World Devastator Role

[Settra]

We're not quite sure which direction we'll take these in, but we've got a few different ideas.

Could you hint as to what the directions would potentially be? I can't imagine much outside of "lol there goes your planet's health" making it basically a DOT version of the galaxy gun (which I suppose would also give you some resources in exchange).

Oh, would it be possible for the devastators to create ships themselves and serve as mobile factories that could only (hopefully) use the resources they ate off of the planet?

[Corey]

Some of them are essentially what you've said. Here are the major ones I've been considering, but we haven't had a final internal discussion on what we want to do, so we're still open to suggestions.

Creation:
1. World Devastators are created by scuttling one of your own worlds, which gives you 3(?) World Devastators and a bunch of resources, also turning the world into a sad little asteroid ala Stripped to the Core. Not buildable.
2. Build them as normal capital ships, nothing special here.

Abilities:
1. Targets enemy planet, dealing damage and creating a frigate or two.
2. Targets enemy planet, dealing damage and increasing its own stats a bit. So, the longer these are around and the more they do, the stronger they get. This means their gains through leveling will be lower.
3. Targets enemy frigate/cruiser, dealing damage and creating a frigate.
4. Something mundane like the Tractor Beam
5. Other stuff we're not sure of yet.

[Settra]

Nifty, it could potentially be fun to be able to acquire the devastators in both ways if possible, making the first one a 'desperate move' type thing. It might be too op to have it slowly scuttle an enemy planet, but it might be decent if it is a slow process that allows for response time (unless of course one sends a large amount of them to speed up the process).

[Corey]

Sorry, should clarify, it would be your own planets that you scuttle. You can't scuttle enemy planets. Anyways, there'd be differences in power if they're the scuttle version vs the buildable version; the scuttle one takes some sacrifices to get, and would be limited, so there's a larger power budget we can worth with, along with more of an "oh shit" factor when you see them. If they're buildable, they'd have to be relatively weaker.

[Carnivore Jacques]

I think that World Devastators were able to build more World Devastators overtime. I'm not sure if this is balanced or even possible to implement, but it is one of their cooler features.

[Waffle Wagon]

Sorry, should clarify, it would be your own planets that you scuttle. You can't scuttle enemy planets. Anyways, there'd be differences in power if they're the scuttle version vs the buildable version; the scuttle one takes some sacrifices to get, and would be limited, so there's a larger power budget we can worth with, along with more of an "oh shit" factor when you see them. If they're buildable, they'd have to be relatively weaker.

I like that option, these are after all terror weapons; and ravaging a planet to build them sounds like a very imperial thing to do. It'll also make it harder for wealthy players to just spam 'em to kingdom come.

As for abilities, would it be possible to have them actually "eat" small ships, like that Vasari Titan?

[Corey]

Yeah, that would be the third thing in the ability list.

I think that World Devastators were able to build more World Devastators overtime. I'm not sure if this is balanced or even possible to implement, but it is one of their cooler features.

We could potentially make an ability like that which requires being the highest possible level.

[KhevaKins]

I think giving the World Devastator the ability to restock your fleets with StarFighters (Tie Fighters, etc) would be cool.

Make it either passive (like 1 squad a minute) or fully restock a fleet in a gravity well when it uses its ability on a planet (shouldn't necessarily destroy the planet). I understand that for balancing it might not be feasible but I thought I'd offer my suggestion.

[Corey]

I think the final decision here is to go with the stripping to build WDs, however there's something else I wanna use that feature for in the future so they'd probably get shifted elsewhere.

[Exakter]

After playing with these, I have to say their build frigate effect is rather underwhelming.

I believe the world devastators should AUTOMATICALLY produce Ships in this order (1- 2 Carrack/2 lancer/1dreadnaught, 2-2 Carrack/1 Strike/2 lancer/1dreadnaught/1vsdmk1/1isd,3-3 carrack/2strike/3lancer/2dreadnaught/1vsdmk1/1isd,4- 4carrack/3strike/4lancer/2dreadnaught/2VSD1/2VSD2/1isd) every 2-5 minutes for Less than cost  use reinforcements for this.

It should also allow you to damage enemy ships and repair itself with same option, while gaining materials.

The third option should obviously be fighter related, either spawning lots of Droid Ties (both regular Droid Tie model and the other Droid tie http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE/D_automated_starfighter, but tweaked to have less health but greater speed/damage than other Ties.

Finally, it's given ability should be to produce smaller World Devastator's itself every five-ten minutes (think our world devastators as they are now.)

In addition, to balance this (and make it a little more impressive) you should raise the model's scale, say by 25-50% and increase the cost and build time of it by 3-4X. Plus raise it's shields by 3-4x (they had impressive shields!).

It might sound a little unbalanced, but it's pretty costly, and when you think about it the upfront cost + it's lack of direct offensive would make them targets, in a one on one battle they'd just eat other ships. You need to take a fleet to them. They also are super weapons in the style of moving factories, not damage output.

