Messages

31

AI War / Re: Flanking: why?

« on: March 04, 2011, 06:51:39 AM »

Arguably there are (at least) four reasons I can think that one might want to flank someone; however, not all apply here:

1)To increase the number of troops you have fighting at one time, by enveloping, flanking or surrounding, you can have local firepower superiority and win battles with smaller losses--note this one really doesn't apply here since ships don't really collide with each other, it might worth worrying about this slightly if your blob is so large that ships on the far side can't fire, but just moving your blob over enemies can usually take care of this issue.

2) To attack the weak points of enemies(your example of hitting the sides or rear of tanks). --Again doesn't really apply here as you noted.

3) To hit specific troops with troops that they do poorly against.  For example hitting archers with heavy cav, or say fighters with cruisers. -- This is one place where flanking actually can come into play here.  Consider the case where the enemy is strung out, and its cruisers are behind the rest of its fleet.  You could fly your entire fleet through the line of the enemy, and do ok, but you could instead arrange your fleet so that each unit meets its counter, say have the bombers fly around, or fly into range of the cruisers after you take out the fighters with your cruisers.

4) To prevent an enemy retreat or to force the enemy into battle. --Without unit collisions this is more difficult, but you can at least force the enemy to take significant damage if you can surround it enough to cut off all of the reasonable paths it might end up taking or to prevent it from kiting you (running away slowly enough to keep you inside its range of fire for an extended period of time but outside your own for as long as possible).


You also might want to split your fleet to hit more than one target at once, but that not really isn't flanking.

32

AI War / Re: Black Widow Shot Speed

« on: February 22, 2011, 10:08:59 AM »

I've also complained about this, mainly because although these targets are tractored, they could be moving at the speed of the black window away from the black widow (or more accurately, away from the position the black widow was in when it fired).  I suggest treating these units as if they have the speed of the unit they are tractored to for shot calculation purposes (which would be 0 with turrets, but higher with the various mobile tractors).  If not you get the situation where the optimal way to use the black window is to have it zigzag back and forth to make each round of bullets actually hit the targets infront of you which ends up being rather micro intensive.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2793

33

AI War / Re: Spirecraft Penetrator balance... mostly

« on: February 20, 2011, 09:13:47 AM »

Another option would be to possibly add attrition based on world level to the various types (as with the spire scouts/transports).  That way the lower mark ones could be used on near targets or defensively, while the higher marks would still have the ability to make pretty deep strikes if you chose your path well.  Ideally the rate would be slow enough that it can survive about 2-3 planets worth of attrition, so that you can hit a raid engine 2 steps out, but deep raids would be reserved for the higher level versions(and if used well, the higher level versions should be able to strike and return).  Could counter this out with regen on friendly planets(slow, but fast enough that they will be full before they have recharged and can fire again), to encourage reusing them after a strike rather than just scrapping and building new ones.

34

AI War / Re: Fallen Spire feedback

« on: February 16, 2011, 01:13:16 AM »

I agree its a swing of 4, but wouldn't that make it 5 hours, not 2.5?

35

AI War / Re: Fallen Spire feedback

« on: February 15, 2011, 11:15:35 PM »

So I hit 800 AIP(before reductions), the new ai ship was bombards, and wow do those suck (in a tedious sort of way).  Do they really need to out range every turret while being immune to sniper shots?  As much fun as microing bombers every time a bit of border aggression trickles in while I wait for the necessary metal/crystal to build each spire city up is, I think I'm going to have to shelve this game.  They are also way better than anything else at actually killing off spire frigates(since they are again immune to the only long range option on destroyers and cruisers).  Perhaps I'll try this again after the patch when capturing planets doesn't mean that shards are now spawning 9 or so hops out from my homeworld.

I do have to wonder if the whole spire reducing aip for just clearing the planet is intended though, as it makes things so much easier.  Is it truly intended to punish the player for actually taking the planet(s) rather than just deepraiding to take out these planets?  What would seem like a logical progression to me would be that its +1 if ai controls, no change if netural, and -3 if you control, or to make them stay neutral even if you take the planet(and be -3 for both neutral and owned planets)

36

AI War / Re: Fallen Spire feedback

« on: February 12, 2011, 07:40:32 PM »

On a side sorta unrelated note I love the spire civ leaders, they give you incentive to take (and hold) planets you might otherwise not, plus they give a nice sense of urgency in the early game (If I risk a little, can I take that planet before the hour rolls over?).  I've made it to the point where I own 4 of them, and the other 6 are out there, meaning that my 4 mostly cancel out not only the other 6, but the 6 aip per hour that I started with, makes me split my forces a bit more to defend from cross planet attacks, but feels like its worth the payoff.

