Messages

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AI War / Re: Private alpha of Vengeance expansion has started

« on: Today at 06:30:54 AM »

7/7. And it's not small to me, I just graduated from 6/6.

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AI War / Re: Private alpha of Vengeance expansion has started

« on: Today at 05:57:59 AM »

So, Spider V turrets...

I'm playing a game right now where I'm basically ignoring AIP. Yeah, not the smartest thing to do. So far I've got one Spire City, a Botnet & Armored Golem, and two Turret Controllers (Needler and Spider).

The first thing I notice is that the Spider V turrets have a m+c cost of  1380/s. The Needler V is 109/s. While the spider should definitely cost more, the build times seem off (the Needler takes three times longer to build, which is why the cost is so much lower per second).

The second thing is that the Spider in some situations can be downright goofy. If you look at Murdoch in this save, you can see a wave of Zenith Reprocessor III's attacking. Look at how far they got from the wormhole before the turrets disabled all of them. (ie: not very)

It's probably not that big a deal since they're not nearly so effective against huge waves (700 fleet ships instead of 50 larger ones like reprocessors) or against sniper immune ships, but in this case I thought it was pretty goofy how they so easily crippled a wave at 550 AIP.

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AI War / Re: What do you want the Champion to be?

« on: Yesterday at 12:14:48 PM »

I voted other, because what I want the champion to be is a fleet leader/hero type unit. The abilities kind of let it do that, though it could use some extra ones (as unlocks or rewards).

Right now my biggest issue with champions is the nebula attention splitting, and that's far less of an issue when a nebula scenario is short. When you get caught in the big wars with a frigate (or even a destroyer), you just can't swing things very fast and the scenario goes on forever. Stuff like the dysons, devourer, or the one with the suicide pods all go a lot more quickly in a small ship and aren't nearly a problem.

The big war scenarios work better when you have a larger ship, as you can directly engage and make progress more quickly. It doesn't distract from the main game nearly so much when it's a 15 minute thing vs a 45 minute thing.

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AI War / Re: The future of Champions

« on: Yesterday at 08:50:20 AM »

I actually think the Dyson Gatling is a very good nebula to start off with (the best one of our current selections) for several reasons.  The most important of which is that the 'do good' condition is get over a certain number of kill shots on the enemy.  This IMO allows the player a reasonably good chance to do well despite having only the frigate.  This one is the only scenario where this is true with exception to the Neinzul Mourners prison scenario but to a much lesser extent.  While I don't know the actual numbers, it feels like it's much harder to meet the 'do well' criteria with a frigate hull than a destroyer.  The first EER isn't bad but isn't great in that respect although this one feels about right for a destroyer hull.  And finally the FFA seems nigh on impossible to meet the 'do well' criteria with only a frigate hull.

I really don't mind the big vicious slug fests you get with the FFA, the Ravenous Shadow, etc. but only when I'm preferably a cruiser so I can slug back without having to leave and repair after 30 seconds of actual combat.  That is what makes these grindy and take forever since we don't have more direct control over how our ally ships fight. 

I think part of what is needed is more early level scenarios like the Dyson Gatling one that allow players to level up their hull sizes and module unlocks in a non intensively time consuming fashion so the later bigger nebula battles aren't so punishing. 

I'd agree with all this stuff too.   The single biggest problem with nebula secnarios is when you get into one that drags out a very long time, and that tends to happen if you get into one of the large battle ones with a small hull. If those were deferred until larger hulls in favor of shorter scenarios, it'd really smooth things out a lot.

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AI War / Re: Question about implementation of Neinzul Combat Carriers

« on: Yesterday at 07:52:25 AM »

FYI, build queues and the "auto create" logic used by the new enclaves (and TDLs, and SBSs, etc) use the same build-point counter, so a unit can't really have both without tearing out a lot of code guts.

Ah, well than in that case I'd go with the mobile space dock & regen chamber. The Enclave Starships do a good job of the drone niche.

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AI War / Re: Question about implementation of Neinzul Combat Carriers

« on: May 23, 2013, 07:23:13 PM »

...I thought of an idea I like more. Don't the new enclaves get more drones when you get bigger turrets? .

They used to, now each mark of Enclave ship just gets higher mark drones (and gets them more often, so you can get more out at once).

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AI War / Re: Question about implementation of Neinzul Combat Carriers

« on: May 23, 2013, 07:19:41 PM »

Since it seems like the intent was to let you get Younglings to the front lines and provide mobile regen chamber like ability, IMO it should work like the mobile space dock.

