While I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on the military techs of all the other races, as I was the one who suggested a complementary military thread to Darvin's survey of financial techs, and no-one else took the hint, I decided to try to produce one.
Planetary Shields- Overrated even before starbases, as they were most useful against siege frigate raids and before the carrier cruiser revision, when the ships couldn't simply take the shield generator out first. When starbases allowed the retention of planets despite bombardment they became wildly overpriced, as what you then pay for is the difference in credit income between a bombed planet and one that isn't bombed, rather than all the investment in infrastructure. They're even higher on the tech tree than the starbase control of planets... on a volcanic planet or roid the Vasari ability to keep planetary control is so much better than this that it becomes derisory.
While the novalith has also lost some of its value due to starbase control of planets, it isn't nearly as badly affected as planetary shields, at least a novalith will still have some targets, whereas anywhere you would have built a shield will have a starbase as a priority.
Solution: Many solutions have been proposed, but the most basic problem is that this tech is just incredibly far up the tech tree for what it does in the game. I would suggest that with the arrival of the starbase control abilities, tier 1 and tier 2 might be more appropriate for the research, unless the effect of the research is radically altered. Even at tier 1 and 2 and with reduced cost, I doubt there would be many of them.
Martyrdom- The seekers have only just disappeared! We don't want them back! However, as this ability costs a ship, the damage might be very poor. I haven't ever seen it used online, and I've seen a great deal, including sort of crop circles made with turrets and my feed being used to build multiple cap ship factories. Having said that I've rarely played Advent so I'm not sure, but I wanted at least one Advent tech in the four.
Solution: Is this damage straight or mitigated? Either way, improving the damage would seem to be a straightforward solution.
Wave weapons- Another perennial is that improvements to wave weapons are too expensive, as they are too high up the tech tree. The tech just requires vast numbers of heavy cruisers to make it remotely viable, rather than building another cruiser.
Solution: The obvious solution would be to bring them into line with other techs, drop them a tier. However, as more variation should always be encouraged, why not make them twice as effective instead, 10% not 5%? Vasari ships still tend to be undergunned, and at a high price this could then be altered.
Pinpoint Bombardment- I'm not sure what this tech was ever intended to achieve, a 13% increase in the range from which bombardment is possible doesn't sound much for a tier 1 tech. You can buy a whole scout for that. I wouldn't buy it.
Solution: This one just needs to be completely redone. If it's to stay where its is on the tech tree then I would suggest that it should allow destructors to also have a ranged anti-structure attack like ersatz assault cruisers, only not nearly as effective. Either that or add to the starbase anti-structure weapon, though then it would belong in a different tree. Maybe both?
So there we are, I'm sure that there are many other candidates and suggestions, but let's stay with military techs rather than capital ships and their abilities, which belong on another thread.
The problem with the tech trees has always been that cost is fixed with tier placement. A handful of upgrades break this mould (starbase trade ports and culture nodes), but most have not been touched since the game has first released. For example, the wave cannons being high tier are fine since there's no reason to get them before heavy cruisers anyhow. The problem is that they cost more than any other family of weapon upgrades because of their placement, yet the benefit is no greater.
Ironclad has very, very rarely messed with the research trees beyond bug fixes. With the final expansion out and the new trees finalized, I think it may be about time for a community balance mod to address this ourselves. This isn't an insult to Ironclad, many RTS communities have done this to save the online community late into a game's lifespan. Online players need balance changes faster than Ironcald can put them out at this stage.
Heh, well, I may as well post the draft I was working on (I was sleeping on it before posting, since I have a lot of entries)
Vasari – Pinpoint Bombardment
This high-level tech has large costs and exorbitant prerequisites to access, and somehow still manages to be one of the least useful technologies in the game. The effect of pinpoint bombardment is to increase the range of capital ships and siege frigates when bombarding planets. To someone not familiar with the game, that might seem potentially useful, but in practice it never is.
There are three major issues to consider here. The first and foremost is that in 95% of cases, you secure the planet first and then (and only then) start bombardment. A tactical range increase has no purpose in these cases. The second issue is that Vasari's most reliable siege option is the Vulkoras Desolator with its bombardment platforms. This is a special ability, and does not benefit from the upgrade to begin with. Yes, that's right, the best Vasari bombardment option does not benefit from this upgrade at all! The final issue is that even in the rare attempt to bombard a planet in combat, it is trivial for an enemy to send its mobile units after your longer-ranged attacks, and it's trivial for you to avoid a static weapon emplacement even without this upgrade. In other words, there's no benefit to be had anyways even in these rare cases.
