viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

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996 days, 12 hours, 4 minutes ago

viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

viability of wasp , to the positive side

tweek the fuel consumption numbers on their capital ships

give opponents regular que points

996 days, 11 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

I guess a good campaign goodie would be a fuel rock

996 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

> I guess a good campaign goodie would be a fuel rock

It already exists. It's called Liquefaction. In most cases, if there are enough Horwasp to be able to effectively use the additional fuel, there are also enough Horwasp to be liquefied to provide that fuel.

996 days, 11 hours, 5 minutes ago

hays

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

sure @whisperer one planet out of 20 has enough natives and enough workers, so it has enough fuel.

all planets around have minerals but lacking fuel natives and workers.

thats a hard logistical issue for a horwasp.

The good planet can just send 1 pod per turn.
All planets around stay useless, till they have fuel/natives/workers.

996 days, 10 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@hays

In that situation you should be moving fuel using Soldiers and Hives. Both of which move fuel very well when they have 0 cargo.

996 days, 10 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@Whisperer I think you need to play a game through against human opponents. Liquification which is nice is not the same as moving fuel around.

There is not logistical way for horwasp to move fuel to where they need it and being able to move fuel around would go a long way to help them.

996 days, 10 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@Morgan_Kell it is not very fuel efficient to move fuel with soldiers and hives, especially over med to long distances. And you are grossly limited in the number of hives to turn them into glorified heavy fuel carriers.

996 days, 10 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

sir one point which realy isnt seen from the outside looking at general stats , is this , you see this big ship ya have which is only 1 of 2 which can perform wasp initiated intercept
she has a nice big tank for fuel ,but with it full, she isnt good for a 2trn w7 jump ,till shes empty , an her soldiers are good for about 3trns,
possibly the accelerator helps
I have discovered an unusual way of conserving wasp fuel by roughly 25% on the wasp capital ships

im havin fun , like the village idiot playing with a new toy

996 days, 10 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@dimensia

I agree it's not terribly efficient to move fuel with a Soldier or a Hive. It's a sad state for the Hive to be in that it has two roles, fuel tanker or defense platform, however the trade off is that no other races can make fuel out of workers, which if done right can be infinite. Yes the Colonies have the Cobol but it's not as powerful liquefy.

@ghostrider

Yes there are issues that need to be addressed for the Horwasp to be more viable.

The first alpha changes were a step in the right direction. Ability to make more Soldiers and cheaper Hives helped a lot. There is clearly some more work that can and should be done to them.

I would suggest that Accelerators are not currently worth the investment. They are to expensive and provide limited benefit for the cost and time involved in placing them in space and placing them where you need them to be.

996 days, 9 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@Hays,

> one planet out of 20 has enough natives and enough workers, so it has enough fuel.

The relevant game parameter is "Native Probability", which defaults to 55%. This means that at least half the planets will have some sort of native, most of which will have enough clans to be useful (min/max range in Standard Games is 2K-9M natives).

As the Siliconoids are useless, that takes out about 1/9 of the planets with natives (exact distribution of natives is currently unknown).

Overall, this gives 40-45% of the planets with enough natives to create a large enough worker population to liquidate to get a usable amount of fuel. It's just a matter of time (turns) to get the worker population up.

I'm guessing that, in a game against real players, you're not being given the development time needed to bring those planets up to full production.

@Dimensia,

> I think you need to play a game through against human opponents.

I'd love to, but I don't have the time :(

The AI isn't especially difficult to beat, even for a Novice Horwasp player like myself. Based on what I'm seeing here, I expect that some games against a real player would change the way I think of them.

996 days, 6 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@morgan actually all races can create fuel. They have access to refineries. Which turn supplies into fuel from factories made by clans.

@whisperer on the native density. It isn't so much the number of native worlds but more about the population of them. The horwasp need a lot of fuel. A lot more than the other races to keep their pods moving. And as stated it is near impossible to move hives loaded up to any effective distance without already gaining a foothold. The better use i've found is to get them close and make us3 of their swarm ability. But in late game when world populations on mative worlds have grown this becomes minimal in utility too.

996 days, 6 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

> give opponents regular que points

Currently, if the Horwasp have any PBP, the appropriate number for the destroyed starship hull mass are taken by the combat victors when a Horwasp ship is destroyed. The Horwasp accumulate PBP by taking worlds with starbases, and by destroying enemy ships.

