Messages

1

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

« on: Today at 10:10:24 AM »

The point being that not all players like this kind of risky mechanic, but from what I've seen the majority of people keep Golems-Hard on.

I'm not sure if that is done due to their benefit or for their extra challenge.

Right now, given the inflation of everything else, golems aren't so mighty. Handy, yes, but Iy at 9/9 str 4/10 that they are more a liability then asset, and even on 8/8 for me it still easier to go without.

Golems also suffer from the problems of non-replacables. Them being movable and relatively tough helps, but due to AI targetting logic in any serious fight I can only leave them on a world for two or three volleys before they are severally wounded and have to retreat.

Hmm, I still think Golems are in a good place personally. They definitely are more fragile now with all the new AI changes (and especially with some of the new AI difficulty scenarios in the new expansion), but if used correctly can still be game-changers.

Regardless, Champions would technically be on a different level than Golems, being replaceable even after they die, and probably no where near the cost. This all depends on the setting you use, of course.

2

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

« on: Today at 09:53:34 AM »

It seems to be dependent on the volume of AI ships and the losses you take.  If I play with golems on, I only use them for HW assaults.  At that point, they are expendable.

And that's certainly one way to use them. But if your HW assault fails, then you've now lost a critical resource that can't be rebuilt (or which will take quite a long time to repair). This all assuming you don't savescum.

The point being that not all players like this kind of risky mechanic, but from what I've seen the majority of people keep Golems-Hard on. I think that's very telling about what players are willing to put up with in terms of extra risks and resources costs in order to harness awesome power.

3

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

« on: Today at 09:43:55 AM »

Isn't that more like time spent waiting?  Resources being infinite and all

Depends on the settings being used. If 1/10, then it doesn't cost anything to rebuild, it's free like now.

If 2/10, it's still pretty cheap.

At 10/10 yes, you're going to spend a lot of time waiting.

On the other hand, at 10/10 your Champion will be so powerful that, if used correctly, can save you time in other areas such as raiding, defending, and succeeding on big attacks.

In that regard it's like a Golem. Don't you have to spend a lot of time waiting for your Golems to repair after big engagements? Sure, and that's why some people don't like them and turn them off. There's really no major difference.

4

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

« on: Today at 09:33:51 AM »

utside of the scenarios, you are correct - there's no drawback to losing a Champion.  But aside from the uniques like Golems, there's no real drawback to losing ANY ship.  And I don't see a problem with that.

Erm...what?

There is a drawback to losing ships, you have to pay money to rebuild them. This is doubly true for Starships and such.

If you think that having to rebuild your fleet, with resources, is not a drawback, then I guess we're on the same page

5

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse 1.002 "Hunting Through Rubble" Released!

« on: Today at 08:54:58 AM »

Okay, thanks for clarifying.

6

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse 1.002 "Hunting Through Rubble" Released!

« on: Today at 08:36:41 AM »

Out of curiosity, what is the deal with the "gods"? I thought that the player got to choose the god for each race on the 20th turn or whatever. It looks like they are instead assigned randomly?

7

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

« on: Today at 08:34:09 AM »

If you are not waiting long, it is because you are not using its abilities. Which I think is a valid strategy in its own right.

Well there is really only one ability worth using (in my experience) which is the shield. This is the other major problem with the Champions in my opinion.

But yes, sometimes when you are microing several fronts at once, your Champion dies when it still has plenty of energy to use. Or when your champion is in a Nebula scenario that lasts 45 minutes or more, you'll forget about it and he'll die, then you'll notice him just sitting on your Homeworld.

As I said before, even if it dies with absolutely 0 energy (pretty rare for me), it only takes about 10 seconds to respawn. In a game that typically lasts 10 hours or more, I would hardly consider this to be relevant.

8

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

« on: Today at 08:13:47 AM »

That moment when your adrenaline is pumping, your hands are shaking, and your mind is racing as you desperately try to keep your hero alive because it may mean the difference between victory and defeat: These scenarios can't be replicated if your champion gets to respawn for absolutely free. There's really no argument you can make against this.

Yuck. And they don't respawn for free, there is a timer.

