Major Nerfing to invasion ships

[hlo]

Invasion ships get "Nerfed" big time after this update!

Playing Garden HARD year 11. Invasion ships with 150-215 hull are destroyed in 1 turn just doing bombardment. I don't know what defense xeno system has because I can only see "". Invasion seems to be less suicidal as none or almost no damage was taken. Before this update I think some invasions ships get destroyed rarely but none ever loose all hull in 1 turn.

Here are the 2 invasion transport types I use:
Level 2, Reactor 4, Low orbit drop pods, Lgt mechanized division, no armor, 151 hull. Use Planetary Invasion 1.
Level 2, Reactor 9, Hvy drop pods, Hvy assault brigades, Deflector barriers (2 armor rating), 208 hull. Use Planetary Invasion 2.

Invasion is not something I want to do always, I rather create Dead Worlds as neutral zones so nobody can get the system back. This is especially true for the early xeno interactions where I need to pacify them quickly because I cannot afford a long fight. So what kind of load outs do I need to get Bombardment working properly? Do I need to build a swarm of suicide transports and do kamikaze on the system?

Can you make it so invasion ship take progressively more damages from Hard to Impossible? I am assuming Hard-Impossible now all take the same massive damage... Imagine someone who plays Normal or lower before that uses the Bombardment - Dead World tactics starts playing Hard, the shock will be just as big as mine over the weekend.

[Cory Trese]

I deleted the duplicate and edited this post to remove the duplicate links.

Couple of points I will be happy to respond to in this post, however.

1. Invasion has received a dozen or so rebalancing updates. This one was not intended as a nerf, but has obviously impacted some players more than others. This seems to be centered around designs we did not expect players to be using -- things that were non-optimal before may be more dangerous to use now.

2. Without the stats on those ships, I am not only guessing but probably spreading bad information. I will point out that "no armor" is an immediate red flag for me -- don't do that.

3. The Dead Worlds strategy and neutral zone approach is one that is rarely used -- super specialist tactic that you and a few other people seem to really like.

4. Suicide transports are not a good strategy. If you find yourself thinking they are, you are on a path that leads to poor results.

5. Viable bombardment ships don't lead the charge. Don't send your Bombers first.

6. We will be releasing more 4X updates this week. I'm cycling feedback from e-mail and the forum into the game for the next set of Invasion updates.

[hlo]

Looking at the default boiler plate Transport from an older saved game: Level 2, Reactor 4, Low Orbit Drop pods, Lgt mech divison. I guess that will be a xeno fodder now in Hard and beyond.

So if we need armor now under this new Invasion logic, maybe we need to update the Transport to reflect that. I equip my higher level Transport with armor to survive the onslaught of defender ships mainly.

To make the Dead World strategy that us oddballs like to use, what kind of Invasion Transport design do we need? Please suggest. I can build whatever I need with 260K in the bank and growing at least 1.5K per turn. I hate to see my 30+ XP transports die but l certainly want to stop that from happening again.

Smartening up the xeno AI 2 updates ago is already making the game very long (in a good way) due to the fact we have to fight tougher xeno mob. This invasion transport "nerf" or balancing will make the game even more difficult regardless of which way we decide to deal with the xeno. Instead of just occupying 1 star in those triple star clusters and leave the other as dead worlds, I either have to occupy all 3 (lead to potential factions imbalance) or I will have to deal with constant xeno re-occupation. Then the brand new xeno colonies will have > 0 defense rating on 1st turn!!!!!

[Cory Trese]

What's your attack sequence? I can make suggestions off that. The first ship should use Scout and be designed to withstand early Xeno defenses.

[hlo]

May 25, 2015 10:32:54 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

What's your attack sequence? I can make suggestions off that. The first ship should use Scout and be designed to withstand early Xeno defenses.

Before this update:
1. At least 3 transports, up to 6 at times. Few escorts as well. A tanker (carrier) follows few turns later.
2. For low quality worlds (quality 8 or less), I usually go for Dead World creation.
3. Also considered for Dead World creation is when I need my buffer zone, regardless of quality.
4. Send in the transports and bombard the system to death. Refuel with tanker if available or just retreat and attack again later.

Now - not sure yet. Invasion seems to be relatively harmless to the transports. I can afford doing that in the game but then it means I have to drag some colony ships along to occupy the system.

If I am to use Scout, for how long do I do that? What indicators should I look for in the xeno colony stats?

[Cory Trese]

If you are using one attack type exclusively, that's not good. Avoid doing that.

You should use Scout so you can see some more of the stats -- this one might hurt, so have good skills.

Send in an Invasion force (or try a quick bombing run right after the scout?)

Either way you want to knock back their defense some before you start bombarding.

I think the message is clear -- the patch did work ... jamming one button is even less effective now.

However, it sounds like I have more work left to do here than I thought.

Graduating the damage is an important next step, providing more feedback as we go.

[hlo]

May 25, 2015 11:16:26 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

If you are using one attack type exclusively, that's not good. Avoid doing that.

You should use Scout so you can see some more of the stats -- this one might hurt, so have good skills.

Send in an Invasion force (or try a quick bombing run right after the scout?)

Either way you want to knock back their defense some before you start bombarding.

I think the message is clear -- the patch did work ... jamming one button is even less effective now.

However, it sounds like I have more work left to do here than I thought.

Graduating the damage is an important next step, providing more feedback as we go.

Let me try that in my (going to be) very long running Garden Hard at year 11. I can build whatever I want and there are 2 groups of xeno systems that I can launch attacks on.

Thanks.

[Kanly]

I need some specific builds for a midgame invasion ship. In my first game on hard in a few months (been playing hos) I have been unable to take a single zeno planet. I am destroying any attack they have sent against me with ease but I have lost about 30 ships now against the first zeno planet. I have tried many different combos of stats but they all end up getting one shotted when I try to scout.

