Messages

61

After Action Reports / Re: Oh. Dear. Lord.

« on: November 18, 2012, 04:19:44 PM »

-- State of the Universe --

Alright, where am I?  I've just reclaimed Poker and need to re-establish Nero's Fiddle (and clean out that other 500 ship barracks behind me before it gets rediculous).  The fleet's a tattered wreck after the first assault on Nero's Fiddle, they're rebuilding in a famine econ.

AIP is 92, threat is 286 (mostly MK III), no wave, and I seriously need to get another system before I end up completely stagnated.  Either Sox for the other Whipping Boy or Roulette for the Shield Bearers.  Both by preference.  Next research is Riot IIs for Tazers on the Whips.

Light 'em up.

-- Rebuilding the fleet --

6:15:25 The Raid I fleet is still viable, so there's got to be a target for 'em while I wait.  I decide I'm going to punch the Tach Drill through Cyborg next over in the northern cluster to my west to see if I can get scouts a little deeper over there.

There's a mob on the gate entry from Wonder Woman however.

6:17:03 The Raids trade one raid for one tachyon down and head home for repairs.

They don't make it home through Wonder Woman however.  There's a small battery on the Matrix gate.

6:19:52 Turn off starship construction once the last corvette is rebuilt to allow fleet to rebuild.

6:22:10 The fleet's finally rebuilt, sans Flagships and Factories.  I'm going to try to end-swing the blockade at Nero's Fiddle by going around the south and coming in from a different gate.

6:23:53 Wave announces for Matrix, 719 ships.  They're on their own, but hopefully some of the WW threatball will commit.  The fleet just arrived in Sox, having passed through Neverending Story and Misery on the way.  I'm going to let the fleet do a little cleanup work here in preparation to take it before moving north to Earth and then to Nero's Fiddle.

6:25:00 The fleet, down to 4 corvettes, 74 Frigates, and crapall else after duking it out in Sox against the SF stream as well as the local guardian defenders tucks tail for home to refleet.  More threat heads for Nero's Fiddle from the backwash of assaulting Sox.

6:29:00 Wave defeated, Fleet ready again, this time with Factory ships.  Econ still in the dirt.

6:31:00 Main fleet arrives on Sox again.  Most of the defenders are gone but the SF stream is strong here.  Lot of frigs with some zombard support.

6:31:00 AIP: 93 from autoprogress

6:32:54 The fleet clears Sox of all Tach and non WHGPs.  It's time to assault Earth.  175 ships of MK III Earth.

6:34:00 With the fleet having hammered into EArth and Earth now having 222 ships instead of 175, we did decent damage.  The fleet's retreated to Sox to handle any 'leftovers' that might come their way, recharge corvette shields, and rebuild fighters.  About 50% of the fleet survived first wave.

The enemy has chased us to Sox in force, with over 100 ships and rising.

6:35:00 At 54 ships left, the fleet realizes it's going to die.  Hoping the corvettes can use the frigates as a screen they run for homeworld.

That barely works, 3 Corvettes make it home.  The sheer firepower obliterated the fleet.  These are mostly SF units.  Looks like I need to bait them to their death again.

Meanwhile, Poker's been assaulted by the other portion of Earth that moved out.  The threatball on Nero's Fiddle still won't move, but these guys decided to attack.

Poker doesn't last very long.  I'm going to end up in an Econ Spiral here.

6:39:30 With the loss of Poker's resources I turn off the starship builder again so hopefully I can get enough fleet to evict the 60+ MK III ships parked on Poker.

Right now 440 SF troops are just parked in Sox, another 283 leftover threat from the CPA are chilling in Nero's, and 65 threat from Earth are hanging out on Poker.  I've got a mess.

6:42:23 The fleet, finally rebuilt, heads for Poker.

6:43:22 Eviction complete, minus a few hobos hiding under their cloaks.  I send in a rebuilder.  Over half the fleet was lost retaking Poker but at least the starships didn't fall.

6:44:30 An energy crisis has arisen with the loss of Poker.  That's just great.

6:45:19 As the Mil I on Poker comes online, the cloaked ships re-appear and blow it to pieces.  They ignored the fleet and were just waiting for the command center.  Tricksy hobbits.

6:45:50 The SF buildup in Sox is up to 500+ ships.  The backdoor is no longer open.

6:47:12 Fighting with Poker's problems has led me to the next issue.  Flat econ and 1,713 ship wave for Matrix.  I've definately econ spiraled.

Gods,a 713 ship carrier.  That thing's viscious.

6:51:00 With fleet support the wave is stopped with reasonable losses at the LRM lines, basically the last defensive point.

Sox is now a parking lot of nearly 600 ships.

6:52:30 the fleet heads after Nero's Fiddle.  Front door.  They barely survive the alpha strike... and aren't able to kill all the medics, one remains.  Only two corvettes are still alive.

6:55:00 Another wave hits Matrix, 107 ships.  Odd... all Reclaimers.  Great.

77 of them push up to the Basics and lay waste to them in a salvo.  63 make it to the laser banks and pretty much flatline those, too.

49 make it to the MLRS turrets and bypass the HBCs completely.

They're finally stopped about halfway to the mini-fort/LRM line.  Yeesh.

6:57:00 Wanderer says Fuggit.


Alright, there's a few things here that are seriously fouling me up... one of which is photobucket changing their site around and it screwing up horribly.

I've attached the save.  Keith, if you get bored enough, can you check out two things for me?

First, why is Sox a parking lot?

Second, why won't the threatball on Nero's Fiddle commit to anything?  Is it because of all the dead turrets?

100 planets I think is just too large a galaxy at this level, at least for me.  I can't drill/picket everything I want to and the extra planet or two between me and the first ARS is just too far to really work with.

The new SF are kicking me around like a ragdoll.  They are BRUTAL, and a massive delay between CPAs.  The next CPA will kill me, once again I'm dying to stagnation/econ spiral.

