Heroic Fortress King (9/9 balance report and stuff)

[Diazo]

Attempt #2 begins here.
Night 1 wrap-up here.
Game 2, Night 2 log here.
Game 2, Night 3 log here.
Game 2, Night 4 log here.


Alright.

As we are approaching the 'official' release of Ancient Shadows I'd figure I would actually play a game that gives some useful feedback.

As fun as my usual 10/10 furballs are, I'm dropping the difficulty down to 9/9 for this one as that is supposed to be in the hard, but winnable range.

Then I crank the difficulty back up by setting my opponents to Heroic and Fortress King.

I also give myself a handicap in that I will not build any fortresses or mines this game.

I do however give my self an edge by taking the Zenith Siege Engine as my bonus ship.

So, settings at difficulty 9/9 vs. a Heroic and Fortress King AI:

Map	Ships	Game Options	AI Options	AI Plots
80 Planet	All Enabled	Normal/Normal	All Off	All Off
Lattice	including CSGs	Full Fog of War	0 AIP/30 Mins
Normal Player	Complex Ship Types
with no Champion

And here we go.

Starting Galaxy:


Starting Homeword:


I've got myself an nice corner of the map to fortify and my homeworld has plenty of room to set up defences.

We are off!

Hopefully I don't explode into a little ball of fire the first time that enemy champion comes my way.

D.

edit: Anyone know how I can change the image preview size? It's being forced to 600, I'd like to boost it to 800 or 1000.

[Diazo]

And I start the game by getting sloppy.

Ugh.

So, the world directly south of me is a Mk I with an E CSG and the system 2 hops south at the end of the chain has an ARS.

I'm going to take both.

I want to know what Zenith Siege Engines do so I take 16x Siege Engines and 98x Fighters into the system with no bomber support, this is an experiment.

I stir things up, the siege engines having to sit still for 15 seconds is a long time but they outrange most everything and most of what they don' t uses missile ammo. Oh, there's a raid starship stirred up also, but we're still in the AI's system.

A few minutes later I've had enough, I'm not killing this system with the few units I've got. A few leakers come through, my siege engines have not reset yet to fire but the turrets handle them.

Still pondering the zenith siege engines I see the Metal Extractor I lost is not rebuilding.

Wait, that Raid Starship is still alive? WTF? KILL IT!!!

Well, it's dead, but not fast enough, I've lost a Home Settlement already for 5 AIP, ugh.

However, I was going to play a High AIP game anyway. The system directly south has a Co-Processor, I'm going to blow it and eat the 20 aip so I can conquer the system.

Also, siege engines will probably take most of their damage from missiles it looks like.

Didn't Scout Starships Mk IV get the Counter Missile ability? Patch notes say they did, let's try this.

* Diazo unlocks Scout SS Mk IV.

Hmm, first wave is 80 Cloaked units, those crazy etherjet tractors. I really don't want to deal with those on their own terms.

* Diazo unlocks Decloakers.

First wave is the Heroic AI, I have 40 Missile Mk I turrets up, those combined with my rebuild fleet of fighters and siege engines deals with the champion pretty easily.

Next wave is 76 fighters, scary.

First Scout SS Mk IV is build, send it off to scout.

And that takes me to 15 minutes game time, will edit this post as the night goes on.

The wave hits and their is a Zenith SS along, that uses missiles. I send my other Mk IV SS in and it looks like it does in fact have the counter-missile ability. It's description needs updating, does not actually say that anywhere.



Gametime 25 minues

* Diazo has lost.

Umm, wow.

I underestimated the Heroic AI type, badly.

40 ships enter my system on threat.
1 Zenith SS Mk I
1 Plasma Siege Mk I
2 Spire Shadow Frigate
36 assorted fleet ships that quickly die.

They proceeded to walk through:
Cap of Mk I Fighters, bombers, missile frigates, zenith siege engine (16 of these).
3x Decloakers
80x Missile Turret Mk I
4x FF Generators (My Home FF and 3 Mk I FFs I built over top of my home command.

The 2x Shadow Frigates and Plasma Siege were still alive when my command station died. Those shadow frigates destroy FFs. Only took them like 4 salvos. Did you have to give the Heroic Shadow Ships the ability to mount Plasma Siege Modules?

Ow ow ow.

Taking a break for supper, will restart the game with the same settings.
D.

[Diazo]

Okay, attempt #2.

