Tackle Drones on epic (slower) speed

[yobbo]

So I like to play on ultra low ship cap and with epic (slower) speed. And i've found that tackle drone launchers seem completely ridiculously overpowered. As soon as i see one, the primary objective of the scenario becomes "find and corrupt the design backup or else quit and start again".

Are they supposed to be that bad? I had a single Mk II tackle drone launcher take out my entire Mk I fleet all by itself. It just tackle droned them until they all died. I took that one out with a starship, but then it sends hundreds of these at me (and this is on low ship cap with hardly any AI progress), each one having as much health as a weak starship, and they have normal guns as well as the drones! It just seems silly.

I wonder if maybe they're worse on ultra-low ship cap or slower speed somehow? Like maybe they always tackle a certain distance and so that's more effective when ships are slower? Or they always tackle a certain number, so that's more effective when individual ships are more powerful?

I haven't even mentioned how my fleet uselessly shoots at the tackle drones in stead of other more valid targets.


I looked around a bit for info on how to deal with these, but all i found was "only use tractor-immune ships". Being completely unable to use all regular fleet ships because the AI has a certain ship type seems very wrong to me.

[keith.lamothe]

The epic speed would be hurting you there, but the tackle drone launchers do scale with ultra-low-ship-cap.

As for how to deal with them, I think others will have better advice.  Though corrupting the backup is probably what I'd do

[Histidine]

If a nerf is called for, we could give in to Isaac Newton's demands and make the drones slow down when they're tractoring something (so they reach their targets quickly, but then can't carry it off to the edge of the gravity well so easily).

If they're currently too hard to kill even when you close with them, perhaps nerf their health (and perhaps their guns as well)?

[yobbo]

I think the problem with their health was partly that there were so many of them. They seem to get sent in the same numbers as normal ships, even tho they're much more powerful. I couldn't use my fleet shipts to attack them, and a full contingent of starships and turrets killed maybe five out of the hundred.

I notied huge waves of zenith medic frigates as well, and those had a ship cap of something like 2 per level when i unlocked them o.O. But those are useless in large numbers anyway so i didn't really think anything of it.

I did also notice that even when ships were in attacking range, over half their shots went at the tackle drones in stead of the launcher, even tho shooting the drones was 100% futile. This resulted in far more than 50% wasted shots, as the launcher lived longer from not being shot, thus spawning more drones, thus diverting more shots, etc. The drones didn't even die, they just ate the shots,


I do think if the distance they tackled was halved to account for the slower ship movement speed they would have at least been manageable when i encountered them in an enemy system.

Well i mean they'd still annihilate my fleet. But there might have been the option of at least some of the fleet escaping, in stead of the whole fleet being a write-off as soon as a single tackle-drone was spotted.


In my latest game i managed to unlock snipers which countered them pretty hard (never found the tackle-drone backup). But i still had to micro the snipers to get them to actually shoot the launchers. Seemed like they preferred to shoot pretty much anything else in stead.

[ArnaudB]

Beachheading with turrets, spreading the mobile builder over the map to avoid them getting tackled to death.

I am unsure if it works, but I vaguely recall using champion force-fields to snatch the tackled units, in the same way that a forcefield can prevent a widow from leaving with half your fleet.

[keith.lamothe]

I think the problem with their health was partly that there were so many of them. They seem to get sent in the same numbers as normal ships, even tho they're much more powerful.

It may appear that way, but the AI does pay more for the more powerful ships.  Basically directly connected with the ship cap on your side.  So if the MkI fighter cap is 192, and the MkI tackle drone launcher cap is 8 (I forget what it would be then, but you get the idea), then a tackle drone launcher would cost the AI 24 times as much as a fighter of the same mark.

If you want to see the math, you can turn on Advanced Logging and check the logs for wave calculations, etc.

In this case, though, I'm not at all certain what mechanic you're encountering.

My guess is that you're attacking some planet that's at least somewhat important to the AI, so it's sending in the Special Forces.  The SF, past a certain point in the game, is generally big enough to overwhelm a good-sized player attack if you don't do something clever to deal with them.  And the SF does have a special place in its black heart for Tackle Drone Launchers, though it does pay the correct rate for them.

If you post a save we may be able to figure out why you're getting slammed with so many TDL's.

On the drones, they start losing health much faster when they've got something tractored (and the faster with the more stuff tractored), but perhaps not quick enough.

On the targeting, I did put flags on various drone types to discourage the autotargeting from them, but perhaps something is awry there.

[Hearteater]

In my latest game i managed to unlock snipers which countered them pretty hard (never found the tackle-drone backup). But i still had to micro the snipers to get them to actually shoot the launchers. Seemed like they preferred to shoot pretty much anything else in stead.

If you manually target something with a unit, that unit will be set as its preferred target (you can see the units preferred target by hovering over it) until you manually click on another unit. Units with preferred targets do just that, prefer that target strongly. I use this all the time for Sniper Turrets on Raid Starships in important systems. Note that when there are multiple marks, it prefers the exact match first, then units of that type but a different mark, then finally whatever else it can find. The biggest downside to this is you can't set a preferred target (unless I missed something in the last year of patch notes) until you actually that unit actually shows up to be targeted the first time. I've always wanted to be able to set this when scrolling through all the ships available in the planetary summary.

[yobbo]

Beachheading with turrets, spreading the mobile builder over the map to avoid them getting tackled to death.

I am unsure if it works, but I vaguely recall using champion force-fields to snatch the tackled units, in the same way that a forcefield can prevent a widow from leaving with half your fleet.

Ohhh, yes forcefields do protect against them.

