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« on: April 10, 2012, 11:52:10 PM »
I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with everyone regarding decoy drones, but not because of their lack of power in the player's hands. Add the support style AI to any game, and you'll see how brutal decoys can be in the AI's hands. They don't need a buff or nerf, they need to be glared at until the targetting mechanics for them are better understood.
Currently, what happens when a number of decoy drones come in is everything fires at ONE. Then, when the rest are all streaming at the targets, your entire fleet fires at... ONE MORE. Rinse/repeat for half a large planet, or until everything's on the command station in a small one.
However, my current personal votes are not from ships that I look at and scoff, but from ships I wish were actually useful (in my hands, in the case of teleporting ships).
1) Neinzul Factory Ships. Their K prices, enforced Engineer III investment, and tin-plating make them more of a novelty ship then something you could use with heavy strategy.
2) Fleet Support Ship K rebalancing. I'd like them to reflect their K costs more efficiently, and a better idea of how many ships each of them can boost within the fleet. I'd expect a flock of MK I Fleet SSs to be able to boost a full fleetball of MK I fleet ships. The new modifications got them in-line with each other, but their K costs are outrageous for what you actually gain.
3) Riot Starship III. I've never been in a game where I've looked at the Riot III and said "I *want* that." Can't remember the last time I said "'eh, they might be nice" either.
4) Teleporting ships in general, but not because of the ship themselves. Does EVERYTHING I'd want to teleport raid really need to be Minor Electric Immune? They can't stay with the fleet ball so they pretty much have to be a micro'd force and/or a raiding force. These are the mechnics surrounding them that make me not want to use them.
5) Warheads. Desperately.
If I'm staring at a threatball or situation that's dangerous enough that I'm willing to trade AIP for destruction, these things need to destroy the target. Threatballs of that danger already are larger in distance surrounding an inbound warp gate then the largest AoE available (which is, strangely, on the smallest missile). Couple that with the AoE immune triangle ship (always a thorn in my side) and you've reduced, tremendously, the value of these items.
The Tachyon Missile is merely a 'decloaker's too fragile, where's the stealth post' missile. It's too expensive.
EMPs could be fun but it's a minimum of 2 AIP for 30 seconds and doesn't work against the ships you REALLY need them for, MK V, particularly if they're doing a gate-camp.
Armored are utterly pointless. The only thing you need an armored missile for is popping particular and specific AI HW guardposts which are surrounded by, and include, warhead interceptors. If you could pop the interceptors, you could pop the guardpost(s).
6) Harvesters, still far too weak. It takes me 5 minutes to have my econ at 1 mill/1mill with these at level III in the opening part of the game. That's just wrong for the cost. Sheesh. Please, buff these. Maybe we can add a mechanic where each MK III harvester will pump out a MK V patrolling zombie fighter or something, or just a random unlocked fleet ship.
7) K costs for most, if not all, starships, in general. The only ones I agree with currently are Raid and Cloaker. Even after playing around with them heavily I don't see the need for higher MK Scouts nor can justify the K cost for the III/IV. You get the MK IV fleet-scout for free eventually since you have to picket so many worlds and will simply need the volume of fleet scout III to do it in most games. Well, I do anyway.
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