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[Jacob/Lee]

Backdoor Hacker + massive field of pain and death + salvage mechanic = economy fueled by destruction. The 50% salvage rate on the home command system brings in a ridiculous amount of metal from waves that attack through the wormhole. Same goes with any system, really.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Aklyon]

Well, its sorta the point of having a well-defended HW, really. if you protect your homeworld, it will supply you with supply to neighboring planets, supply you with metal (and if something dies on it, you've got a hefty efficiency bonus for more metal), supply you with 3k knowledge for no AIP cost, and generally be a pretty great place.

[Frumple]

Don't forget it's the one place in the game you can have the effects of both a Mark 3 logistics and military command station. Throw a full load of trader junk in there, too, and you've got ridiculous force multipliers bleeding from your every orifice and almost nothing can escape. Admittedly that's something like a minimum of twenty million metal down the road but details, details.

[Draco18s]

Keith actually likes the fact that in order to take advantage of the 50% scrap efficiency you have to expose your homeworld to attacks.

But yeah, waves end up being more like hostile deposits to your bank account.

[BurnedToast]

Armored golem seems... way too good.

I just won basically with my armored golem alone. All my fleetships were just hanging back guarding my chokepoints, I used artillary golem to take out the AI's orbital mass driver (they must have buffed those at some point, they are a lot more brutal then I remember) the just parked my armored golem in there and let it grind down the massive amount of M.5 ships. had to pull it out once to repair, but then it finished grinding them down and mopped up all the command posts no problem.

Repeat with AI 2

This was on... 7.4? 7.2? whatever the next step up from 7 is.

Unrelated, dark spire seems a lot more wimpy then I thought. It makes it out to be a big deal, but they never seemed to do anything major, even when I wiped out a 1000 ship CPA on a world with a vengeance generator. It just spawned a small number of dark spire ships that got caught in the crossfire and wiped out without accomplishing anything. This was on 4/10, I guess I need to set it up higher to get a noticeable effect.

[Draco18s]

7.3

And the armored golem got a buff recently, I think.

Yeah, May 5th.  Health 500M -> 900M and twice as many shots-per-salvo.
"Again, this may be too much, but it's the sole "brawler" golem (that is, it _needs_ to get relatively close to operate, and thus faces intense danger) so extreme measures seemed indicated."

[Aklyon]

Aside from the general 8.0 polish thread I think has been mentioned here already, there are potential turret changes afoot! But look below if you want to get straight to the point.

Another potential option, that I think would be less fiddly though potentially less satisfying is:
- Make MkI, II, and III main combat (needler, laser, MLRS, Missile, Flak, Lightning, Sniper, Spider; leaving the HBC untouched for now) turrets per-planet cap.  Halve their caps.  Halve their K cost.  Maintain same cap-energy cost (so double the individual unit cost).
- Have Sniper and Spider turrets be separate lines with mkI, II, and III.
- Add MkIV turrets for each of those lines that are gained through Knowledge, and have a galaxy-wide cap.  The tooltip for these will need to be fairly clear about the difference from the lower marks.
- Have MkV turrets [the ones from Core Turret Controllers] also be galaxy-wide-cap, probably with a higher cap than currently or some other buff to keep them a capture/hack choice that's roughly as attractive as fabricators.
- Remove the restriction against having MkV and other-mark of the same turret line on the same planet.

I'll probably do that for next week's release, unless feedback here changes radically in a negative direction (not normally something I'd expect, but the warp relay idea was initially received really well, and then... )

[Draco18s]

The turret changes will be so good, I think.

[Frumple]

I read it, and all I see is "Turrets. Everywhere." Because seriously a half-cap of turrets is still infinitely more than I end up putting on most systems (which is to say none). Even heavy chokepoint systems only get around a third or so.

Especially in multiplayer games where energy is a non-thing about two systems in, if that.

[Retropunch]

I really hope scrap gets nerfed, and I'd also like to see a general improvement in waves - even if it was just a straight buff in amounts and variety of stuff.

[Draco18s]

I read it, and all I see is "Turrets. Everywhere." Because seriously a half-cap of turrets is still infinitely more than I end up putting on most systems (which is to say none). Even heavy chokepoint systems only get around a third or so.

You and me both.

I really hope scrap gets nerfed, and I'd also like to see a general improvement in waves - even if it was just a straight buff in amounts and variety of stuff.

What's weird is that the scrap mechanic, when I do the math, is only worth ~65,000 metal of total income for a wave (call it 1.7m metal that gets deposited in orbit and the 4% efficiency of a military command station) which is enough to build all of 6 bombers.

Yet! I find that I am able to replace most of a fleet and hit the resource cap rather frequently.

It's weird.

[BurnedToast]

Lately I've been using logistics instead of military stations at my chokepoint for MOAR SCRAP (and also faster movement). I don't upgrade my stations (usually) and the base military station never seems to do anything useful, while the extra scrap really helps get things built.

I'm really looking forward to the turret changes. Right now, the optimum strategy is to just chokepoint 1 - 3 worlds with unstoppable defenses because of the way turrets work and it's almost impossible to balance. If you make turrets weaker so you can't have an unstoppable chokepoint, then someone who can't (or won't) chokepoint has no chance and chokepointing becomes the ONLY choice.

Making turrets per-planet makes chokepointing harder, but also makes spreading out or having layered defenses easier. So, it seems like it makes it more interesting (and less frustrating when one stupid raid starship or whatever slips past and blows up half your stations).

To the turrets everywhere people: remember, the current idea has turrets costing double energy per-turret so you probably can't just spam a full cap on every planet. It also makes energy more relevant which is nice, because I've usually got way more then I can ever use.

[Frumple]

Re: station upgrading: Mk 3 logistic stations are arguably the best chokepoint station currently existent, imo. Halving enemy move speed, increasing your own by 200%, and preventing teleportation... all make getting through the system an absolute nightmare. Military increases damage (and, at max, prevents cloaking), but that doesn't help all that much if the critters are fast enough to just blow through before the damage adds up enough to do anything. It's hard to say what helps out turrets more, though. On one hand, the damage is nice. On the other, logistic stations mean stuff stays in turret range longer.

... mind you, I also have a vaguely unholy love of logistics stations (movement speed manipulators in general, time or otherwise) so I might be somewhat biased. But really, upgraded stations are great. If you've parked your homeworld on a chokepoint, even doubly so. Nothing says "infinite pain" like taking no cloaking, no teleportation, half speed units into a system full of double speed (or better -- delicious stacked time manipulators ♥), double damage defenders. And then the trader comes in and there goes your armor, their goes theirs doubled, and ohey your attack ranged is halved. "Get in mah bellah" says the scrap processors to the AI.

[Aklyon]

Military stations also shoot back, Frumple.

[Frumple]

I tend to consider something getting in range of a military station's weapons to be a failure

It does look like it's not as bad with MK3 ones, but even the MK2 is only barely longer range than a missile turret (and stuff gets into firing range of those way, waaay too often). But -- most of the time I've seen you folks using them, at least insofar as I've noticed, it's very, very rare those weapons actually make a difference. Occasionally swats off a raider or small group or whathaveyou, but y'all both tend to put 'em far outside their effective weapon range and, when they're not, they get blown up.

I... just don't consider their weapons as an actual feature of note :V