AI War 2 has just received another update, taking it from 5.535 to 5.536 for Windows, Mac and Linux.
5.536 Extended Sidekicks
(Released January 30th, 2023) Part 2
• Vanilla Frigates:
• Translocator Sniper Frigate: No changes - it looks decent to me.
• Shredder Frigate: Base hull points 300k -> 50k, Hull Tech Heavy -> Light. This reduces their overall durability (which makes them too powerful in my opinion) and also increases the vulnerability to fusion damage, since their shields are still at 300k base. Since there is an absolute overabundance of Heavy+Melee, and still quite a few Medium+Melee ships the Shredder Frigate and its variants are now Light.
• Sharpener Frigate: Hull points 100k -> 35k, shield points 150k -> 210k, damage amplification 1.5x -> 1.25x, base ship cap 4 -> 6, Hull Tech Heavy -> Light, strength rating 2.5x -> 2x. This reduces their damage amplification to somewhat reasonable values but in return gives a number more ships to apply it with (and thus also more redundancy, overall the durability goes up quite a bit!). THe hull and tech changes are in line with the Shredder Frigate changes. The strength is adjusted for the reduced damage amplification.
• Wedge Frigate: Damage 5000 -> 7500, speed 1600 -> 1300, tech Melee+Heavy -> Melee+Core. Before the Wedge Frigate was probably actually weaker than the Shredder, due to its lower overall durability and damage modifier against lower-hull targets at exactly the same DPS, but with the added requirement of high-mass targets and more damage wasted on overkills. This is a buff: Not only isn't its durability nerfed like the Shredder Frigate, it also gains marks easier (usually) due to double-weapon-tech upgrades and can if fully upgraded against the right target exceed the Shredder's DPS. The only negative change is the speed going down, which I believe to be fair.
• Stealth Carrier: Speed 1500 -> 1600, explicit kite distance 15000 -> 500000, cloaking loss per weapon fire and drone deployed 5% -> 2%. The Stealth Carrier loses out on a large chunk of drones due to them deploying every 6 instead of 4 seconds. To stay hidden better (which is the point of this ship) the cloaking point loss was reduced. Additionally they should also stay far, far away from the fight (this ship is more manual control specialist than attack-move main fleet ship) and are a bit faster doing so.
• Attack Carrier: Strength rating 1x -> 1.5x. A well deserved estimated strength buff since the ship misses the engine slow/stun gun and cloak of the normal Ambush Carrier, but makes up for it in extra drone production.
• DCL 1 Strike Craft:
• Beam Bombard: Base hull points 500 -> 5000, base shield points 6500 -> 0, metal cost 13k -> 20k, AI purchase cost 120 -> 140, base ship cap 14 -> 12. Beam Bombards, the long-range deleters of strike craft were probably a bit too powerful with their alpha strike power, being as numerous as normal Bombards. A reduced cap should serve well here. Additionally their shield has mostly been moved to health (which was probably still a relic of when Strike Craft used to have shields) and the metal and AI cost that was far below the original Bombard (which costs 16k metal) increased a lot. These ships should be kept in the rear and valued.
• Compact Bombard: Base hull points 3000 -> 4500, base shield points 1500 -> 0, metal cost 10k -> 13k, AI purchase cost 120 -> 100. Similar changes to the above, the actual balance of the ship itself looks fine.
• Rail Bombard: Base hull points 1500 -> 4000, base shield points 2500 -> 0, metal cost 20k -> 40k, AI cost to purchase 120 -> 140, strength rating 2x -> 2.5x, adjusted the tooltip. Similar changes to the above, the ship itself is costly but also very powerful. The tooltip no longer states that if dropped in the center of a planet the entire gravwell can be covered (as they are now potentially variable), and instead of how to use the ship effectively.
• Cloaked Viral Shredder: Base hull points 1500 -> 2250, shield points 750 -> 0. The ship itself seemed just fine, with the exception of having shields.
• Parasitic Viral Shredder: Base hull points 3000 -> 4500, shield points 1500 -> 0, damage per attack 30 -> 50. Same shield-to-hull adjustment for strike craft, and given that its cap is only 62.5% of the base Viral Shredder its damage was rather lackluster even accounting for it applying zombification.
• DLC 1 Frigates:
• EMP Missile Frigate: No changes - I'm pretty happy with this ship.
• DLC 2 Strike Craft:
• Electric Blaster: No changes - Another ship that I think of as fairly balanced.
• Static Bomber: Ditto!
• Polarazer: Base hull points 1600 -> 1000, speed 600 -> 800, damage per shot 50 -> 30, damage multiplier per 35 -> 60 armor mm, max multiplier 10 -> 3, Damage multiplier based on mass 3x -> 2x, flat damage amplification 32 -> 16 + 8 -> 4 per mark, armor 80mm -> 50mm. This ship was simply absurd with its ability to multiply its own damage into the stratosphere as well as having increased damage itself. A well deserved nerf to an already very powerful base ship. The reduced hull strength, reduced armor (to become vulnerable to certain weapon types) and increased speed should hopefully promote a bit more of a controlled playstyle instead of simply throwing the ship into a swarm of strike craft.
• Polaraider: Damage per shot 150 -> 35, armor 50mm -> 30mm, hull tech Light -> Medium, AI cost to purchase 24 -> 36. This needed a big fat hit with the nerf bat hammer. The reports received from the AI annihilating fleets with swarms of Polaraiders were shocking. It came from the base Polarizer having been nerfed in damage in exchange for a damage multiplier against targets >= 5tx mass, but the Polarazer and Polaraider never got adjusted to compensate. The Polaraider was moved to the Medium hull tech in order to prevent it from teching up with too many similar ships ever so slightly.
• Exemplar Polaraider: Inherits all the changes from the Polaraider, for the same reason.
• Shrike Fighter: Energy cost 700 -> 900, AI cost to purchase 30 -> 60. Effectively it's a bit better than 2 Shrike Interceptors in actual combat, and thus the costs needed to be adjusted especially for the AI.
• Shrike Seeker: Shrike Seeker: Energy cost 500 -> 600, AI purchase cost 30 -> 35. Looked like the ship itself was fine, only noone would be charged extra for the upgraded ship line.
• Dark Splitter: Metal cost 6000 -> 7500, AI purchase cost 750 -> 90: The ship itself looked fine, but should probably be costing some more for the increased strength.
• Toxic Mirror: No changes, this ship looks fine by me.
• DLC 2 Frigates:
• Darker Gravity Mirror Frigate: No changes, another ship that I don't think is in any need for change.
• Darker Echo Frigate: Its echo now decays twice as quickly but also spawns Shattered Mirrors when dying.
• Bomber Host Frigate: Decoy base hull points 75k -> 40k. This seemed like the only change necessary, to bring it in line once again with the base variant.
• Decoy Host Frigate: No changes, another ship that I don't think is in any need for change.
• Fixes:
• Fixed the Electro Strike Corvette having a too small weight in the AmbushStrikecraft AI ship group.
• Fixed the Space Bomber being in only a single AI ship group which lead to them probably appearing in barely any waves at all, ever.
• Fixed the Parasitic Viral Shredder in the ReplicatingOffensiveMix fleet template having a base ship cap of 25 instead of the correct 20 it had everywhere else.