Underpowered Units and Quick Fixes

[Faulty Logic]

*cracks knuckles*

This thread is for not for minor faction balancing. A lot of units have outdated stats, or, more frequently, their stats in no way describe their in-game performance.

Here are the units I think are severely underpowered; I either never unlock them, or only do so after units which are strictly superior. In the case of the fleet ships, I would always unlock the three triangles before them.

Starships
Raid Starships :  Health from 20000*mk to 50000*mk
Scout starships mkII and III : Some reason to exist
Lightning starship : Double DPS

Econ
Logistics stations : k costs to 2000/3000 for mkII/III
Warp Jammers : eliminate ongoing cost, reduce to k cost to 2000

Support
Hardened force fields : double health
miniforts : add small forcefield
Exo-shield : eliminate energy cost
Spacetime manipulators : reduce energy cost, add cloaking

Turrets
Lightning Turret : remove forcefield penalty, double dps
Flak Turret : remove forcefield penalty, double dps

Other
Experimental translocators : Health to 20000, anti-focus fire logic
Experimental microparasites : Health to 20000
Warbird Starship : Health to 600,000, Base attack from 160 to 250
Beam Starship : Health to 500,000, base attack from 880 to 2000

Fleet ships
Armor booster : should give a flat armor boost of ~25 or 50, rather than multiplying.
Armor ship : double armor
Armor rotter: double multipliers
Attractor drone : double ship cap
Autocannon minipod : double ship cap
Cutlass : double ship cap, add gravity immunity
Electric shuttle : double DPS
Etherjets : double health, increase ship cap to double normal cap ships
Eye bots : remove speed boost immunity, add Medium multiplier
Gravity ripper : triple DPS
Infiltrator : triple ship cap
Laser gatling : double ship cap
Tachyon microfighter : increase ship cap to double normal cap ships
Mirror : double health and armor
MLRS : double dps
Paralyzer : triple health
Raider : speed to 296, cloaking
Teleporting leech : double health
Vampire claw : double health and DPS
Viral shredder : double health and DPS

Edit: when I say "double ship cap" I mean leaving the individual ship stats untouched, thus doubling capDPS, capHealth, et cetera.

[Hearteater]

Starships
Raid Starships :  Health from 20000*mk to 50000*mk
Scout starships mkII and III : Some reason to exist
Lightning starship : Double DPS

Raid Starships: No. They are already among the strongest starships. The additional abilities they gain at Mark II and III is reason enough to unlock them, they don't need health too.
Scout Starships: They have a reason: they get more cloak boasting, better tachyon range and better radar dampening. The could be renamed to Escort Starships so they role is more apparent. Also, they do NOT list counter sniper on the abilities list which appears to be a bug. I could see counter missiles coming down from Mark IV to Mark III, but it would probably be too strong for the K cost. It would have to be more limited.
Lightning Starship: I'm not sure the buff here is so simple. Elec shuttles also have issues and the solution might be something more general to the point-blank AOE ship classes.

Econ
Logistics stations : k costs to 2000/3000 for mkII/III
Warp Jammers : eliminate ongoing cost, reduce to k cost to 2000

Logistics: I'd rather see them buffed, if they even need it, than break the K-cost across CS upgrades. But the gravity effect plus high salvage rate makes me think they are fine.
Warp Jammers: These are extremely strong so I don't think they need reduced K cost. I don't like -metal costs though, so I'd be fine with that going.

Support
Hardened force fields : double health
miniforts : add small forcefield
Exo-shield : eliminate energy cost
Spacetime manipulators : reduce energy cost, add cloaking

Hardened: No, just no. They already are 25% stronger than regular FF except against units with AP.
Miniforts: Yes, these need something. There have been a lot of suggestions. Force Field is a good one.
Exo-shield: I'd say get rid of these. They don't really serve much purpose. They protect income by (indirectly) costing income? It isn't like it is very costly to rebuild harvesters.
Spacetime Manipulators: I've never actually used these. Same bug as Scout Starships, their speed boost ability isn't listed. The energy cost seems too high, but I don't know that they need cloaking.

Turrets
Lightning Turret : remove forcefield penalty, double dps
Flak Turret : remove forcefield penalty, double dps

I don't think either of these need the FF change. They already have an advantage under FFs. Flak DPS is fine. Lightning turrets have the point blank AOE issue, same as Lightning Starships and EShuttles.

Other
Experimental translocators : Health to 20000, anti-focus fire logic
Experimental microparasites : Health to 20000
Warbird Starship : Health to 600,000, Base attack from 160 to 250
Beam Starship : Health to 500,000, base attack from 880 to 2000

It is very possible these need work. I've used them so rarely. The translocators I remember being really bad.

