Some Starships cost too much Knowledge

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the point here isn't to buff the player, it's to make sure that there aren't obviously-suboptimal-all-the-time choices for the player.  If they're always suboptimal, they don't add anything to the game and even detract a bit because it's one more thing players have to sift through.

That said, I agree that the Bomber Starship is probably more useful than many folks realize.  Are the II/III upgrades decent deals compared to various other things K could be spent on?  That's a tougher question.

In any event, I strongly disagree with the idea that this form of iterative balancing is bad for the game.

[Wingflier]

On the contrary, the "Best of"/"Worst of" Polls have been fantastic.  I think that if people really think the Bomber Starship needs a buff, we can just vote it up next patch.  If people vote for other things it obviously wasn't that important.

[TechSY730]

Although I do think that the bomber starship could use some stat and cap "normalization" to bring it into line with the rest of the starships, my biggest concern is the knowledge costs of the higher marks of military starships, especially the bomber and the plasma siege.

[Diazo]

I still have to try a game with the new starships so I'm extrapolating from the older versions but here's my take.

If I remember right, a starships balance point is roughly half the DPS but twice the survivability of the equivalent cap of fleet ships.

For me, there are three reasons I don't unlock starships:

1) For my playstyle it is worthwhile to launch my fleet blob in and take the losses. The higher DPS kills things faster so it feels alright to me to lose even half my fleet blob to clear a system. It will rebuild in a few minutes and I have down time anyway while I build a command station and what not. I could have probably cleared the system with a starship fleet also while losing no or maybe one starship but because of the reduced effective DPS the starships have it would have taken much longer.

IE: Fleet ships are so cheap that losing even a lot of them does not matter to me.


2) Orbital Mass Drivers: These shut down starships, hard. In theory the Ion cannon does the same for Fleet Ships but I'm willing to lose 30-40 fleet ships crossing a system to kill the Ion Cannon or other high priority target. I am not willing to lose one or two starships to do the same to the OMD or other target. Perhaps reduce the shot damage on the OMD but give it multiple shots? That would spread the damage out to take advantage of the Starships survivability while still making the OMD a major threat to starships.

3) Caps: I play single HW exclusively. I see in the after action reports people talking about taking their raid starships on a deep strike and losing half of them to kill a data center 3 hops away. Except they have 4 homeworlds so their fleet of raid SS is 12 ships (assuming Mk I only). I only have 3, my 3 raids would not even reach the system 3 hops away, they would die en-route. So I unlock fleet ships because they have the higher DPS to allow me to neuter the systems enroute faster so I can reach that data center 3 hops away.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here really. Part of the issue is I play high difficulty so I lose a lot of units and losing a starship costs a lot more in resources and rebuild time then losing some fleet ships. And because of the high difficulty I assume I am going to lose starships at some point, and probably quite often. It's not like lower difficulties where you can go several system assaults without losing a starship.

Which is why moving the Zenith and Spire starships to their own line has made it less likely I would unlock them. (Unless I'm playing a pure starship game). Their Attack Power boost was the biggest reason I had to unlock them.

Having said all that, maybe I should actually play a game with the new starships before getting to worked up about it but in my previous few games I did not unlock a single starship at all so we'll see what happens.

D.

[sol_ilya]

First developers buffed players so 10/10 difficulty became too easier.

What patch was that?
[/quote]

Series of patches. Including lowering costs for Sniper and Spider turrets, reducing energy cost for many turrets, big buff for harversters, new energy system which benefits player a lot and more. There was a huge buff to player economy. After all buffs there was not a surprise to see a thread that points 10/10 is no so difficult as it was expected.

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11190.0.html

Then AI strike back and also was buffed. In result we have now a strict, elagant system ruined. For one difficulty it is one AIP datacenter reduction, another difficulty is another. Same for Coprocessors, AIP floor. People complained that there was not enough challenge in storming homeworld. But they assaulted it with help of Golems, this is a superweapon which definately make assault more easier. Core AI Posts recievied good buff, but what about assaulting Homeworlds without golems or Spire ships? It looks this type of gamesetup was punished becouse of gamesetup that uses Golems.

