Fallen Spire feedback

[Sunshine!]

Could the seeding logic be different based on what kind of map it is?  That way snake maps won't become too easy, but maps like Realistic(Hubs) won't become untenably tedious.

Maybe if the shard appears on a human world, in addition to the normal AI chase waves, the AI spawns an immediate (free) wave.  This way, the AIP of the player (how aggressively the player has attempted to get the shard to spawn in his/her territory) has an immediate effect each time the shard shows up.  Since the player will likely have gate-raided all the surrounding planets, this will also mean that it'll be a cross-planet wave and will join up with the rest of the AI chase waves as an extra 200 to 300 or so ships on diff 7.

[Draco18s]

Perhaps it could randomly decide to ignore the border, and even incline towards player territory (as has been more or less suggested) but in turn spawn a different kind and magnitude of AI response attack.

If you go that route I would suggest, for the sake of story, that shards outside player territory get the "Build a Teleporter" type "quest" whereas the ones inside a "fly home."

It makes sense from the perspective of "what would I do in this situation if it was real" because if the thing is behind my lines I figure I can withstand the assault, but if it's out there behind enemy lines I'd rather sit and build a teleportation device.

[Red Spot]

Making the seeding ignore the AI/human border would just make it randomly much easier if it happened to pick a planet near to or inside your territory.  But I suppose that most of the challenge comes through the "repeating" exogalactic attacks rather than recoveries in hostile territory.

Exactly. For me at least, I always make sure to either capture or neuter a planet with a sunspace signal, so therefore the only difficulty I get is from the spawned chasing event waves.

You dont even have to go that far. I now have a setup as followed when taking the 3th shard and it allows to me to 'pick up' the last 2 without any effort.

A-B-C-C-C-C
A = AI terf, connected to their homeworlds
B = A very reinforced human planet
C = AI terf, all planets have been stripped of guardposts and wave-spawning gates/etc

When you neuter planet A the FS-campaign will default to take a path into the C-planets(it seems). Those C-planets have been pre-neutered and so the AI will send all the FS-waves from behind planet A, which never make it through planet B. Which is part of why I would suggest dropping the last 2 recoveries, make the first 4-5 recoveries a bit more jumps out of your comfort-zone, and allow the AI to really give you hell in the form of nasty waves.
Perhaps I am playing this a bit too well thought out for my own good, but as it demonstrates when you plan ahead the recoveries dont really have any impact on your game. I just give them a move-order and wait till I see a new FS-message apear, keeping myself busy defending against the waves
Nothing gets through a combined fleet of regular (star)ship, Golems and Spire-ship. 

[keith.lamothe]

Perhaps it could randomly decide to ignore the border, and even incline towards player territory (as has been more or less suggested) but in turn spawn a different kind and magnitude of AI response attack.

If you go that route I would suggest, for the sake of story, that shards outside player territory get the "Build a Teleporter" type "quest" whereas the ones inside a "fly home."

It makes sense from the perspective of "what would I do in this situation if it was real" because if the thing is behind my lines I figure I can withstand the assault, but if it's out there behind enemy lines I'd rather sit and build a teleportation device.

Well, it depends.  Perhaps the "in your territory" spawn is in a planet that's cut off from your main territory, or is practically so despite the fact that the AI doesn't control the intervening systems.  It could be trapped behind a massive stalking blob or hybrid fleet or something like that, or there's a devourer golem lounging around in between, etc.

On the flip side, perhaps the outside-your-territory one is along a path that's already really peaceful for whatever reason.

But yea, the journals would be modified to reflect that _usually_ you'll want to teleport from AI land, and _usually_ you'll do better to fly home from within your own territory (assuming that we ditch the spawn-every-minute logic for shard chases, still undecided on that)

[BobTheJanitor]

A-B-C-C-C-C
A = AI terf, connected to their homeworlds
B = A very reinforced human planet
C = AI terf, all planets have been stripped of guardposts and wave-spawning gates/etc

Do the C planets in your example not have any other wormholes coming in the sides? I don't gate raid everything along the path back to my territory, so I tend to get plenty of ships coming in side paths.

