Jig Nuclear Explosions - actually benefit the owner

My understanding of the introduction of jig nuke explosions was that they were there to increase the risk to the owner thus offsetting the huge amount of eco produced. In my first experiences with them however I'd say the opposite is more accurate, jig nukes now work as a form of defence, limiting the damage a small force can do. Jigs are now effectively very expensive nuclear mines.

In previous patches 4-5 fighters could destroy a fair number of jigs if the enemies own units were out of position (orbital layer travel times being fairly slow). With the explosions the absolute maximum is now equal to the number of fighters as at least 1 fighter must be lost per jig as the fighters range is less than the explosion radius. Dropping a large army of fighters into the centre of an enemies production is also now useless as you will simply lose tens or hundreds of fighters for no more damage than 5-10 could have done.

Suggestions:
Increase damage radius/reduce jig spacing - default area placement should cause jigs to damage each other say 1/2 health damage to direct neighbours and 1/3 health to neighbours diagonally neighbouring
1/3 1/2 1/3
1/2 X 1/2
1/3 1/2 1/3
this would allow for casual chain reactions but prevent them from being catastrophic unless the attacker puts some thought into which jigs to attack.
Increase fighter range - fighters should be able to sit just on the edge of the blast, taking some damage but not immediately dying unless immediately next to the jig when it explodes.

I will point out that 4 of my fighters did manage to destroy ~60 enemy fighters by timing the destruction of a jig perfectly, but given the eco lead that we couldn't even up because we couldn't destroy jigs it was largely a moot point as we simply couldn't produce fighters fast enough. I need to play a few more games to get a better idea, but for the moment the jig risk seems too low.

I tend to agree, when I first read that change I thought the placement was a little backwards. It feels like you should have to micro to prevent a chain reaction, rather than there being no inherent risk of that with a macro placement.

Here's a question though, with the group-line mod for storage, we have an interesting precedent for modifying placement commands. Whats to stop someone from making a UI mod that changes it back to current spacing if this was implemented?

I guess there's nothing preventing anyone from making a UI mod, but it does mean you can fit less jigs on the planet, and have longer travel time during construction.

The spacing is why I also suggested a range increase for the fighters. If the attacking fighters are outside of the main blast radius they are reasonably safe and it's the defending fighters that are likely to be destroyed even if the jigs are spaced sufficiently to prevent damage to neighbouring jigs.

Idk, I always modded where jigs are a little less eco (you have solar generators for instance so why the heck power), and that they could not be built closer so you can only cover a gas giant with so many. Like, with my spacing, id say 20. Also had their health very killable so fighters could drop tons of places and wreak havoc. Even with all those nerfs, they paid for themselves in less than a minute and were ridiculous.

Called it.

Realm Teamspeak, day of the PTE announcement. To @tHeTrOpHySyStEm, no less.

The convo was something like "people already drop them in dispersed groups of a few on several different jigs at once". And they do. Just, now you don't keep the avengers after each jig or you have to carefully micro to move all avengers away except 1 at very end.

....has anyone tried building a jig on a planet other than a gas giant, just to see if it really can use used as a disposable orbital nuke?

Jigs shouldn't produce energy, we have solar panels for that. For that amount of metal, make them cost energy instead. Works great in orbital warfare overhaul.

I like the idea that instead of attacking the jigs directly, we can kill the enemy's power and turn their massive economic boon into a huge liability.

An easy solution is simply bump the cost; 9000 power, 36 metal and whatever storage they possess shouldn't be so cheap! On a moderately sized gas giant, you're much better off (metal for metal) expanding gas than capturing territory on regular planets

Why do they need to generate metal at all, again?

I agree, the plan as far as I know had always been that it was an energy giving system that was going to placed on areas of activity preset on gas giants similar to metal spots.

I agree with the op, been thinking the same thing for a while now.
Taking more than one avenger on a jig is just making you lose groups of avengers at a time. So either you're stuck microing avengers so as not to lose too may, or you're sinking way more eco into cleaning up those jigs than you are denying your opponent.

Once he's got a few orbital fabs going, there's probably no way you can catch up. since he'll be building them faster than you can take them out.

It seems like a more elegant solution is to make them autobuild at a distance that could trigger a chain reaction. Then you need to setup multiple bases around a gas giant with adequate defences at each or risk losing the whole thing in one go?

Clearly, the solution is Jig Shields.

Sorry, I just wanted to mention shields.

Or perhaps the best solution, is to just increase the range of orbital fighters and force them to stay at max range?

Can't be done

Whatever the case, jigs are annoyingly imba. You don't seem to be able to nuke them. So the only way is to use orbital fighters and fat chance I'm going to waste 10 minutes babysitting avengers to kill jigs one by one.

Jigs seem to have been added just so that Giants have a reason to be in the game. If they improve orbital with more unit diversity then Gas Giants might actually add something to the game, but at the moment Gas Giants are just meh.

Well they were apart of the "expanded" orbital stuff that was supposed to game with the gas giants.