The new spire corvettes are too much of a research investment to use, particularly as a starter ship.  To really get the power out of them you need to drop a ton of research into turretry and the corvettes themselves.  They're a fun toy but the K cost is too high for the DPS delivery and they're inanely expensive on rebuilds.  The raw numbers may tell a different story but they're just not powerful enough for what they cost.

I did not have the critical mass of fleet to really fight this war.  This was a critical issue.  I just don't have the numbers in MK II ships to actually take on threatballs.

Medics and Reprocessors.  Oh gods, Medics and Reprocessors.  They're brutal in the hands of the AI.  You can't 'whittle' against a fleet with medics in it, it's kill or run.  Reprocessors are just tanks.  You beat on them all day in the volume the AI gets them and they just don't DIE... and then they cloak past your heavy defenses and pop up right in your face with all those HP.  Combine these two monsters and... yeah.  Ow.

I'm starting to think you may absolutely need to have Champs to play at this difficulty to avoid econ spirals.  Rebuilds against massive SF fleets and the like are just brutal.

I'm going to go enjoy a few games without taking the time to AAR them, and get a better handle on dealing with these new tactics without using the Champs. I'll get around to Champions, but in general I usually avoid superweapons in most of my AARs.  You've watched me bang my head on the desk here, now I'm gonna go have some fun with it until I get a better handle on things.

Y'all are welcome to pick up the save and see if you can get out of the hole I've dug here, however, I honestly won't take offense. 

62

AI War / Rebuilders, Command Centers, and energy

« on: November 18, 2012, 03:47:53 PM »

Alright, I appear to have created a perfect storm for my rebuilders to screw up.

Planet was assaulted, repeatedly, until I'm at literally 0 energy from reconstructions elsewhere.  Now, I've got turrets and the like on this planet.  The rebuilders are ignoring the dead command center and keep trying to rebuild other stuff.

Recommendations?  I'm sending a new colony ship over and scraping the old command center, but it would be nice if the rebuilders would prioritize the CCs.

Edit 2: And Energy Collectors.

63

After Action Reports / Re: Oh. Dear. Lord.

« on: November 18, 2012, 02:58:00 PM »

Wow, quite a battle there

Tell me about it, and I'm not even done with it.  Those CPAs are getting viscious cleaning out the MK III barracks behind me.  I'm going to have to pop the other one before I seal the breach I think.

64

After Action Reports / Re: Oh. Dear. Lord.

« on: November 17, 2012, 07:55:27 PM »

5:45:00 The fleet cleans out Dyson Misery and then heads back to support Nero's Fiddle which is under significant assault.  The reclaimers have cloaked past the mini-forts and have heavily hit the spider-bank on the edge.  Eventually FRD is required for Zombard hunting.

5:50:00 3 mins, 30 secs till 2k ship CPA.  Threatball on Wonder Woman is at ~200 ships, including a 39 unit carrier from an earlier U-Turn.

Econ at 265k/747k.  I'm banking for repairs and rebuilding Nero's Beachhead until the CPA is cleaned up.

5:51:42 245 ship wave announced for Matrix.  There's... something horribly wrong with that value.  My guess, it's a mono-wave of something BIG.  The fleet heads to support.  The CPA releases 30 seconds after the wave so I want it cleaned up quickly either way.

5:53:22 Econ: 399k/945k.  the wave lands.  242 E-Bomber IIs and a smattering of IIIs.  Gyeads.

Support threat immediately comes in.  140 cutlasses and a handful of other trash.

5:53:54 CPA launches.
258 MK II
19 MK I
1,246 MK III
577 MK II from reserve.

Fleet's been hiding under the FFs so they're intact, and most of the cutlasses are down (or ran away again) and we're down to only 109 E-Bombers.

A huge amount of threat released off Marlboro, 866 ships, and another 125 on No Way Out.

They're both behind me.  The beach-head is going to get TOASTED.  I immediately ship the fleet out to Nero's and let the turretball handle the remaining e-bombers and starships.

5:55:00 Turretry on Poker is dealing with drifters coming in from Arrakkis.  631 enemy ships have landed on Nero's Fiddle so far.  The fleet's ALMOST there.

88 of those ships are Siege Engines.  Seriously?  That's like critical mass there.

5:56:30 90 ships are on Poker, seriously threatening the defenses.  20 of them are reprocessors just tanking the mini-forts, another 5 are medics which are doing their best to keep things alive.

Meanwhile, on the Fiddle, the spider-bank has been assaulted.  Just too many ships to try to stop them all.  The fleet is concentrating on shredders to try to keep them from multiplying but it means they're ignoring serious firepower ships, like the 54 Ebomber IIs, the 166 Bomber II/IIIs, or the 69 siege Engines.

With only two Corvettes and nothing else left, the fleet attempts to retreat to Poker.  Only the two corvettes make it ( a I and a II).  Homeworld fleet rebuilds are being shipped to FRD on Poker.

Only one corvette makes it through Poker and heads to Strana (homeworld) for repairs.  Poker is now defending from 181 ships and falling.

5:58:12 Poker command falls.  Defense is now on the homeworld.

Econ is at 1.3k/715k.  Manual metal converter activation ignited.

I've been wondering where the majority of the threat is, they're still in Nero's Fiddle.  Apparently the Human Resistance showed up to give a hand with what I THINK used to be ~100 ships.  They're fighting off on the edge and I have nothing left on that system to support them other than scrap metal.

Wonder Woman is also sitting on 860 threat now, 412 in firepower.  Only 366 threat still on Nero's.

The 825 ships on WW include 160 bombers (mostly IIIs), 383 Cutlasses (also mostly IIIs), 27 Siege engines, an Imposion Guardian III, and sporadic other inclusions.  They're not committing against the turret-ball.

6:00:00 An attempt to get back to Poker fails miserably, I send my scouts over so I can get eyes on it.

