Whats with the Hyperspace Artillery?

posted on June 26th, 2009, 8:42 pm

Seriously, it's got to be one of the most useless unit in the entire game. It doesn't do any damage to ships (tried it on a Klingon destroyer without shields, no hull damage), barely hurts stations (11% hull damage to a borg resource node, barely even nicks shields) and fires slower than anything else in the game thanks to needing 300 energy per shot. It also costs practically nothing to build. Why is this? From its description I would expect it to be a powerful, though expensive and limited, superweapon, something like an artillery tavara in that you can only build a few but they can turn the tide if used well, though even more specialized. As is you're better off with a couple A26s if you want to do damage.

Is there a reason the artillery is like this right now? Does it have a use I'm just missing? (I've built it in 3 games, tried using it for attack, defense, hitting ships in nebula where they have no shields, all sorts of things). I'm just not seeing a point to it right now, it's just a waste of resources (though a small waste).

Personally I would like to see it be an expensive (at least 3x its current cost, probably more) ship that did a lot more damage per shot (enough to kill full health destroyers if they didn't move) but fired even slower (7-10s countdown) so it would become sort of an anti-station weapon that could also kill fleets if you were inattentive. That would be a cool ship to have, even if it cost you an arm and a leg to build. Right now it's just a waste of micro, better to build a regular fleet and micro them than worry about firing it when its charged.

So what's up with the Hyperspace Artillery? Is it meant to be like this? Is there something I'm missing? Or is it just way out of balance with everything else?

posted on June 27th, 2009, 3:39 am

Id have to agree. Whenever I see the 5 second warning I just ignore it. Either up the cost or the power or dont make a limit on the amount u can build.

posted on June 27th, 2009, 3:47 am

I also concur with you guys....heck I even modded the cap file and used ten of them at once against a fleet...it did absolutely buttkiss...now against unatentave players if they dont move their ship after being hit with the blast it does do a lil bit but still.....no real use ive found for it yet other than eye candy and perhaps as a proof of concept and placeholder perhaps.

posted on June 27th, 2009, 8:05 am

Not only the hyperspace artillery also the dominion dreadnought wont do ANY significant damage with its small singularity. I've shot that thing several times into a fleet of small ship, directly against a sphere (It stayed at its position) and so on. Really NOTHINg happends. With this tiny upgrade, the dreadought is not worth the veteran slots.

Also, when you have 23 slots consumed, what can I do with the remaining two? Is there a ship for the dominion that consumes 2?

I think it needs a lot of rebalance. With this configuration now, it dont makes any sense even to build a dominion dreadnought. It only makes sense when you play against the borg, but to withstand them, you need actual 2 of them on veteran.

When compared to the romulan dreadnought, this ship is really weak.

posted on June 27th, 2009, 8:11 am

If you reead the tooltip, i'm pretty sure it says it's good against STATIONS. Here it is:
     Fires a Tetryon torpedo enriched with
     instable protomatter, causing a
     shortliving Tetryon singularity at the
     target location. A Tetryon singularity
     has devestating effects on stationary
     structures.
I've tried this and it rapidly and pretty much completely drains the shields on an enemy starbase (and kill *any* other station) but does little against ships. It will also deal area damage, so you can take out clustered turrets with it (i imagine up to 4 if they're arranged right). Add it's high stats, and it can pwn an enemy base with at most a small fleet and the other dreadnought you are sure ot have built as support. Now, the matter of a singularity of any kind not doing damage to ships? that's another matter entirely...

posted on June 27th, 2009, 3:10 pm

Hyperspace Artillery is also very good at decimating buildings, and it does wonders if you can get it behind enemy lines to squash cruisers and destroyers (yes, against battleships it doesn't do so well... and against the Borg, well, they have extremely high tolerance for most special area weapons .

Plus, no split damage, so it's great for taking on a fleet of any size. 

posted on June 27th, 2009, 3:34 pm

In the older versions  (3.0.5 I Havent got 3.0.7 yet)Aginst Stationary targets the HSA's workgreat.I tend to use them to knock out my opponents shipyards,and other stations. However I do not use them alone, they need  covering ships to protect them. I feel it would be awesum to  allow the HSA to upgrade to  a Burst mode by useing one of the spare slots per ship to upgrade each ship to have this capacity, but a increased  reload time. But  if not still is a pretty good ship as is. When I play  1player Vs 2Ai medium  or 4Ai Vs1 Easy they work well to chew up a opponients base of operations., while the rest of the fleet is taking care of the  ships.

posted on June 27th, 2009, 4:25 pm

Well, the HSA is a special ship right? So, why not giving them a cost factor of that of a starbase and then make it a little bit more efficient against ships?

