Dodec sentry buildtime

posted on August 29th, 2010, 1:40 pm

In certain maps where the starting moons are quite far away, a Dodec can be extremly game deciding if placed at a moon. Many factions cannot destroy it once deployed. In comparison to other turrets, the dodec sentry should get a higher deployment time since it requires no constructor and can fight even without deployment. This will not hinder ppl placing it but will stop annoying and almost not counterable Starting moon blocking.

posted on August 29th, 2010, 2:02 pm

think i need to support this one 

posted on August 29th, 2010, 10:28 pm

if it gets much more build time then a watching clever cloaking player will make sure u never make a dodeca, which with vinca module is one of the borg's few cloak detection options.

i dont know if dodeca relay is a problem, but if it is, another solution would be better.

posted on August 29th, 2010, 10:57 pm

With one of the longest construction times for a turret out there (over 2 minutes), and a huge amount of notice time (take a look at the passives on that unit) it's really up to you to use your eyes and ears to stop it - anybody can take a constructor and pull off the same trick in less time, not to mention all it takes is two first tier units to bring down the thing while it is constructing (aka, 2 Sabers). Perhaps another 5 seconds of construction time could be accommodated, but they are quite easy to squash (at the very least you can bring it down to very low levels) unless you aren't paying attention.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 6:03 am

While they are nasty once they are deployed i'm going to argue they are ok as they are.  Played a team game last night and my opposite number was simply the first to get ships out and first to go for the contested moons in the center.  If I had been quicker with my construction of ships I could have got there and started hitting the dodeca the moment he hit that deploy button, especially as I was Klingons so could wait nearby cloaked.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 7:00 am

anybody can take a constructor and pull off the same trick in less time

If a Fed player does it, it will cost him a constructor available while the borg can keep building as normal. Scouting the Dodec is of course possible but not always. If your focus is eleswhere for some reason e.g. early Warpin on you or your ally you are screwed. The Dodec is NOT counterable by any 1 tier unit in time. It has a fairly high regeneration and does decent amounts of damage. I had 2 Rhienns and 3 Griffins and could almost not sratch it. The result was, that my starting moon was blocked so I could not do anything...even with another exp. AND any incoming Borgship can easily retreat to the dodec while killing my other frighters.

The point is, the downside of placing a Dodec is not as high as placing even a Fed platform (which costs you another focus if you want to refit it. Dominion turrets are easy for small ships. Klingon HWP take much longer than 2min afaik. Rom turrets are limited in shots...
The only argument for the Dodec being not OP in this situation is if you realize it and you have ships there it is destroyed easily if not you have lost the game.

Maybe a different solution is to give it a weakness to pulse weapons and a better defense vs torps instead when deployed.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 7:11 am

If a Fed player does it, it will cost him a constructor available while the borg can keep building as normal.

I'm with Drrrrr here. I tried a strat like this playing Feds. What happened? I lost one of my constructors and instead of having built a mining at my natural exp as I usually would have done I didn't even have a turret sitting at another exp my opponent was likely to take. My constructor got shot down by tier 1 ships which a dodeca could have fought off easily and my economy was screwed. 

posted on August 30th, 2010, 12:49 pm

As a fed player, however, you didn't lose nearly the supplies and no collective connections.  Plus, you didn't have to sit through that horrid buildtime on a vinc-dode, and then it's stupidly vulnerable deployment time.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 12:59 pm

Oh man, with proper scouting you will be able to snipe it ALWAYS....  even two sabers can kill it while building.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 1:55 pm

Dodec turrents are easly beaten a fed warp in can do it, if your a cloaked race you can de-cloak while its building and thats that.

The borg player can only build 2 of them at most early on and he is unlikely to have many ships if he does this, so thats 2 moons hes defended... attack the other 2.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 2:38 pm

i think someone placed a dode in drr's base and he couldn't fight it off lol...

dode is fine the way it is, in fact dode sensor is horrible. costs 25 supply, cost 15 CC  and it's not THAT powerful.

if you have a good fleet you can take out a dode easily. (dode has 3k hp and without the regeneration, it's like taking out 2 spheres without regeneration - should be easy.)

edit: i just remembered non-regen spheres have about 2k to 2.3k hp; regen spheres have 1.5k to 1.8k hp

posted on August 30th, 2010, 2:44 pm

if someone places a dodeca relay near your base then u should have an easy time killing it as u are near your repair yard.

just attack with everything, and cycle out damaged ships. it takes a little time depending on your fleet, but u easily beat it.

i once killed a dodeca relay with a handful of bombers.

its also possible to outrange a dodeca relay easily if it is unsupported. this is because its sensor range is smaller than its weapon range. so get a scout with large visual range and some long range ships like bombers, and sit at the edge of long range, your ships will see the enemy and attack, while the dodeca wont see you, and cant fire back.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 3:00 pm

i think someone placed a dode in drr's base and he couldn't fight it off lol...

