Orchid & Cruiser choice

[Bleh]

Slowly worked my way up to diff 9 AIs, and I've got to say that none of the other Arks come close to the Orchid in power level. It doesn't even feel close.
I'm actually surprised that this hasn't been discussed before, so I guess I'm asking for others' opinions. Am I the only person who feels this way? Am I just missing something in terms of playstyle with the others like the stealth Belle?

On a related note, what are people's favourite cruisers? I usually try to get the Voidpiercer since it feels like the strongest, again, with few competitors, though I'll admit that there are a few I haven't tried, and it obviously depends on what upgrades you got(I have a strong preference for Piercing as one of my chocies).
Am I missing any other bonkers ones?

[Handsome Jack]

Orchid's greatest strength is 100% fusion reaction and its speed. One unit can just tank the damage and take out all non-cloaked Guard Posts. But for combat overall, I like a combo (albeit its hard to pull off, pray to RNG gods) of two Golems: Armored and Cursed. One can tank and kill and the other, if properly upgraded, can freeze even exo-war units.

[The Grand Mugwump]

What's funny is the current iteration of Orchid is a somewhat heavily nerfed version of what used to be there a year ago, so it has been talked about. The fleet used to be nearly immortal while a mark VII Orchid was around because it would spawn regenerator (revives allied ships) flowers with several million HP every few seconds.

The "rare" arks like orchid are supposed to be powerful though to my understanding,
One of the perks of playing as an Ark empire is that we can pick one of the rare ones to start with it immediately. Tortoid and Orchid are outstanding arks which I almost never see spawn as unclaimed in my runs (especially the Orchid, that thing is super rare).

Belle's value comes from being able to apply knockback and engine stopper en masse, which can remove enemy short range units from a fight and split enemy forces apart. Its damage isn't spectacular though, like most units which focus on debuffing. The cloaking can be nice though for shenanigans, just like the Sol Ater.

The rarity=power also applies to golems. You'll notice some golems have a much higher AIP cost and much higher stats, damage or bonuses to go along with it, which corresponds with their rarity (botnet or retribution golems being somewhat rare).

As far as cruisers go, I pick the one which matches my highest weapon tech at the time. Valyrie is a standout for the same reason Orchid is, since regenerator (ship reviving) tends to be very powerful. The cruisers get exponentially more powerful the more their weapon tech is invested in.

[Bleh]

It doesn't feel very nerfed, lol.

I'll give Tortoid another look.

Mainly as I pushed the difficulty up, I found that few Arks and Golems survive very well in larger fights, which imo makes a lot of them unusable. It's why the Rorqual Hegira(what a name) is probably my second-most used with Spire Frigates after that. Even the sniper Ark's range doesn't protect it reliably.

Still more of them I discount since they're so incredibly slow that they aren't very useful outside the big fights where tankiness is king. Moving your forces around rapidly is simply mandatory in this game, especially during CPA's.

As Handsome Jack pointed out, the Orchid can also solo snipe guard posts, Macrophage Teliums etc without unloading your forces, or while they're fighting.
It feels like it has it all, and it probably needs some type of nerf or sizeable AIP cost bump, even though this would make me sad.

It also raises the question about what makes so many of the other Arks and Golems not be worth the AIP/hacking-points past a certain difficulty level. While I was learning the game on diff 6-7 I used quite a few others like the Botnet and Cursed, but those days are past. Seeing a Cursed Golem on a world I would have liked to conquer is a negative to me now because it's -20 AIP for no gain.
Many of them could use either speed or survivability buffs, but that's just my opinion or perhaps my playstyle speaking.

[The Grand Mugwump]

Huh, your priorities are drastically different than mine if you're passing up most arks and especially a cursed golem. That's part of what I like about this game. Though I could potentially understand that if you're playing on expert campaign mode, where most of the golems especially are nerfed from where they're at currently in humanity ascendant or challenger.

[Bleh]

True, that's why from the start I was asking whether it's just my playstyle that led me to those conclusions.

[The Grand Mugwump]

I'll also add a fun fact that may make the golems at least more valuable in your eyes. If you c+left click on them or left click on their fleet in the sidebar, you can find a button at the top which lets you spend HaP to change their form. Have fun with those if you're not on expert campaign mode.

[The Grand Mugwump]

I think this also might be a symptom of playing on diff 9. 7 is the "normal" experience where the AI does everything and we can use everything without feeling like we're shooting ourselves in the foot. The higher difficulties require a lot more pickiness. So while I could see Belle doing really well with a sniper fleet or keeping the AI away while building a beachhead, it might not help as much with a melee fleet.