There's 192 ships just parked on Strana's wormhole.  That's great.

Wonder Woman is now up to 1000+ ships as a threatball.  The frigates are catching up.

Fleet is about half rebuilt.

6:00:45 The threatfleet assaults Matrix. 937 MK III with a smattering of IIs engage and the Missile Frigates are making quick work of anything without radar dampening.

6:01:00 AIP: 92 due to autoprogress.

6:01:14 Econ down to 16k/203k.  Final Corvette II should be off the lines shortly and the fleet will attempt to take back Poker.  The Turret ball will have to hold on its own.  The assault is down to 685 ships but the Lightning/Flak FFs are about to drop, which means the massive tractor wall will fall shortly... and the cutlasses have been wailing away on those turrets non-stop.

6:01:33 The fleet is rebuilt mostly, missing a bunch of flagships.  It'll have to do.  The fleet prepares to assault the Poker threat remnants.

6:02:00 With two FF IIs still alive protecting the tractors, the turretball is down to only 146 enemies, but all the short/mid range turrets are dead. Still 289 threat out there, but most of it's on Nero's Fiddle.

Unfortunately, we revolving doored the Poker fleet, and they poured into Strana as my fleet moved to engage them.

6:02:45 Econ is famine.  What we've got is what we've got.  Turretball trying to rebuild.

Strana is defended with minimal casualties, maybe 1/2 of the main fleet but no corvettes.  Time to get Poker online, need the resources.

6:04:30 No, SERIOUSLY you silly rebuilder, START WITH THE Command Center!!!  Dangit.  I can't even force it to do the command center first.  Twiddle.  C'mon...

6:05:00 Finally.  Sheesh.

6:06:42 The fleet's holding off the threatball formed up on Fiddle waiting to get into Poker.  Econ is at -4.5k/s  -5.5k/s.  Yeah, this'll take a bit.

Well, that's one of the rearward barracks emptied out at least.

6:08:45 Mil I on Poker comes online.  Can get that econ back up and running there again once the harvesters build.

6:09:40 Still rebuilding fleet/turrets/miniforts.  Twiddle.

6:10:22 1,350 enemy ships to Matrix in 140.  Turretball still trying to rebuild, too, mostly the FFs.

6:11:56 Fleet's rebuilt but Poker will drop like a rock if I move the fleet to support Matrix.  I'm going to bait the enemy in.  Fleet heads back to Strana now that the majority of the defenses are rebuilt on Poker, just waiting on mini-forts.

Wave lands.  350 ship carrier + 468 Cutlass, 254 Vulture, 158 Bomber, 120 Frigs.   Think the fighters died in the alpha.

Even with the fleet retreated, the threatball is not committing.  Hm.

6:12:33 Carrier pop was a mess of fighters and a few starships.  There's a Spire II and a Raid II that were hiding in this mess somewhere too.  Still no threatball committal.

6:13:00 Down to 633 wave ships but still no committal by the Fiddle threatball.  I'm not willing to commit the fleet until I know I don't have 300+ MK III's breathing down my neck.

6:13:30 The wave is mostly destroyed.  147 ships left.  It's time to deal with the Fiddle.  The fleet moves out to take that threatball on at point blank range.  The heavy tractor at the entry wormhole has kept escaping threat to a reasonable level.

6:14:00 the fleet hits Nero's Fiddle.  ALpha strike.  1/3 of the bombers, 1/2 of the fighters down for the fleet. I sic the fleet on the zombards attempting to escape.  With the FF's down on the Corvettes I retreat the fleet, 286 enemy ships remain, some are zombies.

I get out with 20 bombers, 18 frigates, 3 corvettes,  no Neinzuls, and 26 fighters.  Ow.

Medics are repairing the enemy fleet in Nero's Fiddle and there's shite I can do about it.

Econ's still on the floor.

Well, I was able to block the CPA but now I have to dig back out of the hole.  See earlier maps, nothing's changed and I've got dinner plans so I'm just going to post this for now and I'll try to make it 'pretty' later.

65

AI War / Re: Discussion: Player Economy

« on: November 17, 2012, 05:02:23 PM »

Total mats for refleet:
10.3 million  Take out the MK IV bomber SSs and it's 7.9 mill.

Hmm, interesting.  Amused by the fighters not even being mentioned, but I suppose that's appropriate

LOL, yeah.  They're what, 40k and died to a stiff wind?  Dragging along Neinzul Is actually keeps them in the fight now though so I'm starting to appreciate them more, though they're a consistant drain when the fleet's in operation.

66

AI War / Re: Discussion: Player Economy

« on: November 17, 2012, 04:38:48 PM »

Alright, I pulled up one of my AI10/10 wins (I know, NOT a good balance point generally) to get final numbers at near end-game.

This would be the 9 through 10 run game... but the timing's a bit fouled and it was with the old energy system so it's all over the blinking place economically and for power.  However, I can get fleet numbers from this.

Fabs:
Bomber SS IV: 4 * 600k      2.4kk
Blade Spawner V: 5 * 128k  640k
Space Plane V: 172 * 2.4k   413k
Speed Booster: 98 * 3.7k    362k
Spider V: 96 * 2k                192k

Fact IV:
Bomber IV: 96 * 9.8k          941k
Maw IV: 5 * 150k                750k

Turretball: Dear gods, there's 4 fortresses on this thing.  However, ignoring 10/10 inanity, it's mostly MK I with dyson support.
Autobombers I/II: 96 * 100, 96 * 200 ... negligible 29k, being used defensively anyway.

