Arcen Games

General Category => AI War II => : BadgerBadger December 06, 2018, 12:26:08 PM

: Minor Faction opinions
: BadgerBadger December 06, 2018, 12:26:08 PM
Hey All,
    Which minor factions to people really like/dislike, and why?

Some minor factions are intended to have big gameplay impact (Nanocaust, Marauders) and some have much smaller impact (Human Resistance Fighters, Risk Analyzers), and having some factions at different power levels inherently is good. But are there any that just seem boring and uninteresting, or not fun to have?
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: HeartHunter December 06, 2018, 04:30:04 PM
hi

Dislike.
Risk Analyzers - ez mode for turtle Human player on x10 speed.
Human Resistance - i dont see their task in the game. Its like poor Marauders.
Macrophages - low, but will see buff in new patch.
Devourer - low. Just low. High Pike towers delete this faction from the game in the middle game, but good dmg. And i m not sure, that wreck(Salvage) from best monster in the game enough good.

Like.
Dark Spire - one of the factions which have chance to stop Human.
Nanocoust - More ez, than Dark Spire, but seldom more hard, if you try attack Hive or win planets with big Nanocoust stacks.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: tadrinth December 06, 2018, 05:17:06 PM
If Risk Analyzers are a renamed Spire Civ leader with the same mechanics, then I vote for these to be either removed or refactored.  Unlimited AIP reduction encourages turtling.  I never finished my Spire-themed AIWC campaign because the optimal strat was to sit and wait for the Civ Leaders to tick, and my planned expansion was going to involve something like 15 hours of that, after I'd mostly cleared the map.   

I think they would work better as something like a very slow Superterminal hack; you capture them, they reduce AIP while being targeted by exos, and then they transform into a combat ship.  It still encourages turtling while you've got them reducing your AIP, but it doesn't encourage indefinite turtling.  They don't even really need to cause exos, they can just be worth holding for a while and then transform. 
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: zeusalmighty December 06, 2018, 05:23:28 PM
I'll have more to say about factions later, but as for the comments about risk analyzers, what is the justification to penalize people who want to turtle?

That's a legitimate strategy (one I quite enjoy) and since this is *optional* there's no reason to play with it if you don't like the option. Meanwhile, it does auto-increase AIP if left alone, so that mechanic itself encourages players to expand. Since these are spread out it's very unlikely to allow for contiguous empires and so the tradeoff is harder to defend territory.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: RocketAssistedPuffin December 06, 2018, 06:11:28 PM

With Analyzers, the fact you can capture one and have the increase reduced by 4 (1, because that Analyzer is no longer increasing, and 3 from the decrease) makes it fairly easy to more or less nullify the effect. If you use the starting intensity of 5, capturing just one reduces it by 80%.

It personally feels fairly easy to me to abuse. I don't know what I would do with them though.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Ovalcircle December 06, 2018, 09:09:07 PM
Add in an AIP floor so you can't decrease it into the negatives with the Risk Analyzers.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: BadgerBadger December 07, 2018, 09:29:52 AM
It seems like Risk Analyzers have encouraged the most discussion so far, so that looks like an obvious candidate for improvement.

I think in the abstract, it's good to have factions that allow for diverse playstyles. It's not a bad thing to allow for people who want to play turtle-style.

The most likely set of options are to put an AIP floor out, to have the AI get bonuses when the Risk Analyzers generate enough AIP (not net AIP, so it would ignore your reductions); this could be exos, more instigator bases, stuff like that.

The AI could also get bonus reconquest waves if you own risk anaylzers, for example. Perhaps they also need to give less AIP reduction. More ideas are welcome, of course.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Draco18s December 07, 2018, 02:12:41 PM
What about (player owned ones) consuming hacking points when they tick?
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: zeusalmighty December 07, 2018, 02:31:14 PM
TLDR:

Lost Spire Ship: Remove entirely or make lore-friendly
Devourer Golem: Needs more interesting ways to interact with; presently boring.
Human Resistance Fighters: Pathetic support; needs to be more distinct from marauders
Marauders: Great
Broken Golems: Great, bring back widow and hive
Nanocaust: Great
Macrophage: Great
Dyson Sphere: Great, maybe more lore-friendly and possibility for unique win/lose condition
Astro trains: Cool in theory, not as cool in practice—needs more direct impact
Dark Spire: Cool in theory, not a faction I use a lot so no real feedback.
Zenith Trader: Nice, be interesting with a procedurally generated inventory in addition to its normal stock.
Risk Analyzers: Don’t get all the hate against turtles; add back the AIP floor and call it a day.

