View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0005661 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Feb 6, 2012 11:31 pm | Feb 18, 2012 11:17 am | |
| Reporter | Spikey00 | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.024 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 5.025 | ||||
| Summary | 0005661: Parasite starship rebalance | ||||
| Description | Parasite starships have continued to fall out of favour since their angry-woman-head sprite back in 3.0, to their low-damage multi-shot raking jellyfish mode, and now to their latest pathetic iteration that accomplishes nothing. They don't have the ability to reclaim ships effectively and lack the survivability to pay off their construction expense. While I'm somewhat reluctant to say the low-damage multi-shot variant was effective either, I think this should be reconsidered; however, their HP, armour, and hull-type may need to be buffed because they are just too flimsy and costly for ships that serve no purpose or pose a threat outside a fleet or defended territory. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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Thanks to the current, wacky reclamation bonus system, I have found that parasite starships actually can reclaim stuff just fine. However, as noted, their current single shot incarnation is kind of hurting their usability, and although they aren't what I would consider fragile, their bulk is not enough to offset their cost and their lack of reclamation damage due to their single shot per salvo. Now, I do not want them to go back to the, what was it?, 40 shot days. That lead to all kinds of silly, broken stuff. However, I think something like 3-5 bullets per shot would work fine, and make them worth what they cost you. |
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I still don't understand the way the "new" Parasite ships work in general, the explanation is very confusing and it doesn't make sense. "An enemy ship with reclamation damage equal to or greater than its max health will be reclaimed when destroyed. The newly-reclaimed ship will have health = total reclamation damage it had taken." Can somebody explain this to me? First of all, how can a ship have damage greater than its max health? If a ship takes damage equal to its max health, it should die. Secondly, if a ship has to have taken reclamation damage equal to or greater than its max health, doesn't this basically mean that a Parasite would have to kill it completely? If another allied ship deals damage, wouldn't this prevent the ship from being reclaimed? The whole thing is really confusing to me. And yes, I agree that 1 shot every 4 seconds from the Parasite Starships is pretty weak. |
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@Wingflier Oh boy, the current reclamation mechanics are currently quite complicated. Before I got into a long winded explanation, I just want to point out that I think the tool-tip is wrong. I think the cutoff point for "ship is reclaimed on death" is half its health in reclamation damage, not all of its health, but I could be wrong. The thing about how much health the reclaimed unit has is correct, I think. The two key things to keep in mind is, one, reclamation damage is NOT always equal to HP damage inflicted by reclaimers, and two, reclamation damage is tracked separately from HP damage. Copy-pasted from http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9573.msg88865.html#msg88865 --- Reclamation damage is stored separately from normal damage, and is not visible to the user. If at the death of the ship, the reclamation damage/Max HP of that ship > some ratio (50% I think), the ship is reclaimed. Base reclamation damage is the same as the base weapon damage. However, where it gets complicated is that depending on mark level, reclamation damage can get a bonus (even though normal damage still get computed normally) From the release notes (v. 5.001) If the reclamator is 4 mks higher than the target (mkV shooting mkI), multiply by 64. If the reclamator is 3 mks higher than the target, 48. If the reclamator is 2 mks higher than the target, 32. If the reclamator is 1 mk higher than the target, 16. If the reclamator is the same mk as the target, 8. If the reclamator is 1 mk lower than the target, 4. If the reclamator is 2 mks lower than the target, 2. If the reclamator is 3 mks lower than the target, 1. There is no 4-mk-lower case because mkV are not reclaimable. Worse, some units, like the Neinzul nanoswarm, get a reclamation damage bonus for all hits ON TOP of these values. (for the nanoswarms, 10x I think) And to finally round out this madness, these rules only apply to normal reclaimers. Zombie reclaimers use a different method of reclamation bonus damage tracking to determine net reclamation damage (though the same ratio of damage to reclaim rule still holds true) The rules for 5.000 are much simpler, but much worse for the usefulness of reclaimers. In 5.000, net reclamation damage is the same as normal damage (no global bonus shenanigans, only ship type specific bonuses), but with the restriction that a Mk. X reclaimer flat out CANNOT reclaim anything that is 2 or more mark levels above it, no matter how much reclamation damage it managed to inflict. Base attack power of reclaimers were nerfed pretty hard from 5.000 to 5.001 to compensate for this change, but with the buff that they can now reclaim much more stuff. --- EDIT: Derp, wrong link |
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I feel the reclamation HP is irrelevant with the function of parasites, as very often players would repair them with MK3 engineers, run them over to a mobile repair station, or a rally point off-planet. I'd rather 10 ships be captured at 1% HP over one ship at full HP--I don't see that as overpowered in most situations. I don't know if there's an attack logic to check if the ship cap has been reached for a specific ship and instead fire on other ships, but even with the 40-shot I'd end up with only a handfull of random vessels. In a large fleet-ball on offensive even less because most everything outranges and outguns them. I mention the survivability because from my observations they--out of all the starships--are the most often destroyed. This is a ship designed for nothing more than reclaiming ships. Their ultra-light hull-type leaves them very vulnerable to frigates, and assuming a MK1 frigate: 9 600*6 bonus = 1 600 000 HP/57 600 total damage = 28/56/84 shots to destroy each respective MK parasite starship. Everything else can tick it down regardless--these only have 300/600/900 armour. No durability unless you micro them specifically, but at this point they're not worth the trouble. |
