strepto wrote:I'm surprised to see no mention of tycoon. Drillers are both army and currency, having one allows you to play a game of attrition against an opponent that can't match your production. Unless you cap your production very quickly, you can use the boost to make yourself a very unattractive target, and the attacker is always at a disadvantage.

Smuggler is useful, but tycoon has no drawbacks. In a game now where I am 200 drillers ahead of everyone, but I can't touch one guy who has a Tycoon because I simply can't get enough drillers there fast enough to match his production.

The only time tycoon is not useful is when you are capped, which is easily solved by using your drillers continously.

I think the Tycoon is balanced since he is an upgrade to the Smuggler. Yes, being an upgrade is his largest and perhaps only drawback; the x3 speed is immensely useful at any stage of the game. You'd have to sacrifice it to get the bonus drillers.

roadkiehl wrote:Um, you're not a very polite person are you?

No, I'm not. But neither are you, so that makes us even. If you want to take an "Um, yeah" tone with me, I will take an "Um, yeah" tone with you.

King:
I never said he was bad. I said he seemed risky and good in specialized situations, like in kincaid's example.

roadkiehl wrote:What you have to understand is that yes, the king and security chief are niche specialists. But they all are. Every single specialist in this game is very good sometimes and very bad others.

But this is exactly what I'm saying. Admiral and Tycoon are not only good in specialized situations. The only time they are NOT op is in specialized situations (losing very badly but not yet dead).

roadkiehl wrote:My point was that they don't have synergy.

Well now I'm really confused, because General/assassin/assassin DOES have synergy, as thats now 3 specs who get the 10 drill buff, rather than just 2.

roadkiehl wrote:If you thought my comparison to diplomacy was bad, then you missed the comparison. I was not saying that specialists balance diplomacy. I was saying that specialists give an edge in combat in the same way that an alliance does. Neither are technically "fair" in the way most people use it. But it's the way this game works.

So you're saying that the specialists shouldnt be balanced, and its fine that 2 pf them are nearly always infinitely stronger than the rest? If so it would have been easier and clearer to have just said that. Apparently I'm not the only one who didnt get that, as regardless of what you intended, it did take the conversation way off topic.

Listen man, I was just voicing my opinion. A little courtesy can't hurt.
Regardless, let's just move on, yeah? It's kind of killing the conducive atmosphere of this thread.

Sure.

So anyway, we've discussed some of the (arguably) OP specialists. How about the underpowered specialists?

Infiltrator:
I have some respect for this one, but I think the amount he takes should be higher, maybe 30. The reason I think hes a bit underpowered is because he can only be used on offense, and unless he's being used as a hard-counter to Inspector, he basically only gets use once per base. Also most bases only get 10 shield anyway. I also think he should be stronger because he cant be promoted. Another possible way to buff him is to leave him at 20 shield taken, but give him a good promotion option so you could use him to take a base with big shield, then promote him into a new role.

Intelligence Officer:
Info is nice but I just dont think the info he provides has enough value compared to most specialists. I think giving drill numbers at each base would be too strong, but maybe he could also tell you where all the Queens in the game are located. Or maybe upping his sight bonus to 35% would work as well.

Hypnotist:
Its really tricky to get this spec at the right time in the game, and then get him where he needs to be. Too early and there will be no captured specs to take. Too late and he won't get to the specs in time to make use of them. One way to buff him would be to make him work like the diplomat: anything in sight is captured, rather than having to be there. The other (less natural) way might be to give him a speed boost, but not allow him to travel with drills.

In a game I just finished I had 4 tycoons, (which I found doesn't actually stack by multiplying by 1.5 each time, but stacks by adding to make each production cycle 0.5 times quicker than 8 hrs) I had about 480 drillers per day. When I got my first one, everyone started to counter it, and by the end of the game one person had almost 800 drillers a day (2 tycoons + lots of factories + funding), while he only had about 550 electricity. That meant he could literally just attack using all of his drillers once every 18 hours or so. But imagine 800 drillers a day and everyone else having the normal amount. That would be just insane...you could attack practically anyone, you could take on a 1v3 or even 1v4....

The highest I've seen is somewhere around 1400/day. He wasn't building mines, had multiple funding, probably had some tycoons somewhere. I'm just glad I didn't get eliminated that game.

Infiltrator - yeah I agree. It can be useful as a first hire, if you're going on the attack right away. Other than that I ignore it. Maube if it drained all shields as a counter to the huge shields people can get later in the game. Or if it promoted to something once the early game wore off.

Edit - you said all this, I was replying on my phone and couldn't read the original post at the same time

Hypnotist - I think it's one of the strongest. If you convert even one specialist you've broken even. Sometimes you can get a ton of captured specialists, huge profit there. Being able to flip a switch and add 33% to your attacking force at any time is the most powerful move in the game in my opinion. But I know we agree to disagree there.

Intelligence officer - I tend to agree, but that extra visibility is a great passive bonus. Being able to see what's coming your way sooner is almost as good as a speed bonus being able to react to what's coming your way quicker. But the intelligence officer is global. I really like the idea of it being able to pinpoint queens. Maybe it could only pinpoint them if they are at an outpost though, not in-transit queens.

This entire discussion is how some specialists are consistently better than others in most situations. Sure, the king may be better than 5 specialists combined in one situations, but what if you had a sprawling empire? Same goes for tycoon-if you have a small concentrated empire, he isn't that great compared to maybe a foreman, who can promote to engineer and save you a lot in large sub battles. I would categorize each specialist in areas (based on my play) that they would be most usable or "OP" in:

Empire=What you control
Tiny Empire-King, Infiltrator, Hypnotist, War Hero
Small/medium-Foreman, Engineer, Intelligence Officer, Inspector,
Big-Smuggler, Tycoon, Admiral, Security Chief, General

Maneuverability- Navigator, Helmsman, Smuggler
Counters and Specialist killers- Saboteur/Double Agent, Pirate, Martyr, Assassin
Combine maneuverability with counters to create Queen Killers

Keep in mind this is just situational and each specialist can be used almost anywhere, though not to the best extent.

You guys are forgetting king+tycoon ;p

Or an engineer in there... Along with a navi or something that bumps speed

Also everyone mentioning hypnotist as 'bad'... It had the ability to be a game changer by essentially giving you extra specialists.. Anything helps. If you can't convert anything then the reward for the weak initial specialist is the powerful king.

Well I just got a double engineer with admiral in two games in a row. OP?

Yep.