Spirecraft Attritioner usefulness-increase possibilities

[BobTheJanitor]

Yea, I think that's one thing I really want to stay the same with these guys; there aren't a lot of other ways to just aggro everything (though I guess bringing in a few things with sniper range and shooting one guard at each post would do it), and a lot of players like to use that tactic.

I'm fine with that tactic, the problem is that it sort of makes them one-trick ponies. If they're going to pull everything as soon as they enter a world, then that's pretty much all they can do. The fact that they attrition things at all becomes somewhat moot, because they're either going to die or have to warp out in short order. Might as well just rename them to Spirecraft Aggravator. And then give them heavy armor, then we can use them as tanks. And when we kill the AI it can drop an epic sword.

That said, I'm not entirely sure how the AI handles threat, or how much work it takes to pull their attention off of one of these. I should probably experiment with using them along with fleet ships to catch the incoming enemies. The situation never seems to come up, though, where I want to bring in a fleet and also have everything on the planet come screaming straight at it. Maybe if I have a botnet golem. But as far as attritioning, which should theoretically be their primary use, they're pretty terrible at it. Damage over time effects, minus the time, become pretty weak.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I think that's one thing I really want to stay the same with these guys; there aren't a lot of other ways to just aggro everything (though I guess bringing in a few things with sniper range and shooting one guard at each post would do it), and a lot of players like to use that tactic.

I'm fine with that tactic, the problem is that it sort of makes them one-trick ponies. If they're going to pull everything as soon as they enter a world, then that's pretty much all they can do. The fact that they attrition things at all becomes somewhat moot, because they're either going to die or have to warp out in short order. Might as well just rename them to Spirecraft Aggravator. And then give them heavy armor, then we can use them as tanks. And when we kill the AI it can drop an epic sword.

That said, I'm not entirely sure how the AI handles threat, or how much work it takes to pull their attention off of one of these. I should probably experiment with using them along with fleet ships to catch the incoming enemies. The situation never seems to come up, though, where I want to bring in a fleet and also have everything on the planet come screaming straight at it. Maybe if I have a botnet golem. But as far as attritioning, which should theoretically be their primary use, they're pretty terrible at it. Damage over time effects, minus the time, become pretty weak.

The attritioner doesn't generate "aggro" in the WoW sense, in that the enemies don't specifically hate it.  It just makes them hate   But I'm guessing there's some logic in the "prefer targets that the human weakling cannot easily replace" code that makes spirecraft more likely to be targeted, sort of like golems.

Anyway, it may be that the aggravation role does make them less useful as attritioners on offense, but I don't think it greatly interferes on defensive attrition.

[BobTheJanitor]

I suppose they'd be good for defense if you had a mountain of grav turrets set up to keep things in their effect for a while. Or a lucky gravity drill. I'd have to go check the numbers to see, but I'm recalling that it would take quite a while to make a dent in even small units with attrition damage. I feel like I'm just here poking holes in things. I do like the idea of mobile attrition units, but the reality just doesn't seem to match. Maybe if they were retooled to store damage over time up to a maximum and release it as one big pulse... or something. That would probably somehow be OP though. And it wouldn't really be an attritioner at all then.

[keith.lamothe]

I suppose they'd be good for defense if you had a mountain of grav turrets set up to keep things in their effect for a while. Or a lucky gravity drill. I'd have to go check the numbers to see, but I'm recalling that it would take quite a while to make a dent in even small units with attrition damage. I feel like I'm just here poking holes in things. I do like the idea of mobile attrition units, but the reality just doesn't seem to match. Maybe if they were retooled to store damage over time up to a maximum and release it as one big pulse... or something. That would probably somehow be OP though. And it wouldn't really be an attritioner at all then.

Yea, I don't think attrition as a main stat works for a human ship, honestly.  It's cool to have one for the variety but if the ship is going to be useful in itself it needs something else; like being its own personal grav well and some guns to chip in

I do like the idea of a self-destruct ability, too.

