siege frigate spam not cured by 1.03

yeah, they just made it disappear online..


AI spamming siege frigs is why they do so ad. Even with unfair AI, they have no supply or resources to build things that would make a difference.

The problem was never that siege frigs were too strong. They were not. They sucked all along with the way too high 12 supply.
The only problem was that the AI would build them despite then having no more room for a real fleet and then losing miserably.

Yes and this did not disadvantage it vs other AI, since they built the same things. But it would disadvantage it vs Player. But since its usually 1 player and 9 AI, the player ends up getting the beat down

Well, it breaks a few of other things badly too:

1) due to the XP from destroying siege frigates being 3x more than light frigates for far less effort, making loads of capital ships is by far the best strategy in SP. You can get by just fine with repair yards and cap ships until you hit support cruisers. Removes all but 2-3 cruiser types as necessary or even useful in SP.

2) the huge fleet cap usage from a fleet full of SFs means the AI needs to put its fleet cap up far more than any sensible player, which combined with its miserable spending on infrastructure, trade, research etc just cripples its economy. So the next kludge we end up with is an 'unfair' AI which just ignores the economic game entirely. Oh boy is that fun to fight against, it's like fighting the king of idiot rushers being fed by someone elses economy.

3) due to the siege-frig / run away idiocy, we end up with a massively turtle friendly PJI, crippling the efficacy of raiding and reducing the incentive to take a cap ship just about anywhere hostile. Game breaker.

So that's .. 3 kludges, all of which make the game actively less fun, because nobody can f*cking sort out the build priorities for the AI.

Ironclad, do you think you could make the AI external to the executable and let modders play with it - as in, next patch? Please don't make the patching game a kludge to fix a kludge to fix a kludge to fix a kludge. The approach you are taking right now is making the game continuously and cumulatively worse.

^^ That post while in its attempt to be sincere and honest, caught me as hugely hilarious! I agree whole heartedly!

I play against the AI regularly and while they may send decent size groups of Siege frigates agaisnt me, I don't findthem to bethat much of a problem so long as I keep good defense/offense near my front line (as anyone in a war should). I think they're more of a problem if you turtle a lot, but if you have at least some offense going on, then they're not really a huge issue.

I tried this in my first few games, and got my ass handed to me by an AI that built a mixed fleet. I don't know whats wrong with your AI, but mine definitely knows how to fight.

While I am trying to destroy those siege units with my fighters, the AI's bombers are killing my fleet. They are a good distraction, but i agree they are a useless unit when they use so much fleet supply.

Now that we have a -700% PJI it's even easier to get by with just cap ships and support structures. Don't even bother researching ship types until you get to robotics/overseers/guardians which you use to buff the caps. Just make hangars and repair yards and turrets. You don't need that many fighters to hold off bombers, and the repair yards can keep a cap ship alive practically forever. I don't think I have ever lost a cap ship to the AI in friendly territory.

Don't blame the PJI It's finally useful and that's great.
I don't have in-dept 1.03 knowledge yet, need to play some more, but against the AI nearly every strategy seems to work. Cap ships only certainly is fine if you tech to cruisers fast and I actually did that recently (wanted to try kodiacs + robotics only as frigs). But the good old LRM spam also works fine and makes it a lot easier then the cruiser rush.
(keep in mind, all vs the AI. cruiser rush in MP is suicide, except maybe on GIANT maps)

Actually, the problem was although Siege were easy enough to kill, it took more effort to kill them than it did to build another wave.

Personally I have no problem with reducing their survivablilty even more with added bombing capabilities. You can't expect them to come in bombing and surviving until you clear out all immediate threats but once that happens they paste the planet much faster.

I'm not sure I follow... They don't fight back in any way worth mentioning and they cost a mountain of resources and fleet points (even before the recent nerf) to make waves of. Sure, they might knock a planet away from someone who's not paying attention but if you take out the fleet, the owner of that fleet is out all those resources and as noted above, any nearby cap ships of yours just gained a huge amount of experience.

A siege-only fleet that could wipe a prepared planet by itself (and keep in mind, it does nothing to the surrounding buildings which are generally far more valuable) costs well over what you would need to rebuild that planet.

WTF is wrong with you siege whiners? Have you not discovered the wonder that is 2 turrets or 2 hangars in defense? I mean jeez. The AI is gimp now because siege frigates eat 15 supply and die like guppies next to sharks. FIGHTERS >> SIEGE. The siege frigate is now NEVER worth building compared to just paying for a siege capital ship.

I personally found that using only capital ships to take a planet was a lot slower than using seige frigates, which wastes valuable time.

Depends on the capital ship. The one on the right is the siege capital for each raze. Those work better then siege frigs, the others don't. I mostly play Vasari but their siege cap can spawn little siege cannons that on their own are about as good as a siege frig and it can have 3 of them active all the time. That combined with its own superior firepower ... no way a siege frig fleet of the same supply can even come close to that.

If 2 siege frigs die attacking an asteroid, the cost for just re-colonizing it and building that pop upgrade again and are lower then the cost for the siege frigs. Not to mention the wasted supply the siege frigs cost which is missing in the fighting fleet then.
If 10 siege frigs die (and with 3-4 hanger defenses they will!) even losing a fully upgrades planet is cheaper then rebuilding those frigs.

If you use a cap ship that offers bonuses or abilities tailored to sieging planets, you'll get plenty of planet-bombing punch on top of having a very capable fighter with other useful abilities.

Siege frigates can't do anything worthwhile besides bombing. Capital ships can handle themselves in any situation including helping to destroy everything else orbiting the planet (which, as I said, are also targets of high value)and are far less likely to wind up being experience for the other guy and a huge resource hog for you. You'll probably save just as much time with a Marza helping to destroy orbital structures before or after the planet is wiped out.

Well, what they were useful for online was to break stalemates and to keep the front moving - once someone lost control of the space around a planet and if they'd had their fleet mauled defending it, a few extra siege frigates pounding it meant that they would not have time to build another fleet before you could take the planet. However, now that SFs are practically taken out of the equation, you might as well skip trying to take planets altogether until you've nursed a marza to l3 Raze Planet or jarassul or revelation to level 6. Without the ability to quickly reduce a planets health, border-area planets become something like a WW1 trench.

Someone who is any good at all now has enough time to come straight back in your face with LRMs and fighters and bombers and make it extremely difficult for you to use siege frigates and cap ships. If someone has 5-6 carriers with fighters they'll take every SF you've built before they can jump out, then use an LRM blob to force your cap ships out of siege mode. In the time it takes for you to deal with that, the planet regenerates another 1000-2000 health and the grind starts again.

Sins really did not need to be made any slower or any more of a grind-fest.

Well.. you're just plain wrong there.
Use the siege cap.