To top it all off, this ability's lengthy list of prerequisites makes it more similar to a superweapon in terms of what stage of the game it comes out. And yet, it probably wouldn't even raise an eyebrow as a 1-lab-level technology in its current state.
What should be done about pinpoint bombardment? Given that a complete retooling or a move to a different location on the tech tree (which would be ideal) are probably not available for discussion, our choices are very limited. The most obvious approach would be to make this upgrade increase bombard damage as well as bombard range. This would bring it more into line with the TEC and Advent which get damage benefits from their upgrade lines (with far fewer prerequisites, it should be added).
Without adding additional effects to this upgrade, the only real option to make it useful is to supercharge its effects to the point at which a siege frigate could bombard from the near the edge of the gravity well (something like an 800% range increase). Considering this technology comes so late in the game that superweapons are likely already in play, this isn't as extreme as it sounds. Any defender should have the economy to put hangers on all their planets by this point in the game anyways, if they don't already have starbases on all their front lines.
Vasari – Gravity Mines
Gravity mines have three massive issues. The first and most obvious is the act of clearing them: you can literally run over gravity mines with your units and they won't take damage. If something isn't shooting them while they're doing this, a single unit can clear a gravity minefield in a matter of seconds, and it's trivial to send a “scapegoat” unit ahead of the fleet to clear them out first and spare most of your units. This makes general-purpose use of gravity mines impossible (not that conventional mines are much harder to clear, but at least you can stop that by killing the fragile scouts...)
The second issue is that avoiding mines is relatively easy, so it's very difficult to set up a good trap. The easiest way to set up mines in an in-combat situation is to shut down the enemy units temporarily with subverters, but if you have these then you don't need gravity mines anyways. So most of the good combinations that allow for easy mine usage make gravity mines redundant. The third and perhaps most pressing problem is quite simple: explosive mines are very effective at what they do, so much so that it's very hard for a niche alternative like gravity mines to compete. Most units will be killed if they run into several explosive mines, especially if they're already damaged and are fleeing a pursuing enemy. All these things considered together leaves gravity mines as a very weak and undesirable technology.
What should be done about gravity mines? This is a tough one, because gravity mines simply don't mesh well with the role of mines. My suggestion is simple: instead of shutting down phase engines, gravity mines should shut down all engines. The target comes to a complete stop, and cannot move for the duration. While that may seem like a death sentence, ploughing through an explosive minefield already is a death sentence, so gravity mines do need a similarly powerful (if not more powerful, due to appearing much later in the tech tree) effect to compete.
TEC – Highly Conductive Rails (Gauss Cannon Range)
This is not a bad technology at all. In fact, if you're using turrets, it's pretty well mandatory because it's so good. The problem is the way it's actually implement is a slap in the face to the TEC faction. TEC turrets are actually inferior to the other factions with reduced range, and you need to purchase this upgrade to bring them up to the same level. When this was first pointed out to me, it was a face-palm moment.
What should be done about HCR? Bring TEC turrets up to the same range as everyone else's. There's no reason they should have to pay to get standard range. If this upgrade is too strong afterwards, then lower its effect slightly, but what I should get is a benefit, not something that is an undo to a purely arbitrary gimp on one faction.
TEC / Vasari – Ship Shield Upgrades
You're choosing between shield or hull upgrades, and deciding which are better. Both of them add 5% to their base values. This is a big benefit for hull to begin with, since for TEC and Vasari hull points are a much bigger slice of the frigate's total health. However, a second consideration is that hull benefits from armour value, whereas shield does not. However, hull does benefit from shield mitigation. In other words, one hull point is worth more than one shield point to begin with. In fact, the only apparent benefit to shields at all is that they regenerate faster. The killing blow? Shield upgrades are more expensive to begin with.
With hull upgrades vastly outclassing shield upgrades, most people only touch shield upgrades if they happen to be Advent or if they've already completed hull research. It's heavily implied in the manual that shields are intended to be superior because of faster regeneration rate, but in reality fleets seldom operate far from repair bays, so this is not a very large consideration at all.
