Some Negative Feedback [Sorry]

[keith.lamothe]

Wanted to note this part of the 5.005 release notes (that just went out) :

* Spire Blade Spawner:
** Ship cap from 0.05 of normal to 0.03 of normal (in practice, from 9 to 5 for mkI).  Note that this impacts AI usage as well as human.
** BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap from 2 => 1.

* Spire Gravity Drain:
** Grav range from 3000*mk => 8000 (flat).

* Spire Gravity Ripper:
** Attack power from 1000*mk => 2000*mk.
** Seconds-per-salvo from 1 => 2.
** So basically the gravity ripping effect is being nerfed to 50% of what it was, and the normal attack is better against armor.  We'll see where to go from there.

* Spire Miniram:
** Ship cap multiplier from 0.25 => 0.20.

* Spire Stealth Battleship:
** Effective Attack range from 6500 + (500*mk) => 7000 flat (thus, they can no longer engage while still protected by their 8000 radar dampening range).

* Spire Tractor Platform:
** Hull Type from Turret => Heavy.

* Light Starship:
** Base Health from 1.5m => 2m.
** Armor Rating from 500 => 1000.
** Given Radar Dampening of 8000 (to make it harder to deny a fleet its fleet starship munitions boost by ganking the fleet starships from long range).  For reference, its munitions boost range is 3000.

* Flagship:
** Base Health From 4,875k => 6m.
** Given Radar Dampening of 8000.  For reference, its munitions boost range is 6000.

* Neinzul Youngling Commando:
** Base Health from 6600*mk => 8000*mk.
** Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1200*mk.

* Impulse Reaction Emitter:
** Now has a minimum multiplier of 5 (roughly what it would get vs a ship with 5,000 energy cost).  This might be excessive, we'll see, but the ship was having significant "used as a paperweight" issues against anything at all small.

* Zenith Mirrors:
** When a shot is reflected, the returned shot's power is now increased 4x.  Thought to be a perpetual motion machine until the first power bill arrived.  More seriously, this is an attempt to correct for the fact that things now tend to have a higher ratio of hp to damage (particularly against their own hull type) than when the mirrors were first added.

There's another more complex thing I have in mind for limiting the number of guarding AI ships of a particular type on a planet (for blade spawners, notably), but hopefully these will help.

[TechSY730]

Sounds good, except for one thing

* Spire Gravity Drain:
** Grav range from 3000*mk => 8000 (flat).

This makes the Mk. I and II versions even WORSE to fight against. And since by far most of the time in games are spent in AI tech levels 1 and 2, this is a big deal. And the Mk. III versions are still about the same.

In other words, for cases that come up the most often when fighting the AI (especially waves), you have made the problem worse.

EDIT: Everything else looks good though; most certainly pushing it in the right direction.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, are grav drains a problem in AI Waves, or in AI Defenses?  I figured it was the defenses, where you're typically fighting MkIII/IV worlds (there are MkII, but those are usually far easier to steamroll).

[Sunshine!]

Love most of the changes, the only one that stands out is the Gravity Drain as being perhaps the wrong direction (in AI hands - in player hands they're going to be so much easier to work with now), but I think I have a solution.

What might actually help balance grav drains is making themfaster.  They have very short range (2000 or so?), so they will be in return-fire range of anything they actually want to shoot.  Making them faster, so that they close that distance faster and come in enemy-fire range faster, will probably enable the player to spend less time actually being gravity drained.

I say this because 8000 range for a ship that has a cap of 49 (I think it was - even a cap of 24 this applies) is still going to be problematic, especially when attacking enemy planets.  Of course, this makes it so that the player MUST engage the gravity drains, but that's already something of an issue with them.  The speed could be justified as abusing space-time continuum to act as a speed booster - if they placed their gravity singularity marginally in front of the ship, all other ships would still have difficulty getting away from them, but they'd get a pretty major speed boost as their ship is constantly sucked toward it.

[TechSY730]

@Keith
Yes, their huge gravity range is unbalanced on attack waves as well as on defense.

@Sunshine
Great idea; a formula more along the lines of 3k to 4k gravity range (flat) or 1k to 1.5k * Mk range seems fair. This, on top of a boosted speed, seems more balanced but still useful. Keep in mind, Spire gravity drains are NOT immune to tractor beams. This means that the range even at Mk I has to remain high enough to be somewhat useful even if they are forced to sit still.

[Sunshine!]

3k-4k gravity range makes them REALLY hard to use as a player, because they will just die to everything even if you don't tell them to engage.  Maintaining the 8000 range (flat) for each ship allows the player to have them standing around without engaging and still be useful.  I think the speed boost should maintain usefulness for player while also mitigating the huge range on the AI side.

Edit:  The main problem would be if the player's forces are trying to flee, from a per-planetary attack view I think the speed boost may work out decently.

If the range is going to be 8000, the ship cap should probably be dropped, though this is under the assumption that normal ship cap is 49 - if it's something lower, I'm not sure dropping would really be necessary.