This means that when you destroy ships of a successful Horwasp, you get PBP, but when the Horwasp has been less than successful, you usually get nothing.

I believe that Joshua created them this way to keep them from being made into a Vassal to be used as a PBP source.

996 days, 5 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@Dimensia Fair enough about the N refineries I'd not thought about them. However my main point is that the Horwasp has the easiest, most efficient and most productive way of creating fuel. If you gave them a more efficient way to transport that fuel you risk making them vastly over powered. I do think their fuel system needs to be tweaked but only somewhat, and Horwasp fuel issues should not be first on the list to tweak.

How to deal with Heavy Carriers would be something more meaningful I think.

996 days, 4 hours, 14 minutes ago

hays

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Sorry @Morgan Kell and @Whisperer.
The few real ships the horwasp have to use as logistic servants show a gap in game design. Yes you can move fuel around with 49 ly a turn and with it good ammounts of cargo. But who should intercept the invading chordate ships then?

On Density of natives the cracking point in every horwasp game:

To have a useful planet:
Bout 2.200.000 Workers needet. That means bout 4 Million natives survifed the harvest. Roughly 5 Million at point of colonisation. temperature must be above 15 and below 85.
And for some reason one out of 10 Planets meet this.

To have a good planet:
Bout 4.400.000 Workers needet. That means bout 8 Million natives survifed the harvest.
Roughly 9 Million at point of colonisation. temperature must be above 15 and below 85.
And for some reason one out of 20 Planets meet this.
Of course you need the minerals there to build hives/Soldiers/Accelerators and Jackers.

996 days, 4 hours, 5 minutes ago

hays

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Adding to Ghostriders suggestion:

Ship Name:Sergant

A med size hard-hull carrier as ship with half of the current overdrive warp 9 fuel cost.
330 kt combatmass
3 Beams
6 bays
3 Tubes
600 Cargo
900 Fuel
40 Fighters
Costs around Jacker + Soldier. Availability Planet count dividet 5 and roundet down.

Seem the solution for most tactical issues the horwasp face.

996 days, 1 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

To reinforce Hays idea's on lack of fuel.

You are in bad sector for fuel. You are sending out 300 clan soldiers (or lower) or a few hundred clan nest to colonise planets due to lack of fuel.

You find a planet with enough natives and a good temperature. So with your few hundred clans you now have to spend the first 10 turns on harvest only to get the clans to a level where you can start mining what fuel you had on the planet and liquefying the clans you are trying to create fuel.

Or you can send a 1200 clan nest several turns exhausting your fuel elsewhere to speed up the fuel in one sector to help in another.

While your Soldiers and Hives which are totally inefficient in transporting fuel even when empty are needed to help fend off every neighbour that is attacking you as you have no fuel to keep up a steady supply of high mass pods in attack.

Fuel is a problem for the Horwasp but that is probably what Joshua had in mind as a weakness.

996 days, 0 hours, 6 minutes ago

hays

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

As i stated several weeks ago, the shortage on fuel and minerals is like a fuse. And for balance reasons its useful so the horwasp dont become a chain reactin fission bomb in expansion matters. Its hard to figure the correct fuse size.

Lets see the negatives relating to expansion and combatstrenght:

1.Slow movement of ships and pods. Warp 6 and 7.
2.Predictable movement of pods.
3.Very weak combat efficiency of Soldiers and Hive.
4.Just 2 real ship types.
5.No kind of alchemy.
6.No way to move fuel where needed, exept with very limited Soldiers/Hives.
7.HARDCORE logistics and time consumtion per turn if meet >40 Planets.
8.One planet can just build one pod and its lost without reward if it enters orbit.
9.Very few possible builds of Soldiers/Hive compared to old races.
10. No way to deal with two enemy high end battleships at one position.

The strong points:
1.Awesome start.
2.Unstopable early expansion, if luck with native planets and planet distance is with you.
3.No pod limit.
4.No fear of other races till ship limit is hit, or facing picket line ships and gang up fleets.
5.Full visibility.
6.Most effective ratio from colonisation till first ship is build.(5 Turns)
...Well

995 days, 23 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

"Hays: HARDCORE logistics"

That is what is keeping me in Private Sector testing mode thus far and not in a Public game as Horwasp, which initially my plan was to review the first finished Horwasp Sector and then play as them... now I don't quite enjoy playing Horwaso Turns, but the Replay feature sure is pretty to watch though... especially Horwasp vs Horwasp wars.