Turns out you can even put down a pair of forcefields, and put your fleet just outside them in the "crease" they make, and they get tackled back but stop where the forcefields join.

It may appear that way, but the AI does pay more for the more powerful ships.  Basically directly connected with the ship cap on your side.  So if the MkI fighter cap is 192, and the MkI tackle drone launcher cap is 8 (I forget what it would be then, but you get the idea), then a tackle drone launcher would cost the AI 24 times as much as a fighter of the same mark.

If you want to see the math, you can turn on Advanced Logging and check the logs for wave calculations, etc.

In this case, though, I'm not at all certain what mechanic you're encountering.

Ahh then i guess that attack was just intended to utterly destroy me ><. I didn't think to save, so i'm not actually sure what kind of attack it was. I thought it was a normal wave, but maybe not.

On the targeting, I did put flags on various drone types to discourage the autotargeting from them, but perhaps something is awry there.

Hmm, i tested with a pair of battleships but i don't remember if i just moved them next to it, or if i attack-moved them. I just looked for another to test against but i seem to have killed all the ones in the local neighbourhood.

Is there some way to spawn units to fight against each other? Some sort of debug command or cheat maybe?

I'll mess around more next time i see one.

If you manually target something with a unit, that unit will be set as its preferred target (you can see the units preferred target by hovering over it) until you manually click on another unit. Units with preferred targets do just that, prefer that target strongly.

Ohhh neat! I had no idea I guess i'll have to put more effort into defending my veteran "cleverer" snipers.

[Hearteater]

Is there some way to spawn units to fight against each other? Some sort of debug command or cheat maybe?

There are cheats. Specifically you are looking for "ilostit,TackleDroneLauncher,0,0,8,8" which will spawn 8 Tackle Drone Laucnhes (the first 8) controlled by AI1 (the second 8) at 0,0 (the center of the system). Easiest to play against a 1/1, move to a neighboring system and use "cleanup aisle three" to wipe the system. Then spawn your units first ("ilostit,Fighter,0,0,96,0" to give yourself a cap of Fighters) move them back into position, and then spawn the AI. If you fight in your home system the AI units can easily get distracted by things like your metal resources and CS. Don't use "cleanup aisle three" in your home system btw.

[Draco18s]

Don't use "cleanup aisle three" in your home system btw.

Giggle.

[yobbo]

Okay, test one: bomber starship vs tackle drone launcher:

The bomber starship definitely preferred to shoot the drones rather than the launcher.


Test two: 24 fighters, 24 bombers, 24 missile frigates VS two mk II tackle drone launchers

A) normal ship-cap (and thus strength) and normal speed
result: easy fleet victory.
forces remaining:
  * 17 fighters 37%/14%
  * 13 bombers 45%/9%
  * 24 missile frigates 81%/32%

B) ultra-low ship-cap and epic (slower) speed
result: complete fleet annihilation.
tackle drone health: 15%, 32%

C) normal ship-cap, epic (slower) speed
result: complete fleet annihilation.
tackle drone health: 10%, 35%


So the epic speed is what makes the difference, and ship cap doesn't change the result.

While doing the tests I noticed that drones have their health and attack scaled just like ships,
but
their speed is not scaled.

drone speed was 610 in every case, leading to overpowered tackle drones when ships were slower.

conversely tackle-drones are probably vastly underpowered on blitz speed.


One other thing i noticed was that tackle drones actually miss at max range.
They seem to consistently aim off to the side by some constant angle.

[Draco18s]

One other thing i noticed was that tackle drones actually miss at max range.
They seem to consistently aim off to the side by some constant angle.

Its due to the internal approximations for math functions that make the game run faster.  Other things are affected by it too, they're just less noticeable.

[keith.lamothe]

One other thing i noticed was that tackle drones actually miss at max range.
They seem to consistently aim off to the side by some constant angle.

Its due to the internal approximations for math functions that make the game run faster.  Other things are affected by it too, they're just less noticeable.

Actually it's not (primarily) for cpu-speed that the angles are off, it's that anything sim-related has to use our fixed-point math instead of floating point math.  So sine and cosine and arctan and such functions are approximated.  Not very accurately, in some cases.

That's also why the wrath lance's rotation isn't smooth.  I tested it with double-precision angle instead and it was perfectly smooth, but it would cause desyncs in multiplayer since floating-point math is not deterministic across machines.

I actually cheated with the new Encapsulated map type, though, and used floating-point for computing the angles of the outer ring points, since that's at mapgen and is sync'd forcibly rather than simulated in parallel.  The only smooth ellipse in the game, possibly

[Alex Heartnet]

Okay, test one: bomber starship vs tackle drone launcher:

The bomber starship definitely preferred to shoot the drones rather than the launcher.

Why'd you choose a bomber starship in particular for testing?

Bomber Starships have a very short range, so of course they are going to take potshots at drones before the launcher is in range.

A raid starship would reach the launcher a LOT faster then a bomber starship.  Get in, kill the launcher, pull out, send in fleet.

A Riot Starship costs almost the same amount of metal and comes with a (small) forcefield.  Formation-move anyone?  Create a line of Riot Starships and put them in front of the tackle drones or behind your fleet?  Add your Champion to the formation as well?  Maybe even a wall of Shield Bearers?

[yobbo]

I used a bomber starship just because they don't seem to get any bonuses vs. any particular hull type, so i figured their targetting priorities should be in some way "default".

I should've specified that i made sure it was in range of both the launcher and its spawned drones.

I moved the bomber right next to the launcher. When there was no drone in range, it shot the launcher. But every time the launcher spawned a drone, the bomber preferred to shoot at the spawned drone, rather than the launcher.

A wall of riot starships… i'm going to try that next time i come across these horrible things