I did not make this poll to try to make the game easier or to buff the player. But to make higher marks of Bomber and Plasma Siege Starships useful. At the moment they don't even exist. Well.. they do.. but unlocking them would be waste of knowledge.

Unlocking higher Marks of Bombers is a more viable option than unlocking more Bomber Starships. Vs Heavy, Artillery, Command-Grade, Ultra-Heavy, Structural a cap of MarkI Bombers have almost 2x better dps than a cap of Mark I Bomber Starships. Bombers are also cheaper and unlocking more of them costs less knowledge.

Today I have read another post in the forum. That person wroted that unlocking bombers without a factory is a waste of knowledge. Opinions of people are very different what is a waste.

Also fleet ships can destroy guard posts and starships too. Fleet ships are the core. Starships are there to support the main fleet.

I can say opposite. Straships are the main assault force and fleet ships are there to support them. This game is flexible in tactic. I have made video to represent a tactical deep of the game. My main strike force are Bomber starships.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLaSyK0RmDo

Destroying guard posts by fleet will result in a lot of fleet losses. That is an economy penalty for building new ships, and time losses for bringing reinforcements to the fleet... While bomber straships can destroy them and return back without losses. Also there is AI Eye which makes straships very important in assaults; if person want to capture ion Cannon -  all these makes straships far more viable than cap vs cap calculations.

If there was no Spirecraft or Golems there wouldn't be Exoglactic Strikeforces. And without Spirecraft and Golems I would have more resources for other things. Being more aggressive and rebuilding my fleet for example.

Golems allows use of superweapon in destroying waves and makes assaults for homeworlds easier.  Else resources (for rebuilding fleet or turrets) would be wasted in defeating waves. I guess  ability to use Golems gave more advantage than payback for it. I have seen AAR about defeating AI 10/10 with Golems but have not seen without them. But last "AI strike back patch" affected both type of gameplay.

[keith.lamothe]

I have seen AAR about defeating AI 10/10 with Golems but have not seen without them.

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9869.msg106954.html#msg106954

But last "AI strike back patch" affected both type of gameplay.

Yes, it did, and since then I've made some additional changes to make golems-hard harder, and to begin balancing the botnet, without impacting non-golems gameplay.  I am conscious of the fact that the game without superweapons is a different balance target.

[KDR_11k]

Are ion cannons a real factor yet? I remember them being total jokes because their low ROF kept them from doing much harm ever since the ship cap change (with the added low/mid/high options). They used to fire once per second against what amounts to mid caps and I think that was even without the higher lethality combat enabled.

I used to employ the old Zenith and Spire starships as deep strikers with their extreme survivability to go for easy targets like data centers.

You can probably tell that I haven't played much recently.

[TechSY730]

Are ion cannons a real factor yet? I remember them being total jokes because their low ROF kept them from doing much harm ever since the ship cap change (with the added low/mid/high options). They used to fire once per second against what amounts to mid caps and I think that was even without the higher lethality combat enabled.

I used to employ the old Zenith and Spire starships as deep strikers with their extreme survivability to go for easy targets like data centers.

You can probably tell that I haven't played much recently.

They now fire 4 shots per salvo, so yea, now you will start caring about them.

And we need to be careful about comparing the current Zenith starship MK. I and the Spire starship Mk. I with their older counterparts, as their older counterparts were Mk. III and Mk. IV starships, respectively. A fairer comparison stat and cost wise would be comparing the new Mk. IIIs with the old versions.

[sol_ilya]

I am conscious of the fact that the game without superweapons is a different balance target.

That is nice to hear!

[KDR_11k]

Are ion cannons a real factor yet? I remember them being total jokes because their low ROF kept them from doing much harm ever since the ship cap change (with the added low/mid/high options). They used to fire once per second against what amounts to mid caps and I think that was even without the higher lethality combat enabled.

I used to employ the old Zenith and Spire starships as deep strikers with their extreme survivability to go for easy targets like data centers.

