Spire/Zenith starships

[keith.lamothe]

So, the Spire starship came in 3rd on the current worst-unit poll, and the Zenith starship only a vote behind that (with a bunch of others tied with it).

Is the problem that they aren't worth the knowledge to unlock, or that they don't compare with how buff they used to be when they were exclusively high-mark (III for the zenith, IV for the Spire) unlocks?

In other words:

- do they just need better stats to make them worth the K

- or do they need to cost more K and have better stats so that their baseline strength is in the mkIII/mkIV range.  Basically just make the mkI versions like the mkIIIs, and make the mkIIs like mkIV/Vs.  But the K costs would be proportional to their strengths, of course.

- or is this not really a simple numeric problem, and you want the "mobile fort" (including inability to kill polycrstal) Zenith and the "super-long-range, nearly-unkillable" Spire back?  Or what?

[Diazo]

I look at starships and find them underwhelming at the moment.

I've posted this before, but my two reasons are:

1) Knowledge: Fully unlocking a fleet ship costs 8,500 knowledge for all 4 marks. Spire/Zenith cost 7,500 for only 3 marks. And due to the way marks scale a full cap of Marks I-III is only 60% the power of a full cap of Marks I-IV.

2) Firepower vs. Survivability: With how replaceable units are in this game, Firepower is "worth" more then survivability. When you make a straight trade off of halving firepower for a doubling of durability, the actual combat utility of the unit goes down. Tests would be required, but I'd start at making starships have 220% the durability and 60% the firepower of the equivalent fleet unit.

Having said that, I only find starships underwhelming, not useless so I do not think a major change is needed.

Even just making Mk Spire and Zenith available at game start might do it, that would drop their K cost to 6,500 for full caps of Mk III. That is more in line with how I think that would stack up.

Tweaks as per my point 2 above would not go amiss either, but I do not see a need for anything major here.

(Note that I never did finish that starship only game I tried. I have not actually played with a MK III starship unlocked in basically forever.)

D.

[Faulty Logic]

The appeal of the old Zenith/Spire ships (for me) was their survivability. Just those four could zap a mkIV AI planet (given excessive micro). Any one of the four could perform most sub-tasks (kill that guard post, protect this planet from minor attacks, do noticeable damage to a threatball and still not die, etc).

They aren't worth the k anymore, because they don't have distinct roles like the other starships.

Condense the cap into one ship. Then increase the range of the spire starship by a factor of 2 or more (and have it fire more often, so it resets to on target faster), and Zenith health by a factor of 1.5.

This should give the Zenith its brawler role back, give the Spire back its kiting ability, and give the ability to act independantly (their main draw) back to both.

As to starships in general, I would like a slight stats buff, but mostly their economic costs reduced some (energy especially), and a mkIV starship constructor. I don't mind the survivability/firepower drawback (though it is a drawback) because it is roughly balanced with all the benefits of a low-cap unit.

[keith.lamothe]

2) Firepower vs. Survivability: With how replaceable units are in this game, Firepower is "worth" more then survivability. When you make a straight trade off of halving firepower for a doubling of durability, the actual combat utility of the unit goes down. Tests would be required, but I'd start at making starships have 220% the durability and 60% the firepower of the equivalent fleet unit.

I think the balance target I aimed at (as of several months ago, was different as of a year+ ago) was 66% the firepower and 200% the durability, but I could be wrong on that.

And while the durability isn't as valuable as the firepower in a straight-up fight, having both "high firepower, moderate durability" units and "moderate firepower, high durability" units available to you gives you flexibility that simply summing up your blob's dps doesn't convey.  Often a pure starship "wolfpack" can operate behind enemy lines without casualties, whereas fleet ships inevitably take attrition.

Even just making Mk Spire and Zenith available at game start might do it, that would drop their K cost to 6,500 for full caps of Mk III. That is more in line with how I think that would stack up.

Haha, anything on the bottom row of the tech menu always seems to get requested as a freebie

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I agree that nothing drastic is needed here.


Though, cap condensation for these two types could be interesting.

[Diazo]

Even just making Mk Spire and Zenith available at game start might do it, that would drop their K cost to 6,500 for full caps of Mk III. That is more in line with how I think that would stack up.

Haha, anything on the bottom row of the tech menu always seems to get requested as a freebie

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I agree that nothing drastic is needed here.

Though, cap condensation for these two types could be interesting.

