Messages

1

AI War / Re: The future of Champions

« on: May 23, 2013, 10:38:46 PM »

What I would really like to see, is Champions control and design a lot more streamlining and made quicker. I spend a lot of time just refiting the whole thing, and unlike Fallen Spire, I can't just make one or two load outs, save them and be done. I have to do them every game.

I rather like the whole one hull, unlock tree idea, if you could then move into more automatic refit. Champions are rather micro heavy, and get even more so when you get into the Nebulas themselves. Some micro is good, but I think they are bit on the very micro heavy.

One good example would be if you have two Champions. You should be able to just set one up and clone it trivially to the other at the very least. Yet you have to do them both individully. There is no linking of designs or patterns. No stick the highest rank module of this kind in this slot sort of thing.

2

AI War / Re: Poll: Bonus Ship Type ideas for the Vengeance expansion

« on: May 16, 2013, 08:56:18 PM »

Ok this is a big one...
I guess it will wait for weekend for me to actually read all of that proposals and choose some.
I thing that 6 picks might not be enough. This list is quite long

Yea, It is a long list.

And well reading this, I recalled a Unit I suggested ages ago. http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=6138

Then again, I am not sure if a Unit that disable sheilds would be worth it or not. Certainly would be nice against Hybrids, but at the same time might be a little unfair against them.

3

AI War / Re: Nominations for new Bonus Ships for the "Vengeance of the Machine" expansion

« on: May 08, 2013, 11:58:02 AM »

Does suggestions for new Modules for the Spire Fleet count as Nominations? Given that I figured they would be washed back into the Light of the Spire as that is where their units go. I got a few that I have been meaning to put up.

Those would not be bonus ship types or for this expansion (and thus not for this thread), but feel free to make suggestions   Variants of the champ/mod-fort modules would be pretty easy to port over to spire capital-ship/city usage.  It'd still take time, but if there was enough interest I could do it.

Well I would certainly like to see that, I was also thinking of something completely new yet not completely new at the same time. We have Spire Attritioners, why does the Spire fleet not have something like that you can mount in a heavy slot in place of a shield that does the same thing.

4

AI War / Re: Nominations for new Bonus Ships for the "Vengeance of the Machine" expansion

« on: May 08, 2013, 11:49:35 AM »

Does suggestions for new Modules for the Spire Fleet count as Nominations? Given that I figured they would be washed back into the Light of the Spire as that is where their units go. I got a few that I have been meaning to put up.

5

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

« on: May 08, 2013, 11:47:13 AM »

Not really anything right now.

Gravity ships used to annoy me, as my already slow Spire Fleet turned into a nap as I waited for them to kill things but now things are more or less fine.

6

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.026-6.027 "The Guard Before The Storm" Released!

« on: May 07, 2013, 07:32:07 PM »

Hmm. I'm definitely getting it consistently. I have a directly-installed copy; could that make a difference?

Further observation reveals that the computer doesn't freeze everything, just the moniter image.

Anyway, not a super big deal.

I can reproduce it by doing the following.

Nearing End game (Spire fleet of 1000+ ships, 90+ planets taken), save the game then quit.

The game freezes, but after a while it cleans up and exits, so I am sure that the game is busy doing saving stuff in the background as the save files are large at that point.

7

AI War / Re: So, this whole crystal thing (wait I think I used that title already...)

« on: April 09, 2013, 06:54:25 AM »

- hacking an advanced factory before capturing it to permanently unlock mkIV production capability (on a mkIV, or I guess mkIV&mkV tab on the normal space dock; whatever), though this would need to have a huge impact on the hacking response level to be at-all balanced.

Now that would be awesome, would I be correct in assuming that if you do this for fleet ships, you do the same for the advanced starship factory so we can build MkIV and mkV starships at a normal starship constructor?

- hacking a special forces guard post to decrease SF popcap and rate-of-growth (as long as that post lasts).

Oh Yes!

Anyway, the specifics would be very much up for discussion but my thought is that you could get away with 1 Ship-Design-hack at AIP 10 but further hacking beyond that level would be ill-advised until you were at AIP 30, where you could get away with another one without the sky falling on your head.  I'd probably want hacking-room to scale up logarithmically (or something like that) with AIP so that unless you get to 1000 AIP you can't just hack everything with impunity (and even at 1000 there'd be limits).  In this model I'd like hacking to be core and important, but I wouldn't want you to be doing it all the time.  It'd still be a series of fairly surgical decisions like it is now, just with a broader selection and with those decisions (probably) coming at different stages of the game as your AIP increases.

So my normal game ending of 2000 AIP means I be able to just about hack everything left with impunity?



In any case, I really like this idea, and I think this is exactly what we wanted to replace crystal. Something completely 90 degrees from Crystal and metal as it stands. Yet not a Knowledge v2 requirement.

8

AI War / Re: Does AI strength to AIP need adjustment? (aka, is AIP too restrictive?)

« on: April 05, 2013, 06:04:59 AM »

The way I see it you should have two major options:

How about another option:
D) Take very few planets but spend knowledge on combat upgrades. Spend long periods of time saving money and rebuilding fleet, whine at the forum about netflix


Your suggestion basically aims at directly nerfing the player, so he cannot effectively progress while still staying at the floor.
My suggestion is that we nerf the means to sustain this floor, so the player simply cannot stay at it for as long.

While both aim to achieve the same goal, i just believe nerfing the economy hard enough to achieve it will come with more undesirable side-effects.

This thread generally has lots of great ideas, some just would achieve the goals in a more simple and fun way than the others, but this is debateable... which we are doing right now.

