We actually didn't touch this portion of the Pirate raid code at all. It's based on all the things happening in game - trade, fleet points in use, number of settled planets, etc. 

Keep the feedback coming!

[/quote]Yeah I saw you said that in this thread before. However, it does feel like it gets higher quickly than before. I had that feeling on every game I played with pirates on. Weird...

[/quote]

I agree, pirates seems to be escalating pretty quickly now.

• I can't save the game or any recordings under a new name. Keyboard works (I am typing right now , I also tried rebinding some keys just to make sure the game recognized it, and I can save over a game/recording I already have, but if I try to type a file name into the text box nothing appears.
• Got a crash. message said R6025 - Pure Virtual Function Call. Before closing, I looked at the RAM usage and it was @1.27 gb. I'm not sure if it helps, but I was alt-tabbing alot at the time this occured. If i could find a crash log, I'd send it in.

 

Disclaimer: I have no idea how the pirate system is supposed to work seeing as it just changed and I've always had it off before.

• So I ran a test in which I had the small fleets/no quick start/all settings on slow. I didnt do anything but stand there against 1 Vicious AI (thought the cheating might give him enough credits to throw at the pirates). It went from low to guarded immediately on his 2nd planet acquisition. So he had a total of 3. Same thing on another matchup. So I ran the same map with 2 AIs. It went from low to guarded when an AI grabbed his 2nd planet acquisition (other had only acquired 1 so far). So he had a total of 3 and the other had 2. My guess is that the trigger is (total number of planets owned by all players/# of players)>=2 and it escalates to guarded. So, it obviously will jump to guarded fast. I confirmed this by rushing for an acquisition and it jumped up once everyone had acquired 1 planet (total of 2 each)
• the low level raid = 20 Pirate rogues. The next level involves 10 Cutthroats, 5 Corsairs, and 11 Rogues. The odd number of rogues is indicative of another variable upping the raid size a tad, in my opinion.

Now, as I said I don't know how it's supposed to be, but I usually dont have 20 of anything by the time I have my second planet. Of course between my first capital and the rest of my fleet I could *probably* take them. but it will take some time.

However, by the numbers (with my awesome sandbox calculator), on a low fleet level (75 supply w/o upgrades), I can get 18 disciples. If I hocus pocus make them not shoot at me at all, it would take me 250 seconds to kill them all, where as they kill me in 72 seconds (shield mitigation not taken into account). on a normal fleet level (100 supply w/o upgrades), I can get 25 disciples and I do alot better and can kill them in 180 seconds, but they can kill me in 100 seconds (again, w/o mitigation taken into account). On a Large fleet level (125 supply start), I can get 31 disciples and my time to kill them is 145 seconds, but I am killed in 124 seconds. If mitigation is taken into account, my guess would be that I would defeat the pirates with the 31 disciples, but the cost: 2 minutes of fighting, 7750 cred and 1240 metal and it would basically be lost as I doubt many would survive the fight.

Mean while, my opponents have moved on to other planets and probably made enough money to send the pirates after me again, and oh yeah, btw they are at the next level now and have HCs. My calculations say I could take this raid with 42 disciples (the cutthroats make it easier), which I would need a fleet upgrade to do.

 

 

I think the Vasari anti-structure gap should be filled. When i play late games against Tec or Advent they often spam anti-structure ships and wipe out everything around the planet in a matter of minutes. I also always wanted to know if the Phase Missle Swarm on the vulkorus were meant to actually be phase missles?

Its impossible to make the ability relate to your phase missile research. So either all the damage goes through shields or none of it.

Advent anti structure cruiser is pathetic, but even the TEC one takes a lot of fleet supply. So if you're Vasari you have no excuse for not being able to defeat a fleet with a large portion of those.

