Fallen Spire feedback

[Sir t]

And the AI makes a point of going right for them too

[Draco18s]

Good to know.

[Orelius]

I think the shard would be much more interesting to transport if, the speed were increased to, say a tad slower than that of a missile frigate, and make it so that it is only able to go through wormholes once every five minutes or so (perhaps less?), which gets progressively shorter as the shard travels through worlds that are friendly.  Since the shard is still relatively slow, you won't be able to outrun any AI ships with it, either.

It'll allow the player to attempt to quickly set up a defense to defend the shard for five minutes before it goes to the next planet, rather than sending a fleet to escort it.

Not sure how this would really work if the player decides to conquer worlds to connect the location of the shard to his current set of worlds, but I think that this would be less grindy than that of the current system.

[Red Spot]

First time finished the FS-campaign yesterday, wasnt expecting the end to work out as it did but it works out nicelly 
Couple of notes though.

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Be warned, spoilers below.








When at the end the Spire fleet spawns in they more or less seem to nuke anything on their path to the AIs homeplanets.
It has some weird/unwanted behaviour there, imo.

-They attack all counterpost, not an issue by itself, but when they hit 4 counterposts soon after each other and they all spawn 3.5-4k mk4 ships, it will hurt if you cant complete the game before that time. And the spire fleet doesnt help you defend there either. (In my game I actually caused the problem myself as I used my spire fleet to nuke the first Avenger, which nuked all weapons/shields on the spire fleet and left me rebuilding them, in effect they never saw battle the rest of the game...  )
-The spire fleet sits next to Eye's triggering massive reinforcements, but never actually engage the Eye, CC or even the guardposts .. seems to happen every other Eye the Spire fleet encounters (with my spire fleet in repair I was unable to help them out).
-AI responce being triggered is huge. If it wasnt for the fact I was tag-teaming the Spire fleet with my own main-fleet PLUS the fact I used my spire fleet to nuke the first AI homeworld, I would not have been able to hold my ground during the end game.
I had 200+ heavy ships, with escorts, the remainder of a CPA and all angered ships nearby to fend of by the end of the exogalactic signal thingy. If at this time the AI would have triggered the responce from both homeplanets I would have had about 20k mk4-5 ships inbound.


If possible, please make the spire fleet beeline to the AI homeplanets, but make them concentrate on one before they even try to nuke the other (better succeed in 1 than fail in both but cause a lot of angered units to be released).


I really am going to try this at 8.3 though .. with spire civilian leaders in an effort to keep my lategame AIP lower

On a sidenote, did you realise that with all datacenters and Co-processors you can take about 60 planets before you get to mk4 waves?
(1200AIP-10*8=1120 at wich point mk4 waves set in at difficulty 8, 6*20 + 120-80= 160 lowered by data centers/co-processors, 1120+160-10=1270 AIP needed before you get to lvl4 waves, 21AIP/planet on average (CC+special post) 1270/21=60 planets.
This isnt so out of balance, but now only take 50, and gate-raid the rest .... has quite an impact on gameplay I can tell you, specially in the SF-campaign

Look here for some screenies, the last 2 are from during the scan, while my empire was still in one piece. Spot the differences
The first one shows the spire fleet sitting next to an Eye, but not attacking it.
http://members.ziggo.nl/red_spot

[keith.lamothe]

-They attack all counterpost, not an issue by itself, but when they hit 4 counterposts soon after each other and they all spawn 3.5-4k mk4 ships, it will hurt if you cant complete the game before that time. And the spire fleet doesnt help you defend there either.

They won't move to the counter-attacked planet, but there should be some minor faction ships that stay to guard your homeworld and some that move to guard each city hub.  There's also the ongoing spawns heading out into AI territory that can wind up wandering through a system the AI attacks.

-The spire fleet sits next to Eye's triggering massive reinforcements, but never actually engage the Eye, CC or even the guardposts .. seems to happen every other Eye the Spire fleet encounters (with my spire fleet in repair I was unable to help them out).

That sounds like a bug, odd.  Do you have a save where, when loaded, I can see the minor factions doing nothing against that Eye?  Their logic is to take out all warp-gate-wave structures on the planet before moving on.  Except for the two main fleets (led by the super dreadnoughts) which just beeline for the AI homeworlds.

If possible, please make the spire fleet beeline to the AI homeplanets, but make them concentrate on one before they even try to nuke the other (better succeed in 1 than fail in both but cause a lot of angered units to be released).