Heh. On my previous post, I actually pondered posting a suggestion that all Mk I starships, except the flagship, require knowledge to unlock.

Something like 500 for MK I, 2,000 for MK III and 3,000 for Mk III. Drops the total K for all 3 marks to 5,500, but requires that initial outlay to get starships at all.

But then I realized that is how things used to be pretty much and it was changed to how it is now because starships simply were not getting used at all.

@Faulty: On the economic costs, starships are in a weird place right now. I believe their costs are roughly in line with what you get out of them, but they are not the super-units they used to be any more so they don't feel like the costs is worth it. Yes, they are more durable and all, but throw them at a system a Mark or two higher then them and they die almost as fast as your fleet ships.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

For reference, currently:

Fighters have approx 15M*mk cap-health, 50k*mk base-cap-dps, and 300k*mk bonus-cap-dps.  They're basically the best of the triangle in raw numbers (bombers have better bonus types, but lower dps) but the other two aren't far behind.

Spire Starships have approx 16M*mk cap-health, and 240k*mk cap-dps (no bonuses, the "bonus" is "did you actually hit something every frame of those two seconds?"), so it's a bit more durable and 80% as much dps as the fighter.  Basically these numbers were intended to make this the "glass cannon" of starships, though not quite glassy due to starships generally being pretty durable.  Either way, overall, these things can do a lot of damage if the target's polite enough to hold still.

Zenith Starships have approx 24M*mk cap-health, 50k*mk base-cap-dps, and 200k*mk bonus-cap-dps, so 160% the durability and 66% the dps of the fighter.  They're also pretty short ranged, more of a brawler than the spire starship by a significant margin.


Tinkering...

[chemical_art]

For me, I use starships as part of my fleets, and if I need special forces I get the Raid Starships.

The problem, for me, is that the Spire and Zenith just lack an impact.

The Spire ships feels to short ranged to be what it was previously to me as a long ranged craft.

The Zenith just don't perform enough to be a brawler.

I'm already slightly adverted from ships due to their higher cost both in resources and knowledge, so the ones I do use need to have an impact for my consideration.

[TechSY730]

For the Spire starships, my concern is more about how much "skew" between the average (sans tricky micro) and best case the Spire beam mechanic gives. This is more about spire beam weapons in general, but it shows especially here.

9397: Change how Spire Beam weaponry works some to make them worthwhile in the average case
The wording on that issue is a tad too strong (spire beam weaponry can actually get decent performance in average cases), but the idea still holds. The disparity between Spire beam weaponry's effectiveness of best cases and average cases is too high due to their nature (aka, merely messing around with the damage and range stats won't fix it, it will require a mechanics change, though that may be as simple as making the beam last longer or shorter or something).
Also not helping is that Spire beam weaponry doesn't always extend to full length when no longer hitting something for whatever reason. It's sporadic when it happens, but it really hurts when it does.

Also, I would like to echo chemical_art's sentiment about their range being a bit too short for their fragility. I'm fine with the fragility (even when they were Mk. IV, they were still fragile by Mk. IV starship standards), but they need the range and damage to make up for it (which the old Mk. IV version had, and currently they do not)


For the Zenith starship, they are supposed to be a very durable starship. I'd say their cap durability needs to be at least that of a cap of bomber starships. As for their firepower, I don't know; don't really have opinion on that "half" of them.
I remember back when they were basically a fortress in "starship form". Something along those lines (though possibly with less firepower than the straight up scaling down from fortress stats would imply) seems to be a good idea to shoot for now.


Also, as Dazio pointed out, the starship "balance target" overall may need some tweaking.



For knowledge values, I think those are in a good place right now.

[Dichotomy]

Condense the cap into one ship.

Yes. Other buffs are fine, too.

[Winge]

I think Faulty is right on this one.  Condensing those starships down to a 1-2 ship cap would be a good improvement.

For reference, currently:

Fighters have approx 15M*mk cap-health, 50k*mk base-cap-dps, and 300k*mk bonus-cap-dps.  They're basically the best of the triangle in raw numbers (bombers have better bonus types, but lower dps) but the other two aren't far behind.

Spire Starships have approx 16M*mk cap-health, and 240k*mk cap-dps (no bonuses, the "bonus" is "did you actually hit something every frame of those two seconds?"), so it's a bit more durable and 80% as much dps as the fighter.  Basically these numbers were intended to make this the "glass cannon" of starships, though not quite glassy due to starships generally being pretty durable.  Either way, overall, these things can do a lot of damage if the target's polite enough to hold still.

