 3000 to unlock, and we can deal with that.

On the other hand, if there's not room in the game for something like this (which is possible), my other guess is to just remove the mkII transport from the game since honestly the mkI does the actual "transport" job


Thoughts?

[PokerChen]

Thoughts?

(1) If it's going to be that different to the Mk-I transport, we could consider calling them something else: like Battlewagons, or Carriers...

(2) What's the motivation for not dumping a whole cap of empty transports and deleting them for champ forcefields when assaulting the AI core worlds? Did we did trivialise the AI strategic reserves with the freebie shields, and obsolete Spirecraft Shields in the same stroke?

[Faulty Logic]

Just make sure that it only counts combat ships (or I really will be able to kill the AI with pure science) and that the forcefield ability doesn't work if the unit is killed under construction.

I like the idea. It opens up some new options, and provides secure transportation, so I can see it being worth 3000 k in some games.

I can envision some kind of continual building and scrapping to generate obscene ff coverage)

You need a rule that says only one of these ffs is allowed for planet. That should cut off the stinkiest cheese.

Edit: but even that is quite abusable. I would just not have the FF on death.

[Hearteater]

Don't know if I like #2.  It's nice, but might be overkill.  I can always use a Cloaker Starship.

Not a fan of #4.  I'd prefer to focus on getting them to the target, and not kiting AI ships with the Transports insane speed.

I like #6 and I considered what if it had a Force Field tied to it being on Stand By.  So on Stand By it doesn't, but otherwise it does.  But I think I like the on-death thing more, although that is a little fatalistic of the transport.  I also considered it having a Force Field only when empty.  Sadly, I'm a little concerned about how abusable this is.

Otherwise the rest sounds good.

[TechSY730]

Yes, the FF on death thing is way too abusable unless their is a cap on the number of these forcefields in any one system and/or globally.

[Hearteater]

Yeah, a cap of 1 and a very short duration, like 5 seconds, might be workable.  Transport IIs would need to build pretty slow so you could chain build them for endless shields though.