Topics

1

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

« on: April 10, 2013, 10:52:52 AM »

Okay. First, this is a thought exercise, not an actual suggestion (yet).

From another thread:

The basic problem is you don't get anything from having 400 AIP that you didn't get by 200 AIP, but the AI is twice as hard.

10 planets worth of knowledge is nothing?

There should also be at least a few fabs in those planets (on most maps anyway).

Yes, 10 planets worth of K is nothing, because I've already unlocked everything meaningful.  Nothing, not K or Fabs, can give me enough power to match doubling the AI strength.  I already end 9/9 games with ~5-10k  Knowledge unspent, and I'm doing 10-12 planets.

Now, playstyle differences strike again, I certainly don't end a 9/9 game with that much K unspent.

Having said that it did prompt a thought.

Over time, and especially for starships, knoweldge cost have come down, and down a lot.

What are peoples thoughts on reducing Knoweldge (both starting K and/or K per planet) in return for cutting back on how fast AIP scales?

My logic behind this is that Knowledge is a relative resources. The more K you have, the less more K is worth, relatively.

By reducing the amount of K you get, that critical point of "I can take the AI HWs" is reached slower and requires taking more planets.

This would hurt low-aip players more then high-aip players, but at the moment the low-aip strat is so much more viable then the high-aip strat that I am okay with that.

Indeed, the point of this change is to make the high-aip strat more viable. Right now if you are facing Mk III waves (excluding stuff like superweapons), you've probably already lost the game.

However, AIP right now scales to give low-aip a challenge and so scales in the high-aip range too much (imo).

This all comes out of my stance that low-aip games have become too powerful and so the AIP scaling to give low-AIP games a challenge has resulted in high-AIP games becoming too challenging. A 9.0 or 9.3 diff game should be winnable with a high-aip strategy. Right now I'm not sure it is. (Currently testing this in an AAR though).

D.

2

After Action Reports / Nines, just up to my nines.

« on: April 09, 2013, 09:26:31 PM »

Alright. There's been some pretty big changes to the game recently so I figure I'd give them a try.

Also, thinking on it, when's the last time I actually won a game on diff 9? It's been a while.

So, nothing exotic here, just a straight up game with a couple nine(balls). Is it just me or is it getting cold in here?

I'm going to post my thoughts and opinions as I progress as this is as much about the recent game changes as it is me actually winning. 

Also, after the recent thread about high-AIP being restrictive, I'm going off my usual play style and going not be as paranoid about AIP as I usually am. Let's see what happens?

Going with my usual setup so:

80 planets, lattice map, Diff 9/9, Random All/Random All, no % modifiers
Normal Cap, Normal Combat, All Ship types including CSGs enabled.
All minor factions and AI plots off, lazy AI off.

Close my eyes, hit new map, hit start game.

Here we go:



Ohh, that's a lot better map position then I usually get. I also get zenith chamelons as my bonus ship. Bombers ahoy!

OKay, going for a mid-aip (probably) game means more ships then usual. Immediately unlock Harvesters Mk III. Also grab Grav Turrets Mk I to slow those starships down.

Get my initial build going and start scouting.

AI 1 is an attritioner? Okay, that will hurt deep strikes but won't be a primary tactic of mine this game.

AI 2 I'm not sure. I have scouted 7 AI2 worlds and combine found an Alarm Post, a Troop Accelerator, and a Planetary Armor Inhibitor. That's almost half the worlds having something special. Is there a 'get lots of special structures' AI type?

***Game Time 8 minutes***

And the first wave arrives, missile frigates. Pretty easy, I've got plenty of units built.

Or it would be if they hung around, 7 seconds after warping in they turn tail and run away. I have replicated this from the autosave that happened with 20 seconds left on the wave timer. I've attached it if you want to take a look Keith, I've seen this behavior in previous games but never had a save to post until now.

***Game Time 15 Minutes***

The second wave hits and apparently AI 2 is a  Neinzul Youngster as the wave is a pretty even mix of all the neinzul types (including fireflies). Annoying enough these turn to run away aswell after being in-system only 8-10 seconds or so. As they are going to self-attrition this is kind of self defeating.

