Messages

466

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.090 "Fish Or Cut Bait" Released!

« on: October 07, 2012, 09:09:00 AM »

the major energy problems come from a single homeworld/no planets. I cant support as many starships as i can spam knowledge on.

I can spend two systems worth of energy easily enough

Beyond 3+ systems, its usually not an issue. The only reason losing one system's worth of energy is a problem is because many other completely undefended systems are also rapidly lost after that.

Well, from my last game I'm not sure.

9 planets controlled, 1 Energy Collector on each, no Metal Converters anywhere.

Fully constructing my fleet and all defences leaves me with an energy balance of 120,000, less then a single energy collector.

Now, I do have 5 Mk I forts on my defensive line and those are notorious energy hogs, but at 9 systems I should have the energy free to support forts without issue I think.

This is single-HW.

D.

467

AI War / Re: Brainstomring: Status of Command Stations

« on: October 07, 2012, 08:59:32 AM »

The modular command station has been brought up before and it has also been made clear it is a no-go from a design perspective on the part of the devs.

So, we have the 3 types of command stations we do and need to see what we can do with them.

One thought I had on the logistics was to make it a combat support station without being a direct combat station like the military command is.

A thought I had was something like giving a logistics station a planetary wide repair rate of 0.25 but give it a limitation of not being buildable unless all adjacent systems do not have an AI command station so it has to be build behind the lines.

This totally guts the speed special they currently have and it is not really that great a suggestion, but it shows what I mean by combat support as opposed to direct combat.

Wow, so Faulty Logic lays out why he uses Logi stations over Mil, which I laid out myself not to long ago, and people disagreed with me.

I don't disagree with you, rather I can't as I don't use Log stations so I don't have a point of comparison.

Where I disagree is that the logistics is more useful in a combat system then the military station from a design standpoint. If the logistics station has significantly more military value then the military command station, something's gone wrong somewhere.

D.

468

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.090 "Fish Or Cut Bait" Released!

« on: October 06, 2012, 11:23:19 PM »

Seriously?

Wait, multiple homeworlds?

I play single HW and it's not that far off at the moment.

I'd have to pull some stats from my saved games, but in general, I feel that losing one system puts my energy balance pretty low and if I lose two (without losing a significant chunk of my mobile fleet) I'm looking at a power blackout.

I'll pull some quick numbers tomorrow when I load the game up again.

D.

469

AI War / Re: Brainstomring: Status of Command Stations

« on: October 06, 2012, 11:20:45 PM »

I already have some changes for the mil station in mind, but I'll listen if someone has ideas on that one.

I'm hoping they are good ones because at the moment my best idea is a total overhaul of the system that would require significant code work.

In short, you get a single command station unit that is built in all systems, including your home system. (Anything extra for the home system would have to get moved to the Home FF Generator).

Then, upgrades simply upgrade the command station. You unlock Millitary Mk I? All you command stations in the game (both built and future) get the Military Mk I abilities. Short on resources? Unlock Econ Mk I and all command stations (both built and future) now have both the military Mk I and Econ Mk I abilities.

In short, you can upgrade your command stations as much as you want as long as you are willing to spend the knowledge on them.

I'm not going to suggest actually implementing this as with the limited knowledge you have it would quickly bankrupt you and the game engine does not support a unit with variable abilities at this point and that would be a huge code change to implement.

But that's my 'best' idea at the moment for reworking command stations so hopefully it can generate more suggestions and ideas.

D.

470

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.

471

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.090 "Fish Or Cut Bait" Released!

« on: October 06, 2012, 02:13:20 PM »

I believe they are less of a "wave defense" thing and more of a "passerby defense" thing.

That is my understanding also.

I read _K_'s post as a concern that these could invalidate the AI's threat as it makes defense in depth too easy as there is no global cap.

I don't see them as being strong enough for that, pending play testing with them of course.

D.

472

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.090 "Fish Or Cut Bait" Released!

