Messages

1

AI War / Re: No Wave Warnings + Cross Planet Waves

« on: September 09, 2012, 01:06:19 AM »

I thought I was the only one who played with CPAs only and no wave warnings....

A FRIEND!!!

Actually, early-game, it's fairly easy.  Most of the smaller waves won't charge your system immediately, bu tinstead sit on an adjacent wormhole.  You can periodically go through the adjacent wormholes and clear them off.  With good intel, you can get a good idea of where they're heading, too.

And for the "Alert on ships" thing, this is something I expected from the beginning.  Sometimes (Like in FS, Champions, etc), or when viewing an enemy planet with scouts on it, there are a great number of green lines of text.  Mistaking one or overlooking one is easy to do.  Make the alert notifications more obtrusive... obnoxious... whatever you like.

2

AI War / Re: Unique systems

« on: September 08, 2012, 06:26:22 PM »

I had some similar ideas a while back.  A planet, once captured, is just a planet.  It has it's position, making it somewhat strategically important, or resource-rich, or perhaps the location of a fabricator or other immobile valuable, but aside from that, it's just a stage for the game to take place.  Without a setting, the stage really is kinda' boring.  I thought of a few things, both structure-wise for the AI and environmental for planets in general.  I won't go into too much detail, but a few examples....

Different AI Command stations with different planet-wide effects.
 - Staging Facility - 150% Wave strength on waves sent from this planet or surrounding planets
 - Minor Shipyard - Produces threat ships at a fixed m/c build rate.
 - Major Shipyard - Produces threat starships at a fixed m/c build rate.
 - Defense Outpost - Places turrets on the planet and adjacent planets
 - Perimeter Station - Can "lock" a single wormhole in the system, preventing the player from entering or exiting that wormhole, forcing him/her to find an alternate route to the planet.  (Perhaps Spire Jumpships can have immunity to this for dead-end systems)

Environmental Anomalies / Effects / Entities:
 - Monolith - a massive rock in the solar system that is not passable by ships.  Must go around the object to navigate to the other side, giving physical terrain to some systems.
 - Unstable Wormholes:  Causes slight damage to ships entering and exiting through the wormholes linking this planet to another.
 - Ice Field - Sensors of ships bounce off of the ice chunks in the system, also decreasing visibility.  Ships are only visible at close range.
 - EM Radiation - Ships take damage proportional to their energy cost.
 - Methane Clouds - Pockets of floating methane that explode on contact with a ship's engine flare.  Not advisable to traverse with large fleets.

Those are just a few of the ideas I had.  The pointis to give anothe rdimension to considering what systems are valuable and which aren't.  Some that are hazardous can be used to your advantage if you use their position right (IE: Methane Clouds at a chokepoint, forcing the AI to traverse it before getting to your systems)  Perhaps a density setting to determind how "common" the environmental anomalies and effects are, as some may find them very attractive and fun, while others may get irritated when they find their home system is an Ice field.

3

AI War / Re: My thoughts on current balance

« on: September 01, 2012, 01:40:00 PM »

Both of them were amazing.  I couldn't quite get into the Cataclysm one, though.  It just didn't grab my attention too much.

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AI War / Re: My thoughts on current balance

« on: August 31, 2012, 02:38:50 PM »

Aren't the electric shuttles the same way?  it'd essentially be a step between the beams and the lightning shuttles.

Though, I do somewhat better understand the main idea behind the Photon lances now.

Speaking of Homeworld, I used to play it quite religiously as well on the Complex mod.  I remember playing a game with 2 friends against the mod's ramped up AI with ma handicaps... we ended up with 2 Capital ship carriers (Battle Arks) launching Destroyers and Nuclear Missiles at our two motherships paired together in a wall of anti-missile defenses, trying to take out the nukes quick enough while dispatching the incoming Destroyers and Cruisers... .Oh man, those were the days...

On a more related note... Since the problem with the Photon Lance is that targets are too often moving about to let it do it's full damage, perhaps give it a 1sec paralysis, just to ensure it deals appropriate damage?  While the Riot is definitely the starship disruption ship, a small 1sec or even 0.5sec paralysis may be just the thing they need.  is there a way to paralyze movement without paralyzing the weapons? (Other than engines, but that's a different story)

5

AI War / Re: My thoughts on current balance

« on: August 31, 2012, 08:07:08 AM »

I don't usually post very often, but I did have a suggestion to throw at the Spire Beam discussion.

To be brief, have the Spire beam a sort of "Slashing Beam."  The zenith concept does very well with dealing damage in a linear fashion, as one would expect a wepon of it's type to do.  Making the spire beam a unique weapon is difficult, as it still accomplishes much the same goal, and if they both fill the same role (linear damage dealing), one is bound be to be, even if slightly, better than the other.