Two points:
1) You don't need to capture spire leaders to get the benefit, merely kill the system.
2) They're basically immune to damage.  I don't think the AI can kill them if you only make the system neutral* and the player can't (currently) destroy them.

*Verification needed

Ah, didn't test that, but that seems like a bug (or at least somewhat counter intuitive), that you are penalized by taking the system but rewarded for leaving it neutral.  Seems like you should either just not the the + but not get the - if you only make the system neutral, or you should not be penalized by having them become vulnerable when you take the planet.

37

AI War / Re: Fallen Spire feedback

« on: February 12, 2011, 05:08:36 AM »

Been busy and this has been my first real game since 4.0 came (I'll admit the fact that it was impossible to finish a game in 4.0 if you weren't playing at a breakneck speed probably contributed to this), but here's a few thoughts on fallen spire from someone who's around half-way. I just finished my 5th recovery(just finished my 2nd city), and I have to admit its gotten pretty "samey" already.  However, the first few recoveries were a nice challenge/meshed interestedly with the idea that you want to avoid taking too many planets and still have limited resources if you want to attempt to get to the goodies at a decent rate.  Game started out challenging enough (diff 7.6, schizo, human colony rebellions, dyson sphere, preservation wardens, fallen spire, spire civ leaders, broken golems (2-med), spirecraft (2-med) support corps + fortress baron ai types, 6 aip per hour).

However, at this point it seems that I don't seem to need to care about AIP quite as much (even 700 mk II bomber's in a wave can only get through a fully upgraded city's mkII shields before dying without doing much other damage to anything), pushing through planets to get to the next shard isn't that difficult, and the slow shard speed does make things a bit tedious, but not that hard (my first few recoverables in contrast were a bit of a thrill, I got most of them back with 10-30% life, this last one made it back to the homeworld with 80+% and none of the units in the attacking waves made it onto my homeworld).  I'm strongly in favor of shortening it somehow, or mixing up the missions in some fashion.  From what I've read nothing major changes till I have 5 cities now, its just a scaling game, and I seem to scale faster than the AI (or at least I have been so far and if it remains linear, I don't see why that would change), thus the game is only going to get easier if I have good city placement.

I think some variety in (later?) missions would be nice.  Not exactly sure if all of these ideas work, but here are a few (some have been suggested in some form in the thread already):
current mission:  escort back, durable, slow move speed, medium distance out. (for comparison)
1) Escort back, fragile, slightly faster, short distance out.
2) Teleport back(defend it + self for x time before teleport will happen), far distance out (defensive mission in enemy borders)
3) Long signal research time, friendly territory only, have to defend the signal unit + borders the entire time research is happening, once research done, threat is over (defensive mission in own borders)
4) AI held shard, easy to get back(durable, fast, no/minor waves or fast teleport), have to defeat a nasty defensive setup to free (the AI gets a "prison" type unit, and a large number of extra defensive units and structures on the selected planet) (offensive - assault mission)
5) Raid x AI Jammer units at planets a, b, c,... to eliminate signal jamming, after raiding is done, easy escort mission back (or some subset). (offensive - raid mission)

Could even give the player choice, have 2 possible alternatives at a given time (i.e. after you get your first city upgraded, they find 2 possible signal leads, you get a bit of info about each and get to pick which mission you want--  mutually exclusive choice of course)


I also feel that the spire units synergize a bit too well with the unlocks that also unlock spire things(Laser III's do 6 times the damage of laser I's), making a large subset of them almost "must" unlocks (4k knowledge to jump the shield on the city from 14k to 56k? yes please!--note I already had shield II unlocked at this point).  Laser cannons are balanced around the fact that its worth 3500k knowledge for the mkIII upgrade, which doesn't take into account the fact that it also increases cruiser and city dps by a significant amount as well.  What about small (500-1k) techs at the spire city hub to unlock these upgrades (that additionally requires the current tech for each of these upgrades)?  I.e, spire laser 2 would require laser turrets 2, and an additional 500 knowledge.  Spire laser 3 could require laser turrets 3, 2 or 3 city hubs and 1k knowledge?  Requiring x hubs for each could also let you have some control over how quickly the cities gain in power, since really the spire units/cities seem to start to be a overwhelming percentage of your offensive and defensive strength.



On a side sorta unrelated note I love the spire civ leaders, they give you incentive to take (and hold) planets you might otherwise not, plus they give a nice sense of urgency in the early game (If I risk a little, can I take that planet before the hour rolls over?).  I've made it to the point where I own 4 of them, and the other 6 are out there, meaning that my 4 mostly cancel out not only the other 6, but the 6 aip per hour that I started with, makes me split my forces a bit more to defend from cross planet attacks, but feels like its worth the payoff.