I'm pretty sure the timer only exists when they have no "Champion energy" or whatever. In most scenarios they respawn fairly instantly. At most you may wait 10 seconds, which is hardly noticeable.

9

Skyward Collapse / Re: Question about on-demand mechanic

« on: Today at 08:11:27 AM »

Yes, better explanatory value please.

It took me about 3 hours, and a lot of experimentation to finally understand how the "on-demand" mechanic actually works.

It probably would have taken me another 3 hours or more to finally understand how the town-based "advanced resource" mechanic works.

10

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

« on: Today at 07:57:48 AM »

ai war isnt moba and it shouldnt be

Nobody is saying that it should be. We're just acknowledging the fact that the "Champion" idea was, at least in part, inspired by the success of those games. I'm pretty sure Keith even said that when he first announced the AS expansions.

Nobody here wants to turn AI War into a MOBA, nor an RPG, nor a TBS, etc. But that doesn't mean that we can't take some of the best ideas from those genres and incorporate them into our game. One of the things that the most successful RPGs and MOBAs do is offer the player a significant punishment for losing their Champion. I've been studying these games for over 10 years now. One of the biggest appeals to them is the sense of connectivity you glean from using your Champion, and that sense of connectivity is absolutely bolstered when you experience a sense of loss after they die. Please realize this appeals to RPGs as well.

That moment when your adrenaline is pumping, your hands are shaking, and your mind is racing as you desperately try to keep your hero alive because it may mean the difference between victory and defeat: These scenarios can't be replicated if your champion gets to respawn for absolutely free. There's really no argument you can make against this.

I realize there are people who don't really care about that, that's why the ability to pay for Champion respawns should be optional, but scale accordingly with increased Champion power. If you're fine with the Champion just being a bit of a support unit as it is now, which is expendable and can be suicided into the enemy force over and over to accomplish its mission, then that will still exist. However, if you're the kind of person that likes to CONNECT with his champion (i.e., every RPG and MOBA player out there), then you should also have the option of having a much more powerful unit, at a significant resource cost etc.

The reason Chris and Keith even made this expansion, I'm assuming, was to reach a larger audience. Yet the Champion mechanic doesn't even resemble the mechanic in the games it was taken from. This is why new players are constantly making topics in the forum complaining about how weak and boring Champions feel.

11

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

« on: Yesterday at 09:05:00 PM »

Time is actually finite in certain situations, as well. I guess having the other players pay resources isn't a problem if it doesn't cost that much... but if the cost is trivial then why is there a penalty in the first place?

As I said in my suggestion, the cost scales with the Champion power.  So if you make the "Champion" scenario 1/10, it doesn't cost anything, but the Champion doesn't make as big of an impact on the game.

On 4/10, it has a significant cost to rebuild (scaling with MK), but also is much more powerful, and has a bigger impact on the game.

At 10/10, it has a HUGE impact on the game (like a mobile Golem), but costs quite a lot to rebuild.

The reasons for a mechanic like this are self-explanatory. If you're person playing the solo Champion, you want it to have a big impact on the game. As of now, the Champion just can't do much on its own outside of nebula scenarios. It can take out maybe a guard post or two, depending on difficulty, before it dies and has to be rebuilt. On the higher difficulties it will be lucky if it can even do that.

Part of it is the novelty factor. It's supposed to be a CHAMPION. If the best way to use it is to continually suicide it into enemy guard posts until you kill them, then that's not enjoyable at all, that's just grinding.

But what if the Champion is a powerful, 1-ship army that can take on hordes of enemy ships and wreak massive havoc just by itself? Well then it's a lot more fun to use. It's even more fun to use because there is an actual penalty for losing it in the cost of resources. You say that making the enemy temporarily stronger is a better solution because you aren't punishing your partner, but you ARE punishing your partner. He's the one that has to defend his base and control the galaxy. You've just made that significantly tougher on him. I would much rather ask my friend to pay a specific resource cost (based on the scenario level) than to force him to defend some massive attack because of my screw-up. He can rebuild my ship on his own time, but the attack punishment is inevitable, and may come at a horrible time.

What if your Champion dies during an Exo-wave, do you really think it's a good idea to make that even worse by increasing the enemy strength?