How should shield upgrades be fixed? I don't really know what to say here. It's very clear that in their current state these upgrades are pretty well useless until hull and armour upgrades are fully researched for TEC and Vasari, and yet to buff them would be to take away one of the apparent advantages of Advent (cheaper and earlier in the tech tree). The problem is that Advent units have highest shield values to begin with and loads of awesome synergies, so the same 5% bonus goes a lot further.
Simply put, even if TEC and Vasari upgrades were moved to the same cost-effectiveness level as the Advent ones, they'd still be considerably worse because their units benefit less from them to begin with. Short of buffing them beyond the Advent upgrades, which is clearly not in the cards, I just don't see what can be done. On the other hand, I'm loath to leave them in their current status as a “last-stop” technology that you only get once everything else is researched (a situation that rarely happens).
Vasari / TEC – Beam Damage Upgrades
Unlike Advent, the Vasari and TEC have very few units that use beams. The Vasari have only capital ships, and the TEC have the Argonev and the Kol. This is a remarkably small pool of units to be affected by weapons damage upgrades. With capital ships already a generally poor source of damage and the Argonev having many other more cost effective damage boosting technologies available to it, these upgrades just don't compete and are seldom researched.
How should beam damage upgrades be fixed? Because these upgrades affect so few units, it may be feasible to justify reducing their cost below what would be normally expected of 3rd and 4th level technologies. That would instantly make them quite palatable as cheaper upgrades that affect a smaller pool of units.
Vasari – Wave Damage Upgrades
The now infamous wave damage upgrades are already well and thoroughly convicted by the community of being underpowered, so I don't think I need to say that much towards this case. However, in the interest of due process, let me list the facts.
Wave upgrades are the highest-level (in terms of lab) damage technology in the game. Most other damage technology paths begin at the 1st or 2nd lab levels, and a few begin at the 3rd. The wave upgrades take the cake: beginning at the 4th lab level where most of the others actually max out or are at least two thirds complete. This is complicated by the fact that they only affect a single combat unit: the enforcer. In other words, the most expensive damage upgrade in the game perplexing affects the fewest types of units. It doesn't help that the Vasari Enforcer packs the least bang for its buck of all units in its class to begin with.
How should wave damage upgrades be fixed? This is a hard question to answer. One of the biggest problems is that even though they have the worst general unit damage upgrade, Vasari also have the best: phase missiles. It's very hard for a Vasari player to justify using heavies as their damage output when it means giving up on the absolutely glorious phase missile line. The question is, do we want something powerful enough to match phase missiles, or do we just want something that's decent enough?
One simple possibility is to lower the cost of this upgrade. It would remain high on the lab-level, but at least its cost could be comparable to other similar upgrades. Another simple possibility could be to increase the amount of damage it offers per upgrade level. Since the Enforcer already packs the least bang for its buck of any heavy to begin with, letting it max out a little bit ahead wouldn't be that big an issue (especially since Advent already have a fourth upgrade level on their heavy to compete).
A more extreme possibility would be to give the wave weapon a special effect like phase missiles have, and have this affect improve as you buy upgrades. This could be something like a life-steal effect (which would really help out the enforcer's unique style as a “cockroach” that never goes down) or an effect that lowers shield mitigation on attack (which would be a nice alternative to using a phase-missile based army to bypass shields). However, these are more extreme changes where a simpler one may suffice.
Not yet written:
TEC – Shield GeneratorTEC – Civilian Ship Safety ActTEC – MinesAdvent – Skilled Hanger AnimaAdvent – Communal LabourVasari – Mobile Phase Detection / Jump DegredationEveryone – Basic Crew Training
Actually, with Diplomacy we have have the new king of terrible upgrades, the techs that remove the racial diplomatic penalty. It's tier seven, and all it does is remove the -1/-2 racial penalty in the relationship screen. No really, that's it. This one desperately needs to do more. I don't see why it shouldn't also remove the diplomatic inclination penalties too. That would at least be giving you a chance to boost relations by 3-4 points, which could be worthwhile even at such a cost.
This is the military technology thread though... You're welcome to start the relationship thread, especially as Darvin hasn't got the expansion yet, and I only play single player occasionally. I have noted that you could win on unfair simply by researching the first three levels of relationship boost tech. Isn't what you're claiming like observing that the last level of shield research 'only' adds another 5% shield...?
