Defender robots OR: red-headed stepchildren of rebalancing

[Kazuar]

Ah, the old and true Defender Capsules, borderline useless (in my humble opinion) even before the combat rebalance, and now indirectly nerfed even further...

Why is that? Am I missing something crucial?

Its damage is now even less than what the piercing bullets used in its recipe would inflict, and its rate of fire is half that of a pistol. You can't work around these drawbacks through sheer numbers, either, because by the time the defender capsule becomes unlocked, its utility is still limited by the robot follower limit - you can't have a large (or semi-large) following of defenders without investing heavily into follower robot count.

And any piece of resource you invest into the follower robot count research becomes temporarily irrelevant, as the next level of combat robotics, distractors, do not count against the follower limit (since they don't follow you), while at the same time, the change in damage type makes the distractor a stronger choice - which makes sense, since it is an upgrade. But all in all, this makes the jump from combat robotics 1 to combat robotics 2 cheaper and more useful than the investment that is necessary to make defender capsules remotely viable as a means of killing things before they kill you, and even if you do make the choice to invest into defender capsules (via increasing the follower limit), the window in which their mediocre bullet damage accounts to anything was very narrow in 0.14, and now, they don't even get that tiny window since their damage is almost completly eclipsed by the resistance of even a medium biter.

Can we have it so that robots that consume piercing bullets in their recipe at least inflict the damage of the piercing bullets that they consume? Or change their recipe to consume the bullet type that inflicts the damage that the robots happen to inflict?

Or *gasp* maybe increase their rate of fire to that of a pistol, even, so that they can have an influence on the combat in the numbers that befit the point of technology at which they unlock that is also tangible, at least until the biter evolution that is supposed to end their effectiveness shows up?

And now, before you say to me "defender capsules are supposed to be worthless against anything larger than small enemies", keep in mind that they consume research packs more complex than red beakers to unlock, thanks.

But snarkiness aside, am I missing something important?

[DemRat]

I personally don't use follower robots at all, but my guess is that they are useful as extra dps, as they shoot additionally to your own weapon of choice.

[bobingabout]

Defender robots are actually a weapon you can fire in my mods.

I will admit though, that since they changed the personal laser defence (in your suit) to be 15 times as powerful as it used to be, Yes, 15 times! everything else just seems, underwhelming by comparison. I think they made it too strong.

[Kazuar]

Defender robots are actually a weapon you can fire in my mods.

I will admit though, that since they changed the personal laser defence (in your suit) to be 15 times as powerful as it used to be, Yes, 15 times! everything else just seems, underwhelming by comparison. I think they made it too strong.

15 times seems excessive, though I haven't tried those myself in 0.15, yet.

Thing is, I'm not arguing that defenders should be a competitive choice against laser defense modules - they exist in very different "in-game eras", as dictated by their research packs - and going heavy on laser defenses would, at least in my suspicion, require the portable fusion thingie, which in turn requires gold beakers. Yes, a gold+blue+grey beaker unlock should be better than a green+grey beaker unlock.

I'm also not arguing that defenders should be competitive with distractor capsules, for the same reasons - a green+blue+grey beaker unlock should be better than a green+grey beaker unlock.

My argument is that a green+grey beaker unlock should be a viable, worthwhile choice in the "in-game era" in which your research is still in the green+grey beaker stage, that provides a value to the player and/or his/her factory in turn for the resources that unlocking it required. Because as it stands, it does nearly nothing except increase the cost of obtaining the more viable robots, and at that point, you can make the game more clear to a newcomer by just removing the defender robots and their tech, while "collapsing" their tech cost into the combat robotics 2 tech a.k.a. the combat robotics tech at which combat robots are a thing that does something to the enemy and is thus worth of consideration.

