C-11 too weak?

posted on February 5th, 2011, 7:26 pm

I've said roughly the same thing as on the forums -

The C-11 is a cheap, fast producing unit that has more durability than a Bug when not considering passives (due to shield recharge rate).

It is not to be mass produced unless you have a force of units that all have special weapons or, if you have the opportunity for added research, you are facing a fair amount of support vessels (it's tertiary ability does massive amounts of damage to them).

It can serve as a tank against ADAI spams and is an excellent siege helper due to providing energy to V-13's, Siege Cruisers, Bombers and similar making them extremely effective for destroying structures and fleets quickly (ever seen a force of 100 Defensive Value Siege Cruisers firing Artillery Beams? ).

If S-2's are not being used as a mainstream unit, it can make it easy to just build a handful of the ships, since Alpha White can be used much more frequently.

posted on February 5th, 2011, 8:42 pm

Perhaps JUST the speed boost then, because right now C-11's CAN'T tank even against ADAI ships and it's really easy to snipe them.  I suppose I need to learn to play Dominion before I can try to use them effectively.

posted on February 5th, 2011, 8:44 pm

A speed boost wouldn't be a bad idea in my book

posted on February 5th, 2011, 9:47 pm

@neb, i wasnt semi defending the c11, i was defending it properly.

i like the c11, i think if it got good defence to go with good specials, it would become a bit much for its relatively cheap price.

dominion have a lot of solid specials such as s2 white, bomber big torp, pink beam of death etc, having energy spread around your fleet to let you fire them more is a great thing. they regen shields fast so wont need to run away far. they regen their own energy fast as they are a support ship.

the other two are very situational, but do great in those sitauations.

weapon focus: bombers are not costly and available in numbers early on. if they had arty range they would murder any buildings with ease. c11 will extend them to that range and make them a force to be reckoned with, especially since they have a special that murders buildings and the c11 can recharge that too

Cascade: as dom said, murder those supports if the romulans shift more to using specials as a main part of their gameplay then cascade will be even more awesome. like mutli prime module spheres.

posted on February 5th, 2011, 10:00 pm

wat


Woah I missed that, Cascade Feedback deals damage to ships with only one special as well.  How does it affect borg ships?

Now I want to try a C-11 "farming" strategy where I carefully try to get last-hits with the C-11 and rank it up.  Since Veteran C-11's look like they're utterly ridiculous...even though I doubt anyone's ever gotten one before.

For some reason that idea appeals to me: a super-fast ship that avoids the main combat and tries to snipe defenseless miners and damaged ships retreating from the front-line...until it hits veteran.  Then it goes and Hero Tanks for the main fleet of B-5's and V-13's 

posted on February 5th, 2011, 10:03 pm

cascade does damage to ships with 1 special, and more to ships with more specials. thats why supports suffer.

i'm not sure about borg, technically most of their ships can carry loads of specials like slicer, dev attack, sensor station etc. but that would mean c11 smoked them instantly.

and vet c11 are nuts. they regen so fast that they are invincible to a fed starbase (not upgraded). seriously they regen the damage from each shot before the next one hits.

posted on February 5th, 2011, 10:09 pm

Cascade Feedback seems to do normal Support-level damage to all Borg warships except the Cube, which naturally takes less because it's a monster like that.

Probably because there's a limit to how many of their special weapons you can have available in a single game that it doesn't do a lot more.

posted on February 5th, 2011, 10:11 pm

i remember when cascade was broken lol, i loved doing an ai game and using 16 cascades at once, then watching the entire ai fleet explode. ion storm isnt that powerful. maybe we should make the c11 like that again, all this whining and complaining would stop 

posted on February 5th, 2011, 10:12 pm

Don't forget that Cascade also drains energy - and to some triple regen Spheres, that's quite important for instance 

posted on February 5th, 2011, 11:06 pm

dev attack

I want a ship that can use Dev attack!!!  It can summon a special ship called "Optec" that fires damage nebulas and warpins!!!

When you say it drains energy (has a chance to, anyway) is that a number or a percentage?  I can't see a number-based drain doing much to a sphere with 1700 energy.

posted on February 5th, 2011, 11:10 pm

I'd imagine a percentage, any other code number going from 0-1 and everything between tends to be percentages. Borg ships also have the same percentage as regular support ships there, too.

Plus, it has percent in the drain code...

posted on February 5th, 2011, 11:34 pm

Ah, actually I just checked the odf file.  The drain amount is set at 50 (so barely any effect vs a sphere).  The "percent" is the chance to drain, which is 50% for ships with 1 special ability and 100% for ships with 3 and borg ships.

Damage is 18 for ships with 1 ability, 55 for ships with 3 and borg.  Not too shabby I suppose.  If you hit 5 spheres with 5 cascade feedbacks the ability would start to have an effect.  Still, not a very big one...

Also it says "ignoreshield = 1", does that mean it's direct hull damage?

posted on February 5th, 2011, 11:37 pm

Yes, I realized not that much considering that regen rate now (oops  ) - still awfully nasty versus Leahvals and things with special energy in the low hundreds

Ignoreshield = 1 just refers to showing damage. The ability does not deal direct hull damage

[Tyler]

posted on February 5th, 2011, 11:44 pm

Last edited by Tyler on February 5th, 2011, 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Does the drainspecialenergytime use seconds instead of percentage the others use, making 1 mean works for 1 second? I can't imagine that meaning 100% like the rest.

A thorough look through the odfs is always a good idea, it only takes a little logic to figure out what each thing means.

[Tryptic]

posted on February 6th, 2011, 12:15 am

Last edited by Tryptic on February 6th, 2011, 1:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, definitely.  So ignore shields means when it deals damage, the shield hit animation doesn't show.

Now, since I'm in the mood for making suggestions, here's the refined "idea" so far:

-Speed increase (150 sounds cool to me, but less is fine.  Current speed is 110)

-Perhaps a build time decrease?  So that it's easier to use up your extra tritanium and augment your fleet without interrupting your other ship production?  I can see how you're worried about them being massed, but everything they have except for cascade feedback is soooo weak.

-I was about to suggest the range on Cascade Feedback go up to long, but then I realized you can use the medium range of the special AND the medium range of the AOE effect to snipe enemies a long way away.  If you don't want to increase the ship's speed, long-range cascade feedback makes a good alternative.

EDIT: I went and tested them a little bit, and Cascade Feedback should DEFINITELY be made long range.  Since it is only useful in large groups, when you give a group of them the order to use it the ships in front get much closer than those in the back...and die fiery deaths.  Seriously, it's like fighting with scouts...oh wait.

EDIT #2: Also, the single ship the C-11 is most effective against, the Leahval, gets a damage bonus against it and can cloak.  I think this warrants some sort of buff to keep the C-11 competitive