Game Start! 3.182 beta feedback stuff

[Diazo]

TL.DR: Posting a record of my game as I play it so expect lots of text as I'm actually writing this post as I play in an alt-tab window.

Hybrids are fine. Preservation warden faction possibly too weak. Enclave starships are not an early game unlock.



--Post start--

Alright, I wasn't sure where to put this as this is as much about beta feedback as it is an actual after action report, but here we go anyway.

Having played several short games recently to test out specific features I felt it was time to play a game all the way to it's conclusion and as we seem to be over the worst of the balancing issues I'm feeling good about starting one.

I'll be updating this post as I play this evening rather then making multiple posts. I also intend to be quite wordy, both describing what I'm doing, but why.

So, game start:
80 planets, realistic
AI 7 Neinzul Viral Enthusiast, with Avenger, Hybrids (not Advanced)
AI 7 Neinzul Cluster Bomber, with Avenger
All ship types and minor factions enabled.
Fast & Dangerous Combat, 1AIP/30mins
Neinzul Youngling Commando as my special.

Alright, wanting a game that will somewhat forgiving of my mistakes, I go for AI 7 opponents on a standard 80 planet map.
Since I'm playing with as much Neinzul stuff as I can, I select my AI types rather then go random as I usually do. I also take the youngling commando for this reason.
I get lucky and the commando is up in the top right corner of the map with only 2 warp points.

And here we go!

My first unlocks are harvester exo-forcefields and enclave starships. At only 500 knowledge, exo-ff are perhaps the best unlock for the very early game when losing a harvester can be more then 10% of your production lost. I also do enclave starships because I'm going to try and use younglings as much as I can and they go hand in hand.

And less then 2 minutes in, I've already bottomed my economy out. :/

What's this? Raptors already? Going to have to move tachyon emmiters up the priority list.

3:30 game time, send my first wave of scouts out using auto-explore (nice feature  )
Well, the good news is that there's an ARS a mere two hops away in a Mk I system! The bad news is there's a special forces alarm post there that covers one of my ways out from my homeworld. The other way out is covered by a Mk III ion. Hmmmm......

5:15 game time, wave of 40 bombers/raiders/fighters warps in, it's not an actual wave, just special forces?
Either way, build some youngling commandos (speed 140) to deal with it, then build more turrets.
I lose a couple basic turrets to this wave.

5:45, another wave of 40 ships. Even after these two waves, the threat meter is still up at 127 which I find a bit high for me not having launched any sort of attack yet. 50 threat is more the average from previous games.

7:33 Alright, map generation may need a look see, I got a couple more waves and my threat is now down to 41 and no more attacks are coming in, it looks like about 200 ships were turned loose as soon as the game started via border aggression/CPA/system caps/something.

9:28 Odd, threat shot back up to 68 a bit ago, then another small wave just hit me, taking threat down to 39. I'm starting to think I don't quite understand how special forces work (with that special forces alarm post 2 hops away and all.)

Anyways, if small waves are going to keep coming in like that, time for grav turrets. I know it's a preference thing, but for me the 2k knowledge for Mk I grav turrets is worth it.

12:00 Homesystem looks pretty secure, time to attack. It looks like I'm going to have to take out the world next to the special forces alarm post and eat the resulting wave. The other way is blocked by an Ion Mk III which I don't want to tangle with yet. And the command post is right there, time to build up my turrets, then send a load of younglings in to pop that.

23:11 Energy issues, yay. Anyways, can only build 100 commandos at the moment, so time to attack and see how they do.
And they get the command station to 50%, accomplishing not much.

24:11 Turn off my starship factory to send 198 commandos through.
And the command station goes boom. And the special forces alarm goes off. 434 threat, I can handle this.

Trying something new, giving the space dock and FRD order on the system I just popped the command station in and spamming commandos just to see what happens.
Hmmm, as a usual tactic, I think this fails. Entrenched defenses around the guard posts just shred the commandos. The MLRS guard post is just ouch against the commandos. They end up taking it out, but I lose a lot of them doing so.
It does blunt the 434 ships that the special forces alarm called in though. Maybe half reached my home system at most.