This is very true for the Ogrov; it's one of the strongest units in the game and one of TEC's few late-game strong points.  However, this is completely untrue for Advent; the Adjudicator is largely worthless currently, and Vasari is in a much better anti-structure position overall.  Their phase missile equipped bomber is absolutely awesome against starbases, and their Orkulus gives them a good (if expensive) option to fall back on.  You also have some nice capital ship combos that can solo starbases with few upgrades.  Advent really has no options except bomber spam or battleball.  If the enemy has security override, mass disorientation, or meteor control, that precludes the battleball option.  If the enemy has phasic traps, that precludes the bomber spam option.  This leaves Advent's approach to fortified positions extremely inflexible and predictable.

If anything, it's ADVENT that needs help against structures.  Vasari isn't on the same level as TEC with their wonderful Ogrov, but they still get the job done.

Actually advent starfish is great against phasic traps if you can pull it of and guy doesn't subvert you. When I play vasari against vicious AI I'm much more afraid of advent starfish than TEC ogrov.

On another note I have a question for you deliverance engine specials. Does attack and culture generation effects stack or even if it hits with 2 or 3 engines at the same time it still counts as 1???

No and yes.

No: The damage that's done is only .25, nothing in the grand scheme of things...  That does not stack.  However if your shots are greater then 2.5 seconds apart, then that damage will be applied every single hit.

(In my own personal mod, I added teeth the the DE by changing this to have 50 damage to ships and a 10 second interval time.  Since the Vasari lost that ability, it now stands that in my personal mod the Advent hit and kill ships, the Vasari hit and kill structures, and the TEC hit and kill planets.  Each has their own specialty now with the secondary effect of culture spam, phase gate, and trade income suspending respectively.)

Yes: The culture spread rate does stack.  You get a +5 spread rate for 150 seconds each hit.  Pounding away can have the nasty effect of taking away planets from poorly prepared opponents, forcing a player into early retirement from the battlefield if they lose them all.

I personally like the idea of the Deliverance Engine being not very useful used alone, but help a fleet on a fight, this adds to the Advent synergy. So I like the general idea of culture boost and damage bonus, culture boost removes the opponent's culture bonus if you're on the offensive, gives you your own bonus, plus a bonus damage output.

It sounds cool to me, however this weapon is probably the most expensive to research, and the only one being on a civilian tree, so having it will take you a big amount of logistic slots since you also generally want a fair amount of military research...

I think a good way of making it more worth the effort would simply be to buff it's effects : add a bit of culture boost (a bit), maybe make it increase a bit the maximum allegiance decrease rate on the planet it is fired at, buff the damage output to 30% (or leave it at 25% or below and make it stackable to a certain point, would be fun and powerful to be able to have +40 or +50% on multiple shots), and/or maybe add a 2% mitigation bonus on top of damage output... Maybe make it last a tad longer...

All this, depending on how it's combined, could make it a rather powerful thing, remaining in the Advent synergy idea, making it not powerful if you don't combine it with a fleet, but possibly giving you the decisive edge if you do...

Yes the Starfish are brutal against support structures. I think that was the intent. Pound away at the support structures while the fleet engages a now solitary starbase.

Err., the .25 is a 25% damage bonus to friendly capitals, frigates and strikecraft and not a direct damage against enemy ships...

the DE already gives a mitigation bonus due to the culture research you have to do to get it. It's powerful and helpful in it's current form, just not enough to be worth the extra research, money, and time.

as for the starfish, I think it should get an ability to either focus all their weapons together (so that the banks facing away from the target can fire). Or it could get an ability that simply ups the damage for a small amount of time. Or it could have another gun added (in the center) that has a much longer cooldown (im thinking the phsycic blue plasma of love that the upgraded starbase fires, but much less damaging)

The problem with starfish is the cost...they serve a very limited purpose, and are easy to kill, meaning that you are almost always better off paying for the construction of other units, mainly HCs, bombers, or illums....the AI's use of starfishes is not a good comparison...sure, they may be devastating to you, but they cost the AI a hella lot more to build (and will be expensive to replace)...this isn't an issue for high level AIs because they essentially have infinite resources, but it is an issue for human players, so just be wary about that...