38

AI War / Re: The early game

« on: February 11, 2011, 03:54:59 PM »

Any chance of giving riots the ability to use (basic,laser,flak,ff,lightning) turret techs for small-medium upgrades to (machine gun, laser, shotgun,ff,taser) to make them scale better into the mid/later game?  I'm thinking perhaps riot 1's would just use what they have now (stats could still be tweaked, but no upgrades from tech prob), riot 2 could use either some default version, or a version unlocked by the mk2 version of that turret, and the riot 3's could either have 3 options or a default + one unlocked with tier III turrets.  Doesn't have to be a huge boost(aka the upgrade shouldn't be as drastic as you get with the spire ships), but just a way to make it so you really can't have full potential riot 2 or 3's at the start, but after taking a handful of planets, they can still scale upward at least some.  Note I'm hoping for more extra targets and extra engine damage from the upgrades, rather than huge damage increases.

39

AI War / Re: Parasites.

« on: February 04, 2011, 01:46:32 AM »

Or by (x << 3) + (x << 2), though sub and add are prob the same cost.  Could get finer grain than just 8,12,16 if wanted through a combo of add and sub prob though (10 12 14 16 perhaps)?  would be add, add or sub, sub, none to have only 2 shifts and one arth per.

40

AI War / Re: Parasites.

« on: February 03, 2011, 10:11:15 PM »

For a possible solution to making mk V's a bit more useful(and higher marks more useful in general), any thoughts on having it scale up a bit when you are firing at things at a lower level than you? 

Thinking about these, the mk-level thing, and other issues that have been brought up, I'm considering something like this:
- Reduce all parasite ship-type base-damage values to 1/8th current value (and make sure they all can punch through most sane forms of armor, at least).
- When shooting at ships of the same mk or lower, they get 8x-for-reclamation-purposes-only.  So same parasiting-power as before.
- When shooting at ships 1 mk higher, they only get 4x-for-reclamation-purposes.
- When shooting at ships 2 mks higher, 2x.
- When shooting at ships 3 mks higher, 1x.

Thoughts?

Perhaps add:
When shooting at ships 1mk lower, they get 12x
When shooting at ships 2mk lower or more, they get 16x

Thus mk V's would be significantly better at stealing mk III and mk IV ships.

41

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Let's talk about Z Electric Bombers

« on: August 28, 2010, 01:47:40 PM »

I think the way to look at it is that bombers are currently the best of the core triangle units.  The fact that they are at least close to as good as bombers means that they are an easy way to have a higher bomber cap in the end game when most of the threatening things out there die to bombers(force fields, the new guard posts, forts).

42

AI War / Re: Missle Frigate - Area Damage Immunity -> Serious Balance Problem

« on: August 28, 2010, 11:11:31 AM »

If we are discussing multi-homeworld and multiplayer vs single player balance, honestly I think at high levels, single player tends to be quite a bit harder than either of these two cases.  I think one of the main reason is with waves, since (iirc at least) at 8,9 and 10 the ai's each get an extra wave, and 4 waves instead of 1 is a much larger difference than 11 waves instead of 8.  Any chance of reworking the wave mechanic to be at least a little nastier at higher player counts (perhaps something like 1 extra wave per 2 additional starting waves, so with 3 players it would go 3,5,7,9)?  I seem to recall hearing something about how ai reinforcements also scale at about 1/3rd of a player per additional player, any chance of pushing this up to 1/2 as well?

43

AI War / Re: Prerelease 3.184 (Cmd Stations+, Transport Nerf, Colored Planet Links, Fixes)

« on: August 19, 2010, 10:04:06 PM »

Do tachyon warheads still let you kill the guardposts sitting at worm holes or was that emp only(or does that still happen with the latest guard post changes?)

Edit: on that note, I agree making non-core guard posts emp and especially nuke immune is a bit silly.
Edit2: I see that its mainly the mark IV's that have this, that might be ok, but dunno.

Btw, unexplored planets seem to be treated as neutral, so you get yellow between a homeworld and a unexplored, red between an enemy and an unexplored, etc.  Not unreasonable, but it isn't clear from the desc above.

44

AI War / Re: Design Discussion: Transport Revamp Ideas

« on: August 19, 2010, 10:02:44 PM »

Pfft, its only one zenith power plant, and it makes it easier to get your ships to the target since the transport fleet has more hps too.  Its just alot of micro to get the darned ships split evenly like that .

45

AI War / Re: Tell me about Golems

« on: August 19, 2010, 10:01:23 PM »

As a small note, rather than repairing to check, you can hit f1 to cycle through pages on unit info on the right side of the screen(where the current ships on the planet show up), and all of the golems show up on one of those screens.