A look into the September Raid Preview

Damage from above you, beside you and the old lady standing behind you in line...

By:Jon Irwin   &   George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Specs    &    a/k/a Dragon_Bane  

Initial Thoughts:

George:
I think I am going to try something different and try doing this particular entry as a collaborative effort with Jon. I know there is a bit of confusion at times because there are two authors here, and we don't always agree. This disagreement is fundamentally an excellent thing when trying to balance opinions and viewpoints, so to that end, let's see if we can't pull this off....

I'm not sure exactly where, to begin with, this. It is, except for the S targets, exactly what Kixeye has been getting us ready for the last few months. Damage. This is not a bad thing per se. However, it does ruin the illusion we like to live under when playing a game.

I will begin with this: I love subs, in general. I have five fleets of subs. Even though many are useless now, I am loathed to scrap any of them as they hold a bit of nostalgia for me. So to hold to some of these positions truly saddens me, however, let us not get ahead of ourselves. Both Jon and I were lucky enough to get on the test servers, and we got to test a few things out. I think I am going to start on the B set targets.

B Set Thoughts:

George:
These could be done with a single HW for minimal damage (comparatively). Bringing in the 3 set fleet from the A's cost a LOT of damage for minimal gain time wise. Tigers, likewise, did fairly well in these targets. I did not get a chance to try anything else on these.  Personally, I felt for the damage dealt and the expected point gain that these targets were not exactly viable in these iterations

I have a video of me doing a 51 early on and everything going wrong. May as well start with a chuckle:

Jon:
I love my subs, although I do not hang on to them if they outlive their usefulness. I only have two sub fleets right now. A tiger fleet with some cobra scattergun and Charon, and the Hellwraith. While George started with the B set, I will add some thoughts I had as I tested them with the Tigers and Hellwraith. I used a full fleet of five ships with the Tigers and 4 Hellwraith. The fleets took roughly the same damage of around Four hours for a full set. So, it did not matter if I tried the higher tier sub or the sub one rank below. The Tigers were quite a bit slower and took a little different approach to the targets. At the beginning after using the Hellwraith for the first run through I was caught a few times by the sub cavitator fields that popped up as I approached. Once I got the pattern down I could lower the repair time to match my Hellwraith. The B set is supposedly set for Spectres and Nighthawks. I think the Spectres could do this target, and I am afraid the slower Nighthawks will not be able to.

Now the S target, on the other hand, was a whole another ballgame. There were these homing mortar missile things that would hang in the air a very long time. More on that later as it was crazy at first.

A Set Thoughts:

George:

Kixeye's vision on these is essentially what they said. In trying out a few builds, you will not walk out with zero damage. If you do not want to spend 10-12 minutes in a target, you will have to use more than one ship. The offset to this is that using say a 3 set fleet nets you 2-3 hours of damage whereas a single Wraith can do it for just over a half an hour of damage. If we are going to be forced to grind, having three hulls and rotating them nets you a free raid.

Two builds I used in the 73 and 75 targets were these:

Jefe, from the Battle Pirates Crib page, tested a single sub in these targets. This is the build and result from a 75. As I mentioned previously, using a single sub is the best way to mitigate damage in these targets, however, it is very time-consuming. If you are a lazy pirate like me, this will drive you crazy. It also means about 40-50 minutes per 3 target A set if the timing and targets remain unchanged.

Two vids of different build in the 75 targets. The driving in one was ok, the other was, honestly, shit.

Jon:
The A set for me was a mixed bag. I tried this with the Hellwraith, and I was able to do a full set for about five coins. So, not horrible and comparable to the first raid series with Apollo. It is an amount I am sure I could lower as I practice more with the targets and found better ways to hit with the better sub. The Tigers, though, my first build (one I have in game) was too slow to get away from the drones. This Tiger build is the standard Hydraulic resistor, cat 3, stealth attack 4, AA3 charon torps. I refitted away from the cobra as I wanted to test a fleet that a majority of people would have ready for these targets. If I surfaced too close (yet far enough away to not trigger the scouts or hulks) the drones would catch my Combat 24 and 27 speed (did two different builds with different speeds to test this) before they surfaced and then get away was a pain.