« on: October 06, 2012, 02:03:04 PM »

added a new "Mini-Fortress" unit to the SUP tab of the command-station/mobile-builder buy menu

Unlocking these costs 1000 knowledge

This sounds like a very VERY big deal. At least for my games, where i can often have 5+ ingress points due to my AIP greed. In these games many of my border planets had really ,eager defences as i had to spread them. Not only those mini-fortresses boost this approach, it also makes it possible to spam these at all regular non-border systems, making it ALOT easier to mitigate any leaks that may try to raid defenseless system. All at the cost of 1k knowledge.

I might be overestimating these, but being able to protect not just the border systems, but also your inner territory at virtually no price (cap distribution-wise) sounds unbalanced.
Also, dont forget the energy economy is still broken, so you cant even really balance these with a high energy cost, as you'd have to set it to something ridiculous for that to work.

The rest of the changes are welcome and look very interesting.

I'm not sure, if there's a serious break in your defensive line, at only 2 per system that's only 20% the effectiveness of a Mk I fortress.

Yes, it will stop that 10 or 20 ship leak as they are designed to do, but if your defensive line has fallen, these are not going to deal with a couple hundred AI ships.

Going to start a game to play with them later today, but on paper I'm thinking they look okay. Of course, a balance tweak once they are actually seen in action is expected but I would not expect a big one based on a quick bit of theory craft.

D.

473

After Action Reports / Re: Heroic Fortress King (9/9 balance report and stuff)

« on: October 06, 2012, 12:57:46 PM »

Okay.

Actual AAR time.

That Heroic AI? He hurts, badly.

This is actually an interesting chain of events in play here.

Galaxy Map:


Game Log

First, I had 9 of the 12 systems I had intended to take to secure my corner of the galaxy when everything fell apart.

Oddly enough, it started when I unlocked fortresses. I had been operating under a self-imposed rule this game of not unlocking fortresses or mines as I wanted to challenge the current 'everyone knows' state that fortresses and mines are the best defensive units and were not 'required', but I was having major problems on defence so I needed the punch that fortresses give me to hold the line. I guess proving that fortresses are required for any serious defence, at least multi-world. I did not manage to scrounge up the knowledge to also unlock mines before the game over hit.

I had near max resources so I start on two fortresses and get them built. I start at the north end of my defensive line so Briodaka and Smauyi get fortresses. As my other defences and my fleet are at full, I go to work on planet #10, which is a Mk IV world with a barracks. Zortooth is this Mk IV world. At this point my stored resources at at about 300,000 each after building the fortresses.

This world has been on alert for a while and it is Mk IV with 1,500+ units counting the ones in the barracks. I sneak in to pop the barracks and then pop the command center, falling back in between so I tank the threat in two waves on my defensive line. Having said that, it is still two waves of several hundred Mk IV ships so they take a chunk out of both my fleet and one world on my defensive line. Neither is anywhere near depleted but they are down to the 60-75% strength range.

Before I have a chance to rebuild either, a double wave gets announced to the world at the south end of my defensive line (Veronnoha). I move my fleet in to defend as the world has no fortress and not a strong turret presence as my turrets are spread over 4 worlds (including the one the waves are hitting) at this point. The first wave is 900 spiders, the second is 1,400 etherjets.

The spiders hit about 20-30 seconds before the etherjets and they die as they should, but not before the etherjet wave arrives, escorted by 5 champions. My defences and fleet are still trying to clean the spiders up so the champions get in close before they take damage and my command station shortly dies. Even a Mk II forcefield does not last long against 5 champions.

At this point I'm scrambling, my homeworld is now open and the AI takes adavantage. All 5 champions are still alive and they have a strong etherjet escort.

During all this, the open threat that has been piling up dumps itself into the world I tanked the Mk IV system's ships on and without support from my fleet it falls after a few minutes. This essentially guts my defensive line and I fall everything back to my homeworld.

Led by the 5 champions still alive the AI launches itself into my homeworld and while I've left some token turrets behind, they don't really help.

