LienRag wrote: ↑Thu Jul 23, 2020 6:22 amI wasn't ready when they sent Black Krakens in turn 200 rather than 250, but really they're unbalanced.
They are "the final boss" of FreeOrion. They appear in turn 250 if you playing "Maniacal", which is supposed to be the toughest difficulty.
You can beat them before they start spawning psionic monsters in Maniacal (at least when they appear at turn 250). You get 50 more turns for each less level of AI aggressiveness, so there is space for players that want less of a challenge and players that do like them.
Black Krakens have :
4k Structure : OK, why not, they're supposed to be tough.
60 damage : OK, why not, they're supposed to be dangerous, even to shielded ships. That means that they could one-shot most of my ships and two-shots the rest of my fleet, but I had the tech to produce more heavily armored ships and it was my mistake to not be ready.
3x20, to be more exactly. You can have for sure shield-9 or tons of robotic shield ships (up to shield-20) by that time, and big hulls that could withstand much more than 2 shots even without shields.
200 vision (iirc) : For the first wave of monsters, is that really necessary ? Stealth only allows ships to survive one more turn, what's the point of reducing to zero all the efforts of an Empire to pursue a stealth strategy ?
They need long range to be good at chasing planets.
200 speed : WTF ? Where's the fun in eliminating all possibilities to outmaneuver them ?
That might be necessary for monsters to ensure they finish their trip out of Experimentors system before starlane collapses.
One-shot of planets : For the first wave of monsters, why ? Why remove all ways to counter them except a bigger pile of ships ? What's the fun in that ?
If you get some planetary defense techs they can't oneshot a planet. Maximum shield is around 500, 1000 with defense focus, way more than the 60 damage per turn that a kraken does.