Tackle Drone Launcher balance

[keith.lamothe]

In my tests with the most recent change I'm making, this is what I'm seeing:

Starting conditions:
Normal Unit-cap-scale
Standard human homeworld setup.
Full cap of triangle ships defending in FRD.
Bunch of engies supporting loop-building space dock; more than sufficient econ to keep it going.

1) Test 1:
- Add MkI TDLs to human side
- Send in 200 MkI fighter wave
- Result: wave easily swept up and defeated

2) Test 2 (everything reset back to original position and repaired; same with later tests) :
- Send in 400 fighter wave
- Result: repulsed wave with difficulty; home FF was at about half.  In general the TDLs were sending fighters back about as fast as they got back in range.

3) Test 3:
- Add MkII and MkIII TDLs to human side
- Send in 800 fighter wave
- Result: fighting is heavy, but wave repulsed without much damage to home FF.

4) Test 4:
- Send in 1200 fighter wave
- Result: barely won.  The space dock and many other buildings had lost FF coverage by the time the carrier popped.  I don't think I could have survived even 100 extra fighters.


My question is: where do you think the numbers should be? 

Given that these are mkI fighters, I think these are reasonable results. For 1 mk-cap and 6 mk-caps (1+2+3) + 3 mk-caps of assisting defenders with home-field advantage against up to 12 mk-caps of attack ships.

[rabican]

Imo still bit unreasonable.

MK versions don't really matter , as they all get pushed back equally. They would probably perform simliarly vs MK V bombers.

3) Test 3:
- Add MkII and MkIII TDLs to human side
- Send in 800 fighter wave
- Result: fighting is heavy, but wave repulsed without much damage to home FF.

800 is a lot, its almost as much as the ai will let out of carriers at one time.  Add in mark IV and likely only thing you still have to worry about are carriers, which admittedly are big deal.

As for numbers... i don't know, buuut lets say 600ish ship for similiar result as test 3.  Might be bit on the high side still, but probably in more acceptable limits.


Oh and this : Drones need to lose their FF immunity, or at least make them FF-move only.

[keith.lamothe]

MK versions don't really matter , as they all get pushed back equally. They would probably perform simliarly vs MK V bombers.

No, against mkV bombers I would have died horribly because they would have needed far less time to kill my FF and would have killed my fleet ships much faster.

In case it wasn't clear: in all but the first test, the enemy wave was getting plenty of time to engage my forces without being entirely thrown into not-kansas.  In general by the time my next drone pulse was out the ships moved by the one before it were at least halfway to back-in-range.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback

[Hearteater]

My first thought is a cap of TDL should be able to stop roughly 125 Fighters (30% more than a cap).  Their utility is so high that if they are able to beat larger groups than that, they are all-in-one ships, with great combat potential and utility.  Since you knocked out 200 Fighters easy, that seems a tough concerning to me.  How would a full cap of Bombard work (prior to any nerf)?  I'm going to guess the Bombards do worse.  What about some other strong (but not anti-Fighter) bonus ships?  TDL shouldn't be out-killing as well as pure combat ships.

[keith.lamothe]

My first thought is a cap of TDL should be able to stop roughly 125 Fighters (30% more than a cap).  Their utility is so high that if they are able to beat larger groups than that, they are all-in-one ships, with great combat potential and utility.  Since you knocked out 200 Fighters easy, that seems a tough concerning to me.  How would a full cap of Bombard work (prior to any nerf)?  I'm going to guess the Bombards do worse.  What about some other strong (but not anti-Fighter) bonus ships?  TDL shouldn't be out-killing as well as pure combat ships.

Just checking, but did you catch the bit where I said that I had a full cap of triangle ships (so just shy of 300 total, including the frigates which are anti-fighter) helping out?  This isn't just the TDLs.

[Cinth]

With a full cap of triangle ships flying in FRD, I would suspect that the Missile Frigates did most of the work.

With that said, it sounds like the TDLs were doing a pretty good job at controlling the fighters.

Wondering how bad Test 4 would have been without the TDLs.

[Faulty Logic]

The test results seem fine.

[TechSY730]

The test results seem fine.

Agreed. Trade in the FF immunity for "can move through forcefields" flag and this seems pretty reasonable.