You can probably tell that I haven't played much recently.

They now fire 4 shots per salvo, so yea, now you will start caring about them.

And we need to be careful about comparing the current Zenith starship MK. I and the Spire starship Mk. I with their older counterparts, as their older counterparts were Mk. III and Mk. IV starships, respectively. A fairer comparison stat and cost wise would be comparing the new Mk. IIIs with the old versions.

Then again unlocking both the old Zenith and Spire only required going up one tech line, not two. The two ships offer different abilities (the Zenith was garbage vs Polycrystal IIRC while the Spire could slap that silly) and combine pretty well.

[chemical_art]

The old zenith and spire ships were quite different, and while the new ones aren't identical they are not "Do I go one or the other" like I hoped they would.

They feel samey. I know they are not. But its not the old days were if I had the zenith ship I'd send it with fighers and go on a spree, or get the spire ship so I could have an ultra long range missile boat.

Now its "just get both and lump them together in the fleet ball. They don't fill a niche to send them alone or with a specific role"

To put it another way. The raider starship unlocks new possibilities. The old zenith and spire ships did too to a lesser extent. The new ones do not aside from moar starships.

[TechSY730]

I would agree that adding more differentiation between the Zenith, Spire, and possibly Flagship lines would probably be a good idea. I was merely trying to point out that there are some of their original differentiations already present.

EDIT: And as with any new unit, I never expected the first iteration to be perfectly on target balance wise.

[keith.lamothe]

On the zenith/spire stuff: I've never been comfortable with stuff having sub-one multipliers, let alone steep ones, let alone one that causes a ship to do effectively negligible damage to a common type (like fortresses and the old zeniths did against polycrystal).  The game used to have all kinds of crazy stuff like infiltrators getting a 100x multiplier vs fortresses and so on.  Nowadays I try to not have multipliers greater than 10 in the interests of actually being able to balance stuff and reason about the numbers, etc.

Needless to say I'm not happy with the way fortresses are now, but I do try to restrain myself from changing stuff simply because it bothers me unless the players agree or it really is a huge problem   Though I think there is fairly widespread agreement that fortresses usually being a case of "clear out nearby stuff that can kill with bombers, swarm fortress with bombers, wait several minutes" isn't really the kind of fun it could be.  But more fun than fortresses completely trashing every ship the way they do anything that's not polycrystal nowadays.

On the spire side, another thing that became a huge problem earlier in the game's development was so many units having enormous range.  How could each planet not just be 1 big fight in a case like that?  Perhaps we'll go back to simply being ok with each planet being 1 big fight as we haven't really succeeded in achieving the battlefields-within-battlefields feel, but on the other hand I do think we achieved enough of it that just totally ditching it would be a mistake.

All that's not to say that zenith/spire ships couldn't be made more interesting in the future, and I have some ideas, I was just making them at least more useful than they'd been since the more outlier stuff had been removed.

[chemical_art]

Hard to say about your battlefields within battlefields thing Keith.

I know you have tried hard to get it, but I've never had attempted this, nor gotten it. For example I love zergs and enclaves. Both these units by their very nature cause the ai to go "send everything. now." If I go the other way and get spire ships and starships, that causes problems too.

Aside from raider starships, I always seem to get "planet is a battlefield" feeling. It doesn't help that mentally, despite over 3 years of playing AI War, I still think that is how it should be.

The only times I don't to cause the AI to frenzy is if I deepstrike. But the AI gets in a frenzy, anyway, if I take it to its logical end (going to deep, as Lord of the Rings sort of references). So unless I need to get a data center there is little reason aside from minor faction combinations for me to deep strike.

[Martyn van Buren]

I'm not very good tactically (or at all), but I certainly feel like my approach to the most dangerous worlds is like that --- my preferred strategy is definitely to overwhelm a world with a giant blob, but if I can't do that my next thought is to try and pick it apart segment-by-segment.  That said, I tend to avoid superweapons; I'm not sure if those would alter the game.  I would like to see more things that force that kind of play, tho; I agree that it's the most fun.