Messages

1

AI War / Re: New stuff on the wiki

« on: May 18, 2013, 04:50:09 PM »

Hey, there's an error on the Spire Maw wiki page.

It says

Since version 5.036, a Spire Maw's swallow rate has depended on its mark level. Mark I/II/III/IV/V Maws can swallow one ship every 5/4/3/2/1 seconds. The number of swallows per minute for a full cap of Mark I/II/III/IV/V Maws is thus 60/120/180/240/300 swallows per minute.

This is a contradiction.

Either the swallow rate is actually
60/75/100/150/300 per minute

or the average delay is actually
5/2.5/1.67/1.25/1 seconds per swallow

Nice catch. I believe the 5/4/3/2/1 seconds between swallows is directly from the patch notes, so changed to 60/75/100/150/300 swallows per minute.

D.

2

AI War / Re: What bonus ship types make you not want to keep playing when the AI gets them?

« on: May 08, 2013, 12:14:34 PM »

For me, ZBombards would be the only one I can think of.

When I'm clearing systems, especially in the early game, my preferred tactic for dealing with them is to individually shift-right-click each bombard with my Raid Starships and let the raids do their thing while my fleet goes around killing guard posts and such.

With their high retreat range and decent speed, nothing else I have can catch them and kill them fast enough.

If I send fleet ships after them, they take forever to die as the fleet ships get in range, fire, stop, then have to move back into range again as the ZBombard has kept retreating the whole time. I find most units in the game has an effective DPS of about 30% due to the ZBombard always running away!

Having said that, I don't think I've ever faced TDLs in the AIs hands.....

D.

3

AI War / Re: So, were combat starships overbuffed? (v. 6.019)

« on: April 27, 2013, 08:00:37 PM »

I would counter that the emphasis that starships have on survivability (as compared to fleet ships emphasis on DPS) means that a warp point defense is about the worst place for them to be by design.

Warp point defense is all about the Alpha strike, and then DPS to get the AI dead. As starships are more 'survive' then 'damage', they are intentionally weak there.

D.

4

AI War / Re: So, were combat starships overbuffed? (v. 6.019)

« on: April 27, 2013, 05:02:19 PM »

I think I'm happy with the radar dampening being just removed.

Radar dampening 30k really does not do anything and the Zenith is still the highest health starship so it has enough (IMO, and pending testing) survivability from that.

Makes my defensive situation much smoother, that radar dampening on the SPire and Zenith starships was a nightmare to defend against.

As always, we'll see when we get it.

D.

5

Off Topic / Re: Glorifying War

« on: April 27, 2013, 03:10:14 PM »

I'm actually thinking this is somewhat mis-targeted advertising. (COH Trailer from opening post.)

While it is changing, there is still the perception that 'real' computer games (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc.) are very much played by the young male audience. (As opposed to the 'casual' game market, but that's another discussion.)

What percentage of the average gamer in that target demographic actually knows about those statistics mentioned in the trailer? If you did not, it is actually a reasonably good hook to get you to look at the game in more detail and potential interest in a game that I (personally) don't expect anything new from in terms of advancing the RTS genre.

Is this glorifying war? Erm, probably?

But I could make a decent case that AI War glorifies war because it "de-humanises war by making the enemies robots" and "encourages war by offering no other gameplay options (diplomacy, trade, alternate win conditions, etc.)".

I suppose it is a question of taste and/or culture as much as anything. Where's the studio that produced this trailer located? And are the german and russian language trailers the same?

D.

6

AI War / Re: So, were combat starships overbuffed? (v. 6.019)

« on: April 27, 2013, 02:52:00 PM »

One thing I just though of on the DPS comparison is that the "effective DPS" decreases as ships die. I'm not sure this was ever officially accounted for in comparing the DPS vs. Health comparison.

I'm talking about the 'steps' DPS decreases by as ships die.

For fleet ships, this is generally 100 steps, which I'm going to make a straight line so the math stays easy. So we end up with an 'effective DPS' triangle when we graph it out.

So, a fleet ships with 100,000 Cap DPS which engages and has its last ship die 30 seconds later does 1,500,000 damage before dying. (100,000 DPS * 30 Seconds / 2 = 1,500,000  Divide by 2 to get the area under the line on the graph.

However, a starship with a cap of one has full dps until it dies, it's dps chart stays level.

So a 1 Cap starship with 100,000 Cap DPS that dies after 30 seconds does 3,000,000 damage before dying, or twice that of the 100,000 Cap DPS fleet ship.

A 2 Cap starship has only a single step in the middle, so it gets 15 seconds of 100,000 DPS and 15 seconds of 50,000 DPS for a total damage done of 2,250,000 over the 30 second engagement.