995 days, 21 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

As a horwasp player I feel that lack of information is unfair.
1-It should be information about the exact damage that a rock produce given the combination mass-speed
2-it should be better way to test battles in the simulator. For example I did not find how to simulate a battle pod-against horwasp planet (can someone do this?)
3-the size of protofield should be simulated in the same way that normal mines does
In my opinion the horwasp is ery very super smart creation, but it will need time to be tunned. At this time my guess is that is impossible to win a game in a normal map pllaying against exprerienced players.

However I insist, items 1,2 and 3 should be fixed, it is unfair that such a complicated raze to play have this limitation respect other razes, it should be more confortable to play with it

995 days, 20 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@Hays We are essentially arguing for the same thing. I do want to see improvements to the Horwasp fuel usage but I disagree with some of the finer points of the Soldier and Hive because there does need to be some draw back to the Horwaps.

My main Horwasp concerns are;

Limited controllable ships
Choice of warp 6 for pod threshold is understandable but to severe a limitation
No effective way for Horwasp to fight Heavy Carrier races
Worker to ship tech ratio is to severe (A brood hitting a single mine renders it nearly useless in combat)

I could live with crappy ways to move fuel and no alchemy and the logistics of the Horwasp if those were addressed.

995 days, 19 hours, 9 minutes ago

hays

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Well said,
one thing should be decidet fast by the admin team/joshua.

Should the horwasp be one race out of 12?

OR

The ultimate nemesis to all others?

Its frustrating if you explode and hammer down your next neighbours early without mercy, just to implode in the midgame cause you dont have the tools to protect your tiny waspling empire facing a four frontline battle against Novas,Darkwings,Viccys,Biocydes,Gorbies,Rushs,Golems,T-Rex,Diamondflames,MCBR and all the dirty campaign tools they have.

And no its not only the Heavy Carrier races, Nova and Darkwing perform exelent vs Horwasps too.
They can disengange every fight, thats the issue.

995 days, 14 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Ghostriders 'Fuel Rock' idea just seems the simplest solution... it'd be cool if it was like Destroy Planet or maybe the Tantrum Liner blast when used as a weapon.

995 days, 11 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

heres something that might be simpler , allow capital ship to pod transfers of fuel or clan , rather than designing a rock

oh , the unusual method of fuel consumption is reduce the speed / the slower a loaded soldier or hive goes the less fuel/ at w1 its close to 25% gain an thats a miracle situation in some combat cases/ were not use to trying warp reduction / I think in normal ships theres optimal speed range but not proportional savings based on w /with wasp theres a savings each warp drop /a hive at w1 through w6 can move further than a hive at w7

but yall all my combat Bros an ill be happy to play with anything yall decide

995 days, 5 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

> allow capital ship to pod transfers of fuel or clan

This might work, IF the capital ship and pod are at the same point, travelling at the same speed, and have the same end-turn point. The issue is that the pods are on a ballistic trajectory, and that the ship should match that trajectory to safely transfer cargo.

Joshua has gone through a lot of work to ensure that cargo can't be transferred to/from a pod.

994 days, 22 hours, 13 minutes ago

vindicator

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Lots of comments on lack of power vs carrier races - true, but a horwasp can make use of a jacker IF that carrier has poor beams. If the carrier cannot hit the jacker directiy, then it can suck up the fighter hits and get its torpedos off, weakening the carrier. I have a few battles vs a gorbie with X-rays that I wished I just had another jacker or solider there - would have had it...

What I fear is a fed nova as a horwasp has nothing. 10 beams is enoughto keep my fighters away until it unleashes a 10mk8 volley. Only a few of these will kill the solider and I would have done little damage in that time. Worse is next fight, that nova still goes in with 25 shields. Land grab has chewed through 3 soliders of mine a turn this way - had there been a 4th or 5th, I don't think they would have survived either... now (unfortunately) he does not fear me as much...

We do need something with a chance...

I agree that horwasps could do with a medium ship as a companion to a soldier for fuel purposes perhaps. If you get some good luck in starting position (natives, planet proximity) fuel itself is not the issue...

I would also like to see where my lprotofiekd will be predicted to be next turn.

Vin

994 days, 22 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Originally you could transfer to a pod mid space until someone pointed it out and it was blocked. As some people were over warping pods unloaded with low fuel costs and filling them mid space.

