View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0007035 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Unit Abilities And Behaviors | Apr 11, 2012 1:38 am | Apr 27, 2012 3:43 pm | |
| Reporter | benetnash | Assigned To | |||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.032 | ||||
| Summary | 0007035: Gravity turrets are overpowered for wormhole defence | ||||
| Description | Mark III grav turrrets (with range 9000) make defending wormholes too easy - most units have lower range so you get a lot of time to kill them. What more, grav turrets work under FF so you can stop Zenith Bombards wave because they tend to attack targets outside FF. Anyway grav turrets are superior compared to tractor beams. My solution is to add imunity to gravity effects to several ships (maybe even fighters). I don't have spire exapnsion, so I don't know how this would change grav effects of spire starships. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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If this happens then perhaps make tractor beams prefer gravity immune ships |
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Pretty sure one of the intents of gravity is that very few things would be immune to it, especially starships and under. The intended purpose is that the only counter for lower level ships is to shoot it. I wouldn't mind one or two fleet ships type have an immunity to gravity, but most certainly NOT a triagnle ship. Maybe it would be a good buff for the underwhelming infiltrators, especially given their name and what it implies. Sounds like to me its the Mk. III grav turrets that need a nerf in range, and maybe fix that grav turrets that are paralyzed (and possible EMPed) still slow ships down (see 5849, though there is discussion there about how to fix that without making paralyzes OP at stopping defenses) Also, why do grav turrets get not only a buff in range, but also a buff in how much they slow down as they go up in mark? Why both? That seems a bit OP Keep in mind though that Mk. III gave turrets aren't exactly cheap in knowledge cost, so you should get a pretty decent reward if you get them. For the FF thing, a similar issue came up with the military turrets under forcefields, and they got the 25% damage reduction rule. Maybe something similar for grav turrets, like when under a forcefield, the speed it slows everything down is multiplied by 4. (Like if the Mk. III grav turret slows everything down to 8 speed, when it is under a forcefield, it slows things down to 32 instead. Still useful, but it is an incentive to not stick it under a forcefield, and gives a tradeoff for the increased durability) |
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If Infiltrators were gravity immune, players would likely die against a wave of them. They have a huge ship cap, so waves have tons of them. So many you can't possibly stop them with tractor beams. They ignore Force Fields, so anything that gets to your CS can destroy it and you have nothing that can actually stop them. In addition, Tractor and Gravity immunity are mostly buffs for the AI, not the player, and Infiltrators are weaker for players than the AI, so Gravity Immunity isn't really making them useful to players. |
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Ok, the Infiltrators was a crazy idea, and it may be a bad one. So I guess you can ignore that in the list of things I rambled on about. I would agree the 9k range for a grav turret, even the Mk. III one, seems a bit OP considering that the slow everything down to 8 (or was it 2 for MK. III?) |
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Isn't the ship cap on the Mark III Gravity Turret like 1? |
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Is it? If that is true, then never-mind all this. If a turret has a cap of 1, you would expect it to be hilariously overpowered, because you get to use it in only one place at a time. Take a look at the Mk. IV beam cannon for example. Also, what is the knowledge cost of the Mk. III turret again? |
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Im my current game total knowledge cost of mark III is 750 + 3000 + 4000 with cap 58. Also they are pretty cheap (2000/28000) and have build time 2:00, so even with cap 10 or so you can set up ad-hoc defence around wormhole right after wave is anounced. Another solution, that may nerf grav turrent, is add self-attrition when enemy is in range. With good chosen values (from almost no attrition with one enemy in range to about 10s of life with 1k enemies) they would stop small waves, but big ones still will pose a threat. |
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Wow, 58?! I swear last time I checked them out their ship cap was single digits so I never bothered researching them. I must have them confused with something else. |
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Yea, 9k gravity range seems a little OP for something with a cap of 58. How about making gravity turrets non-scaling with ship cap, make the current Mk. III have a ship cap of one or two (maybe buff them a bit too, possibly their HP), and that should stop them from being OP. You get a ludicrously good gravity unit, but only two of them. The other marks of grav turrets could use tweaks to make them usable when their numbers are not scaled. |
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Instead of making a tiny cap, I'd rather just make them less OP. Muting their range when under a shield would be a big nerf - pehaps the gravity effect range is halved or quartered in that case. Then, make all Mks have the same speed limit instead of improving with Mk level. Or, what if grav turrets only reduced ship speed by a fixed fraction, down to some minimum. Maybe Mk 1 reduces speed to 1/4 normal, but no lower than 8, Mk 2 by 1/6 but no lower than 6, and Mk 3 by 1/8, but no lower than 4. So the fast melee/short range ships will still be dramatically slowed, but not completely helpless. |
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LintMan said: "Muting their range when under a shield would be a big nerf - pehaps the gravity effect range is halved or quartered in that case." I assume you meant that the magnitude of their effect would be halved or quartered when under a ff, not their range, right? Also, I know that the devs have pushed back on proportional slowing in gravity, but proportional slowing (with a minimum speed) does make more intuitive sense and is a bit easier to balance, even though it is harder to compute. In any case, the current values of 8, 6, and 4 are too low for a reduction to that speed, especially given that it does not reduce while under a forcefield, grav turret range (especially Mk. II and III), and the grav turret's generous ship cap. |
