Underground Buildings Exploits

[Deantwo]

The Weltreich empire's favorite military HQ design is exploitively designed so that it is underground.
This prevents AI ships from attacking the building because they can't get a clear line of sight to the building without hitting terrain.
It also makes it impossible to destroy the buildings without explosive weapons. For example a spacecraft with only a energy weapon bay will be unable to ever destroy it. This is even true when the building is still under construction.

Blueprints:

Code:

Military Headquarters
Weltreich base <name>
Blueprint: 3067502 MilHill2
Architect: Racer FMXFM

Code:

Military Headquarters
Weltreich base <name>
Blueprint: 2844901 Hill
Architect: Ceruleas JVJHSJB

Somewhat duplicate of: (Bug report) Deep Deep Underground Military HQ Exploit
This is made even worse when coupled with the (Bug report) Military HQ Spam Exploit.
Also the (Bug report) Power Plant Prevent Military HQ Demolition/Destruction bug makes it impossible to get rid of them even while they are under construction.

[Vectorus]

I don't think this is an exploit, it's a good dynamic which forces you to use explosives - lasers are boringly the best at absolutely everything else. 

The power plant thing needs to be fixed though (if the plant is undamageable?), and the number of HQs should be limited to 2, and if there are 2 you should be allowed to demolish one while military buildings are still standing, thus moving the HQ location.

[Mr. Mortius]

Effective =/= exploit.

[Deantwo]

I don't think this is an exploit, it's a good dynamic which forces you to use explosives - lasers are boringly the best at absolutely everything else.

Seems like weird reasoning for wanting a design flaw to stay. "It is boring, so lets not fix bugs that make them bad." I have said before that the easiest thing to do with buildings with little to no surface structure, is to let hitting the building's site damage the building.

Some of the more normal buildings with huge underground cubes to increase their volume also kinda suffer from this issue. I have encountered a number of refinery building blueprints that my weapon bay (and crew) couldn't hit, because it was somehow trying to aim at a part of the building that was underground. If AI crew can't make a successful line of sight check to their target, they simply won't fire and just sit there forever.

[sarcasm]But yeah, AI is too good and therefore boring, lets not fix sun-dives.[/sarcasm]

The power plant thing needs to be fixed though (if the plant is undamageable?), and the number of HQs should be limited to 2, and if there are 2 you should be allowed to demolish one while military buildings are still standing, thus moving the HQ location.

Good comments, but you might wanna keep the thread on-topic. Please post these comments on their respective bug reports.

[Vectorus]

I see what you're saying, but I think there are genuinely two schools of thought about underground buildings: that they are bunkers and should be integrated into gameplay, or that they're exploits and should be disallowed. We had a discussion on this before and I think the consensus was more for the first idea, provided there are enough legitimate ways to actually destroy them.

Crew armed with explosive weapons should discount terrain when making their line of sight check, because they will crater their way down quite quickly. That would also fix the issue for AI in a more organic way, wouldn't it? I mean without introducing counterintuitive rules where shooting a random patch of ground damages a building.

[Deantwo]

Crew armed with explosive weapons should discount terrain when making their line of sight check, because they will crater their way down quite quickly. That would also fix the issue for AI in a more organic way, wouldn't it? I mean without introducing counterintuitive rules where shooting a random patch of ground damages a building.

This would fix a lot of the AI issues with it yeah.
But there needs to be some checks on distance between terrain collision and actual target distance. Or else the crew will fire not just through the ground, but also level a mountain they might be taking cover behind, or even try to dig their way straight through a planet. Sure Haxus will figure that out though.

On the topic of energy weapons though. I don't agree with the idea of energy weapons being completely useless against a building you shoveled some dirt on top of. Sure the damage can be reduced by an amount depending on the depth, but we are then starting to talk about free damage reduction since it cost nothing to make underground buildings.

[Vooker525]

Energy weapons could have ground penetration mechanics based on lens type and quality

[AnrDaemon]

My opinion is still that destructible buildings are not balanced against the destruction potential of the ships in the game.
And are best removed for now.

[Deantwo]

My opinion is still that destructible buildings are not balanced against the destruction potential of the ships in the game.
And are best removed for now.

I will agree that PvP has gotten totally toxic after it became possible to damage buildings. Even with just temporarily destructible old-style buildings it led to a lot of issues because it caused city decay.

Before destructible buildings, cities/building were never lost unless you bulldozed them. And with the old conquest system, it meant that an attacker had to capture your city and hold it until loyalty flipped before they could delete the city or any buildings in it.

I will however say that this topic is off-topic, totally start a separate thread for it though.

[Moghom]

In one sentence: use explosive weapons !