Teleport battlestations - OP

[superking]

I have spent the last few days playing with teleport battlestations and have concluded they are grossly OP, from both the AI using them and me using them. by grossly OP, I mean that I now see no reason to ever choose a different starting unit with them as is.

my reasoning:

• very low cost relative to shipcap makes replacing losses extremely quick and easy
• Small energy costs combined with small shipcap makes them extremely cheap to run
• teleportation makes for supreme, unmatched mobility
• battlestations scale up extremely well over MKs, gaining massive DPS increase each MK. compared to eg armour ships, each MK is a HUGE improvement.
• they have unmatched DPS- they are actually capable of taking down shields, like bombers, purely through merit of raw damage. they are also relatively good against capital ships (40 or so will take down a flagship in seconds, which is dumb), buildings, turrets for the same reason. they usually acheive a 2000% kill ratio
• they perform excellent anti-swarm vs weak ships with their multiple shots
• they are effective against turrets

given that they are v. powerful, extremely mobile and cheap to replace & maintain, effective in both offense, defence, anti-turret, anti shield and at higher MKs justify knowlege expenditure by scaling up well, why should I ever choose a different different unit? maximum mobility and damage output should be balanced against some kind of real disadvantage and cost...

[Lancefighter]

lighting turrets murder them?

i remember last time i used them a single lightning turret was enough to make a literal no-go zone for teleport stations

[RCIX]

Yea, lightning turrets are poison to them. And i'd be surprised if the AI doesn't start mixing them in everywhere.

[Wingflier]

In defense of OP's argument, lightning turrets owned by the AI are fairly easy to avoid with a little planning.  I don't see that as a tremendous drawback to the ship.  I'm not saying one way or another, but that sounds like a very superficial "weakness".

[RCIX]

Not really; aren't Telestations short range? and when lightning turrets are near each guard post they become very useless.

[superking]

Not really; aren't Telestations short range? and when lightning turrets are near each guard post they become very useless.

teleportation makes range a non-issue in most circumstances

[Lancefighter]

not completely useless, but excellent mobile defense (as stated).

I generally use them as a heavy micro unit in the beginning (for instance hit the command center with suicide forces, use tele stations to clean up unis as they leave protective lightning cover) as they are fairly useful in that role early on.

As well, midgame they make excellent defense against special forces and the like, or an excellent bolster to a wave someplace..

However, the later the game gets, the less i tend to use them. they cant stand with a force because of their insane weakness to lightning, and their teleport. as a mopup force they lose potency as numbers increase late-game (you max out around 120 of them with mk4, 40 of which die if someone sneezes..)

*shrug* late game they are a pure defensive force on my 'hole in the wall' planet, but they are useful early on because they are so fast and powerful. unfortunately their speed and power do not scale well as the game progresses.
*excuse my tiredness


as per superking's range .. .er.... lightning turrets have more range then telestations iirc.

[RCIX]

Not really; aren't Telestations short range? and when lightning turrets are near each guard post they become very useless.

teleportation makes range a non-issue in most circumstances

Ok, what happens is this:
Telestations decide to teleport to attack a lightning-turret protected outpost.
The lightning turrets go off, absolutely shredding the Telestations
They get off one burst at max, which doesn't do much

[Wingflier]

No this is what happens.  Telestations blink around the whole planet, killing every non-lightning-protected wormhole.  Then, the player sends in bombers to take out the rest.  Everybody's home before dinner.

[RogueThunder]

• very low cost relative to shipcap makes replacing losses extremely quick and easy

True. Although do consider they have very low HP per shipcap. I could definately see raising their cost

• Small energy costs combined with small shipcap makes them extremely cheap to run

Somewhat. They have the same per-cap energy use as standard fighters. Their per-ship energy cost is actually notable. 200 per. It's just their tiny shipcap (25%) that makes this not an issue.

• teleportation makes for supreme, unmatched mobility

Mostly true. There are however issues with teleportaion. For instance anytime you move without forcing formation, or ever (dare) specifically attack a target(God forbid you ever want to set target preference on something that's actually a threat...). All ships emerge on a point. This results in anything AOE obliterating a practically unlimited number of teleports, preticularly once past a certain threashold of not-very-much. One autobomb(who are immune to minor elec) can cause a local no-teleport zone, or high loss zone at best. Granade launchers require a few more. But do much the same over a larger range, and mobile.
Edit: Additionally, the AI reacts to seeing teleport units by building vastly more lighting turrets. /edit...

• battlestations scale up extremely well over MKs, gaining massive DPS increase each MK. compared to eg armour ships, each MK is a HUGE improvement.

[[/list]

Yes and no. And abnormally? Not for a damage focused ship. Their MkI are actually somewhat meak. Scaling up somewhat bomber-like when hitting MkII(MkI bombers, suck.)