And the first actual wave is Cloaked Ships, lovely, time to unlock decloakers it looks like.
It's easily handled as I'd built up my defences to handle the special forces wave I touched off earlier.
Next wave is just fighters, no biggie.

Time to capture the system, this early I can't justify anything except the Econ command center, and I unlock Mk II crystal harvesters as I've been bottomed out on crystal pretty much the whole game.

System capture goes smoothly and I turn my attention to the other planet bordering my home system, it's got the Mk III Ion so I plan to pop the command station with younglings and build a command station and let the ion clear the system

Or not, in return for about 300 younglings I maybe killed 50 ships and no structures before calling the attack off. The 5 hybrids on the command station didn't help anything.
Time to transport dump on top of the command station.

ARGH!
A hybrid just walzed in and popped my command station in my first colony system. My defences made it run away before it destroyed everything, but it still got the command station :/

Oh, my FF wasn't finished building yet, pulled my fleet out too soon.  

This is 1:00:00 gametime now.

Hmmm, for some reason a single hybrid came in early before the main wave.
I've beat the wave off, lost some turrets and the command station and that was it.

Oh, friendly roaming enclave just spawned in my home system.

And goodbye friendly roaming enclave. Warping into a system with an Ion cannon and 3 defensive hybrids isn't such a great plan.

Alright, took the second system by brute forcing it and did capture that ion cannon.

Unlock Metal extractors Mk II now also.


Ion cannons take out turrets too which is nice. Not guard posts though :/

A Hybrid just tried popping my colonies command station again, with the FF now built, it turns and runs without doing any damage beyond a dozen turrets.

Again, for some reason a solo hybrid came early. The main wave of hybrids came a few minutes later and they popped my second colony command station as the defences are not up yet.

Just hit 1:30:00 game time, still trying to build my second colony system up.

And my threat just spiked from 120 (remnants of the hybrid attacks I think) to 488 and I don't know why.

Nevermind, I've just been introduced to the Preservation Minor Faction, this is going to hurt.  

Or not?  

According to the scoreboard I just killed 923 Warden Preservation Bombers in the past couple minutes and I lost a single basic turret. They were throwing themselves at defenses designed to stop hybrids and a system with an Ion cannon in it, but at first brush they are too weak.

Not so the 500 commandos that followed them in a few minutes later. 

Alright, I've got my second colony system secure, and that's it for tonight. The fun stuff with the Neinzul structures will have to wait until tomorrow.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Wow, thanks a lot for doing this, lots of bugs/balance-problems don't come out unless people actually play through, and it's helpful to see the play by play.  And often entertaining, when my creations gank one of your command stations unexpectedly

On the Hybrids, they don't actually conciously try to all go in one wave, they just coordinate with other hybrids that already have an attack mission against the same planet.  So if only a single hybrid has an attack mission against a given planet, it basically doesn't wait at all.  When picking an attack mission it sizes up your various border planets by things like "does it have non-replaceable mark IV production capacity", "how many human planets that are currently not border worlds would become threatened if I took this", and "how many resource extractors does it have", and then does a weighted-random pick between them.  So if you have one super-valuable planet (i.e. your homeworld in this case) and one relatively minor planet, and there are 10 attacker hybrids, it would not be terribly unlikely that 9 would get a mission for your homeworld, and the lone other one would get a mission for your other planet and not wind up waiting for anyone.

On the preservation wardens, bear in mind that their spawn rate and their youngling-production rate are directly related to the number of resource extractors you have.  You don't have terribly many right now so not a huge deal, but if you get up to 100, 200, 300 extractors... let's just say they'll become a fairly major threat, or at least they will if I coded it the way I think I did

But thanks for the note on the number and strength of the warden bombers; they should be stronger and less numerous, I'll look at that.