***Game Time 20 Minutes***

Well, it's a good thing my bonus ship is a bomber type, one of the AI's unlocks is Sheild Bearers. I've found an ARS 3 hops out from my HW, hammering down a path to get a science ship in.

Also 2 data centers within 3 hops, going to hammer those down too.

***Game Time 40 Minutes***

One DC is down, lost 3 raids and a transport on that run.

Got the Science Ship into the ARS. If I dont' hack, it's Zenith Auotbomb. However, I can get Tackle Drone Launchers if I hack it!. Anti-Armor is my other choice.

Tackle Drone Mk IIs? I think I'll go for that. Hacking this ARS is now my next goal. Now how to go about it?


***Game Time 42 minutes***

I need to go threat hunting already, more ships from waves are surviving to get away and go onto threat then my defenses are killing. Going to have to figure out where the threatfleet parks, the threat on worlds adjacent to me is only accounting for about half the ships showing on the threat meter at the top.

***Game Time 45 minutes***
Going to have to call it here, I've got my plan to setup the Ship Hack started, working on hammering a path.

I've updated the Galaxy Screen Shot above with the CSGs showing. I'm going to capture the D CSG (blue) on the far left (Amael) so the ARS at Barklikjer with the tackle drone can be hacked while in supply. I'm going to hop the intervening systems however so Amael will be my first capture of the game. As a bonus, the DC I have yet to kill is on Amael so my AIP will not come off the floor until I capture Barklikjer.

More to come tomorrow.

D.

3

Off Topic / Wiki site version? (Database access)

« on: April 08, 2013, 10:18:27 PM »

Keith/Chris:

I'm looking at the wiki and trying to come up with a way to avoid having to touch every single ship page when a change is made. (See the Ship Cap change or the proposed Armor Change.)

I was going to grab a copy of MediaWiki to mess around, but are you able to tell me the details of how yours installed? What DB does it run on, what extensions are installed, etc.

For anyone else reading, I'm trying to create a single DB file (or page) that I would create from the DB dumps from the game and then would only have to upload a single file for the numerical changes in a patch, rather then each page individually. If anyone has any ideas about this please post about them.

Thanks,

D.

4

AI War / Minor Faction Intensity

« on: March 19, 2013, 03:34:18 PM »

Alright.

I've started playing with minor factions, specifically Fallen Spire and upon setting the intensity of Fallen Spire to only 4 in the lobby I proceeded to get roflstomped by the AI.

Next game I then dropped the Fallen Spire intensity to 2 and I am now the one roflstomping the AI.

This has started me wondering about the scaling on the intensity. I only had the intensity at 4 and I was getting completely dominated, why do the higher settings exist?

I'd also like the scaling steps to be smaller, dropping the intensity by only 2 should not be a big enough change that I go from getting roflstomped to being the one roflstomping.

Combining these two things makes me want to suggest that, on the minor factions intensities that spawn exo-waves, a scaling shift upwards. The current 7 becomes the new 10 and all the other intensities scale as appropriate so that changing the intensity results in a smaller difficulty change then it currently does.

Also note that Keith (in another thread) confirmed that difficulty affects exo-waves, so Fallen Spire 4 on difficulty 7 will be less intense the Fallen Spire 4 on difficulty 9.

However, I have very little experience with exo-waves so I want to make sure I'm not projecting this problem into something bigger then it is.

So, for those of you who do play with exo-waves on, can you post the following from your experinces please?

Which minor faction, the intensity you play at, the difficulty you play on, the map type, and how difficulty you found the exo-waves please?

I'm including the map type because the recent chokepoint thread has made it clear that map type plays a large part in determining how difficulty exo-waves are.

Going through the AARs, I'm am not aware of anyone playing with these factions up really high, but I'm directly asking as my impressions have been wrong before.

D.

