There is another consideration with Siege Frigates - yes a Cap is better value than the same amount spent in Seige Frigs but it is also like using a credit card versus cash - you can buy a Siege here and a Siege there - while still streaming other ships - rather than waiting and waiting and waiting to buy a Cap.

Yeah. Caps totally need layaway. I want to break out my Visa and order a world of hurt.

Interestingly enough, that's exactly the role I always thought the siege frig should fill before I even played the game.  It's intuitive, it works, it makes sense, it's balanced, etc.  I can't really make sense of any other role for a siege frig.

 

the role i have in mind for the siege frig is Economic Warfare specialist. i'd like to see Sieges seriously threaten enemy economic development by pressuring their planetary population (and thus tax income collected) and their resource extractors. it would be nice if the ships were strong enough and capable enough of self-defense to be able to inflict economic damage while travelling with or even ahead of the main battle-ball fleet rather than strictly mopping up the bloodied corpses left behind the main battle-ball fleet. 

I'd like to see them used in battle to barrage a planet while the main fleet covers them.  Currently you can just send a couple of fighter squads and take out dozens of siege frigates before they do any real damage, and considering each SF is about as expensive as a carrier cruiser, your actual fleet strength is going to suffer dramatically.

I noticed the same thing applies with anti-structure cruisers.  Was playing a game tonight and some asshole dropped a vasari SB into my grav well.  I was playing advent, and built some starfish.  One wave of his fighters would kill one starfish in one pass.  After that, I didn't build anymore.

exactly as how i think of it....

like the post above... building a siege-cruiser when an enemy has a starbase in your gravity well seems the best way of getting wrid of it... still need a fleet to keep his fleet busy tough

The problem with that is "corpse collecting" is not a STRATEGY. It's a CHORE. If a siege frigate is only good at mopping up after everyone has left, then they serve no true strategic purpose, other than to waste a victorious player's time.

 

exactly. 

You are wrong.  First off, the question isn't whether it's a "chore" or a "non-chore."  The question is whether it is necessary or not necessary to do as a game function, and if it's necessary, what units will perform said "chore?"  The answers are "it is necessary to do" and "currently, you are doing this 'non-strategic, time-wasting chore' with your capships."  So, you are doing the "chore" anyway, even without siege frigs (presumably), yet I don't see you complaining about "wasting your time."

Currently the "corpse collecting chore" is performed by capships immersed in a main fleet, because for obvious reasons people don't build too many siege frigs.  This ties up your main fleet from moving on, while your enemy gets a breather, fortifies his other worlds, rebuilds, etc.  But the way it should have worked, and the way it worked for me personally back in the days when one could build siege frigs with careless abandon, is to have the main fleet move on once the planet has been cleared out, and have the siege frigs move in for "mop up duty" and "choring."  This "unties" the main fleet, you see.  The problem is (as I see it, anyway), siege frigs can't be rebuffed to perform this "chore" because of reasons previously cited.  Thus you will continue to do this vitally necessary "chore" (and thus waste your precious time, in your view) with your capships and main fleet.

Your charge of "it wastes time" doesn't make sense, unless you are arguing for a planet to instantly revert to your control once you rid the well of any enemies.  I'm guessing you aren't arguing for that.  Therefore, you are for "wasting a victorious player's time" in some capacity.  The question has always been "which ship or ships should we waste this time with?"  The answer has always been "the siege frigate," but the utter disaster with it when the game came out precluded this from happening.

No. The answer was always a cap ship. For the difficulty of getting a sizeable siege fleet, it is more than easy enough to have a spare cap ship or two. in addition, the cap ship won't be wiped out by the local construction ships rebuilding the one defense structure needed to wipe out TWICE a cap ship's value in siege ships. Play this out over more than one planet, and the cap ship research gets paid off as well.

Tec has an extra advantage here with the Marza, as even at level 1 raze planet allows it to kill faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than a wave of siege ships. The Vasari siege cap has a similar ability, but doesn't seem to be commonly fielded.

So no, players don't need to halt all siege operations in order to keep a fleet mobile. That's just folly.

As an aside, the best siege caps are also the best combat caps for competitive multiplayer. The Marza's lvl 6 is waves beyond any other siege cap, and the egg's drain planet turn it into a siege cap all its own. When players say it's better to "keep the fleet moving", they're saying that it's better to keep a level 6 Marza and egg pushing forward, as they're too pivotal in combat to leave behind. Most other caps can do the job without severely affecting the front line, but they don't have "siege" in the name, so players don't use them!

