Jigs are way too strong

The gas giant economy satellites, the Jig, is way too strong. It produces more metal than a t2 and t1 mex, and nearly as much energy as two land-based advanced power plants. Those would cost, in sum, 8-9000 metal. The Jig costs only 3000 metal and can be built anywhere on the biggest planets available, that cannot be annihilasered or halleyed, produces both metal and energy in a nice tidy package, and are built by flying builders.

... and are exceptionally fragile to orbital fighters

Sure, but having jigs also means having orbital fabbers on the gas giant.

And that again means having Anchors and fighters of your own. Whereby fighters are also fragile to everything...

Unlike all planets with ground based combat, you can't just break an gas giant turtle open by dropping a portal and releasing hell, neither do nukes work due to the huge radius of gas giants. You can only invade with Avengers of your own, and you need to outnumber the enemy by far because he most likely already spamed Anchors himself.

Plus: Free metal AND energy from a single unit which also has no build restrictions at all? That is not even just a simple metal generator we all "loved" so much in TA and SC...

Agreed on all points, as it happens. I suspect there will be further refinements on how they operate.

Jigs are fragile as hell. Their eco bonus is quite large, sure, but they take forever to set up.

Here's why:

It takes one avenger 500/25 = 20 seconds to kill a jig. Considering that a jig costs 3k, and an avenger 800, it would be more realistic to assume that your enemy has built one or two avengers to escort his orbital fabber in the mid-game. That means some very light protection. Just drop an avenger between the fabber and avengers and the fabber is gone, as is their capability to build more jigs.

In other words, it's the same answer to the "Bombers are OP" argument - if you spend the same amount of metal they did, but all of it on avengers, and you reached the jigs before a significant amount of time has passed, you can completely eliminate their base easily.

Almost too easily, in some cases.

That's not to say that jigs aren't economically OP - in my opinion, if you are letting your opponent use them due to a lack of foresight or scouting or what have you, those jigs are going to give him an edge. A massive edge.

I would support their storage being drastically reduced, and their energy production dropped to 2k or 3k, or removed entirely - after all, we have solar panels, and no-one uses those anymore because jigs are so much more cost effective.

You can just nuke them, since you cannot build on the ground of a gas giant you can nuke them in orbit ( with no way to stop the nuke )

You can't make anywhere near enough nukes to cover jig spam.

Yeah, but you're never going to have remotely the same amount of metal because my economic buildings are vastly more efficient than yours and easier to build to boot. Plus, I have all the Avenger travel time to build additional Avengers as defence and no impediments like tricky terrain to deploying them. All I have to do is outmass you, which is easy because I have vastly more economy than you.

Especially since all I need to build to defend myself is Avengers, whereas you will need tanks, bombers, interceptors, teleporters, etc. You can only start massing Avengers after it's become clear that I've headed to the gas giant AND you have no on-planet threats left. I might just go to the gas giant, use the Jig to build up on-planet forces, and if you spend your metal into Avengers, I'll spend mine on tanks and own you.

If you are so far behind that your opponent already has some jigs on the gas giant, and you have no orbital, you have maybe 5-10 minutes before his Eco boost will start to turn the tables. Which means you need to go for the snipe, and quick.

You should have a set time to go orbital, and it should be before t2. I rarely go for t2 anymore, except for when I need superweapons.

Nukes on gas giants are for killing commanders hiding there. And if your opponent is furiously building jigs, he doesn't have the eco to do much else - I know from experience and testing the limits of the system. That's a period of weakness.

If you can catch them early on, you can end the threat relatively painlessly, just like t2, Halley's, nukes, or the annihlaser,

All of those have counters other than just "Don't let your opponent go there". Annihilaser can be countered by Halley. Nukes by antinukes. T2 by, well, most things, depending on which T2. Halley'd bodies can be invaded.

Jigs have a counter. Its called one avenger.

That's not saying that orbital isn't incredibly stale, tho.

Jigs are only countered by avengers if you have an existing, fairly large advantage over your opponent. They're not really countered by avengers. The Jig player can win the avenger battle over the long term easily.

The attacker in the orbital layer has a massive advantage over the defender. You can arrive at any point and there's no way for the defender to know where that will be until you arrive. If their response is too strong you can leave immediately without casualties.

If you want to take out someone's jigs then you're going to take out their jigs. If you're unable to do then then it means you were already fucked and just didn't realise it.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Personally I think the boost in storage they give is a little too silly.
It's not particularly OP, but it's just unneeded imo.

But that is just the point. Giving a 5 minute head start might sound like a major fuckup in an 1vs1, but it's almost inevitable in an FFA since you can't exactly choose to be the one player not being harassed.

Break even point for the Jig is at 83 seconds after construction has finished. That means you can effectively double the amount of eco you have every 83 seconds since Jig construction is not limited by the availability of any fixed resource nodes or alike. It even gives you the storages for free, so you don't even need to worry about wasted eco at all.

Alternatively, every Jig you have yields another Avenger every 22 seconds, for an upfront investment of mere 960 metal per Jig (one additional orbital fabber required to speed up the factory every 1.6 Jigs), resulting in the first Avenger having payed of after a total of 49 seconds.

But that's true for every strategy, and just the risk you run playing FFA. You can get randomly fucked over.

One player getting fucked over? Fine, that's just life. Or karma. Or rape. Whatever you prefer.

But the entire game flipping towards a single player isn't a good thing to happen. There was a huge gain for the first player to go orbital from the beginning, but it never promised such high yields as the Jigs do now. It's almost as we were back to the days where you could stack metal extractors in every arbitrary location.

I miss those days.

Well... I can't argue with you there...

...except that a dox produces the same amount of energy as a t2 and t1 mex...

...okay, I will spell it out, SURELY you mean't more metal?

Couldn't have said it better myself.[/QUOTE]I like to call it surprise bed-wrestling, because people take particular offense to the R world.

But yeah, not realizing your screwed is pretty much it.

Metal is indeed what I meant. 36 for a jig, 24 + 7 = 31 for one mass spot with a t2 and t1 mex on it.

You're right about abusing orbital transfer to kill Jigs for free, but I'm not sure it's going to be enough. Depending on how close the other bodies are to the body with the Jigs, it could take you a long time to get from your own planet to the Jig planet, and the Jig player can just build more with his ridiculous economy.