[0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

DarthVicious
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[0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by DarthVicious »

- Drop assaults on bases with active defensive weapon modules are no longer allowed
- Improve performance during bombardment counterfire target selection
So okay, Marines are pretty useless now. Cant do a base assault.

Bombarding a base with a fleet of heavily armored dreads and lancers was a suicide attempt. The same fleet took out two alien orbital stations over Titan no problem, no damage, but is wiped out when attacking a ground base.

Any suggestions for a what constitutes a good bombardment ship?
Last edited by DarthVicious on Sat Dec 17, 2022 11:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
DarthVicious
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[0.3.45] Re: Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by DarthVicious »

Also,

One of my ring stations just got subjected to an overwhelming missile barrage, and I thought all was lost, but the missiles went right through the defending battlestations without doing damage. Will email the combatsave in separately so you can see.

(I will take the win. Please provide a head up notification a few days before enemy fleet actually arrives).
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
DarthVicious
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by DarthVicious »

DarthVicious wrote: Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:30 am
- Drop assaults on bases with active defensive weapon modules are no longer allowed
- Improve performance during bombardment counterfire target selection
So okay, Marines are pretty useless now. Cant do a base assault.

Bombarding a base with a fleet of heavily armored dreads and lancers was a suicide attempt. The same fleet took out two alien orbital stations over Titan no problem, no damage, but is wiped out when attacking a ground base.

Any suggestions for a what constitutes a good bombardment ship?
Yeah ... pretty sure base bombardment is stuffed now. Put together a 10k fleet of Lancers, Dreads, Battleships armed with a combination of nuclear missiles, coilguns and heavy phasers. Tried bombarding an alien base on Titan.

The ENTIRE fleet got wiped without destroying a single base module. it shouldn't be that hard a nut to crack surely?
(Edit: by the way, the alien mining base has a combat rating of 76K, so there is that).

At least I got the 'Armarda' achievement in the process.
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
WillWKM
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by WillWKM »

Is the only reliable bombardment method now just a single nuke boat? What exactly are marines / Assault Space Asset mission good for against the Aliens now? If the devs could explain the rationale here I'd appreciate it, it seems like you're just reducing your own gameplay options.
anonusername
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by anonusername »

At least this ensures that missile research has a purpose in late game, I guess? I think that marine assaults were much more satisfying than suicide nuke escorts though.
WillWKM
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by WillWKM »

DarthVicious wrote: Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:30 am
- Drop assaults on bases with active defensive weapon modules are no longer allowed
- Improve performance during bombardment counterfire target selection
So okay, Marines are pretty useless now. Cant do a base assault.
Okay so I'm not sure if this is intended but I CAN still target a ground base with defensive modules with the councilor "Assault Space Asset" Mission, those defenses just count against the chances of success. It seems like this change only affects the ship ability and not the councilor ability. Is this intended? If so, this change is not nearly as problematic and it actually provides an incentive to send councilors into space.
rookie.one
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by rookie.one »

DarthVicious wrote: Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:30 am - Drop assaults on bases with active defensive weapon modules are no longer allowed
- Improve performance during bombardment counterfire target selection
Landing on surface and starting a marine assault still works (Bug / Feature?). Just assaulting from orbit isn't possible anymore.
DarthVicious wrote: Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:30 am Any suggestions for a what constitutes a good bombardment ship?
In previous patches I ran pairs of escorts with 80/20/20 armor and 2xNemesis. Upped the armor to 120/20/20 but those things get melted within half a second. Maybe still works if you use enough of those escorts with lower armor, but i think Marine Assault is for now the only way. Those things are still good to inflate combat strength though.

As for the intention of the patch:
- Maybe a nerf to early hostile takeovers on Mars, now that AI tends to build base defense and the early ship designs might lack the delta-v for escape velocity or
- Nerf to sending low armored / high delta-v / high-combat acceleration Marine Transports that evade the defending fleets and still destroy the Alien base. Not sure about the interaction of bombarding a landed fleed, but that's my guess.
rookie.one
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by rookie.one »

0.3.46

Bugfixes
- Fix sometimes being able to land fleet at an enemy defended hab
Nvm my earlier post. Guess Counciloraussault is the only way then (unless thats a bug aswell). Really hate having a councilor stuck in space for ages
DarthVicious
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by DarthVicious »

Yes. Can't imagine that sacrific8ng a councillornfor this for months at a time is the way to go.
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
DarthVicious
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by DarthVicious »

I experimented with multiple dreads having 100/30/30 armor and they still melted in the face of the first shots. No. Base bombardment is not worth it. I haven't yet found a good strat.