[keith.lamothe]

By the way, I should emphasize: one of your goals in a preservation warden attack is to catch and kill the warden, because otherwise it goes away for a while, builds more younglings, then comes back and attacks again.  The game will keep gradually spawning wardens (at a rate proportional to your extractor count), so they keep piling up and the "wave" sizes will get bigger from the number of wardens as well as the rate at which wardens produce younglings.  But if you take out a warden, that's the last generation you have to deal with from him

[Diazo]

Do the wardens sit a system away or something?

I don't remember seeing anything like an actual Warden Starship.

(I've killed AI war and am about to log for the night or I'd check myself.)

D.

[keith.lamothe]

They look just like your normal Enclave Starships (no ff's like hybrids or anything, these are pure Neinzul units).  Their basic behavior is to spawn on an AI core world, move toward your territory, release their younglings when they get to a planet adjacent to one of yours, and actually enter your territory very briefly and then turn and head back to an AI core world.

To catch one you'll want scout coverage and a good mobile strikeforce.  It helps to have, ah, "suppressed" the AI population in the nearby systems, so your fleet doesn't get tied up too much.

[Diazo]

TL;DR: Summary of both my game sessions on Weds night.

Preservation Wardens spawn rates seem high.
Warden Bombers absolutely eat Ion Cannons, this intentional?
Maurauders Minor Faction shows up and eats my fortress alive. (Non-issue probably)
Fortresses absolutely destroy younglings of any sort as well as hybrids. (Haven't found a warden starship yet.)
The hybrids and preservation wardens contribute to a slower game. You can't take risks and expose a flank because these factions will make you pay for it, you have to have at least some defenses up everywhere. Note that slower does not mean grindy at all, it's just against the AI alone you could expose yourself for a bit and usually get away with it, but not any more at all.
Viral Clusters may build too fast still, only seen one so far, will test further later tonight.
Viral Clusters also stop raiding of any sort cold, you have to stop and clear the Cluster building off any warp point you use, no if ands or buts.
Hybrids are a freaking stone wall once a bunch of them gather. They are okay as they are in small groups, such as when they attack, but I've got 15 camping this system I'm trying to take and it's stopped me cold for 70 minutes game time now.

---Post start.
Alright, time for night 2. Update to 3.183 and we're off.

Gametime 1:47:00

And immediately go rescue my system from the Wardens Commandos. Only a couple hundred of them, but they are shredding my defenses unlike the Preservation Bombers that I killed off last thing my previous session. I don't actually lose my command station due to the FF, but all my turrets and extractors are gone. Time to stop and rethink my defenses it seems.

Ohh, warning when Preservation Wardens or Hybrids are in a system, nice.

And this Warden Starship that is supposed to be one hop away? Well, all these preserver starships are coming from this warp point.....

Ummm, oops. That was a Mk IV system with a Neinzul Cluster on the warp point..... SHould have checked my galaxy map.
I'm in no actual danger as I've shifted my entire fleet here now, but this will delay my next attack by quite a bit.

And now the preservation wardens are trying the other way into my home system, but with a Mk III ion, they aren't getting anywhere.

And another roaming enclave just spawned, once again friendly to me.

Alright, Wardens have retreated for now, however stationary turrets didn't cut it, so time for fortresses.

And 5 minutes later the wardens are back with a fresh wave.

WTF?! A wave of about 125 Warden Preservation Bombers just 3 salvoed a Mk III Ion cannon to death. That's 6 million HP. Are Ion cannons supposed to be this weak to bombers now? I haven't actually attacked on since the bombers got the buff against them, I've been capturing them.

This absolutely guts my defense in my second colony system and I'm now scrambling.

Yup, there goes my command station, 2 salvos from the warden bombers did in both the FF protecting the station and the command station.

Okay wow, did the Maurauder Dagger Frigates get a buff? 32 Dagger Frigates vs. Mk I Fortress and 160 Fighters. I lose the fortress! (in about 15-20 seconds and it started at 100% HP). If the Dagger Frigates were a bomber of some sort I could maybe understand, but they aren't are they?

2:00:00 Gametime, still rebuilding from the double hit of Preservation Wardens and Marauders at the same time.