Gravity mines- I haven't used them, but they sound like they give the Ruiner an area interrupt for phase jumps, which would be a fairly useful tech, if situational? A normal minefield wouldn't concern a cap, but inability to jump might?
TEC turret range- You have to consider that the TEC LRF has a longer range than the other two, and this is more important for static defence. This tech seems fine to me, especially as there is a further long range tech. The hangar tech, with only one low tech low power upgrade is more of a problem, especially when the TEC area anti-strikecraft powers are on less-used capitals.
Shield Upgrades- Though it doesn't make much sense to me either, or only as much sense as shield mitigation remaining when the shield is down, armour does affect damage done to the shield. That's what I understand from what I've read on this forum.
Sometimes I just wish that all the '5%' upgrades were twice as effective as they are currently. That would make the pirates easier to rationalise. However the Vasari and TEC shield upgrades being poor seems okay to me. My issue is with the weakness of the Vasari repair bay, with the faction supposed to be dependent on nano-material tech for defence, and less on shields.. and why would the Advent repair bay work on health at all, rather than shields?
Beam Damage Upgrades- Yeah, the techs are very expensive. The TEC one could extend the Cobalt beam as well, then it would be useful. The Vasari weapons tree is a mess, with the powerful and oddly low-tier phase missile upgrade another contribution. However, the pulse beam could also improve the pulse gun.
Of the ones you haven't yet mentioned, the Civilian Ship Safety Act and Communal Labour are not military technology, they have 'Civilian' and 'Labour' in the title, so there. Add the retribution tech and consider them in the other thread. This is about clobbering time, not the build time of labs or trade ports or the strength of trade ships.
TEC Mines- I considered these to be less valuable before I started to use them. Having used them, my problem with them is that for mines that are the easiest to clear and the hardest to build, they don't explode for much damage. That would be what I would consider a proper trade off, size for portability. If they are going to work so infrequently then they better work well.
Skilled Hangar Anima- This doesn't sound too bad, in my rare Advent SP ventures I've occasionally used it. Was I gypped? I hate to be gypped...
Mobile Phase Detection/Degredation- How about the first research would allow both abilities and the second improve Degradation?
Basic Crew Training- I've never used this in any form for any faction. I imagine that it loses even more value for Advent later in the game, but that has never bothered me. If there was a tech that allowed capital ships to be built at Level 2 it isn't a huge advantage, and might help prevent them being simply destroyed in the later game. This might be too low a tier though, unless there were other requirements.
With Pinpoint Bombardment I'm still mystified as to what it was ever supposed to do. I prefer the ersatz assault solution to the 800% range one though, it would satisfy players who moan about Vasari assault cruisers as well.
Its lasted numerous patches and two expansions. The developers seem prone to weird errors of judgement sometimes, these can either have little effect on the game, or be entirely catastrophic. Can someone from Ironclad explain the theory of Pinpoint Bombardment to us, please?
I actually like the 800% range solution better than the anti-structure weapon idea.
not 800% range of course... but... how about the range at which after researching gravatic tolerance, and a phase pact, that you ships do not have to move to begin bombardment... aka... the circle of bombardment equeals gravity well at max research.
the bombardment platforms should get this range increase too... but i dont know if its possible for research to effect cap ship ablities.
I always thought that you should deploy gravity mines mixed with normal mines. That's how I do it, anyway.
I think the phase disruptors are pretty useless. You can only build them on your OWN planets, and if those planets get attacked, i would rather that the fleet attacking my planet leave, rather than prolonging their stay in the gravity well. I think the disruptors should prolong the jump INTO the gravity well with the disruptor in it, while also showing each unit attempting to jump in. This way, there would be an early warning system which is better than the enemy phase jump warning research that could give the defender a small advantage.
Actually, the the fleet sticking around on that planet is fine. The idea is that you don't want that fleet jumping FURTHER INTO YOUR EMPIRE (you want that planet to be a "choke"). If you want the fleet to leave the way they came in, just don't put a phase disruptor covering the phase lane they came in through. This is why your complaint isn't valid, I think.