Won't have much chance to play today, so will leave the experimentation for now.
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
rookie.one
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by rookie.one »

i actually don't mind that change too much, as i can live with the aliens having some mining bases on asteroids. they usually don't have shipyards there, so clearing the stations should be enough to keep fast reinforcements away. And at least that way the Aliens have some resources in late game.

What i do mind is alien bases in jupiter and maybe saturn system. guess i'll have to sacrifice a councilor there for like 10-12 weeks then. Though i would very much prefer it if you could land on an undefended / empty site and start an attack from there (maybe with longer assault times to account for travel times) and for the aliens to emphecize more on base building once their first base went down.
Maty83
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by Maty83 »

This will make the game a lot slower I feel like. Which is both good and bad. Maybe there should be a designated "Ground defences" value for assaults instead? I imagine most of the weapons can rotate within the hemisphere. Nevertheless, it appears as if the clearings of alien bases need sacrificial nukeboats to tag along now.
anonusername
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by anonusername »

rookie.one wrote: Sun Dec 18, 2022 8:16 am i actually don't mind that change too much, as i can live with the aliens having some mining bases on asteroids. they usually don't have shipyards there, so clearing the stations should be enough to keep fast reinforcements away. And at least that way the Aliens have some resources in late game.

What i do mind is alien bases in jupiter and maybe saturn system. guess i'll have to sacrifice a councilor there for like 10-12 weeks then. Though i would very much prefer it if you could land on an undefended / empty site and start an attack from there (maybe with longer assault times to account for travel times) and for the aliens to emphecize more on base building once their first base went down.
Do suicide nuclear escorts not work any more? If you give them the "Troop Transport" role, they will stay off the frontlines in space combat. Just split one or two off whenever you want to attack a ground base.
rookie.one
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by rookie.one »

anonusername wrote: Mon Dec 19, 2022 1:08 am Do suicide nuclear escorts not work any more?
They get melted by ground defense within milliseconds without being able to get a shot of. Might still work with enough armor (125/25/25 wasn't enough) and/or sufficient numbers, but I didn't bother testing.

On a positive side note: My bases don't get bombarded aswell (at one time I had 8 alien corvettes above one of my asteroid mines without attacking).
DarthVicious
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by DarthVicious »

I finally found a use for those expensive end game torch drives.

I built a couple of dedicated super fast frigates, to transport two of my councillors around to wherever I've blocked alien mines with marines, and use the councillor mission to destroy the alien bases.

Three weeks from Earth to the kuiper belt. (Still Painful, but better than trying to bombard).
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
neilwilkes
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by neilwilkes »

DarthVicious wrote: Mon Dec 19, 2022 8:00 pm I finally found a use for those expensive end game torch drives.

I built a couple of dedicated super fast frigates, to transport two of my councillors around to wherever I've blocked alien mines with marines, and use the councillor mission to destroy the alien bases.

Three weeks from Earth to the kuiper belt. (Still Painful, but better than trying to bombard).
Nice!
Kinda like a special 'Black Ops Taxi Service'
SillySMS
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by SillySMS »

The real problem isn't the change to require suppression of orbital defenses. The real problem is that the aliens are only really limited by exotics and maybe a fixed amount of mission control, so they don't need farms, they don't need labs, they don't need geriatrics, they need fewer nanofacturing complexes, so they can fill full ring habs with far more layered defense arrays and battlestations than human factions could possibly contemplate.