Same settings so at difficulty 9/9 vs. a Heroic and Fortress King AI:

Map	Ships	Game Options	AI Options	AI Plots
80 Planet	All Enabled	Normal/Normal	All Off	All Off
Lattice	including CSGs	Full Fog of War	0 AIP/30 Mins
Normal Player	Complex Ship Types
with no Champion

Gametime 0:00
I've got an evil idea I'm going to be trying out with Siege Engines and Cloaking and so I want the Scout SS Mk IV counter-missile along.

I unlock and crash build Scout SS Mk IV immediately to scout the map.

I also turtle up a lot more then last game so I start building defences.

Gametime 0:03 (That's 3 minutes, I'm not bothering with seconds.)
Scout SS build, told to Auto-Explore.
Serious defensive work begins.
Gravitational Turrets Mk I unlocked.

Gametime 0:08
The first wave is once again cloaked ships. 70 Etherjet Tractors.
Looking at the map it looks like things are pretty much the same.
Defences are not up, hold my attack fleet to deal with this wave.
And it's a Shadow Neinzul Frigate with bomber bays? Well, it dies but that was annoying.
I can't afford them yet, but plasma siege are going to be a high priority to deal with the AI's Shadow ships.


Gametime 0:12
Second wave announced, it is 70 missile frigates.
I have my second Scout SS Mk IV built, this will be easy.


Gametime 0:15
And the Missile Frigate wave is easy, dies with no fuss.
My first Scout SS has finished scouting the galaxy, time to plan.

Initial Strategy
Well, I got lucky in some respects.
There are 2 ARS within 2 hops of my HW and a 3rd 3 hops out.
Going to capture and hold those systems.
Also, to counter the cloaked thread I'm going with Military Command stations and unlock Mk II of those.
Time to attack.

Gametime 0:20
First attack goes in on the world directly south of my Homeworld.
It was only 50 ships when I warped in, it is shortly up at about 100, I think I just found the new special forces.
Retreat to my friendly system as I only sent in my fighters and bombers and there are several guardians that just warped in.
Also, next wave of another 70 cloaked ships announced. It's AI 1 so more Shadow Ships will be along.
Interesting, a Shadow Ship is not guaranteed with a wave, Flagship was the most dangerous thing in this one.
However, I'm tired of rebuilding resource extractors, think I've rebuilt 30 already this game, I unlock Harvester Exo-Shields for 750K, along with the 250K for Scout SS Mk II that is an even 1000K.

Gametime 0:30
System directly south of my homeworld is captured.
Required blowing a Co-pro but I was able to knock down the E CSG network also.
AIP is at 51 already but I'm not too concerned yet.

Going to more infrequent updates, will still use this post.

Gametime 0:45
The next system I'm taking is the system 2 hops directly south of me.
It is an ARS Mk IV system with a Sentry Eye.
I'm going to experiment with Zenith Siege Engines so I unlock Mk II of those and send them in with Cloaker SS and one of my Scout SS Mk IV.
I proceed to botch the cloaking and it's a wipe, fall back to refleet.
Next wave of 426 Missile Frigates announced. With counter missile that is still nice and easy although I'm still upping my defences for when it's a bomber wave that big.


Gametime 1:00
Friggin ow!
I vote for Heroic AI type as the hardest AI in the game at the moment.
Those Shadow Ships are just waltzing over my fleet, see my wrap up post for more details.

I'm done for the night, will pick this up tomorrow.

D.

[Diazo]

Night 1 Wrap Up.

Okay, since I am trying to provide useful feedback for balance purposes by dropping the difficulty to 9, here are my observations so far.

Shadow Ships are overpowered, no ifs, ands or buts.

My first captured system has the following which is what I allocated for defence when I took the Zenith Siege Engines and their support on the attack:
Military Command Mk II covered by 4 FF Mk Is.
140 Turrets Mk I of various types.
250 Fleet Ships
12 Starships including 5 plasma siege.

2 Human Shadow Frigates walked in and tore the system apart, I did not get the shield down on either of them.

This is only at the 1 hour mark and 51 AIP, with the turrets I've built in my home system there is not that much more in the way of military power I can assign to defence of a non-homeworld system, not if I want my offensive fleet to be any sort of decent size.

I'm going to work at this tomorrow some more, I think the fact that I am limiting myself by not allowing fortresses hurts. That is my primary defensive strategy and without them I'm kind of experimenting.

Having said that, a few questions/comments:

Guardians and Shadow Ships are immune to translocation but their Immunities does not show that. I'm assuming this is working as intended and the description did not get updated, it makes sense the bigger ships can not be translocated.