When I hear the word "artillery" I think on large ships with powerful weapons but with such a low speed, that they dont perform well in and one on one battle.

We already have bomber like ships for every race instead of the borg. And these ships should ALL get an atrillery range. The dominion bomber got no artillery range and the excelsior only with the correct avatar.

The dominion already got a very powerful fleet so increasing the abilities of their ships would unbalance the game. They are, in my opinion the second strenthed race after the borg.

But the question is: Why does the singularity not perform well against even destroyers but can destroy a whole starbase? Destroyers can easily evade the singularity, but if fired against bigger ships like cubes, the singularity should make mincemeat out of it.

And a dreadnought is in my opinion a ship that should outperform other ships. So I like the advanced beam of the dominion dreadnought see to do additional damage against bigger ships, not against stations. Against stations, you have your bombers. (the frontline-artillery)

I also think that the bombers are a little bit outgunned. I really dont use the A-26 Bomber. This ship wont deliver enough punch to decrease enemy shields fast enough and it cant perform out of the second line, because it only got "long" range.

So maybe it should be rewritten a little bit.

The dominion strategy in combat is in my eyes: Put some punchy strongholds into the fronline and distract them with many bugships and fighters. In the line behind the front, you have your heavy cruisers that will defend your bombers and deal a great punch against everything that will try to break through. The second line consists of your bombers that will point out enemy ships with large barrages.

So dogfight with bugs, heavy cruisers for the backbone and bombers for a constant elemination-stream from behind. Here and there some support vessels for making the life hard for the enemy.

This tactic would be finde against the federation, the romulans and the klingons, but not against the borg. Against the borg, the only thing that will work are torpedos, and thus, you need bombers, dreadnoughts and battlecruisers.

And here comes the point:
I like to see the dreanought singularity as a borg-killer. A so called torpedo that will have two options:
- You fire it in space: Enemy ships get accelerated from it and when entering it --> boom
- You fire it on a certain ship --> warp core breach

... ideas running through my head...

posted on June 27th, 2009, 4:41 pm

Plus, no split damage, so it's great for taking on a fleet of any size. 

As I posted it does literally 0% damage to most ships (tested on a Klingon K'beajQ class with no shields (shield draining nebula, blue one) and 30% hull and a B'rel class with shields, may as well have been firing probes at them, no shield or hull damage).

If you've managed to hurt fleets with this thing then I want to see how you use it because I have yet to do 1 point of anti-ship damage with it, despite having it as a staple of my defenses while building up 3 games in a row. I've fired at every ship that I see outside my base (generally hiding in the anti-shield nebulas on central point) and never once have I seen a health or shield bar budge.

posted on June 27th, 2009, 4:55 pm

I tested it a few days ago and it one-shots a B'rel 

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posted on June 27th, 2009, 5:50 pm

Continued

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posted on June 27th, 2009, 5:52 pm

And last but not least

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posted on June 27th, 2009, 6:01 pm

I agree with Dominus, they wipe out small ships very well.

However, I've noticed that some special weapons (Cascade Feedback, Mass Polarization) don't have effect within nebulas, but that's probably a general bug and not fault of the artillery.

I also wouldn't like to see the Singularity to become more effective against ships to give the Dreadnought more veteran-value. The Dreadnoughts already have a great weapon against ships, and that is beside their armory the Mass Polarization. I fear that giving them an area weapon would mean that Dominion will be reduced to two classes: a Dreadnought to mass-polarize the enemy, the veteran Dreadnought to deal area damage to your enemies and C-11s with Cascade Feedback to destroy what's left.

Atm Dreadnoughts are already useful against ships but a lot more dangerous when it comes to stations. I love them as they are.

posted on June 27th, 2009, 7:30 pm

Well then I guess that's better, I've been firing at nebulas with it most of the time (because that's where the AI likes to hide ships before attacking your base) and was getting frustrated with not doing any damage. I'll try firing it at ships out in the open to see what the effect is.