The player and AI human factions need to economize and limit the number of LDAs, which leads to the following situations:

1) There is a mechanic to sidestep all the LDAs: this is what pre-nerf marine assaults were.
2) Static defenses are relatively strong, in which case the player can resist nuisance bombardments, but the aliens' surface habs become almost invulnerable.
3) Static defenses are weak, in which case the player will lose habs left right and center to singleton corvettes, but alien surface habs become practical to defeat.
4) Aliens become limited in the number of defenses they can put down.
5) There is some combination of diminishing returns on surface defenses and finer-grained bombardment rounds to make it more practical to defeat LDA doomstacks.
6) Surface defenses make marine landings more difficult but not impossible.
Maty83
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by Maty83 »

SillySMS' situation number 6 would probably be the best choice here- But it should be noted that to prevent hostile Mars takeovers immediately, there should be one thing added: Landings should require the ship expends 2* takeoff velocity for the given body with it.
rookie.one
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by rookie.one »

0.3.51

Balance
- Balance: reduced hab module surface-to-orbit rate of fire
Just tested an alien base bombardement, base gone - 0 casualties

Used my standard defensive fleet setup to assault the station and then tried to take out the base which worked. 4 Ships dead in space, others with some knocked out modules but most importantly no casualties.

Compostion: 16 Battleships, 11 Cruisers; 60/12/10 Adamantane; fleettotal of 49 Light Green Phaser Cannon, 5 Light Coil Cannons Mk3, 6 Medium Green Phaser Batteries; no nukes
gkulreich
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by gkulreich »

Just tried a bombardment with a fleet of 15 max-tech titans. All destroyed, base remains. No point whatsoever in having a bombardment option, it would appear.

This change in the update is terrible.
DemonseedElite
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by DemonseedElite »

I just saw this. I'm also having the issue where alien bases have like 57K rating and obliterate entire fleets battleships and dreadnoughts. I started my game about 2, maybe 3 weeks ago. I see someone reported they tried it and had no casualties after the 0.3.51 update.

Would this change affect EXISTING savegames or would we only see this balance fix if we started a NEW game? I'm thinking if it saved the alien base's original stats to my save-file, then it's going to load up pre-patched data until I start a new game and I might as well forget trying to destroy them.
rookie.one
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by rookie.one »

So I upgraded my fleets a bit and went for one their asteroid mining bases. As it is now 0.3.53 i thought might as well use marines.

Destroyed their station, then wanted to capture with marines. 10 Elite Marine Units gave me 0 % chance, so bombardment it is.

34 Ships, mostly battleships, some light green phasers, some light UV phasers, basicly a total of something like 68 light phaser cannons, 1 nemesis nuke, no other bombardment stuff. base gone without my ships as much as taking a hit.

Then came a really bad idea: why not roll back, capture the station with marines and bombard again:

Base captured without glitch; bombardment: base gone, so was most of my fleet; the 10 ships that survived had most their modules shot out and were dead in the water. So reroll again, next try: 1 ship lost, rest of the fleet: 10 ships terrible shape, rest unharmed. figured i might go on trying; next try 2 ships lost, most of the rest got their front and middle sections destroyed, two ships still functional.

So basicly it comes down to tons of RNG. if you take out their power supply with your 1st volley, you're peachy, otherwise you'll take heavy losses.

As it now stands, my councilor will arrive in 3 mission cycles and take care of that base (hopefully) for good.

/edit: totally forgot that i assaulted the station and my marines were damaged: attacking modifier +60, defending modifier -100 resulting in 0% to capture; so another rollback, only used the ships that I was willing to loose, 12 battleships, 7 cruisers, total of 38 green phaser cannons, 1 nemesis nuke;
and guess what: base gone as expected, but without even a scratch on the paint of my ships; way too much RNG imo
rookie.one
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by rookie.one »

DemonseedElite wrote: Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:55 pm Would this change affect EXISTING savegames or would we only see this balance fix if we started a NEW game? I'm thinking if it saved the alien base's original stats to my save-file, then it's going to load up pre-patched data until I start a new game and I might as well forget trying to destroy them.
.51 and .53 changes will affect existing savegames, so no need to start over.
quisatzleto
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by quisatzleto »

USA nuke weapons?
quisatzleto
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Re: [0.3.45] Base Assault - From one extreme to another .... ?

Post by quisatzleto »

Any new idea? Or Just buld 100k fleet power to kill 1 base. Is in unplaybe now TI
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