You mean they actually failed?  Wow.  I'll just buff the super dreads to make sure that doesn't happen


Glad you had fun

[Red Spot]

They do, but 4,5k mk4 ships will kill what they are targeting, even if they do little more damage (see the attached savegame, in the north-west corner is a spire-city, 4 'heavy-build' reactors/hab-centers and the spire fleet, did hardly scratch the counterattack that steamrolled that part of my terf).


I attached a savegame from after finishing, see the warning about an eye spawning ships.


Yeah only the second spire wave took out the second AI homeplanet. 2 Posts and the CC remained after the first wave.
The second time I escorted the fleet with my smaller spire ship, the other spire fleet got supported by my main fleet(mk3+ fleetship and mk2+ fleet starship), which got rather hurt clearing out the other set of coreplanets. I think the balance is pretty good though, help them a bit and they should manage, dont and they might need a second run. Well, if you havent cleared out everything like I did they might need a few more runs, but with the nature of the campaign I doubt you wont do a lot of conquering and clearing.


Edit: one thing I just realised might be the cause of why the initial spire fleets didn't get the job done. What I found out the hard way is that when you pop a carrier with a dreadnought right on top of it, like when you enter a gate, the AI will shoot at the ship underneath its shielding, it seems. At one point I at least lost a dreadnought and damaged the other 2 by popping them through a gate with a couple of 1k mk3 carriers. From the 4 carriers they popped 2 and took out about 1k of foe's, but at a very steep price. Taking them through the gate targeting other targets/disabled, allows them to clean out 3-4k of foe's with little micro (and I did not have the beam weapons the spire fleet has, boy those seem to rule ..).
The AI spire fleet crossed paths with quite a few carriers ...

[Sunshine!]

I can confirm that simply destroying the command center on a planet will cause the Spire Civilian Leaders to reduce AIP, no need to capture it.

[Kjara]

So I hit 800 AIP(before reductions), the new ai ship was bombards, and wow do those suck (in a tedious sort of way).  Do they really need to out range every turret while being immune to sniper shots?  As much fun as microing bombers every time a bit of border aggression trickles in while I wait for the necessary metal/crystal to build each spire city up is, I think I'm going to have to shelve this game.  They are also way better than anything else at actually killing off spire frigates(since they are again immune to the only long range option on destroyers and cruisers).  Perhaps I'll try this again after the patch when capturing planets doesn't mean that shards are now spawning 9 or so hops out from my homeworld.

I do have to wonder if the whole spire reducing aip for just clearing the planet is intended though, as it makes things so much easier.  Is it truly intended to punish the player for actually taking the planet(s) rather than just deepraiding to take out these planets?  What would seem like a logical progression to me would be that its +1 if ai controls, no change if netural, and -3 if you control, or to make them stay neutral even if you take the planet(and be -3 for both neutral and owned planets)

[Draco18s]

The -1 AIP / hour is meaningless when you need to add 20 AIP to get it.

I.E.  It takes 10 hours to pay for itself.

[TechSY730]

The -1 AIP / hour is meaningless when you need to add 20 AIP to get it.

I.E.  It takes 10 hours to pay for itself.

Didn't you hear? They bumped it up (down?) to -3 AIP / hour once captured. Still will take some time to pay off, but at least it should start making a difference.

[Sunshine!]

It's -3 AIP per hour, Draco.  And sure, it's not worth much given the 20 AIP needed to take the planet, but it's still kind of fun to think about.

7 hours to pay for itself in a game that routinely takes 12?  That's not so bad.

[Draco18s]

It's -3 AIP per hour, Draco.

Oh.  Well then.

And sure, it's not worth much given the 20 AIP needed to take the planet, but it's still kind of fun to think about.

7 hours to pay for itself in a game that routinely takes 12?  That's not so bad.

Its not 7.  Its 2.5

You have to remember that it's not only decreasing by 3, but not increasing by 1.  So every hour is "worth" 4 AIP.
(hence why at -1/hr it's 10 hours)

[Kjara]

I agree its a swing of 4, but wouldn't that make it 5 hours, not 2.5?

[Sunshine!]

I just tend to think of it in terms of "if I didn't have this minor faction enabled," especially if I'm going to abuse it so that I have to deal with 2, maybe 3 hours of AIP increase.

[Draco18s]

I agree its a swing of 4, but wouldn't that make it 5 hours, not 2.5?

Derp math.  Yes.  5.

I was being dumb and did 10/4, not 20/4.