• they have unmatched DPS- they are actually capable of taking down shields, like bombers, purely through merit of raw damage. they are also relatively good against capital ships (40 or so will take down a flagship in seconds, which is dumb), buildings, turrets for the same reason. they usually acheive a 2000% kill ratio

In my rather extensive use of teleport stations, I found only MkI and sometimes MkII shields to actually be safely feasible for tele stations, though MkII depends on how much stuff is fiering on them. MkIII are simply too high hp unless there's very little/nothing killing you. Remember, these buggers have very little HP, both individually and per cap.
Additionally I disagree with their strength vs capital ships. Flagships and higher in particular eat tele stations at a fairly steady rate--though tele stations are equally deadly back. They're also exceptionally vulnerable to leach star-ships... beam star-ships find them to be absolutely delicious... Raid starships can take quite a chunk out of a cap fleet if higher than lv1, though it must be granted teleports are one of the few things to ~catch~ raid star-ships.
Also, despite impressive damage. They have fairly few and narrow focused bonuses. Being good vs fighters, and most swarm ships. Oh, and tanks. Though tanks rip them a large one too and they miss them alot.

• they perform excellent anti-swarm vs weak ships with their multiple shots

Seems intended, given the multishot. I mean, thats rather the purpose of multishot.

• they are effective against turrets

What? You do mean... Completely unable to damage right? Because seriously. Turrets=Immune minor elec damage... Teleports(both kinds)=deal minor elec damage. Only exception being flak turrets for a few patches in prerelease a few weeks back.
Furthermore a few equal mark lighting turrets render either a very micro intensive assault, or complete no-teleport zone.
There are many targets one would wish they could hit that they cant due to their minor-elec damage. This is one of their counterbalances.

The last one makes me wonder how much you've really used them... Because literally. They are 100% ineffective vs turrets.

All said, being a heavy teleport user, both stations and raiders. Stations could use costing about +50-100% more resources. Would make loosing them far more painful(by which I mean more than slightly). Probably also bring them to bomber-energy-cost-per-cap. Which would be double current to 400.

[superking]

wo ho ho I must have been tripping balls about the turret effectiveness 

[sil]

I made a post in the favourite extra unit thread about tele station and I do think they are somewhat unbalanced in single player as long as they are microd properly. Fact of the matter is that if you use the pause function to micro your tele stations their survivability becomes absolutely obscene. It is quite easy to hit 5-10 guard posts(normal, core or spec force) with a single stack of tele stations and have at least half survive by judicious pause button usage. It is easy to have 90% survive by moving them to a mob repair station pit stop in between insta popping stuff. I'd say that they are considerably more balanced in coop games since the amount of micro they require will usually take your full attention(if you want to use them properly).

Mines are also nasty against them. I don't seem to lose many of them to lightning turrets maybe in SP the AI just doesn't build enough? Anyway their price seems almost irrelevant to me because they fulfill an unbelievably powerful role. Against ships that they do well fighting(most ship types) they can solo waves of up to 3-400 mkIIs and do this in a minute or less with minimal casualties. Since they make turrets almost completely unnecessary I don't see how making them even 4-5 times more expensive/slow to build would convince me to get a different bonus ship, if my goal is to min/max to the best of my ability.

On the one hand I don't want to see them nerfed because they are so fun to play with. On the other it is unbelievably more difficult to play without them, to the point where their power does seem to break the game:

1. They are the 100% perfect counter for all the obnoxious fast/cloaked/tractor immune ships that the AI might send against you; in fact they are the best tool in your defensive arsenal against waves/border aggression/cpas(especially cpas), better than any other ship, better than a turret ball many times more expensive.

2. They are the best guard post and comm station killers(not sure if warp gates are immune to them).

3. With decent kiting you can probably kill any group of ships they AI sends against you with them(actually I'm sure there are exceptions, Z Mirrors, elec shuttles, melee ships would take a long time and be really tedious). They have the highest dps of any ship and seem to do solid damage to pretty much everything that moves. Realistically however, the stuff that they have a hard time killing isn't all that dangerous to you, it tends to have gimmicky attacks or be melee and/or slow. Which leads us to:

4. They MELT swarming ships. A I-III cap will take out 4-500 infiltrators/gatlings/parasites in under 2 minutes if memory serves. All the while taking absurdly low casualties. As mentioned above they destroy all the shiptypes that normally give you defensive headaches.


Realistically what else do you want to do in the game? Break buildings, k they can't do that at all so you want bombers. Raid Distribs/Data Centers/Coprocs. Pop stuff into a transport ship and 90% of ships in the game can do this job just fine. Kill fortresses, bombers again. Tele stations are the most useful unit to have in virtually every other phase of the game. I'd love to see some theorized situations in which a different bonus ship performs better(short of fighting Grav Driller, and potentially One Way Doormaster and even then they are still extremely useful).



Tele stations have the best mobility in the game, which also translates into great survivability; they have the best dps against a huge, huge array of targets; and they are sufficiently cheap to be used much like any other fleet ship. I would personally still be picking them as my bonus ship if their resource/energy/time to build cost were all multiplied by 5. Probably even beyond that.

[superking]

^ this

[soMe_RandoM]

Electric Shuttles vrs teliporting turtle for the win