Main Fleet (standard):
Starships:
Raid SS I/II: 3*82k, 3*164k                               738k
Flagship I: 4* 100k                                            400k
Bomber SS I: 4*100k                                         400k
Cloaker SS I (covering the repair fleet): 2* 60k    120k
Scout Starship (anti snipe/stealth post): 5*15k     75k

Fleet:
Bombers I/II/III: 96* 1.6k, 96* 3.2k, 96*6.6k (odd drift there, MK IIIs are 5800/800, probably a typo)    1.1kk
Frigates I/II: 96* 1.2k, 96*2.4k                                      345k
Grenade I/II: 96*1k, 96*2k                                            288k
Sentinel Frigate I/II: 19*3.9k, 19*7.8k                            222k
Acid Sprayer I/II: 96*440, 96*900 (another drift)             128k
Maw I/II/III: 5*25k, 5*50k, 5*100k (yet another drifter)  875k

Total mats for refleet:
10.3 million  Take out the MK IV bomber SSs and it's 7.9 mill.

Edit: Due to the above question on the spire, allow me to assure that said fleet listed above can and did wipe... often.  That was against Core Raid Engines and CPA defenses, though, not in standard affairs.

67

AI War / Re: Discussion: Player Economy

« on: November 17, 2012, 04:11:25 PM »

Interesting, thanks for the numbers and analysis; that's probably more important at this stage than anecdotal accounts, etc.

Not a problem.  I'd been meaning to do this eventually.  Life had just been geting me distracted.  I purposely left the cost of my Raid SSs out of the above calculations which add additional pressure to the econ because they never come home, but because of how I use them either they replace the fleet for Eye planets or they're disposable heroes.

What do the refleeting costs look like later on and/or with superweapons of various kinds?  That goes for all of you.

Assuming final fleetball?
5*MK I/II of bonus ships, MK I-IV of primary bonus, MK I-IV bombers, MK I/II Frigs and MK I of Fighters.  Um, hm.  I'm going to have to dig up an older end-game save and do the math, but end game fleets skew oddly.  Usually it's the lower end craft that are dead and you have enough firepower that during a chase scenario if you string out the enemy you don't end up overwhelmed so you don't *usually* wipe unless you foul up on an AI HW/Coreworld, and those are special events you plan for.

68

AI War / Re: Discussion: Player Economy

« on: November 17, 2012, 03:31:15 PM »

Secondly, you seem to be forgetting the massive benefit of using a Logistical or Military Orbital in place of an Econ Station, where upgraded Harvesters pose have no negative drawback in that regard.  Not sure why everybody keeps ignoring that.

+25% damage for the whole planet, basically immunity to raid starships, powerful defensive translocation ability, and immunity to blades (this is huge against many melee ships) OR half enemy speed, double your own speed (which has already been doubled, so it's like quadrupled right?).  And this is all just at level 1.  Let's please stop pretending like that isn't a factor when taking into account the benefits and drawbacks of Harvesters vs. Econ Stations.

Just a clarification to this.  Mil station is +19% bonus to all allies, not 25%.  All command stations (including econ) double friendly move speed, but the logistics adds to the friendly move speed by a set amount.  It significantly helps very slow ships (think siege SS) but it's not much of an effect on higher speed units (fighters/raptors).

My personal observation of the stations however was prior to the harvester upgrade, which used to be so dismal to not be worth upgrading EVER, I would immediately open MK II econs for the first planet I took and the first 6 would always get MK III other than the whipping boy(s), which usually got a Mil I for turret boosting.  Mil stations previously with the translocation firepower was too weak to defend a satellite anyway so I simply econ'd the satellite systems as well, fully expecting them to self destruct (high-impact satellites would get a transport/cloaker/3 engis/colonization ship stuffed into a nearby system for rebuilds), except for the Fact IV systems.

When harvesters were less effective, I simply ignored the other command stations until very late game when I'd usually upgrade to MIL IIIs to try to help defend the outer colonies since their econ output was higher than the Econ IIs they were replacing. (Mil III is 96/96 where an Econ II is 80/80 + negligible Energy)

So, yes, 6 systems of Econ III not using logistics or mil stations, but otherwise, they really didn't change it that much unless your empire was HUGE.  Those worlds in most of my games tended to be hidden behind chokepoints, because of how I selected my maps, so that makes a huge difference as to their vulnerability.

So I partially agree with Wingflier here, there is an impact to not having the other stations on hand when you need to use the econ stations, but I don't feel it's an all or nothing scenario.  It's reasonable to tuck your Econ IIIs in the 'back' and use the other upgraded facilities which are roughly equivalent to the Econ IIs.  By the time you're at an empire of that size though I don't feel that it matters much however, harvester or econ.  You're either floating in M+C and just building off mercenaries to keep it from hitting 1M/1M or you're fighting for your life with every inch of your econ.  Late game seriously sees feast/famine econs, primarily because the bank is so small compared to the size of the fleet I'm trying to rebuild, and I fully support expanding the size of that bank, even if it's just the opportunity to build my own distribution nodes as emergency funds.

The econ is most fluid, in my games, in the early/midgame, where there's not a lot of systems taken yet ( up to about 5 or 6) so the econ strength is highly important to my ability to refleet to drive through a MK IV world eventually or if they're just brick walls.  This is the time where I see my per second income mattering for the rebuilding of fleet ships while my fleet comes home for R&R, or if it was able to bank enough for a full rebuild.

In the games were I use Econ Stations, the border worlds simply don't matter as to their resource counts, I'd just take 'em and toss up Econ IIIs.  In games where I've been concentrating on Harvesters, I usually only take worlds that have high collector amounts, which definately changes my galactic strategies.

I've just sat back down with my 9.6 game.  At 5:45 and AIP 91, I've got 191k Metal, 570k Crystal, and 45,000 available power.  I've taken 3 worlds, a 3/3, a 1/4, and a 4/3, all of them simply borderworlds while I scout.  My homeworld is currently running two matter converters to keep my fleet and defenses powered and the fleet is prepping to head back out into the wild again. 