5

Off Topic / Pay to win? (Definition)

« on: March 11, 2013, 03:00:36 PM »

This was spawned by the current conversation in the SimCity thread, but it is different enough that I felt it warranted its own thread.

And that is "pay-to-win" and microtransactions.

First, what exactly is "pay-to-win"?

Something like buying a new hat in TF2 is not, that does not affect your game play at all, it just makes your character look different.

Something like doubling your weapon damage is obviously pay-to-win as you are getting a significant bonus that way.

What about something like leveling faster though? I play World of Tanks and I've just moved into Tier 8, but I'm stuck with my Tier 7 gun until I grind the XP needed for the Tier 8 gun. I'm getting close but I have a ways to go.

However, WoT allows you to buy premium time which gives you an XP bonus after every match. Had I done this, I would have had my tier 8 gun a long time ago and be doing much better in matches. Is this pay-to-win? Had I paid, I would have my tier 8 gun by now, which is effectively a damage bonus.

On microtransactions, there seems to be a feeling that microtransactions should not really affect gameplay to avoid the pay-to-win effect mentioned above.

But then the example was brought up of a mobile game that had microtransactions but took great pains to avoid the pay-to-win effect, and then made practically no money as no one was bothering to make any microtransactions.

Where's that line on acceptable here? And what as players do we think should be spent on microtransactions by players to support the developers?

D.

6

After Action Reports / Picking up the Fallen (Spire) pieces.

« on: March 02, 2013, 05:42:03 PM »

Okay, I have the pieces of a Fallen Spire game scattered all over the place that I need to pick up, so let's try this again.

80 planet lattice, all ships (including CSGs), Diff 8 Random All AIs, all minor factions and AI plots off, except Fallen Spire at 4.

Hit "New Map Seed" and click start without looking at the map or bonus ships, I refuse to sit here cycling through maps until I get the "perfect" map/bonus ship combo.

And youzers, how do you program an RNG this evil?

Emphasis on evil.

First try:  Sentinel Frigate? Bleh. Peacemaker (Again? Got him 2 games ago) and Starship commander. That would be doable, except my homeworld is in the center of the map on the lattice map type, can you say undefensible? I need my starting position to have at least some defensive potential. Abandon ship! Err.. Abandon Game(?)

Second try: Etherjet tractors? Those can be fun. Also, the map layout is okay. Not great, but not bad. However I draw oddball AIs. First is a Shield Ninny which would be both good and bad. No waves is nice, but with the armor inhibitors all over the place (which also disables Force Fields) my Spire ships would be a lot more fragile as I would not bother with Shield Modules as on half the planets they'd be disabled. I'd be willing to still try however, but the other AI is a Technologist of some sort. I don't bother playing long enough to learn which type, I call the game there.

Maybe I'll get lucky on the third go? I want something I at least have a chance at....

Third try: Well, this looks promising. Tackle Drone launcher and my while my homeworld has 7 warp points, it is in the bottom left of the map so quite defensible. After scouting 2 to 3 hops in every direction, I have no clue which type either AI is so I'm going to call this game good and go for it. Watch for the first actual AAR post to go up soon.

D.

7

After Action Reports / Falling into things (but not falling apart!)

« on: February 17, 2013, 10:40:28 AM »

Alright.

Fallen spire? I think it is time I actually play with them enabled to see what all the fuss is about.

However, still going to do my random setup and see how this goes.

80 Planet Lattice, Diff 8/8 Both Random All, Complex Ships, Normal Ship Caps, Normal Combat style, all minor factions and AI plots off except fallen spire at 4.

Hit 'New Map' and 'Start Game' without looking at the map.

And I get this:



Well, I'm both lucky and unlucky it seems.

14 wormholes into my homesystem? That's going to make defense interesting.....

However, as I get farther into the Fallen Spire story I have two perfect choke points to cut off about 1/3 of the galaxy to build cities in.

I also get Acid Sprayers as my bonus ship. Those are decent ships but nothing special so I don't count this as lucky or unlucky.

