Another unpopular thought from ChWooly

[chwooly]

So going thru some of the maps again and I get so frustrated with how overpowered the emergents are. OF course I am talking about the enemy emergents since you never really get any in quantity that will make a difference for the player until the end game.

They 1 hit kill omni's and if you are in the process of building a ship and have not got to armour yet they will 1 hit kill your ships. If you have armour they 2 hit kill.

Personally I think they need to be nerfed but I know that is an unpopular idea hence the title and I wait with bated breath for the snarky  8) comments that will likely follow as well

Cheers

[peter]

So going thru some of the maps again and I get so frustrated with how overpowered the emergents are. OF course I am talking about the enemy emergents since you never really get any in quantity that will make a difference for the player until the end game.

They 1 hit kill omni's and if you are in the process of building a ship and have not got to armour yet they will 1 hit kill your ships. If you have armour they 2 hit kill.

Personally I think they need to be nerfed but I know that is an unpopular idea hence the title and I wait with bated breath for the snarky  8) comments that will likely follow as well

Cheers

I  could not agree more.  There are several maps I walk away from because of the destruction caused by the emergent.  Especially by the randomness that it appears to have.

[invaderhive]

I want the game to be challenging. I hope no enemy units are nerfed before release.

[Xalos]

I dunno, I'm pretty sure enemy mire and emergent are the only two things that can actually kill landed omnis. And for most maps, the enemy mire is basically a laughable non-threat for omnis, especially once they've established a foothold.  I agree that emergent is extremely powerful, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, and missile-heavy ships like the Wolf seem to be able to take emergent down reasonably effectively.

Of course, this is just what I've gathered from watching videos of other people playing the game. :P

[GoodMorning]

It's balancable by the mapmaker.

[Sorrontis]

In custom maps, we mapmakers have more power to make them more or less annoying. The best defense for emergents is a lot of missile bays.

If an emergent can get to your in-building ships, you have bigger problems, like not defending unfinished ships. That's part of the strategy.

[Cavemaniac]

It's balancable by the mapmaker.

Agreed - but the random acts of malice perpetrated by emergent are my single, #1 most frustrating moments in PF.... 

[knucracker]

Speaking of blue emergent...
Set a rally point in some place of safety and let them accumulate.  When you make an assault, set the rally point where you are going.  They can cut through struc, ships, and enemy emergent.. for as long as you have them.

The same is true for red emergent, but for most missions you have something the enemy does not:  missiles.  An amp'd wolf can create a bubble of safety.

Movement wise, enemy emergent basically take up a position somewhere on a line between the enemy center of 'mass' and the player center of 'mass'.  Imagine all of the enemy positions and their center.  Do the same for you ships.  Somewhere on that line is where the emergent will move to.  They move closer to your ships the more power the enemy grows.  If an emergent sees a nearby ship, it is attracted to it.  That's how you get them tearing through ships.  Stay away, and they won't see your ships.

Emergent are attracted to some rally point.  Their position relative to that rally point determines which of the 4 directions they are allowed to move.  So you get movement generally towards the rally point, but with some room for overshoot.

[GoodMorning]

Interesting.

Missiles aren't always enough, however, particularly when a mapmaker sets the spawn rate, regeneration, and health cap high. The Emergent power is then limited by pop. cap. This makes taking the last unmired land problematic if an amped Wolf is insufficient (which has happened already in the Exchange).

Pincer movements are your friend, however. If the emergent move toward the CM, then you can place this outside your fleets by splitting in two (reasonably evenly) and leaving a gap.

[knucracker]

Alright... I'll make a small change in tonights build.  Looking at the way emergent and omnis interact, emergent definitely get the upper hand.  I've changed it so that colliding with an omni still does damage, but only 0.249 as much damage as before (slightly less that a quarter).  I've also made omnis deal damage to the emergent based on the omni health.
So a full health omni can barely survive an impact from a 20 health Emergent.

Of course if there are other emergent,  the omni is not full health, you will still lose them.  But that's ok. Its just a more "fair" collision mechanic.  The purpose of this change is to prevent a tiny just spawned emergent from taking out 4 omnis for instance.  That was a bit lopsided.

I don't know about weakening emergent collisions with ships. I'll hold off on that and think about it for a day.

[Karsten75]

Alright... I'll make a small change in tonights build.  Looking at the way emergent and omnis interact, emergent definitely get the upper hand.  I've changed it so that colliding with an omni still does damage, but only 0.249 as much damage as before (slightly less that a quarter).  I've also made omnis deal damage to the emergent based on the omni health.
So a full health omni can barely survive an impact from a 20 health Emergent.

Of course if there are other emergent,  the omni is not full health, you will still lose them.  But that's ok. Its just a more "fair" collision mechanic.  The purpose of this change is to prevent a tiny just spawned emergent from taking out 4 omnis for instance.  That was a bit lopsided.

I don't know about weakening emergent collisions with ships. I'll hold off on that and think about it for a day.

Sounds great. Consider perhaps, all other things permitting, an armor upgrade for hulls - either tied to an amp gem or to tech tree?

[planetfall]

Does this change also apply to cores that are damaged by particles? A certain map may need some tweaking...

[GoodMorning]

This will make Omnis stronger again. It must be hard to balance them. However, it seems that an Omni landing zone/path is in the "Hard to make, hard to break" basket. Omnis are volnerable in space, but are exceedingly tough once landed with their upgrades.

[knucracker]

Does this change also apply to cores that are damaged by particles? A certain map may need some tweaking...

Good question....
It will apply to any unit damaged by a virtual particle.  A virtual particle is an invisible 'particle' held under an emergent, or under a hull section.  It is there to interact with the collision data structures.

So it should not affect particle on unit collisions.  But it could affect ship on unit collisions and emergent on unit collisions.  If need be, and we don't like the results, I can narrow the scope of the change down so it only affects emergent on omni collision.

I'm doing a beta 21 build right now and it will be up in 30 min or so.  We can give it a day and see what if anything it affects in a negative way.

[planetfall]

Thing is SetUnitDamagedByParticles makes a unit vulnerable to both standard particles and emergent, and it seems to take off more health from 20 particles than from a 20 health emergent (have not tested this rigorously.) However unlike with omnis, emergent seems to take off a bit of health from itself and the unit each frame... something tells me that is a bug.

(sees beta 21 topic posted while writing this - have not tested that at all yet)