The "extra" type that it gets (in the description) could work like the Enclaves though, because that mechanic honestly is fun (and getting the Combat Carrier bonus ship probably shouldn't give you another bonus ship). So it'd be a mobile space dock that only makes younglings, a portable regen chamber, and it's attack would be to release special younglings like the enclaves.

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AI War / Re: The future of Champions

« on: May 23, 2013, 07:17:39 PM »

Those are some great suggestions. That might be worth trying before doing something more drastic.

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AI War / Re: Champions

« on: May 23, 2013, 03:20:23 PM »

There's a thread with some ideas over here, take a look. Short version is some ideas like the AI having relic caches that you need to capture/destroy/whatever, and that'd let you get unlocks outside of a nebula. You'd still need XP for the unlock points to boost module levels.

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AI War / Re: Call for saves for 7.0/expansion trailer material

« on: May 23, 2013, 03:14:48 PM »

"Doesn't launch waves. When a CPA is declared, *all* ships under control of that AI will attack."

You put planets on alert at your own peril.

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AI War / Re: The future of Champions

« on: May 23, 2013, 03:13:30 PM »

Ok, so I'm kinda surprised at the level of dogpiling suddenly being directed at champions.  At least, it feels sudden to me but perhaps that's just my perception.  I was aware of concerns people had before, just not like this.

Well, people were probably sitting on it until the subject came up. I know I'd barely used them until recently.

Anyway, what I think I'm hearing is:

- Most players hate the nebulae.  Too disconnected from the main game, too invariable, too long, etc.

"Hate" is too strong a word, but yes it's not something I care for. I can't focus on what's going on in the main game and what's going on in a nebula at the same time, so I basically stop playing the other game (maybe letting something build) while I'm doing a nebula. I don't really think that's a good thing, because it just makes the game take longer. Nebula length can be really variable, if you get one of those three way wars when you're just in a frigate your ability to influence the outcome is limited to the shield ability and that takes forever. In the stronger ships you can flat out assault things and it's not so variable.

(It also doesn't work that well in MP. If the champion player goes into a nebula and I'm a normal player, the two of us are now playing different games that have no connection to each other until he comes back out.)

I do like the journal entries and storyline bits in the nebulae. They're great. I also like the shorter nebulae more than the longer ones, as they're much less of an interruption.

- Many players aren't happy with the offensive response to champions (threat/threatfleet nemesis units).  One explanation is that it's too similar to Hybrids in terms of the constant vicious pressure on anything not sturdily defended.

That was no doubt highlighted by the bug that made tons of them appear. But even without that, until you can get past the frigate level the benefit the AI gets for you having champions far outdoes the benefit you get. They require significant effort to ramp up, outside of what you'd typically do in the game.

- Virtually no one likes to play just a champ-only slot in MP.  This isn't so much a problem with the implementation as with the lobby tooltips, etc: it just needs to make clear that you'll want to also be playing a normal slot, or at least be team-controlling somebody else's units a lot of the time.

- Also stuff like wanting more direct-use abilities, which desire I've known about (it'd be nice, but I don't think it addresses the main concerns here), and wanting more options for the response/rewards.

I'm pretty sure the second one would address the first one here. A champion that's more active in terms of abilities is going to be more fun to play as a solo unit, particularly with fleet sharing enabled where you can use it as a kind of fleet leader. With only one ability it's more of a "is shield down? cast it" type scenario and just doesn't drive enough attention to stand alone as gameplay. Making it a more active unit can help that.

- Find some way where a champion can earn growth (XP, module unlocks, ability unlocks, hull-race unlocks, hull-mark upgrades) in "normal space".
-- Would need to be:
--- At least balanceable (so it's not just "fly through the whole galaxy zerging special structures with no effective opposition or retaliation").
--- Not grindy (so it's not just "kill every guard post in the game for the XP").
--- Not insanely hard to code (nothing nearly as complex as the nebula scenarios will work here, just too hard to keep the AI and other factions and stuff from just stomping all over the sandcastles such that the champ's involvement is irrelevant).
-- One concrete idea I think would work is: having special structures on AI planets that grant the various kinds of champ growth when killed, but are also defended by nemesis units (and cause more nemesis units to go after you when killed).
-- There's also more complex ways to spin that, like having some of the structures give the benefit when killed, and others spawn an object that you then need to get back to your territory (and then you get the benefit), and others spawn a boss object that you need to kill before it gets back to the AI HW (and you get the benfit when it dies). 
--- Though after all those FS shard recoveries I doubt anyone's looking for more escort missions
-- The minion starships from the nebula factions would simply be not there.
-- The non-human mod forts could be gained in some other way, or perhaps just unlocked by a particular kind of target structure.