Yes, for some reason, I'm unreasonably passionate about that

[BlakeMW]

I've used defenders a lot in the past, considering them the best combat robots for practical purposes, having upgrade synergy (shared with guns and gun turrets) and packing more damage against unarmored targets than destroyer capsules (and A LOT more damage in terms of damage/cost) and being on par with defender capsules for absorbing damage. I've always used them as a mix between damage dealing and chaff a role in which they are well suited thanks to high damage and low cost. But compared with before there are two main nerfs in 0.15, both indirect:

• The higher level bullet damage upgrades are a lot more expensive, which make it hard to stay ahead of the big biter armor
• The robot follower count upgrades are a lot more expensive, which makes it hard to get a large swarm

There is one indirect buff in 0.15:

• With infinite bullet upgrades they can now overcome behemoth biter armor, although this is unlikely to make them better than destroyers and does nothing to improve their early game weakness

Now, despite being a long term user of Defender capsules and not at all ever considered them useless, I have stopped using them in 0.15. And this is why:

The Tank now has double the hitpoints and a +100% damage machine gun and makes mincemeat of medium biters and spitters and is quite capable against bigs too. It is far more capable of "tanking" damage and of putting out damage and that has simply left no reason to invest in Defender capsules, even though I already have the bullet upgrades to improve the tank MG the defender capsules are still pretty useless at dealing damage against big biters only becoming useful with the High Tech upgrade and the follower count upgrades are just so expensive to research that it's hard to get a meaningful swarm of defenders before big biters evolve rendering them obsolete until high tech science is produced in bulk, by which time you got better options.


I would suggest one of the following solutions:

• As suggested by OP let them deal 8 damage/hit, this would make them pretty good against big biters since the damage upgrades are pure gravy. I don't think it would be overpowered, because not everyone wants to get the damage upgrades, so some people would still prefer to use the destroyer bots which don't need upgrades.
• Alternatively, make the robot follower count progression cheaper - make the lower levels cost 1/4 as much. If I could at least get a decent swarm of the things up (i.e. at least 20) they could do well before Big Biters evolve and still be pretty respectable as an ablative shield once big biters evolve. I'm not going to pay out the nose for follower count upgrades when the jacked up Tank is available (not to mention offensive laser turrets).

I don't know if both solutions together would be overkill. Maybe, maybe not.

edit:

another useful comparison is between defenders and poison capsules: a defender cost 17 iron 8 copper, a poison costs 16 iron, 4.5 copper and 10 coal. Now the poison comes with the downside of being self-lethal but that is easily mitigated by deploying it from within a Tank. Deployed well about 10 poison capsules will completely take the fight out of a moderately large nest (big biter or lower evolution level) by simply killing everything that tries to swarm the Tank. The same number of defenders would basically just die while achieving very little, they would achieve the most against small biters and spitters but a poison capsule kills those in just 2 procs of damage. It is cheaper to unlock poison capsules than to research combat robots and follower count 1, in fact poison capsules are pretty much a free unlock on a tech you want anyway. This is another case of there being far more cost-effective options available: Poison Tank is significantly more effective than defender capsules while being available at an equivalent technology level (in fact cheaper than getting follower count 2), and in particular Poison Tank absolutely wrecks big biters (and I know this from playing several Deathworld games, including Deathworld with increased biter settings) whereas defender capsules do basically nothing. The fact that defender capsules aren't even cheaper to get than Poison Tank just leaves them with no role to play.

[greep]

I think it'd have to be a damage upgrade rather than shooting speed or robot count upgrade (or all would be nice really), simply because you get defender bots right before big biters which completely outclass their 5 damage + bonuses: In a deathworld, that evolution rate is rampant and you'll need to spend time before it to get laser turrets or gun turret upgrades, and in a normal game, you'll likely delay military science until after science pack 3.

Even with 8 damage, they're pretty lame without 2/3/4 follower upgrades, which is closing in on when they get outclassed by tank/laser defense/poison capsules. So maybe even both a damage upgrade and follower count base of 5 rather than 1. Right now it just makes a lot more sense to either do full on gun/laser turret creep or rocket launcher with turret backup for this brief window. The game would be a lot smoother if we could churn out a dozen D-bots after getting military science and kick ass with a shotgun/launcher while having the bots take care of the biters.

I think it's fine that other setups overtake the lowly defender bot eventually like tanks or fully loaded modular armor, but it'd be nice if it had it's moment of glory.