This is speaking as far as the actual combat system between Ships, Constructs and Colossi are concerned. Nothing to do with the constructs and the benefits they provide.

Likewise, this is coming from someone who has piloted a colossus at least six times now (?), often to victory (see signature) and often not (see today). So here are...a lot of issues with the system I've seen over my time working with it. Fair warning: long.

1: Why do we even have Colossi?

A colossus is made up of various items from tradeskills located at near-Mythical level, typically costing 100 commodities of a main material of that particular trade. 100 fish for cooks, 100 platinum for forgers, 100 gold for alchemists, etc.

For all this investment? They suck, honestly. A colossus is deployed with 3,000 health. A colossus will take 80 damage per attack made by an enemy construct. Here's a log snippet- my balance recovery timestamps are highlighted in red. Enemy construct's balance in the ugly Glomdoring mauve colour. Mine was without gears or scroll penalty, I don't know about the Tree's.



Summary:
/17:23:20.127/- to /17:23:25.307/- 4 second balance recovery for Construct
/17:23:21.773/ to /17:23:27.560/- 5.7 second balance recovery for me.

(Edit: turning next part into icky green colour because it was somehow black and wasn't showing up on a lot of forum themes)

I'm going to guess that the Tree had gears active during this log, whereas I didn't. He had Girdle up.

77 damage per attack, every 4 seconds.
770 every 40.
1115 damage every minute, assuming they don't stop to reset gears, girdle, or get into an attrition scroll/gear war.
So, more accurately, 900 or so damage every minute
A colossus has 3,000 health. So, a construct is capable of taking down a bit less than one-third a colossus' health every minute.

2: But why don't you use Sparkleberry cubes to heal?

This is why:

QUOTE

(Serenwilde Elite Guard): Sarrasri says, "Don't have a sparkle cube?"
(Serenwilde Elite Guard): You say, "That heals 15 health."

5561h, 6057m, 6057e, 10p, 25145en, 28175w exk /17:23:24.941/-
The ground beneath your feet begins to violently stir as a thunderous wave of
sound erupts from the centre of the Guardian Tree of the Wyrden Way, slamming
into the surface of the Begym Eld of Serenwilde in a furious assault.


(Serenwilde Elite Guard): You say, "Out of the 80 it does per hit."

5561h, 6057m, 6057e, 10p, 25145en, 28175w exk /17:23:28.369/-
A swirl of luminescent motes announces the birth of a thundering bolt of magical
energy before the Guardian Tree of the Wyrden Way. The force surges forward into
the Begym Eld of Serenwilde, rocking it violently back and forth.

5561h, 6057m, 6057e, 10p, 25145en, 28175w exk /17:23:30.453/-operate colossus sparkleberry

You pull a lever and sparkleberry jelly is slowly absorbed throughout the Begym
Eld of Serenwilde, bathing the chamber in a green glow and filling the air with
a sweet odour.
Net +24 health on an effect that consume's colossus balance but (last I checked) is a seperate balance in constructs.
5561h, 6057m, 6057e, 10p, 25145en, 28175w exk /17:23:30.897/-
Rocking unsteadily on its spot, the Guardian Tree of the Wyrden Way lurches
forward, slamming into the Begym Eld of Serenwilde with the thunderous sound of
metal and stone striking against one another, sending debris crashing down all
around you.
The Begym Eld of Serenwilde violently explodes, sending black plumes of smoke
towering high into the air.
(Boom)

3: FocusConstruct seems to be having minimal effect.
According to the AB, FocusConstruct increases the damage taken of what you're focusing on (if negative) or boosts its defense (if positive).

Snippet of when I had Serenwilde all Focusing Positive on me, the colossus:

A swirl of luminescent motes announces the birth of a thundering bolt of magical
energy before the Guardian Tree of the Wyrden Way. The force surges forward into
the Begym Eld of Serenwilde, rocking it violently back and forth.

Net: 86 damage

When they all did negative on the Tree (thus removing their protection on me):


A swirl of luminescent motes announces the birth of a thundering bolt of magical
energy before the Guardian Tree of the Wyrden Way. The force surges forward into
the Begym Eld of Serenwilde, rocking it violently back and forth.

Net: 89 damage

4: Bombarding is more important than the ground force

You'll all have various opinions on if this is right or not, but the point is that it's true either way. A bombard will do much, much more damage than one colossus will in its lifetime. Maybe even two colossi. Each bombard takes 10 minutes to charge up and eventually fire. If the targetted construct has a shield up when the Bombard fires, the Bombard will do half its normal damage. You have a ~60 minute window to destroy the construct in question, if you're truly aiming for it. A shield can wreck the entire effort on minimal effort of the person in the construct who is fighting defensively.