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So, sons changing around things outside of gravity turrets or gravity effects, the proposed solutions so far are: Changing the turrets themselves: *Making them self attrition while slowing ships down (very moderate effect, like almost unnoticeable when only slowing one ship) *Decreasing or eliminating range improvements as Mk goes up *Decreasing or eliminating how much the effect forces ships to slow down to as Mk goes up (maybe also adjusting the Mk. I magnitude as well) *Decreasing the caps of grav turrets as Mk goes up more sharply (doesn't have to be 1 or 2 at Mk. III, it could be like 16 or something) Changing the mechanics of gravity: *Making a gravity emitting unit self attrition proportional to the number of ships it is slowing down, except for the grav-drill (very moderate effect, like almost unnoticeable when only slowing one ship) *Making how much the effect forces ships to slow down receive a decrease when under a damage output reducing forcefield *Making gravity a proportional reduction in speed, with a minimum speed it will slow ships down to Remember, these do not have to be mutually exclusive. Some combination of them could also be chosen to be implemented. |
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I think the caps are just too high. There are at most 120 systems in a game, and how many do you need Gravity Turrets on? Even the 58 Mark I turrets are enough for most games. Once you have Mark III, Mark I are obsolete and so are Mark II are for all practical purposes. Lowering Mark II and III caps is probably warranted. Heck, even Mark I might need a slight reduction. Maybe 48, 24, and 6. |
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@Hearteater I think adjusting the caps seems like the safest, least destructive change that still gets the job done. I would vote for that. |
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Actually, I did mean range. As I see it, the biggest problem with putting a shielf over them is that for many (most?) ships, 9000 range means that grav turret and the shield it is under aren't even within their firing range and they need to crawl up to get to it. A half or quarter range gravity effect would give many/most ships a shot at it, and would force most grav turrets to be closer to the edge of the shield rather than centered under it and so exposed more quickly under fire. As for cap reduction - Were those cap numbers for epic fleet size? I guess I just prefer having a decent amount of a less powerful unit than to reduce the quantity down to tiny amounts. |
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Hmm, the problem with dynamic range based on whether a shield is over it is that it makes positioning and range display very tricky, as it would depend on the current state of the unit, and it would introduce a tricky new mechanic into the game. Or were you talking about reducing the range of grav turrets in general? If that is the case, I could support that as well. As I stated, 9k range with 50ish cap is broken, so that can be solved by either reducing the range or reducing the cap. The current cap of 58 or so for Mk. I turrets are for normal caps. So I am assuming that Hearteater's proposed cap changes are also for normal caps. Actually, do grav turrets currently scale with global ship caps? I can't see any reason why they should, as their effect and range would not scale, only their durability. |
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Gravity Turrets do NOT scale with caps. Which is correct, because they are not affected by the number of units present. |
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I favor a caps reduction; if you're going to get to researching a Mark III turret it should be pretty OP. Strongly against self-attrition scaling with number of ships affected; surely the whole point of grav turrets is that they can take on unlimited numbers of ships? |
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even with their cap and area you do realize that the leader mechanicss that have gone in with waves mean anytime a spire ship or other gravity immune ship is picked the entire wave is gravity immune with it. so that is their current counter along with the beachhead that can be turned off. i find that even with their area it takes about 8-14 per system to create an effective zone of control. artillery ships, golems, spire, hybrids, and missles(if you dont unlock anti missle turrets) all are direct counters because they have longer range than the aoe. at most i might suggest a change to targetting logic on the hybrids but even then theey are not that op against the end game waves. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 11, 2012 1:38 am | benetnash | New Issue | |
| Apr 11, 2012 9:05 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Apr 11, 2012 9:05 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Apr 11, 2012 11:26 am | ArcDM | Note Added: 0021930 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 1:42 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0021935 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 1:42 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0021935 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 1:49 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0021937 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 1:52 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0021938 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 2:04 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0021939 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 2:38 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0021940 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 3:10 pm | benetnash | Note Added: 0021941 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 3:22 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0021942 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 3:22 pm | Hearteater | Note Edited: 0021942 | |
| Apr 11, 2012 3:25 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0021943 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 12:32 pm | LintMan | Note Added: 0021963 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 12:57 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0021964 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 1:04 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0021965 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 1:05 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0021965 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 1:27 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0021966 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 1:41 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0021968 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 2:12 pm | LintMan | Note Added: 0021969 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 2:26 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0021970 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 2:26 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0021970 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 2:32 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0021971 | |
| Apr 12, 2012 4:16 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0021965 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 5:11 am | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0022802 | |
| Apr 27, 2012 3:43 pm | motai | Note Added: 0022862 |