The two things that allows me to survive is the Mk IV Scout Starship with it's counter missile renders several hundered etherjets a non-issue and the 4 FF Mk Is I built on game start that I had not moved up to my defensive line as I had Mk II FFs for that.

I still lose 4 Home Settlements, that's an extra 20 AIP that is going to hurt in a bit, more on this later..

Having broken the AI's attack, I clean my empire up and start rebuilding. I lost 4 of 9 systems in this attack and with only 300,000 resources in the bank I am quickly broke.

I'm focused on rebuilding until the next two waves get announced and I'm not ready. The first wave to the bottom of my defensive line, most of my turrets are not rebuilt so I sent my fleet in to hold the line. Essentially without turrets to help I will need my entire fleet there.

This is a problem when the other AI launches a wave to the north of my defense line. Fortunately the north was not touched in the previous attack so it, including it's fortress, is intact. This is a good thing as my fleet will not be able to assist as they are still busy at the south end.

I think things are going okay, until the wave arrives at the north end and I see that it includes 7 Shadow Frigates. That 20 AIP from losing home settlements? 2 more shadow frigates so ouch.

That does not go well to say the least.

I now have 7 shadow frigates and most of a wave left in the north and my fleet is still tangling with the wave that arrived in the south.

It is pretty much game over at this point but I do what I can. The only real defence I have left is my fleet and it is down to about 50% so I fall back to my homeworld to intercept the Shadow Frigates.

This turns into a running engagement as the world in the south quickly loses it's command station as the south wave was not totally dead and it follows my fleet into my homeworld.

This does not work, I hold out for a while thanks to how many FFs I have over my home command but I simply don't have the firepower to knock those shadow frigates down before they tear apart said FFs and my home command station is gone.

So ya.

Heroic AI? He hurts.

Thoughts on this game

First, I think I'm done with this game. It is now at the 8 hour game time mark and the worlds outside my defensive line have been on alert long enough that their reinforcements are starting to form barracks so breaking out is going to be painful.

The biggest cause of this was I was using only siege engines on the attack for too long. Sneaking them around under cloak was reasonably efficient but between the rebuild times due to their high loss rate and the extra time sneaking around under cloak costs my expansion was slow. I started making decent progress once I started bringing other units into the mix, but I only did that late in the game.

The other thing is fortresses are required for any sort of serious defence, especially multi-world. I had Military Command Mk II on all my border worlds, so +50% damage to everything in those systems and several turrets unlocked. I was still bringing effectively my entire fleet in to defend against waves so when two waves hit at once I simply got overwhelmed. The firepower vs. knowledge cost for fortresses makes them a must have as soon as your economy can support them for any sort of serious defence.

Note that the fortresses range makes them a lot more effective then their raw DPS numbers would indicate. Also why Missile Turrets are another favorite of mine.

Lastly, I did mis-manage threat in this game. In both the 2nd last and last attacks that took me out, there were several Mk IV ships that I assume were leftovers from that MK IV system I captured way back at the start of this post, I can't think of any other place they would have come from.

Overall, I think I learned several things that did not work and gave the siege engines a good test. I'm going to play a similar setup next go around, probably against a heroic ai again, that's one AI that I now have a grudge against and am going to tear apart.

D.

474

AI War / Re: The Avenger and Fallen Spire

« on: October 05, 2012, 02:37:21 PM »

3k gravity-immune raid starships.

What does that have to do with anything?

Not exactly in line with the OP, but I think it falls under the closely related topic of "kill the player by any means necessary".

There is one notable difference however, which is that the Avenger feels like a final boss of sorts. A slow lumbering beast with a ton of guns sounds much more fun fight than a lightning fast zergrush from 3000 ships. I mean who'd rather fight the imperial fleet than the Death Star?

Except 3000 Gravity Immune Raid Starships beelining for the player's home command station? The player just lost.