5: Colossi and Constructs are half blind to the world around them
While moving in a colossus/construct, not only do you suffer from major balance loss, but you don't automatically see what's in the room. You have to squint/glance outside. A colossus cannot glance into adjacent rooms, either, to gather their surroundings. Same for constructs- they're blind. If a construct pilot sees an opening to flee, unless there's immense coordination on the part of the colossus pilot and its scouts (you can't access any sort of map inside the colossus), you can spend half the weakening chasing one person all around. Also, squint doesn't tell you the exits of a room. So, I have to use the trivial 'operate colossus look' command and consume ~5s worth of balance in the process just to see which way I can go.

Also? For some reason you can't move into the room where the nexus objects are. And it sucks ~7s of balance from you for even daring to try. :/

6: TOO MUCH ATTRITION AND USELESS MECHANICS

Scrolls and Gears are the main items of guilt in this. It is extremely easy to lock the entire fight down into some twisted game of doing nothing but stripping a debuff, having them reapply it, and then stripping it again, ad nauseum. For those of you that don't know: Scroll is essentially ectoplasm for nexus weakenings. Gears is like quicksilver/cleanse. Having the gears buff up improves your balance recovery. Using scroll on a geared object strips the gear buff. Scrolling again gives them the scroll debuff, making them recover it slower. Using gears will break you out of scroll, or speed you up.

It's been ages since I've been scroll locked, but- why are these items even here? A scroll-locked colossus will have its already-insignificant offense cut in half if it allows itself to be scroll-locked. Otherwise, it'll be stuck there for the entire weakening because gears and scrolls have no charges and can be used infinitely.

Next on the list we've got Crotamine and Cloak. What do these even do, honestly?



As far as I can gather, breathe is just another type of attack. It has the potential to be stronger than a regular attack (???) but is thwarted by a defensive item that all constructs carry and that you need to burn through 50 layers (???) of to be useful. Why are these here? There's never been an opportunity to test them extensively because there's just no point in using them in the first place. You're better off using Girdle + Attack.

Lastly, we have Shield. Wow, I hate shield.



Even on a fully optimized colossus and while utilizing questionable mechanics (no eq loss when hitting shield) it takes three balances to break through and land an attack. This is with the colossus being geared, and the construct being scrolled.

7: You can pilot a construct while graced.
Wat. Seriously.

--------------------------

At the moment, that's all I can think of. Tl;dr post to follow this one, with all the important things bulleted. If you want the evidence, it's up here.

As an FYI, some themes have black backgrounds... and as such your black text is invisible.

tl;dr summary:

• Bombarding inflicts more damage than colossi do, and is far more important towards the overall goal of the weakening. A colossus is mainly just a tool to keep the enemy shields down. Should this be the case?
• Scroll/Gears are very, very annoying mechanics.
• Crotamine and Cloak seem to have no use.
• FocusConstruct seems to have small effect.
• Sparkleberry cubes have little to no use for colossi.
• Colossi have little health and seem to inflict very little damage in the grand scope of the weakening.
• You can pilot/enter constructs while graced.
• It's extremely difficult to effectively maneuver a colossus or construct around the nexus world.
• Too much annoying, attrition/turtle-esque mechanics are used in the fight. (Scrolls/Gear, shield-spamming)

I posted most, almost all, of it in the regular colour..where's the black text, if you mind pointing it out? I can edit it into something else.

I'm going to guess that the Tree had gears active during this log, whereas I didn't. He had Girdle up.

77 damage per attack, every 4 seconds.
770 every 40.
1115 damage every minute, assuming they don't stop to reset gears, girdle, or get into an attrition scroll/gear war.
So, more accurately, 900 or so damage every minute
A colossus has 3,000 health. So, a construct is capable of taking down a bit less than one-third a colossus' health every minute.

2: But why don't you use Sparkleberry cubes to heal?

This is why:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3: FocusConstruct seems to be having minimal effect.
According to the AB, FocusConstruct increases the damage taken of what you're focusing on (if negative) or boosts its defense (if positive).

Snippet of when I had Serenwilde all Focusing Positive on me, the colossus:

A swirl of luminescent motes announces the birth of a thundering bolt of magical
energy before the Guardian Tree of the Wyrden Way. The force surges forward into
the Begym Eld of Serenwilde, rocking it violently back and forth.

