EtherJet Attack Boost bug?

[Kahuna]

Are EtherJets supposed to be immune to attack boosting? Because they seem to be immune to it even though it's not listed in their immunities.

Maybe it has something to do with cloaking?

I attached a save file. My fleet is in Mondilape.

[Alex Heartnet]

I'm not quite sure what the point of even having weapons on EtherJets is anyway.

All it does is uncloaks the ship, allowing it to be shot at by the enemy that it is dragging.

[Hearteater]

They work best when you send them in second, behind some ships to fill up the AI targeting lists. Sending Fighters through a worm hole followed by EtherJets works well. Just pop in and out with the EtherJets and they'll each bring back an enemy, while you lose mostly super-cheap Fighters. They are also solid against both Fighters and Bombers. When you consider their speed they are actually pretty decent, if a little micro-intensive. We could use some better controls for handling ships with tractors, and I've always been partial to changing tractors so they don't grant infinite range to the victim. We play with thousands of ships, I don't really care if some ship gets to tractor something else such that it can't shoot back. But I think it used to work that way and got changed, so it is quite possible there were some problems with that design.

[Draco18s]

Mostly that change was so that bombers could "retaliate" against Tractor Beam Turrets.

[Hearteater]

I knew there was a reason. However, Tractor Turret ranges are 2700, 3550, and 4400 for Mark I through III. Bombers are range 4000, 4200, 4400, 4600, and 4800 for Mark I through V. So Mark III+ bombers can always hit the turrets. Mark I and II can only get stopped by Mark III Tractor Turrets. I think I'd rather see -400 range on Tractor turrets. Or really, do they need increasing range by Mark? They already get a ton more tractors, extra armor and health when they go up in mark. Keep the range at 2700 across the board and up Mark II and III health more.

[Draco18s]

Relative ranges have probably changed since it was first done.  And I'm pretty sure it was bombers.

All I remember is that there was some unit that was out-ranged by the only tractoring unit in the game at the time (the turret, although etherjets may have existed) and was incapable of freeing itself.  Which could lead to situations where you could have 400 units caught in tractor beams, incapable of dealing damage, with no damage-dealing turrets surviving that could fire on the trapped units.

So it was decided that tractored units should always be able to fire on their captor, to break the unintentional stalemate.

[Hearteater]

I can't imagine how you could stalemate in that situation, at least now. You can always build more turrets to kill them if needed, and Sniper turrets should be out of range, so they'd always be available. Maybe a sniper and missile immune ship, with < 2700 attack range could be an issue, assuming it wasn't also immune to tractors. But I think the situation could at least bare review. The Black Widow Golem would love to hear about a change .

[Draco18s]

Oh, it was an edge case for sure, but the fact that tractor turrets could stop a triangle unit perfectly with no retaliation possible made them "too good."

Mind, this was also changed waaaay back when the AI got turrets.