So, my idea is a "Slashing" or "Sweeping" beam weapon.  The beam fires and slashes, making a cone-effect.  Any ships coming into contact with the beam take damage.  The beam's damage is divided by all the targets it successfully hit on it's pass.  Higher marks could not only have higher damage but wider cones to deal damage in.  It's still a "Controlled AoE" weapon, but it serves to attack many targets in a large area with moderate damage, instead of the Zenith's high damage in a moderate-sized area.

If overkill from the beam hiting only a few ships on each pass becomes an issue, perhaps a damage ceiling can be applied so that the beam is most effective when used against larger groups of ships (Max inflicted damage is 10% of the maximum, meaning it's full damage is only realized with 10 or more ships, as an example)

I hope this makes sense... I've nto had my morning coffee yet...

6

AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

« on: August 18, 2012, 07:58:51 PM »

You mean the Dark Spire?  The DS were the only ones using the beams, and they were the pinky/purple color; the Nenzui were the orange guys (perhaps the colors vary?)

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AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

« on: August 18, 2012, 07:40:34 PM »

...

Check out the Neinzul Champ ships (when you get them unlocked). Those are very different than the other 2 right now.
The speed of the ships in the nebula is there to make the encounters a tactical challenge. 14 levels on your first encounter sounds about what I get on mine. And on the Shattered Pillar encounter (2v1), its a free for all actually and try and focus on the Neinzul (pinkies) first. Those beam ships hurt plenty.

I have the Nenzui champ unlocked, bu tdidn't see anything remarkable about it other than the cloak.  The purpose behind the speed being slowed is understandable, bu tthe want for it to be tactical doesn't feel right with all the ship speeds being nearly the same.  It's pretty difficult to kite or to retreat once one of the NPCs targets you because you're the same speed.  A bit of variance would make it much more tactically interesting.

I didn't realize it was a FFA for the Shattered Pillar one.  Either way, yeah, the Shadowblades (The beam ones) hurt quite a bit.

Other than the cloak, what's so significant about the nenzui champ that makes it so much different?

8

AI War / Re: Reactions to Ancient Shadows and Suggestions

« on: August 18, 2012, 03:54:03 PM »

Potential Spoilers below, be warned.

1:  The AI for the scenarios involving Starbase attack and defense needs work.  The NPCs seem to be on FRD, simply engaging whatever the heck seems good.  Since the player engaging the Starbases one-on-one isn't exactly a great idea (Though Bomber Drones make for great fodder when trying to get a few final shots in), he/she has to wait for the NPCs to make a move towards one before it is feasible to attack it.  The problem is then that the player is mindlessly killing enemy NPCs as fast as he can to get his own friendly NPCs to set their next target to be a starbase.  I spend a whole hour doing this in the Shattered Pillar Vs. Dark Spire + Anoids 1v2 match, and got from level 1 all the way up to level 14 in a single challenge.  The whole time just swatting down NPCs in hopes that I could swat all of them down fast enough for the Shattered Pillar NPCs to take a starbase as a target.

Perhaps instead of FRD'ing the military units, perhaps give them attack-move orders to the various starbases?  This way they'll still defend themselves and shoot down incoming enemies, but won't be so clueless as to get within striking distance of a starbase just to turn around and go to another one to fight a single ship.  Either that, or perhaps a radar dampening champion hull to allow the player to feasibly directly attack the starbase? I've used the Human and Zenith models, and have unlocked the Nenzui but haven't used it yet.  If Radar dampening is added onto one of the champion hulls, he can engage the starbases, but isn't completely invulnerable because the base will spawn NPCs which will close range, forcing him/her to fight them.

2:  The Tackle Drone launchers are quite cool, except that they can take ships WAY too far out of the planet.  They have taken my ships nearly twice the distance they shouldbe able to go out of the system's radius (WAY past the 2 yellow circles), and it makes finding and regrouping them terrifically impossible.  Perhaps have the drones not fly so far out, or stop once they hit the ddge of the system?  Anything to prevent me having a play area nearly 3-4x the size of the planet, as finding units and selecting them to give orders becomes very cumbersome at this point.

3:  I play on the "blitz" combat style exclusively--Are the champion and challenge NPCs supposed to scale with this?  The challenge movement speeds are breathtakingly slow.  It's not a huge detriment as I can speed the game speed up by +2-3 and somewhat mitigate it, but it would be nice for them to get a very slight speed boost.  Or perhaps have different hulls have different attributes (IE: Zenith somewhat slower bu theavier armor, Nenzui faster but slightly thinner armor, etc.) just to give players an opytion on how they want to play in the challenge systems.

Other than that, I'm really liking this.  I just saw the Abilities released so am about to boot up and try those out (With my Level 19 Champ, 14 levels of which came from my first challenge).

9

AI War / Re: Ideas for the next expansion

« on: May 23, 2012, 05:06:25 PM »

I don't think a lot of new fleet ships are really necessary.  We have quite a large number as-is.  A few new ones may be nice just to keep some variety and flavor being added in, but I'd much rather see more done with the maps and environment the game is played in, as it feels very static and boring.  While there are a few decisions that one needs to factor in before capturing a planet (Metal/Crystal, ARS/Fabricator/Other capturable, Adjacent worlds, ...), There is very little in the way of being able to interact with the planets and terrain, as all it is is a backdrop image with M/C harvesters and wormholes dotted about.  Some things I think would make the environment a bit more interesting and fun to be a part of.