00:00:00 (Game Start)

Alright, I'm going for FS from the start and I have 14 wormholes into my home system.

I think heavy (crazily heavy) defenses are called for. Even by my standards.

With 14 wormholes I don't have a hope of keeping the AI out of my system so to start with:
8 more FFs over my home command.
Missile Turret Mk I Cap
Basic/MLRS/Laser turret x60.
Sniper/Tractor turret x50

Add in my inital fleet build and I think that's enough. (I hope so anyway.....)

00:15:00

Oh right, I still need to scout don't I?

Well, scouting adjacent does not give me any clues on the AI types. Within two hops I have a single Alarm Post, Grav Drill and a Raid Engine.

Although 14 wormholes is nice, I've only scouted within a couple hops of my homeworld and already have 21 systems scouted.

There is also a couple of waves that hit, but they just kind of vanish with the turrets I've got built.

00:25:00

Defenses up. Start on that surbey ship.

00:30:00

Signal found on Urnashwi. That's 2 hops out to the North West. Nothing special out that way so I'm going to neuter those systems then do the shard return.

I'll be escorting the shard with Riots for the shields so I don't think I need to clean out warp gates first. We'll see....

Out of time for now, next post when I do the Shard return, hopefully this afternoon.

D.

edit:

to see what all the fuss is about.

Firepower.  An awful lot of firepower.

Oh, there's a narrative in there somewhere too.

Hehe, firepower? I can always use more of that! 

8

After Action Reports / Starting Blind

« on: February 12, 2013, 05:52:30 PM »

Alright.

I've been accused of being crazy, so here we go. Let's start this one blind.

80 Planet Conquest
Complex Ships
Normal Combat, Normal Ship Caps.
8.6/8.6 Random All/Random/All
No minor factions or AI Plots.

Hit "New Map Seed" and then hit "Start Game" without looking at the new galaxy generated.

That gets me:


with Zenith Bombardment Ships? Nice, that's actually a pretty good ship.

Now, going to try pure starship this game as I did get challenged to it in another thread. Although I may get Zenith Bombards Mk II just because.

Although I did not 'Reveal Random AI Types' so I don't know what I'm facing.

10 minutes in
Well. Change of plans already.

Apparently AI1 is a Peacemaker, so starships are a no-go. Every one of that AI's worlds have an orbital mass driver and core warhead interceptor.

No clue what AI2 is though, although it's worlds seem awfully lighting defended. Mad Bomber maybe?

Anyways, Ginrev over in the right center with all the warp point connections is going to be my first capture. That will bring most systems (75+) on the map within 4 hops of one of my two worlds.

We'll see how badly I get punished for that, I am stretching things to make my first world captured that far out.

AI1 Wave 1

33 Spire Gravity Rippers, that's in line with it being a Peachmaker.

AI2 Wave 2
95 Fighters. Well, that really narrows down what AI2 could be. 

30 minute mark
Nothing more of note, I still don't have a clue what type AI2 is.

Going to carve my way over to capture Ginrev, probably won't post again until I do that.

D.

9

After Action Reports / Teleport Raiders and the Wrath (Lance) of the Teuthida

« on: February 10, 2013, 08:17:40 PM »

Alright.

This game is actually complete but I ran into several of the new things I wanted to be toss out there.

First, a couple disclaimers however. I'd attempted a couple 10/10 games, and then the new astro trains at 8 for both AIs and got horrendously trampled so I wanted something simple.

So, I started a pretty vanilla diff 7/7 game, taking the teleport raiders to experiment with them after their (at the time) recent overhaul.

7/7 is quite far below where I should be playing, I had 16,500 unused knowledge and finished the game at 9 hours, 20 minutes with an AIP of 268, that includes the 200 AIP for destroying both AI home command stations.

Game Summary

1: My homeworld on the right.
2: First system I captured in center
3: Second system I captured on the left
4: AI HW Top Left
5: AI HW Bottom Left

My plan with taking the teleport raiders was to hop systems and that can be seen by the fact that the first system I captured was 3 hops from my homeworld and the second I captured 4 hops out from that.