Fleet ships
Armor booster : should give a flat armor boost of ~25 or 50, rather than multiplying. Yes, although not sure exactly what numbers
Armor ship : double armor Yes
Armor rotter: double multipliers I'd rather it allowed armor to go negative, making it add to damage
Attractor drone : double ship cap No (see high ship cap)
Autocannon minipod : double ship cap No (see high ship cap)
Cutlass : double ship cap, add gravity immunity No (see ammo immunities)
Electric shuttle : double DPS No (see point-blank AOE)
Etherjets : double health, increase ship cap to double normal cap ships No (see high ship cap)
Eye bots : remove speed boost immunity, add Medium multiplier Speed boost immunity is to protect humans. I suggest +1 reload, keep DPS for better alpha from cloak
Gravity ripper : triple DPS A little boring. Have it add target's Speed to damage and add Gravity Effect immunity.
Infiltrator : triple ship cap No (see high ship cap)
Laser gatling : double ship cap No (see high ship cap)
Tachyon microfighter : increase ship cap to double normal cap ships No (see high ship cap)
Mirror : double health and armor Health is fine. Armor might stand an increase. Interaction with x10 damage taken seems odd.
MLRS : double dps No, very solid DPS already
Paralyzer : triple health No, way too strong already
Raider : speed to 296, cloaking Solid speed already and cloaking is for Raptors. Give these 1000 or so engine health.
Teleporting leech : double health Call it 2k health. I'd also like to see their multipliers rounded up to 4 instead of 3.2
Vampire claw : double health and DPS No (see ammo immunities)
Viral shredder : double health and DPS No (see ammo immunities)

I've inlined my responses in green above.

High Ship Cap: Something does need to be done for these ships. Just increasing their ship cap probably isn't it. Some, like Laser Gatlings, might be just really bad hull multipliers (x1.. I think base DPS needs to come up for these ships. Laser Gatlings deal 227% of Fighter DPS. But when you consider how quickly they die (and their x1.8 multiplier) I suspect they actual DPS output is at or below Fighters. I'd try x2 damage to see how that works out. I'd like to see a "multi-hit" ability that makes an attack hit more than once (so armor applies to each hit) but those hits can't be split between targets. I'd consider LGs and Autopods getting multi-hit 3.

Ammo Immunity: Blades and Fusion Cutters have too many immunities that really hurt them. Fusion Cutters exclusively because of the Viral Shredders replicating of high-hp structures.

Point-blank AOE: Often the DPS works out well on paper, but it just doesn't feel good in practice. Many of these units have really high reload which makes it very easy for their damage to get cut short in battle. Do we still have the performance issues that prevented them from having lower reloads?

[Vacuity]

Gravity ripper : triple DPS A little boring. Have it add target's Speed to damage and add Gravity Effect immunity.

I don't have time to respond with my opinion on everything here, but this is a *really* neat idea.  With the problem that as the ships slows down after the first hit it's taking... less damage?
What I'd say would make it even neater would be an inverse function of the target's speed, where slow ships take more damage and fast ships take more damage, and as the shots slow the target down it would actually *do more damage after the first hit*.

On the other hand, this kind of bonus would be non-trivial for a player to calculate in-game and may be better avoided, but it's still a cool idea.

[Hearteater]

I actually meant its speed stat, not current speed . So damage would be consistent. The biggest problem with the Gravity Ripper is its range is short and it is so slow its hard to catch anything. But I don't know that I really want it to be super fast which is why I suggested gravity effect immunity.

[Wingflier]

Band aids on a gaping wound. The problem with the current armor and hull type system is that some choices are always going to be clearly better than others. Stat buffs don't fix the problem, they just tip the scales in a different direction. For example we can increase the cap size of the worst ships 2 or 3 times if we want to, they're still going to evaporate into thin air and trigger Eyes that much more.

[Hearteater]

I've been wondering if maybe eyes should sweep the system (like a wraith lance), but in only one direction and much slower. Think Sauran's Eye. If they encounter a player unit, they trigger. They could sleep, and only wake up for X time whenever an AI unit dies in the system (or maybe just when a Guard Post dies).

[Peter Ebbesen]

Band aids on a gaping wound. The problem with the current armor and hull type system is that some choices are always going to be clearly better than others.

Why do you consider it a problem if some choices are clearly superior to others, when the ships are not only available in the game as choices for you to choose between?

It may mean that you won't choose them from an ARS, assuming you hack it rather than accepting the luck of the draw, and it may mean you are unlikely to pick them as your starting bonus ship, unless you pick them for an added challenge, but they'll still be present and adding flavour to the game via fabricators (where you will use them regardless of how much you consider them inferior choices) and in AI hands (which has a separate cost for each unit anyhow, which can reflect that some are better than others).

A case can certainly be made that it makes for a more interesting pick of bonus ship at the start of the game if the choices at that part are more in line with each other in perceived quality, but that's not really a problem per se.