My fleet, on a wipe, will cost me 4 Spire Corvettes ( 135k mats at MK I, 270k mats at MK II, so 910k in resources alone, not including modules), 96 Bomber Is (1600 each, 153k), 96 Fighter Is( 400 each, 38k), 96 Frig Is (1200 each, 115k), 4 Flagships (100k ea), 2 Neinzul Is (40k each).  That's ~1.7 mill in mats to rebuild just the fleet, and mostly MK I, and most of it is concentrated in my bonus ships. 

On a wave on average I lose the 'front line' of the defenses.  That's 4 leech starships ( 100k ea), 2 FF IIs (48k ea, 96k/2), 3 FF Is (24k ea, 72k/2), 49 Flak I turrets ( 4.8k ea, 240k/2), 49 Lightning Is (4k ea, 200k/2), 5 Tachy Is (3k ea, 15k/2), 25 Tractor Is (7.2k ea, 180k/2), about 10 of my grav Is (7.5k ea, 75k/2), 78 Basic Is ( 2k ea, 156k/2), 38 Basic IIs (4k ea, 152k/2), 78 Laser Is ( 2.2k ea, 171k/2), and usually the MRM/HBC bank unless it's a really light wave, so that's 3 HBC I's( 17.5k ea, 52.5k/2) and 78 MRM Is (2.2k ea, 171k/2).  Ignoring the starships I'm using as cannon fodder and attempts to reclaim, in just turretry thats 790k in materials that are spent repairing for wave defenses, roughly.  Waves are landing roughly every 10-12 minutes gametime from the advanced logging, and they're Mil I boosted.  If the sieges and leeches bite it on defense that's another 800k since they're not repairable and need to be rebuilt.

My current econ with Harvester IIIs is metal: 1132 - 211 = 921/s, and crystal: 1462 - 202 = 1260/s, so total of 2,181/s.  My build queues are currently mostly empty except for a bomber being built to replace the handful I lost taking out a fortress, so that's pretty close to my max econ.

As my econ stands, to get 790k in materials to rebuild after a standard wave takes 362.21 seconds, about 6 minutes.  This means half my current econ (with Harvester IIIs) is being poured into/saved for defenses.  That gives me another 5 minutes worth of econ to work with the fleet, which is roughly 654k in mats, not counting the crystal -> metal conversions which my bombers give me fits over.  Ignoring the corvettes, which are .9 of my 1.7mill fleet, that leaves me 800k in fleet to rebuild if they wipe, which means ~1.2 waves worth of econ.

I'm sorry, but I'm having a very hard time seeing how y'all have this huge economy at low planets to the point that harvesters are broken.  Yes, I get some feast-times too when my fleet does everything right and I can get a bonus, but really in my games that's just a bank for later so I can get the fleet out again, or maybe sink a bit of materials into other goals, like a transport fleet or some additional starships.  When I take another planet for resources (Econ or Harvester) the AIP goes up and my defensive costs go up too.  In theory if I can soak the defensive costs my offensive costs go up (hopefully to the point where they go back down later because the fleet ball can handle things without wipes).  Sure I'll max off to 999s but that's barely enough to refleet with, and that's a mostly MK I fleet, and it'll be awhile before I return to it.

*scratches his head* I must be doing something severely wrong here...

69

AI War / Re: Discussion: Player Economy

« on: November 16, 2012, 07:00:01 PM »

I'm going to try to finish up my 9.6 game this weekend.  I currently am playing a near base game and I don't see the volume of issues other players are commenting on.  On rare occasions I have some surplus but it's  definitely not as overwhelming as others are seeing, so I'm wondering if it's end game totals that are skewing perception or if I'm just that much more aggressive with my resource usage during  midgame.

I should be able to have some hard numbers when I'm done with that and hopefully can debate my perspective from firmer ground.

70

Game Development / Re: Unity in general

« on: November 16, 2012, 04:02:40 PM »

Note to self paying from your new iphone knockoff is a serious pita.  Yeah I meant the intelligence equivalent there.

71

Game Development / Re: Unity in general

« on: November 16, 2012, 02:06:19 PM »

Cheers! Good luck to you, it sounds like you're at the early stages of a fun journey. My main comment is: unity 3d actually greatly simplifies a lot of things about game development. Most of your opening comments apply to game development as a whole, heh.

Agreed, and thanks.  Yeah, some of this is just figuring out what a Matrix is, or a Vector2.  I know what they mean... ish... but not completely what they're representing.

Not to say unity isn't complex, but you're not having to deal with raw vertices and triangle faces and so on unless you really choose to; you're not having to worry about initialization sequences for the various directx sub-components, each of which is more than a little complex; you don't have to worry about completely resetting everything by hand whenever the fullscreen mode changes (having to do this is why so many older early-2000s games would crash on the switch); and so on and so forth.

Oh, I can imagine.  I knew the pool was deep from some direct code work I did on some 2D games and programming courses WAY back (think Win 95 wayback) but um... yeah.  This pool got a lot deeper when I wasn't looking.   

C# is superior   Sorry, had to get that out of my system.  Though I'm sure it will recharge in the next 5 minutes.

Superior perhaps, but I've been doing VBA/VBscript coding so long it's second nature.

I'm working through a copy of Unity 3x Game Development by Example - Beginner's Guide.

We didn't use any books (at least, I didn't) but from what you said it's helping, so that's good.

Fair enough, but I'm coming to the conclusion of just how much I'm a neophyte in the game implementation mechanics.  I've been theoretical FAR too damned long.

But that said, it is actually usable, if you're not too perfectionistic and are well practiced in the general form of "bang head against brick wall until it comes down", and if you've been programming that long I'm sure you're pretty good at that.

LOL, yeah, eventually head to desk impact maintenance on code performs as advertised.

We've only used the PC support, Mac support, and web-browser support (for Tidalis Lite), but I have to say it's incredibly good.  Not without some pain (Tidalis's release was our first official mac support, and there were some unity bugs that did awful things... but those bugs have been fixed since then, it was the late 2.x days for unity), and since Chris handled most/all of the porting itself I'm sure he's probably less unanimous in his praise for it... but all told, the porting works, and it works well.