[BobTheJanitor]

What might actually help balance grav drains is making themfaster.  They have very short range (2000 or so?), so they will be in return-fire range of anything they actually want to shoot.  Making them faster, so that they close that distance faster and come in enemy-fire range faster, will probably enable the player to spend less time actually being gravity drained.

Of course then Chris wouldn't be able to resist the urge to put in one of those evil little special behavior modules for them that makes them prefer to stay just inside of gravity range instead of closing in to weapons range.

[superking]

complain, and three days later the issue is patched... you guys 

[Philo]

Flagships and light starships buffed? Yes!
Awesome, just awesome.

Just a few days after these issues were raised there's a patch now?
You. You.

[TechSY730]

3k-4k gravity range makes them REALLY hard to use as a player, because they will just die to everything even if you don't tell them to engage.  Maintaining the 8000 range (flat) for each ship allows the player to have them standing around without engaging and still be useful.  I think the speed boost should maintain usefulness for player while also mitigating the huge range on the AI side.

Edit:  The main problem would be if the player's forces are trying to flee, from a per-planetary attack view I think the speed boost may work out decently.

If the range is going to be 8000, the ship cap should probably be dropped, though this is under the assumption that normal ship cap is 49 - if it's something lower, I'm not sure dropping would really be necessary.

Yea, because of how massively gravity effects influence fleet effectiveness, I'm surprised that Spire gravity drains weren't given base ship caps of like 5-10, sort of like Spire maws.

Mobile gravity effects are very, VERY powerful, and as such, IMO, it should be pretty rare, for both humans and the AI.

BTW, are you saying that if the base ship cap for Spire gravity drains is indeed 49, there is no gravity range that would be balanced for both the AI and humans? Thus, necessitating an adjustment to the ship cap itself (with proper scaling HP and attack to match the new cap)?

[Sunshine!]

Correct.  The ship cap is 49 on normal (98 on high!), I checked.  There is no optimally balanced gravity range because of the following reasons:

A.  The gravity effect does not scale with ship cap.  Even though a gravity drain on high is much weaker than on low, the gravity effect is still the same (8000/17 speed max) for both, so on high both the player and AI can completely nullify an entire planet with proper placement.  With 98 mk1 gravity drains with 8000 range, and proper placement, a player could essentially slow an entire enemy wave across the entire approach (possibly up to 20 planets, if we're assuming a maximum distance from one wormhole to the next at 40,000, which seems reasonable) to the player homeworld to 17.  Add in the mk2 and mk3 (maybe even mk4) gravity drains at 88/78/68 ship caps IIRC, and a player can essentially shut down all free AI movement in the entire galaxy.  That the AI is not limited by ship caps make this an almost impossible proposition for players to deal with, especially with the preponderance of mk3 and mk4 gravity drains they will have to face.

B.  Even if the range were lessened so that players cannot do this, the AI is still not constrained by ship cap, so the player will most likely still need to kill every gravity drain they come across, because once a human fleet is within a gravity drain's AOE they will never be able to leave unless they kill the gravity drain, or manage to micro out the specific targets the gravity drain is attacking.  This can be a daunting task when the AI has 40 of them on a planet, which is possible even on low ship caps, and even worse on high level planets where speed is going to be reduced to far less than 17.

Gravity Drains should probably be moved into the range of .05 ship cap, with no scaling for high/med/low ship caps because their main utility (the gravity effect) already does not scale.  Their hitpoints and damage should probably not be increased 10-fold as the ship cap decrease would otherwise suggest, because that would make the destruction of even one gravity drain a daunting task.  Rather, they should be relatively easy for players to kill if used by the AI once the gravity drain is in range (they will still be a problem because the huge slowing effect will let the AI fleet absolutely trounce any human fleet wandering around in-system).  This will not largely affect player usage of the gravity drains because of how the large range, and a screening fleet, will still allow even a small number of gravity drains to affect most of a system.  Adding in the speed increase should ensure that players are not impossibly stuck within gravity fields for too long, and will make gravity drains a slightly different issue (and easier to deal with, individual) compared to Gravity Guardians.

Edit: Optimal speed would probably be somewhere in the 56-68 range.  They should be slower than the main fleet ships so that on the AI side they cannot catch up to a fleeing group of fighters/bombers (which would be disastrous), and so that on the player side there is a consideration in throwing them in with the main fleet ships.

A player combining gravity drains with fleet ships should be a particular balance point to be concerned with, since the combination will largely allow a player to move his fleet around within AI territory without having to deal with too much resistance from AI defensive responses that have a weapons range of less than 8000 (except for whatever is at the player's ultimate destination).

[TechSY730]

So you are suggesting to:
Decrease their cap by a factor of 10 or so, so it is in the "starship like" tier of fleet ships, which implies
  -Normalize their build times and costs accordingly
  -Give the AI a max per planet and max per guard post like the other "starship like" fleet ships
  -Normalize their HP and attack, but this time consider the Gravity ability even more valuable, as such, even if the ship cap decrease by a factor of ten, maybe their attack power and HP only go up by a factor of 5 or so
    -This "ability adjustment" is one of the reasons why good abilities, including, but not limited to, cloaked ships, ships with vampirism, and ships with multiplying (like Zenith viral shredders) have less durability and attack power at ship caps than the "standard balancing point." Those abilities add more usefulness than the standard stats can reflect. You are saying to add gravity effects to that list, or if it already is, treat is as even more valuable than it already is, thus giving an even bigger penalty to their other stats.

