So, turret balance

[orzelek]

From what I remember starships were given radar dampening to not die to horribly from stuff that outranges them. And thats a lot of stuff (2.5k range on bomber.. they can't shoot through decent fleet).

As for drones... I was actually very disappointed with these. With exception of missile one they have quite short range and slow speed. I guess that enclaves need to be positioned very close to potential attack places for optimal use.
Then the hp - it's 16k hp on ultra-low caps (if caps affect this at all?). This basically means that you have six targets that die at a sneeze. If enemy has anything capable of multiple shots or rapidly shooting (or simply there is large amount of enemies) drones will eat bullet each and their gone.

As for dps it's hard to judge. 6 drones will need 13/15 seconds to kill one Bomber (the drones with bonus vs bombers). Thats 7/8k bonused dps. I would need a bit of special testing to see how useful it is in actual combat.

Can someone give me some tips on how to use these for some effect?
I couldn't find nice use for them as they are now. Maybe swarmers are simply not my type.

[Faulty Logic]

Hmm, I'd be willing to go for that, though identification of "cheese planets" is tricky.  What if you take a choke which has three "external" (further from your HW) neighbors and you take all three of those planets but only hold them with miniforts or whatever as speedbumps?  But those three planets have no way to your HW except through the choke.

It would have to based on pathing to important stuff. If 100% of the paths (which, IIRC, are from any full warp gate to some irreplaceable) go through one planet (or end at one planet), then the exo is treated as if it were against one chokepoint.

If the human could fortify two planets such that any exo path goes through one of them, then the exo treats it like two chokes.

Otherwise, the exo treats it like no-choke.

For all these cases, it would count only stationary structures.


I think this change would go a long way toward allowing turrets to have a better balance, and help with the chokepoint problem, but if it's a nightmare to code then the dev-time might be better spent elsewhere.

[keith.lamothe]

From what I remember starships were given radar dampening to not die to horribly from stuff that outranges them. And thats a lot of stuff (2.5k range on bomber.. they can't shoot through decent fleet).

Bomber Starships don't have radar dampening, though.

Starships not dying horribly is a point, but recent changes have made them pretty durable.  The ones that have radar dampening, anyhow.

[Zeyurn]

I tried to use the drones and they barely did anything.  Neinzul Enclave Starships are just impossible to move around very easily due to a lack of a 'brave' option for them.

However it is amazing having them all with you mass producing Neinzul Scapegoats (love those things).  Of course I've only ever been willing to spend the 18k Knowledge to unlock them in that megagame I just did...

For some reason I felt like I was bumping over radar dampening all over the place, maybe it isn't as bad as I thought besides the starships, which I have kind of a philosophical objection to not being able to be hit from very far away (Except the Raid Starships and the Neinzul Champion which is basically an uberraid starship)

I think it's just the tendency of that one carrier to pop into all sorts of Guardians and raider guardians spilling everwhere irritating me.

I'm all for Flagships losing or getting greatly reduced dampening, and definitely all for Z. Starships and S. Starships losing it.  They have crazy health now, they don't need that kind of protection.

[TechSY730]

I tried to use the drones and they barely did anything.  Neinzul Enclave Starships are just impossible to move around very easily due to a lack of a 'brave' option for them.

Seconded. I would use Neinzul Enclave Starships (and by extension, drones) much more if there was a "brave" option for them.

Also, I know that drones are supposed to be cap-wise much weaker than most neinzul ships, and I agree with that. But right now, it is taken a bit too far.
IIRC, they have about 1/4 cap stats of similar neinzul ships. I wonder if 1/2 cap stats would work better.

[Zeyurn]

The drones are 'brave' but they also move with the starship even if you don't want them to (as far as I could tell) but amusingly if you try to drag a selection box around drones AND starship you only get the drones.

I tried really hard to use the drones because I had everything researched but even a full cap of ALL drones sitting next to a wormhole that was trickling special forces barely did anything.

[Cinth]

Going to give feedback based off my normal game type

Anyway, my current guess is to:
a) Make the K cost of basic, laser, mlrs, missile, flak, and lightning all the same.  Basic has a very low cost for historical reasons mainly; it used to be much weaker but has really been buffed up to be in the neighborhood of the others (it's still weaker overall, but not by much).

Currently, getting all those MK IIs is 12250 K. That's an average of 2042 K (2041.6) each. A base 2000 K for each turret (MK II) seems reasonable here.  A base cost of 1750 K for MK II would put all 6 at 10500 K total.

b) Buff the cap health of the basic, laser, mlrs, missle, sniper, spider, lightning, and flak to about 40M, putting it in the 2x-to-3x range compared to fleetships (which tend to vary from 10M to 25M with some outliers), similar to its dps.

