The AI is unable to play properly agains the healing battle card.



My fleet of 3 ROC class ships was able to destroy consecutively on the course of one turn over 30 AI fleets that were able to deal a little damage to my ships. All I needed to do was spam the healing battle card all the time. If the AI had blocked my healing battlecard 100% of the time, he would have been able to destroy my fleet.



The above is just one example; the healing battlecard is the single most powerful thing that I noticed a human can exploit much better than the AI.

In MP this won´t happen as the other players will learn to counter this, but SP is another thing

I´ve seen this myself and it has provided some of my ships a bit too long lifespan if you ask me

I used to have games where the ai would constantly use the offensive cards once your fleet ha low health, maybe the AI could be told to do such a tactic again but make them less predictable.

It may also be that the repair cards are OP. It seems odd that repair in a hangar is like 10x slower than repair during combat. If they nerf the repair cards, I would be fine with that. As long as they also buff out of combat repair. Even better, allow spending dust for repair, or provide a shipyard improvement which increases the repair rate.

Repairing in combat should be much less efficent than repairing outside of combat, which is not the case now. Playing as U.E. with a level 20 Hero (Corporate, Pilot) I was able to destroy 97 Sower ships, in a series of engagements around their most productive planet, in one turn. I had only 8 ships in my fleet, 6 battle ships, an invasion based cruiser (with no weapons), and a corvete. Using Dust Barrier and the repair card, I was able to come out having lost only one ship.



Now to be fair, I had like level 4 weapon and defense tech, with the +40% min and max damage module, and they only had levels 1-2. I think they only had cruisers aswell. Regardless, without the repair card they would have killed my fleet five times over, if not more(They were using a lot of missiles, so my tactic was Dust Barrier-Nano Repair [no3rdcardbecausetheenemyfleetwouldbedeadbythen]).

I kind of get the feeling that the AI just picks a card at random when fighting battles, pretty much the same way as it designs ships - picking at random from pre-set templates. I often see them play cards that reduce the damage my missiles do when I don't have any on my fleet, and I see them play cards that increase weapon damage for weapons they don't have.



There's a crucial "analyse my fleet and the enemy fleet to decide what cards are valid choices for this battle" step that the AI just doesn't do.

Palau wrote:
Repairing in combat should be much less efficent than repairing outside of combat, which is not the case now.

This is also the case. You can wait around one of your systems for twenty turns waiting for ships to repair, or you can fill up the medium and short range card slots with "nano-repair systems" and repair 40% of your HP damage instantly. It makes no sense. Either the devs want repairing damage to be a big, time-consuming deal, or they want it to be instant. At the moment, it's instant in combat, but takes ages out of it, which makes no sense at all.



Of course, if you're playing the game optimally you'll just have a huge swarm of destroyers and not care whether they're damaged or not - if they die you just build new ones.

Gort wrote:
I often see them play cards that reduce the damage my missiles do when I don't have any on my fleet, and I see them play cards that increase weapon damage for weapons they don't have.

I have never proven this out, but there may be valid reasons for selecting things like the weapon disruption card (-25% missile damage) even if the enemy has no missiles. Playing this card may block a card played by the enemy. Is it *possible* that this may be the best card to play in a certain situation? Of course it is possible the AI chooses randomly, but I wonder if we are overlooking some real strategy here.

Of course, if you're playing the game optimally you'll just have a huge swarm of destroyers and not care whether they're damaged or not - if they die you just build new ones.

IMHO, that is not true anymore. I prefer omnitank BS and DN. Especially against the AI, which tends to have around tons of low tech kin/miss ships. Less total tonnage spent on high end engine and repair modules, and less micromanagement since there are no rally points (yet).

I think there should be two changes:



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Out of combat repair needs some mechanism for the player to be able to leverage for significantly improved effect.

My own preference is for a tie-in to the industry of the a same-Faction, and perhaps Allied Faction(?), system in some %based manner (so the fleet repair module effect remains an important influence), which I also have thoughts on having interact with addressing some other concerns.

The ship design repair modules should be:

• Significantly weakened in the magnitude of effect (see next point for the context for this!).
• Be multi-module like weapons, defenses, and armor.
• Reduced in Tonnage with an eye towards trying to balance the above.
  
  

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I think this would help shift the significance of repair modules more towards usefulness, and aid the advantage of larger tonnage and special tonnage discount ships, but I also think some changes to weapon behaviors and interactions with defenses are necessary to complete an environment where this can be achieved.

I agree that in combat and out of combat repair rate proportions do not make sense. Healing card effectiveness reduction should solve this.

Yah the repairs in combat are a little ridiculous, i tend to not use them just because i feel like i'm abusing... I have had the AI block it on occasion when i have used it, but that is probably just random.



I also question the AIs choice of cards on occasion.



And i would like to see the dynamics of ship repair improved, as it is a vessel sitting in a hangar takes right near forever to heal, and that just shouldn't be the case.

It seems that particular types of AI fleets always play a certain battle card pattern (as I've learned to counter most of these with repeat practice in a single game). It's only when it's a hero-led AI fleet that things get weird.



They mostly like to play offense, defense, or camouflage cards