Well, I
really like leech starships so far (usually the first starship I sink knowledge into). They've been quite incredible as screens and firesoaks versus non-guardian forces, even when you can't reclaim stuff, and just chew right on through the non-starship stuff. Definitely they do more damage than when that report was issued, heh. They're currently at ~6.5k damage/second (~13k/every two seconds) per shot (and six shots, coming up to ~39k/mark total output) and quite readily chew through
lots of chaff ships. Also fairly tough, alright range, etc., so forth, so on. Wish I could build more of them, and it's always nice to send a full wolfpack of them into a large fight and come out ahead. Multiplayer game we were playing this weekend, one fight I threw the six fleet into and came out with 390 or so new ships, iirc
I mean, the ships were blown up not too long after that but still! Also since then they've been patched so health is equal to reclaimation damage, not 1/2 of it. It's pretty easy to come out with full or mostly full health units, when you can recoup them at all.
Biggest problem with leech starships is that they're outranged and weak vs. missile frigates. But, well... that's what the spire blade spawners are for
(protip: Spire blade spawners are for goddamn everything. Okay, barring stuff immune to blade attacks. Everything else, though!)The specific fairly major problem with the botnet golem is that it just doesn't attack unreclaimable targets
at all. Leech ships, parasites, etc., can still fire and damage enemies even if it doesn't reclaim, but a botnet without something bot is relatively flimsy deadweight. I mean, I'll be paying better attention this time, but when it's matched up against the armored golem which you just v+rightclick into enemy systems and go deal with the other side of your empire or whatever, the botnet is high maintenance, in terms of player attention. Still holding out on if the payoff's worth it, though.