[BobTheJanitor]

I do like the idea of a self-destruct ability, too.

Warp in attritioner, wait for everything to come after it, tick tick tick, BOOM. That could be fun. It combines the 1-2 punch that I usually use a team of attritioner and martyr/warhead for when clearing overstuffed planets.

[zebramatt]

You could crank the attrition amount up a bit, then make it affect everything hostile on-planet plus the Attritioner itself!

[Nalgas]

I do like the idea of a self-destruct ability, too.

Hey, I know!  We can solve the problem of other ships being less useful than Martyrs by turning them all into Martyrs!  Why didn't someone think of that sooner?

[keith.lamothe]

I do like the idea of a self-destruct ability, too.

Hey, I know!  We can solve the problem of other ships being less useful than Martyrs by turning them all into Martyrs!  Why didn't someone think of that sooner?

Genius!

More seriously, I don't mean a high-damage self-destruct, but maybe a localized EMP.  Actually, last night I was thinking it might be fun to make the self-destruct have a different effect based on the mark level, if that's not too confusing:
- MkII: strip all the armor off all enemy targets in range (i.e. massive armor damage).
- MkIII: disable the engines of all enemy targets in range (i.e. massive engine damage).
- MkIV: temporarily disable all enemy targets in range (i.e. massive paralysis debuff, basically a localized EMP).
- MkV: reclaim all enemy targets in range (i.e. massive reclamation damage).

Not sure if I'd give the MkI one, kinda ran out of mechanics to pillage   Maybe a tachyon burst.  Anyway, these may just be "not as good as a martyr, mkII", "not as good as a martyr, mkIII", etc, except for the last one.  And the last one might be pretty laughably unbalanced, though to be honest I think it could probably be ok because only Titanite can make a MkV and it only makes 1, and the 80-planet galaxies I've tested with had between Zero and 6 Titanite, total.  So been meaning to make the Titanite-requiring stuff a bit more interesting in general.

Either way, if I add a self-destruct ability it wouldn't be the only buff, that's just to open up some new strategic uses of asteroids.

[Nalgas]

- MkV: reclaim all enemy targets in range (i.e. massive reclamation damage).

And the last one might be pretty laughably unbalanced, though to be honest I think it could probably be ok because only Titanite can make a MkV and it only makes 1, and the 80-planet galaxies I've tested with had between Zero and 6 Titanite, total.  So been meaning to make the Titanite-requiring stuff a bit more interesting in general.

Oh dear.  You know how Martyrs are crazy ridiculous because in large games where you have thousands of ships piled up in one place, you can make them all a splode at once by using one ship?  Now picture inducing the AI to pile up a giant stack of mk4 ships over a wormhole by parking a golem or two on one side and triggering a high level raid engine a couple systems away on the other, and get some threat of lower levels sitting there for good measure, or really just free up ships from nearby systems however you feel like.  Send in the reclamator Martyr, et voilà, instant army of every type of ship the AI has unlocked that isn't immune to reclamation, mk1 through mk4.  That's just dirty.

[keith.lamothe]

Send in the reclamator Martyr, et voilà, instant army of every type of ship the AI has unlocked that isn't immune to reclamation, mk1 through mk4.  That's just dirty.

Yea... but you spent a Titanite asteroid to get it, right?  What could you have done in similar circumstances with a botnet golem?

That said, yea, it's getting into the realm of the crazy

[Nalgas]

What could you have done in similar circumstances with a botnet golem?

Gotten a bunch of zombies that you have no control over.  With the reclamartyr, you are ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL and have spent one asteroid for a few hundred/thousand ships, without needing knowledge to unlock them, or ARSes, or fabricators, or anything.  It's just, "Oh hai there, I can haz fleet?"  It's not so much a Botnet Golem as a 3.0-era Leech Starship Golem.  Heh.