Teleport Raiders are great at tachyon raiding though, having captured only those two systems I had every system on the map within 4 hops of one of my systems and I proceeded to scout the entire map. Scouts as far as they could go with teleport raiders behind cleaning up tachyons so the next wave of scouts could get a system farther out.

Next up was CSGs. I actually got pretty lucky on placement for these. You can see the node in the center where I was able to capture most of the systems I needed with a few on the left. A an absolute minimum of 8 systems captured is needed to take out the CSGs, I did this game only capturing 9 systems.

You'll note the closest system I captured to either homeworld is 3 hops, the mobility of the teleport raider permits me to be that far out and still project the force I need into the homeworlds to crack them. I did end up bringing my main fleet into both homeworlds, but the initial entry was all the teleport raiders.

Now, we are at the point in the game I wanted to talk about.



Homeworld Balance

As I mentioned, I was cruising along, a diff 7/7 game is well below my play level. Having said that, both homeworlds were a steep, steep spike in difficulty that actually slowed me down a lot. Of the 9:20:00 playtime, at least 02:00:00 of that was the homeworld assaults.

My concern here is that it might be too steep, I'm very experienced at the game and it felt like I'd just slammed into a wall when I first tried assaulting the homeworlds. And neither homeworld had a Core Eye either, so they could have been more difficult.

Now, one did have a Teuthida and one had a Wrath Lance and those are almost the entirety of this wall I hit.



Teuthida
I'd argue this thing is broken at the moment. Because drones keep spawning as long as any human ship is in system (including scouts), what happened to me was I had a scout in the system then several minutes later was ready to actually attack. As soon as my force entered the system, all those drones that had spawned since the scout entered and sat there swarmed me.

At a self-attrition time of 4 minutes, that's in theory 240 drones, realistically probably 200 drones that reach your fleet.  200 drones is 2000 of your ships zombied that get thrown back in your face.

Once I scrapped my scouts and waited 5 minutes before re-entering the homeworld things were much more reasonable as there were no drones waiting for me and the post was difficult, but not out of line for what it is supposed to be as I was able to exploit the Sniper Coverage my scout starships grant to close with my starships to take the post out.

I'm thinking a health nerf would not go awry either. Because the Teuthida can't actually do anything to my star ships because of the sniper coverage, they spent quite a while sitting there just pounding on the Teuthida while it could not do anything in return.

I'm only talking dropping it from 120 million health to 80 or 90 million health though, it is supposed to be tough to take down.



Wrath lance
This thing was actually more troublesome then the Teuthida, at least after I figured out I had to scrap my scouts to make the Teuthida killable.

Unlike the Teuthida, there are no immunities to exploit here. The only real exploit available is to take advantage of the fact that the Wrath Lance is not AOE, the first unit its beam hits is the only ship to take damage from the beam from that frame. (Note that each of the 4 directions looks to be made up of 9 beams each.)

However, the wrath lance puts out so much damage I'm not sure how to exploit that. I used cheats to spawn a bunch of spire sheidcraft with 280 million combined health. A single pass from a single direction beam easily killed the shieldcraft and the units they were supposed to be protecting.

So, the next option is to not get hit. Hello teleport raiders. Exploiting the teleport I was able to get about 1 and a half full salvos off from my raiders before they died. As I had Mk IV teleport raiders I was able to do decent damage before they died, but I was still sending 640 units on a one-way suicide run which tanked my economy something fierce. It took 5 or 6 total wipes of my teleport raiders directly attacking the wrath lance, and probably 3 more wipes of my raiders to clear out the other units in the system so I could focus on the wrath lance.

That's between 8 and 10 wipes of 640 ships to destroy a single unit. That seems a little high to me.

Now, cloaking is also supposed to work against these so I have two suggestions on these.

1) Also reduce the health, again only from 120 million to 80 or 90 million. By the time you have done 80 million damage, the post is dead. It is just a matter of how many waves of ships you are going to have to throw at it.