If the players don't want to pay for a resource cost, that's fine! Just keep the Champion scenario at 1/10. I'll bet you my life's fortune though that most people are going to be playing on the higher level scenarios though, because the risk, and the power, would make using a Champion that much more engaging.

12

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

« on: Yesterday at 08:11:07 PM »

The problem with champions costing resources to bring back is that the champion player doesn't have resources. The biggest resource champion players really have is shadow energy and XP, and XP penalties are generally hated on pretty hard. Now if you're talking about a resource penalty for a Normal+Champ player, then fine, but then champ-only wouldn't really have a penalty or would directly screw over their allies.
One of the big things in MOBA games is that dying makes the enemy stronger while giving you less time to gain exp/gold. You could go for simulating that somehow, by making the AI get a shark-like reaction to killing a champion. Dying in a nebula scenario probably doesn't really merit that, because you lose quite a bit of time spent not helping your team in that case... exactly like a MOBA game.

Hmm, you have a good point. However, it is a team game. And if you want to know the truth, the most efficient way for it to be played is for one person to take over the resources completely.

Why? Because knowledge is limited, resources are not. The only limit on resources are time. So if one player in a multiplayer game goes MKIII Harvesters, and MKII Command Stations of whatever type, then proceeds to take all the planets, he can share his "overflow" with everybody else. As I said, this is technically the most efficient way to play. Otherwise, everyone has to spend their knowledge on upgrading Harvesters, and you end up wasting knowledge needlessly.

So when you look at it from that perspective (i.e., the most logical way to play multiplayer games), anytime your allies lose their forces, you (the economy player) *ARE* paying for their army, or at least the vast majority of it. All that asking the economy player to do in paying for a champion is to use already existing game mechanics...

Keith has already expressed his dislike on making the "Shark" reaction part of the regular game. Asking someone to pay a little extra resources is one thing...they're infinite. Asking them to face a permanently harder opponent is quite another.

I was thinking about this a little. What if we made the "Champions" scenario optional. You would turn it on just like Fallen Spire, and it would have different "levels". At 1/10, the Champion would be the weakest, and would cost nothing to rebuild. At 10/10 it would be the strongest (as in massively increased survivability and damage), but would cost a *LOT* to rebuild. The enemy "opponent strength" (Nemesis or whatnot) would obviously scale with this mechanic.

13

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

« on: Yesterday at 04:39:58 PM »

Now I wouldn't mind a serious rebuild cost for the champ but that obviously makes it hard for champ-only players.

Also makes it more interesting.

Can you think of a popular "Champion-esque" game out right now (DotA, LoL, etc.) that doesn't impose some kind of penalty on the player for losing his champion?

Even most RPGs have some kind of penalty, however lenient.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained is my philosophy on it.

14

Skyward Collapse / Re: Extremely-detailed wall-o-text first impressions by a long time Arcen player

« on: Yesterday at 03:50:44 PM »

The Norse faction can spawn them with the correct resources (incense is the most difficult to obtain). I wasn't aware they spawned randomly.

I'm still not sure what "Woes" are, I obviously haven't encountered them. But from everything I've read, they sound bad

15

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

« on: Yesterday at 03:16:46 PM »

I want it to be something like a Golem or a Spirecraft ship. Dunno if that counts as "A ship which requires constant attention (Micro-management heavy, dedicated player)". w/e

I agree with Kahuna.  I think simply buffing the Champion's overall firepower at each level would be a big step in making it more "interesting", especially for dedicated players.

To combat this, the enemy Nemesis Champions are similarly powerful, leading to many "Battle of the Titans" type events. As I said before, Nemesii won't attack you unless provoked. They would probably roam the galaxy a lot like Special Forces, except they immediately respond to Champion attacks on their planets. Once provoked, they'll basically chase the Champion down and try to kill it until it becomes an extremely bad idea to do so.

To make up for this new power, I think the player should have to pay resources to "resurrect" the Champion as it were. Perhaps initially it wouldn't be that expensive, say 20k/20k, but maybe the later versions would cost up to 100k/100k. Which isn't a crapton lategame, but might make the difference between winning and losing a battle if get yourself into a sticky situation and can't rebuild it fast enough.