Those starship deconstructers hard-counter starship deep-strikes

[Fleet]

I'm not calling for an immediate change, but I was pretty annoyed when my complement of Mk I raid starships were eaten up. I not only lost them prematurely (they could have lasted longer and killed more structure), but I could not build more because they were still alive...The raids seem to have very little utility as a deep-raider when these deconstucters are in play. As in, they can't do anything.

[Lancefighter]

i personally am completely against units that 'eat' units.. the maws and these.

I see no reason for my starship, or even fleet ships, being taken prisoner and completely unable to do anything

If a starship eater eats a spire starship, id hope that starship does some shooting in the belly of the beast. But as it is now, the ship is just *poof* removed from the map.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Stasis fields .  That's how they keep from getting their internals from shout out.  That or unobtanium. 

As it is right now, does the AI have an "effective" counter against starships?  I mean, you can shoot the deconstructors and get your ships back, so its not like its totally killing them.  But the problem I see is that the AI lacks an effective counter against starships that doesn't involve a non-moving structure.

King

[Fleet]

Stasis fields .  That's how they keep from getting their internals from shout out.  That or unobtanium. 

As it is right now, does the AI have an "effective" counter against starships?  I mean, you can shoot the deconstructors and get your ships back, so its not like its totally killing them.  But the problem I see is that the AI lacks an effective counter against starships that doesn't involve a non-moving structure.

King

In deep-strike situations, or even a few hops out (with AI Eyes on the way), I can't easily bring other ships to hit the deconstructers. And if I use transports, then I just totally failed at doing a precision strike since I just brought my fleet in! The right guardian can wtfpawn starships, so I feel that the AI can counter starships easily.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Stasis fields .  That's how they keep from getting their internals from shout out.  That or unobtanium. 

As it is right now, does the AI have an "effective" counter against starships?  I mean, you can shoot the deconstructors and get your ships back, so its not like its totally killing them.  But the problem I see is that the AI lacks an effective counter against starships that doesn't involve a non-moving structure.

King

In deep-strike situations, or even a few hops out (with AI Eyes on the way), I can't easily bring other ships to hit the deconstructers. And if I use transports, then I just totally failed at doing a precision strike since I just brought my fleet in! The right guardian can wtfpawn starships, so I feel that the AI can counter starships easily.

Which guardians?  I don't tend to do deep strikes so I'm curious at this point. 

Although I guess I can agree with Starship deconstructors maybe being OP, I'd say the fleet maws are pretty well balanced.  Game earlier today we both owned our own Maws and the AI used them frequently.  I didn't see too much wrong with them. 

King

[Winter Born]

If I were going to tweak the maw's I would have them digest things faster. I used them to great effect against the Hybrid ships.

[Irxallis]

Right now we are in the middle of a game where one of AIs has maws.

- A batch of ~12 mark2 scouts was completely eaten (grav drill + tachyon guardian + maw, I guess). The galaxy filter for scouts shows only 8 while I have the cap full (20/20) in the docks. For the love of everything horrible, PLEASE, make scouts of all things immune to being devoured - they are the only unit you just cannot replace in, well, scouting (especially if this happened about 5 hops away from any civilised world). If it comes to this I will have to unlock scouts mk3 only to be able to scout anything further than 3 hops away (and hope the cap of 30 is enough to find all A-Prime generators).

- I sent a fleet of ~250 ships mk2 against a planet and escaped with ~27; I couldn't outdamage maws' eating them (it was a mk2 planet). If not for my partner's quick reaction and combined fleet of all of our ships (tier1, tier2, tier3) I would have been crippled beyond recovery.

Now, I don't mean maws are a bad concept but I would really appreciate if:

- I could get any information if any ships of mine are eaten (I've searched ~3 minutes on pause for 5 scouts of my partner and I couldn't find them neither with filter nor with good old 'look at the planet and count' way; we concluded those were devoured but we have no way to PROVE it).

- There was an option to self-destruct the devoured ships. I can live with having to rebuild my fleet after being eaten. My loss, as I didn't anticipate to be that outmatched. I cannot live with NOT having any ships for insanely long time; I have to wait, wait, wait and wait until they get digested and waste the time pointlessly before that happens.

Of course, the same concerns disassembler starships and any other ship which can devour ships :-).