 - Environmental hazards:  Toxic Nebulae clouds, Asteroid fields, proximity to black holes, etc.
 - Anomalies and Events:  Unstable far-jump wormholes that open and collapse during play, slightly altering paths around the map.  Wormhole destabilization, making ships come through more slowly (Staggered) or take damage based on the distance traveled, Meteor showers, Solar Flares, ...
 - Unique Planets and Locations:  Special planets that have unique effects on them that alter the gameplay on them.  Greater speed, increased Laser damage, Nullify cloaking, increase resource harvest amounts, etc.

Things like that to make the gameplay more immersive is what I personally would like to see.

10

AI War / Re: Spire Alternate Ending

« on: March 07, 2012, 08:50:56 PM »

Even on my i7 2.2Ghz 12GB RAM machine, the 30k+ ships can decrease framerates (Not to the point stated above, but I can notice it when things get tht high in numbers.)

11

AI War / Re: Fallen Spire Map Types

« on: March 01, 2012, 03:49:52 PM »

I'm a maze kind of guy.  It seems to have a good variety of backdoor entrances, chokepoints, clustered systems, long dead ends of systems, and bottlenecks.  It does this while presenting it in a much easier to understand view, which helps for strategic planning of where to capture systems and how to manage my territory.

I played a FS game through on a Maze D.  Think I may give it another run through for fun.

12

AI War / Re: General Hacking Discussion

« on: February 27, 2012, 08:19:07 PM »

One of the things I'm specifically trying to avoid is a "second AIP" resource, so it's not going on the hud; if it got to the point of needing to be on the hud it would probably have to be taken out of the game, actually. 

At some point it might add a descriptor to the "AI is spawning responses to your blah-blah-blah on (planet)" alerts to say something like "dimly aware" to "full alert" or whatever in case you've literally forgotten how much hacking you've done, but I doubt it would do more than that.

Much like how you're never told explicitly in-game how many points are going towards the various exo-sources (if you have any on) or where your thresholds are for those, etc.

I give out a lot more info than that in the forums and wiki because I know some of y'all really like having the numbers and being able to plot and scheme with them, but putting the info in the game is a very different ball of wax

Ah, that's a good point.  My concern was very similar to D's, which is why I made the suggestion.  The other part of why I suggested it was for infrequently played Multiplayer games.  I sometimes forget locations and such, but then again, I could always use the planetery notes to keep track of things such as that.

Still getting a feel for the general design philosophy behidn the game; Give it time and I may be able to suggest something useful here and there in the future

13

AI War / General Hacking Discussion

« on: February 27, 2012, 07:13:15 PM »

If you have not checked the Wiki as of late, there are quite a lot of changes and additions to ways to hack the AI. 

Is it possible that a HUD Element can be displayed to show the AI's current "Defense Multiplier" for these hack attempts?  It may help provide a more concrete way for players to judge if/when/what method of hacking they should perform.  Also, as a minor side-suggestion, a "Firewall" structure would be cool o give the AI that protects it's planet and the adjacent planets from beincg hacked (Aside from Superterminal hacks).  Perhaps Fortresses of the AI could even grant this bonus as a more strategic use to the AI.

This is meant to be just a general discussion of the upcoming features, though.  Post your comments or suggestions on these; the above two are my only thoughts on the matter, the rest I'll have to wait and see how it pans out in-game to judge.

14

AI War / Re: Remastered Music

« on: February 27, 2012, 05:29:41 PM »

I take it that we can use the Vorbis OGG with our own custom music tracks to edit the music?  Is there a file that details what music files are used (I know that not all of them are used in the main menu, so it makes me believe there's a sort of text or data file that has all the music tracks laid out with titles and lengths and other info on the tracks themselves)

15

After Action Reports / Re: Why the Zenith and Spire shouldn't team up

« on: February 26, 2012, 01:37:40 PM »

I'm making some progress against them.  It's hard to make any real headway because each system has to be able to provide support against such a wide variety of targets, not all of them can have the "IDeal" setup of Gravity, Tractor, MLRS and Beams, Lasers, blah blah blah.

I've found that Gravity turrets + Tractors keep units VERY closely clumped together when they enter through wormholes.  Normally I just use the Tractors and Gravity turrets a bit closer to my comm station to slow ships down that are charging at it to give me some time to think and make the right decisions.....

But It would seem that the gravity turrets take effect before the tractors do.  Tractors allone don't instantly lock onto ships when they exit a wormhole, so they have more chance to spread out slightly before they  are locked onto by the tractor turrets.  This sets them up perfectly for beam cannons, which I have Beam Frigates from an ARS (Turning the Zenith's own tech against them... pretty nice), so this makes it quite nice.

Still pretty difficult when making assaults on systems, though.