2) Reduce their turn speed. If a lance touches a unit it is dead, no questions asked. (I tried doing the math and got something like 6 million DPS per sub-beam, with 9 sub-beams per directional beam it is simply not survivable.) Therefore, slow the turn speed on the lance to allow ships to get two or three salvos off before the beam catches up and destroys them.

That would make the Wrath Lance much more reasonable to me.



Strategic Reserve and Special Forces

These felt right. I certainly noticed both in taking ARS systems and the homeworld. The strategic reserve actually killed a lot of my teleport raiders that were engaging Teuthida/Wrath Lance at the time.

However, neither actually had a chance of stopping me. They added time and complexity to taking systems and did make it tougher, but not hard enough that I had to change my plans about the system. I think that is where this is supposed to be though?

Now, maybe they are a little high? I was playing on 7/7 so it would take a larger contingent of Special Forces to hinder me then it would to hinder someone who's playing 7/7 for the first time.



Teleport Raiders

I love these things. True, I can't raid a Raid Engine or other unique, high-value targets because of the minor electric ammo, but flying around picking guard posts off? Oh yes.

The only Core Guard post the Teleport Raiders did not solo kill was a Spire Shield Guard post (the forcefield with 180 million HP) that was in range of the Mk III Fortress by the AI's home command. My bombers ended up being the one to handle that one since they came to kill that fortress anyway.

I'm not ready to say they are OP, I churned through an awful lot of them. (Just checked my stats, 17,000 teleport raiders built by me during this game.)

However, I would say the re-work has made them viable as a unit and they are certainly in my 'to-play' list so I will be taking them again sometime soonish.



So, I actually finished a game and came to celebrate!

"Experimenting" with 10/10 games and new features (You crazy Astrotrains) does not lend itself to winning many games.

D.

10

AI War / Ancient Shadows Wiki Updates

« on: October 28, 2012, 12:26:06 AM »

Alright.

I've managed to automated updating the wiki pages.

Well, mostly, it's down to less then 60 seconds per normal ship page.

Having said that, I would like a double-check before I go too far, so here are the 4 pages I've done so far:

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Missile_Frigate
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Bomber
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Fighter
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Acid_Sprayer

I'm only updating the pages for the number changes for the new expansion so only the numbers in the Base Stats section have changed.

Can a couple people give it a once over please to make sure I don't have a stupid typo in there somewhere please?

Also, once I get this done, what should be the next thing I tackle? In terms of what you want a wiki reference for in the game?

D.

11

AI War / Energy Managament and Fortresses

« on: October 17, 2012, 11:23:18 PM »

Alright, here's what's prompted this thread.

In my current game I am playing with a multi-ingress defense and you don't get much more powerful for defense then fortresses.

I wanted a fortress Mk I and II on each of my 4 fortress worlds. But at 90,000 and 120,000 energy for a Mk I and II, that is 840,000 energy for the fortresses alone.

I play a single homeworld start so I only get 150,000 energy from a collector so that is 6 systems dedicated to the fortresses alone.

Even with my 4 ingress worlds, I am only planning to take 10 systems by the time I set my defensive line up.

That leaves 4 energy collectors to support the rest of my empire, turrets, mobile fleet, everything.

Now, this makes Fort's Mk II and III essentially unusable due to the number of Metal Converters I would require to support them so I simply can't use Fort Mk II as it stands.

Even the Mk I forts I have built (only 2 of them so far) are crippling my economy. I control 6 systems at the moment and I can't build a 3rd fort due to energy restrictions.

To me, this does not work as the fort's might as well not exist as the energy requirements for using them are too high.

Because of that, I would like to request a decrease in the energy requirement of forts so that they actually become an option to use on a single homeworld start.

What are other peoples experience with this? Especially people playing multi-HW start and so getting the higher energy collector generation?

D.

12

After Action Reports / I shall be Heroic! (and get a Heroic hurt. Ow.)

« on: October 07, 2012, 01:03:20 PM »

Alright.

After the interesting experiences my last couple games have been, I decided to just play a game.

