Underwhelming Fleet Ship Types

[keith.lamothe]

I didn't specifically intend to leave the eyebots terrislow or anything like that.  A speed increase is certainly ok to me, though you may regret it when you see what an AI can do with a type that can go fast and through ffs (other than raid starships). 

Eyebots are intended to be one of the flimsiest types in terms of total-ship-cap-hp, though.  If you go raiding with them expect to lose a lot if there's any defenses.  Perhaps they could be made cheaper to compensate for the pain of rebuilding them, but I don't see them ever being tanky or bulky.  That said, it's not that their health has to stay exactly where it is.

As far as a "storing up shots" mechanic, I don't really see that happening due to the extra complexity involved and the fact that it's really not much different than simply tripling their reload time and tripling their damage.  I'd be willing to do that but again I'm not sure you want to see what the AI would do to you with that

Leaving a "scouting parasite"... it's interesting, but seems more complexity than it's worth and ultimately doesn't do anything for you that scouts can't.  I don't really see the scouting ability of the eyebot as important, but Chris may feel otherwise as he originally added them.  In the spirit of the scouting-parasite idea it might be funny to have dying eyebots leave "remains" that give you visibility; probably without time limit just because it would be a pain to keep replenishing them, etc.  That would basically let you get "scout picketing" visibility anywhere without spending the scouts.  But would it make any difference on whether getting the Eyebot from an ARS is a good thing or not?

Reading the previous stuff in the thread and will keep it in mind. 

Odd about the Neinzul Tigers: they're my favorite "guard post assassinators"; I just set up a flood from the other side of a wormhole leading to the target planet and do a lot of ctrl+, (or whatever it is) and right-click-guard-post.  The other younglings can be used in this way somewhat but the tigers have better bonuses for it.

[TechSY730]

About the eye-bot speed thing, I think increasing their speed a bit is fine, as long as they keep their immunity to speed boosts. Don't want them becoming broken if a player or especially an AI manages to get their hands on speed boosters.

For the "recloaking" timout thing, that is acutally something that, IMO, is a problem with cloaking ships in general. Decreasing the amount of time needed to "recloak" across the board seems like a good idea. (Not by an absurd amount, of course, but enough that things like scout starships would have a mild chance of surviving long enough to recloak)

[Hearteater]

I'm quite certain I will rue any improvements to Eyebots once the AI has them .  That being said, I think their health is fine, it is just I have trouble getting them to put out enough damage even with a stealthed approach to warrant their use as raiders, hence the increased opening volley suggestion.  But I'd be just as fine with higher reload but stronger shots.  It might be interesting to give them a random ~20% chance of immediately re-stealthing whenever they fire.

[KDR_11k]

What should the eyebot be good at? If it's only really there to benefit the AI then maybe it should be classed as an experimental instead?

I once made the mistake of trying to use Neinzul commandos as scouts, it ended up freeing thousands of AI ships.

[_K_]

Decreasing the amount of time needed to "recloak" across the board seems like a good idea.

HELL NO. I've had enough trouble with those goddamn spire battleships already and i dont want to see any direct or non-direct boosts to them. And i keep rolling them every friggin' time. All of my hate.

Also, someone mentioned etherjets. They are NOT useless. They have very high cap, are ultra cheap, and still pack some punch (for their cap at least). Last game i rolled them, i managed to save my home from certain defeat when i swooped down on the enemy fleet ships and pulled them away from my home station's faltering shields, giving me enough time to deal with them before they kill my base.

For the general rebalance, i wish there was a huge excel table with all primary and derivative (like DPS) unit stats. Those things help spot different abnormalities very well, if you use them properly.

[Hearteater]

Good thing there is then, see here .  I think there is a better explanation somewhere on the forum or wiki.  But that should point you in the right direction.

On the topic of cloaking, it might make sense to have some ships have "fast cloaking" or "combat cloaking" that lets them re-cloak faster (or randomly after attacking).  I think making it universal would probably not be ideal.

[TechSY730]

Good thing there is then, see here .  I think there is a better explanation somewhere on the forum or wiki.  But that should point you in the right direction.

On the topic of cloaking, it might make sense to have some ships have "fast cloaking" or "combat cloaking" that lets them re-cloak faster (or randomly after attacking).  I think making it universal would probably not be ideal.

Hmm, two different "recloaking" times could work. Dangerous stuff like Spire stealth battleships and the cloaking provided by cloaker starships could keep their old, slower recloak, but more fragile stuff could get the faster recloak. Maybe some additional logic too (like different recloak times for being revealed by tachyon beams vs. being revealed by firing, and each different recloak timing could have different sets of these)

There is the question of whether scouts should get the old or new, short recloak time. I would vote for the new, faster recloak, as scouts seem a little too fragile currently.

