Messages

16

AI War / Re: Chokepoint Balance

« on: March 18, 2013, 07:35:58 PM »

Here how I view it.

You have structures that you can't replace if you lose them. (Factories, Fabs), You have a limited number of defense structures that are on a global scale rather then a local scale. The AI is limited to attacks along wormholes.

Therefore, One of the most Tactical sound actions is to make choke points. Before you factor in Exowaves that make most Choke points defenses cry if you don't have every turret and it brother waiting for it.

To really make Chokepoints less important, would likely take two very radical changes. Make it so that turret cap was per planet, rather then global. (Make them spread out completely naturally, maybe even tie the size of the cap to the Command Station type and level.) And structures that are 'destroyed' like Factories, Fabs and whatnot can be rebuild after a delay. Make the delay long enough to basically hurt if you lose them, but not so long that they are out of the game. Say a countdown timer of 30 minutes if the AIs blow up a Factory before it can come back online. Exact delay pending testing. You want to make it enough to really hurt if you lose it, but not so much that you again want to do the solid wall of guns to stop it from happening.

Keep the AI liking to focus power with less doors in, and you get player tend to leave many door opened with turrets all around. AIs will send weak waves everywhere, rather then at one door with every gun that the humans own pointing at it waiting for them.

17

AI War / Re: Share pictures of your games!

« on: March 18, 2013, 07:22:15 PM »

There only 764 ships on the AI homeworld, this should be easy enough.

18

AI War / Re: Nominations for target of the Nerfbat of Damocles (III)

« on: March 15, 2013, 07:15:20 PM »

I would like to add the following.

*Nomination: Shield bearers, AI-side.

A pile of those things is nasty. As soon as the AI gets them, my defenses all go from able to stop to withstand waves, to finding AI units deep in my territory. And Hunter killers are so hard to kill under them.

They are one of the most useful and powerful bonus ships. Outside of Maws, they are the only ship that I would be willing to trade any two bonus ships for. They are just that useful. Throw Maws with them and you got a anti-wave fleet that can happy eat any wave that does not have anything larger then a fleetship.

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AI War / Re: Nominations for target of the Nerfbat of Damocles (III)

« on: March 15, 2013, 11:48:16 AM »

I am going to say that any nerf to the Harvesters needs to be meet with an equal buff to the Fallen Spire Hab centers. I have seen Fallen Spire fleets costing as much as an Ion MKV die to just Special Forces. And they take long enough to rebuild as it is.

I am going to go for something that I don't think need a Nerf per say, but need a rework.

*Nomination for rework: Warp Counter attack Posts.

I find that these are more annoying then anything else. If they don't hit a Homeworld, then you don't really need to rush back to them as any defences you left on a world you care about (advanced factory, fab or whatever, should be able to take out the attack), and if they do, you basically need to pull your armies back home, sit and wait for the attack wave to come in, then leave and go back to what you where doing. Normal waves you can control where they end up with Warp gate raiding, you can't control where a Warp Counter attack wave hits, save for building Warp Jammers on every planet as it command station and that only makes certain that they will go for the homeworld.

I would really like to see this changed in some way, to make it much less of a ok, fly back and protect that planet, then go back to what you where doing, to something a bit more exciting.

I however am not sure how exactly to do that.

20

AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.011 "Nemesis of the Dubious Honor" Released!

« on: March 11, 2013, 03:24:12 PM »

So, the only change for the Raid Starship is that it now has a MKIV? Nothing else has changed?

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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.011 "Nemesis of the Dubious Honor" Released!

« on: March 11, 2013, 10:16:36 AM »

Unless there is a way to basically have a rebuildable Advanced Starship Constructor, you can't say that they should have similar K costs.

I don't see the mkIV enclave's mkIV production capability as having nearly that substantial an impact on things, because unlocking the mkIV takes a _ton_ of knowledge.  That's a _major_ strategic choice, with heavy tradeoffs.

Though in your specific case, I think you take enough planets that the knowledge costs don't really faze you.

Given I normally end the game with around 80 planets or so, more then likely yes.

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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.011 "Nemesis of the Dubious Honor" Released!

« on: March 11, 2013, 10:03:40 AM »

Anyway, a few things:
- Yes, availability of mkIV starships will be temporary if you lose the ASC.  Is that any different from mkIV fleet ships and the AdvFact?

Yes it is, you can build MkIV Enclaves(at a great cost) to build MkIV fleetships. Meaning if you lose your AdvFactory, unless you can't get that much K due to how much is left in the whole game, you are not completely removed from MKIV fleetships.

Unless we get a MKIV Enclave or something else that we can build that can build MKIV starships (At a cost more or less similar to the MKIV Enclaves) then Fleetship will win on that end.

- Yes, there were some knowledge cost changes, but specifically to bring the now-with-mkIV-availability starships into line with the fleet ships.  I guess I could look at targeting a lower baseline K cost for getting to mkIV starships than fleet ships, but I didn't want to make it too nice.

