View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0005432 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Jan 21, 2012 4:50 am | Jan 31, 2012 9:40 pm | |
| Reporter | Astilious | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.020 | ||||
| Summary | 0005432: Blade spawners too powerful | ||||
| Description | Recently a freind and I played a game in which we got blade spawners. These made things considerably easier as they tore apart planets and destroyed ships even under forcefields. This game we found ourselves on the other side of things as the AI has got them pretty early. They seem to be very powerful, tearing apart the small fleets we can send through to the Eye guarded planet, even when we back them up with spirecraft. The only thing that deals with them seems to be gravity effects, but as no mobile version is available (bar one bonus ship) this isn't useful most of the time. I'd imagine them to be ok when defended against as you can get your fleet near them easily and aren't limited by AI eyes but when facing them on the offensive as they hit you from all about the system far away. This could be resolved by: - Reducing damage based on the remaining health of the blade, decreasing long range effectiveness. - Giving them a 0.1X damage modifier against polycrystal, thereby letting bombers get in on Eye guarded planets to take out the posts and let the rest of the fleet in. - A flat damage reduction. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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Making the damage dependent on their health would make them worthless for the human player, I think. The .1 multiplier against polychristal could be a good idea. |
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Reducing their damage a little may be worth considering, as it seems a bit high for a melee unit. But giving them an "artificial counter" may make them less aggravating too. (sort of like fortresses and their .01 multiplier against polycryistal, basically making bombers a counter in large part because of the fact that fortresses can barely do anything against them) |
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The counter to blade spawners is anything ignoring a fusion cutter. IE: Starships, which you typically want to use on AI Eye planets anyway. They don't need a nerf, they have a natural enemy. They've shut down my early blade spawner army often enough that I treat them like Maws if the AI gets them at this point. You want to eat my small stuff? Fine, no more small stuff. |
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@GUDare Good luck with that. The current balance of the game doesn't give starships a very good cost efficiency. Not terrible cost efficiency, but certainly not enough to actually be able to replace most of your mobile military with them in the early to mid parts of the game, and still be able to take planets and survive. (In the late game, you could easily have max shipcaps for all fleet ships, so you would be building starships anyways) |
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I got my math backwards, my apologies. I flipped a divisor when I did a series of calculations. You're correct. I've had excellent luck using them in that manner and their DPS/Fleet cap is still one of the highest (at Zenith/Spire Starship), but cost to DPS is horrendous. |
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Blade spawners have blade attacks not fusion cutters. Only raid starships are immune, the rest are vulnerable. |
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I think it's an interesting case--the blade spawners are pretty good early and mid-game, but their usefulness declines after you get your main 'ball fleet' and subside into a supporting attrition role. The major drawback is their low ship cap of 5/5/4 and some blade AI problems (i.e. rate of acquiring next target), and I feel that's the reason why I think they maybe should be left alone. Don't know about the penalizing multiplier--I suppose as long as the AI blades don't flail around ineffectually back and forth between target priorities or often decide to attack polycrystal hulls. Dunno, I'm curious on what others have to say about their experiences. AI possession of said vessel is pretty painful, though. |
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Probably the most powerful spire ship-type in my play-throughs, in terms of overall use. As a *human* I'd always take the full cap since they're ideal versus planets armed with Ions+MassDriver+AI eye. (the blades count as ships for the spawn, but with a small strikeforce it doesn't really matter.) Currently playing a Peacemaker with plenty of all three installations and seriously saving my day. I think the planet-wide attack is probably the worst offender followed by blade speed, rather than raw power of blades. If you take the equivalent niches such as snipers and sentinel frigates: (1) the shield-penetration and high number of hits per second give blade-spawners a significant edge. (2) Blades are also faster and more offensive than sentinel frigate shots. (3) You can make counter-snipers both in turret and starship form. An alternative suggestion would be to decrease the range to 35~50k (still better than zenith bombards range-wise, but not planet-wide). I think they should remain powerful (but then these are my favourite fleet ships along with beam frigates and bombards). |
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I take back my comments on their power in the AIs hands. I'd never run into early game blade spawners before. Until you have either insanely fast craft (ie: Raptors) or sniper equivalents they are overly powerful in the hands of AI. Admittedly I just ran into a perfect storm of events to change my mind (trapped to 4 worlds behind 6 Class IV worlds, and they had bombards too for anti-starship), tracking 20 or 30 down to kill them, and then having them respawn while you build for the next raid, is inane in the early game. Though fighting early honeycombs can be no better. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 21, 2012 4:50 am | Astilious | New Issue | |
| Jan 22, 2012 10:28 am | Burnstreet | Note Added: 0018049 | |
| Jan 23, 2012 7:42 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Jan 23, 2012 7:42 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Jan 24, 2012 7:44 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0018061 | |
| Jan 27, 2012 12:06 am | GUDare | Note Added: 0018216 | |
| Jan 27, 2012 12:30 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0018217 | |
| Jan 27, 2012 3:08 am | GUDare | Note Added: 0018220 | |
| Jan 27, 2012 3:41 pm | Astilious | Note Added: 0018269 | |
| Jan 28, 2012 8:36 pm | Spikey00 | Note Added: 0018346 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 7:38 am | zharmad | Note Added: 0018436 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 9:40 pm | GUDare | Note Added: 0018456 |