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i want to suggest a compromise that will sound crazy. we should change it so that reclamation works more like a capture. when reclamation damage exceeds remaining health the ship will change owners with no repair then have half its health left as reclamation damage. this is will create some odd interactions that i sort of intend. it means you can take a ship back by starting to kill it. when reclaimers are involved with any action they will cause ship to break formation and firepower. this will also not allow reclamation to preserve fleet strength and will maybe rethink the idea of zombies. it may cause problems by moving the reclamation check to the damage step instead of death check but i dont think by that much. anyway it also means that if you start harvesting reclaimed ships you will have to get them to rally away from action. this has many things built into the game that are not often used. paired with this i want to make the suggestion that the flagship line be given the option to construct rally points outside of supply or a toggle to become rally points themselves. the logic of this idea is that ship that are being reclaimed will still die with too much firepower around however it will reinstate the intended effect that reclaimers will cause havoc outside their size. it will also means that you will either ignore them or focus them depending on the size of your fleet.(aka if its a small fleet it needs to avoid or kill them quickly, while a large fleet will just kill it all and cares less). the up side players get more bang for a fragile ship type and more reclamation happens. the down side saving rare reclaimed ships may be more of a hassle since they are harder to keep alive. i think its a good compromise to reinvigorate the design tho. |
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Spikey00, reclamation HP does matter in any large scale fight. The AI likes to target low hp stuff and so if you are barely reclaiming ships they'll die before you can get them out of the fight. Anytime you are mobbing a few enemy ships it won't matter though. This is not to say I don't support possible improvements to the Parasite. But I'm pretty happy with the Leech Starship as is. I'll have to play with Parasites to get a good feel for how they perform compared to a Leech Starship. If they don't net significantly larger reclaimed unit counts then they absolutely need improvement. |
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In real practice I gave the parasite starships a try. I ended up with like... five to ten ships after the use of them over half an hour or so, and lost two starships in a full fleet in mid-game. I also tried using IV merc parasite ships--had about 60 of them, and sent them to bolster a turret line back in my flank for a wave (which about 200-500 ships came, which were tethered by tractors). That literally gave me a gracious amount of seven or so armour ships. The main problem in the first situation is that I already had a full fleet cap, so the parasite ships seldom reclaims anything that isn't a non-triangle (fighter/bomber/frigate) fleet ship, unless you're either a.) using only starships (a strategy which isn't solely reliable or efficient anymore), or b.) macroing factories to keep the cap from being reached, both requiring proactive action to allow parasite ships to be the most effective. The second situation... well, I don't know what went wrong there because I wasn't watching, but I assume instead of spreading fire they focused down several vessels of the hundreds available. But this was an ideal situation for maximum parasite efficiency: all the ships were tractored, and there was a rally point further away with the CTRL option that sends reclaimed ships to it. The IV parasites were right in range of the wormhole in FRD, and I lost about five of them. |
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Have you read any of my AAR? Using just Mark I Leech Starships I've gotten more reclaimed ships than you are reporting. What you are reporting sounds worse than what everyone already gets for free. Also, you might have run afoul of issue 0003708. |
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Yeah, I've been only using MK1 leeches on normal cap; I had plentiful amount of energy for the reclaimed ships. The rally point was not the redirector version--it was the mobile version that was placed further inside the gravity well, well away from the wormhole. |
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I'm going to say that they're okay now as of the 5.025 changes. Please feel free to close. Leech Starship: - Base Energy Use from 10k/14k/18k => flat 5k. So cap-e is same now as Raids (the next highest for combat starships) - All vs-hull-type bonuses removed, to allow for a bit more of an overall damage buff and thus more general reclamation utility. - Base Health from 1.6M*mk => 3.2M*mk. Was well below the target range for starship cap-health, is now just on the low-end (bottom is 7.5M*mk). - Shots per salvo from 1 => 3. That brings it up to the target range for starship-with-no-bonuses cap-dps (about 66k*mk), and should help it reclaim more. - Hull type from UltraLight => Heavy because UltraLight tends to be a major pain to kill when in the hands of the AI (see: raid starships) and the health just doubled. - Thanks to many players for feedback that this was an underwhelming unit. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 6, 2012 11:31 pm | Spikey00 | New Issue | |
| Feb 7, 2012 12:56 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0018678 | |
| Feb 7, 2012 9:00 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Feb 7, 2012 9:00 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Feb 7, 2012 9:57 am | Wingflier | Note Added: 0018686 | |
| Feb 7, 2012 10:42 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0018687 | |
| Feb 7, 2012 10:43 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0018687 | |
| Feb 7, 2012 10:49 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0018687 | |
| Feb 7, 2012 2:13 pm | Spikey00 | Note Added: 0018691 | |
| Feb 7, 2012 11:20 pm | motai | Note Added: 0018706 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 9:31 am | Hearteater | Note Added: 0018712 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 2:08 pm | Spikey00 | Note Added: 0018715 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 2:25 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0018717 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 2:41 pm | Spikey00 | Note Added: 0018718 | |
| Feb 18, 2012 11:16 am | Spikey00 | Fixed in Version | => 5.025 |
| Feb 18, 2012 11:17 am | Spikey00 | Note Added: 0019347 |