So 3 types of ships, all with 100,000 DPS at cap do this over a 30 second engagement that kills all ships in the cap:

Fleet Ship: 1,500,000 Damage
2 Cap Starship: 2,250,000 Damage
1 Cap Starship: 3,000,000 Damage.

That's 50% more effective for the 2 cap and 100% more effective for the 1 cap starship over the 'equivalent' fleet ship.

Now, this is theory crafting. From my personal experiences in engagements that count, only the part with the fleet ship from 100% to 70% (or maybe 60%) of its units left alive matter.

Having said that, the point I'm trying to make is that a starship balanced at twice the cap health and half the cap DPS of the equivalent fleet ship actually has in practice almost the same amount of actual damage inflicted and still has twice the health.

I'm posting this because I believe that this is a large part of the reason starships seem a little overpowered at the moment and so I want it to be considered for any future tweaks to starships, especially at their low K costs.

D.

7

AI War / Re: More useless ships... >.<

« on: April 25, 2013, 08:49:52 AM »

How long does it take the Wrath Lance to kill them though? I know Infiltrators can last quite a while even at point blank due to their sheer numbers.

Wrath lance one shots them. It one shots everything. It does 50 million damage in a cone in 4 directions non stop. It's basically "SuperFort+MarkIVHeavyBeamCannon*4".

Actually, not quite.

The 'Lance' is not quite 100% coverage due to limitations in its implementation. There are small gaps in the lance that will allow ships to survive for a short time.

It usually took 6 or 7 passes of the lance to kill my cap of teleport raiders when I attacked it.

On the time to kill the lance, it did not seem that bad. I was essentially throwing away a full cap of Mk I - IV teleport raiders every time I attacked, but I was doing 15-17% damage to the wrath lance each time. (I think that was before their health nerf too.)

As always, experiences will differ so that's my take on it.

D.

8

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.022-6.023 "Honored Bugs" Released!

« on: April 24, 2013, 10:13:33 AM »

Erm, I was talking in human hands.

I want to play with it, but I'm worried that a cap of Mk II's alone can now shift-right click all guard posts in a system and get away.

Add in the Mk IIIs and any guard post without a lot of defenders is just dead.

As I understood the guardpost changes, one of the intentions was to make it so a single unit could not clear a system on it's own like that.

As I said, I need to experiment.

D.

9

AI War / Re: So, Enclave Starships

« on: April 24, 2013, 10:10:40 AM »

Okay, while interesting I don't see anything here that addresses what is (IMO) the core issue with the Enclave.

The Enclave is a mobile space dock that does not require supply and so is designed for operations away from human space.

What's this? Deep Strike counter threat?

Well, I guess I'm not using the Enclave.

For me to commit enough K to unlock higher level Enclaves (at any sort of K cost that is remotely balanced), the Enclaves need to be able to support an independent fleet far enough away from my worlds that it is not cheaper (in K and/or M+C) to simply carve a path and rebuild the ships I lose from the Space Docks in my territory.

The drones, the building units faster, and any other bells and whistles the Enclave gets are simply band-aids and workarounds to justify the unit's existence.

I'm not really sure what to say here. Has enough other buffs gone in (Special Forces, Strategic Reserve) that the Deep Strike response can be looked at?

Barring that, the Enclave very much feels like it simply doesn't 'fit' in the game to me.

D.

10

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.022-6.023 "Honored Bugs" Released!

« on: April 24, 2013, 09:55:06 AM »

It is going to be interesting.

It is actually the missile immunity that is going to be the big change. This makes the Raid immune to both the MLRS and the Missile Guard Posts.

That's huge in terms of how effective it will be.

Now to find some time to try this out, that's the hard part.

D.

11

AI War / Re: So, MkII transports

« on: April 24, 2013, 09:53:31 AM »

Transports, hmmm.

Transports have two purposes for me, bomber drops in hostile territory and moving my slow units around my own territory.

Bomber drops:
# of hops does not matter, it is one way due to the attrition regardless.
Health matters some in getting the transport to it's target, but I usually let the transport die to 'unload' all at once.
Not reaching the target? Send some empty transports through first to soak.

Own territory:
Only capacity and speed matter.

So what would it take to get me to unlock Transports Mk II? I'm not sure. As odd as it sounds, the cloaking does not actually appeal that much.

Really, for carrying units, the Mk I is so good as it is I'm not sure what would make the Mk II worthwhile for me.

Actually, one thing that would make it worthwhile is a forcefield attachement. Not a strong one but enough that it can actually fill the "Assault Carrier" role and protect the units it is unloading for a second. How you keep that from being cheesed though? Dunno.

Really, I'm not sure what to do here, the Mk I is so good at anything I can see myself using a transport for, the Mk II just seems superfluous.

D.

12

AI War / Re: So, turret balance

« on: April 24, 2013, 09:26:18 AM »

Keith, why do you do this to me?

I can't check the forum for a while and you start all these "So...." threads! 