Against stuff that matters, this would help me a ton. Like

c) Make the bonuses even on:
-- flak (remove its penalties vs heavy and ultraheavy, leave existing bonuses at 2.4)
-- lightning (set all bonuses to 4, maybe add 1 or 2 additional bonus types since Refractive and Neutron are kind of lame, and replace Artillery since it currently gives it the amusing distinction of a bonus against a triangle ship it cannot hurt)
-- sniper and spider (set all bonuses to 6)
d) I'm unsure on this one, but there appear to be a lot of complaints about the low bonuses on the turrets (2.4 is the "standard"), with a preference for the kinds of bonuses the triangle gets (6), so I could change all the 2.4 ones to 6 while dividing the base dps by 2.  That would be a moderate buff to bonus dps and a significant nerf to base dps, but that appears to be what's being asked for from some folks.

These two together since it's about bonuses.  I'd rather see base dps go up before bonuses.  Not sure how the AI is going to like sniper/spiders with 6x bonuses against its bombers (lol).  Flak/Lightning are "meh" to me, so I don't have an opinion on these two.  About d), the 2.4 bonus is fine as is.  I'm ok with turrets being a little better vs everything, rather than, turrets being generally bad vs everything except there bonuses.  I think the passive H/K modifier on turrets needs to go also. That .1 makes fortresses the only defense against them.

e) Given the above, determine what people think is a fair K cost for "a mkI cap" of immobile firepower, and apply that to a) above.  There appears to be consensus that 2500K is a good cost for a mkII triangle or bonus fleet ship, so roughly speaking it seems 1250 is a fair price for "a mkI cap" of mobile firepower (I know 1 mkII cap is more than 2 mkI caps in many senses, but it's closer to 2 than 3 in actual practice).  The question is how "immobile" and "2x to 3x the hp, 2x to 3x the dps" (which turrets would then have, more or less, compared to triangle ships) affects the value.

Not sure what you are looking for here. Planning on locking out all the turrets (I kid)?
 Based on MK II/2 = MK I, MK Is are currently worth about 1021 on average.  Isn't that pretty close to MK II combat SS?  I think that's fine.  The HP/DPS part, I leave that for those with a better sense for those things.

And half a dozen posts crop up while I wrote this :/

[TechSY730]

Woa, forgot about that .1 vs command grade thing.


Yea, either that should go, or the H/K needs a new hull type, like Heroric or something, that everything would get 1x against (except maybe bombers, since they already have 3x or whatever against command grade, not sure what the bomber's bonus should be, EDIT: Or the spire rams and mini-rams, due to their unique role, should probably get like .25x against heroric or somthing, which would still be a buff for the rams, but stop them from being an easy way to take them out). This would also give a nice hull type to give champions. Astro trains would probably want to keep their command-grade keep the idea that to take them out, you need to actively peruse it.

[orzelek]

From what I remember starships were given radar dampening to not die to horribly from stuff that outranges them. And thats a lot of stuff (2.5k range on bomber.. they can't shoot through decent fleet).

Bomber Starships don't have radar dampening, though.

Starships not dying horribly is a point, but recent changes have made them pretty durable.  The ones that have radar dampening, anyhow.

After recent guard post buff... champion fears those. And I'm not talking only about arachnid one. They also have dampening and significant dps - large amount of hp helps but it's the dampening that makes the post not shoot at you from twice (or more) of your range.

As for bomber starships - I find them to be an oddity. You can kill fortress with them tho. And they help with hybrids (and other large stuff that doesn't directly counter polycrystal) but they require a lot of micro to actually shoot at anything since they lost their targeting systems somewhere. I'm still using them as close range support. In my long FS game they have around 1k kills (compared to 2k for plasma sieges, 700 for spires, 450 for zeniths and fleet ones). I was using mainly starships/champion in this game and after that actual FS fleet. From their kill stats they actually work better than it seems

[TechSY730]

As for bomber starships - I find them to be an oddity. You can kill fortress with them tho. And they help with hybrids (and other large stuff that doesn't directly counter polycrystal) but they require a lot of micro to actually shoot at anything since they lost their targeting systems somewhere.

Yea, what happened to that "prefers large targets" targetting flag?
Ditto question for the Plasma siege starship.

[Toranth]

Anyway, my current guess is to:
a) Make the K cost of basic, laser, mlrs, missile, flak, and lightning all the same.  Basic has a very low cost for historical reasons mainly; it used to be much weaker but has really been buffed up to be in the neighborhood of the others (it's still weaker overall, but not by much).

Currently, getting all those MK IIs is 12250 K. That's an average of 2042 K (2041.6) each. A base 2000 K for each turret (MK II) seems reasonable here.  A base cost of 1750 K for MK II would put all 6 at 10500 K total.

I think that if you are suggesting that a Mk II turret unlock is worth 80% of a Mk II fleetship unlock, I'm going to strongly disagree with you.

Let me say it with pictures:  This is what immobility means even within a single system.



