Spirecraft Attritioner usefulness-increase possibilities

[Huaojozu]

I had to register just to say this, so hi everyone  Attritioners are a unit with great potential and Id hate to see that wasted with something like Armor Damage (seriously, is there anyone who likes Armor Damage in general? It seems too lackluster in this fast paced game except against a few units a normal player likely wont even see).

Engine Damage sounds like the best idea to me (well reclamation does, but I can understand if you worry about it being too powerful; though Botnet Golem can do pretty much the same thing, if you make it zombie reclamation). It solves the problem of stuff coming at the Attritioner to kill it. Warp in a few of these and start killing everything while they slowly make their way towards you. Make them immune to melee (dunno if they are already) to further protect them and you have yourself a unit I would most definitely use.

A large Gravity Well would work as well, but it would have to be large enough for stuff to get slowed down before they actually reach the point where they can fire at the Attritioner.

[TechSY730]

I had to register just to say this, so hi everyone 

Hey, welcome to the forums.

Attritioners are a unit with great potential and Id hate to see that wasted with something like Armor Damage (seriously, is there anyone who likes Armor Damage in general? It seems too lackluster in this fast paced game except against a few units a normal player likely wont even see).

Good to know I am not the only one who feels that the armor damage mechanic is currently underpowered. Should we start a new thread about this?

...(well reclamation does, but I can understand if you worry about it being too powerful; though Botnet Golem can do pretty much the same thing, if you make it zombie reclamation)

Agreed, normal reclamation damage would be overpowered. Zombie reclamation damage might be able to be balanced.

[Hearteater]

What about having it deal damage triggered whenever an enemy unit is killed.  This could be:

a) Deals 10% of dead units health in attrition damage (system wide AOE). Interestingly favors you focusing large hp targets first for the big attrition pulse.

OR

b) Acts like an Ion Cannon that is triggered to shot once each time any enemy unit dies.  Use the partial damage rules that are slated for Ion Cannons for higher Mark targets.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, this doesn't seem to be moving towards much of a consensus.  Not that it'd be the first time we just went and did whatever we thought was best, but I'm quixotically trying for actual agreement before a change this time

So, to everyone:

If you have a concrete set of changes in mind that you think would make the Attritioner significantly more useful without being overpowered (I leave it to you to decide how important thematic/lore consistency is to you), please post it here in a coherent chunk (just 1 proposal in a post if you have multiple, if you don't mind, so we don't confuse 2 different ones as being intended to be both be done).  If someone else seconds that proposal, I'll add it to the list (unless I have some big problem with it technical-wise or whatever) and after a while I'll start a poll with one item for each in the list and we'll see what folks like on a more quantifiable level.

This will probably turn out horribly, but I think it's worth a shot

[Gudamor]

Attritioner is changed to be similar to a warhead. When destroyed or scrapped it lays an instant minefield for a certain radius around it. The mines could be adjusted to balance, for example making them lose health over time and be unrepairable like neinzul ships.

[zebramatt]

I'm still up for:

...make one of the hull types particularly susceptible to attrition damage in general? Say, twice as vulnerable. Or thrice even.

Although I'm not sure anyone else is!

[Hearteater]

PROPOSAL

Increase the damage per pulse greatly, but have the attrition pulses only affect enemy ships below x% health (where x is a fairly low value like 10 or 20%).

NOTES

This allows a much higher damage value because you won't be able to wipe out a whole system without something else to get those ships down to x% health.  Depending on x, it is likely the Attritioner could deal x5-x10 its current damage.

This does result in the Attritioner no longer aggroing an entire system since un-freed ships aren't damaged and can't possibly be below x% health.

[Hearteater]

PROPOSAL

Attrition pulses are trigger only when an enemy mobile unit dies, and deal x% of dying unit's health (with x being something like 1-5% for Attritioner Marks I-V).  Death caused by an attrition pulse does not trigger an additional pulse.

NOTES

This favors focusing down larger targets first to trigger attrition pulses to heavily damage weaker targets.

This still allows system aggro, but you need to kill something first to get the ball rolling.

[Huaojozu]

Attrition pulses also inflict engine damage.

This serves as a means of protection and allows the Attritioner to function without and accompaning fleet.

[Orelius]

It's also very broken and overpowered, allowing for a team of attritioners to completely annihilate a system's ability to use its moving ships.

[rchaneberg]

Hi all, don't post here often but love the game.

What if Spire Attritioners dealt damage as a percentage of the enemies total health?

Since if a mark v attritioner dealt maybe 1 - 1.5% it would take down everything on a planet in 60-100 seconds, maybe the unit should actually attract all of the enemies attention and be relatively thin-shelled to offset its lethality.
Even if the lower marks were vastly less lethal in their own right they would be useful to bring along when setting up beachheads in enemy territory.

I also agree that they should have at least some placeholder armament to make managing them easier.

[Cyborg]

Proposal:

• attach modular gun armament
• scrapping gives warhead ability dependent on Mark level

[keith.lamothe]

Might have to give bonus points for that point size.

[mindloss]

Off topic:

I came here to spew a bunch of numbers but it looks like the janitor beat me to the punch. There may be a case for leaving them as-is, as the raw numbers suggest that in the right setting, they do massive overall fleet damage. They never end up killing anything, and you don't really see any damage happen, so it doesn't make them an exciting unit, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're broken. However, it could be that with the way targeting and individual shotpower and all works out, their spread-out damage doesn't actually have a significant effect on the outcome of an ensuing fleet battle. Or it could be that it does.

Okay, here's the part that's actually off topic:

The above suggests that testing an identical fleet battle both ways (with softening up by attritioners and without) would be a Good Thing To Do, but of course with the PRNG, any two battles from a given save point are going to be so wildly different that the effect of the attritioners, if any, will be lost to noise short of a sadistic amount of retesting.

So, simple question: why not include a debug toggle that allows you to suppress re-seeding of the PRNG on reload (and anywhere else it might be triggered)? This would make it pretty straightforward to see if they actually "do anything" other than aggro, not to mention allowing for a whole bunch of other find-the-optimum-strat tests.

...unless, of course, that's what you're trying to discourage... on second thought, maybe keeping fuzzy mysteries is a good thing, prevents grind in the long run. Still, it'd be useful for this.

On topic:

I don't have much of an opinion about this, but I have been meaning for a while to suggest a unit/turret be made which acts as a legit gravity well, complete with increased acceleration as a ship is drawn in. Hell, you could even use them offenso-tactically (http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Leyland_Gravity_Whip ). Dunno whether that would jive with existing motion code, of course.

[keith.lamothe]

On the debug-RNG thing, even if we did that there'd be way too many other factors that would make it nearly impossible for you to get a scenario where the RNG(s, there are multiple used) are asked for exactly the same number of numbers for exactly the same purposes, etc.