Ikky ship revamp

[Baalzamon]

Someone came up to me today with concerns about the Ikky ships in SMR 1.5, the ITMS in particular, saying it was vastly underpowered and needs to be looked at...I laughed a little bit in side, but laughter faded as this person gave me their reasons, and it made alot of sense to me, so here it goes...

Right now, with upgrades, you can take any of the old top racials, and make them blow the ITMS out of the water. Even with upgrades itsself, its not up to par. On average, people in the old birds right now have +3 hardpoints, and 10 power or so. Give them some CDs, and the ITMS is done.

<XXX> 1 drone upgrade for 15 drones
<XXX> thats 30 damage
<XXX> is the =
<XXX> so then u put the equation in
<XXX> and ull get 4-9 of those drones hit
<XXX> so then u times that over a few times
<XXX> as is transpiring
<XXX> it would seem the average wb is upgraded 2-3 hard points
<XXX> and ten power
<XXX> that gets u 115 drones
<XXX> of them 115
<XXX> maybe 30-40 will hit
<XXX> giving 60-80 damage
<XXX> take the weapons
<XXX> ur talking as much as 1200 damage brp

Now, you can easily see the problem that that brings up against the ikky. Give the person with that ship phase shifting weapons, and Ik'Thorne are done for. There are a few suggestions that this person brought up to fix it. The first, and possibly the best suggestion, is bringing back an old idea that was nerfed because it was over powered. I think that this can be tweaked a bit.

A long time ago, there were two CD equations. One for ports and planets, and another for the Ikky. This was taken out because (i'm assuming here, this is before my time) the ikky drone equation was making the race way too powerful. The first suggestion is to make the seperate equations once again. The ikky need to have a higher accuracy with their drones to be able to compete with other top birds. The Ik'Thorne rely on their combat drones, not on weapons, and for another race to take their weapon-heavy bird, and upgrade it with a couple hundred drones is a whole lot cheaper and easier then taking a mother ship and giving it 10 hardpoints and 35 power.

The second suggestion was to just take the ikky ships and completely change them. Give the ITMS 4hardpoints with the power to reflect that, and change the other ikky birds in the same fashion. But the person and I don't like that idea, although it is there.

The next suggestion is have the ikky ships act like ports from old SMR.

<XXX> 100% drone accuracy
<XXX> just like ports
<XXX> BUT
<XXX> like the old SMR ports when in a fight u had drone bleed thro
<XXX> IE pure arm,or weaps would kill drones even tho shields was still their
<Baalzamon> ok
<XXX> and if those fail
<Baalzamon> so basically fighting an ikky ship would be like fighting a mini port?
<XXX> yes
<Baalzamon> in CD sense, that is
<Baalzamon> ok
<XXX> very mini port

The final suggestion was make the ikky a massive defensive race, but this defeats all the ik'thorne excel at, and were designed to reflect in 1.5.

When it comes down to it, the best suggestion in my opinion, as well as this person's opinion, is to bring back the Ik'Thorne CD formula. It would need quite a bit of testing, but in the long run, could make all the difference.

[JettJackson]

maybe a drone acc increaser gadget that maybe an ikky doing ikky things can eventually get?

always an idea

[canff]

Ik need a higher acc on drones... over everyone else... say 10% more attack all the time... would fix this.. could be a smaller number would need to test to see.

[DWill]

This is assuming that an Ikky player would use his upgrades to add drones, which seems a bit redundant to me.

[DWill]

Also CD's are more affected by experience as it is, than by MR, and it is a linear relationship. Meaning the % drones launched goes up pretty evenly as your experience level goes up, and because there are now 100 levels it isn't really surprising to me that the lower level ikky's are not launching drones very well. However once they reach a higher level they will be consistently launching more drones much more independently to MR than hardpoints do. So really any tinkering you do (like give ikky a 10% drone launch boost) will make them pretty overpowered at higher exp.

A possible solution for this is to make the % drone launch formula more of a logarithmic curve. Meaning it would rise more rapidly in the beginning before leveling off at the top. Any other idea seems to just create more problems to me.