Unless there is a way to basically have a rebuildable Advanced Starship Constructor, you can't say that they should have similar K costs. Because one of them you can spend more K to get it back, well the other you can't spend more K to get it back. For that alone, I think it might be worth to lower the K costs, unless you are planning on adding a unit to allow the rebuilding it.

Like a mobile Starship constructor? Now that would be interesting.

So, in my mind, but I have to play it to be certain. You either need to buff the Starships to basically make the 1-3 worth that of the 1-4 if you spend the same K, and make the IV a true icing on the cake sort of deal. Or reduce the K costs to reflect that you can't truely replace the Advanced Starship Constructor, like you can an Advanced Factory.

Perhaps it's better to look at it this way: starships as a category should not overshadow fleet ships as a category.  Not the way that FS capital ships overshadow everything (which is basically intended in FS's case).  I could reorient the starship balance targets such that a cap of starships isn't meant to stack up to a cap of fleet ships, and make the starship K, cap-e, and cap-m+c costs accordingly lower.  But the individual starships could still be very strong.

Personally, I have always seen it as this.

Fleetships, weak little things that work in swarms.

Starships, powerful, but small groups of units that are roughly equal to Fleetships of the same Knowledge cost and types.

Fallen Spire Fleet. Once the ball gets rolling, it a rockslide coming down the mountain. With the AI being a flood that trying to reach the top before the rockslide makes it to the bottom. Or maybe the other way around works better. But in either case, the small villages of fleetship with their cars (Starships) halfway up the moutain just get completely mashed around in the crossfire.

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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.011 "Nemesis of the Dubious Honor" Released!

« on: March 10, 2013, 06:44:20 PM »

That sounds awesome.

Although, does this mean I should put off starting my next game as I will need to regen the game to get the Advanced Starship Constructor or will it be added to existing games?

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AI War / Re: Balancing Champions

« on: March 02, 2013, 05:04:37 PM »

I play with the Special Forces Captain on difficulty 9+, and for me a Champion makes this mode 1000 times easier. 20% larger AI Force pales in comparison to the amount of damage a fully upgraded Spire Battleship Champion can do with Ion Beams from a huge range, not to mention the entire Armada of supply in minor faction ships you receive from the missions and such. My experience has been just the opposite of yours. Champions take an extremely challenging scenario and make it easy.

I play Fallen Spire on 9+, Champions are useful upto the first or second city shard, then they are nothing more then AI progress free tachyon warheads. Just because one combination is extremely easy, does not mean that another combination is not. 20% larger AI force is a few more Hunter Killers for me, even though for you it nothing more then a few more fighters.

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AI War / Re: Poll: Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (XI)

« on: March 02, 2013, 04:59:03 PM »

I'm personally opposed to requiring possession of Advanced Factories to make use of Neinzul Enclave Starship Mark IVs. The reason is that the only reason I ever get Neinzul Enclave Starship Mark IVs is when I cannot afford to take and defend an Advanced Factory but want to build Mark IV fleet ships. If Enclave IVs became Enclave IIIs with slightly better drones and a higher build rate, I would not find them particularly worthwhile.

I don't think Enclave IVs are supposed to be something you consider unlocking every game; rather, I think that they are there if you really need (or really want) Mark IV ship production capability and cannot take or cannot defend either of the worlds with Advanced Factories. The knowledge price is a bit steep, but it's the price for getting a mobile, replaceable Advanced Factory.

If I get an Enclave IV, it's usually during a Fallen Spire game, since it's then that I am least able to protect an Advanced Factory, and it is also then that I can most afford to take (but not always hold) additional planets to strip the knowledge from them, or perform knowledge raids to gain the Enclave IV. Yes, it's pretty difficult for me to justify fielding an Enclave IV in a non-Fallen Spire game, but in a normal game it's also a lot easier to defend the half a dozen or a dozen worlds that you'll take before hitting the homeworld, and at least one of those will probably include an Advanced Factory.

If we get a MKV that lets you build MKIV ships without an Advanced Factory, I could very well disagree here. MKIV lets you build MKIV drones as well as ships. But if you don't have an advanced factory, then you only get MKIV drones. It is quite reasonable. Granted I always have a factory under a city in my games, so my Enclave MKIV are only used to attack with MKIV drones. But that is more done late game when I have Knowledge to waste on anything, as I have everything I need.

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AI War / Re: Balancing Champions

« on: February 24, 2013, 08:19:55 AM »

One thing that I would like to see adjusted somehow, is that Champions become just as worthless as None-spire fleet ship around the third Spire city and there is nothing you can really do about it. Even the top level ship just dies when an Exowave shows up and I tend to find them more useful in the fact that they can release a non-AIP Tachyon pulse more then anything after that point. They just can't survive long enough to do anything worthwhile without being a part of the main Spire Fleet at that point.