On the other hand, any ship that doesn't really fulfill the role it is designed for should be changed to fit that role, if possible. Many of Faulty Logic's proposed changes to fleet ships seem to address this type of issue.

[Hearteater]

Why do you consider it a problem if some choices are clearly superior to others, when the ships are not only available in the game as choices for you to choose between?

Because that IS a problem, for numerous reasons.

[Wingflier]

It's basically an accepted standard in strategy games that overlapping roles and redundant units are a negative design flaw. If every unit does not have a specific and accepted purpose that it performs better than the alternatives, it's better to just repurpose it or remove it.

[TechSY730]

It's basically an accepted standard in strategy games that overlapping roles and redundant units are a negative design flaw. If every unit does not have a specific and accepted purpose that it performs better than the alternatives, it's better to just repurpose it or remove it.

Good luck not having overlap when there are like 50 or so bonus ship types to choose from, if not more.

[TheVampire100]

I think the Teleporting Leech Ships are okay the way they are. I've taken enitre planets with almost only TLSs.

FF Penality for LT and FT bothered me as well. I thought "Can't you just remove the 25% as well? They aren't even that strong to have a benefit from it."
From all turrets I use these turrets the least often.

Armor Ships: Yes, very yes. For a ship that yields the term "Armor" in its name it has laughable low armor. Seriously, 92 is not very high.

About the rest? I think i didn't bothered enough to notice soemthing you mentioned for example the Exo shields. I think only in one campain ever I noticed that the Exo shields took to much Energy. I even rarely use them...

[TechSY730]

Just by the way, I agree with Hearteater's assesment and suggested changes much more than I do with Faulty Logic's. No offense intended, Faulty Logic.

[Toranth]

I tried testing some ship effects, and got results I didn't expect.  I used 'Cleanup Aisle Three' to make an arena of sorts, then 'ilostit' to pair up ship types.

Did you know a cap of Electric Shuttles will kill a cap of Fighters or Bombers with almost no losses?  But can't hurt Missile Frigates at all.
Did you know a cap of Translocators (98) cannot defeat a cap of Fighters (96)?  In fact, they will kill less than 50% and take a full 8 minutes to do even that much?
Did you know that 100 Laser Gatlings vs 100 Fighters results in 80+ Fighters surviving?  But 200 Gatlings vs 100 Fighters results in 110+ Gatlings surviving?

I think that there may need to be a lot more actual testing put into place before major changes are made.


That said, I think Faulty and Hearteater are correct about the list of ship types that need help, mostly agreeing with the ones they both agree with anyway.
I'll also add the Spire Mini-Ram.  This used to be an anti-starship fleetship, but after the starship rebalance, it was never touched.  Right now a full cap of Mini-Rams cannot kill most Mk I starships.

[Faulty Logic]

Just increasing their ship cap probably isn't it. Some, like Laser Gatlings, might be just really bad hull multipliers (x1.. I think base DPS needs to come up for these ships. Laser Gatlings deal 227% of Fighter DPS. But when you consider how quickly they die (and their x1.8 multiplier) I suspect they actual DPS output is at or below Fighters. I'd try x2 damage to see how that works out.

But doubling their cap would double their damage...
I meant doubling the cap, while leaving the individual stats untouched. The resulting stat advantage would be balanced by the inherent problems with high-cap ships.

I suggested doubling the cap in a lot of places to make them the best type for brawl situations, with straight dps outshining any other ships. Having to keep them far away from AI Eyes seems like a given, not a problem.

Band aids on a gaping wound.

Nirvana fallacy: it's imperfect, so not worth doing.
Reworking the whole armor/hull/ammo system does probably need to be done at some point. Until then, band aids are called for.

Lightning turrets have the point blank AOE issue, same as Lightning Starships and EShuttles.

And I think doubling DPS would help with that issue.

Raider : speed to 296, cloaking Solid speed already and cloaking is for Raptors. Give these 1000 or so engine health.

That wouldn't help. I proposed those changes to enable raiders to raid.

A little boring.

You have me there. But this is about quick fixes.

[Wingflier]

It's basically an accepted standard in strategy games that overlapping roles and redundant units are a negative design flaw. If every unit does not have a specific and accepted purpose that it performs better than the alternatives, it's better to just repurpose it or remove it.

Good luck not having overlap when there are like 50 or so bonus ship types to choose from, if not more.

It just means the system has to be calibrated in a way that minor differences between ships can have a large impact on the game. I suggested such a system here. I think I did a good job of explaining how units with similar roles in the proposed system can be dramatically different. In the current system, minor differences between ships make little difference, ultimately creating an environment in which low cap units with higher levels of immunity usually win out.

While I do agree that having so many units can make balance tricky, it is by no means impossible in a game as complex and nuanced as AI War can be. At worst, each unit will have niche roles that it performs better than any other unit possibly can, and there are already bonus ships whose mission falls under that category (Eye Bots and Spiders come to mind).