On the plus side, a hybrid just warped in, fortress took about 10 salvos to destroy it, never even reached my other defenses in system.

And now the Wardens are back for round two, as expected, the fortress makes short work of them.

And the next hybrid wave just got stomped, I'm almost back to the point where I can go on the offensive again.

K, gametime 2:15:00 I start moving my fleet to start my next offensive. The system I really want to take borders that Special Forces Alarm post again so I'm going to clear the system with the special alarm first.
I was going to take it anyway, but would have liked to take it 3 systems from now but that special alarm has got to go. It borders 3 (not including it's own system) worlds (including the one I already took) that I'm going to be capturing.

And I get the scouts in and see 15 Hybrid Hives, hmmm...
Oh, 6 are leaving, nice.

Alright, this will be the first system I'm attacking that has the Viral Clusters built, let's see what happens.

Ow. Well, a hybrid wave just warp into my face shortly before I started my attack. As my main fleet was all there, the hybrids died but I lost about 150 ships.

K, going to try picking off the Viral Cluster with Younglings.

Ummm, that really didn't work. This is only a cluster Mk II and after two waves, the first 198 youngling commandos, the second 198 commandos and 198 bombers the viral cluster on my entry warp point is down and I have a threat count of just over 1000. Oddly enough, the swarmers are going on a long (6 or 7 system hop) circular route to come at me from a different warp point then the one I'm sitting on. The fortress in the system is eating them alive and it's no threat, but why are they taking such a long route?

K, gametime 2:27:00. I'll have to wrap it up here for a couple hours. See summary at top for my thoughts.

Alright, second session for Wednesday night.

Building up my forces to max, with the viral clusters, anything short of a sledge hammer is not enough to keep ahead of the swarmers replicating.

Although a warden starship finally poked it's head through and I killed it. Helped that it pretty much flew into my main fleet on it's own.

I've taken too long though, 15 hybrids in the system with the special alarm post I'm attacking. But hello there devourer golem! Why yes I'll get out of your way if you destroy those hybrids for me!

This is odd, do devourers not attack force fields? It destroyed the attendant fleets but didn't fire a shot at the hybrids themselves.

And the hybrids made short work of my attack fleet. Total loss of my entire fleet. Looks like I'm going to be doing this system the hard way. At least I got a guard post down, although the special forces alarm is still up.

3rd friendly Neinzul Roaming enclave just spawned. Nice, helped out in defense against a Preservation Warden wave. And now it's going to attack a Mk II system, at least it's the one I've soften up slightly. It's also the system with 16 hybrids in it and while it at least gets off the warp point, it doesn't get far. It only launched 140 younglings upon warping it, don't think it killed anything at all.

Long time to totally rebuild my fleet, I've decided to decoy the hybrids and pop the guard post/command stations then clean the system up by using transports to dump bombers on the guard posts.

3:30:00 game time I send my rebuilt fleet in after the special forces alarm post. It's on a warp point so right beside a Viral Cluster, the cluster only spawns 36 swarmers, way lower then what the post on my entry warp point spawned.

I get lucky and the special forces alarm does NOT alert when it dies. I don't have much of a fleet left, but the hybrids are off the command post chasing my decoys so I go try to pop that also.
Never mind, there are 2 shield guard posts in the system. And the hybrids catch up. I did get the special forces alarm post, I lost ship cap of Mk I & II fighters, Mk I bombers, Mk I cruisers, Mk I youngling commandos and 3 flagships to get it. I'd say not worth it, except I have no other way to go so I have to absorb these loses to progress at this point.

And now that my fleet's dead, 150 resistance ships attack. Hybrids are decoyed but I haven't rebuilt much yet. Nope, no good. Shield guard posts have too much HP for me to pop quickly, going to have to wait for a fleet rebuild.

And there's the first hostile enclave that I've noticed. Again, the fort just destroys the younglings so no actual threat really.

And my fleet rebuild is done. Going to try and sneak-build a fortress while my fleet decoys the hybrids this time. But that will have to wait until tommorow as it is midnight here now.

