A quickie golem question?

[TheStratovarian]

Is there a way to speed up that one golem that makes the 500 drones? (Can you use engines to help it build? I've not seen it the last ten or so games, so i haven't had a chance to try, it seems so darn rare.) I think its botnet one.
The one golem that resurrects allied ships, does it count as being under fire when it revives a ship that dies? (Its just as rare as above. I usually get the really bad ones, that mostly end up as a border guard at best for a heavily attacked world if i need a bigger defense there.)
And the third, is flame wave reflectable in any any way shape or form? (I note a few of the golems have that, often about the time the ai starts using a counter of the mirrors or the shield damage ship to attack them. High shield more damage one)
Oh, does a golemite attack with golems, or are they defenders up until you take out the command station? (I was feeling in the mood to try something utterly different)

[x4000]

Let's see, this was multiple questions, hopefully I don't miss any.

1. No way to speed up the hive golem, that's part of the strategy of how to use him.  That golem was originally a player suggestion, and I thought that mechanic was really cool.

2. For the regenerator golem, most likely it does count as being under fire when it's resurrecting ships, but I'm honestly not sure.  I've always just retired it to way off to repair it when its health got low, and never tried doing repairs on the battlefield.  But I'd expect it probably would count, yeah.

3. Decoy drones and redirect any shots, and I'm pretty sure that the mirrors can reflect anything that isn't a missile ammo, so most likely those work pretty strongly against that.  The Impulse Reaction Emitters are pretty deadly against golems, you're absolutely right.

4. The golemite's golems are defensive-only until their planet does not have its command station, you're right.

Hope that helps!

[Dragon]

On a related note, is there any way to capture a golemite's golems?

And I have to agree with the comment about only ever seeing the bad ones, such as artillery (pretty much every game), cursed, and regeneration (for some reason using this over my normal tactics just makes me lose more ships).  The Botnet one seemed insanely powerful compared to those three.  I only saw it once though.  Ditto Armored and Black Widow.  I have never seen the hive golem either.

I don't suppose there could be some golem balance done to boost up some of the weaker ones, or make the strong ones more common?  My current game has Artillery, Cursed, and regeneration, so even without the AI Progress that they used to have, I'm not bothering to use them.  Well, maybe once we get to the AI Homeworld, the Artillery might be useful. 

Cursed is insanely weak though, doing less damage then a handful of mark 4 ships.  Plus it loses health.  Plus it hugely increases the number of ships on the planet it's attacking.  All told, it seems pretty cursed alright.  Is there something specific that it's good for?  I know the artillery one is for taking out high value targets, like ion cannons or stations.

[x4000]

Nope, golems are immune to reclamation, sorry.  However, the usual for-capture golems would be out there unactivated even when playing against a golemite.

We've done a lot of golem balance lately, I mean a LOT a LOT, not sure if you're playing the latest beta or not but just check out those release notes.  And the release notes from the official before this last one.  I imagine we'll see even more changes in the coming months, as we get back more heavily to working on AI War.

[drum]

in 3120 the cursed golem is utter pants imo

hopefully you've improved it in the beta/ are going to

one suggestion though- from a bit of reading i learned that the cursed golem needs quite a lot of engineers to counterract the decay, but my initial impression was that attaching engineers to it did nothing because the engineer beams were red (basically i didn't put enough repairing) so i just sent it to its death- it got 46 kills before it died yay! maybe make the engineer beams a different colour, lets say purple, to signify that their efforts are not enough rather than it seeming like they are doing nothing.

[x4000]

It's much improved in the latest betas, though you may not feel it's enough.  The engineer beams ARE a different color (red) when they are failing to function.  They show as green when they are actually doing something.

[Dragon]

I have the latest beta.....  It seems like it's rather weak to me....

[x4000]

Well, let me put it this way: it's way stronger than it was the prior release, which is way stronger than it was the one before that.

I'm definitely not claiming the golems are perfect yet.

[drum]

sorry i didn't explain properly;

after activation, engineer beams on it were red even though it had damage to heal, i thought from reading about it needing a lot of engineers that it was red bacause the decay wasnt being fully counterracted

is there a bug in 3120 that it cant be repaired?

[x4000]

Ah, ok, I understand now. Sorry. There was a bug at one point that had that behavior, yes. So I am guessing it was still present in 3.120 from the sound of things...

[Draco18s]

2. For the regenerator golem, most likely it does count as being under fire when it's resurrecting ships, but I'm honestly not sure.  I've always just retired it to way off to repair it when its health got low, and never tried doing repairs on the battlefield.  But I'd expect it probably would count, yeah.

FYI:
A regenerator golem will regenerate ships even when:

It is in low power mode.
When it is "out of supply" from AI warp gates.

And due to the enormous cost of repairing the damn thing (556 resources/second!?) it costs more to resurrect your ships than it would be to rebuild them.  It was dubious when it was +API for repairs, now its just plain inefficient (even at the initial cost of getting it going of 56 resource/second its more expensive than throwing engineers at your space docks beyond the efficient use cutoff).

[x4000]

Would you mind making a bug report post about that so that we'll see it when we're working on bugs?  Thanks!

[Draco18s]

Would you mind making a bug report post about that so that we'll see it when we're working on bugs?  Thanks!

Sure, I'd thought about it at the time, but I was unable to actually verify that my golem was doing those things and then haven't played in like two weeks.

[x4000]

Okay, many thanks.