General Feedback:

Much of player’s feedback has been focused on improving mechanics, but I want to focus on a less discussed topic—lore. One of the reasons I kept playing classic was that it gave me a sense of a procedurally generated story. The champion missions, fallen spire, showdown devices, nomad planets, and the story-based objectives (to name a few) all contributed to this feeling that I was playing a unique campaign driven by an underlying “universe” (in the sci-fi world-building sense). Basically, I don't want this game to feel so much as procedurally generated as it feels like a "choose your own adventure." Rouge-likes, imo, lose replayability when they over-emphasize procedural generation at the expense of plot. To this end, my critique on minor factions will focus on promoting lore-building (and general things to make them more fun)

Minor Factions:

Lost Spire Ship: A whole faction dedicated to a single ship, without any lore, is frankly a waste of a faction. I would ditch this faction altogether, at least until it has a lore-friendly theme. I suggest ditching this because it presently adds nothing unique and by that fact alone makes the Spire just another ingredient haphazardly thrown into the AI War mixing bowl.

If there was some sort of special objective tied with freeing the Spire ship, that would go a long way to making it more interesting (maybe it’s defended by insane spirelings? IDK)

Devourer Golem: I think this faction is somewhat boring because it is predictable, exploitable, and inconvenient. I think this faction needs a way to interact with it—ideally turn this into a win/lose condition unto itself.

Human Resistance Fighter: Currently offers pathetic support; otherwise this faction is AI wars with training wheels (which isn’t a bad thing). Would be ideal to have these units more distinguishable from marauders. 

Marauders: These guys are great, probably need some balance tweaking but otherwise in a healthy, fun state.

Broken Golems: I love golems, but frankly the game is too easy in its current state to really make a point of using them every game. Would like to see the widow and hive golem back in action.

Nanocaust: Great, if somewhat imbalanced. If I ever get serious I would love to create a variant that substitutes the hydra mechanic for zombification. Would like to see more lore associated with the Nanocaust (if only in the form of mission objectives like classic).

Macrophange: Great, this faction is pretty unique. Some balance issues but reserving judgment for when they scale with AIP.
 
Dyson Sphere: Great, I’m glad they have their own unique units and have more ways to interact with them (e.g. hacking). Still haven’t seen Dyson Antagonizers in action (don’t think they are in the game yet), but that sounds like a cool mechanic. Think it’s still worth developing this faction further to build upon its lore and open up a unique win/lose condition (what do they do with all that energy??)

Astro trains: Cool in theory, not as interesting in practice. Too many of the depot effects are indirect and it doesn’t really feel like it’s contributing to gameplay (although it very well may).
There needs to be more of a causal factor (oh, this unexpected wave is because of the train). I would like a “pain train” (that a depot eventually spawns) that targets your hw and releases a ton of drones when it gets to your hw or if it dies in transit)

Moreover, there should be a reward for killing trains (it would be awesome if you killed enough trains you get enough “parts” to build a superweapon, like your own dire guardian).

Also, my last game I rarely encountered a train (on 7), even though I kept stations alive in my territory. There should probably be a penalty associated for keeping stations alive so players can’t just cheese where trains go, although in my game that didn’t really occur—might be buggy)

Dark Spire: I honestly don’t use this faction because it clashes hard with my playstyles, but I do like the concept of it and will give this faction more attention. I hope this faction has unique interactions with the Spire when that becomes a thing.

Zenith Trader: Nice faction to have for the possibility of getting unique and powerful goodies. It would be nice if there was a way to summon it to one of the worlds you want said goodies, perhaps at the expense of making that planet targeted by the AI.

