View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0024282 | AI War 2 | Balance Issue | Dec 28, 2020 2:32 pm | Oct 29, 2021 1:07 pm | |
| Reporter | Arides | Assigned To | |||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 2.709 Obedient Engineers | ||||
| Summary | 0024282: Outguard still weak-ish (on higher difficulties) | ||||
| Description | While I personally love to use outguard, it's honestly quite difficult to justify getting them (diff 8+). On diff 7 they're perfectly fine, however on 8 and 9 my superiors (and teammates) would hang me if I hacked an outguard beacon. The balance change having them replenish helped a LOT, but there still seems to be too little value for a lot of AIP and a very long hack. Outguard excell at: - Saving homeworlds against hunter. Very cool. - Hunting for roaming threat - the outguard roam too, effectively lowering threat in cleared out systems - Protecting planets under attack, and thus freeing the main fleet to do something useful. Extremely cool. - Hell, I've seen them snipe structures deep in AI space, like an instigator spawned behind a line of AI fortress planets Sad part - all of the previous "uses" require the player to have several outgards, since their "fleets" range around 20-30str, which doesn't do much on its own. To be really of value, cca 3 beacons must be hacked. And here there's the issue. - It costs hacking points, which are priceless on higher diffs. But hey, that's kind of the resource a player expects to pay for this. - It takes next to forever. But hey, outguards are a replenishing "resource", so I guess the player can soldier through. - It costs AIP. Here it gets tough. It costs 10 AIP, which is half a planet. <story_mode> "So, I get an outguard, I have to sit around for 10 minutes with my fleet, throwing metal at a hack. Meanwhile any hunter attacks will have to be stopped by ... turrets, hopefully. After I'm done, the outguard will be useless on its own, and the whole game will get harder from added AIP." "To make this actually usefull, I need to hack at least 2 outguard beacons, which means *double* the 10 minutes, and 20 AIP! In the end I have a few OK-ish defenders/attackers. Instead I could have had a planet, which might have contained a flagship with units. I could have saved hacking points for something else, such an ARS hack. Furthemore I would have gotten 2000 science and 30 hacking points from the new planet. But instead, there are those mercs. Who most of the time refuse to deploy where I actually need them. Weird trade." </story_mode> TL;DR Single outguard beacon is useless. Cost of taking multiple seems prohibitive on higher difficulties (at least until super late-game). Changing the AIP generated to 5 would make them viable on diff8+. However - lower diffs seem balanced right now. Thoughts? | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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There are other players who thinks Outguard are too cheap. Outguards are extremely useful no matter the difficulty as a detraction for the AI to split up it's forces and/or clear up wormholes to help you set up beachheads. |
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After the recent AIP and AI budget rebalance, I feel the outguard are fairly fine now. Before this update, my "metagame" was to search endlessly for reduction while staying on AIP floor. That discouraged outguard use and made me create this issue. However nowdays the budget is far less sensitive to AIP, plus is far greater from the start, plus no AIP reduction works until cca 90 AIP. This makes taking AIP much more desired, and the outguard are suddenly a nice addition to the arsenal. |
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Given the last comment, I'm going to mark this as fixed. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 28, 2020 2:32 pm | Arides | New Issue | |
| Dec 28, 2020 4:23 pm | Smidlee | Note Added: 0060169 | |
| Jan 10, 2021 3:46 am | Arides | Note Added: 0060264 | |
| Oct 29, 2021 1:07 pm | tom.prince | Status | new => resolved |
| Oct 29, 2021 1:07 pm | tom.prince | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Oct 29, 2021 1:07 pm | tom.prince | Note Added: 0063034 |