[tlmiller]

I agree that the spawn frigate is underwhelming, mostly due to the spawned frigate not being permanent.  If it was a permament ship that actually added to your fleet size, then it'd be a great ability.  As is, I don't even bother putting points into it since it's basically worthless.

[Mandragr]

According to the lore World Devastators not only were mobile factories but had the capacity to alter themselves to changing battle conditions meaning that as the battle/war went on the . Devastators would modify the quantity of turbo laser battery they had. Considering the cost of building one I think it would be interesting to add a function that the more planets it strips /battles it wins the more hard points it would add, to the point of ssd strength  battery numbers in addition to the more battles,resources it wins/collects the higher hangar capacity it had

[tlmiller]

According to the lore World Devastators not only were mobile factories but had the capacity to alter themselves to changing battle conditions meaning that as the battle/war went on the . Devastators would modify the quantity of turbo laser battery they had. Considering the cost of building one I think it would be interesting to add a function that the more planets it strips /battles it wins the more hard points it would add, to the point of ssd strength  battery numbers in addition to the more battles,resources it wins/collects the higher hangar capacity it had

They already act like that.  The "consume" ability (the first ability they had) adds to their hulll strength and their damage (as a percentage buff, but still).  One time I had a WD make it to level 8 and it had over 14,000 hull points, doing average turbolaser damage of over 300.  That's 2/3 of a lvl 1 Sovereign hull strength and around the same percentage of a Sovereigns turbolaser output.

[Mandragr]

As I do not have sins of a solar empire I did not know how the wds work in ascendancy I just read the thread and saw no mention of the point I made and thought I'd bring it up

[tlmiller]

As I do not have sins of a solar empire I did not know how the wds work in ascendancy I just read the thread and saw no mention of the point I made and thought I'd bring it up

Oh, I figured you were playing it and hadn't noticed that the consume ability buffs weapon damage as well as hull strength.

[Corey]

I believe the world devastators should AUTOMATICALLY produce Ships in this order (1- 2 Carrack/2 lancer/1dreadnaught, 2-2 Carrack/1 Strike/2 lancer/1dreadnaught/1vsdmk1/1isd,3-3 carrack/2strike/3lancer/2dreadnaught/1vsdmk1/1isd,4- 4carrack/3strike/4lancer/2dreadnaught/2VSD1/2VSD2/1isd) every 2-5 minutes for Less than cost  use reinforcements for this.

 You can't really set up an ability like that (you sort of can in a fairly complicated way, but it'd be a very large buff chain) amd even if we could, that doesn't sound like a very good ability. The key with the World Devastator is that its output requires some input, and it's not just constantly pouring out tons of ships without even needing material. If it were done as you suggest, after like 15 minutes with 3 of them you'd have a gigantic fleet requiring no input from the player, and no action on the part of the WD. That is just a super high amount of ships, and you're getting all that from a single capital ship. The way the ability works now you're still getting a completely free ship, while destroying another ship of roughly equal value on average, with a relatively low cooldown and on a ship that already has an immense amount of innate power. The only thing we're changing with that ability is fixing it so the ships actually stay around.

It should also allow you to damage enemy ships and repair itself with same option, while gaining materials.

That's essentially what the other abilities already do do.

Finally, it's given ability should be to produce smaller World Devastator's itself every five-ten minutes (think our world devastators as they are now.)

In addition, to balance this (and make it a little more impressive) you should raise the model's scale, say by 25-50% and increase the cost and build time of it by 3-4X. Plus raise it's shields by 3-4x (they had impressive shields!).

Keep in mind, these are capital ships. You can essentially build as many as you want. They're already almost titan-level powerful if you use them correctly (in my opinion people are overvaluing Praetors and severely undervaluing World Devastators in the current build). Giving them the ability to make more, smaller ones that are at the current level and making the directly built ones be the Mothership type would make them them even more ridiculously powerful than they are now, while giving you, again, consistent access to the already almost-Titan level ones we currently have. Even if you took away some combat power (which adding that myuch to the shields completely negates, and you can never remove enough power without negating their abilities) that amount of production ability is just ridiculous considering how many you could end up with, how much they then would reproduce, and the fact that their production abilities by necessity would be coming at the expense not of the player but of their opponents.

[tlmiller]

Yeah, right now I'd say with the last nerfs to the WD quite some time ago, it's pretty good.  Out of the gate, it's a bit expensive for what you get, but once it gets up to level 5 and has eaten a few ships, it's got serious damage output, the hull is brutally strong, and it has the ability to heal a LOT of damage to itself with one of it's abilities, no fleet tender needed.  Maybe a bit week for the cost at first, but if they get to the upper levels and you feed them well, they can become absolutely horrible to stand against.

[tlmiller]

My current WD in the game I've got playing...over 10,000 hull, over 500 average turbolaser damge + another nearly 200 ion damage.

[kucsidave]

NIIIIIIIIICE

[Lord Xizer]

Om nom nom planets