I then swapped to Mag 2, Mimicus, 3x Z tough, rest charon and D4-S armor, and I was able to get away from them a majority of the time (32 combat speed). I got caught by the first few, but I killed them enough and stayed ahead enough that I did not keep getting swarmed. The Preview server ended before I could refit the Cobra scatter guns back though to test that. I think for the tiger shark at least, in the A set you will want one cobra to scatter per sub. Unless, they read my suggestions from the survey and make some changes.

Damage mitigation?:

George: The best mitigation in these targets comes from the singe hull use and your timing and driving. Not setting anything off is the best chance you have at minimizing your damage.

Another option was difficult, but I did not see many trying to take advantage of it. You could use the additional protection of the overload by trying to kill another target while in overload. I'm sure many, if not most players that were aware just could not be bothered with this aspect of the overload as there are so many variables that you are already dealing with during the combat engagement. Taking away part of your concentration to track this aspect likely was not worth the effort.

A little idea I, and a few others, have been toying with is bringing three or four hulls into an engagement but only using one at a time to kill the targets within. This would theoretically spread the damage out between several hulls and allow you to play longer or even mitigate your damage enough to instant repair individually in the dock. While this would be neat, it would be exceptionally time-consuming, particularly over three targets. I would venture to guess this would bring an A set to over an hour to complete. (shudder) I would rather run one at a time until dead and switching to another or even switching out after each target. Still time-consuming but perhaps a little less. As mentioned- these are thoughts in progress...

Jon:
I agree that the biggest mitigation of damage received was in the timing of surfacing. You did not want to surface too close to the scouts as both those, and the drones are painful. Likewise, you do not want to get caught in a field that forces you to surface as that is painful. As long as I took my time, I could do the A set in a single hit for a reasonable repair time for a complete set. The S target took more than one fleet; this is just due to the sheer size of the target and the fact we have homing mortars that hit us as we surface. In summary, unless the targets change the Tiger shark will not be useful for the set it is supposed to hit, and the hell wraith will do good in all sets with more time needed to deal with mitigating your short surface operations and the unavoidable death explosions that we face.

All three Tiger builds I used in order I tried them. The third did best, but I would still add a cobra scattergun, and that build is in slot 4. Link to Huggies

My most successful of 4 Hellwraith builds link to Huggies

The key to success for me was to time the dives and surface times so I could kill a couple of ships and then retreat back before the sub cavitator rings popped up. That one feature in the targets was the most difficult ot over come. The tigers were very difficult to get the time right due to the slower speed and the immense map size.

The S targets:

George:
My initial reaction is No. Hell no. A whole lot of NOPE.
The S targets have always been proportionally harder but a quicker way to gain your points and end your raid early OR something to prep to help your Alli members get where they need to. They are not supposed to be grindy. They are not supposed to have psychedelic float-in-the-air-till-you-surface MORTARS. Unless these things have a pay out of 30+ million, I am going to grind A's for free and maybe do one or two of these to finish early.

These do not maintain the proportionality we have become accustomed to over the past year unless they carry a massive point total. Given the lack of historic proportion and the grinding aspect, I think this is not at all what the elite players want to see in an S target. Again - if the points are hovering around 25-30 million for a completion... I would take it all back. (We are talking 2 1/2 fleets minimum).

Now, let's be honest, in the last raid set, people were using a hull that had a base repair time of 1.5 hours, the same as the Hell Wraith, however, in that raid set, you did not need any armor on those hulls. If you did, the damage was still similar per target.

But let's be fair in the comparison (someone shouts)...You did need 2-2.5 fleets to do the S set (barring a Zoe) in the last Raid. Fair comparison? Looking at Jon's best performing build of 4 hulls, we are looking at 10.5 hours repair. And that is a lighter armor build than many use. Compare that to the 4 Apollo set that I used last raid of 6 hours. If the points for the S set are 10 Million again, many people will see the cost for their raid DOUBLE. You see the frustration point we, as players, will have towards this.


What bothers me, even more, is that these targets were designed to be grindy and painful. To take over two full fleets to complete. Designed that way.

My entry and reaction to the target after testing if you could run to the edge of the combat area to avoid the psychedelically magical floating mortars...