Until tomorrow.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, for 3.184:

* Neinzul Bomber (and Preservation Bomber) attack power cut by 50%.

* Neinzul Preservation Warden rate-of-building-younglings cut by 50%.



They feel that they have made their point

I didn't realize the difference would be quite *that* dramatic.  Mostly I was counting on the bombers getting shredded before they got to fire a second salvo.  Anyway, the point is for them to be dangerous early on, but not actually in lethal concentrations until you're a nice big empire.

[Diazo]

Well, for all that I'm taking unexpected hits from them, they haven't reached my home system even once and all these combats are taking place in systems right next door to my home system.

So yes, they are a shock that I'm having to adjust too, but they are by no means as bad as the first pass Hybrids or Swarmers were.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

And that's a bit odd on the dagger frigates having the fortress for lunch.  They have a base damage of 4800 and a multiplier of 2 against HeavyDefense types like a fort.  Unless you were dealing with a fairly high number of the frigates, that shouldn't be a landslide at least.  Hmm.

[Diazo]

K, so if a single dagger does 9600 dmg a shot against a fort, it should have taken 32 daggers 9.1 salvos to destroy it, 9 salvos is 63 seconds. That sounds reasonable, the marauders generally have strong ships.

I want to say it died a lot faster then that, but I wasn't actually watching the game clock so I'm not sure. I don't actually have the save to recreate it so I guess leave it as it is and call it a once off.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, seems like the preservation bombers aren't over-the-top, just way past the mark I was aiming at.  Honestly the early preservation warden attacks are supposed to be fairly easy to deal with, even a bit puny.  You're not messing up large swaths of the galaxy, after all.  But they'll crank it up

And the marauders are quite strong in the right fights, perhaps a bit high on the balance scale, but that's largely because they have a pretty limited scope and don't have the snowball effect of something like the wardens or the hybrids, nor the overwhelming backing of the main AI forces.

Any word on the friendly enclave that spawned in your territory?  From the first one it seems possible that they're not building up enough of a force to be effective and/or lack decent survivability.  On the other hand, it was pretty stiff odds.

[Diazo]

Nope, I didn't see where the second friendly enclave got to. It had a choice of a Mk II, Mk III or Mk IV world, none of which I've beaten the defenses down on.

I'm just starting in on the Mk II world now.

Based on it's location I suspect it warped into the Mk III world and just died as there is an AI Fortress in the system and Fortresses render younglings all but useless in that system.

D.

[Diazo]

Alright.

After sleeping on it for a night, here's my thoughts on my 3.182/3.183 game at 3:45:00 gametime or so.

1) Fortresses are an absolute hard counter to anything Youngling, including Hybrids and Preservation Wardens. After the first Preservation Warden wave which caused me to unlock fotresses, I don't even bothered reinforcing my planets now when Hybrids or Wardens attack, although I do have an FF Mk I and 40 turrets backing the fortress up.

2) Hybrids and Preservation Wardens in the same game are a much bigger increase then expected as compared to playing against either one solo. They are generally fine, it's the fact that you fight the hybrids off, fight the wardens off, rebuild, go to attack but you have to fight hybrids off again. This leave very little time to attack the AI, or you have to mount partial attacks which is hard in the early game.

3) Hybrids still have the ability to stonewall a system. Due to delays caused by mistakes against the early Warden and Hybrid attacks, the system I am currently attacking has 12-16 hybrids in it at any given time. This has reduced me to sending my entire fleet in, get a single guard post (or other structure), and then lose the entire fleet. Repeat as needed. Entire fleet means everything I have including Fleet Starships and my single Mk II unlock so far. I'm going to look and see if I can come at the system from another warp point when I start playing again.

4) The easy Neinzul AI type with the Cluster Swarmers is not an easy type even if you nerf it hard. This is because with the Cluster Structure on every warp point, you cannot raid, period. You sending anything through except scouts, you spawn swarmers and have to stop and deal with them or they replicate really, really fast. (Have to test transports still.) This spikes the difficulty because you can't raid that data center/alarm post/raid engine/etc. 2 or 3 hops away, not without sending your entire fleet after it and then it's not a raid anymore, it's your main push.