Yes, it can. Your reasons don't exist anymore, so stop living in the past. The only major issue left is the tech level of the siege frigate, as the game ending unit comes about far too early in the game. You've said yourself that it was built too early in the game, that players only built siege frigates and nothing else would be available to stop them. That makes it the pivotal issue around which siege frigates get balanced, and the reason why they HAVE to suck.

 

yet again, agree. i'd like to see a more viable implementation of the Siege Frigate introduced in an upcoming patch. my hopes are that the ship will be more useful in frontline fleets but also come out later. Tech tier 3 sounds about right in my opinion. 

1.00 siege ships weren't overpowered. However, new players couldn't understand why they aren't invincible when going on a full out defense, a lesson that I learned the folly of rather quickly. Siege ships just can't do that anymore.

That sums up the issue perfectly. If I invest in 20 siege ships, I better damn well take out a few planets. Siege ships aren't a viable strategy anymore.

The problem is, they shoudn't BE a strategy, and they never should have been.  That was what made them a problem in the first place.

I think the problem here isn't so much that the sieges are too weak at their jobs it's just that the caps are too good at sieging.   In 1.0 Siege was fairly overpowered, you could mass a fleet of them and make quick raids to annihilate planet populations before defense could effectively counter it crippling an opponent's economy.  Now they've been nerfed perhaps a tad too far, personally I think the supply cost of them should be lower to make it more reasonable to build a few to mix with a fleet.

However, the fundamental problem here is that the CAPs do the job of siege entirely too well (with several caps having abilities tailored specifically to siege) effectively making them pointless.  The solution, as I see it, to bring siege frigates to usefulness is to nerf the base planet bombardment capabilities of all the caps, particularly the the ones that aren't of the 'planet killer' variety.  But this might be a difficult solution to achieve given the planet attack abilities on some of the cap ships particularly since they aren't restricted to specific 'planet killer' ships (i.e. Drain planet on the Vasari colonizer cap).  The only way I can see to rebalance for these would be to consolidate them to a specific planet attack cap for each race and then make that capital ship significantly weaker for general space combat such that it's not a strong choice for an early game capship and more something to be built late game to support your anti-planet offense

I disagree. Siege should be a viable strategy, because players pay for it in fleet composition. More siege ships means less combat capability, in exchange for greater economy damage. They just shouldn't be one of the strategies available when players only have 2 planets to lose.

Siege shouldn't be a strategy.  Siege is what you do after you've already won the battle at a planet.  Cleanup detail isn't strategy.

If you don't concur, then the only thing I can imagine is that people have radically different views on what a siege frigate is, what their role should be, and what sort of gameplay mechanic Sins should employ.

 

exactly.

 

why shouldn't economic warfare be a strategy? the depth of the game is increased by adding more strategies. the quality of the game is increased by adding to its depth. the issue is balance. unbalanced games are not fun to play. strategically shallow games are also not fun to play. the effort should always be to increase depth while maintaining balance. this is why Entrenchment is a good expansion. It has dramatically increased the depth of the game while maintaining a pretty good state of balance.

 

its really just a cop out to say "i think fewer strategies is better". no, its not. it may be your opinion, but i'm gonna go ahead and say your opinion leads to a more boring, easier, and more shallow game.

Leaving an enemy planet behind in order to advance deeper into their territory isn`t a strategy?!? I disagree. Tell this to the Americans who participated in their great Iraq Adventure Part II®.

Siege Frigates are cleaners, sure. Using them immediately against an enemy system or using them post-battle to purge a world, either way they are having a strategic effect. Treating them as such and balancing them in that context is therefore reasonable I would think.

It should be.  Siege frigates shouldn't be.  But, that's just my opinion, and in the end it's worth about as much as yours - nothing.

Siege Frigate fleet supply should be reduced to a more competative level I think since after 1.0  Maybe somewhere in the 7-9 range, but over 10 seems to be way too much

 

I will announce straight off that I have only played against the AI, so keep that in mind.