That's awesome to hear.

One thing to bear in mind when making inferences from our stuff is that we deviate substantially from the path that Unity tries to guide you down usage-wise.  I think the only GameObject's we use are:

Um.  Er.  Hm.  Thanks for the warning.

Unity uses mono and it works great   There's a few things that aren't as good as .NET but the biggest weakness in our setup is the lack of ability to do generalized line-level profiling, and that's more a weakness of the Unity setup than the mono one (I think current versions of mono have at least the necessary basic support for this).

I have a few complaints about mono but its not mono's entirely mono's fault.  It's that I'm just not used to its idiosyncracies, like the file needs to be saved before a variable gets added to the keyword collection, or that the keyword collection doesn't always include certain items in function arguments that it'll include in a newline.

Thanks for the extra information guys.  It'll probably just back burner for a while as I dig through it and goof around.  I don't think the first stages of my project are overly ambitious other than the fact that I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing yet.     Luckily being in software design this long has given me a good ground state for the mixed waterfall/sprint model I prefer, and I'm tackling things in (what I currently think) is a reasonable volume of work per step.  Well, at least that's what the incomplete design doc looks like so far.  I'm still working through Chapter 9 for now!   

72

Game Development / Unity in general

« on: November 16, 2012, 12:18:48 AM »

Arcen: You guys are nuts.  A good kind of nuts, but nuts.

I know part of it is that I'm more VB.NET than C#/Java, so I'm having syntactical arguments, but still.  I'm working through a copy of Unity 3x Game Development by Example - Beginner's Guide.  The GUI components alone are head-smacking in the thousands of small pieces to using it, and they're about as obvious as a cricket hiding under the desk.  You know it's THERE... but WHERE?

Errr, oh, why the hell am I going head-diving into Unity?  Three reasons. 
1) Someone recently pointed out an article of game engines and Unity's price (FREE! ... until you actually can make some money) made me curious enough to dive into this engine.

2) I have a reasonable idea of what can be done with the engine by a handful of talented folks and I have a game idea that's been stuck in my head for YEARS.  Everyone does, the only game ideas that count are the implemented ones.  Well, alright then!  Unity also has the ability to port to phone app reasonably well from what I've read up on and said idea could be reasonably tweaked to an app... actually, it'd probably be BETTER as a portable app.

3) Well, crap, if I'm going to dive into a public engine, it might as well be an engine that built a game I love.  Maybe then I can read the code bursts that Keith drops off more often... and I have a reasonably friendly relationship with a professional developer in the engine if I get well and truly stuck.

Some personal views 7 chapters into the 'unity for utter morons' book I'm using.  Great book.  Holy depth.  Ignore the 'tutorial' with Zelph or whatever his name is, it's broken enough and Unity has too many changes since its last iteration.  And the bouncy camera will make you puke within 30 minutes... which I don't think it was supposed to do but I couldn't figure out how to fix it so I went to a more 'Unity for Morons' approach with my learning.  Need to learn to crawl.

I did some 3D modeling for an XCom remake awhile back so I have a little familiarity with it.  I suck at it for larger models, particularly animated ones, but stills I can do reasonably, so I have some 'friends' I'm working with when I want to goof around.  That's not the point.  Unity has so many unique elements to it that you have to learn for just this engine.  Just the empty game-object alone can take some understanding.  Its interfacing is both easy to use and a huge PITA sometimes.  There are a ton of internal components to the engine's library and just learning the object model might take me upwards of 3 months (or longer since I'm not really 4 hours a day gung ho about it, this is fun dammit... *whipcrack!*) before I can even really dive into anything more substantial than 'oh, I wonder if I can do this...'. 

However, with all of that said and done, this looks like it's a pretty damned powerful toolbox.  I have no idea if I'll ever actually build said game or not (doubtful), but it'll be an interesting trip nonetheless.

Just in case anyone was curious and hadn't had a chance to really dig into the engine.

73

AI War / Re: AI War state of the game

« on: November 12, 2012, 01:15:58 AM »

Good!   I love talking to indie devs.  I've been so alienated to the big companies.  Trying to get something to them is like trying to get through AT&T's support.  But, he hadn't heard it from me yet, so it still stands.  I'm still a bit new to the community here, as can easily be seen.

Fair enough.  Keith and Chris (the primary devs for AIWar) are incredibly responsive to our discussions and welcome feedback.  Keith (Keith.Lamonte, you'll see him briefly in this discussion here and there) stated somewhere a few pages back that he's kind of letting this one spin out for a bit.

Huge debates like this aren't uncommon around here and they tend to cherry pick the best ideas out of them to use in what time they have available.  Something like this thread though can be nearly impossible to keep track of end to end, unfortunately.

As to the rest, I'll re-read it all and respond tomorrow, so I'm not adversarial again.  However, Martyn does bring up an excellent point.  The reason harvesters are overwhelming early compared to the same eventual gain as Econs will get you is because of the larger # of harvesters on the homeworld.  Reduce that and the option becomes much less cut and dry, though very early game still benefits better from the harvesters, and pretty much always will.  Using the homeworld facilities to augment the removed harvester points makes a lot of sense, however, to assist in balancing off Econ vs. Harvester.

74

AI War / Re: AI War state of the game

« on: November 11, 2012, 08:25:04 PM »

General Conversation comments:
Regarding those of you who are finding they have overwhelming amounts of energy... are any of you NOT playing with champions?  I'm curious because I'm wondering if that's where I'm confused why y'all think it's overwhelming.

If you nerf the econ guerilla attacks become unreasonable, you only blob because otherwise losses are even less recoverable.

Who used guerrilla attacks to begin with? 

Well, I do, for starters.  Particularly against worlds with Eyes, so I tend to do it a lot.