Honestly, a simple cost and fleet supply reduction would be more than enough to make the starfish competitive with ogrovs...

Yeah I know that, I was suggesting an additionnal bonus...

The problem is that ANY combat frigate can do this if the enemy fleet isn't guarding the location.  The adjudicator is quite fragile and easy to kill and of no help in a real fleet battle, so I honestly think you're much better off putting your money into general-purpose ships and using that to "brute-force" your way through the defenses.

At the end of the day, it's the enemy fleet that's going to be the real challenge; unsupported static defenses is always going to be child's play to take down with a sufficiently large force.  I do not have any faith in the adjudicator's ability to withstand a reasonable amount of fleet-based resistance, which is why I disregard it as a viable unit in general.

For TEC, the Ogrov offers you single-target damage at exceptional range at a reasonable cost.  This makes it far more viable.  The Adjudicator's damage is spread out so it will be absorbed better by repair, and their cost is much higher so if there are defenders there it is more than likely the adjudicator will die first.




This is essentially the problem; you have to shove out a ludicrous amount of prerequisites to access this superweapon.  It doesn't help that the Advent civic tech tree is woefully barren beyond the third-lab level.  The culture techs are good, and allure of the unity is good, maybe a couple of pacts, but that's it.

The DE is actually very good in the Advent mirror match, where it can deprive your enemy of their mitigation bonus while giving you your own.  This is a brutal swing because Advent mitigation at this point in the game can hoover at 90%+ when maxed out.  Mitigation is one of the few game mechanics that features accumulating returns, so the higher mitigation is the more powerful a 1% swing is.

Against TEC... you REALLY should have the game in the bag by this point by sheer frigate power.  TEC shouldn't be seriously challenging you once you have both a battleball AND a concentration-buffed carrier swarm.  Although with the new and improved novalith they should have some more late game staying power.

And against Vasari... the big problem remains phase missiles, so it actually makes little sense to invest in your mitigation in this matchup, weakening the DE.


One of the biggest things Advent could get is some love to their 4-7 level civic technologies.  It wouldn't be enough to cure the deliverance engine, but it would soften the otherwise "dead labs" you have to plot down to access it.  A good target would be resource focus, which currently requires investment in the mid-5-figures range just to become profitable. Most of the time, investing that much $$$ in fleet will win the game outright, and just to get a minor improvement over what basic unupgraded trade port operation offers?  Yeah...

Mitigation is one of the few game mechanics that if it says 100% it means 100%. Found that out with modding Distant Stars. At the upper levels of research the Advent became invincible while in its own cultural area with +100% mitigation. I found that 94% is the thin line between OP and not OP.

The problem with Phase missiles is that it bypasses Mitigation. If they didnt bypass this, then you wouldnt have such a massive power curves on Vasari vs Advent.

 

Maybe this is something that needs to changed or at least looked at. There nothing wrong with damage going straight to hull, but it might be the mitigation bypass thats crippling.

Ding Ding! This is definately the value/problem with phase missiles, It's not enough that they bypass shields they also bypass mitigation and still are capable of a 20% damage boost on the normal TECH tree. Most weapons are only eligible for 30% and still have to go through all shields/shield restore rate/shield mitigation. If shield mitigation acted as a natural phase missile block, we'd be golden. Sure you can bypass shields, but your chance to bypass goes down as shield mitigation goes up.

An idea for the pirates would be that their force size and techs only level up after a successful raid (I.e the planet is destroyed and their are multiple surviving ships to return back to base) Another factor would be cool is if the pirates get defeated routinely while on raids that their overall force starts to decrease and they become less active over all. (Hey who wants to be a pirate if your chances of dying on a raid are very high with low returns?) And perhaps the fleet guarding the base would decrease as well.

