Good point - I agree with this perspective completely.

My first game was a 2v2, 1 friend vs 2 AI, with a fresh copy of Sins. I spent 20 minutes chasing around a siege fleet as they systematically wiped out my worlds. I nearly lost the game, but fortunately had colony ships nearby to keep rebuilding my planets. After they were gone my eco was CRIPPLED. However I still had my fleet fully intact, because even 1.00 siege ships can't kill crap. I launched a devastating counterattack which wiped that player out. It was made easy because there was no backup after the siege ships.

1.00 siege ships weren't overpowered. However, new players couldn't understand why they aren't invincible when going on a full out defense, a lesson that I learned the folly of rather quickly. Siege ships just can't do that anymore.

Siege ships aren't even viable against an empty gravity well. Players can build turret defenses and wipe out the ships faster than they can destroy the planet. That's how worthless they are.

Well as i can see the AI gave you trouble. Now imagine a game againts a human player that truely knew how to used the seige frigates.

My idea for the added bombers was different. Like, you clear a planet defenses, move your assault fleet elsewhere and let the siege + bombers take care of planet and civilian structures.

Either making them tougher, or increasing their planetary damage would be an option. Do you have any % to suggest about that?

They gave a completely new player with no experience trouble.  That is completely and totally normal in any RTS game; there will be things newbies don't know and get killed by.  If the AI trade port spammed or managed to get a level 6 Marza, it would have been far more devastating than a couple siege frigates running amok.  A new player just wouldn't be able to counter those at all.  Siege frigates, you take a beating the first time, but are on guard the second time.  Once I knew they were coming, I almost never lost a planet to them in 1.00.  After I patched, they stopped being a threat altogether.

Now, I'm not asking for 1.00 siege frigates.  I can see how a player could use them a bit more underhandedly.  However, the current ones are a joke and need some considerable buffing.

 

I'd be of mind to make them tougher and keep their damage as is, but I'm a little hesitant to throw around numbers off the top of my head.  Given their cost, I think at least doubling their effective durability is in order, and doubling their ship vs ship damage wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.  I personally think the counter to siege frigates should be a hanger defense that has a squad of bombers, so my opinion is that their durability must be as high as possible without being so high that a single squad of bombers can't stop a small force (say, three siege frigates) from destroying a 3000 hit point planet.

Why hangars? Siege vessels have to approach very close range to attack a planet. Simple turrets can cover the distance just fine. In fact, a few turrets can wipe out pirate siege ships very quickly.

The only issue with 1.00 siege frigates is that they could wipe out planets without so much as slowing down. It made them impossible to chase if your fleet was more than a minute behind. That got nerfed with the considerable upgrade to PJIs. It got nerfed again when ships got more capable of shooting on the fly. It got nerfed again with the speed increase to capital ships (keep in mind that most fleets slowed down to stay with their caps). Entrenchment utterly wrecks siege ships entirely. Note that none of these changes directly altered the siege ship, but hurt it just the same.

The siege ship's threat level could have been just fine with a slight decrease in mobility, so that ships could engage them more easily. As long as the ships can be shot at, any hell they raze is justified. Instead, they now shoot fairy dust and blow into a billion pieces any time they get a funny look.

To ask the question about siege frigates means you don't know the history of the game.  I had it when the first version rolled out.  It was totally and completely ridiculous.  To win the game, all you had to do was build 10 siege frigates (at the time they were cheap, used little fleetcap, and were ridiculously hard to kill) and send them straight to your enemy's homeworld.  That was it.  It didn't matter what fleet he had protecting his homeworld.  It didn't matter how many turrets and hangers he had.

It is hard to overstate how ridiculous it was.  Imagine having a good fleet at home, plus as many defenses as you could reasonably build, because you are in mortal terror of the siege frigs and you are trying anything you can do to stop them THIS TIME.  Then they roll in, straight through your turrets, straight through all your defenses, straight through your fleet, UNACCOMPANIED BY ANYTHING, and they start bombing your planet to kindgom come.  Your turrets are wailing on them - nothing happens.  Your entire fleet is wailing on them - nothing happens.  Your planet goes down, the siege frigates WALTZ OUT and go on to your next planet while your jaw has just hit the floor.  You maybe took out a couple of them at most.

Ridiculous and infuriating to the max is not the word for it.  It was the most ridiculous unit I've ever seen in a strategy game, and I've been playing strategy games since before the first Command and Conquer.  It deserved the mega-nerf it got.  Believe me, you don't want that unit buffed back to anything compared to what it used to be.  If you don't believe me, somehow get an unpatched version of the game, and try it.  See what happens against the AI.

Are you freaking kidding me?  Did you PLAY version 1?  The speed of those things was the least of their issues.  Those damn things had armor made of admantium or something, and thicker than a cap ship.  You could wail on those things for ages and they wouldn't go down.  And their cheapness meant the AI would send 20 into your system at a time, wave after wave.  Now, imagine what clever PEOPLE did with them.

It was the most ridiculous unit ever.  I think most people cheered like it was Christmas when that unit got nerfed.  I doubt it is ever coming back, and I'm glad.