You're playing Fallen Spire, the minor faction designed to dominate all else. The champion shouldn't be able to stand against an exo; only extensive fortifications are supposed to.

I am not saying that the Champions should be strong enough to just stand against it outside of fallen spire. I was saying that it would be nice if the cities granted modules that could let it do so, or at the very least give it a bit more strength. Even the final Champion just dies when I sent it though any wormhole without sending the fleet in first around the time of the third city.

Basically when you get the first city, you get the first level of a special fallen spire only line of modules that can only be increased in level by gaining more cities( 2 citys = mk2 unlocked and so on). Although the more I think about it, the less likely something like that is going to happen, as I think part of the design is to keep the expansion stuff more or less isolated to one DLC, and what I am suggesting here would basic require 2 DLC, Light of the Spire and Ancient Shadows.

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AI War / Re: Balancing Champions

« on: February 23, 2013, 06:39:12 PM »

One thing that I would like to see adjusted somehow, is that Champions become just as worthless as None-spire fleet ship around the third Spire city and there is nothing you can really do about it. Even the top level ship just dies when an Exowave shows up and I tend to find them more useful in the fact that they can release a non-AIP Tachyon pulse more then anything after that point. They just can't survive long enough to do anything worthwhile without being a part of the main Spire Fleet at that point.

I would really like to see some sort of City granted modules for Champions that would make them still worthwhile well you are doing the whole Fallen Spire Campain. And it should be fairly easy to justify lore wise.

As the Spire get more and more facilities online, they can design and grant more powerful additions to champion. Due to the ship's design, it the only one that can mount these modules or something along those lines.

Well Nebula might become too easy with these new modules. I personally think you should look at it like this,  you are basically trading an easier time in Nebula for AIs that are sending waves of Hunter-Killers at you. Your champion might be able to just walk into any nebula and take it out, but outside your find Hunter-Killers chasing you rather then fighters.

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AI War / Re: New stuff on the wiki

« on: February 04, 2013, 05:44:00 PM »

The older ones you've tweaked look good, but there are some problems with the tables on Zenith Siege Engine.  On both tables the Mark III line is showing Mark II stats, and the Mark V cap metal cost looks wrong.

You'll probably want to kick me for not suggesting this earlier, but the immunities lines could all use a little tweak: "Tractor Beams ? Paralysis Attacks ? Being Insta-Killed ? Mines" would be much easier to parse than "Tractor Beams Paralysis Attacks Being Insta-Killed Mines".  I think the game uses variable spacing to achieve the same effect.

Ugh. I know what happened on the Mk II/III and that's an easy fix. Not sure why the Mk V metal cost is wrong, will have to dig into it.

As for the immunities, I'd like to do that but the data file passes it to me as one long text string, there is nothing that tells me one ability from the next. I can't use spaces as some of the immunities have multiple words.

If you have some sort of brain wave I'll see if I can implement it but nothing I've come up with works.

Thanks for taking a look.

D.

What about using some sort of processing on the stream? The immunities have a finite set size ( how often do we get a new one added?), so build a list of all of them and parse the string from the start and when you find a complete match chop that part off the stream, add to a nice list and start over with the newly chopped list for the next one. I don't think there is anything weird in the game that I have noticed were you have things like for something completely random: immune acid and immune acid blades. Not that would break it, you just need to do a bit more processing to confirm that you wanted immune acid and not immune acid blades by looking at the next word.

Or maybe we could ask Keith add in the next update that the stream is , or tab or something else separated.

Where would I get this raw data stream of immunities anyway? I want to take a bit of a look at it myself.

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AI War / Re: Going for my first game of AI War. Should I use the expansions?

« on: January 17, 2013, 07:16:39 AM »

Unless you planning on playing Fallen Spire (a completely different way to play the game) expansions are a good idea to delay to get used to things.

Fallen Spire however plays very differently then the base game. Base game, you would take a few planets, likely no more then 10 or so. Fallen Spire, you will often end up taking 50 or more planets. The game play is very different and I personally perfer Fallen Spire over the base game, but each to their own.

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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 6.007-6.009 "Burying The Hatchet" Released!

« on: January 16, 2013, 07:47:30 PM »

I agree that special force need a change. Two in fact. It first needs it that as special force guard posts go away, the rate of spawn and caps to go down. Second, it needs to not stick special forces into carriers so quickly and aggressively. I pop one, and almost instantly the ships are back in the carrier at full health pounding away at my ships again. I had special force take take out the initial push by the End Game Fallen Spire fleet, and well they do eventually get though it, I would have hated to try and do it myself.

Although that does explain why when I spent as much as MK5 Ion cannon in Spire Fleet ships, they did not seem to make a dent on that world that lead to the other AI homeworld. Something about 40,000 MKV guardians in Carriers makes about anything roll over and die.