Now, where the phase disruptors totally fail is that they don't create hard chokes, only soft chokes. This, from day 1, was an extremely bizarre choice that the devs made. I am 99% sure that they made this choice in catering to a segment of vocal beta testers who had a certain gameplay mechanic in mind (the same types who complain that starbases remove tactical play from the game, blah blah). The devs need to learn to differentiate complaints from DT multiplayer types from more "normal" players who aren't nearly as vocal or active on message boads. The DT multiplayer types are usually good to listen to with issues concerning fine unit to unit balance. They aren't good to listen to on much else.
Adding my two cents again from memory. (Forum went big time boom today
In general: I really dislike the standard 5% level increases on research upgrades. Not only is it boring, it rarely adds any significant value to a fleet (with a few exceptions such as hull upgrades and Vasari phase missles). The Vasari and TEC Hull upgrade is probably the best example on how to make them a little more interesting and not the flat 5%. In terms of usefulness, I would like to see a bigger impact to weapon upgrades. Right now, it is usually more efficient to add 10-20% more fleet than to research 2-4 of these upgrades early on. Weapon upgrades would be more interesting if they had some ability or affect associated with it similar to the phase missle upgrades. As they stand now they are usually pretty useless early game and just an after thought in long games especially if you have maxed out your economy.
Race Specific:
TEC: I think their research trees are layed out the best level wise on when items should be accessed. However, I don't like the small results the Shield and Anti-Matter research give for their level/cost (again the standard 5%).
Planetary Shields: I would like the see the second level upgrade extends low level shields to all structures in the gravity well. Advent already get something similar at a much lower level with hangars and Vasari get the phase out ability for structures. I think this would be a nice add for TEC.
Auxilary government: is too high of a level in my opinion and should be moved to tier 3.
Advent: I really dislike the 5% spam in the military tree. A little creativity would make it less bland.
Planetary bombardment: I'm not sure when it would add value to research 6 levels of planet bombardment when adding one purge vessel to 2-3 capital ships results in around the same net increase.
Rapid Plasma Generation: at Tier 7 seemed really expensive. So... If my math is correct it works out to a 50% improvement on the Destra's dps, however, the total cost of these upgrades works out to appx 20 destras. Assuming you had 20 destra's built would you invest the cost of 20 more destra's to get the equivalent of 10 more in dps without the additional ships or hull? I'm afraid to even look at the cost for the Precision Beam Focus now.
Immaculate Defense: another useless TEC at Tier 6 that only gives an 8% increase in shields to starbases only.
Skilled Hangar Anima: This tech would be more useful if it applied to starbases too.
Vasari: Has the most useful techs at lower levels. Still suffers from a lack of creativity with 5% increases.
Overseer: I love this ship now, but never research the two aditional abilities. Their cost is way to high for the value added.
Quick Pulse: Damage increase is so small as to be unusable and only applies to capital ships.
Pinpoint Bombardment: I don't get this one either.
Expensive, yes, but that does NOT make it weak or less useful. It's an end-game tech with end-game cost and requires an end-game fleet to get bang for your buck. If you have 30+ destras and are banging your head on upkeep it's a no-brainer.
Immaculate defense is an Advent, not TEC, tech. I'll agree it's a little on the weak side, but if you stack it with their global shield research it's not that worthless. Of course, it's got nothing on the TEC and Vasari equivalents that buff hull and armor, and that vastly outclasses what the Transcencia gets from this. Now, if it were to give you a few extra points of shield mitigation on the other hand...
For the most part, I absolutely agree with Darvin... But there is one exception...
Gravity Mines... For any other faction, their deployment method would nullify them, but the Vasari have the Ruiner. Why is this important? Because you can spawn 10 mines wherever you feel like it if you can get a Ruiner there. Also, mines have an arming time. The trick with using mines offensively with Vasari is to use Subs to knock out Flak and Illuminators temporarily. This gives the mines time to arm before they are shot to bits. EM's are IMO the best mines in the game for damage, but they only deal so much.
Gravity mines work to stop phase jumping of capitals which Subs can't do. One time I was playing an unfair and I was trying to defend a Gas Giant as it was the only chokepoint. Since i couldn't build a PJI, I went with GM's. They worked wonders for my ability to keep capitals stuck.
You don't want to spam them like you can EM's, but you do want to use them when the time arises.
I would also like to elaborate on a few things...