You're preaching to save a dead child.  We've all pretty much agreed that blobbing is the best strategy.  Nerfing the econ isn't going to change that either way.

Agreed.  I'm just not entirely sure where the idea that nerfing econ would remove the blob.

I agree with you that blobbing is a major issue with the game, but the way to fix it is not to LITERALLY OVERLOAD the player with so many resources he can't spend it all.

I'm afraid you've misunderstood me.  I DON'T think blobbing is an issue.  I thoroughly disagree with you on this.  I do not want to spend half the game doing unit micro.

Econ Stations are a choice, Harvesters are not a choice.  Harvesters have no downside aside from the knowledge you spend.  Econ Stations take the place of a much more defensible or practical Military/Logistics Station.  You may lose the game during a major attack because you had an Econ Station and not any of the other 3.

To get equivalent economy from harvesters you have to take less strategical viable worlds to get equivalent economy from them.  In particular, you have to aim for 3/3+ worlds.  So with econ stations I can take a fab world and get equivalent econ, no matter the resource count.  If that fab world doesn't have decent resources, I'd need a second world for equivalence.  Now, you can argue if the difference between econ and logistics is valuable enough, and I'd say no, not unless logistics are reduced in economic power.  Harvesters in early game are a coinflip.  A powerful force that took forever to build, or a light force you can easily rebuild.  I spend many a game at famine economy and I blob, and I have harvester IIIs.  Now, that may just mean I suck at this game, I don't know.  I do know that I do not have your perma-1mill econ, and that's with Harv IIIs and targetting max econ worlds.

In other words, I think the price for Econ Stations is fair.  I see no problem with a player having max resources if he's paying the penalty in his defense.  This is why your argument on this is flawed.

No, you're not seeing the difference in the argument.  You either have to target worlds that contain those resources, which may or may not be as strategically viable.  You pay in AIP or bad positioning.  Again, I do not have max-econ most of the time.

Wing's heavily advocating significant micro and this would actually defeat the purpose, not improve it.  Everything meet everything!  FIGHT!  Well, why not, they've only got fighters but who cares, nothing's really that much better.

My specific solution to this problem was not to change the multipliers, that was somebody else's.  My solution was to add a bonus ship omission file and add Super Guardians to the game:  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9450

Agreed, I apparently phrased that poorly.  I did not mean to imply that removing multipliers was your idea, but that removing the multipliers would be counter to your preference in the long run.

Everything else you talked about wasn't really worth addressing.

Oh, well, thanks for that then.

You may not want anything to change but that's just your personal preference.

That's an odd comment considering how many changes I *have* advocated, particularly ones that have removed cheese and made the game more difficult.  I happen to disagree with these changes, though, you're correct.  I for one do not wish to partake in intensive ship micro in AI War.  I have other games I play for that.

Maybe someone else does.  My point to the previous poster was that nerfing the economy by removing MKII and III Harvesters would make it MORE likely that you would use guerilla raids, not less likely.  Guerilla raids are efficient, they don't waste your entire army on the trip.  With a small amount of resources, you can accomplish a lot.

That's what I'm trying to explain to you, and that wasn't your point you made.  You went on a tangent about econ stations instead of anything about blob vs. guerilla.  All you said there was that blob was better... unless we're not talking about your response to me.

If the econ is low to the point that you can't rebuild, you don't raid because you don't want to lose the ships, you always arrive in force, to reduce the economic impact of the raid.  No more one-way trips for units, you always need them back.  This will discourage raiding.

Furthermore I'm advocating an energy economy cut, that would mean you couldn't even build full caps of everything without taking some extra planets. Obviously that would lead to a lot of scrapping and rebuilding so low-power mode should probably be reintroduced (or some sort of cold storage building)

Fired up a brand new game, 9.6/9.6.  Starting energy (due to homeworld builds) was 183,500.

I then MK II'd all the fleet ships (IREs were the random thing I clicked on).
96 MK I Fighters: 50 E each 4,800 E
96 MK II Fighters: 100 E each 9,600 E
96 MK I Bomber: 100 E each, 9,600 E
96 MK II Bomber: 200 E each, 19,200 E
96 MK I Frigate: 200 E each, 19,200 E
96 MK II Frigate: 400 E each, 38,400 E
96 MK I IRE: 100 E Each, 9,600 E
96 MK II IRE: 200 E Each, 19,200 E.

Total: 129, 600 E, after blowing all your Econ on MK IIs.  Your MK Is are 1/3 of that, at 43,200 E.

Where you get into problems is turretry, starships, and defenses (like FFs).  You cannot build your entire arsenal right now without taking more planets, however trying to balance it against the fleet alone is, in my opinion, a poor choice.  A single FF costs as much energy as an entire cap of MK I Fighters... so does a single Raid SS.  A cluster of 3 MK I raid SSs is nearly the energy cost of the Frigate cap.

So, already, you can't build everything without power from multiple planets, and that's without mark boosting, but the fleet itself isn't going to be where you take the hit.  Now, it'll probably take about an hour to actually build that MK II fleet in the early game without harvester boosts (and no econ planet captures), and some of that will be variable depending on if the howeworld is crystal or metal heavy.  How low do you bring 'startup' power to make sure that you couldn't build off your entire MK I fleet?  You wouldn't be able to build much of any of the other things, then, either.  Fleet ships require the lightest energy requirement of everything you have.

It seems like the current problem with AI War is not primarily with the game, but the players.  They want to play on the highest difficulties so they can feel good about themselves, but then they complain that the highest difficulties are too hard because "they have too long for my wasted fleet to rebuild" or "I need enough energy to have a Fortress on every planet without spending a dime" or "I should be able to blob my entire fleet around without a hitch".  If you want to do those things, fine!  Play on difficulty 5.  If you're doing them on difficulty 9, and it isn't working out, the game shouldn't have to be changed for you.

