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AI War / Re: Teleport battlestations - OP
« on: July 08, 2010, 11:17:00 AM »
I made a post in the favourite extra unit thread about tele station and I do think they are somewhat unbalanced in single player as long as they are microd properly. Fact of the matter is that if you use the pause function to micro your tele stations their survivability becomes absolutely obscene. It is quite easy to hit 5-10 guard posts(normal, core or spec force) with a single stack of tele stations and have at least half survive by judicious pause button usage. It is easy to have 90% survive by moving them to a mob repair station pit stop in between insta popping stuff. I'd say that they are considerably more balanced in coop games since the amount of micro they require will usually take your full attention(if you want to use them properly).
Mines are also nasty against them. I don't seem to lose many of them to lightning turrets maybe in SP the AI just doesn't build enough? Anyway their price seems almost irrelevant to me because they fulfill an unbelievably powerful role. Against ships that they do well fighting(most ship types) they can solo waves of up to 3-400 mkIIs and do this in a minute or less with minimal casualties. Since they make turrets almost completely unnecessary I don't see how making them even 4-5 times more expensive/slow to build would convince me to get a different bonus ship, if my goal is to min/max to the best of my ability.
On the one hand I don't want to see them nerfed because they are so fun to play with. On the other it is unbelievably more difficult to play without them, to the point where their power does seem to break the game:
1. They are the 100% perfect counter for all the obnoxious fast/cloaked/tractor immune ships that the AI might send against you; in fact they are the best tool in your defensive arsenal against waves/border aggression/cpas(especially cpas), better than any other ship, better than a turret ball many times more expensive.
2. They are the best guard post and comm station killers(not sure if warp gates are immune to them).
3. With decent kiting you can probably kill any group of ships they AI sends against you with them(actually I'm sure there are exceptions, Z Mirrors, elec shuttles, melee ships would take a long time and be really tedious). They have the highest dps of any ship and seem to do solid damage to pretty much everything that moves. Realistically however, the stuff that they have a hard time killing isn't all that dangerous to you, it tends to have gimmicky attacks or be melee and/or slow. Which leads us to:
4. They MELT swarming ships. A I-III cap will take out 4-500 infiltrators/gatlings/parasites in under 2 minutes if memory serves. All the while taking absurdly low casualties. As mentioned above they destroy all the shiptypes that normally give you defensive headaches.
Realistically what else do you want to do in the game? Break buildings, k they can't do that at all so you want bombers. Raid Distribs/Data Centers/Coprocs. Pop stuff into a transport ship and 90% of ships in the game can do this job just fine. Kill fortresses, bombers again. Tele stations are the most useful unit to have in virtually every other phase of the game. I'd love to see some theorized situations in which a different bonus ship performs better(short of fighting Grav Driller, and potentially One Way Doormaster and even then they are still extremely useful).
Tele stations have the best mobility in the game, which also translates into great survivability; they have the best dps against a huge, huge array of targets; and they are sufficiently cheap to be used much like any other fleet ship. I would personally still be picking them as my bonus ship if their resource/energy/time to build cost were all multiplied by 5. Probably even beyond that.
Mines are also nasty against them. I don't seem to lose many of them to lightning turrets maybe in SP the AI just doesn't build enough? Anyway their price seems almost irrelevant to me because they fulfill an unbelievably powerful role. Against ships that they do well fighting(most ship types) they can solo waves of up to 3-400 mkIIs and do this in a minute or less with minimal casualties. Since they make turrets almost completely unnecessary I don't see how making them even 4-5 times more expensive/slow to build would convince me to get a different bonus ship, if my goal is to min/max to the best of my ability.
On the one hand I don't want to see them nerfed because they are so fun to play with. On the other it is unbelievably more difficult to play without them, to the point where their power does seem to break the game:
1. They are the 100% perfect counter for all the obnoxious fast/cloaked/tractor immune ships that the AI might send against you; in fact they are the best tool in your defensive arsenal against waves/border aggression/cpas(especially cpas), better than any other ship, better than a turret ball many times more expensive.
2. They are the best guard post and comm station killers(not sure if warp gates are immune to them).
3. With decent kiting you can probably kill any group of ships they AI sends against you with them(actually I'm sure there are exceptions, Z Mirrors, elec shuttles, melee ships would take a long time and be really tedious). They have the highest dps of any ship and seem to do solid damage to pretty much everything that moves. Realistically however, the stuff that they have a hard time killing isn't all that dangerous to you, it tends to have gimmicky attacks or be melee and/or slow. Which leads us to:
4. They MELT swarming ships. A I-III cap will take out 4-500 infiltrators/gatlings/parasites in under 2 minutes if memory serves. All the while taking absurdly low casualties. As mentioned above they destroy all the shiptypes that normally give you defensive headaches.
Realistically what else do you want to do in the game? Break buildings, k they can't do that at all so you want bombers. Raid Distribs/Data Centers/Coprocs. Pop stuff into a transport ship and 90% of ships in the game can do this job just fine. Kill fortresses, bombers again. Tele stations are the most useful unit to have in virtually every other phase of the game. I'd love to see some theorized situations in which a different bonus ship performs better(short of fighting Grav Driller, and potentially One Way Doormaster and even then they are still extremely useful).
Tele stations have the best mobility in the game, which also translates into great survivability; they have the best dps against a huge, huge array of targets; and they are sufficiently cheap to be used much like any other fleet ship. I would personally still be picking them as my bonus ship if their resource/energy/time to build cost were all multiplied by 5. Probably even beyond that.