Wave Cannons: That would be weird, but would make the Enforcer almost indestructible... Since I'm sure that the Devs won't be adding a special ability to the weapon any time soon, I'm all for doubling its effectiveness. It affects an already weak combat unit that rarely gets used anyways. PM's yield a 70% Damage increase (actually up to around 110% if you have the pact and everything else, and that is assuming that you didn't kill their hull before shields.). I see no reason that Enforcers can't get a 60% DPS increase. It seems fair to me and would make them on par with PM's in the Vasari's arsenal. Not quite as good mind you, but I think it would be enough for the Enforcer to be used.
Pulse Guns/Pulse Beams: I have always said two things for this...
1. Kill PG's and just put PB's on frigates/Orkies.
2. Link the DPS upgrades...
Now, I'll explain the second one... The first two upgrades are for PB's. How about doubling that bonus so that by the end PB's are 40% more powerful. But also put an increase on the DPS of PB's of 5/10/15/20%. Then, when you actually start researching PB's, reverse it so that by the end, you end up with +60% DPS to both PB's and PG's. This may sound like a lot, but it won't do that much.. PB's are a cap only weapon. PG's are on things like support cruisers and Skirmishers. The only thing they will benefit much is the Orky. But even then, the Orky has more damage coming from PM banks anyways before upgrades and thus PM damage dwarfs anything else.
In other words, my point is that these weapon types could be doubled in effectiveness and it still wouldn't make that much difference, but I think it would come close enough to let players use both those weapon types and the cost of the upgrades themselves.
I know. I have no faith any changes will be made either based on this thread or the other civilian thread either. It's just an interesting discussion as this research makes it more difficult in the suicide spot to protect your planet. There is no issue outside of that.
Sure it's not weak or less useful, It's just not practical to get except for in massively long games. It would be nice to see investments in weapon technologies have a more relevant impact in early to mid game (they are available early afterall). Most likely if you have the econ to fund this full upgrade you probably have already won the game. As it stands, I rarely touch the weapon upgrade paths in multi-player and note from most replays that very few others do as well (excluding phase missles and a few other scenarios).
Yes, I know it's not TEC. It's under the advent section and I meant to write tech. That aside, It is simply a weak research and I still think it is worthless given Advent already has a strong shield research path. This technology should add more to the table. Again, not very creative.
Many of the changes are simply a matter of changing around a few numbers. Not
What do you expect from a 7th level tech with six prerequisites? Its position on the tech tree means it will always be end-game material, and once you get there it's quite worthwhile. Yes, most games never reach the 7th and 8th lab levels, but those that do go on for long periods can put techs like these to great use. I don't see any changes here.
As I already said, it stacks with the other research. It's not worthless, but still very sub-par. I agree it should add something else, and a point or two of extra shield mitigations would definitely do it.
Let me rephrase my issue with damage upgrades. Most upgrades become available at tier 1-3, however, they provide little strategic value to upgrade even though they are available at the lower tiers. A 5, 10, 15 or even 20% upgrade in dps is very limited when the same cost can be put forward to build 20% more fleet that adds additional health to the fleet as well. It's fine if you don't agree with me. I just don't find the damage upgrades to provide much strategic value unless you are spamming a type of unit that utilizes the research. Vasari is a good example that benefits from phase missles which of course is a great tech but also affects LRF, Anti-Fighter, Fighter and Bomber, Capital, Starbases and Turrents. Building a balanced fleet and continually researching the damage upgrades doesn't provide the improvement in numbers that I would like to see.
I mainly focused on this research ability because it required 6 previous researches to be performed to unlock. I'll drop my comments at this point.
Thus why I suggested maybe it's time to make a balance mod, seeing as IC missed the window for major changes with Diplomacy. In fairness, they did at least improve all the artifacts.
They did?
Indeed. Check them out.
A combat update on my issue with TEC mines:
I finally trapped a damaged and fleeing capital into one of my TEC double minefields, it hit six mines going through them, which is fairly good, as the detection radius of the mines is somewhat limited.
The ship began with 48% mitigation about 1850 health and 20 shields.. after hitting six mines in rapid succession it was on 64% mitigation about 1000 health and 0 shields. Effectively, the mines hit for slightly less than 150 damage each.
So had I laid one minefield, and the ship hit every single mine, it would still have survived?