Risk Analyzers: As the game is too easy in its current state, this faction is imbalanced. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. AIP floor would go a long way to prevent endless turtling and perhaps letting non-player risk analyzers generate threat (or something like that) based on how many times it has consecutively gone off (so that it scales into the late game and doesn’t destroy you the first time they all go off)
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Dominus Arbitrationis December 07, 2018, 08:12:29 PM
TLDR:
Risk Analyzers: Don’t get all the hate against turtles; add back the AIP floor and call it a day.

Minor Factions:
Risk Analyzers: As the game is too easy in its current state, this faction is imbalanced. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. AIP floor would go a long way to prevent endless turtling and perhaps letting non-player risk analyzers generate threat (or something like that) based on how many times it has consecutively gone off (so that it scales into the late game and doesn’t destroy you the first time they all go off)

I fixed the AIP Floor glitch where you could destroy datacenters and the like and benefit even while at the floor. Now, no change in AIP will happen if you do that. I also added back the AIP floor increase from Classic, so the floor is now determined by AIP scale * AIP cost of starting planets (Both moddable in ExternalConstants.xml) OR 0.2 (moddable in ExternalConstants.xml)*Total AIP Gained. It takes whichever value is higher.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: ulu December 10, 2018, 03:08:22 AM
Human Mauraders are great! Huge improvement compared to AI Wars 1.

Human Resistance Fighters need to be enhanced. They attend at almost every battle but have no impact. In defensive fights they distract some enemies at least.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: AnnoyingOrange December 10, 2018, 07:39:39 AM
I personally didn't find the new golems to be as satisfying as the old ones: Artillery are more micro-intensive since they don't seem to prioritize guard posts and since their reload time doubled, Armored seems a lot weaker probably because of low range and new multishot mechanics, Cursed went from planet-wide threat to unimpressive metal sink...

About the Risk Analyzers, I think the passive AIP reduction is fine, but I would like to see them offering some active (and riskier) way to reduce AIP faster: for example, you hack them to double the AIP decrease but the AI retaliates until they conquer the planet or you get X points of bonus reduction, or every X minutes the analyzer tells you the location of a backdoor in the AI network and you can go there and hack it for AIP decrease.
Another idea would be to have various types of risk analyzers with different tasks: some passively increase/decrease AIP, some increase/decrease spawn rates for instigator bases, some give a malus/bonus to AIP after an adjacent station is destroyed...
In any case, in my experience instigator bases already discourage turtling effectively.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: BadgerBadger December 17, 2018, 11:57:48 AM
Proposed enhancements to Risk Analyzers:

Having risk analyzers on will generate periodic Exogalactic Strikeforces. The more Risk Analyzers you own the more powerful these will be.

In addition, every RA you own will generate small buffs to the AI's reconquest budget.

Thoughts?
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Draco18s December 17, 2018, 12:08:06 PM
What about instead of exos, it triggers reclaim attempts, so the ai attempts to reclaim the analyzers?
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: BadgerBadger December 17, 2018, 12:10:44 PM
Given that the player has to explicitly enable reconquest waves, that's not a great solution, since many people will play without turning them on.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Draco18s December 17, 2018, 10:34:48 PM
Ah. Was an idea, didn't realize those were optional.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: AnnoyingOrange December 18, 2018, 06:28:35 AM
Having risk analyzers on will generate periodic Exogalactic Strikeforces. The more Risk Analyzers you own the more powerful these will be.

In addition, every RA you own will generate small buffs to the AI's reconquest budget.

Both ideas seem great to me, both gameplay-wise and thematically.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: RocketAssistedPuffin December 18, 2018, 06:33:22 AM
I personally didn't find the new golems to be as satisfying as the old ones: Artillery are more micro-intensive since they don't seem to prioritize guard posts and since their reload time doubled, Armored seems a lot weaker probably because of low range and new multishot mechanics, Cursed went from planet-wide threat to unimpressive metal sink...

Yeaaah, I'm not a fan either. Multi-shot makes Armored and Cursed fairly...difficult, to work with, being unable to focus fire on a single target, yet grossly overkill vs other things.

I did think of having them reload single shot weapons every 0.1s, but turns out the game doesn't load if you try that! So I'd need to think of some other solution...