Or many defeats could cause the pirates to go after the trade and refinery ships (like the pirates do in the real world)  And they could get added loot from that which over time would increase their numbers depending on how many trade ships they can destroy and how many survive to return back to base.

Yup, mitigation of 94% means you take only 6% damage.  Mitigation of 95% means you take only 5% damage.  The value of each point of mitigation at this level grows exponentially.

This is the big problem.  As Advent pushes its mitigation combos higher, phase missiles work out to an obscene damage bonus, something like 600% damage increase in a worst-case scenario.  How can we get Advent vs TEC and Advent vs Vasari both balanced with a feature like this on the table?

while I am an advent fan, and do agree with a tweak to phase missiles, I do not agree about the part with shield mitigation being factored in. I might be completely off in this regard, but I see a balance in that the Advent shield technologies give them an advantage over TEC, while its a weakness against vasari due to the phase missiles. And I am okay with it being setup this way as long as there is a way to make up for it. If mitigation were factored in, against both factions you would just want to up your mitigation tech. It would lose that rock-paper-scissors approach.

I would say armor should be a big factor in phase missile damage. That way, phase missles are an advantage over Advent, but are a weakness against TEC due to their strong armor techs. Now, advent do have some armor upgrade techs available to them, so they can grab those to level the playing field.

Hmmm... you know I am kinda suggesting that armor is the TEC thing, shields is the Advent thing, and phase missiles is the Vasari thing. And thats a strange comparision because both the TEC and Advent's 'thing' here are defensive, whereas the Vasari's is offensive. Also, all factions have shields and armor (though there's different amounts), but only Vasari have phase missiles. Is this the nature of the beast?

You know, if I were in charge of things I would make the Vasari's phase missiles shield by-passing, the TEC's missiles armor penatrating, and the Advent's beams shield depleting. I think that would even it out between the three of them assuming the Vasari had some defensive tech on the level of the TEC's and Advent's mentioned above. But oh well, that aint gonna happen. Too much to change.

In principle, I agree with this fully.  In practice, a 30% chance to ignore a 90%+ damage reduction is just out-of-this-world good.  There's literally nothing we can give TEC that would be remotely comparable, and it doesn't help that they don't have support cruisers like the subverter or guardian that can shut down or toss around the enemy fleet.

It already DOES work this way in practice.  Although there's no "hardcoded" advantage here, the higher hull/armour/repair value TEC units bring to the field means that phase missiles affect them relatively less than Advent ones.

Kinda worthless, since the other two factions have pretty crappy shields which they never upgrade.  Particularly in longer battles, it's not uncommon to see capital ships running around with 100 shields remaining and full hull since they're being constantly repaired and their shield reserves just can't keep up.

In Distant Stars you really see the whole TEC beats Vasari beats Advent beats TEC due to the increase level of research.

Well, mitigation is really Advents shield superiority. If mitigation did affect phase missiles then Advent would only really be at an advantage mainly in their own culture which of course would give value back to the DE.

Even with mitigation applying the first assault from Vasari before mitigation kicks up would still be brutal for smaller ships and then would face diminishing returns when attacking something with more hull like a capital or starbase. Vasari would still be kings of destroying frigates but would come back to reality on larger ships.

Not saying it would happen but I still see how bypassing shields and not shield mitigation would be powerful still.

The Deliverance Engine is useful in the right situation. I recently had an Advent mirror match against a vanilla Normal AI at Agamemnon's Bounty, I conquered my home system and the Agamemnon system itself including the wormhole, then took the enemy's Ice, and used a lot of Deliverance Engines to get the job done (I got Advent Harmony Researcher). If you target the right planet, and have a foothold with Temples of Communion in an enemy system, it can be a powerful tool for achieving victory. While my scenario is idealistic, the applications are very real.

Any love for the Entrenchment crowd Would love to know whats up And I know you guys are hard at work with the next expac so I wont bug yall to much lol