Heroic AI Type is freaking hard.

Zenith Siege Engines are weird, I have not figured out how to use them on the attack yet.

Scout Starship Mk IV with Counter-Missile ability is nice.

Can't really comment on the balance yet, the Shadow Ships attacking me are kind of the only thing registering at the moment, anything else is just dying without me noticing. (Including my defensive setup, need to re-work it badly.)

This saga will continue tomorrow, watch for it!

D.

[Mánagarmr]

My Heroic first attempt was met with a Neinzul frigate mounted with Insanity Inducers. It didn't take long for my fleet to join its mindless hordes and eat my face.

[Diazo]

@Fox: Have not seen those yet, but I'm dreading it.

Anyways, having had a night to sleep on it (and calm down a bit, no more frustrated rants for now) here's a couple more thoughts.

First, just how much harder are the "Technologist" type AIs supposed to be? The Heroic AI type is one of them, but I don't usually play them so I don't really have a basis for comparison.

I'm kind of ballparking this as it's only been the one evening of play so far, but I'd say the Heroic AI is at least one difficulty level higher, if not one-and-a-half levels higher. (So a Diff 7 Heroic is at least a Diff 8 other AI type.)

The other thing that gave me such a problem was the fact that the Shadow Ships just spawn straight onto threat it seems. This is giving me absolutely no end of problems as all of a sudden I'll have a couple Shadow Ships in system tearing it up without any warning.

I'm also starting to realize that my usual play style is not going to work here. Because I play with minor factions off, my defenses are optimized for killing lots and lots of fleet ships. If I had a super-unit to kill, I'd bring in my mobile fleet to do so.

Here, I don't have any warning before the Shadow Ships jump in so my mobile fleet is not around and my fixed defenses are not up to the task. It's been an average of 30 seconds after the Shadow Ships warp into my system until the command station dies so I have no time to redeploy my mobile forces either.

Regardless, I'm not giving up. The Shadow Ships are nasty but I'm going to make this work.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

As fun as my usual 10/10 furballs are, I'm dropping the difficulty down to 9/9 for this one as that is supposed to be in the hard, but winnable range.

-1 Doom.

Then I crank the difficulty back up by setting my opponents to Heroic and Fortress King.

+7 Doom.

I also give myself a handicap in that I will not build any fortresses or mines this game.

+3 Doom.

I do however give my self an edge by taking the Zenith Siege Engine as my bonus ship.

... hmm.  Should be effective, in some cases.

Hopefully I don't explode into a little ball of fire the first time that enemy champion comes my way.

Perhaps not the first time.

Well, it's dead, but not fast enough, I've lost a Home Settlement already for 5 AIP, ugh.

+1 Doom.

* Diazo unlocks Scout SS Mk IV.

An... interesting choice for early-game knowledge

Gametime 25 minues

* Diazo has lost.

(to the tune of the Imperial March) Doom Doom Doom Doom-Do-Doom...

Those shadow frigates destroy FFs. Only took them like 4 salvos. Did you have to give the Heroic Shadow Ships the ability to mount Plasma Siege Modules?

Bwahahaha!  Each AI champion actually rolls which module-template to use randomly when spawned, so you could have gotten one with all shields on the heavy hardpoints, or some extra photon lances, etc.  But yea, the spire ones are eligible for plasma siege cannons, and they're brutality-incarnate when it comes to most fixed defenses.  At least they're not as long-ranged as normal Plasma Siege starships, iirc.

And it's a Shadow Neinzul Frigate with bomber bays? Well, it dies but that was annoying.

Yea, some of the random combos will be more annoying than lethal, but variety's the spice of death, eh?

Interesting, a Shadow Ship is not guaranteed with a wave, Flagship was the most dangerous thing in this one.

Are you sure that wasn't a wave from the fortress king?  All heroic waves should have a champ.

Friggin ow!
I vote for Heroic AI type as the hardest AI in the game at the moment.

Woot woot!

Anyway, on the champions themselves... well, I guess I could nerf them, to some degree.  The modules themselves have to stay the same since that's what the human uses and I don't want to define AI variants for dozens of modules.  But I could nerf the health, speed, and main-gun on the hulls themselves, and potentially even cut out some of the module slots.

Or could nerf the quantity the AI gets, but in a wave it's kind of "do they get one, or do they not get one?" and if that's random it doesn't actually reduce the "how bad can it hit me if I roll a 1" factor.  If you're running into champions created at the AI HW that's something that can be adjusted downward.

