Let's talk about ships

[Cinth]

Specifically, ships that the AI uses.

I want to know what you all think are the standout vessels in the AI inventory.  Standout vessels can be ships that the AI can use very well, very poorly, or just the ones you find down right annoying to fight against.  Be sure to back up what you say, I need some level of detail. 


 

[Timerlane]

I'd say Spire Gravity Drains(not Rippers) are the bane of Raid Starship-raids; they're fairly durable mobile grav turrets, high marks can even force units to move slower than the Drain itself(i.e. inescapable until the Drain(s) are dead), and they have high power single shots to (somewhat)pierce Raids' characteristic high armor(on top of helping other ships catch up to and pound on them).

[Tridus]

Tackle Drone Launchers ruin any fleetball's day when the AI has them. Once high level ones come out, you pretty much need Starships or tractor immune stuff to deal with them, otherwise they just make a gigantic mess and open your fleet ships up to being taken out by other things as they get pushed out of cover.

Pretty great AI tool. Also a great target for hacking to eliminate or steal, because they're also nice in player hands.

[Vyndicu]

Spire Blade Spawner can be sneaky and difficult to deal in large enough swarm especially if manage to blow up something critical behind your turret/fleetship/starship line.

Zenith Medic Frigate is annoying to deal with if they can repair something else you need to take down guerilla style. Something with high hp and isn't immune to repair. Edit: Just realized something, AI isn't great with organizing the Medic Frigate in a way to actually seek out other ships that need repairs.

Neinzul Scrapegoat allow other ship to survive a fatal hit a few more time than typically. It can be difficult if you absolute NEED to take out that raid starship NOW. This just force you to deal with both scrapegoat and raid starship at the same time.

Tractor ships dragging your ships away to alert a raid engine or something else nasty...

Astro Train and their unusually super high hp can be difficult to deal with using normal means at first.


ANY enemy ship with non-wide planet tachyon scan will just have a difficult time dealing with finding your cloaked anything. Sentinel Frigate and Eye bots fall under this category.

[Draco18s]

Etherjet Tractors fall into this for me, as I've mentioned previously.  The AI is the only entity that can manage them properly.

[tadrinth]

Blade spawners hanging out under fortresses are suuuuper annoying.

The AI doesn't use Zombards particularly cleverly, but it really doesn't have to in order to be super annoying with them. 

[Lord Of Nothing]

Dire Widow guardians fall squarely in the annoying category for me, for reasons I suspect are obvious. The dire tractors are interesting, but the added paralysis was a bit to far on the !!Fun!! side for my liking. Especially when killing a lair decided to spawn more than one of them.

On the other hand, Motherships are probably my absolute favorite, beacause to me they epitomise the AI: It's bigger than you, it doesn't play fair (Warpgate, super range), and it's (slowly) coming.

[Pumpkin]

Etherjet Tractors fall into this for me, as I've mentioned previously.  The AI is the only entity that can manage them properly.

I disagree. I love using them as a Threat-grab tool. Cloaking + tractor is really an interesting combination that I don't want to see disappear. (Anyway, I'll mod them )

[Cinth]

Etherjet Tractors fall into this for me, as I've mentioned previously.  The AI is the only entity that can manage them properly.

I disagree. I love using them as a Threat-grab tool. Cloaking + tractor is really an interesting combination that I don't want to see disappear. (Anyway, I'll mod them )

That's a combo that will definitely have to be modded in.

[kasnavada]

Basically anything that has a special ability can be annoying, but then again it's rather the point, else you'd be fighting fleetballs all the time.

The main problems I had was "stupid" OP combos like shield + drone spawner, shield + tractors, shield + swallowing.
Or gravity effect with any kind of kiting ships in front, or gravity effect plus any kind of long range (from drone spawners to snipers). Gravity immune ships on gravity worlds.

Anything that becomes a doomball in high number too I'll count as annoying / broken. The neinzul thingy that replicates each time it hits for example (forgot the name...). It's basically 5 times faster than anything you have and will replicate / tank your fleet just before it transforms it into scrap metal. Only sensible way to kill it is throwing immune stuff at it, which is a complete no-go for me in term of design. Droneships are included here, but more due to large battlefields and slow moving speed. Once caught-up they're fine, its just that they're so annoying to catch when under a forcefield on the other side of a map with a gravitic station...

Another thing I found particularly annoying is space planes... but they're gone.

Battlefield wide effects are also major annoyances, like battlefield wide EMP, gravity, planetary anti-cloak, ion cannons... a few others, probably, which I forget, because of the combos there is. Complete EMP + replicating ship is basically doom. Anything battlefield wide means snipers / droneships own the place.

[tadrinth]

Drone spawners need a better means of limiting their range if they're going to return (among other problems to solve there).  Either give them a hard leash to their creator or massively increase their self-attrition once they're too far away.

[RockyBst]

Maws / Powerslavers / Disassembler Guardians. Man does getting all your big hitters swallowed and taken two hops away to be slowly digested suck, especially when it means you can't rebuild 'em until they actually die. One of the units I always micro to kill first.

Tackle drone launchers / blade spawners are also annoying, enough so that they are one of the few reasons I ever hack a design backup.

Warp guardians spawning other warp guardians. I mean, c'mon.

For utmost annoyance though, it has to be large amounts of Neinzul ships. What's that diff 9 overreactive AI, you want to send me a wave of 35,000 youngling tigers? Sure, put them all in carriers so they never atrophy and blast straight through my defences, why not. They really aren't balanced around carriers.

[Pumpkin]

I love using the drone spawners. As there are Human-reserved units with the background factions' rewards, several mechanisms could be reserved to Human players (fun to use, not fun to face). Swallow could be one of these (even I don't find them actually fun to play, just good).

[Cinth]

Swallow died with radar dampening.  It's not coming back (afaik).

[Vyndicu]

Swallow died with radar dampening.  It's not coming back (afaik).

I get why radar dampening and other isn't coming back.

Any reason why swallow is not coming back? I like those a tiny bit since they kind of act like a semi-widow tractor with an extra utility on top of that.