Devourer needs some work as well, it also grossly suffers from the multi-shot restriction. I could technically use the AoE type that spreads damage evenly as a way around this? So single target, full damage. If it hits a group it spreads it out, so more or less it will always do the same amount.

Of course, as a player you could just split everything into single units, but I have a feeling you generally won't have the time for that...or be facing a single Golem with no support.

Oh and I'd remove that self damage from the Cursed. Probably fine without it, it's already among the lowest health Golems.

Any spontaneous ideas I'd be interested to hear.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: AnnoyingOrange December 18, 2018, 07:47:06 AM
Of course, as a player you could just split everything into single units
But for what purpose? Sending single ships to absorb the alpha strike makes sense vs opponents with long reload times, while most golems have fast reloads so there wouldn't be enough time to get in and out without being hit again.
Vs artillery golems, players would simply swarm with bombers, pike corvettes, and such: losing 4 fleetships per minute to the golem is not a big deal.
I would almost say that sending in all units at the same time would be the best counterplay to evenly spread AoE, as it prevents the damage from being focused on any particular unit, delaying losses and benefitting from repairs as much as possible.

Any spontaneous ideas I'd be interested to hear.
I feel like the whole issue is complicated, and simply copying the AIW way might not be enough.
In the original, multi shot allowed to spread and concentrate firepower as required by the situation and it strongly reduced damage wasted to overkill, while suffering much more than single shot against high armor targets.
Projectile travel time, too, could be a major factor, such as with the cursed golem.
The armored and cursed golem filled different roles, with the former being some great point defense and a good unit to lead an assault if speed boosted, and the latter specializing in planet-wide attrition.

None of that would translate well to AIW2 as of now.
The idea to have armored and cursed weaken enemies in different ways (reload debuff vs paralysis) is certainly promising, even though paralysis is something that might overlap with the black widow's arsenal when that golem is reintroduced.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: RocketAssistedPuffin December 18, 2018, 08:28:28 AM
But for what purpose? Sending single ships to absorb the alpha strike makes sense vs opponents with long reload times, while most golems have fast reloads so there wouldn't be enough time to get in and out without being hit again.

Somehow temporarily forgot that reload time, derp.

Indeed on the translation part. Might just have to wait, there's no proper solution that seems available right now. It'd be a while, as things like the lobby are more important than Golems.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Lord Of Nothing December 18, 2018, 10:03:20 AM
I wonder if armoured golems should take a leaf out of the Thanatos and phase two overlord's book and have two (or more) weapon systems- For instance, the armoured could have a multishot attack, and a single target attack with a bonus against larger ships, but each with a bit less DPS than the current multishot alone? I think they're large and important enough to justify similar treatment. I agree that multishot is currently making larger ships very ineffective against each other, but the current functionality also allows for making ships that are a more pure anti-swarm, and it seems a shame to throw that away.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Draco18s December 18, 2018, 12:24:38 PM
What about an OMD style shot? Virtually 0 damage against small things, lots of damage against big things.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Toranth December 18, 2018, 08:33:14 PM
Having risk analyzers on will generate periodic Exogalactic Strikeforces. The more Risk Analyzers you own the more powerful these will be.
Should Exowaves really be the response to everything?  The Spire Civilians were an option that made AIWC games easier, sure - but so were half the other options.  Since they aren't on by default, do they really NEED a counter? 

If people really want both the AIP reduction AND an AI enhancement to make up for it, maybe make RA - Easy and RA - Hard factions?  Maybe running the RAs takes Metal and Energy.  Think of Golems - Medium, which was often considered harder than Golems - Hard and its Exowaves.

Mostly, I'd just really like another option - ANY other option - than just more Exowaves.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: BadgerBadger December 18, 2018, 08:34:58 PM
More exowaves? The only way to get an exo wave is to ask for it from the Golems. I want there to be more things that use the mechanic because it's a good one. People were complaining a lot about risk analyzers not having a counter and being too simple....
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: zeusalmighty December 18, 2018, 09:30:22 PM
Exo-waves are pretty non-existent at the moment, so not sure what you are really referring too.

