I have yet to see anyone even use them. I haven't used them except when I played against the AI, when I first got this game. They only do 20 or 23 planetary damage, have weak shields and armor, and are quite pricey. It seems like you would have to devote too much resources to buy enough to make them useful. Even then, they are too easy to kill.
From what I have been reading, it seems like they had a pretty big nerf recently. I don't think making them expensive with a high fleet supply is a problem, but the way they are currently just doesn't seem to work. I would like to see them be more of a heavy planetary bomber that does more planetary damage and is quite a bit tougher than the current version. Only then, or by making them cheaper, can I see them being viable.
Any thoughts from you vets who know more than I?
P.S. I know there have been some discussions about sieges but I didn't see any directly talking about if they are useful for what they are intended to do, planetary bombardment. Hence, I made this posting.
While this is true, I suggest picking bombers for colonizing. Generally, neutrals have flak frigates and the bombers are much more resistant to flak. For planet defense, I agree 100%, fighters are the way to go.
I've had plenty of opportunity to use Siege frigates, to great effect.
The effectiveness of the SF, in my opinion, entirely depends on the enemy. Every fortress, every defense has a weak point somewhere, and SFs are the best option for exploiting that.
I think most people don't like SFs because their expectations of them are too high ... most people want to have a brutal planet-slaying, but I think it's also acceptable to simply use a well-timed strike on an undefended planet to kill the population. You can sometimes accomplish this goal before the enemy has a chance to respond, depending on the dynamics of the map and where the enemy fleet is. Murdering a planet's population destroys its income, for an appreciable amount of time. Depending on the success of your attacks, and the targets, you can take out anywhere from 3 - 10 credits-per-second of planetary income. Even better for TEC if you have the radioactive fallout ability, making repopulation come to a crawl.
To make a comparison to say, Starcraft, this would be like killing all of a player's SCVs, but not the Command Center. It doesn't necessarily win the game, but it certainly gives you a temporary leg-up.
My favorite scenario is when I find a cluster of planets that the enemy has neglected to defend well. You send in 6 SFs and murder a planet. Unless the main fleet is literally next door, they'll try to take out your SFs with a small force of a few LRM frigates or whatnot. When they do, you scatter the group - send the 6 SFs in groups of 2 in 3 different directions, if you can, and hit 3 more undefended planets. Keep going back and forth like this for as long as you can. The economic damage you can achieve if you pull it off well makes the frigates pay for themselves, if you ask me.
Not only does it hurt the income, but it can usually cause the enemy to get very paranoid/annoyed about SF strikes. I find it funny to come back to a planet I've bombed 2-3 times and literally see it ringed with about 10 cannons. What's even funnier is when I use the ALT key to check the ranges on said cannons, and see that there is one little spot he missed. Hangars are definitely the better solution, though can be easily countered if the SFs are accompanied by flak frigates. The best counter, I think, is to couple such defenses with a single frigate factory, so that you can spam a few support units to counter those sorts of strikes when you need to.
I never understood why only certain weapons could attack planets at all. Maybe all could but most would be extremely ineffective? Like less than 5%. Or maybe not that. But then if you have this extremely powerfull weapon that is so strong it's the only type of weapon that can be used on planets why is it never used in combat. I understand maybe it's too slow and lumbering to his frigates or cruisers but what about against buildings? They don't move any more than planets... Or even maybe cap ships with like a 40% accuracy against caps and a 20-30% accuracy against cruisers and frigates but a very powerful attack and then that one cap that gives accuracy bonus would actually be useful.
5 Sieges cost more than a cap? Whoa, well that doesn't sound right esp. since this is a unit that can get easily taken out unlike the light carrier that everyone spams and abuses the hell out of.
I'd say reduce their cost slight so about 7-8 Sieges equals the cost of a Capital ship and reduce their ship to ship dmg so they literally be useless against other ships and only serve to take out structures and planets.
Didn't really have the patience to read the 3 pages so I dont know if anyone came up with this idea already but it's perfect.
Make it so that sieges need to be deployed. 1 minute of setting up before they can shoot the first shot at a planet.
Makes it so that they can't just rush to a grav well and blow up the planet, and allows you developer people to make the seiges a lot more powerful once they do start shooting. drop the fleet supply , cost , and raise the armors/shields a little. I believe that's pretty fair.
Then they might be even too powerful, considering the pitiful state of the upgrade: "Emergency Facilities" basically being not worth getting I don't want it to be even less worth getting.
Sieges shouldn't be more powerful then they are now. If anything maybe individual capital ships planet bombing abilities should to nerf to only about 2 Sieges so if he wants to speed it up he needs to get more Sieges.