Jon:
My overall thoughts on the target changed as I hit them more. The bigger Hulk (mothership I call it) launched 3 of them. Each of the smaller hulks seemed to launch between 1 and 2. They covered the whole screen and only hit a single sub. This one feature in the target was a huge turn off at first. I lost my first Hellwraith fleet with barely killing two ships. This target was extremely difficult at first.

Some tuning to my fleets and swapping out D3-CT armor for D3-S to raise my explosive helped in later runs. I was able to complete the target in 2 runs for 18 coins with the armor swap. While this is not the four coin elite we had a few raids ago, it was at least better than 5 or 6 fleets at it for the points. The 100 (or elite) is designed to take more than one fleet to complete. It should still be faster than a full set of A targets and payout the most points.

If the elite is worthwhile will depend solely on how many points they assign to it.

Final Thoughts:

George:
Let me begin with this: I LOVE the idea of a sub raid. I do love driving my subs... sometimes.
Robot, I am sorry I kept breaking your raid idea with surface ships. It was fun, but -I would MUCH rather have seen Kixeye find a way to block any ship other than subs from engaging in the targets. I think it would have made the targets far more appealing, and the lives of the Devs far easier rather than try and figure out ways to outsmart the players they asked to outsmart them. The theory behind that idea, however, is very sound. Don't hate on it. I would much rather break something early rather than have Kixeye have to change things mid-raid because of something we found.

I think that if Kixeye could set the damage of the deaths plosions to be inversely proportional to the amount of subs you use (1 sub taking about the same or a little more damage than 3 overall), it would change the meta completely, make the damages more palatable for the players, remove part of the huge grinding aspect for bigger players and allow them to tweak the raids as the months progress.

I am a huge opponent of the S targets in the iteration we saw on the test server. In practice they heavily, and disproportionally, favor Ghost Crawler owners and penalize any other sub in the game. Magical floating death weapons will not be well received, particularly by those players that expect to run through their Raid quickly.

Another thought on this- Those players who have climbed up to hovering near 'Elite' status or a full blown 'ELITE' player, all paid in some way (most likely coins) to be at that position and have all the goodies to allow us to play at an 'easier' or 'lazier' level. Forcing a grind upon these players, regardless of their target choice, will make aspects of both the A set and S set unpalatable to these players, which says nothing to the howls of lower players once they engage the targets.

The targets, being so time-consuming in their right, detracts from any fun you could extract from the event. The constant precision required makes these targets a bit tedious and I think after the first day will be driving people mad.

While I loved playing these targets for the first hour or so, I was already groaning inwardly after the passing of the second hour. For the past several months I had looked forward to the raids - even if I was going to struggle a bit. Unfortunately, I', a little leery of this one and the response of the community. This iteration has a significant chance to be received as Scourge 2.0. I would hate for that to happen. Honestly, I would rather see Kixeye have to eat four easy raids rather than alienate more players with a four raid set hated by the whole of the community. I am hopeful, but... given the community's history, not betting on a well received Raid Set, which would be a shame given the mostly good year Kixeye has given us.

We did get a bit of inside info from Robot. The Cav fields are patterned thusly:

Jon:
I think that the overall raid will not be well received in the current format. Players will have the option to grind for their points in the A set if they have Hellwraith. But, at the moment the A set is not easily done for the majority of the player base with tiger sharks. The splash is needed to deal with the drones in the target, and many do not have cobra scatterguns, and the fire twister does not do well on the hull. My hope is that they tone down the speed of the drones to accommodate the longer surface time the Tiger has so that those with just the charon will not be hampered by a slower moving hull.

I did not have the Spectre to test in the B sets, although my Tigers did fine and I think with the extra downtime from the Spectre, and some timing players will be able to manage the targets that the sub is designed to hit. Tigers, of course, do well in B set, with some tweaking to the A set target (I hope) then they can do that set as well.

Attempting The S target  with anything but the Hellwraith and the Ghost Crawler is not advisable. I know we did not touch on the Ghost Crawler, but its special deep dive could avoid the death explosion for lower repair times. Look for the S targets to take at least two fleets of Hellwraith and a partial to finish the last scout.