[keith.lamothe]

Can someone post a save where Tackle Drones are having their way with stuff under forcefields?  Making that flag change is quite easy, but the interaction of a point-blank ship with can't-hit-stuff-under-FFs is nontrivial and I want to make sure it doesn't do something bizarre in a "real world" gamestate.

[Hearteater]

My first thought is a cap of TDL should be able to stop roughly 125 Fighters (30% more than a cap).  Their utility is so high that if they are able to beat larger groups than that, they are all-in-one ships, with great combat potential and utility.  Since you knocked out 200 Fighters easy, that seems a tough concerning to me.  How would a full cap of Bombard work (prior to any nerf)?  I'm going to guess the Bombards do worse.  What about some other strong (but not anti-Fighter) bonus ships?  TDL shouldn't be out-killing as well as pure combat ships.

Just checking, but did you catch the bit where I said that I had a full cap of triangle ships (so just shy of 300 total, including the frigates which are anti-fighter) helping out?  This isn't just the TDLs.

No, I missed that.  What was the result without the TDL in test 1?

[keith.lamothe]

My first thought is a cap of TDL should be able to stop roughly 125 Fighters (30% more than a cap).  Their utility is so high that if they are able to beat larger groups than that, they are all-in-one ships, with great combat potential and utility.  Since you knocked out 200 Fighters easy, that seems a tough concerning to me.  How would a full cap of Bombard work (prior to any nerf)?  I'm going to guess the Bombards do worse.  What about some other strong (but not anti-Fighter) bonus ships?  TDL shouldn't be out-killing as well as pure combat ships.

Just checking, but did you catch the bit where I said that I had a full cap of triangle ships (so just shy of 300 total, including the frigates which are anti-fighter) helping out?  This isn't just the TDLs.

No, I missed that.  What was the result without the TDL in test 1?

I didn't test it, but they would have won (outnumbering the AI wave and having a counter to it), just with more damage to the home FF.  If it had been bombers that could have been more of an issue.

[chemical_art]

TDL suffer from things that blade spawners and even zombards suffer from.

A certain critical mass, based on a relationship of your ships to enemy ships, occur.

Below critical mass #1, they completely dominate.

Above a larger critical mass #2, they drop off in effective ability drastically.

Between these two masses you have a mix.

This is true for any ship class, where your own forces dominate the enemy so much for whatever reason you suffer few losses, but it is really visible with things like tdl, spire blades, zombards, etc.

[TechSY730]

TDL suffer from things that blade spawners and even zombards suffer from.

A certain critical mass, based on a relationship of your ships to enemy ships, occur.

Below critical mass #1, they completely dominate.

Above a larger critical mass #2, they drop off in effective ability drastically.

Between these two masses you have a mix.

This is true for any ship class, where your own forces dominate the enemy so much for whatever reason you suffer few losses, but it is really visible with things like tdl, spire blades, zombards, etc.

This right here explains why low cap ships in AI hands are so scary, even if thu are balanced in human hands. Often times, this "critical ratio" will require >cap to reach in many battles, which the AI can get. It doesn't matter if the AI pays properly for it, near this point, the utility gained from one more ship far outweighs the ship cap scaled cost of that ship.

Yes, this happens with all ship types, but with low cap ships, this point tends to come earlier (like 2x cap for a low cap ship, but against the same force, it would be 3x cap for a higher cap ship), and the "sharpness" of the effectiveness near this point tends to be sharper for lower cap ships (so it is easier for a low cap ship force to swing between hyper useful and not all that worthwhile, while higher cap ships tend to be a bit more consistent).

Very, very complicated stuff to model though. 

[rabican]

i assumed little damage meant over 80% health remaining in test 3.

And generally would've done better against bomebers because of lower speed. 

Add in single riot and well, i dont know ,i expect things to be drastically different.

Bottom line : full mk I-IV caps of single bonus ship is enough to take out all the uncarried ai ships , thats bit much.

[keith.lamothe]

Bottom line : full mk I-IV caps of single bonus ship is enough to take out all the uncarried ai ships , thats bit much.

I didn't have mkIVs in any of these tests, but if I had it would have been 1+2+3+4 mk*caps.  All the uncarried ships would have been 1000 ships.  1000 mkI fighters (the closest to any of these tests) is a bit over 10 mk*caps.

Why would it be a problem for one to win over the other?