Mod: Kaizers MaraudersWhat was originally designed to be a slight overhaul of Marauders domino-ed into a full-on rework.
Unique Marauder Units:Marauders bring an entirely unique set of units to bear. From small and nimble fighters to their own forcfields and even up to galaxy-ending Dreadnoughts able to steal science, hacking and enemy ships anything goes. Mind that the player through various means can acquire most of these:
Strike Craft:Interceptor Fighter:
Cheap and very nimble anti-light fighter, deadly to many other strike craft.
Fusion Torpedo Bomber:
Fast and powerful bomber with low durability, but can block off the first hit almost entirely.
Disrupter Corvette:
Inhibits enemy movement and attacks, along with a planetary decloaker. Damage grows if enemies are not or barely moving.
Frigates:Light Sting Frigate:
An atypical frigate with great damage against forcefields, good speed and a lot of alpha strike power along modest radar dampening.
Rampage Frigate:
Extremely powerful frigate with a multitude of weapons against many kinds of enemies, but slow and with shorter range.
Raiders:Raid Cruiser:
Powerful capital ship with light drones, an anti-heavy torpedo and 4 different laser weapons, able to deal with almost any foe. Cloaks and can attack numerous times while cloaked.
Raid Carrier:
Modest durability and speed but with the ability to produce frigate drones, aiding best in drawn-out fights while giving fire support from the rear.
Raid Blaster:
Extremely powerful Raider with an array of beam weapons, incredibly powerful shields and a ravenous desire for stealing.
Defenses:Consumer Turret (Tier 1):
Deals increased damage as shields fall lower and spreads cleptomania.
Breach Torpedo Turret (Tier 1):
Very high damage to armored targets at a high range, but low rate of fire and projectile speed.
Beam Sniper Turret (Tier 1):
Infinite range and annihilation of high-albedo, which often includes cloaking-capable targets.
Fortified Forceshield Generator (Tier 2):
Protection from damage, even more from bombardments and snipers, but halves damage under it.
Phase Cannon Turret (Tier 2):
Very high alpha-damage to enemies with full health or shields, but lower if enemies are damaged.
Defense Post (Tier 3):
A high-damage, high-health multi-weapon defense structure. From Deadline Injectors to Energy Waves and a Plasma Blaster, along with the ability to be empowered by forcefields.
Superstructures:Trapdoor Machine:
Black Hole Machine with a planet-wide slowdown to ships with lower engine power, at the cost of raw power.
Parametrium Amplifier:
Parametrium radiation flows from this device into the entire galaxy, boosting Marauder invasions.
Fortified Planetary Saturator:
Planet-wide Tachyon, Tractor and radar dampening irradiation, growing in strength or numbers with mark level.
Void Booster:
Boosts planetary speed, damage and metal salvaging speed.
Guard Harbour:
Extremely powerful defensive structure with a true implosion weapon, dealing percentual enemy health as damage once shields are down. Also well equipped to debuff and destroy smaller foes.
Supply Center:
Planetoid constantly harvested for metal doubling as a staging ground for supplies, increasing raider capacity and planetary-to-invasion budget conversion.
Tech Nexus:
Cloaked archive of technology, preventing research blackouts and boosting mark levels.
Raid Battleship:
Extremely powerful Marauder Raider specifically designed to take on the Galactic War the AI might unleash upon Marauders, but with a weakness to most Frigates.
Automation Controller:
Builds and controls a great amount of drones, including repair drones to aid in regeneration efforts.
King Units:Shhhh...!!! It's a secret! Well, one that's small and easily figured but still.
Unique Mechanics:Kaizers Marauders are smarter and stronger than normal Marauders:
Smart AI:- Smart Outpost Placement: Marauders will aim to place their turrets away from wormholes, but will put them next to allied planetary controllers (command stations, Nanocaust Hives, etc)
- Smart Turret Placement: Turrets around Outposts spawn towards the closest wormhole, but outside of Forceshield reach so they can use their DPS, while infinite-range turrets create a sniper ring and Turrets with Bastille-buffs ignore this and spawn right next to forcefields.
- Smart Fireteams: Marauder fireteams will aim to precalculate the galaxy to an extend, seeing where they are needed and go there. This includes reacting to SOS calls from outposts, lowering attack thresholds if allies are ready to attack as well, giving up on planets too far away and too heavy under attack to save... And much more!
Realistic Economy:Note that Marauders DO NOT take over such units as to not have them destroyed for AIP!
- All units not warping in are created from metal which is harvested from planets similar to how players do. The more metal harvesters are present, and especially Zenith Matter Converters will boost this.
- Marauders can also convert energy into metal. Though at a reduced rate even Zenith Power Generators or Lost Energy Reactors will contribute to faster building.
- Partnering with allies Marauders will lose half of the metal harvested from 'shared' structures, but they will in return gain metal from for example Player Command Stations. Support your friendly Marauders with a better economy if you can and they will help in return.
- Marauders are able to steal metal from their opponents. The modifier will turn to metal gain, similar to metabolization if the unit is in the hands of the player. But their theft doesn't stop there... More below.
Technology Gain:Note that Marauders DO NOT take over such units as to not have them destroyed for AIP!
