experiments with assimilation

posted on February 28th, 2010, 12:09 am

I also think holding beam is underpowered, though not "horribly."  I think it could use a bigger boost to how fast it assimilates or how much crew it can assimilate at once.  I ALMOST NEVER use holding beam modules.  I find larger def/off numbers win games with mid to late game ships.  Early game ships are different, but they don't have holding beam as options. :/  Assimilation modules are very effective though. 

posted on February 28th, 2010, 12:22 am

i think the holding module is underpowered, but only in one thing: its special weapon. the moule gives nice stat boosts and much special energy, but the holding beam it is built for  in the first place is pretty useless if you sont have boarding researched (which is pretty costly)

posted on March 2nd, 2010, 12:09 pm

The number of holding beams should depend on the number of modules I think...each module gives a holding beam weapon and also lowers the cost for each beam.

posted on March 2nd, 2010, 2:32 pm

How about maximum modules gives a second Holding Beam? 2 Beams on 2 targets (like the conventional Cutting Beams) or 2 on the same target to double the Assimilation rate.

posted on March 2nd, 2010, 5:02 pm

failing to assimilate two ships is worse than failing to assimilate one

i think a simple reduction to the amount of special energy it noms up would give it a lot more use.

posted on March 2nd, 2010, 10:31 pm

Just because you can't assimilate an entire large ship with one doesn't make it useless  . Use it to hold down that pesky Negh'var while your other vessels blow it to shreds - or, if you want to assimilate everything, fill your Pyramids with Holding Beams and they become even better than Assimilators  (and don't forget boarding!)

posted on March 3rd, 2010, 5:14 pm

it seems at the moment assimilate avatar has to spend serious wonga to have effective assimilating power, such as pyramids loaded up with holding modules, they may just cut it at assimilating one medium ship but was it really worth it when you could have fitted out your ships with more guns and destroyed multiple ships and loss considerably less hull points

posted on March 3rd, 2010, 5:44 pm

Not at all.  If your intent is to assimilate, you simply have to have boarding.  Assim beams are good for early game, but by mid game you can get boarding and then all you need to do is have one assim touch a ship with a beam, and then have everyone else send over boarding parties.  A 2 assim/nanite factory assimilator is great for this, because you get the extra boarding strength.  If you do that, you can easily take medium ships, and large crew ships like Sovs and Descents are only a little harder.  But you can reduce their crews quickly by using the nanite factory, which is percent based and affects multiple ships, so ships with higher crews are no longer safe.  When 4 assimilators have reduced a crew of 400 to about 125 in only a matter of seconds, it's not hard for the other ships to use assim beams and/or boarding to take out the remaining crew.

posted on March 3rd, 2010, 6:12 pm

4 assims top capture one ship is expensive both in resources and in micro. plus those assims are less offense armed. they are great at neutralising one target, but all his friends will be shooting you in the face. boarding is great too, but requires research and is a bit micro as well and takes energy away that you could use to fire slicer and deves. attack torp of death. in most battles if you're not great at micro (i admit i'm not great at micro) then you will only capture a small number of ships. if you focus on destroying rather than assimilating you have more success. making the assimilate name kinda misleading. i would rather the assimilate avatar's offensive capabilities be reduced and its assimilating abilities increased by the same amount, giving you the same overall strength, but you focus on assimilating rather than destroying.

posted on March 3rd, 2010, 7:02 pm

4 assims spamming nanite factory significantly reduces the crew of ALL the enemy fleet.   Then it's an easy matter to just of picking them off one by one.  Again, at this point we're talking about a mid game fleet, which is typically 8 assimilators total.  Also, it basically puts every ship in their fleet at yellow crew levels, which drastically reduces their fire rate.  Once you've reduced the crew of all their ships, boarding is easy, and doesn't take a lot of micro.  You merely have to select all your ships, click boarding, and click the ship you want.  Trust me, it works in multiplayer quite well.  At least in 3.0.7 it did.  Assimilate avatar in current patch is about the worst pick right now, because assimilators are so slow.

Assimilating works well if you use assim beams, nanite factory, and boarding at the right times.  It is very micro intensive, but it's still a fun way to play, and there are ways to reduce your micro burden so that it's not too difficult.

posted on March 23rd, 2010, 10:18 pm

I agree that the holding beam just needs an energy reduction, but that still won't make it endgame effective.  I suggest 1 of 2 things.  They should either

1. Improve the AI to allow your ships to reduce the amount of micro you have to do constantly.  For example, if Holding Beam is maxed out your ship will automatically transport a full complement to the captured ship when it hits 0 crew.

2. Make it so assimilated ships don't lose all their shields!!!  If assimilate were spammable that would be a problem, but right now it's balanced to work much slower than conventional weaponry so there shouldn't be such a large penalty for assimilating in the middle of a fight.