Zenith Starships have approx 24M*mk cap-health, 50k*mk base-cap-dps, and 200k*mk bonus-cap-dps, so 160% the durability and 66% the dps of the fighter.  They're also pretty short ranged, more of a brawler than the spire starship by a significant margin.


Tinkering...

The bolded portion of the quote is the main problem with Spire ships in general.  The Spire Starship does great against stationary targets.  Against fleet ships, it does great damage for half a second, and then has to wait a reload cycle to retarget.  Micro does help a lot with these, but at that point, I would rather use another Starship--Raids for hit-and-run, Plasma Siege or Heavy Bomber for damaging tough targets, or Riots for all-around disabling happiness.  I only use Spire Starships when I have no other way to deal with Gravity effects.

Note that other Spire Ships don't seem to have the same problem.  Here is why (in my opinion, of course):
Spire Champion:  Champions, in general, are designed to be microed.  It's almost expected that the player will assume manual control to get the most out of the super ship.  Modules help too.
Spire Modular Fortress:  That's a lot of Modules.  IMO, the main weapon of these is worse than the other forts because of the beam.
Imperial Spire:  Can you say "terrible, terrible damage?"  Their damage rating is so high that the beams are like Wrath Lances of Doom to most fleetships (which is kind of the point of Fallen Spire ).  Also, modules are a major bonus to DPS.

I haven't tried the Spire Corvette, so I am withholding any judgments about them.

[Dichotomy]

What if it fired smaller beams (about a third of the power) but every 3 seconds instead of 10?

[keith.lamothe]

On the spire beam: sure, but is there a problem with a unit basically being "60k base-cap-dps, 240k bonus-cap-dps" where the bonus isn't against a hull type but "against stationary targets and dense piles"?  Surely that "bonus group" is pretty commonly encountered (any fixed defense, and nearly any situation where you're defending against a large attack coming through a wormhole)?

If it was easy to make it always get full damage against everything, it'd basically be "240k base-cap-dps" which would be really, really high

[Diazo]

With the Spire Frigate (so not the spire starship) in my current game, I'm actually finding that ships with the spire beam have to be stationary. I actually get almost full on time against AI fleet ships (assuming they are high enough mark to just not die instantly) as the AI ships are closing directly at me so their is no sideways deflection to cause the latter part to miss.

If the spire frigate is moving to attack something, it might as well not even be there though. While in motion the sideways deflection drops their damage to essentially nothing.

So, in my opinion, spire beam equipped ships are what the Zenith Siege Engine was intended to be. Absolutely freaking scary when stationary but can't do a thing while in motion.

D.

[chemical_art]

As Diazo says, it is not just a matter of the enemies being stationary, it is also a matter of the spire frigate being stationary.

Without micro, I am lucky to get even a third of the beam's power. And even with micro, in fleet battles it is simply hard to manage.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, here's the result of my mad crayon scribblings in the code:

* Spire Starships, in honor of coming in third in the poll:
** Ship cap from 4 => 2, with health and damage adjusted to maintain same cap-health and cap-dps.
** Effective mark level from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4, so that the mkI is balanced like a mkII starship, the mkII is balanced like a mkIII starship, etc.
** Knowledge cost from 1000/2500/4000 => 1500/3000/4000, in accordance with their effective mark promotion (this makes the cost of getting to mkIV the same as with a triangle fleet-ship type, though this is without the benefit of having mkIs and without the need to get an advanced factory).
** Beam cycle time (from the beginning of one beam to the beginning of the next, so including the 2 seconds the beam is actually being fired) from 10 seconds => 3 seconds, damage adjusted to maintain DPS.
** Base Cap-Health from 16M*mk => 24M*mk.
** Base Cap-DPS from 240k*mk => 300k*mk.

* Zenith Starships, as an honorable mention from the poll:
** Ship cap from 4 => 2, with health and damage adjusted to maintain same cap-health and cap-dps.
** Effective mark level from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4, so that the mkI is balanced like a mkII starship, the mkII is balanced like a mkIII starship, etc.
** Knowledge cost from 1000/2500/4000 => 1500/3000/4000, in accordance with their effective mark promotion.
** Base Cap-Health from 24M*mk => 36M*mk.
** Seconds-per-salvo from 8 => 4, damage adjusted to maintain DPS.