I feel like I really want the days of the old engine back. I dunno, it just felt better. Felt like it handled lots of stuff without dieing. That feeling probably has something to do with caps being dropped in half since the change. But since I'm pretty sure we arent getting that back..
Should lightning warheads instead become a sort of Ion warhead? A very large range weapon that just straight up instakills n mkx targets (where n probably scales by mk, and x is well.. mk.)
My main concern about the difference between warheads and martyrs is that martyrs will tractor a ton of targets and keep them in position, as well as having a (iirc) bigger aoe to begin with. (looks like 1.5k*mk lightning, 3->5k on martyrs). Id kinda like to just make that bigger. And by bigger, I mean kinda mapwide. Maybe just 20k? range? That sounds large, but it might be too short.
Anyway, basic proposal:
Ion Warhead Mk N
AIP +N
Instakills Mk N+2 ships and below
Deals N,000 engine damage
N0,000 range
Hits N,000 targets.
Some sort of magical "hits targets inside of carriers"
I feel like this properly solves the question of "how many targets do i kill" (by directly killing n thousand) while providing a very clear cut reason as to WHY it kills n thousand targets. Also, exo-waves include far too many units. I wanted to make this N+2 instakilling to make mk1 warheads useful (clearing waves for pretty much all game), while also making mk3 warheads worth their expense, and justify them as a big warhead.
Id of course also suggest a corollary to this, the Mass Warhead, which blows up big things.. Probably through just high impact damage, pretending they are spirecraft rams? then probably leave martyrs where they are? I dont know this is complicated. Honestly id probably just merge spire rams and martyrs into a sort of impact damage+aoe thing with tractors. Maybe even give them a damage bonus for each thing they have tractored? (also, I would do a similar thing for mini-rams, aka 'the shitty autobomb', give them some aoe damage on top of their impact damage (thought - Any damage that isnt dealt as direct damage becomes area damage? Not sure how the numbers would work out) Better at blowing up starships still, but not terrible against everything else. )
Honestly, what strikes me right now as a problem of aiwar is that there is relatively little way to actually deal with 'groups' of enemy ships. I think this is probably a design decision, but when your ships are literally hard capped in the amount of firepower you can actually bring to the enemy, it makes dealing with some things feel quite literally out of your control. You cant really fight an exo-wave to death without either murdering large parts of it at a chokepoint in waves, or attritioning it to death (which is VERY hard given the build rates of 'big' ships, and the low value-per-ship of small ships.. without true attrition devices)
Then again, like I said - A lot of this is by design. Youre not supposed to be able to field a fleet that matches the AI at pretty much any point in the game. Also I think I've gone on about 5 tangents in this post alone, but its okay because the entire thread is currently in tangent-land
(also seriously I hate carriers so much)
