Thinking about blobbing

[keith.lamothe]

My concern was to make sure we were talking about the same thing because people were calling the fighter fragile but not calling the bomber fragile, when the fighter has more health (albeit less armor, which I had understood from previous feedback to be practically irrelevant).  Which makes me think there are some perception issues to work through somewhere in there.

[chemical_art]

The bomber may be slightly more fragile, but in firepower it is crazy stronger in perception, because of what it counters.

Anything that can't easily be counter by the generic blob most of the time needs moar bombers.

That fort? Those shields? Those golems? Those H/Ks?

More bombers.

[Philo]

I don't really see this a problem. Fighters are really good for the money. I'd say they are the best cost/efficiency wise of the basic ships. Bombers cost a lot of metal. Replacing them after a failed attack is no joke, then again when your fighters die it's not such a big deal.

For blobbing. As per another poster's suggestion, I think that Fighters could do well with some turbo-boosters/afterburner. This would at least alleviate some problems. I usually do split up my fleet when fighting, bombers against heavy targets and fighters + frigates against smaller craft. Leaving a small blob with Flagships to fight generic mass of enemies.
But having Fighters be really fast for a short time would be great to have them work as a small strike force inside the battlefield. Right now they get chewed up too badly by guardposts and other far hitting craft before getting in range of anything.

[doctorfrog]

The bomber may be slightly more fragile, but in firepower it is crazy stronger in perception, because of what it counters.

Anything that can't easily be counter by the generic blob most of the time needs moar bombers.

That fort? Those shields? Those golems? Those H/Ks?

More bombers.

Again I might be showing my noob stripes, but I kind of don't mind this. "Oh these nuts are kinda tough to crack? Send in the marines."

In the meantime, I weep very little when I lose a bunch of fighters, because I can always make more.

To re-echo Philo, which an echo of my earlier half-serious suggestion, what about gifting fighters a burst of speed? Say a very short-range teleport that only works once per time unit, and they can use it in an initial attack, or, if they calculate that their health is low, to kite, and probably make your CPU explode.

[Draco18s]

More bombers.

Again I might be showing my noob stripes, but I kind of don't mind this. "Oh these nuts are kinda tough to crack? Send in the marines."

I'd like to again point out the distribution of things that the bomber kills:
Structures (guard posts, which are every where, force fields, which are everywhere)
Fortresses (which murder everything but bombers, and bombers have a damage multiplier)
Hybrids (which the AI builds in multiples of 137)
Golems (exogalactic waves)
Avenger (obvious)
Hunter killers (which I've yet to see, but they sound relatively common for the late game)
Command stations (which you tend to want dead)
Some guardians
about third of all fleet ships*
most starships*

Compared to what fighters are good against:
Bombers
Some guardians
about a sixth of all fleet ships*

Or what frigates are good against:
fighters
some guardians
a handfull of low-hp fleet ships (swarmers)*

There's not even a problem of "well duh you get more of the right unit" it's a problem of "the right unit is ALWAYS the bomber."

*Made up values.  I don't feel like looking through the entire list of some 300 different units to figure this out.

[Hearteater]

Just to clarify my position, I don't want Fighters to be the primary fleet ship.  I want them to be a stronger counter to Bombers.

1) I'd like some extra speed on the Fighters, or somewhat less important, slower Bombers.  Basically, Bombers shouldn't be able to run from Fighters.  At present, with micro, Bombers beat Fighters because their range is greater and they are the same speed.  Worse, Bomber range goes up with Marks, while Fighter range stays the same.  I could see Fighters getting a +20% or 50% Speed Boost (+10% per mark?) which didn't stack with the +100% Speed Boost from friendly Command Stations.  This would result in no change on player defense, but more speed in enemy systems and for AI Fighters in general.

Since the AI uses a ton of mixed units on defense, I'd also like more Fighters seeded on systems to present a better threat against mindless Bomber blobs.

To make Fighters more important to players, I think their DPS hull multipliers need either go up, or get more diverse.  I favor the latter.  Would a x2.4 against Structural be terrible given they have less range than Bombers?  I could even see x2.4 against Heavy working.  And why just x5 Polycrystal?  I'd bump that to x6.

[TechSY730]

More bombers.