TEC minefields take ages to prepare, and are normally detected by scouts, it was very disappointing to have built so many minefields in so many games only to have a squib go off the one time they did work... I would expect a double minefield to destroy a damaged cap that tried to plough straight through it. If you doubled the explosive power of the TEC mines that still wouldn't have been the case here.. and there is a limited path through a mined choke, two minefields consecutively might be the most you could expect.
I'm not sure what the issue is, perhaps the damage multiplier? However, the TEC mines are very short on explosive power.. they would need to be more than twice as powerful to function as traps.
I've said that mines need something.
I'd have to test it, but I suspect that Martyrdom, which I have as one of the more useless military techs in the game, in fact creates 'mines' that are nearly as cost-effective as the TEC ones, even when ships run into a TEC minefield...
Two TEC minefields cost 1000cr 260 metal and about 150 crystal(?).. you might get 10 Seekers for that. If 6 hits from an undetected double minefield is as much as you can expect, then if 10 martyrs did any more than about 80-90 damage each, they would work as well as mines when ships run into them. Except that the Seekers always hit, there would be no useless detected minefields floating around, and no swept mines.
It might be easy to go too far with Martyrdom, I wouldn't want to make it cost effective to use Seekers against capitals. It could use a boost, not a huge one, as it is it takes a couple of Seekers to remove the shields of a light frigate, perhaps ten to destroy an undamaged one. However, if TEC mines are not as effective as Seeker 'minefields' are currently then they need rather more, and more urgently!
I'm not sure what damage the mines of the other factions have, but the slow deployment and easy sweep of TEC mines would justify them packing far more of a punch. On these findings I would replace Martyrdom with TEC mines as one of the most urgent fixes, though I'd also like the fixes to be linked. Static mines should be several times more effective than exploding Seekers, if and when they are unwittingly set off.
It occured to me that the Gravity mines could simply be made to explode in addition, as well?
In-game stats for mines:
vasaricost 570 135 70range 650damage 700adventcost 530 120 65range 100damage 1050TECcost 510 130 55range 650damage 700
Do note that the Advent mines deal the 1050 only to the primary target. For splash damage they deal like 150. Still, they home in from 4,500 range(scout detection range is 5,000; close enough that mines sometimes decloak and attack before the scout can respond-- which totally sucks for the weak Arcova and Navigators).
Change them from Gravity Mines to 'Nanite Mines' or something. Instead of disabling just jump drives, they would disable numerous systems.
As for TEC mines, change the way they're built. Instead of having to build all 10 mines, have the constructor build one 'mine' that fires off like the Visari mine drop once built.
Thanks Agent. I suppose that mines must do anti-heavy damage then, to be only exploding for about 150 on capitals? If it is anti-heavy I'm not sure how that was worked out, mines are nothing like pulse guns. Also it would mean that mines do most of their damage to.. flak? I would have considered that mine damage would be more like torpedo damage, which is anti-medium.. and anti-medium is far better against very heavy and capital class armour than anti-heavy.
It seems very dubious that Advent mines not only have homing ability, but explode for far more effect, suely therange would reduced their payload? Advent mines would have destroyed the fleeing capital ship in my example. What is the splash damage on the TEC and Vasari mines? You might be able to put down Vasari mines into the path of a fleet, so it seems more reasonable for them to rely on splash. However the TEC mines are very static, and so weak that a heavy cruiser could probably clean up an entire minefield by itself without being destroyed- and minefields cost as much as heavy cruisers! If you have the opportunity to spot a minefield then splash damage doesn't seem very useful, also Advent and Vasari can shrug off small amounts of damage spread throughout the fleet.
Historically mines exploded for enough damage that most ships that struck a mine would sink, whether escorts, cruisers or capital ships. That might be a liitle much for this game, but having the mines ineffective unless accompanied by your fleet defeats the purpose of mines as deterrents and area deniers.
I suggest that all mines be changed to anti-medium damage and that the TEC mines get increased damage to reflect how difficult they are to deploy and their rubbish detection range, I wouldn't consider 1400 damage per mine unreasonable. The Vasari gravity mines could get increased damage as well, to the Advent level of 1050. Those alterations should be fairly simple to make, and they're hardly game-changing. I suspect that many players imagine that TEC mines deal out that sort of damage at the moment- like Darvin's comment that a capital ship going through a minefield would lose half its health. It isn't true currently, but it should be true...
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