I really want to see more exo-waves actually, but I hope to see them distinguishable from each other by having special exo-leaders specific to the faction that generates them
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Toranth December 20, 2018, 10:50:54 AM
I'm thinking more of the AIWC development history, where as time went by, Exowaves were used for all sorts things that 'needed a counter'.

Still, I'll say it again - Spire Civilians didn't have a counter, and didn't ruin AIWC.  Do Risk Analyzers need to come with a built-in punishment, even though it's an optional setting?
If people feel it MUST come with a built in negative, does it need to be an Exowave?  There are all sorts of other, more interesting, ways to make them have a drawback.
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Dominus Arbitrationis December 20, 2018, 01:51:41 PM
I'm thinking more of the AIWC development history, where as time went by, Exowaves were used for all sorts things that 'needed a counter'.

Still, I'll say it again - Spire Civilians didn't have a counter, and didn't ruin AIWC.  Do Risk Analyzers need to come with a built-in punishment, even though it's an optional setting?
If people feel it MUST come with a built in negative, does it need to be an Exowave?  There are all sorts of other, more interesting, ways to make them have a drawback.

What other interesting drawbacks do you have in mind?
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: BadgerBadger December 20, 2018, 03:47:58 PM
I could require the Risk Analyzer Exos to go after planets with player-owned Risk Analyzers, and to bring Usurpers along for recapturing them?
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Draco18s December 20, 2018, 04:43:15 PM
I could require the Risk Analyzer Exos to go after planets with player-owned Risk Analyzers, and to bring Usurpers along for recapturing them?

Hey! That was my idea.

What about instead of exos, it triggers reclaim attempts, so the ai attempts to reclaim the analyzers?
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: Toranth December 21, 2018, 11:49:31 AM
I'm thinking more of the AIWC development history, where as time went by, Exowaves were used for all sorts things that 'needed a counter'.

Still, I'll say it again - Spire Civilians didn't have a counter, and didn't ruin AIWC.  Do Risk Analyzers need to come with a built-in punishment, even though it's an optional setting?
If people feel it MUST come with a built in negative, does it need to be an Exowave?  There are all sorts of other, more interesting, ways to make them have a drawback.
What other interesting drawbacks do you have in mind?
The simplest and easiest is to give them a significant Energy and/or Metal cost.  Is the player willing to sacrifice 100,000 energy and 1000 metal/sec from their economy for an hour to reduce the AIP?  Tradeoff!

More complicated schemes can be used: 
- Imagine that you need to kill a certain number of AI units before each RA can start counting - after all, you need data to analyze, right?  So until you kill you first 100 AI ships, the RA has nothing to do.  Reset after each reduction to make the player go on hourly AI hunts.  You can even put an effective cap on the AIP reduced by causing this to increase over time.
--- As an especially amusing variant, you could require that the ships be killed on the same planet as the RA. 
- There could be a limit on the minimum AIP each RA would reduce to - such as the current AIP when it was captured.  Or a fixed value, which could be different for each RA.
- The AIP reduced could be random, possibly including increasing AIP.  Say, it changes AIP by a random number between +1 and -5.  We'd probably want to do a little something to prevent last-second save scumming, but as long as the average is still a decent negative number, it should work fine.
- Require the RAs use up hacking points (may require increasing the AIP reduction).

At the same time, I don't think Dracos's and Badger's ideas about the AI prioritizing the recapture or kill of the RAs is a bad idea.  I just think that the AI getting special forces created expressly for that purpose is not good.  At the least, make it come out of the wave or reinforcement budget.
If people really do want Exowaves or special recapture waves, then I suggest we do a "Easy, Medium, Hard" selection, like Broken Golems had (and has).
: Re: Minor Faction opinions
: AnnoyingOrange December 21, 2018, 02:01:10 PM
I like most of the drawbacks suggested by Toranth, except the max AIP reduction (AIP is bounded by the floor already, and being always able to hug the floor given enough effort is a good way to allow different playstyles) and the hacking points one (would overlap with the superterminal).

I don't agree on dedicated response forces being a bad idea thematically or gameplay-wise, taking from the existing budget would go against the idea of the AI caring about risk analyzers and dedicating additional resources to their protection.