View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0000834 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Oct 23, 2010 10:10 am | Oct 26, 2010 3:33 am | |
| Reporter | themachineissentient | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 3.903 | ||||
| Summary | 0000834: Fleet ships need a little health bonus | ||||
| Description | For example, raptors have 26,000 health. That is a two shot death to an artillery Guardian which sprays six targets for 18,000 health. My basic frigates only have 10,000 range, and they are my long-range artillery. I cannot even get in range. The attack is so critical in fact, in the spray is so large, 43,000 range… It completely obliterates Fleet ships quite quickly. You can barely fly around without losing the ships. A supplemental option here would be to check Guardian range. Now, I know that starships are supposed to be the counter to guardians, but is it intended that an entire fleet of ships are summarily murdered by even a couple guardians? | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | |||||
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Fighters have over 100k health and are extremely cheap, have you tried using those to raid the arty guardians? |
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Fighters are the least of the problem, yes, but I don't see them as the solution. Mainly because of the range of the artillery Guardian, you get quite a bit of attrition by the time your ships get in position. And the Guardian itself isn't the only ship at the enemy planet that you have to deal with. If you just select all of your ships and send them in, you trigger the eye. If you send in a subset, you have to pick a mix of ships to bring. Right now, yes, you probably want to bring mostly fighters because they have the most health. The other ships, while they are not bad, still need a buff because they cannot survive an AI-even in the beginning-who is spraying shots across the whole planet and 3-shotting them. Also keep in mind that a Guardian has 1 million health. Right now I am really questioning the utility value of fleet ships; every battle these just get decimated. And it's not a matter of positioning, it's not a matter of choice of ships; it's the way the balance is currently set. At the very least, this needs to be looked at by the developers to see what the intention is and what the battle scenarios should look like. Just try a few battles, play for a couple hours, and see what happens to these fleet ships. It's not good. :-) If there is a buff, yes, I agree that the fighter should get the least help. However, look at the health of the frigate. It's just too low. |
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What ship scale are you playing on? I played for four hours yesterday on normal, and wasn't noticing any particular deficiencies in my fleet ships. Granted, I had a lot of starships also, but still. |
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Notably Artillery Guardians are in the "WTFPWN" category, just due to their range, damage, and number of shots. Before their double-nerf a Mk4 one killed my home command station in 1 minute (yes, even with that x0.1 damage penalty vs. command grade hull). They do, however, have the Artillery hull, which means bombers and the like can nom on them quite easily. Just move into range with a transport, if getting close is an issue. |
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I nerfed Artillery's pretty hard, they're still that bad? |
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I haven't seen them in too many scenarios recently, just Mk2s against my whole fleet already on top of them (warp points: the ultimate range nullifier). But they can still kill a home system by themselves (huge damage multiplier versus "structure," huge range, and huge damage) if you're not prepared. Flaks are another WTFPWN because they do "aoe" damage of type "energy bomb," fire 21 shots, and do 6000+ damage per shot. They can be killed if you throw fighters at them, take a volley, retreat to a MRS, and then hit them again. I'd have to check frigate survivability (I think the initial shot does damage them, though I don't know about the AoE burst), but Frigates have no damage multiplier against the Flak's hull type. |
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I've played a good four hours each in the last two nights, and really felt like the balance on the fleet ships in general was about right now. Granted, this was on Normal ship cap, so they might get a bit more eaten on High (yet another reason not to use High, we don't really care to encourage High), AND I know there are quite possibly some specific balance issues re: guardians or tanks or otherwise, which would cause fleet ships to die too fast in specific situations. But, in short, I think the balance of the overall fleet ship health in general is good at this stage, and any specific problems that remain are things we should deal with in specific balance threads about other ships. Yes the artillery guardians were still pretty scary in the last release, but I think that's a good thing. :) |
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Agreed X. I was just throwing out thoughts from my last three or four games (across at least two versions) aware that I haven't seen all the guardians in all situations. |
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No worries. I'm glad for the feedback. |
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Being a game developer myself, I know how important good feedback is, even if its (ultimately) wrong. |
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:) What do you develop, out of curiosity? |
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Flash games. I'm not as prolific as I'd like, mainly due to time and the desire to make things of quality. Just about everything I've got is here: http://www.kongregate.com/accounts/Draco18s |
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Cool stuff! |
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Almost won a contest two years ago with Flash Beryllium. Would have been like $200, so nothing fancy. Still, getting 5th (popularity contest) is pretty good (actual winners were picked by some judges from the most popular ones). |
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That's very cool indeed. :) |
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I would concur that in this latest version (and a couple before that) the balance of fleet ships on normal ship caps seems about right. |
