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Absorption Feat - OP?

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Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/9/2021 8:49:43 PM

stryc

Posts: 174
Joined: 7/30/2012
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As far as I understand it, the 'Absorption' creature feat means that they effectively take no damage if the unmodified weapon attack damage is not higher than the creature's unmodified hitpoints. Thus, a creature with 200hp is effectively immune from any weapon that doesn't do at least 200hp damage (unmodified). Is this understanding correct?

Case in point: a stack of 1000 beasties each with 350hp and Absorption. I surrounded them with six multi-stacks of variously 'early game' (~40 turns) infantry, armour, and artillery and over the period of several turns they inflicted precisely zero damage to the beasties. Not a single hit was ever scored. I think this is because no single unit within the stacks was able to deal >350hp unmodified base damage. Effectively these things are unkillable until medium tanks with thumping great Howitzers are developed.

Seems a tad OP to have effectively invulnerable herds of these things every-bloody-where (if you take the wildlife option), being unable to do anything about them at all until the early stages of the mid-game. I don't mind having tough beasties on the roam, that's why I chose the option, but this feat makes them utterly indestructible for the first 50 turns or so.

Post #: 1

RE: Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/9/2021 9:06:20 PM

redrum68

Posts: 1202
Joined: 11/26/2017
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Absorption is definitely an extremely strong feature especially with higher HP creatures. It makes them pretty much unkillable until you have a few tank units to use on them. 350 HP on creatures is very high and haven't ever seen that myself.

(in reply to stryc)

Post #: 2

RE: Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/9/2021 10:12:56 PM

KarisFraMauro

Posts: 113
Joined: 12/2/2020
Status: offline

This is definitely bringing back some very painful memories...

(in reply to redrum68)

Post #: 3

RE: Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/10/2021 8:44:43 AM

stryc

Posts: 174
Joined: 7/30/2012
Status: offline

They are the 'dominant' life form on my current world. Dozens of stacks of 500-1000 of these things. Nothing on the planet is able to even force them to retreat. (They also Herd, have big HP boosts, Ambush, aggressive, etc...)

This is mostly what I wanted: a continual threat from serious forna but invulnerability is a bit silly.

Personally, I think the Absorption feat shouldn't be a binary threshold calculation, i.e., 349 damage does nothing but 351 does everything. Instead damage resistance should be a proportion of incoming damage to HP. So something with 200hp takes 50% damage from 100 damage weapons; you still need to roll in the bigger guns to do much to them but this means massed troops can still, at least, force them to retreat.

(in reply to KarisFraMauro)

Post #: 4

RE: Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/12/2021 8:25:15 PM

CharlieLine

Posts: 8
Joined: 1/12/2021
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Note that despite what the feat reads or what the combat calculation preview says - there is still a chance to ignore absorption and score a hit. Of course it's still incredibly difficult if your attack/defence value is below the threshold, but not impossible. It's a roll just like shield generators' prevention roll

(in reply to stryc)

Post #: 5

RE: Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/16/2021 9:15:42 AM

Mina

Posts: 45
Joined: 1/16/2021
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Yeah my first game has been kinda stuck because there's a set of species that all rolled Absorption+polymer, the latter of which makes them hard targets with polymer armor and +40% HP per level. I have to use my units to just camp there and stop them from pushing in my borders, they don't even have a chance to hit them at all, combat odds just show up as "unknown" if I try to take any offensive action.

It's turned the whole game into an absolute slog. Earlier fauna I encountered were tough but at least I could use artillery and surrounding to eventually break them, these things have been brick walls that I can't do anything to.

(in reply to CharlieLine)

Post #: 6

RE: Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/16/2021 9:36:53 AM

zgrssd

Posts: 3385
Joined: 6/9/2020
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quote:

Yeah my first game has been kinda stuck because there's a set of species that all rolled Absorption+polymer, the latter of which makes them hard targets with polymer armor and +40% HP per level.

I think you need AT-gun wielding tanks, AT guns or Bazookas to crack those nuts. All of wich would be avalible if you started on Tech Level 4.

You propably rolled a Medusa world on TL3 and wonder that your gear does not match up to the environment?

(in reply to Mina)

Post #: 7

RE: Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/16/2021 9:48:18 AM

Mina

Posts: 45
Joined: 1/16/2021
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

I think you need AT-gun wielding tanks, AT guns or Bazookas to crack those nuts. All of wich would be avalible if you started on Tech Level 4.

You propably rolled a Medusa world on TL3 and wonder that your gear does not match up to the environment?

Siwa on TL3. I went for bazookas and got an independent battallion into gear as soon as I could but it couldn't do anything to them either due to terrain penalties and the infantry penalty for offense. I figured AT guns wouldn't do any better due to being soft targets and it took me a while to get some light tanks with HV guns. They can't fight them in mountain tiles though, so I'm gonna see how my roll for guided RPG troops goes.

(in reply to zgrssd)

Post #: 8

RE: Absorption Feat - OP? - 1/16/2021 10:26:18 AM

stryc

Posts: 174
Joined: 7/30/2012
Status: offline

I'm 60 turns into a game with 300hp+ AbsorptionII beasties everywhere (dozens of stacks). These things put a massive blocker on any kind of development, both player and AI, which translates into a long, painful slog into the techs necessary to force these things back.

"Just start the game at tech level 4," spectacularly misses the point.

I still advocate a change to the Absorption feat to make the damage resistance proportionate to incoming damage rather than it being a hard, binary threshold. That way, at least, massed troops stand a chance of forcing a retreat rather than doing nothing at all.

(in reply to Mina)

Post #: 9