Also for attack orders I have been alternating scout with invasion but all my ships blow up within the first three or four turns.

Help please.

[elwoodps]

May 26, 2015 22:18:53 GMT -5 Kanly said:

I need some specific builds for a midgame invasion ship. In my first game on hard in a few months (been playing hos) I have been unable to take a single zeno planet. I am destroying any attack they have sent against me with ease but I have lost about 30 ships now against the first zeno planet. I have tried many different combos of stats but they all end up getting one shotted when I try to scout.........

To make specific recommendations, we'd need to know what techs you have available (unlocked):

• Do you have Heavy Transport?
• Highest Ship Design Level?
  
• What reactors have you unlocked?
  
• Which Drop Pods & Drop Ships?
  
• Armors?  (Barriers & Cladding for Transport - Cladding & Hulls for Heavy Transport)
  
• Troop upgrades?

Two things I've garnered from Cory Trese's replies to questions about this since the current release, are that Radiation damage during invasion is now a really big hitter, and that Armoring your transports is essential.   So without going into specifics, I'd say make sure you put a substantial number (maybe 10 or more) points of Ship Material into Shields.  And after you design the rest of your ship, add the best Armor that the remaining mass will allow. If there's not enough free mass left available for reasonable Armor, downgrade your Drop Pod or Drop Ship to make room.

Prior to this release I thought armoring transports was an unnecessary expense, but I'm going to mend my ways.  Armor has gotta be cheaper than constantly replacing transports.

 

[Kanly]

No heavy transport.
Design level 5.
Reactor 9.
Angelic drop ships although I have tried to use the original drop ships to add more armor and shields.
I used point defense system last design (10 armor 5 water 2 shields.
Heavy assault brigade.

Had my first three of these blow up the first round of scouting.

I typically wait until I have 8 surrounding a planet to attack.

What is the best way to allocate points in ship and captain? I think I may be missing something vital there.

Just frustrated because the xeno have posed little threat but I haven't been able to dent them.

[elwoodps]

May 27, 2015 7:20:40 GMT -5 Kanly said:

No heavy transport.
Design level 5.
Reactor 9.
Angelic drop ships although I have tried to use the original drop ships to add more armor and shields.
I used point defense system last design (10 armor 5 water 2 shields.
Heavy assault brigade.

Had my first three of these blow up the first round of scouting.

I typically wait until I have 8 surrounding a planet to attack.

What is the best way to allocate points in ship and captain? I think I may be missing something vital there.

Just frustrated because the xeno have posed little threat but I haven't been able to dent them.

I'm not an expert, and haven't started invading yet in my current game (my first that extended into v2.2.17- 100x100 93 world map and I tend to micro-manage things so I'm kind of slow).

That said, in my last game (on Hard) my Heavy Transports had 4 points of Captain Skills in Repair and the rest in Invasion.  Ship materials: 9 points in Shields, 4 points in Evasion and the rest in Durability.

I suspended that game with 3 Bollish systems left (it was a foregone conclusion at that point).  After reading about the exploding ship problem, as an experiment I reactivated that game running v2.2.17 and set out to reduce a Bollish system that had 22 Defense by Scouting only (definitely not the safest way, but I hate to waste Quality), using 8 of those well equipped Heavy transports I already had built. See here: Star Traders 4X v2.2.17 Update Released

Because I was knocking off roughly 6pop per turn, I managed to purge that world in just four turns in v2.2.17, losing only three Transports in the process, though I think that was more luck than brains: The system was down to 4pop after the 3 Transports exploded in the 3rd turn, and the remaining 5 transports finished the job without further losses in the following turn.  But those transports had NO armor, so I'm hoping to do better in my current game using Armored transports and varying my attacks a bit.

[hlo]

I tried the Scout first trick and that seems to be ok. If you must bombard, you have better chances if you do it right after the Scouting turn. Invasion is much safer bet.

However the smarten/re-balance xeno AI from the update before will now send you swarms of higher level ships. Before you can count on fast hit-n-run with the transports but now you need a big enough escort fleet to keep the transports out of harm's way.

The changes made in this last update is not complete bad but I think damages to transport should increase incrementally based on difficulty from Hard and above. Not the all or nothing right now. Imagine some newer players who have been on Normal and decide to give Hard a try, invasion tactics will need a complete revision.....

Cory claims the "neutral zone" creation tactics is only used by the few oddball players like me. In mid-late game when my economy is good, I can afford to occupy everything and build a fleet to protect these new systems. How do you expect me to do the same in early contacts? Creating Dead Worlds is meant to buying me time to build up my empire. If I cannot do that anymore in Hard mode, maybe I need to demote myself to Normal mode again. I have a feeling the stock Military Transport is now too weak for the task.

[Cory Trese]

May 27, 2015 9:30:08 GMT -5 hlo said:

The changes made in this last update is not complete bad but I think damages to transport should increase incrementally based on difficulty from Hard and above. Not the all or nothing right now. Imagine some newer players who have been on Normal and decide to give Hard a try, invasion tactics will need a complete revision.....

You are right about that, well put. I am working on this for a release, either today or tomorrow the testing will be done.

Thanks for sticking with it!

[Rfikinite]

I've been playing on hard in year 13, using a heavy transport with the Advanced Duranium Hull, 42 armor, well over 400 hull points, destroyed 100% of the time on a scout or bombard action.

[Cory Trese]

May 29, 2015 15:23:09 GMT -5 Rfikinite said:

I've been playing on hard in year 13, using a heavy transport with the Advanced Duranium Hull, 42 armor, well over 400 hull points, destroyed 100% of the time on a scout or bombard action.

Bummer! Does the design feature any 0 stats?