I'd agree that Emergency Facilities is crap. However, part of the problem is that siege frigates aren't a real threat, so there's no point in investing in this planet upgrade. The first level is acceptable, doubling the hit points of a planet albiet at a stteep cost, but after that it's just obsenely expensive. Definitely needs a buff along with siege frigates, either to give more health or to be less costly.
If siege frigates were a medium-late tech unit, they could be more lethal without causing issues with early game bombing rushes.
I don't think pushing them up the tech tree is necessary. Right now, siege frigates are expensive, have low planet damage, and very low hit points. I think if you buff one of those three things (health and cost being the most preferable) they'd work well as early game units without being too strong. If they remained weak, but were actually cost effective, you could send a wave of them as a suicide attack. They'd be easily killed, but it also wouldn't be a very expensive gambit. If they were strong units, but remained as expensive as they are now, it would be a serious sacrifice to bring them out early game and likewise an opponent should be forced to make some sort of similar sacrifice to counter them.
Do **NOT**, I repeat do **NOT** even remotely consider buffing siege frigate armor, hit points, or survivability! Period, paragraph, end of story! PERIOD! If anything, I'd nerf it even more! The hit points and survivability should not be above a scout frigate!
After getting the game the first day it came out, and going through the first patch, I simply put the game down and walked away for a year. Never touched it, never considered playing it again, never came to these forums again, had no interest. I only came back to the game in January because I had hopes that Entrenchment would make things better, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that siege frigates had been nerfed. If siege frigate survivability is rebuffed, I'll just pin my hopes on another upcoming game.
The most ridiculous unit that's ever been concieved of in any RTS EVER - "the siege frigate of doom." Boy, that really took the cake, I'm telling you.
Who the heck would ever want to play you? Who the heck would ever want to play a game that revolves around such a dynamic? So the defense is to either uber-turtle (and then you find some chink in their armor as you described above), keep your fleet on defensive patrol of your planets (which lets you have the rest of the system uncontested), or do the exact same thing to you?
Yeah, nice. I remember the early days of this game. Instead of "uber-rush to carriers to counter my opponent's carrier spam" it was "uber-rush to siege frigs to counter attack my opponent's planets." Your siege frigates would literally pass each other in the opening minutes of the game, on the way to each other's home planets. It was a contest of who could bomb who's home planet the fastest. Sometimes it became a game of "home planet hopscotch." Both of you nuked each other's home planets, then recolonized on each other's home planets. So you switched places. NICE! Then what to do? Rinse and repeat. Your siege frigates would pass each other AGAIN on the way to each other's systems.
No thanks. Not my cup of tea. I'll take carrier spam (or even lrm spam) over that any day of the week.
Kharma, I think you are overreacting a bit. I don't know what it was like in 1.0, but even if seiges were twice as strong as they are now, that strategy would easily be countered just by massing LFs, upgrading emergency facilities, and rapid expanding.
If anything, I'd nerf it even more!
Gimme a break, siege frigates are crap now. You could double their health and they'd still be mediocre at best. As it is right now if you have equal cost of units defending a planet as the opponent spent in siege frigates, those siege frigates are dead before they fire one shot against the planet. One hanger defense can beat off 6 or 7 siege frigates before they can kill a 1500 hp planet, they're that crappy. They are insanely weak right now, and definitely in need of a buff to give them better cost/effectiveness ratio.
FWIW being new to the game since v1.12 I rarely even tech the seige frigate. Sure Advent AI can be annoying with how they send their seige frigates past your invading fleet to the gravity well you left behind. (I always thought they were clever to do that.) But other than that they just seem to be slight annoyances. As it is now the choice is a 15 supply SF or a 14 supply light carrier. SF use too much fleet supply for what they do even with the fact that 2 SF (30 supply) equals an average capital ships planet bombing.
I will have to try a game with Zwanglos stratagy just to see how it plays out and tech the SF up to rad bomb.
It actually was a pain to hunt down the siege frigates in the old days. Sure, you could kill them, but because it took longer, they were knocking out worlds at the same time, killing your economy, while the player who sent them out was still pumping out more ships. Once you got put on the defensive, if you couldn't immediately turn the tide of the siege frig raids, you started losing.
Hurting your economy more than having to build that many seige frigates? They are ~2 mil labs + research + ~15 fleet points each.
This is one of the best ideas I`ve seen for Siege Frigates. It would also open up space for additional Siege assets, such as Siege Cruisers or dedicated Siege Cap. Ships. Good idea Commander!
They used to be cheaper, tougher, and only take half as many fleet points. Hence I said, "the old days", like back in 1.01. This is the frame of reference I use for why you have to be careful with buffing siege too much. That said, I almost never make siege, I would sooner make a siege cap....unless the enemy is just running willy nilly colonizing stuff, in which case a few siege on cleanup detail isn't bad.
ps, Advent Siege only takes 1 lab, if memory serves.