They are already tractor immune so nothing will slow them down and with their fast move speed, no unit will get more then one shot as they go past and only 10 need to reach the players home command to kill it in a single salvo as they are already FF immune as well.

Really, the really fancy stuff may be in the expansions but the base game AI has plenty of tools to murderize players as it stands.

D.

475

AI War / Re: The Avenger and Fallen Spire

« on: October 05, 2012, 08:29:35 AM »

An avenger is an awesome unit that has been overshadowed by newer features unfortunately.

The avenger is a base game unit and as such is balanced to fight a human fleet that does not have any of the fancy toys the players get these days.

Last time I fought the avenger with none of the fancy toys enabled (we are talking months ago), I had to neuter the AI homeworld, rebuild my fleet, including all my turrets, in the adjacent system as a road block. I then destroyed the AI home command and the avenger proceeded to blow through my entire cap of both mobile fleet ships and turrets.

Fortunately it is slow, I was able to rebuild a significant chunk of my fleet and destroyed it at my second roadblock system which was adjacent to my own homeworld.

I want to say make spawning multiple avengers possible depending on what options are enabled but I think leaving the avenger as a base game unit and realizing that is going to make it irrelevant against the fallen spire or golems is the way to go.

D.

476

After Action Reports / Re: Heroic Fortress King (9/9 balance report and stuff)

« on: October 04, 2012, 11:45:09 AM »

Well, I've almost got my corner of the galaxy secured and I will do a real AAR post once I've accomplished that.

However, sieges.

Because I've switched to using sieges only against a few, specific targets I've found they work as an expendable unit.

When I have a target that I decide to bring them in for I leave them in place and let them fight it out until they die. When I was using sieges as my primary attack, this stalled my attack until the sieges were rebuilt. Now, I continue the attack with other units and the next time I come across a target for them, my dock has had enough time to rebuild the sieges so they are available again.

From a kills/death standpoint this makes them a lot more effective as they are able to keep firing until they die, unlike when I was running them away to return them to being cloaked they could not fire and so took damage without being able to fire back.

However, it means accepting that when I send the sieges in, I'm going to lose them all. This can be a hit on the economy in the early game, but at this point in this specific game I have a large enough resource base I don't really notice the rebuild cost.

At this point, I am happier with the sieges then I was. I still don't think the sieges fit my style of play however so I'm not sure I'm best person to be giving feedback on them at this point.

For me, they are solidly in the bottom half of the list of bonus ships when ranked by my preference but I don't think they are weak, broken things anymore as my earlier posts were indicating.

D.

477

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!

« on: October 04, 2012, 09:08:18 AM »

One undesired behavior I found: group-moving a collection of teleport-only ships makes them slowboat to their destination. In my case, I use group-move by default, and I keep my teleport-enabled ships in their own control group.

I think solving this to be...desirable for everyone is going to be a nightmare.

The way I'd like to see it is the teleporters do multiple small-hops keeping, roughly, alongside the non teleporting units.

The problem is define small hop? And how do you make them pause?

There is no 'wait' command in the game at all as far as I am aware so the teleporters would still jump out in front, just in a series of small hops instead of one big one.

The way it is now is the best way I can think of, it just needs an additional check that if all selected units are teleporters, then teleport rather then the current move with engines if group-move enabled check that happens. (Warning: Have not actually tried teleporters since the patch.)
D.

478

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

« on: October 04, 2012, 08:57:07 AM »

That is the catch with all this, it does not change the absolute number of ships the AI attacks the player with over the course of the game. (Ignoring things like AIP and so on.)

What this wave size modifier does is determine how long the AI waits between sending attacks.

If that game several small wave size modifiers are rolled by the RNG, you will get more frequent, but smaller waves.

If larger wave size modifiers are rolled you get less frequent, but larger waves.

The absolute number of ships sent over all waves totals up to the same number however.

That is why I feel it is okay to mess with this number, it is only changing when the ships come, not the total amount of ships sent at the player.

If multiple ingress points somehow reduced the absolute number of ships sent that would be broken, yes.

