Champion missions

[Cryswar]

Am I missing something, or are the suicide shuttle/rogue dyson gatling missions absurdly difficult compared to the rest? Even with a full rank III anti-Light loadout the suicide shuttles just tear through 70million shields like paper, and of course the AI spawn points get pasted within a few waves - I can solo the enemy spawn points with ease relatively quickly, but the shuttle waves decimate all friendly spawn points and lay into the core colony pretty quickly. Are you supposed to just ignore them and go for the enemy spawners or something? I tried that, I tried sitting next to core spawn point and spamming shadow shields/using my own shields to tank for core colony, but...

Dyson gatlings level was even worse, even with again full shielding and anti-Heavy loadout they have like 10mil hp a pop and tear through me - and of course ally ships, who evaporate instantly - like paper, and after a slowish opening it quickly amps up to dozens of gatlings. Was I supposed to hunt down the factory or something? Couldn't leave allies alone at all or they died instantly, not sure what else I could've done there.

I'm kinda frustrated and this is sort of a rant, but I'm mostly looking for help for when I run into them again - I love the champion stuff, it's an absolutely fantastic addition in general and I have more fun with it than the game proper sometimes, but I have no idea how to deal with those two missions. The Shadow Devourer one was at least doable, just had to switch from shields to missiles and gamble my hp versus his to barely kill it as it finished off the final secondary colony, but these other two... I just don't see how.

[Cotton Eye Jonii-chan]

I don't think I ever fought the shuttles (Not sure how, I thought I did all of them), but what difficulty are you playing on? I never had problem with dysons, even at earlier levels at diff 7.3. I usually grab the spire ship and get the photon lance attacks, and it normally makes mincemeant of the dysons.

[Cryswar]

Well after playing a few more games I found the problem - I must have had legendarily terrible module drops that game. No photon lances, no bomber drones, really the only anti-heavy things I had were lasers. Dyson mission was trivially easy on other runs where I actually had not-terrible weapons. On the shuttle one... same story to some degree but I just went on a jihad run to solo all four of the enemy spawn points as quickly as possible, which bomber drones made possible. Heck even the Ravenous Shadow was trivially easy when I actually had ACCESS to the bloody anti-armor guns.

I think both games were at Cruiser hull, it's just that in the first one (that I was complaining about) I had absolutely horrible drops and didn't get any of the really good weapons. I really don't like the current unlock system, would much prefer a skill tree of sorts, like in the science menu where you can choose to unlock turrets.

[Josh "Spikey00" Y.]

Yeah, a rework of champions was the second-highest voted option in the poll on the for-8.0 topic[www.arcengames.com] so we may expect something more enthralling and balanced.

Heavies stacking in some missions really suck.

[MasterSJT]

i dunno if this is true but the more dyson gatlings you kill the more that appear so prehaps a defencive and maybe even a bad build agains them so you only kill a few off might work (i think i cleared it with just shilds and MLRS using shadow shilds to protect the bases). As for the other one i can't say aside from using photon lances to kill bases quickly i dunno if it's possible. It is however easyer with 2 people even if u dont have photon lances

[Cryswar]

Yeah, Photon Lances on Spire ships are easily my new favorite build, they absolutely shred anything they run into even if it's a bit less "safe" than a bomber spam build. Yet more items I never found in first game.

@Josh: for what it's worth I really do liek the idea of champions and nebulas, honestly I almost had more fun with them than the base game, so I hope that at least some similar themes stick around! Being able to pick what to unlock would be fantastic for those of us that really like lasers, though.

[MasterSJT]

i suppose if you really wanted you could take it down a RPG route and have a skill tree so players can use the level to unlock different build. maybe go for classic ones like Tank, (more amour and hp. Maybe even some defencive mounts like missile intersepters) Damage, (more DPS and damage theamed abilitys) Support. ( stealth, healing, maybe even production of some kind).

Alternitivly i do like the idea of when you take a nebula you get a choice of 3 that is different for all players. Atm i am trying a build for stealth with intersepter bays and insanaty inducers. while my friends use a offence and a defence build.

i have a question is there a non cheat way that will allow me to add the nebual missions (maybe on random) to the remaining empty nebulas?

[Cryswar]

Hm... that would be really interesting, actually, to be able to unlock abilities and rank them up. The problem is that right now there is literally exactly ONE good ability for use in nebulas (hint: it's the only ability most of them even have), and that's just a bit underwhelming. I got all excited to realize there were QWER binds for skills, and I hav e a long League background so I went in expecting QWER skills, or even better QWE and then a stronger unlockable R, but instead we have... drop shadow shields a bunch. Would be fantastic if there were more abilities to pick from, and if you stuck to some and spent some form of resource on them, they got stronger.

Could help incentivize "builds" in both items and abilities - I'm looking forwards to hopefully being able to play a more tanky role with my champ in a multiplayer game while my friend goes more stealth/range/alpha strike, but outside of me leveling shields and her hoping for good module drops we can't really do that very well.

[MasterSJT]

I will add that the repair shadow thing is very good if there are more then one champion as it will out repair starbases(in terms of reparing chapions) as well as being the only thing mid mission that can repair them. (starbases)

As most of Ai war is about giving the user a wide array of options to acheve any one goal i think this needs to be added to the chapions too. Prehaps giving them the ability to specilise in multiple role's at the cost of the remaining roles. The only way i see this working is for some change in how nebula missions play because at the moment you can get badly penolised for taking the wrong build.

I am very interested to see what they will do with them. I think they can add a lot to the game so long as they balance praticality and efficiancy otherwise you wouldn't be able to justif useing them