That's funny.  reminds me of the old days playing Age of Empires.  Team game and i got whacked pretty hard early on so sent a few peons into my ally's base.  Told him i would build towers and defend while he focused on offense.

Filled his base with towers.

When we finally beat the enemies i was prepared.  He had forgot it was a team game with "Last Man Standing" set.  So, just as his army killed the last opponent i canceled the alliance.

Within less than 1 minute his peons and a few military units were dead from arrows and his buildings were flattened from bombard towers.

He was veryyyyy annoyed with me.  Think that was the last time we played AOE together. 

posted on August 30th, 2010, 3:33 pm

I am talking about maps where your starting moons are quite far from your sb. Therefore the Dodec is not easily spotted unless you have a follow scout on it (only cloakers).

I am also talking about the time a Dodec IS placed...sure I can snipe it WHILE building, but if I have no ships at my main because my focus is at a warpin or something, I am screwed almost for sure. The reason:

- My initial mining is blown up
- I cant rebuild it
- I cant take out the dode unless I have many torpedo armed ships (e.g. difficult for Romulans)
- If I do the repair cycle strat as Myles argued, my ships are busy for almost 5min (unless torpedoes)
- the Borg on the other hand can happily ignore the dode since it will do everything on its own
- and can send more ships that can easily retreat to the dodec

its also possible to outrange a dodeca relay easily if it is unsupported

so how many torpedo ships do we have with LR on tier 1? Not that many if you ask me...

if you have a good fleet you can take out a dode easily.

I am speaking about the very early game...in the game it happened I had 2 Rhienns and 2 or 3 Griffins when the dode was deployed...I by myself were busy attacking mining. So I could not run back since this would take longer than 2mins-taking out the dodec.

Dodec turrents are easly beaten a fed warp in can do it, if your a cloaked race you can de-cloak while its building and thats that.

The borg player can only build 2 of them at most early on and he is unlikely to have many ships if he does this, so thats 2 moons hes defended... attack the other 2.

I dont comment this o_O


Now no more comments about sniping the dodec...there are always times you might be busy elsewhere. The point is, IF it is deployed at a starting moon in the early game, the game is over since you are too heavily crippled. All your ships build make no difference to this.
Its like allowing the Borg to build a Ubercube with a build time of 10min...if you miss this timeframe the game ENDS for you...that is not right if you ask me...even if one can throw in stupid arguments about "you have 10min to kill it", "scout more" o_O

posted on August 30th, 2010, 3:51 pm

This reminds me of why I think Disruptor Refit Rhienns are OP, because the main thing that is supposed to balance them is how much time it takes to tech up to them, thus you can scout and see that your opponent is making them. But once they're there, you have almost no chance.
Yesterday I had my fleet of Klingon ships utterly pwned by a fleet of disruptor rhienns because the Rom player was sneaky and had 3 dil moons so that my raiding of a dil expansion and later his base mining had little effect (even had I seen the other dil expansion I wouldn't be able to kill the miners fast enuff), I considered countering the Rhienns, but Klingons have really really bad long range counter options.

Dode turret I think is less OP than disruptor Rhienns by midgame (my usual reaction to seeing multitargeting disruptor is "gg" for a reason), it can be stopped with a normal sized fleet.
Really I find that Dode turrets suck at defending your own expansion, since they take up so much space they are hard to place and you have to use vinculum module to get the cloak detect (so forget about regen turret), also players tend to only attack Borg miners once they have a good sized fleet (whereas other factions have stronger turrets than miners, thus the turret makes up for miner's low defense.)
Used to stop expansion they are much more powerful (don't need cloak detect so just slap a regen module on) and force the opponent to either kill your attacking fleet or kill the strong Dode.