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.
now you're being a ninny and i'm done with this conversation. this is exactly what i meant by idiotic pedantry. you're playing rhetoric not engaging the ideas. i'm done, bye bye.
Whoo! De-Fault! De-Fault!
By the way, the value of losing 280 population in one swing, with 100% allegience, with a full recovery afterwords, is worth about 8000 credits over roughly 37 minutes, with the worst penalty being around the initial loss.
The value of losing that homeworld is worth... uhm... a lot more than that.
A 100% allegience asteroid losing all 20 population and then growing back unmolested costs 200 credits over 15 minutes. The value of losing the asteroid STARTS at over 4 times that value.
This is without tax income upgrades, population upgrades, or population growth upgrades.
The reason your values are higher than what I stated, is because normal income game settings give a 15% boost to income across the board. Sorry, my numbers were off 15% because I forgot about this.
Being pedantic is fun.
you might as well, if you are defeat someone's defense forces on a planet, isn't it worth the time to take out the planet also?
I use them when I want to kill a planet quickly. I mean, just three or four can really help knock a planet down to size so I can colonize. They seem fine to me, since they do what they are supposed to.
I think he was talking about shelter upgrades. Ok... How about this. The devs put the siege ship early cause they felt early game needed a ship that could attack planets besides having a cap. Makes sense. But then the ship had to be easily countered early game. Fair enough. And we don't want to add more ships to the game as clutter. So what if the siege frigate had a special upgrade at like 5-6 mil labs? An upgrade that greatly increased it survivability so that it could fight with the fleet again? This would make the ship fulfill it's role early game without hurting the game and then later in the game make it a viable ship again...
Sarudak, what happens then on small maps is people rush 6 mil labs, and pump out siege frigates. Having not run the numbers, I dunno if the economic side effects of ignoring your civ till you reach 6 mil labs, and have a sizeable fleet of SF's are enough, but more experienced players might be able to give good estimates. (Note that such upgrades shouldn't be necessary, though that may certainly be a solution, as, if a person is just cleaning shop with SF's, they've probably already won, and so have the creds to spare. This has the added bonus of giving players SF's earlier if they may need them.)
Quick tip: NO ONE can rush 6 military labs. It takes 2 fully upgraded expansion worlds to pull it off, and then you've crippled yourself in military and expansion. That's not counting the cost and time of a typical Tier 6 research topic, which is over twice the cost of T1 research(edit: T6 research costs 1400$ / 250M/ 400C, and takes 3min+ depending on game speed) A player that "rushes" that hard has no army to speak of, no economy to work with, and will be crushed as soon as his gamble at spamming non-combat ships comes to a spectacular failure.
Rushing labs like that has only been good for trying to use returning armada, and that's because your crippled economy gets completely replaced with free gate ships. Note that returning armada has since been nerfed, and rushing RA isn't particularly viable anymore.
Of course, that's why I think pushing the siege frigate up the tech tree would fix so many of its unresolved problems. By pushing siege ships up closer to midgame (after the early skirmishes have played out), players won't be able to spam them at their most imbalanced time- first thing. With that imbalance taken care of, the siege ship can be better hardened to survive mid-late game mayhem.
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