Maybe it should be something like hacking - the AI has shadow relics in systems to study, and you need to get your champion next to whatever building has those relics and leave it there for X amount of time to steal the relics. Once they're on your ship, you get some unlocks. There could also be a periodic event of the AI moving relics between systems and you get a chance to intercept the convoy.

Either way I think it should require a champion unit to do it, rather than just blowing the building up type scenario. A fleet is going to be helpful of course, but that's generally true anyway. Some of those could actually take place in a nebula, if it was more of a 5-15 minute scenario instead of a 30-45 minute one. (The multi way war ones should probably not happen until you're in a destroyer or even a cruiser or higher, because in those ships you're a lot more able to attack and not just shield AI ships.)

--- Also, those sound like it would motivate you to have a fleet to back your champ up, which runs counter to the champ design goal of "give you something to do when you're waiting for your fleet to rebuild".  Even the "just pop the structure to get the benefit" mechanic would seem to encounter that to some degree, though perhaps not a bad one.

I guess the question here is - should that be the design goal? It can take me 45 minutes to do some of the nebulae, and TBH if it takes me 45 minutes to rebuild my fleet then I really did something wrong. Now if we're talking about 5-15 minutes while I rebuild or get a Zenith Power Generator up? Sure, that's reasonable.


I certainly think that the relic caches are a good addition to the game in the AI's hands, and it plays in with the idea that the AI is trying to develop the technology (Nemesis units are partially developed shadow ships after all). Combined with a nebula rebalance and adding some shorter scenarios for low level ships so you don't get caught in one that takes forever because you're not strong enough to do anything in it, and that might be enough to address the issue without drastic measures. (And the options to control the AI response of course. We can do that with almost everything else in the game like Golems or Spirecraft, Champions should have similar response levels.)

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AI War / Re: The future of Champions

« on: May 23, 2013, 12:03:19 PM »

That was my approach too, and it's worked for other features, but it just doesn't seem to fly with champs.  If someone doesn't like hybrids, they generally just don't play with hybrids; but if someone doesn't like champs, they say something is wrong with champs.  I think a lot of the difference is because one is AI-side, and the other is player-side.

I'm going to reply in full but just to address this - that it's a player feature instead of AI attack plot does affect it. The topic of champs came up and so I wanted to give honest feedback about it because I think there's room for improvement. If the response winds up being "we like it how it is", then I'll just treat it the way other people treat hybrids: I'll leave it off and forget about it. I mean there's people who don't care for Fallen Spire and I think FS is great, and that's fine.

In the case of champs I find some of it really cool and some of it not so cool. I guess that turned into a big thing because a lot of people chimed in on the same issue. I hope it's not bothering you too much, because in this case the old cliche is true - I only started talking about it because I care.

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AI War / Re: Champions

« on: May 23, 2013, 05:07:36 AM »

XP isn't really the biggest factor in how powerful your champion is.

Sure, you need it. But if you get to level 20 without doing a nebula, you're still going to have a frigate with the base modules. If you do two nebulae, you're going to unlock destroyer size hulls, likely an additional racial hull, and some extra modules to mount. Since the destroyer can mount more modules, more heavy modules, and higher level modules, it's vastly more powerful than a frigate of the same level.

IIRC what the starting frigate can unlock and use caps out at level 5 or 6 if you don't start doing nebulae. So, adding more XP outside won't help in this case.

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AI War / Re: Which role do you play as in AI War: Ancient Shadows?

« on: May 22, 2013, 11:16:23 AM »

but didn't find one champion unit alone had enough to do to keep it interesting.

FYI, champ-only players can also be given team control of other players' ships, if they want more to work with.

Not in a nebula, though. I did turn that option on for him, though as a newbie to the game I don't think he did much with my ships.

I'd probably enjoy champions more if there weren't any nebulas and they powered up in the main game instead, though that runs counter to the entire design as it is right now.

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AI War / Re: Which role do you play as in AI War: Ancient Shadows?

« on: May 22, 2013, 10:43:42 AM »

Well, when I was playing it I was playing normal + champion. I've found that doing that forces my attention to split a lot away from the 'normal' part to micromanage the champion part in nebula scenarios, and as a result it drags the game out. So I've gone back to normal primarily.

A friend of mine tried it in a coop game with me with just champion (he hates managing bases and economies), but didn't find one champion unit alone had enough to do to keep it interesting. Maybe he needed a few of them.

So yeah, at the moment I'm not really using that feature very much at all and think it could use some adjustment.