Anyways, turrets.

First, turrets are immobile, that is simply one of their limitations. As I play lattice maps, I would love mobile turrets because in most of my systems I have 3 or more hostile wormholes.

I could see adding guardians as a per-system cap with the inability to use wormholes filling the mobile defensive gap though, but that is really another discussion.

On the attack multipliers, I don't want to see these go any higher. Because the turret is immobile you can't take advantage of the multipliers.

Okay, my anti-polycrystal turrets on the left, my anti-UltraLight turrets on the right.

But the Raid Starships came in on the left and the bombers came in on the right, No!

If there was some way beyond attack multipliers to differentiate turrets, I'd be okay with increasing their base DPS in exchange for them having no attack modifiers.

Turrets are immobile, they have to be effective against anything that comes into their range.

On their actual stats and stuff, it sounds like you have a decent idea of what you want to implement Keith and I don't have time to pull a calculator out at the moment to post my own opinion on where the numbers should end up so I'm going to say you are looking good there.

I suppose I really just posted to voice my opposition to the mobile turrets or the guardian-replacing-turrets ideas. We are trying to tweak the balance of the game here, not change the entire defensive part of the game.

D.

13

AI War / Re: More useless ships... >.<

« on: April 22, 2013, 09:10:14 AM »

@Infiltrators: Have not used these in a while, but they are FF immune and so I remember them being quite useful. On the Dark Matter thing, I randomly checked the wiki and none of the guard posts (that I checked) have dark matter immunity.

FF Immunity is powerful, but I will agree that the hull type changes on the guard posts have nerfed these, they used to have bonuses against pretty much every guard posts, now they don't and the DPS increase of the guard posts makes it harder for these to sneak in and pick them off underneath an FF.

@Teleport Raiders: These on the other hand I love. True, they can't 'raid' Data Centers or Raid Engines, but they murderize pretty much everything else, including a Wrath Lance.

I treat them more as 'Teleport Bombers' then 'Teleport Raiders'.

However, that was before the guard posts buff. Maybe now they don't have the punch needed any more to solo guard posts?



Having said that, posting a list of all the units and getting feedback on what peoples opinions of the various units are is probably worthwhile, I'm just not sure it's too soon after the guard post changes. Those changes are going to force us to re-think how we raid guardposts or specials near them.

D.

14

AI War / Re: New stuff on the wiki

« on: April 22, 2013, 08:56:47 AM »

Heh.

I am still working on this, but I'm redoing everything from scratch to automate multiple ship updates. Right now I have to manually update every ship page individually when change happen. I've figured out how to make one update do multiple ships but it requires a lot of back end code to setup.

So it's going to be a bit before I have anything ready to go. 

However, what is next after that is the front page.

By doing the front page next, that will start to solidify the structure of the wiki so that people can see where pages are missing or need editing, rather then this master plan that's all locked up in my head.

I'm currently mulling over how to change it. I'm currently thinking something like tiles, probably 3 across and about 10 rows of text high?

(I'll see if I can throw something up as a demo later today.)

Probably similar in terms of topics to what is there now, with the addition of the ship stats reference stuff that I've been working on.

So, anyone else have thoughts on what the front page should look like?

D.

15

AI War / Re: (Thought Exercise) Reduce knowledge to reduce AIP scaling.

« on: April 16, 2013, 12:51:35 PM »

@Keith: I think we (being you and me) are now talking about two different things (if related).

On  your questions:

1) If you have the power and position (including CSGs, if on) to kill the AI, would you ever take another planet?

Depending on  how you define position, sometimes yes. I can technically be in a position to stomp the AI, but my defense is so weak that the AI's response would kill me before I can turn to take out the second AI. This would be rather uncommon, but it does happen to me due to how I planet hop out my forward bases.

2) If you do not have the power and position (including anything non-AIP increasing like hacking) to kill the AI, would you ever not take another planet?

No (err, yes?). By this I mean that if I don't have the strength needed, I have to take another planet, that is the only way to make my fleet stronger. I could K-hack a system or two I suppose if there's only a small strength difference left, and I might delay taking more planets to deal with something like a CPA, but I'm going to need more planets before endgame.

@chemical_art: On power curves, my original contention when I started this thread was that the power curves are fine, progress along them just happens too fast on both sides, so I posted this as a method for slowing down how fast the 'power' of each side escalates.

On the starting K, I never actually stated it outright, but I was assuming that would get knocked down by 1/3 also to keep things in line.

If Mk III fleet ship costs (and some of the turret costs) get reduced as is being talked about in another thread, dropping starting K from 10,000 to 7,000 should not be a big deal.


@Keith (again): It sounds like this is something you are actually seriously looking at. However, before committing this to a patch, can you post the changes exactly (as in, copy-paste from what the patch-notes would say?) as I don't feel anyone is really on the same page here.

D.