Option E:

You take massive numbers of planets, You have massive number of ships with a total cost that makes Ion MKV start to be reasonable (My spire fleets have started to cost more then that), you spend a long amount of time in Hulu waiting for them to rebuild after a massive fight.

It takes a long time to replace a fleet that costs over 100 Million Resources. A very long time.

9

AI War / Re: Does AI strength to AIP need adjustment? (aka, is AIP too restrictive?)

« on: April 04, 2013, 07:53:42 PM »

Yes,  it would have to work in tandem with a boss.

Which i dont think would be bad at all.

Ive never liked how you can nuke both ai hw anyway

So I'm thinking maybe of making the Avenger plot work like that boss (just give the Avenger the CSG effect the mothership has), so people can test this idea before we try it in the "always-on" game.

Might need another surprise or two with the avenger to make it so you don't just murder it immediately too

Vicious players.

CSG + endgame fallen spire = instadeath.

I likely never see it

Personally, I don't care about AIP at all, but likely that has something to do with the fact that I play 4 Homeworld Fallen Spire, and have beaten 4 homeworld fallen spire with the end game on 10/10.

I normally end the games with at least 2000 AIP, so...

10

AI War / Re: So, this whole crystal thing

« on: March 31, 2013, 11:59:44 AM »

Generally cool.

An idea to appeal to both the "nothing is lost forever" and "nothing stays forever" crowd.

1) Crystal mines can be destroyed, but are tough. They should be able to benefit from exo-shields as well.

2) If destroyed, the crystal mine give 10% of its income.

3) The human command station gets a single crystal mine. It can be destroyed, but it is located right next to the command station and its key structures so its destruction tends to be game over anyway.

Since these units are capped by per planet, you don't have to worry too much about too much massive stockpiling.

The issue with 10% of income, is that you will likely end up with cases where the player starts the game, loads up Hulu or Netflicks well they wait the 10x longer it takes to get the crystal, then does stuff. I would much rather see it disabled (or maybe reduced) for a short time (clearing the mines kind of thing) then return at normal rate, then making it for the rest of the game. I already watch a lot of Hulu well I wait for my Spire fleet to rebuild, I don't want to have to watch even more for different reasons.

11

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.013 "Core Foamhammer" Released!

« on: March 22, 2013, 04:04:41 PM »

Keith, any chance of making the AI a little less fill carrier happy when you have forces on a planet? I don't have good saves for it, but often I will fly my fallen spire fleet in, shoot at the Special forces poping several Carriers, and the AI response is to put every ship right back into a Carrier on the same planet until I am facing nothing but MKV guardians as it can't condense it anymore. And very often they will just hop back in a carrier after I killed just a few of them.

12

AI War / Re: Current balance of starships in exo waves?

« on: March 20, 2013, 09:21:44 PM »

Sounds like its time for Mark X ships!

We call them "guardians"   And so does the exo logic, really.

And then those things come in MKV, and several dozen Carrers filled to the brim with them (also known as the Special Forces) makes the Fallen Spire fleet just roll over and beg for mercy. With my CPU having already done it a long time ago.

13

AI War / Re: Current balance of starships in exo waves?

« on: March 20, 2013, 04:58:20 PM »

Also, lol at the AI considering the Laser Gattling the most worthless unit individually (aka, just a single one of them)

Ah yes, the poor gatling I.  Never gets invited to any reindeer games.  "Oh, don't worry son, it could be worse", "No Dad, it couldn't!  I've got a point cost of _one_.  Any lower and I'd just not be on the list at all".

EDIT2: I'm assuming the very, very low RelativeStrength of the hunter killers is because none of the mechanics that use RelativeStrength are eligible to use hunter killers?

Yea, they've just never had theirs set; shouldn't impact anything since they're never on a "normal" behavior.

All we need now is for the game to decide rather then spawning a single Hunter Killer Mk5. It spawns 262144 Laser Gattling MK1.

Somehow I get the feeling those would win against the Hunter Killer and be a lot harder to kill then the hunter killer would.

14

AI War / Re: Minor Faction Intensity

« on: March 20, 2013, 06:28:28 AM »

10/10 AIs with FS 4/10 is quite possible now a days.

It used to be that the end game fleet could not win with a run time of days of being active, but I think I ended up submitting enough games to prove that, that it is finally no longer the case.

One of these days, I am going to run 10/10 AIs with FS 10/10 to make sure that is still the case. Provided that I can even get to that. It not easy when the shard chase waves come with Hunter Killers.

15

AI War / Re: Chokepoint Balance

« on: March 19, 2013, 04:07:02 PM »

Keith, given that you are more worried about checkpoints being very much required in Fallen Spire and high level game play, why don't we add a special Fallen Spire turret that is granted on a per planet basis. In fact, make a deploy-able ship that needs to be deployed next to a Fallen Spire City, or given how map layouts can go, within 2 hops of a Fallen Spire city.

Call it a special spire military base or something. Maybe even have it work like a Hive Golem with some sort of Spire craft. So when the Exo-waves hit that planet, they will auto-deploy to strike back, but against normal waves they only act if some sort of condition is hit. Such as the Command station gets blown up or a massive ships enter the system. The Spire expect you to deal with the normal threat, but they will not just stand there forever it if looks like you are knocked out of the system.

Then, rather then making the Factories and Fabs basically immortal, you make it grant them Immunity to damage well it exists. Like a Spire version of the Core sheild network that only works on Fabs, Factories and things like that.

Should the AI hit it hard enough, it can still clear the system. But it makes it a lot less likely that a large wave will just instakill those Factories.