- Marauders can mark up, to a limit defined by intensity, by capturing planets. They gain more if tech-y units like (Major) Data Centers, Distribution Nodes, Tech Vaults, etc are on them. They will also mark down, provided no Tech Archive exists, if they lose access to them.
- A small number of stronger Marauder units can not only steal metal but also technology points off high-mass enemies. In the hands of the player this produces science and hacking points.
- AI-allied Marauders have a much weaker tech gain themselves (because otherwise with their territory they would never be lower than maximum mark level), but will mark back up with AI tech level in return.
Defectors and Hacks:- The player can acquire any Marauder Strike Craft, Frigate, Raider, defensive structure and ? ? ?
- When Raiders are on a player planet and outnumbered in strength some may decide to defect. They can be hacked either for a single ship line and the good feeling of having saved the crew, or the entire Raider can change allegiance and bring 3 ship lines with it. Note that per Marauder sub-faction and per Raider type only one hack can be done, and not both for the same type of Raider. AI-allied Marauders will cause 10 AIP in exchange for such a powerful ship.
- Marauder defenses can be hacked from any outpost that upgraded twice from time alone (NOT Outpost tech level), but only one hack per planet, twice for every Marauder sub-faction, except AI-allied ones which allow for 4 hacks instead.
- Note that the above hack contributes turrets to a Battlestation or Citadel. It needs both a normal Centerpiece and the receiver Station on the planet.
- The Marauder Capital (also only if upgraded twice over time) can be hacked once (or twice for AI-allied Marauders) similar to a GCA, allowing for 2 lines of Marauder defenses to be added to all command stations. Don't like the defenses it has? Destroy it and wait for a "reroll".
Superstructures:- Marauders can be set up (default is off) to gain Superstructures - big chunky constructs warping in over 5 minutes and ranking up at a rate of 15 minutes per mark.
- They also have a "priority list" with 3 potential entries. When warping in a Superstructure the list is checked for what new Superstructure might be needed, and if the new Superstructure will be of that type.
- By default Marauders will try to go for a high-powered start:
- Priority 1: Raid Battleship - for that extra oompf expanding.
- Priority 2: Tech Vault - boosting overall tech level and stopping potential drops in it.
- Priority 2: Supply Center - more metal and higher raider caps to further aid in offense and defense.
- Any Superstructure can be set to any priority, or the function can be disabled entirely with the "Random" option. Wouldn't it be interesting to have 3 Raid Battleships run around all the time...?
Alternate Victory Condition:Spoiler for Hiden:
- Kaizer, the dread pirate of the Marauders, can be set up to invade the galaxy at a certain hour, if desired.
- When he invades he will unite various Marauder sub-factions under his flag (but won't rip out AI-allied or Player-Allied Marauders from their allies). This will lead to Marauders backstabbing their minor faction teams if needed.
- If spawning in for Player-allied or AI-allied Marauders all hostile-all or minor-faction-teamed Marauders will join in with the Player-allied or AI-allied sub-faction instead.
- His mark level rises every 3 hours, regardless of which hour he spawns at. The further along the game the stronger he will become. He will also upgrade to a spire-infused variant if one of the Marauder sub-factions under his flag has spire debris.
- He will actively enter a berserker mode, taking half damage and dealing double, once his health drops to 25%. At this point if he's facing bad odds he might decide to literally warp away to any allied Marauder Capital, putting the planet on a hefty cooldown for all invasions, and repair before continuing the assault.
- If destroyed the player has a chance and a choice:
- Either let him die within his wreckage, rendering all Marauders not allied to either a player or an AI defeated (no more conquering, defending, warp-ins, invasions, potential in-faction quarrels if Marauders are too strong).
- Or save him and his ship via a Hack, allowing the player to OWN his dreadnought for a hefty 200 AIP, allowing access to a Flenser-eating machine of doom at high mark levels. While the AI may react with both Galactic War units and normal attacks his ability bring doom onto any enemy he encounters makes for a great game-ender.
Note: This is an ongoing project!
- A number of journals have been added for Marauders for some better lore. Many more have been written, but it's under review which ones are to be implemented and how.
- Many Marauder units carry tidbits of information too in their extended tooltips.
Debugging and Balance Adjustments:- If you think anything is over-/underpowered, wonky, glitchy or otherwise broken there's a number of things possible:
- For any kind of bug report, balance adjustment or feedback to Marauders simply comment under this thread, PM on the forums or ping in the Discord modding channel (@-NR-SirLimbo).
- If the error has an exception popup (for those who don't know what this means, you'll recognize it when you see it) please send the ArcenDebugLog.txt file along. It can be found at AI War 2\PlayerData\ArcenDebugLog.txt, wherever your AIW2 game is installed
Installation:- Kaizers Marauders is among the distributed mod list for AIW2. Simply enable it in the Settings tab and restart the game.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: Kaizers Marauders requires the AMU (AI War 2 Modding Utils) mod enabled. It's distributed with the main game as well!
Special Thanks:I'd like to thank a number of people on discord who have been actively testing or otherwise greatly helping this mod throughout its lengthy development cycle:
- Chris McElligott Park
- BadgerBadgerBadger
- gigastar
- CRCGamer
- ussdefiant60
- crawlers
- Tzarro
If I missed anyone, which can happen, simply sound off! I want to include everyone who contributed here!
Feedback, bug reports and all else encouraged!