The big range circle is the Missile turret.  The mid-sized circles are MLRS, and the small ones are Basic turrets.  As you can see, in this system with a mere three incoming wormholes, there is very little overlap in turret coverage for the two wide wormholes, even though those are less than 90 degrees apart from the Home Command Station.  This means that defend against both wormholes, I'd need to split my turret placement, giving each approach path half my turrets.  That also means, giving up 50% firepower on each approach path.

In addition, remember that distance from the wormholes to the Home Command Station in this image is actually rather short (25,000 range or so).  Even so, the Basic turrets, as placed here, would be unable to shoot at AI units at the wormhole itself AND be unable to shoot at units that were very close to the Command Station.  Moving closer to cover one endpoint means leaving the other even more exposed.  Either way, it just shows that turrets, because of their immobility, cannot bring their full firepower to bear even within a single system.  It is not at all unusual for my turrets to be in combat for half the time (or less) than the mobile units in a system are.


In summary:  Mobility matters a LOT.  Strategically, it allows firepower to be brought to bear in more than one system.  Tactically, it allows better coverage within a single system.  A unit without mobility is not worth anything close to 80% of a mobile ship.  I would suggest it is not even worth 40%, for as seen here, the mobile ships can have twice (or more) the engagement time.

e) Given the above, determine what people think is a fair K cost for "a mkI cap" of immobile firepower, and apply that to a) above.  There appears to be consensus that 2500K is a good cost for a mkII triangle or bonus fleet ship, so roughly speaking it seems 1250 is a fair price for "a mkI cap" of mobile firepower (I know 1 mkII cap is more than 2 mkI caps in many senses, but it's closer to 2 than 3 in actual practice).  The question is how "immobile" and "2x to 3x the hp, 2x to 3x the dps" (which turrets would then have, more or less, compared to triangle ships) affects the value.

Not sure what you are looking for here. Planning on locking out all the turrets (I kid)?
 Based on MK II/2 = MK I, MK Is are currently worth about 1021 on average.  Isn't that pretty close to MK II combat SS?  I think that's fine.  The HP/DPS part, I leave that for those with a better sense for those things.

As I said above, and harped on in the other threat, anything over 1,000K for the Mk II unlocks seems excessive to me.  Turrets are just not worth more than 50% of a Mk II fleetship.
Mk III turrets have all the same immobility disadvantages, plus they do not get a Mk IV unlock for free.  That means they should cost even less than 50% of the Mk III fleetship unlock.  2,000K is 33% of the Mk III fleetship cost, and I'm not sure Mk III turrets are actually worth that much in practice.

[chemical_art]

I'm ok with spire starships losing all radar dampening. zenith could have nerf to it, around 10-12k, so that as a brawler it can brawl without extreme external interference.

the flagship should keep it though. it reflects its support role. as a support its main focus is to stay alive, and the rd reflects it.

[TechSY730]

Let me say it with pictures:

Thanks for the visual aid depicting range, which is something that has been quite overlooked in these discussions so far.
How much immobility hurts a unit's utility (and thus, how much more that unit should be able to offer in other areas to remain competitive) is strongly tied to that unit's range.
This is why missile turrets tend to remain popular, their huge range sort of negates partially their stationary nature. Maybe ranges need to be larger across the board? (except maybe for the missile turret, which already has large (but not huge) range)

In summary:  Mobility matters a LOT.  Strategically, it allows firepower to be brought to bear in more than one system.  Tactically, it allows better coverage within a single system.  A unit without mobility is not worth anything close to 80% of a mobile ship.  I would suggest it is not even worth 40%, for as seen here, the mobile ships can have twice (or more) the engagement time.

Not to be a jerk, but...

What if an individual Mk. II, say, MLRS turret had a Mk. II hunter/killer levels of base DPS, a mothership's durability and kept the same caps and costs; but kept the same range and knowledge cost? Would you still say that unlock isn't anything close to 80% of a mobile ship, even when compared to its corresponding H/K?

My point here, other than showing an absolutely absurd extreme that will never happen, is to show that you CAN buff things enough to compensate for the stationary, somewhat short ranged nature. However, buffing them enough to do so may result in absurd stats, which is why it needs to probably be paired with knowledge cost reductions as well, to keep stats in check but still maintain good utility costs.
...
Or some sort of mechanics change like a per planet cap (or hybrids of global and per planet cap) or that limited count booster thingy. (Both of which I still am against, but show that there are alternate ways to approach the balancing challenge than just fiddling with knowledge costs and cap stats alone)

[chemical_art]

I'm in favor of k cost reductions because mk i turrets do their job very well already for the most part. the changes to the bonuses for flaks and lightnings would help as well.


[thinking outside of the box]

what if turrets can move, but cannot traverse wormholes.

[Cinth]

Stuff

When the turrets are on an enemy planet (where I put them) range=attrition of forces.  In the end, I am only protecting one wormhole.  That means i will still get 100% use out of every turret I place since the AI has to go through them.