I believe Advent and Vasari get their's at 1 lab. Not that it matters, since their fleet supply is too intensive to bring them out that early.
I think the important thing is ensuring that light frigates and strike craft counter siege frigates. Unsupported siege frigates should still get out-run and slaughtered by these units at equal cost, even if they do damage the planet. It would also give light frigates and hanger defenses additional purpose in the early game, something they desperately need. Another note is that investing in siege frigates will reduce the size of your army and slow down your tech to carriers, so you're trading off a lot for that offensive edge early game.
Dude, what do you know about this topic? Apparently nothing. You apparently weren't around in the early days of this game - it's just obvious.
Yes, oh my God siege frigates would hurt the other guy's economy WAY more than you throwing down a few labs and doing research and building the damn things by the tonnage. They were cheap back then. See if you can understand what I am about to say.
They had DIAMOND PLATED armor, comprehende? On top of that, they must have had extreme hit points, because your entire fleet, plus planetary defenses, could be wailing on them while they were bombing your planet. Guess what? You wouldn't kill that many of them, AND you would still lose your planet. Then what would happen? They would leave that planet and go to your next planet. You'd follow with your fleet, wailing on them the entire way. Then they'd take down that planet, all the while your defenses and your fleet would be just wailing on them. To add insult to injury, most of the siege frigates would make it out of your system alive. They could outrun you if you followed. Plus, while you were vainly attempting to follow to somehow make them pay, you were now getting hit in your system with yet ANOTHER huge wave of siege frigates.
Is this "spelled out" enough for you? Or do I need to go into more detail?
Look, disagreeing on something is perfectly fine. Having an opinion which is counter to mine is perfectly fine. But just plain not knowing what you are talking about is another thing entirely. If you advocate buffing the siege frigate, then I have one simple request: somehow get a copy of the game in its original incarnation. Play that copy of the game against the AI, or I suppose against a good opponent. After this, if you still advocate buffing the siege frigate - fine, more power to you. But at least you will have a proper perspective from which to make such a request. Personally speaking, my involvement with this game is directly (and inversely) tied to the buff level of the siege frigate.
Sorry AgentofKarma, but the problem isn't about what sieges WERE in the distant past. The problem is what sieges are NOW, and how they no longer fit into gameplay. Where before they were more deadly than Unicron, currently they are more harmless than Space Unicorns. Current siege ships are less than a third of what they once were, and it's a very ugly picture.
It's important to figure out WHY the siege frigate was so good in the first version, because that's a good guideline for how they shouldn't be. Back then ship speeds had almost no difference, so frigates couldn't chase. Capital ships were slower and could not give chase. Carriers were weaker and unable to stop much. PJIs were too weak to slow any ship down. There were absolutely none of the defenses that are now coming out in Entrenchment. A lot of changes across the board has indirectly attacked the viability of siege ships again and again, and the siege ship has nothing to show for it.
What about current problems with the siege ship? Tech level is a VERY persistent and underestimated problem with siege ships. At the starting tech levels, defenses don't exist. Players don't have turrets. Players have no established border zones to cushion a raid. Players have no PJIs to help them give chase(doesn't matter with no territory in your control). Players only have ONE planet, the game ending Homeworld. Players at the start have nothing to even SLOW a siege ship down, much less stop them! That's because all of the counters are either deep in the tech tree, or heavy investments that can only come with time.
What does this mean? The siege ship can't be built to end the game at the absolute beginning, but by flaw, it's given at the absolute beginning. There is only ONE way to balance that in the grand scheme of things. Players have nothing when the siege frigate can first be fielded, so the only balancing solution is to allow players to counter the siege frigate with... NOTHING. That is exactly how the current balance of the siege frigate works, and that's why it is a terrible unit as is.
Actually, now that light frigates are much faster, I think that they qualify as a siege frigate counter. Hanger defenses come out at about the same level as the SF, so that's also a valid response if you see siege frigates coming. Because teching to carriers is critical, this also makes siege frigates risky in that they delay that tech. I do think that there are early game counter-measures to the SF now.
I've seen how the siege frigates were in 1.0 and I must admit that was a huge turn off from the game. I had my a light fleet of 10 LF in the system and about medium sized fleet came in and totally ignored my LF and just rained hell down on that planet. This kind of story would frequently play out in multiple games fighting AI. It could be said that you could use hangar bays, but investing in hangar bays early could turn into a death sentence when those resources were needed to build your fleet.
As sieges are now... I don't even research them. There definitely needs to be a change of some sort, but I can't say buffing their basic stats is really the right thing to do. They need some bonuses or side effects of some sort. Someone mentioned it earlier about how they can only attack planets and it didn't really make sense. A watered down version of the Vasari dreadnought might work with bonus damage to structures.
I've heard there's a dedicated anti-structure frigate coming in entrenchment, so that role is already filled.
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