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This report is semi-relevant, but I just lost in 10:24 (that's 10 minutes) to three Vampire Claws despite having a full (normal) ship cap of fighters and armor (Mk1, 2, and 3) with 23 bombers and some flak turrets. In the time it took for me to kill one, they took out my two larger power generators then my home station. Fighters, which have bonuses, do a whopping 120 damage (less than the fighter's listed damage). I think the issue is that Vampire Claws have a "refractive" hull (which no base ship has a high multiplier for), and not Close Combat (despite being a close combat ship). |
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Yes, it's that paired with the armor rating of the vampire claws. There isn't a good base triangle counter to vampire claws, but that's no longer going to be guaranteed in the game -- there are counters amongst the starships you have for (knowledge) free, and the turrets that you have. I think that will be a good role for lightning turrets, though, actually. This just speaks to an imbalance in vampires, which is unrelated to any larger problem with fleet ship health, at any rate. |
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Yea, the issue with vampires is that they're rather like werewolves from AD&D: significant damage reduction and insane regeneration rate. I remember when I ran into one in Baldur's Gate 2, I couldn't damage the thing fast enough to keep it below max health ;) |
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X: Lightning turrets aren't useful, because of the vampire claw's armor! Each turret would do an amazing 40 damage every 18 seconds. Lightning turrets and electric shuttles are useless against everything because of their low, low damage (800 and 400 for Mk1 respectively). The turret to use (against vampires) is laser turrets. Bonus versus refractive hulls, high damage (base 1200), and high rate of fire, and 1000 armor piercing. 14,200 x3 every 4 seconds. |
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Sorry, I wasn't clear: I meant that lightning turrets need armor piercing in general, and a bonus against refractive. |
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Alright. (as for this thread vs. any other: there was already a discussion here about ship balance that I was tagging along with, rather than filing a new report). |
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No worries, all good. |
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FYI, as the reference tab can tell you, Laser Turrets are fairly effective against vampire claws. Also, for the next version I've completely removed armor from vampire claws, since it seems a unit should be at most two of "tough", "highly armored", and "regenerates quickly during combat". |
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Yeah, I noticed that laser turrets were good, but only after I was getting mauled and didn't have time to build them, I had assumed (incorrectly) that vampires--being a melee unit--had the close combat hull. |
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I don't think one should assume anything in AI War! |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 23, 2010 10:10 am | themachineissentient | New Issue | |
| Oct 23, 2010 12:14 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0001957 | |
| Oct 23, 2010 12:48 pm | themachineissentient | Note Added: 0001969 | |
| Oct 23, 2010 12:53 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0001971 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 1:29 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002039 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 2:36 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0002045 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 3:19 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002049 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 3:32 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0002050 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 3:32 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Oct 24, 2010 3:32 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Oct 24, 2010 3:32 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Oct 24, 2010 5:47 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002058 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 5:49 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0002060 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 5:57 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002063 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 5:58 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0002065 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 6:00 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002066 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 6:01 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0002067 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 6:03 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002068 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 6:08 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0002069 | |
| Oct 24, 2010 9:27 pm | Draco18s | Note Edited: 0002068 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 1:21 pm | zebramatt | Note Added: 0002113 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 8:16 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002124 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 8:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0002125 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 8:57 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0002126 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 9:55 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002128 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 9:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0002129 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 10:10 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002130 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 10:11 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0002131 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 10:40 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0002133 | |
| Oct 25, 2010 11:17 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0002134 | |
| Oct 26, 2010 3:33 am | zebramatt | Note Added: 0002137 |