As this is me however, I can't make things simple of course. However, looking back at the walls of text my previous AARs turned into, I'm going to preface my posts with the following points as those are kind of what I'm playing this game for.

Heroic AI Round 2: After the drubbing I got last game, I have something of a grudge against the AI so I set AI1 to Heroic and leave the other at Random All Non-Tech.

Starship Fleet: A few games ago I did have pretty good results with a starship only attack fleet so I'm going to try that again this game.

Repair Station: The mobile repair station will accompany my fleet to see how it currently stands up. It's probably been 15+ games since I used this and in theory it will be a very powerful complement to a Starship attack fleet.

Multi-Ingress Defense: After the change I championed to the multi-ingress defence, I'm going to set up one of those this game to see how it goes.

Mini-Forts: As these tangentially came from the discussion about Multi-Ingress defence I started, going to try these out also.

Other notes: I will make specific comments on that game session here.


Okay, so onto the game itself.

Game Setup:
Diff 9 Heroic
Diff 9 Random All Non-Tech (I draw Counter Spy on game start).
80 Planet Lattice Map and all Expansions on.

Ships:
Complex Available
All sub-types enabled, including CSGs.

Game Options:
Combat: Normal
Unit Cap: Normal
Full Fog of War

AI Options:
Everything Off
0 AIP Auto Progress

AI Plots:
All Off

And Start!

13

AI War / Brainstomring: Status of Command Stations

« on: October 06, 2012, 09:39:10 PM »

Alright.

In about 4 different threads, people has come out saying that the new mini-fort makes military command stations a lot less desirable then they were.

So, all command station discussion to this thread, let's see if we can hammer out some suggestions that make sense that are worth forwarding to Keith.

I'll start off. I envision command stations as the following (not necessarily how I see them currently implemented.)

Military: A direct combat station that is designed for systems where combat is expected. However, not just for a whipping boy but for your border systems to make them more secure.
Economic: Boosts your economy to increase effective m+c income. (Not necessarily a straight boost as currently, maybe change it to a percent increase?)
Logistic: This one is an oddball, I'm not sure what it is supposed to be. The game does not really move 'supplies' for ships in any form and the current speed boost mechanic is not really 'logistical' in how I define the word.


Notes on as implemented:

Military: About right I think. Maybe could use an HP boost, a Mk III military command station has less HP then most Mk I starships.
Economic: As compared to the other two, this one is the overpowered one I feel. I think the biggest reason it is its bonus is on all the time as it is simply a high resource income. The other two command stations only apply their bonus part of the time and so suffer when directly compared. I'm not sure what the fix is though, change then to a % boost of harvesters in system so they are more variable? Maybe decrease their resource income with the new energy model?
Logistics: With all command stations granting the speed increase to all friendly ships, the halving of enemy ship speed really feels like an afterthought and hardly worth it. Even the higher mark stations that grant friendly ships the extra speed feel weak. With all types of stations across all marks all granting a speed doubling to all friendly ships, their special really isn't special.



Thoughts on changes.

I'm kind of throwing suggestions out here to see what you guys think.

First, drop the cap to 3 so the specials can get changed and to keep the Mk II versions relevant. At a cap of 6 I find the Mk II versions simply increase the Knowledge cost of the Mk IIIs as once the Mk IIIs are unlocked you never need to use the Mk IIs again. This would also allow for a Knowledge decrease to make unlocking them easier in general.

Second. Military Stations are probably the closest to 'right' in my opinion. Their biggest weakness is that there are several units, notably fortresses, that are attack boost immune and so do not get the Military Stations biggest reason for existing.

Third, Economic Stations. These did get a pretty big rebalance not that long ago so I'm hesitant to say they need to be nerfed. However, after the energy system changes I'm not sure they are not overpowered at this point. They are right in a thematic sense however in how they boost resource income so maybe reduce their numbers a little on how big a boost they are to your economy.