Unless we're talking about asteroids, you can't cover an entire planet with turrets.  An AI will happily run straight into them, but a player will go around and hit the planet from a different angle.  Any siege frigate balance must take this into account.  That's why I called bombers their counter.

 

@Agent of Kharma

I'm not arguing with the assessment that 1.00 siege frigates were overpowered.  However, no one here is asking for them to become unstoppable, just for a happy medium.  They went from cheap indestructible world destroyers to expensive flimsy annoyances.  Some middle ground would be nice; if they stayed expensive and kept their low damage, but got back their high durability, that would be more reasonable.

Yes I agree that hangers are the way to counter sieges.  Work fabulous, no need for defensive fleet.

As far as sieges being overpowered, I only ever had a siege spam used against me by a player once in BETA, and even thou he kileld the target planet, he lost just about every siege he built to do it.  And the 5 broadcast centers I had in orbit were not damaged by this siege attack, so he really didn't do much of anything

Kharma said that siege ships were devastating early game. That's because players are reliant on their initial fleets for protection, and had only a minimial reach outside their homeworld. I still maintain that 1.00 ships are not THAT bad. But as a Tier 1 unit, players don't yet have ANY tools available to defend their worlds. There are no PJIs, no defenses, and borders are far too small to act as a viable buffer zone.

As a high tier unit, this would not be a problem. Players are already reliant on capital ships as early sieging units, on account of not using siege ships at ALL. This may make caps too important for early game, but a free flagship keeps players with at least one siege unit at their disposal. Later on, when there are more worlds to trash, and caps become more essential for the front lines, a high tech siege ship can come into play. At this point siege ships CAN be powerful, they can take a high amount of fire and trash planets in a hurry, and it wouldn't be overpowered at that point. Raiding parties should be a viable strategy, however the bonuses of entrenchment may hamper that quiet a bit. Late game there are a high number of planets that need wrecking, so why not have siege ships come in to fill that role?

Actually, its just the opposite.  If anything is to be done to the siege frigate, make it cheaper, but DO NOT give them high durability.  The main problem with them before was their high durability.  It made no sense.

Think about it.  Siege frigs should not be able to waltz into any system with defenses, whether those defenses are static D, or a few generic frigs sitting there, and survive to tell the tale.  They should instantly be toast if that happens.  Their purpose is to take down a planet AFTER ALL DEFENSES HAVE BEEN DESTROYED by the accompanying main fleet.

The way it should have worked all along was - your main fleet moves in and attacks a planet, while siege frigs are hanging back a phase jump away.  If your main fleet is successful and toasts the planetary defenses, plus any fleet sitting there, THEN you move the siege frigs in to clean house.  This is the intuitive way the game mechanics should have worked all along.

Siege frigate armor should be made of paper.  Which means any planetary defenses (even light ones) should kill them easily.  Siege frigs should not be able to go anywhere unaccompanied and live to tell the tale.  The problem now is not that siege frigs are made of paper (that's good) - its that they are too expensive in terms of fleet cap, so nobody (including me) builds them.  If anything is to be done, KEEP THE PAPER ARMOR but lower the cost.

Personally, the original unit was so hated, I never want to see the unit rebuffed in any capacity whatsoever.  *BUT*, if the fates deem it necessary to do something, I hope that only the cost is adjusted - nothing else.

By the way, some people have wondered what the problem was all along, since a PJI should have slowed them down.  Again, not knowing the crazy history of this game, heh.  The PJI was a non-unit when the game first came out.  It did nothing.  It simply took up a space in your planetary logistics, and cost you money.  In other words, it was an expensive ornament and nothing else.

late in the game I build some to kill enemy planets so my capital ships can move on

 

I'm quoting this and restating what I said in the beginning of the thread.  Keep siege frigates exactly as they are now with one exception- lower the fleet cap.  They'll still be too expensive to research early on, too expensive to build early on, and if you do build them early instead of combat ships, they'll still get killed by a early game fleet.  Right now they are absolutely pointless to build and it sucks because it takes too long to get a decent number of caps to bomb a planet in less than 15 minutes.  Plus, as said above, being able to raid with them in a small fleet would open up a lot of tactical options in the midgame.

No. The whole point of infrastructure is to BUY THE DEFENSES ENOUGH TIME to kill the siege ships. Planets can have 100 health and still survive a high end wave of siege ships. That's how pointless they are.

Siege ships can not so much as SCRATCH a planet if there's a single defender. Siege ships are not even fit to attack a barren gravity well. The defenses can be rebuilt to wipe them out, before they accomplish their task.

The only viable use of siege ships is to deliberately handicap the AI.

Now THAT'S a bit of an overstatement.  If there are about 12 siege frigates backed up with a huge number of combat frigates and multiple cap ships on an early game rush (play unlocked teams and you'll see what I mean <_<) then yes they'll get the job done.  Such a huge army will quickly destroy any amount of early game static defense, much quicker than they can take down that many siege frigates, and then cover them long enough to take out an unupgraded planet.  However, we're talking about an AI which has a resource cheat, here.  A player won't be able to have such overwhelming force and siege frigates.