However, going back to my list of conditions for this change, I do want to keep single-ingress the best defensive situation, I'm just trying to make multiple-ingress somewhat harder to defend, not the current cliff wall it currently can be.

How well my suggestion accomplishes this is up for debate of course, but that is where I currently stand.

D.

479

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

« on: October 03, 2012, 09:01:49 PM »

Actual suggestion time

Okay.

Having read over everyone's posts and seen where people are coming from, I'm going to make an actual suggestion on what I'd like to see happen.

This suggestion is affecting the wave size multiplier relative to the number of ingress points only.

While I think things like the fortress rework or the mini-fortress border control unit have potential, just tweaking the wave size is much more straightforward and does not actually impact single ingress at all.

The following conditions went into my suggestion:

First, this number of ingress points affecting wave size is phased in over the first 2 hours of the game so I'm not concerned with the real early game with this change.
Second, this should not change single-ingress waves at all.
Third, single-ingress should stay the optimal defensive situation, multiple ingress needs to stay harder then single ingress, just not as much harder as it currently is.
Fourth, this difficulty is accomplished by required mobile units to back your turrets up.
Fifth, this is intended to affect early-mid game more then late game. As you get into late game, gate-raiding should be a larger part of controlling the AIs access to your empire rather then trying to defend a long front continuously by taking advantage of this mechanic.

So, with that in mind, here is my actual suggestion.

For comparison, here are the current multipliers:

# of Ingress	Min Wave Size	Max Wave Size
1	Diff*90	Diff*150
2	Diff*60	Diff*120
3	Diff*30	Diff*120
4	Diff*0	Diff*120
5	Diff*-30	Diff*120
6+	Diff*-60	Diff*120

My suggestion is to change them as follows:

# of Ingress	Min Wave Size	Max Wave Size
1	Diff*90	Diff*150
2	Diff*50	Diff*110
3	Diff*40	Diff*100
4+	Diff*20	Diff*90

This takes the maximum wave size at 2 ingress points from 80% to 73%, 3 ingress to 67% and 4 ingress to 60%.

The minimum wave size is 55%, 44% and 22% respectively so the average wave size at 2 ingress is 89%, 3 ingress 93% and 4 ingress is 96% of previous.

This keeps the average wave size roughly the same but lowers the maximum wave size while increasing the minimum wave size to balance everything out.

This solves my big issue with multiple ingress points, that of the maximum wave size not decreasing so that is what you have to plan for, irregardless of the fact that the average wave size was decreasing.

It also stop at 4 ingress points. The -30 and -60 at 5 and 6 ingress points could lead to laughably small waves so I don't see the need to have this calculation go any farther then 4 ingress points.

Now, while this is what I feel is appropriate for the higher difficulties I play at, I do need someone to confirm that this will not result in cheese at difficulty 7 by having 4 ingress points result in  laughably small waves.

Does someone have logging enabled in a difficulty 7 game that they could post the MainThreadLog.txt please?

And that's my suggestion, thoughts everyone?

D.

480

AI War / Re: Engineer priorities

« on: October 03, 2012, 07:39:58 PM »

I just want to chime in and make sure that directly right-clicking a dock will keep that engineer at the dock.

If the dock is sitting there doing nothing, I don't want that engineer wandering off because its build job is complete, if I right-click a dock that engineer stays at that dock.

Uhhhh, I actually don't want that behavior. It has always bothered me when me engineers sit at a dock. If I had a loop build setup but it has capped out I want the engineers to be able to roam around and do other things but return to the dock when done.

Do I smell another addition to the CTRL menu?

Just leaving the engineer parked next to the dock does not work for you then? If you don't give it a specific order it will assist the dock unless something else comes up.

For me, I want the engineer to stay put because I have that dock dedicated to younglings. I want those things spammed ASAP and quickly when they start dying so I dedicate engineers to the docks.

In most cases I don't do this but for younglings and other short lived ships it makes a big difference to me.

D.