View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0023828 | AI War 2 | Balance Issue | Sep 29, 2020 1:19 am | Sep 30, 2020 10:11 pm | |
| Reporter | OzoneGrif | Assigned To | |||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 2.601 Savegame Hotfix | ||||
| Summary | 0023828: Melee ships can damage tractor turrets and ships | ||||
| Description | Tractor beams should be a hard counter against melee ships. Currently, they have very few counters (gravity generator maybe), so melee ships are often the way to go to flood the AI. When captured by a tractor beam, the melee ship can damage at a distance the turret or ship holding it; they shouldn't be able to do that. A captured melee ship should be unable to attack. Gameplay wise, the player will have to be cautious to not approach tractor turrets with its melee ships, if he does they are just dead. An alternative would be to allow the ship to move (slowly) inside the range of the tractor, but never leave the zone. (that's certainly harder to code) | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Why do you feel like allowing tractors to hard-counter melee units is desirable? I think it would be very frustrating and unfun for players, which is why melee units are actually allowed to hit tractors. Note that it wouldn't just affect melee units, but also any short range units generally. If tractors were allowed to counter that many units so well they would need to be significantly nerfed. |
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There's...this, old thing on the forum I found. "It's more of an AI Get out of Jail Free card than a Player Get out of Jail Free card. The edge case it covers is a handful of units trapped in player-tractor-beam-turrets on an otherwise dead world with nothing shooting at them and nothing for them to shoot at. So they're allowed to shoot at the tractor beam turret to eventually free themselves." |
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I think that for melee units, and only melee units, actually turning this off would make sense. For shorter-ranged ships, them being able to aim more precisely and just "fire up the tractor beam's nose" makes sense to me. I don't recall where in the code this is, but it should be one line to exclude the IsMelee weapons, I think? |
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> Why do you feel like allowing tractors to hard-counter melee units is desirable? I play my game with a lot of melee units, I take everything I can, I boost their science to the max, and I double their lines until I've got thousands of them. Then I get a few factories, and I'm just unstoppable. My factories produce units at an incredible rate, they do a lot of damage and cost almost nothing; my metal storage remain at its maximum since melee ships eat metal. I feel there's almost nothing that can stop me, beside gravity wells and maybe a few rare ennemies with a ton of small shots (some Golems and AI Overlord). That's why I feel they need a small nerf. Tractor turrets and ships would become your nightmare, and make the game slightly more interesting IMHO. |
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Fascinating - in my games melee ships wound up sucking quite badly, especially once they stacked past 5 units. I didn't know some one else had success with them. I also never knew that melee ships could attack the one that tractor beamed them. I wonder if that feeling of being unstoppable is something specific to melee ships, or just because you focused on one ship type. |
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You can have that unstoppable feeling with other type of ships, but the main advantage of melee ships is they allow you to flood the planet with ships everywhere. Jump, usually with a shield for the breach, your factories stay in the previous system. Then you can just let the melee attack everything; the planet will quickly get filled with ships everywhere and the IA won't know what to do anymore since it's overwhelmed. Your transports are often safe since the AI can't reach them; there's always a melee ship in the way, somewhere, stopping them. |
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How long have you been playing with melee units? Is this mainly since the improvements that Keith added to the game in the last month or so? Maybe it's been two months. I think that they were extremely lame prior to that, so maybe that's the difference in how they are doing now. |
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Perhaps units that are hitting tractors due to the "Can magically hit tractors" code should get a major nerf to the amount of damage done to those tractors? So the tractors will die eventually, but not for a long time. |
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> I think that they were extremely lame prior to that I've been using them since the beginning of AI War 2. I did put them in their own fleet and leave it in pursuit mode with the occasional direct order. It is better now with the improvements, but it was already OP before. I haven't tested them much in the new version, but it seems to work well. |
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Applying a damage penalty to ships damaging their tractor when it would normally be out of range seems fair. Obviously if the tractor is in that weapon's range normally, they should be able to deal full damage as normal. I guess it would have to apply on a per weapon basis though, since ships with multiple weapons can have different ranges for each weapon. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 29, 2020 1:19 am | OzoneGrif | New Issue | |
| Sep 29, 2020 1:25 am | OzoneGrif | Description Updated | |
| Sep 29, 2020 1:59 am | BadgerBadger | Note Added: 0058740 | |
| Sep 29, 2020 2:01 am | BadgerBadger | Note Edited: 0058740 | |
| Sep 29, 2020 1:25 pm | RocketAssistedPuffin | Note Added: 0058744 | |
| Sep 29, 2020 3:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058751 | |
| Sep 29, 2020 3:45 pm | OzoneGrif | Note Added: 0058752 | |
| Sep 29, 2020 4:12 pm | crawlers | Note Added: 0058757 | |
| Sep 29, 2020 5:12 pm | OzoneGrif | Note Added: 0058760 | |
| Sep 29, 2020 5:20 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058761 | |
| Sep 29, 2020 5:50 pm | BadgerBadger | Note Added: 0058772 | |
| Sep 30, 2020 5:51 pm | OzoneGrif | Note Added: 0058821 | |
| Sep 30, 2020 10:11 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0058828 |