I have seen they AI do some good stuff with siege frigates. If they bring them with their fleet, it forces you to concentrate on them first while the enemy fleet wipes out your defenses. Having read most of the above posts, im sure some of you would ask why i would bother if they do as little damage as you claim. well, in my experience, they do a considerable amount of damage. only if your planet has been fully upgraded to the 6k hp do they not do enough damage. and that isnt always an immediate option. I've had the AI also do a brilliant strat where right after I took their planet, they sent their fleet to attack another of my planets nearby, then when my fleet was distracted, sent in 3-4 siege frigates to the planet i just took. without hp upgrade or even having had the time to build up a defense, there is nothing I can do to save that world. and most of the time i get it back, but any money i spent trying to build it up is lost.

however, I have to say that as I have attempted to use them, no strategy worked. maybe a slight success with the 'fly with my fleet and let them divide enemy forces' technique. but i also do not wish to bring back those earlier siege raids. But i would like to use that strat where i divide their forces by using siege frigates.

Proposed Fix: give siege frigates a researched ability that increases their survivability only when in groups of a certain size. say 4-6. could be different mechanic depending on race so as to benifit from any other research you have such as antimatter regen rates. eg. advent gain some shielding, vasari gain hp regen/out of phase, tec redirects damage to in system fleet. or increase their effectiveness in culture. the point being, dont make siege ships better straight up, make it so you have to do a few things and then they can be powerful. with the right research, they should be powerful, but not on their own.

Another idea, give them a power that affects your whole fleet if they succeed in wiping out the planet. this should be a buff powerful enough that if i take a fleet that is an even match for the defenses, but manage to kill the planet during the battle, i can then be reasonably assured of victory. not a damage boost, but a damage reduction.

Im also thinking that maybe its not such a bad idea to take the approach that the new structure damaging cruisers take: long range attacks. maybe make them have multi-targeting so they always bomb the planet, but can help out in fleet dps. should also be able to join fleets like normal. that annoys the hell out of me. this would remove the divided forces strat however.

another idea you might really like: give fighters an ability called Cover. they fly cover for your selected ship, reducing its damage taken and attacking anything that attacks the protected ship. So as to prevent accidently ordering off cover, remove the fighter from the empire tree or something.

Obviously, Im not proposing all of the above be added.

I think the problem with Siege Frigates (At least for TEC, not sure bout' Advent or Vasari) is that they can be too specialized at time. Aside from actually bombing planets, their anti-ship weaponry is too weak. Also, planetary bombardment is a bit easier with a capital ship or two- while still being able to fight far better. So I'd think the best action is to possibly increase firepower and speed. A siege could be able to defend itself a bit better and isn't a total sitting duck when planetary defenses are overwhelming.

Personally, I hardly use siege frigates.  But, then I usually play TEC and have a Marza with raze planet.  Recently though, I've been trying different strategies and civs and using siege to mop up seems to work really well.  My fleet and its vital cap ships can move on to the next gravwell after razing structures and defenders while my sieges come in to deny the enemy their planet.  They can sit there and bomb all day if they want while the construction frigates won't rebuild fast enough to be a danger.  Just one or two scouts or light frigates are enough to keep construction at nil while the six or so sieges attack and my fleet clears the next gravwell.

This is the way it should have worked all along, and this is the way I used siege frigs before they were nerfed.  But I don't use them this way anymore (as you do), because they are simply prohibitively expensive.

If siege frigates were adjusted to make what you describe above viable, that would not only be fine and dandy, it would be fantastic.  It would also go a long way towards addressing the complaints some people make about overly long games (you could have cheaper, more effective siege frigs take down planets that have already been cleared, while the main fleet moves on, instead of sitting there for minutes on end bombing with rare and expensive caps, giving your opponent chance after chance to counterattack you, etc).  This is a no-brainer.

The problem is, the people agitating on this thread don't want to use siege frigates in this manner, so they wouldn't want them adjusted to allow for this and this only.  Instead, they want siege frigates to be able to be used for "economic warfare," harrassment/raiding, etc.  Thus, I remain against any buff, because the risk is too high that they will be buffed to what THOSE guys want, not to what you and I advocate.

Recognize that there are two "camps" here, if you will.  You and I are in the "corpse collector" camp (as Bobucles calls it).  Bobucles and others are in the "super siege frig" camp (as I call it - they wouldn't describe it like that).

I would be for adjusting the siege frig downwards in cost/popcap if there was also a further nerf to their survivability, so that a hanger or two, or a couple of light frigs (if present) would be able to take 10 or more siege frigs down without the loss of a planet.  However, I know the "super siege frig" guys what say "What?!  Nerf their survivability futher?!  It needs to be buffed more, not nerfed!"  This is because of their different philosophy for how a siege frig should be able to be used.  Thus I say again that "corpse collector" advocates should remain firmly opposed to siege frig adjustments.