I liked the Idea of a higher tier siege ship. Games that have been decided can last way too long because your advent mothership takes 20 min to take down a 2500 health roid.  It's not that hard to keep a few ships around in a system you have cleared to keep anymore infrastructure from being built but without sieges you lose a cap or 2 from the frontlines.

 

lowering thier fleet supply or upping their damage and maybe making them harder to research would help alot in mopping up planets endgame.

But again - and I made this argument against nerfing Siege ships way back when, if a foe invests resources into Siege ships, thats resource not going into an actual combat fleet - the very sort of fleet *we* are meant to use to crush such Siege vessels with.

Or any vessels with, for that matter.

A straight massive armada early game can be just as devastating to a player, smashing your facilities system-to-system. You defeat/thwart it the same way you defeat/thwart a Siege assault, don`t you? I did, back when the A.I. utilized them. No big deal... just another tactic to counter.

With the upcoming expansion adding better static defence options, I really don't see the harm in improving siege frigates.  They really need to be buffed slightly across the board.  Too expensive, too weak, too many required to pose a serious threat.  As said, just fix the AI so they don't spam them.

Well first off, with that diamond armor siege frigates had, actual combat fleets weren't very good at crushing them.  Second off, it was just a seriously screwed-up game dynamic.  I mean, what are turrets and hangers for, anyway?  Expensive decorations?  And what is your fleet for when it can't take down siege frigates fast enough to save any planets in your system?  The frigs could just jump from world to world, taking every planet down to zero population, while your fleet was following them on their path of destruction, hammering away at them the entire time.  This is what you call a good gameplay dynamic?

 

This got nerfed time and time again. No, 1.00 fleets were NOT hammering away at siege ships all the time. Ships had a hard enough time firing on the run. Capital ships couldn't ever give chase, and combined fleets were hampered by the slowest ships. Players were still learning the ropes, not knowing the love of LRM swarms or counters. Early game was the most vulnerable time to get your planets hit, and siege ships are very low tier units. It was a combination of issues that led siege ships to be so powerful, and many of them were dealt with.

Here's the deal.  If the siege frigs are adjusted to take up less popcap, they will need a further reduction in hit poits, hull, armor, etc. because, even with nerfs they've already received, they will still be too tough to stand a chance against them in numbers. 

If 20 siege frigs are sent to your planet, reasonable defenses should be able to take out all 20 - no problem, no loss of planet.  With the way those frigs are built right now, the planet would go down, even in the face of reasonable defenses.  What keeps this from occuring right now is the high popcap on the siege frigs.

The point I am making is twofold:  1) "be careful what you wish for," and 2) "if you play with fire, you will get burned."  Look, the devs are no doubt cool guys, and extremely talented.  But do you really trust them to get the adjustment right if the siege frig is tuned more to your liking?  You shouldn't.  When the game came out, it was broken because of the siege frigate.  After the first patch, it was still broken.  Currently, the siege frigates aren't a problem (sure, they aren't used, but that's better than the situation before).  I say it again - "be careful what you wish for," and "you are playing with fire, so get prepared to be burned."  If they adjust that siege frigate, I can guaran-damn-tee you its gonna break the game.

A long time ago when I was completely a noob to this game, I almost lost to siege rigate rushes by the AI.  I now learned that any military unit can kill them easily.  They are underpowered, but as Kharma said, it is better to not see them used than to have them overpowered.

My two cents:

 

I just won a 3v3 with siege frigates.  Sent one fleet to kill the enemy fleet early on (as TEC none the less), and sent another smaller fleet (8-10 LRMS and 3 sieges) to his home planet and whammo, he had to drop everything on the frontlines b/c his pop. was dying.  They DO work.  But only in a handful of situations.  Mine was one of them.  So for me, that one game, I liked them.

 

I personally hate waiting 10min for one cap. ship to finish off an asteroid.

Cheap siege frigates created a lot of game balance problems, which is why they got nerfed...but Siege frigates do have a place....I will be the first to admit, I don't use them much, but they have a couple uses.

 

First, I've noticed they kill the population of a world very fast compared to most regular capital ships (excluding stuff like Marza bombardment!!).  The effect of this is even if you chase them off before the fortification value is reduced to 0, you still have big population losses, which hurts the enemy economy.

Second, they are cheaper overall than equivalent bombardment power in capitals.  Usually, you still want a capital for its versatility, but sometimes you get a situation where the enemy has a bunch of planets and no fleet.  In this case, you want a few siege to help clean things up so your valuable capitals can move to the front line.  Sometimes the enemy is outcolonizing you on purpose as a strategy to tie up your capital ships and slow you down.  You just have to post a few ships as guards, move your fleet onward, and bring a few siege in to clean up the world.

 

That said, siege are a little bit weak for the cost, so don't overdue it on siege unless you have a fleet to back them up, or unless you relish the idea of a "siege suicide attack".

Finally...Siege does not have heavy armor...it has LIGHT armor !!!! Use fighters to kill them, not bombers.  Turrets work just fine too...I'm just commenting on the people who were recommending bombers vs siege.