Also on economic stations, what about changing them to a percentage increase of harvesters in system? That would make their desirability variable based on the number of resource points in the system. However, I think one of the design goals way back when was to decouple the economic station from the resource points so that if the map layout hated you and their were no resource nodes nearby, unlocking economic stations was your alternative to increase your resource income.

Lastly, logistics stations. On these I have no real idea. I don't think I've ever seriously played with them as their theme really doesn't interest me. Maybe change their theme somehow?


So, what do you guys think?

D.

14

AI War / Wave Size and Timing based on Points of Ingress

« on: October 02, 2012, 02:20:18 PM »

My current big 'thing' with the game is that in a serious game pushing your limits, you have to limit the AI's access to your systems to a single ingress point as you simply don't have enough defences to cover more then that effectively.

This results in the situation we have where defending multiple ingress points is magnitudes more difficult then defending a single ingress point.

For the record, I do think that a single ingress point should be easier to defend then multiple ingress points, but only somewhat.

Note that I am talking base game here, I do not have golems, fallen spire or anything else enabled that would help me defend, this is base game me vs. the AI.

I want to push for changes to this, but I want ideas from the community and some sort of consensus on what changes should be made as that is more likely to get implemented then me just commenting about this on my own.

Right now, the wave sizes mechanic is as follows:

With everything else being equal, a certain number of ships will be in the AI waves during a game. The number of ingress points you have will determine how big and how often waves attack. The more ingress points you have, the smaller the waves will be but they will be more frequent. Fewer ingress points will result in bigger waves that attack less frequently.

The result at the end of the game will be that the same total number of ships attacked, just how they attacked will vary.

Now, I have two problems with this scenario:

First, turrets are system specific and I can't be building/scrapping them in response to the different waves. So a multiple system front is reducing my effective turret strength by a massive amount. 2 systems is a 50% reduction, 3 is a 66% reduction and 4 systems is a 75% reduction.

In return, the average AI wave (which comes more frequently remember) is only reduced in size by 25% for 2 systems, 38% for 3 systems and 50% for 4 systems.

However, the maximum wave size regardless of how many ingress points you have does not go down. The maximum wave size is only reduced by 20% if you have multiple ingress points. Even if you have 10 ingress points, the maximum wave size is still only reduced by 20% as compared to a single ingress point.


This leads into my second point of contention with the current system.

Because the relative power of your turrets gets reduced so fast as compared to the incoming waves, you end up covering with your mobile fleet. However, multiple ingress points means you are being attacked by waves more often, so you have to pull your fleet away from attacking the AI and put it on the defensive when the wave attacks. This slows down your own offensive operations and prevents you from taking your fleet away from your own empire for any extended length of time as you need to pull it back to back up your turrets to handle a wave.

I have two suggestions for this at the moment.

First: Reduce the maximum wave size possible for multiple ingress points. You will still be getting the smaller waves more often but you won't get hit by a wave almost as big as a single ingress point wave on a bad roll of the RNG.

Second: Change the actual wave size based on the number of ingress points. This would mean that over the length of the game a player empire with multiple ingress points would face fewer total ships across all waves then a player with a single ingress point.

Now, having said all that, what does the community think?

Do you agree this is an issue or am I barking up the wrong tree?

If you agree it is an issue, what suggestions do you have to tweak it? (Note that messing with turret caps and whatnot has been vetoed by the devs already).

D.

15

AI War / Wiki Updates: Individual Ship Pages

« on: September 13, 2012, 11:33:24 AM »

Alright.

With the changes to the ship caps, every individual ship page has to be redone.

As part of this, what changes would people like to see?

The individual ship pages were the first pages I did on the wiki and they kind of just got stuck in my original layout and never got any revisions at the time.

I've seen some comments in unrelated threads about tweaks people would like to see but can not remember them as the moment so here's your chance to get the changes you want in.

Note that this thread is for the individual unit pages only, the Ancient Shadows stuff is also on the list but will be waiting for the official release before those get serious work. The navigation templates will probably also get tweaked at some point.

Here is the unit page for the Fighter that I am talking about.

D.