[Bleh]

I used to love my sniper fleets when I could cobble them together, but at some stage you just run into a brick wall of not having enough firepower. The premise of AI War after all is being outgunned heavily. Infinite range units still are very useful, especially the Artillery Defences Battlestation, I just don't overspecialise on them anymore.

I play expert mode only so that won't be an option. Not really sure what the other diff options are, I haven't looked at them in ages, but moving down now wouldn't be much fun, and the fuel mechanic of the one step up doesn't look fun either, so expert seems to suit me fine.

Yeah, I guess I could chalk it up to the game probably being balanced for diff 7, but I think that my point about how relatively strong/weak some of the Arks/Golems are in comparison to each other and to their AiP cost, still stands for whatever the observations are worth.

[The Grand Mugwump]

I've never played on expert. I've heard that most of the arks and golems get nerfed there so that they aren't as overwhelmingly powerful as they are on humanity ascendant and challenger campaign modes. So it makes total sense that some of them aren't worth the AIP unless you specifically need them for a fleet build.

I agree that it's kinda strange that expert Orchid is still pretty overwhelmingly good. But given how rare it is and the joys of picking ark empire to play it, I'm not sure if I'd want it nerfed further outside of expert.

[Bleh]

I didn't realise that expert makes such a big difference.

[The Grand Mugwump]

I forgot about the guard posts comment. I personally prefer Thanatos. It has extremely good single target damage, and Thanatos has the damage upgrade hack, which makes it immensely better than orchid at diving for guard posts, especially since it can create its own screen of zombies to draw fire away from itself. Almost all non-dire guard posts die in one shot from its main cannon at mark VII and two damage upgrade hacks (x4 base damage).

Nodorian tortoid also does really good single target damage from long range, and it also has the damage increase hack. It's kind of funny to clear guard posts with it because all of the strikecraft in the enemy garrison will die before being able to do much to it.

I don't know if those options are still viable in expert though.

[Lord Of Nothing]

Originally posted by Bleh:

It doesn't feel very nerfed, lol.

Yeah, it's still *very* strong. It used to spawn rescue spores 6x faster than it does now, it was absolutely ridiculous and made strikecraft borderline immortal without even having to spend the ships health like the regen golem or valk cruiser do. But it's still very good at sniping guard posts, for sure, and the rescue spores are still good.

I never played much expert, but I personally thought it was the probably the strongest ark on expert. (On HA Toroid is stronger and Great A'Thom might be under some circumstances too.)

[The Grand Mugwump]

I love Great A'thomek, but it requires micro management to really shine. Putting it on pursuit mode causes it to dive into the enemy fleet and negate its own defense bonus against long ranged attacks. Reducing the damage the enemy does to your fleet by 99% is huge if you can manage it well.

[Strategic Sage]

Originally posted by Bleh:

I didn't realise that expert makes such a big difference.

It's significant enough that basically whenever a balance issue is being discussed, it's assumed to be HA unless you specifically say otherwhise.

[Bleh]

Originally posted by Strategic Sage:

Originally posted by Bleh:

I didn't realise that expert makes such a big difference.

It's significant enough that basically whenever a balance issue is being discussed, it's assumed to be HA unless you specifically say otherwhise.

I switched to playing Expert so long ago that I forgot how big a difference it makes and what it changes. In my head, that's what I assumed everyone plays on, maybe just on lower difficulty numbers. It makes it pretty much impossible to compare people's opinions as I was hoping to.
On AI 9 Exp, most ()even maxed) arks die really fast on entering some of the scary enemy planets, even after you've sniped the mass driver, no matter how you micro. So it doesn't seem to matter how cool their damage or abilities are.

I also don't see many other people putting an emphasis on speed. The Hunter/Warden/Praetorian fleets are a REALLY big issue for me, so dodging them is the difference between a regular fight or the enemy having 3-4x the forces on a planet which makes it unwinnable. Or even worse, 500k Hunter threat slamming into a critical planet I can't reinforce and losing a building I can't replace. So imo that disqualifies some Arks too unless I want to emergency-swap my entire army from the Ark to a standby Agility Transport to go rescue whichever planet the Hunter fleet is savaging while I was taking an objective.

I guess what I would like to hear is what Arks are people playing on high difficulty settings, besides Orchid-Chad.