Again I might be showing my noob stripes, but I kind of don't mind this. "Oh these nuts are kinda tough to crack? Send in the marines."

I'd like to again point out the distribution of things that the bomber kills:
Structures (guard posts, which are every where, force fields, which are everywhere)
Fortresses (which murder everything but bombers, and bombers have a damage multiplier)
Hybrids (which the AI builds in multiples of 137)
Golems (exogalactic waves)
Avenger (obvious)
Hunter killers (which I've yet to see, but they sound relatively common for the late game)
Command stations (which you tend to want dead)
Some guardians
about third of all fleet ships*
most starships*

Compared to what fighters are good against:
Bombers
Some guardians
about a sixth of all fleet ships*

Or what frigates are good against:
fighters
some guardians
a handfull of low-hp fleet ships (swarmers)*

There's not even a problem of "well duh you get more of the right unit" it's a problem of "the right unit is ALWAYS the bomber."

*Made up values.  I don't feel like looking through the entire list of some 300 different units to figure this out.

This is somewhat exaggerated, but it does highlight why bombers are the "king" of the triangle right now.
As noted, a large part of it is due to the skewed hull type distribution.

[Martyn van Buren]

By the way, is it likely there are going to be nerfs to player economy?  The harvester and energy changes have made economic factors pretty trivial recently; I suspect that if players become more constrained by resources fighters' low cost may come to be a bigger factor in their favor.

[keith.lamothe]

By the way, is it likely there are going to be nerfs to player economy?  The harvester and energy changes have made economic factors pretty trivial recently

The difficulty is that feedback is heavily mixed on whether that is, in fact, true

[Wingflier]

Well we're kind of getting mixed messages here -

They've given us lots of resources so that we can rebuild our fleet quickly, but also want us to use our units intelligently in battle.

It's either one or the other.  If you have endless resources you can just blob your units together and throw them away every fight, then rebuild them all instantly.

However, the current game design doesn't give enough incentive (in my opinion) to use your individual units to their fullest potential, so nobody's doing that.

I think if we:

1. Buff Fighters (and counterparts) - health, speed, and damage.
2. Nerf Bombers speed.
3. Nerf the economy (Harvesters upgrades specifically).

You would have more incentive to use your resources wisely with the unit paradigms, while also not having as many resources to just throw things away.

[keith.lamothe]

Well we're kind of getting mixed messages here -

They've given us lots of resources so that we can rebuild our fleet quickly, but also want us to use our units intelligently in battle.

The mixed messages are going both ways   I'm still seeing people talk about refleeting times being too long.  But others are saying it's trivial now.  I can guess at the different underlying situations, but such guessing does not generally serve as a good foundation for changes.

It's either one or the other.

Maybe, but probably not: efficient use of units saves time.  Time is a resource not just because of m+c but because of what the AI does over time.   And m+c is not so generous right now that you can literally place dozens of space docks and flash-build your whole fleet (much less starships) every 30 seconds because you keep throwing it in the chipper-shredder.

[Wingflier]

Blobbing your units together isn't the same as throwing them over the chipper-shredder, it's just not as efficient as it possibly could be.  However, it's efficient enough that (with the current resource mechanics), there's little incentive not to do it in my experience.

However, assuming the resource mechanics were more strict, the pay off for using squad-based tactics doesn't seem worthwhile for the amount of effort the player expends.

It's cyclical problem in my observation. 

[keith.lamothe]

Blobbing your units together isn't the same as throwing them over the chipper-shredder, it's just not as efficient as it possibly could be.  However, it's efficient enough that (with the current resource mechanics), there's little incentive not to do it in my experience.

However, assuming the resource mechanics were more strict, the pay off for using squad-based tactics doesn't seem worthwhile for the amount of effort the player expends.

It's cyclical problem in my observation.

I would agree, which is one reason I'm not planning to do anything against blobbing in the near future: it's not ideal the way things are, but it's not really a big problem and there's a delicate balance I don't wish to upset at this time.

[Wingflier]

With the new armor rework, I agree it's probably better to focus on that.

Maybe in the future we could focus on it a little more.

[chemical_art]

I challenge anyone with too many resources to add 1 to their ai difficulty. So if you play 7.0 and commonly get too many resources, try playing 8.