The Avenger and Fallen Spire

[Maukka]

So I just recently finished a 7,7 Fallen Spire scenario with my friend and we both felt sorely disappointed by how much of a pushover the avenger was compared to the constant barrage of Golems and Spirecraft and the occasional motherships. Is it possible to make the avenger more of a threat by cranking up the AI difficulty or is he such a wimp on all difficulties?

We also felt that the Anti-starship Arachnid Guard Posts and ships were quite not up to their tasks when faced with anything bigger than Mark III capital ships. And the Mass Drivers were quite ineffective when we had Golems in play.

[Trandrin]

Depends on what you fight the avenger with. Fallen spire ships are kinda insane when it comes to damage. Fighting a Avenger with just fleet craft is harder, if you have super weapons (Golems, Spire Craft, Fallen Spire Ships) it makes him quite easy.

Mass Drivers are a sad thing. They are designed to break the big boys but are readily beat down with little fuss.

[Diazo]

An avenger is an awesome unit that has been overshadowed by newer features unfortunately.

The avenger is a base game unit and as such is balanced to fight a human fleet that does not have any of the fancy toys the players get these days.

Last time I fought the avenger with none of the fancy toys enabled (we are talking months ago), I had to neuter the AI homeworld, rebuild my fleet, including all my turrets, in the adjacent system as a road block. I then destroyed the AI home command and the avenger proceeded to blow through my entire cap of both mobile fleet ships and turrets.

Fortunately it is slow, I was able to rebuild a significant chunk of my fleet and destroyed it at my second roadblock system which was adjacent to my own homeworld.

I want to say make spawning multiple avengers possible depending on what options are enabled but I think leaving the avenger as a base game unit and realizing that is going to make it irrelevant against the fallen spire or golems is the way to go.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the forums

Yea, Avenger < Spire Capital Fleet, they're just on different scales of the game.   An Avenger would do well against a few of those ships, but not a whole black-sky-fleet of them.

If people really want it to scale up if you have Fallen Spire (or golems, or whatever) I can certainly make that happen by having it spawn multiple avengers, but I'm not sure that's actually desired.

[Maukka]

Would it be possible to just have a bigger and better and more awesome avenger spawn when Fallen spire is enabled? I mean if it had like 10 times more health and 3 times more hardpoints it might even be a noticeable threat to a spire capital fleet, which would be awesome.

[keith.lamothe]

Would it be possible to just have a bigger and better and more awesome avenger spawn when Fallen spire is enabled? I mean if it had like 10 times more health and 3 times more hardpoints it might even be a noticeable threat to a spire capital fleet, which would be awesome.

I believe the word for that unit is "mothership"   Not in the modules, but in the overall ability to stand up to the spire ships.

In general, it's much easier to spawn multiple copies of something than defining a new unit (which would be required by different stats), so that's generally what I try to do.

[Maukka]

Yeah we did see a mothership in that game and were quite pleased about how badass it was. It was pretty fun to notice that we had to flee for a change even though we had 3 spire dreadnaughts both of us and multiple golems in the fleet. However we didn't get to use our reserve of 60 Spire Rams on anything significant since the Avenger was easier than expected 

[Faulty Logic]

I really like the avenger as it is. It adds a lot to the satisfaction of FS to blow that particular ship up with little challenge.

[keith.lamothe]

I really like the avenger as it is. It adds a lot to the satisfaction of FS to blow that particular ship up with little challenge.

"Very well, puny human, we shall now unleash our fully armed and operational battlestation!"

*Ominous music - Dun Dun Dun dun-du-dun-

POP!

(spire fleet sails through vaporized debris)

[TechSY730]

Speaking of motherships, any merit to the idea of not having them auto-pop when the final FS push is going on, but suppress their "gives invincibility to the home command station" thing in this case?
It would be cool to see fleets of Mk. V hunter/killers + Motherships vs. high tier FS fleets.

[Kahuna]

Avengers are too easy and the game should be won only after both Avengers are destroyed. Being allowed to ignore them makes them completely pointless. It's like playing with Advanced Hybrids enabled but never having to worry about Dyson Antagonizer etc.

[KDR_11k]

Well, if you want a fitting avenger-equivalent... Spawn 3k gravity-immune raid starships.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, if you want a fitting avenger-equivalent... Spawn 3k gravity-immune raid starships.

I would think that's substantially more dangerous than an avenger, if they had the "bumrush the human home command station, I don't care where you are or what's going on" logic the avenger has.

[Kahuna]

3k gravity-immune raid starships.

What does that have to do with anything?

[keith.lamothe]

3k gravity-immune raid starships.

What does that have to do with anything?

Not exactly in line with the OP, but I think it falls under the closely related topic of "kill the player by any means necessary".