Or how about the ship expends an appropriate amount of fuel to maintain the speed? It loads cargo onto the pod. If no fuel exchanges then the pod reduces in speed due to mass increase. If they transfer fuel it simulates an engine boost from the other ship to maintain the speed.

I would also like to see non straight line flights. Mini engines are placed on the pods which can shunt the mid way point in multi turn flights. You can change the point by 1 or 2 LY hexes and then back onto the original destination. So you can effectively shunt the 6LY jump to say 5 hex points before returning to its intended destination.

Effectively a limited shift click multiple turn movement plot.

This will mean that one ships cannot sit on the exact point and kill all pods going through that point. To do that they would need to have 5 ships not 1 to guarantee a ship at that point. This will not prevent them from intercepting the ship the following turn though.

994 days, 19 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Martinr,

> sit on the exact point and kill all pods going through that point

Only 5 of the 13 pod designs can be killed without an intercept. Because of that, I have doubts as to the effectiveness of this tactic.

994 days, 19 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@Vindicator Yes early game you can hope that your opponent plays low tech beams on heavy carriers but as the game goes on that gets less and less likely to see and your Jacker becomes irrelevant again.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your Nova example but you should never, if possible, attempt to use a Soldier against anything other than a medium sized warship. The Soldier is way to fragile to go into a fight with anything as big as a Nova. Hays's sergeant ship idea would be a better match up.

Multiple Brood attacks are much more consistent against heavy warships though in fairness you'll need at a minimum 2 Broods. Targeting 2 Broods to the same attack can be tricky but would be much simpler with a cost effective Accelerator (which Horwasp currently do not have).

994 days, 18 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@whisperer, which are those 5 pods than can be killed without intercept?
what about the brood?

994 days, 18 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

> which are those 5 pods than can be killed without intercept?

It is possible to initiate combat with the Accelerator, Brood, Jacker, Sentry and Stinger pods without using the Intercept mission.

The Low Energy Profile advantage is what causes the Intercept mission to be required to initiate combat. All the other pods have this advantage.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/horwasp-ships
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/low-energy-profile
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/racesheet

994 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Armoured Nest is the only pod with weapons that requires Intercept mission to engage in a fight... it has 3 beams.

So Martinr is quite correct that you can just camp positions between planets to deal with pods, you can simply Tow the rest without even moving to neutralize them.

994 days, 17 hours, 28 minutes ago

vindicator

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@morgan correct me uf wrong, but broods cannot be put in a defensive position you launch and that's it. In an attack, then yes I agree. Soldiers you can move about...

994 days, 17 hours, 22 minutes ago

hays

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

We have strategic flaws of the horwasp race and tactical flaws. Of course there are benefits in both sections also.

Is there any chance the admins reveal, they are aware of the issues or plan to do something bout it?

994 days, 17 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Well the direction towards Unity and Steam, and the role Horwasp will play as the antagonist, I imagine there are many changes to come. I expect there to be a Beta at some point, utilizing 12 Race Sectors instead of Melees.

994 days, 16 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

We already have 12 race Sectors with Horwasps. All of the campaign Sectors include them now. Possibly including the Captain's Campaign sectors? Since there are no Horwasp Captains, those are going to take a really long time to fill...

994 days, 15 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

Anyone with a high enough rank in another officer can join as a Captain. But they have to be a Rear Admiral I believe.

So as you say it may take a while!

992 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@vindicator sorry for the delay in response. You can use a Brood defensively if you time it's launch to when your planet is attacked.

ie. your planet is under attack by a enemy ship one turn out. you can launch a Brood from your planet with the launching planet as the target. Host runs and your pod is created, travels to it's destination, enemy moves, combat occurs and you have used your Brood in a defensive manner.

Problems with this is if you need more than one Brood to take out the enemy ship.
If you have a second planet nearby with enough fuel/workers/minerals you can send a 2nd Brood but that can be a big if. This is part of the problem with limited speed pods and ships.

992 days, 15 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@Morgan+Kell: Dangit, I was hoping everyone was going to be quiet about that tactic so I didn't have to deal with it. ;D

992 days, 14 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

@ALL,

In the various threads, I'm seeing LOTS of Horwasp and anti-Horwasp tactics being discussed. If someone wants to start putting these together, we'd love to host both of these pages.

991 days, 13 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: viability of wasp , to the positive side tweek the fuel...

will do how?