That's an incredibly falicious view to state as the generic actions of the highest level players.  Faulty, Kahuna, and myself (as a quick example) have all been continuously advocating ways to improve the difficulty of the AI, *particularly* at the highest end of the spectrum.  The majority of those fixes are only in play at the 9+ level, so newbs don't get run over with them.  Keep your words out of our mouths and sure as hell don't fire off false impressions of us.  As to my personal comments about Eyes (which are the dev's gift to anti-blobbing) my usual complaints are how long it takes to kill a spireshield under one or the volume of them, not their existance, because it forces reliance on low-cap ships.

I do happen to disagree with most of the methods you're advocating, because I don't see them putting in a difficulty level like you describe.  If anything, you'll be railroaded into even less options and paths to complete the game at high difficulties, not more.

The reason that difficulties EXIST is so that people don't have to put artificial restrictions on themselves.

I agree.  What I want to know is why are you using 9/9 as your current baseline?  Crank it up.

75

AI War / Re: AI War state of the game

« on: November 10, 2012, 09:10:30 PM »

This conversation is... everywhere.  Good grief.  From economic nerf advocacy to micro-twitch tactical gaming on par with SC II.  I couldn't even begin to get involved in everything being discussed without a few hours to write the dissertation and that's just in the last 2 pages.

I... good grief.  Alright, let's see if I can throw my $0.02 in on the high notes.  I'm going to work backwards, I only have 15 minutes here before I need to be on the road to meet with friends.

Economic Nerfs vs. the blob:
For the love of all that's holy why?  Let me spell this out for you:

If you nerf the econ guerilla attacks become unreasonable, you only blob because otherwise losses are even less recoverable.  You can't 'donate' units, you MUST fight with everything.  No Raid SS attacks on the flank.  No Eyebot assaults for an unreasonable guardian.  You blob, you bait, there is no fight, there is only overkill... or waiting 2+ hours to recover.  No more multiple assaults on MK IV worlds, they're brick walls.

End result is going back to the Econ stations and ignoring the Harvesters anyway.  If you're going to do an econ nerf, you need to go across the boards.

Energy resources:
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the problems here.  On one hand, we don't have enough energy to actually power up our arsenal until 6+ worlds.  On the other hand, we have too much.  Huh?

I know I haven't caught up with my AAR fight in a while but I had to build 2 matter converters simply to support my small empire when I wanted to bring cloak starships online along with a beach-head.  Now, you're saying we have too much when we *know* the superweapons (golems and FS) require boatloads of it.  What am I missing here?  I sure as heck don't feel that I'm overflowing with wattage. 

For the record, said game is NOT a 10/10.

Multiplier manipulation:
Keith has stated the game design goal of the multipliers: To create counter-ship fights.  Most multipliers are in the 4-6x range, with a few hitting 8s (I'd have to look again).  Halving them again practically removes any reason to bother.  Is that the point?  That blob on blob instead of strike ship vs. particular foe is the point?  Wing's heavily advocating significant micro and this would actually defeat the purpose, not improve it.  Everything meet everything!  FIGHT!  Well, why not, they've only got fighters but who cares, nothing's really that much better.

Same strategy repetition:
Errr, yup.  The higher in difficulty you go, and the more experienced you become with the game, the more familiar you are with the 'Best' methods of defeating the enemy.  This is a common issue in anything not PvP.  The execution of said 'best method' is where it comes into play.  Better selection of worlds to choose.  Minor tweaks in small areas to react to changes by the AI (example, using something other than raid SSs against the AI that feeds an OMD onto every planet).

You are never given every tool in the box in any particular game.  For example, if the AI drags out Blade Spawners on you, you're not guaranteed to ever have a sniper type unit (other than turrets).  You counter with cloakers instead, or transport drops, or Riot III grav wells.  These basic tools must be available because every counter is not constant.  That you've learned to use these basic tools well enough that there is no feeling of intensity leads me to one of two conclusions: Either you've mastered the game to the point that you're no longer enjoying it, or you haven't revved up the difficulty to where you're on the edge and execution of the strategy is the key.

You can plan your strategy, but it's all about the execution against more formidible forces.  There's a reason I play at the severe levels.  You're absolutely right.  If you're not seeing a need to change, or even tweak, your strategy, the AI isn't dangerous enough to you.

AI not responding enough at AIP 10/AI increase in danger:
You're quite correct here.  The AI at AIP 10 is a wuss.  It's supposed to be by lore, it doesn't care about the humans anymore.  That champions introduced the ability to become a super-power without any AIP gain is a different issue.  There's an easier cure to that.  Have nebula defeats raise the FLOOR (not the AIP, just the floor) for each nebula conquered.  You can't sit on the homeworld and take out half the universe for free anymore.

As to the AIP increases being too strong, I tend to disagree.  I believe they should be a little lighter in the front end and even heavier in the back, at least at the top-most levels, than they currently are.  Right now taking another planet at 220 AIP is just 'meh, whatever, who cares', and taking another one at 30 AIP nearly DOUBLES the expected inbounds.  That ratio seems horribly off to me.

Regarding 10/10 defeatability:
Keith has stated, repeatedly, that 10/10 is not meant to be winnable, and is supposed to roll you around in the dirt and then kick you a few more times.  If you cheese the hell out of it that's, well, cheesing the hell out of it.  It would be impossible to balance some of the outlier options to not allow it when they're combined and still have them interesting in normal play.

@Histadine:
The problem with your proposal is an original design goal from the first generation of this game.  Namely, that caps of ships don't become useless as soon as you can produce the next one up.  You're talking about a population cap instead of a per ship cap, basically.  Common enough of an idea in most RTS games.

However, that idea was forcibly discarded for this game so that 'early mark' ships aren't made completely obsolete during an upgrade.  It doesn't fit in any lore but was a base design decision.

Dammit, I've been typing for 10 minutes longer than I intended and there's cute girls with smores around a campfire about 45 minutes away.  I'll try to catch up with any rebuttals tomorrow.