And yes, I did just finally get around to finishing ME2 a couple weeks ago.  Why do you ask?

[keith.lamothe]

What could you have done in similar circumstances with a botnet golem?

Gotten a bunch of zombies that you have no control over.  With the reclamartyr, you are ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL and have spent one asteroid for a few hundred/thousand ships, without needing knowledge to unlock them, or ARSes, or fabricators, or anything.  It's just, "Oh hai there, I can haz fleet?"  It's not so much a Botnet Golem as a 3.0-era Leech Starship Golem.  Heh.

But the botnet can do it over and over and over, and stomp all over planets by itself (if reports are to be believed)

Oh well, be a killjoy then; pssh, whaddya mean it has to be balanced!?

And yes, I did just finally get around to finishing ME2 a couple weeks ago.  Why do you ask?

At the end of ME2 I think I could do with direct control of a few thousand mkIV ships; noone in that story outside the immediate party seems reliable for anything other than backstabbing and patting my character on the head and recommending he take some medication, and somebody's gotta blow up that... wait a second, am I seeing double?  Triple?

[chemical_art]

What could you have done in similar circumstances with a botnet golem?

Gotten a bunch of zombies that you have no control over.  With the reclamartyr, you are ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL and have spent one asteroid for a few hundred/thousand ships, without needing knowledge to unlock them, or ARSes, or fabricators, or anything.  It's just, "Oh hai there, I can haz fleet?"  It's not so much a Botnet Golem as a 3.0-era Leech Starship Golem.  Heh.

Unlike the botnet golem, you get maybe one, two opportunities to use it per game. Unlike the golem, it is not reusable....Also, if you get a game where you have thousands of ships on one wormhole, you probably do on more then one...so unless you then take that new fleet you have and beeline it toward the homeworld it still won't solve your defensive situation...and since AIP will be fairly high before you even get access to Titanite I feel the advantage would quickly dissipate under the usual AI onslaught...

[TechSY730]

Just my $0.02, I think Attritioners should remain Attritioners. Aka, I would not support any new functionality that does not really deal with damage over damage over time (DOT). Thus, I don't think this "do AOE stuff on death" like a freaky offshoot of a martyr is a good idea.

However, I am fine with adjusting what the DOT is on (like adding engine damage or armor damage over time is fine), what rate, whether it is a constant rate or an accelerating rate (or perhaps even decelerating rate, if the initial rate is pretty high), or things like that, as they would remain attritioners.

Now it could be said that attritioning in general for anything, no matter what the properties of that attritioning or the attrioner are, is inherently impossible to balance (aka, it would either be underpowered or grossly overpowered, with no middle) given the average pace of battles in the current balance of the game.
I wouldn't say that is the case, but I can't rule it out. If this is indeed the case though, then EVERY attritioner would need an additional effect on top of it to keep them a threat. A gravity field would seem like a decent way to do it. But again, that is only if it is IMPOSSIBLE to make dedicated attritioners useful yet balanced given the current state of the rest of the game.

EDIT: Clarified some of my points.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, so I was being silly with the self-destruct stuff.  I still like it, but I can just put in debug cheats if I want stuff for myself   If anyone wants to argue for those, please do so, otherwise I'm moving on.

I agree that it would be preferable to not just tack something non-attrition-related onto a unit called the Attritioner.  I don't think it's necessarily the case that all attritioners in the game would need something new added if the human spirecraft one did, though, because there's only one other attritioning unit in the game and it's an AI special structure.  I don't think it's the most menacing thing in the world but it's fine as it is.  The human doesn't spend asteroids to get one (dunno if they're even still capturable).

Anyway, I could live with engine/armor/paralysis DOT effects, though engine and para would be a bit tricky to balance right.  The para would have to not stack with other para effects to avoid "stack all attritioners on one planet" equalling a massive lockdown or at least damage-reduction on anything not immune.

Are there any objections to "flavoring" the DOT that way?