EDIT: Are you still suggesting a speed boost for these things, in addition to these other changes?

[TechSY730]

Sorry for the double post, but there is a chance that regular ships with mobile gravity CANNOT be balanced, or at least not with how the gravity mechanic currently works (forces speed to a hard value, not a ratio; fully effective over its entire range, and doing nothing one pixel beyond it, etc.)

If this is the case (and that is a big if), there are two options:
1. The gravity mechanic should be changed. I know that Chris has stated that forced to a hard value will stay, but maybe there can be a "decreasing effectiveness with distance" that can be added. It doesn't have to be continuous, you can just add a few different ranges of different gravity strengths. That shouldn't add too much more computation intensity. You are already doing this with the "too far from the center and get a speed penalty" thing.
2. Spire gravity drains should be removed. Very painful, I know, but if they cannot be reasonably balanced, this is the lesser of two evils.

Gravity guardians aren't as big of a deal, as they are moderately rare.

[Sunshine!]

Yes, decrease them to an "at most, one per guard post" ship cap (I believe that's what most spire fleetships are at right now?  Even that might be excessive), so 9/8/7/6/5 for mk1-mk5 on the player side.

Build times would not have to be increased too much - as-is, I think they have a 25 second build time on high caps (so 50 second on medium, 1:20 on low), and tractor platforms have a build time of 1:40 for mk1 for comparison.

The normalized value of their HP/Damage should be more along the lines of 2x what it is now, to keep them from being excessively hard to kill since they're already causing such major disruption.  Because their gravity ability is their main strength and is so powerful and disruptive (especially at 8000 range), their cap DPS/HP should be far, far lower than the current average for spire fleetships.

I do believe the speed boost will be a good adjustment for making them balanced on the AI side.  Usually it doesn't make much of a difference when players are attacking AI planets, but having the source of such a disruptive ability come into weapons range faster (since approaching a gravity drain when your ships are reduced to speed 8 or so is extremely difficult) will probably be a good thing.

I do believe regular ships with mobile gravity can be balanced.

1.  Decreasing effectiveness with distance will be a poor choice, and will make the lower marks of gravity drains as unwieldy as they have been in the past (seriously, try to get a 3000/17 max gravity drain to do anything effective) which is a serious problem.

2.  Rather than removing Gravity Drains, instead make the random bonus AI gravity drains harder to get, and make them rare-ish for the AI to deploy.  If the AI randomly selects gravity drains, then it needs to randomly select from the selection of Spire fleetships, and if it selects the gravity drains again then it may use them.  If it does not select the gravity drain the second time around, it instead uses the selected spire fleetship.  If it does select the gravity drains, make the deployment function along the same lines as spire blade spawners, since they are arguably as disruptive, if not as purely destructive.

[TechSY730]

I don't think that gravity drains are so powerful that they need their own bonus type selection logic. Especially once a lowish number per guard post and number per planet caps are put in place, that won't be all that necessary.

Plus, the chances of the AI selecting it are already pretty low, thanks to the sheer number of bonus ships the AI could get. (Outside of AI type specific unlocks, it is a uniform probability, right?)

I think that a new issue needs to be posted on mantis so we can start voting on it. Unlike your current one, this one will be explicitly for re-balancing to a .05 or .03 ship cap type ship (thus, joining the ranks of the other "I can't believe they are not starships" spire fleet ships)

If you reduce their ship cap by about a factor of 10, but only give them a boost of 2x for HP and attack, that makes them pretty dang fragile and weak at ship cap, even with the gravity effects, as they are effectively getting nerfed in their general stats by a factor of 5.

Long range mobile gravity is indeed very powerful, but I don't think it is powerful enough to justify giving it 1/5 total stats at ship cap (compared to the average).

I think that somewhere between 2/5 and 3/5 total stats at ship cap is more in line with the usefulness of long range gravity.

P.S. If it is a uniform probability of an AI to get any certain ship type, does that need to be changed? Should classes of ships have slightly lower chances of being chosen as their random unlock? Not specific ships, specific ship exceptions tend to be distasteful to me. But giving all ships with a ship cap of multiplier of <=.08 or something a moderately less chance of being chosen for a random unlock than the rest by the AI seems okay with me (Thus, reducing the chance you will see an AI with those "mega spire fleet ships"). And maybe giving those with <=[whatever the ship cap multiplier of the gravity spire drain currently is] a very slightly less chance to be unlocked, as those tend to be deadly in AI hands too (This would also give Z elec bombers, Z sentinal frigates, Spire armor rotters, and sniper ships a slightly less chance of being chosen random-ally by the AI)