[Red Spot]

Basicly a string of 10 planets, seperated from the rest of the uni, see the attached screeny. The signal is now 2 planets north of the selected planet.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, it's exploitable for those with suitable graphs

It would be less so except for the rule that I put in that it would always prefer the lower-distance-to-homeworld planets that had the desired distance-from-human-border.  Before that it could pick quite a wider range, but it could also mean a difference of 2x or 3x the recovery distance, which seemed overly brutal.  Potentially throwing the teleporter into the mix would allow me to remove that "be nice rule", but it's still brutal to have to go massively farther into AI territory because of a random roll.  So dunno.  I'm not sure how big a problem it is that this exploit exists; I don't like it but I'm not fond of the alternatives.

[Red Spot]

Dont get me wrong, I actually like that, how I expected it to work it also worked. When I first played this game I really had to overcome my 'default' strategies. Being able to get to do some of it in AIW with FS makes me happy
I just think that based on it the last 2 recoveries could be .. changed, I sort of feel like cheating how I can currently set myself up. 

(I'm actually fine with how it works, do hope I can stimulate you a wee bit to specially make the last 2 recoveries more difficult

[BobTheJanitor]

Potentially throwing the teleporter into the mix would allow me to remove that "be nice rule", but it's still brutal to have to go massively farther into AI territory because of a random roll. 

It might be interesting. Currently I don't do very much deep striking at all just because I tend to move ships around a whole lot and I like to have safe worlds or at least highly neutered worlds to move ships through. Something that gave me a reason to do that might be OK. If it's far enough, I suppose you'd have to take a world halfway along to create a supply line, otherwise your transports would all blow up from attrition if nothing else. Of course it might be better if the seeding considered useful worlds and tried to see on or on the path that leads through a world with an ARS or Fab or some other capturable item. Especially since as it stands in FS you hardly have time or resources to do normal capturing of these things.

[Panopticon]

Perhaps an additional use for the Shard Radio would be as a sort of Beacon for the proposed Shard Teleport option. This would make it valuable as an asset and a target for the AI to attack. As long as you have the Shard Radio you have the option to teleport the Shard by whatever method that is determined.

This could have the added effect of making the Shard Radio a target for attack by the AI while it's in use. Since the Shard Radio is on your Homeworld, you better be ready to defend it and your Home Command Station from attack. You get the option of the Shard Convoy or holding down your Homeworld (as well as dealing with hostile action in the system containing the Shard) while the Shard Radio is doing its thing.

[Kjara]

Been busy and this has been my first real game since 4.0 came (I'll admit the fact that it was impossible to finish a game in 4.0 if you weren't playing at a breakneck speed probably contributed to this), but here's a few thoughts on fallen spire from someone who's around half-way. I just finished my 5th recovery(just finished my 2nd city), and I have to admit its gotten pretty "samey" already.  However, the first few recoveries were a nice challenge/meshed interestedly with the idea that you want to avoid taking too many planets and still have limited resources if you want to attempt to get to the goodies at a decent rate.  Game started out challenging enough (diff 7.6, schizo, human colony rebellions, dyson sphere, preservation wardens, fallen spire, spire civ leaders, broken golems (2-med), spirecraft (2-med) support corps + fortress baron ai types, 6 aip per hour).

However, at this point it seems that I don't seem to need to care about AIP quite as much (even 700 mk II bomber's in a wave can only get through a fully upgraded city's mkII shields before dying without doing much other damage to anything), pushing through planets to get to the next shard isn't that difficult, and the slow shard speed does make things a bit tedious, but not that hard (my first few recoverables in contrast were a bit of a thrill, I got most of them back with 10-30% life, this last one made it back to the homeworld with 80+% and none of the units in the attacking waves made it onto my homeworld).  I'm strongly in favor of shortening it somehow, or mixing up the missions in some fashion.  From what I've read nothing major changes till I have 5 cities now, its just a scaling game, and I seem to scale faster than the AI (or at least I have been so far and if it remains linear, I don't see why that would change), thus the game is only going to get easier if I have good city placement.

I think some variety in (later?) missions would be nice.  Not exactly sure if all of these ideas work, but here are a few (some have been suggested in some form in the thread already):
current mission:  escort back, durable, slow move speed, medium distance out. (for comparison)
1) Escort back, fragile, slightly faster, short distance out.
2) Teleport back(defend it + self for x time before teleport will happen), far distance out (defensive mission in enemy borders)
3) Long signal research time, friendly territory only, have to defend the signal unit + borders the entire time research is happening, once research done, threat is over (defensive mission in own borders)
4) AI held shard, easy to get back(durable, fast, no/minor waves or fast teleport), have to defeat a nasty defensive setup to free (the AI gets a "prison" type unit, and a large number of extra defensive units and structures on the selected planet) (offensive - assault mission)
5) Raid x AI Jammer units at planets a, b, c,... to eliminate signal jamming, after raiding is done, easy escort mission back (or some subset). (offensive - raid mission)