5) Younglings are fun ships to play with but they need something more. Enclave starships can heal younglings only? Or younglings health doesn't decay in proximity to an enclave starship? I've pretty much stopped using my youngling commandos because I build them and then something comes up and by the time I get back to them they are hurting already. The regeneration chamber being reduced to 1k knowledge may resolve this.

I'm considering starting a new game with only the preservation wardens and no fortresses to see how that goes. At the moment, I'm worried that fortresses are turning into a "must-have" due to even just the Mk I fortress shooting so many missiles they just render youngling ships useless.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for the continuing feedback

The devourer can't hurt core ships, and Hybrids (and their modules) are core-level.  Their subfleets are not, as you have discovered.

Thanks for the balance feedback on the fortresses.  Honestly I think it's entirely appropriate that they pwn large groups of younglings, as they're intended to be able to deal with large swarms (thus the multitude of missiles).  But perhaps some youngling types should have much better bonuses against heavy defense so they can at least do good damage against fortresses.

Hybrids still have the ability to stonewall a system.

Yes, this is basically one of the main goals they are trying to achieve.  You know how lots of players greatly prioritize being able to defend their empire from one or two chokepoints?  That's what they're doing.  If you make that impossible by virtue of surface area, you probably will be able to get around the really nasty clumps

But they can be drawn into a "gap in the wall", so to speak.  You've already seen how they can be decoy'd, and that opens up a lot of possibilities.  You could use the time to sneak-build some fortresses, like you mentioned, and that could give you heavy enough firepower to at least start whittling them down.  You can also bait them to cross over a wormhole to one of your planets and just as they cross it you could warp over some lightning warheads to do some brute-force destruction (Yes, it's AIP, but not a lot of it).

I think I probably will reduce hybrid firepower again, at least for the lower tiers, since it does seem like they're a little over-the-top on that.  But there's something else I think would better help their "fun" factor: have some kind of chance for, say, half of a defender "chunk" to switch to attacker types when they think they have an advantage.  This could give the player too much ability to "bait" them and destroy them in defensive action, but it also has a good chance of replacing a "stalemate" with a "battle of helm's deep", and you either lose quickly or win a close one and now have a new chance to make progress.

Good point on the fundamental non-easiness of the current viral cluster implementation.  I'm thinking that it will need to be changed from seeding on 100% of wormholes to seeding on perhaps 66% of wormholes at Diff 10 and scaling down from there.

[Diazo]

Thanks for the continuing feedback

Hybrids still have the ability to stonewall a system.

Yes, this is basically one of the main goals they are trying to achieve.  You know how lots of players greatly prioritize being able to defend their empire from one or two chokepoints?  That's what they're doing.  If you make that impossible by virtue of surface area, you probably will be able to get around the really nasty clumps

Yes, I focused on this system because it had a special forces alarm post in it. I have actually managed to kill that so I can look at other systems now that they aren't covered by the alarm post.

Thinking on it some more, one of the reason I think hybrids stick out so much is that in terms of threat, they are backwards from the rest of the game.

What I mean is everything else starts out slow and gets nastier based on the AIP (or extractor count for the wardens). Hybrids however start out strong and get weaker as you kill their structures, with the evolving supposed to counter this. I almost want to suggest reducing the hybrid spawn rate, but increasing their evolution rate. I'd much rather be facing 5-6 stronger hybrids then the 12-16 weaker ones I am.

I hesitate to do so for two reasons, first, in my current game, I did spend a good hour on my heels scrambling to counter the new preservation warden attacks before I unlocked fortresses.  This gave the hybrids time to do what they are supposed to and create a roadblock. The other reason is I have not played a game to the finish with hybrids enabled, the late evolutions may be nastier then I'm expecting.

We'll see how it goes.

D.

edit: Fix the quote tags.