[keith.lamothe]

What should the eyebot be good at? If it's only really there to benefit the AI then maybe it should be classed as an experimental instead?

Personally I think of it as the fleetship equivalent of the raid starship, but that may have no relationship with reality   Basically they're a lot slower but have cloaking.  Perhaps the main thing that's changed for them in human hands is that the AI now has tachyon coverage on every single wormhole outside the mkI worlds right next to a human homeworld.  I keep wanting to change the guardian seeding to put tractor guardians instead of tachyon guardians on a certain percent of wormholes, but I'm not sure how much that would mess things up.

I once made the mistake of trying to use Neinzul commandos as scouts, it ended up freeing thousands of AI ships.

Yea, the "military scouts" are not going to do well in the normal scouting role, they're just nice to have in a blob so you don't have to worry (initially at least) about making sure you have dedicated scout coverage of the planet to have the planetary sidebar, etc.

[Kraiz]

On the topic of cloaking: I do believe 2 separate times would be appropriate.
On the topic of eye bots:  The AI uses these to great effect if you've ever played against an AI who used them.  Having them infiltrate your home planet's shield and knock out your reactor, putting all defenses offline within the second or third wave of the game is not fun.  Even if you manage to pause your game and bring another reactor elsewhere online, the eye bots still remain, and that brief moment where the enemy fleet ships had free reign on your space dock, Home CC, and other things is a big hit to your survivability during that wave.

[Hearteater]

I don't know about scouts getting faster recloak.  At present, I can scout an 80 system normal map with just Scout IIs.  Faster recloak would just make it even easier.  Keith's thought of swapping some tachyon for tractor beam guardians would make my galaxy scouting would also simplify my scouting.  Really the only reason I unlock Scout III is for more scout pickets.  Amusingly I've actually use powered-down Eyebots for this.

As for AI Eyebots, there are several options for dealing with nasty cloaked AI ships.  Their FF immunity is nasty, but they aren't durable enough to make it through proper defenses.  In particular they are Refractive armor, Lightning Turrets do x8 to Refractive armor.  It only take one Lightning Turret Mk 1 one attacks to kill an entire wave of Mark I Eye Bots.

[Ktoff]

You can scout a whole map with MkII scouts? At what difficulty and how?

[Hearteater]

7/7 and 7.6/7.6, 80 system map.  This isn't a full scout when I have 1 system, but I can generally get 5-6 systems deep with Mark II scouts, which gives me the entire galaxy around 10-12 systems on normal map layouts.  I'm also not always able to get a scout picket set up on deep systems, but I can get a peek and know what key units are there.  Obviously on maps with less connectivity this isn't possible.  Methods I use:

1) The most obvious, killing the tachyon guardians for adjacent systems gives you an addition system reach with your scouts.  Either just kill the one on the other side of your warp point, or just go knock them all out with a quick raid.

2) Transports with scouts can get you 2-3 systems deeper at the expense of some threat.  Put all your scouts in the middle of three transports and send them through.  depending on how much neutering you've done to adjacent systems, you can get sometimes three systems deep before the scouts are on their own.  From there scout as normal.  Tedious and micro intensive, but not too bad now that I'm used to doing it.

3) If you don't want the threat, and just need to get 1-2 systems further, line up your scouts with the boosted scouts in front at max range.  Send them in formation through a wormhole and the boosted scouts can warp out of the system almost before the boosting scouts get de-cloaked (with Mark II or better scouts, and against Marl I-III guardians).  You can repeat this in each system at least two scouts make it into.  In fact, if you get two scouts into a system, you can almost always get a peek one system further with this technique.

[chemical_art]

Odd about the Neinzul Tigers: they're my favorite "guard post assassinators"; I just set up a flood from the other side of a wormhole leading to the target planet and do a lot of ctrl+, (or whatever it is) and right-click-guard-post.  The other younglings can be used in this way somewhat but the tigers have better bonuses for it.

That would be fine if Tigers were the same cost. But they cost twice as much and decay 2x faster. I think they should be the same cost as other tigers and/or get a much bigger armor increase.

[Orelius]

Generally, I find neinzul ships to be generally less useful than all other types of ships, especially in the late game.  Their attrition makes it difficult to form a coherent blob of ships when assaulting planets, and it's practically impossible, and often not worth it, to stockpile them because it'd take extensive micro to make sure that they aren't losing hp and that they are able to shoot at things when they need to.
This isn't particularly bad if you just get one type of neinzul ship, but once three or four ARS's produce you a neinzul ship in the same game, you'll be tearing your hair out.  I sure did.

[Mánagarmr]

Eyebots are very useful for hitting stuff hidden under forcefields. Now, I haven't played super actively lately, but in the hands of the AI they are positively terrifying.

As far as Neinzul ships go, they are excellent for attrition warfare. Park a Space Dock with a FRD waypoint into a nearby system and leave it there