Could even give the player choice, have 2 possible alternatives at a given time (i.e. after you get your first city upgraded, they find 2 possible signal leads, you get a bit of info about each and get to pick which mission you want--  mutually exclusive choice of course)


I also feel that the spire units synergize a bit too well with the unlocks that also unlock spire things(Laser III's do 6 times the damage of laser I's), making a large subset of them almost "must" unlocks (4k knowledge to jump the shield on the city from 14k to 56k? yes please!--note I already had shield II unlocked at this point).  Laser cannons are balanced around the fact that its worth 3500k knowledge for the mkIII upgrade, which doesn't take into account the fact that it also increases cruiser and city dps by a significant amount as well.  What about small (500-1k) techs at the spire city hub to unlock these upgrades (that additionally requires the current tech for each of these upgrades)?  I.e, spire laser 2 would require laser turrets 2, and an additional 500 knowledge.  Spire laser 3 could require laser turrets 3, 2 or 3 city hubs and 1k knowledge?  Requiring x hubs for each could also let you have some control over how quickly the cities gain in power, since really the spire units/cities seem to start to be a overwhelming percentage of your offensive and defensive strength.



On a side sorta unrelated note I love the spire civ leaders, they give you incentive to take (and hold) planets you might otherwise not, plus they give a nice sense of urgency in the early game (If I risk a little, can I take that planet before the hour rolls over?).  I've made it to the point where I own 4 of them, and the other 6 are out there, meaning that my 4 mostly cancel out not only the other 6, but the 6 aip per hour that I started with, makes me split my forces a bit more to defend from cross planet attacks, but feels like its worth the payoff.

[Draco18s]

On a side sorta unrelated note I love the spire civ leaders, they give you incentive to take (and hold) planets you might otherwise not, plus they give a nice sense of urgency in the early game (If I risk a little, can I take that planet before the hour rolls over?).  I've made it to the point where I own 4 of them, and the other 6 are out there, meaning that my 4 mostly cancel out not only the other 6, but the 6 aip per hour that I started with, makes me split my forces a bit more to defend from cross planet attacks, but feels like its worth the payoff.

Two points:
1) You don't need to capture spire leaders to get the benefit, merely kill the system.
2) They're basically immune to damage.  I don't think the AI can kill them if you only make the system neutral* and the player can't (currently) destroy them.

*Verification needed

[Kjara]

On a side sorta unrelated note I love the spire civ leaders, they give you incentive to take (and hold) planets you might otherwise not, plus they give a nice sense of urgency in the early game (If I risk a little, can I take that planet before the hour rolls over?).  I've made it to the point where I own 4 of them, and the other 6 are out there, meaning that my 4 mostly cancel out not only the other 6, but the 6 aip per hour that I started with, makes me split my forces a bit more to defend from cross planet attacks, but feels like its worth the payoff.

Two points:
1) You don't need to capture spire leaders to get the benefit, merely kill the system.
2) They're basically immune to damage.  I don't think the AI can kill them if you only make the system neutral* and the player can't (currently) destroy them.

*Verification needed

Ah, didn't test that, but that seems like a bug (or at least somewhat counter intuitive), that you are penalized by taking the system but rewarded for leaving it neutral.  Seems like you should either just not the the + but not get the - if you only make the system neutral, or you should not be penalized by having them become vulnerable when you take the planet.

[Draco18s]

Ah, didn't test that, but that seems like a bug (or at least somewhat counter intuitive), that you are penalized by taking the system but rewarded for leaving it neutral.  Seems like you should either just not the the + but not get the - if you only make the system neutral, or you should not be penalized by having them become vulnerable when you take the planet.

I'm not sure the AI can kill them after the player takes the planet either, TBH.

[c4sc4]

Ah, didn't test that, but that seems like a bug (or at least somewhat counter intuitive), that you are penalized by taking the system but rewarded for leaving it neutral.  Seems like you should either just not the the + but not get the - if you only make the system neutral, or you should not be penalized by having them become vulnerable when you take the planet.

I'm not sure the AI can kill them after the player takes the planet either, TBH.

Yes, if you take the planet the AI can kill them. I had a recently conquered planet swarm by the AI and the ended up killing the Spire Civilian Leaders.