Net: 86 damage

When they all did negative on the Tree (thus removing their protection on me):


A swirl of luminescent motes announces the birth of a thundering bolt of magical
energy before the Guardian Tree of the Wyrden Way. The force surges forward into
the Begym Eld of Serenwilde, rocking it violently back and forth.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Those items are shown as black to me.

This section:
EDIT: Ninjad

(Points not numbered in relation to yours, but just as I think of them)

1. Sparkleberry used to be able to be used all the time. They changed it to require / consume construct balance, which means you can't do it and ANYTHING else at the same time. As such, sparkleberry is pointless for a Colossus and only useful for a Construct when there is no ground assault (which is what a Colossus is good for, it ties up the Construct and stops it from being able to go all-out defensive with shields and sparkles). Also, note: Your sparkleberry healed 24. Mine was healing like... 9 health each time, which is (I believe) due to all of the people focusing negatively on the Tree.

2. I also think that Bombarding does too much damage (still)-- but I don't think bombarding can actually kill. I think a Colossus has to deal the final blow. (This could be incorrect, but that's the thing that was floating around way back when)

3. Only security/protectors of the org that controls the Construct/Colossus should be able to get into it (NO FOLLOWING/TELEPORTING/ETC). The entire point of Construct fighting is to actually be able to use them to fight and defend themselves, and an enemy force just sitting inside one or the other pretty much ends the battle. If, for example, a Magnagoran force was to get into Celest's Colossus, Celest would not be able to build/use another Colossus-- their existing one would stop any others of theirs from entering the room, and Magnagora wouldn't even have to destroy it. There are other issues with the other way around, as well.

4. I had gears up the entire time.

There is nothing that does too much damage to a turtling construct.

Grace is definitely the only way to pilot a construct in case of a rout, though, and I would imagine that this is by design. The idea is that taking down a construct isn't a trivial matter. Taking down an unmanned construct is trivial, as noted by your attack on the Altar: 66%-24% in 45 minutes, then 24%-0% in about eight minutes once the bug kept it from being manned.

Killing an unmanned anything (colossus or construct) is trivial. Gears + girdle + repeated pounding and the thing is going down.

Adding my comments to this: now that Glomdoring has actually started to fight back in ships consistently, bombarding has got a -lot- harder. Luckily they still aren't beating us on the ground easily but because of the obnoxious colossus creation mechanics (you have to sit there for a minute) if they tried to do the same to us I think they would have difficulty, particularly if we pre-demesned the zone.

The strategy the attackers are seemingly supposed to take is to get everyone into a ship except Alianna, but then we're buggered if the colossus dies. I understand that we're not supposed to take it down in one weakening but even if we could hit every weakening consistently it's actually really hard to even get it down that far.

How do you figure. I think I saw ONE Seren die. You guys camped the entrance.

That's what he's saying.

"Glomdoring is not beating Serenwilde on the ground, luckily for Serenwilde." (Just to make it a bit more obvious)

Which seems pretty fair - a construct is a huge, expensive investment to lose, and the defending force should have the upper hand and advantage.

I understand that, but the rule as it seems to me is that rather than having the upper hand, it's more like you recover almost to full between weakenings if your operator is in it the whole time whatever the attacking force does.

I guess that's an artefact of it taking like a whole RL month to rebuild though, which is a whopping amount of time.

@Shaddus: read it again

EDIT: Ooh, I should put my PSN tag in for SF4/Blazblue, good idea

I for one am fascinated by colossi. I would love to practice it, and have some sort of arena where we can use the skills.

Edit: Actually, here's an idea. Instead of Serenwilde using their envoy slots to bring down skills they don't like and boost their own, why not envoy some construct stuff?

Actually, if you guys had even 1 ship bombarding the entire time you'd have done serious (lasting) damage. You guys only got 1 bombard off, though, and your colossus spent the first 5 minutes locked in a scroll battle (for no good reason)-- even so we won't have it fully healed, I think. But it'll at least be in okay-ish shape.

I think, if we scrap the one RL month rebuilding time, could we then proceed to make changes to colossi/constructs?

Edit: To clarify, shorten, not scrap, wrong word.

The 1 RL month rebuild time is... ... ... ... ... excessive.

The messages look cool, there's some neat RP behind it and it makes you feel really badass but unless the gear/scroll thing gets resolved it can get really annoying.

DEATH TO THE BELGYM ELD! DEATH!