Anyway, I'm fine with Heroic and Fortress King both being "Red-Hard" AIs, and among the meanest of them.  We've already got a pretty wide assortment of easy, moderate, and not-insane-but-hard types, so padding the top of the list for the masochistic among us seems a good approach.  That said, I don't want "Heroic AI" = "You Lose".  I'm not sure if it's that bad, and I think after the early game you may find them relatively easy to deal with, which is one reason I hesitate to nerf them significantly.

[Diazo]

Interesting, a Shadow Ship is not guaranteed with a wave, Flagship was the most dangerous thing in this one.

Are you sure that wasn't a wave from the fortress king?  All heroic waves should have a champ.

I'm pretty sure, I was watching which AI was sending the wave because I need significantly more defenses in place for a Heroic wave then for a Fortress King wave. Will watch for this tonight.

Anyway, on the champions themselves... well, I guess I could nerf them, to some degree.  The modules themselves have to stay the same since that's what the human uses and I don't want to define AI variants for dozens of modules.  But I could nerf the health, speed, and main-gun on the hulls themselves, and potentially even cut out some of the module slots.

Or could nerf the quantity the AI gets, but in a wave it's kind of "do they get one, or do they not get one?" and if that's random it doesn't actually reduce the "how bad can it hit me if I roll a 1" factor.  If you're running into champions created at the AI HW that's something that can be adjusted downward.

Anyway, I'm fine with Heroic and Fortress King both being "Red-Hard" AIs, and among the meanest of them.  We've already got a pretty wide assortment of easy, moderate, and not-insane-but-hard types, so padding the top of the list for the masochistic among us seems a good approach.  That said, I don't want "Heroic AI" = "You Lose".  I'm not sure if it's that bad, and I think after the early game you may find them relatively easy to deal with, which is one reason I hesitate to nerf them significantly.

I'm not sure what my opinion will end up being on if the Heroic needs a nerf or if it is fine.

Because I dropped down to diff 9 and am not using fortresses I think my defense is kind of screwed up. Let me get to the point where I can actually stop the Shadow Ships and see what level of force it is requiring to actually do so.

My only other comment would be it seems that even this early in the game they are spawning in pairs at the homeworld. The waves come with a single bonus champion but every time the non-wave champions arrive it has always been 2 of them. Is this because I am on diff 9 and diff 7 would only be a single champion?

D.

[Kahuna]

Heroic is ridiculously overpowered. No point in playing against it atm. AI's Champions should become stronger as AIP increases.

[keith.lamothe]

AI's Champions should become stronger as AIP increases.

They get bigger hulls at higher AI tech levels.

[TechSY730]

One of the tricky things about the heroric AI is that its balance is strongly proportional to the balance of the champions, which is very much up in the air at the moment.

Kahuna's suggestion that AI Champions becoming stronger with AIP has some merit. Maybe at low AIPs, it would be restricted to very basic module loadouts (like, only loadouts that use the basic modules availible at the start of the game at Mk. I), and then can get higher marks and "tougher" unlocked modules as AIP goes up.
This way, the modules would be tied to AIP, but the base hull would be tied to AI tech levels.

This should stop silly things like your first wave containing the lowest level hero ship but with some of the best available modules for it making it an effectively early game Mk. II-III wave or something.

Actually, this would be a good change for the Spire Hammer as well.

EDIT: Keep in mind, one of the goals of the Heroic AI is to make you feel the pain that the AI feels when you use champions against it.

[zoutzakje]

I haven't got the AS beta so I don't know how tough AI champs are, but keep in mind that this is 9/9 you're playing. 9/9 red AI's are supposed to be... unfriendly. Try the same game in 7/7 and see what happens then.

[Diazo]

I haven't got the AS beta so I don't know how tough AI champs are, but keep in mind that this is 9/9 you're playing. 9/9 red AI's are supposed to be... unfriendly. Try the same game in 7/7 and see what happens then.

I considered that, but my usual game is diff 10/10 so on 9/9 I should be able to handle this.

I still have room to buff my defenses, I just keep underestimating the Champions and not buffing them enough.

Once I get to the point of actually stopping them and can see the force required I'll be in a better position to talk about balance.

D.

[Mánagarmr]

AI's Champions should become stronger as AIP increases.

They get bigger hulls at higher AI tech levels.

You mean they get WORSE? :O

*goes to cry in a corner*

[keith.lamothe]

*goes to cry in a corner*

"2500 MkII Bombers to Corner in 05:20"