Arcen Games
General Category => AI War Classic => AI War Classic - After Action Reports => Topic started by: Faulty Logic on April 10, 2014, 08:12:54 pm
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80 planet simple clusters fireflies 14849409
10/10 Heroic/Spire Hammer // Starfleet Commander/Techno Parasite
2 Champions, complete visibility, mono waves.
Resistance 4
Rebellions 4
Dyson 4
Wardens 4
Enclaves 4
Golems 5
Fallen Spire 5
Spirecraft Moderate
And for the AI:
Hybrids 4/4
Advanced Hybrids 7/0
Avengers
Hunter 0/10
Trains 0/1
Shark B 4/0
===Operation Back in the Game====
My homeworld is the sole entrance to a 15-planet cluster. I could possibly fit 3 full cities behind it. But if wanted more, I'd have to allow more than one entrance.
It's a pretty nice cluster, with 2 ARSs, a FactIV, missile and sniper controllers, and tiger and teleport station fabs.
Preparing for the first wave: unlocked military stations mkIII, enclave starships mkIII (I think these still need a gentle tap with the nerfbat. Maybe every six seconds instead of every five?). I have six enclaves and a cap of fireflies mkI when the wave is declared.
Uh, did the wave logic change recently? The wave announced with a laughable 14 frigates, 4 starships, at 3:30. I get two spire frigates, a neinzul shadow frigate, and a bomber starship mkII.
I used the salvage to finish the missile and sniper turrets by the time two mkIV flagships, a mkIV leech starship, and 14 parasites arrive.
Their metal builds the rest of the turrets and fleetships.
The nearest ARS is two hops away. A quick science lab in transport reveals zelecs/planes/commandos. No hack.
I popped the nearest two data centers with the Negotiators, then conquered the ARS.
I took the teleport station fab next to the ARS planet. Yeah, the enclaves are still a little too good. They and the champions were all I needed.
Unlocked fireflies II/III.
New wave announced. It had a spire cruiser. This is somewhat worrying for future endeavors.
I built the rest of the turrets and starships with the salvage. It's really awesome when you're just starting out, cutting the boring waiting down to almost nothing.
New wave, with 76 fighters and 9 starships.
9 Zenith starships. Mk III.
Projected shields and two riots literally pushing the ships back to buy time saved the day.
And now I'm rolling in money, so I built the mercenary enclave.
After scouting the next ARS, I pulled the fleet together to hack for shield bearers. No problem. I quickly conquered it (and a decoy fab), the sniper turret controller, and the advanced factory. Then I gate raided so that waves must come to the homeworld.
I pulled the fleet back home to clean out the six-destroyer threatball.
Unlocked Forts mkI, gravityIIIs, HBC mkIs. Waves fund the fort construction.
Jumpship-raided all data centers.
AIP 50
Gametime 1:40
I've conquered five planets.
To move forward, I'll have to destroy warp counter posts. Eventually I'll want to conquer the RudeGesture world in my cluster.
I set up the counterwaves to arrive five minutes apart. A normal wave happens first, and I start building mercenaries.
Then the first counterwave arrives. With a spire battleship. Fortunately, it kept trying to engage my enclave drones.
A new normal wave announces. 14 high-mark starships. None of which are immune to gravity.
I'm having trouble spending all this money fast enough. But unlocking engineerIIs and building a second merc doc help with that.
The second counterwave had a spire dreadnought. It wiped a lot of my fleet, but they are quickly replaced.
Gametime 1:54
State of Empire:
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10/10 Heroic/Spire Hammer // Starfleet Commander/Techno Parasite
Hunter 0/10
Shark B 4/0
This... should be interesting.
enclave starships mkIII (I think these still need a gentle tap with the nerfbat. Maybe every six seconds instead of every five?)
For all marks, you mean?
Uh, did the wave logic change recently? The wave announced with a laughable 14 frigates, 4 starships, at 3:30. I get two spire frigates, a neinzul shadow frigate, and a bomber starship mkII.
The wave code's gone through multiple overhauls in recent weeks, yes, but with an eye to maintaining fairly similar overall fleet ship strength.
Just tested it myself, and yea, that's just what the math comes out to on ultra low:
On 7.018 (summary: 15 MkII bombers plus starship) :
4/10/2014 8:23:39 PM (7.018)
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Starting CreateWaveToPlanet at Game Time: 0:04:01 ; Player.AIType: Bouncer ; Player.AIDifficulty: 10 ; EffectiveAIP: 10 ; AITechLevel: 2 ; IsSchizo: False
MultiplierFromWaveInterval = 1
MultiplierFromHumanHomePlanetCount = 1
FleetShipBudget = (base value, equivalent to a single mkI fighter on high caps) = 1
FleetShipBudget *= AITechLevel = 2
FleetShipBudget *= MultiplierFromWaveInterval = 2
FleetShipBudget *= MultiplierFromHumanHomePlanetCount = 2
FleetShipBudget *= EffectiveAIP = 20
FleetShipBudget *= player.GetHandicapMultiplier() = 20
preMinStep_DifficultyMultiplier = player.AIDifficulty / ( 13 - player.AIDifficulty ) = 3.33
FleetShipBudget *= preMinStep_DifficultyMultiplier = 66.67
FleetShipBudget *= rand( 0.8 , 1.1 ) = 56.92
FleetShipBudget *= player.AITypeData.WaveSizeMultiplier = 56.92
postMinStep_DifficultyMultiplier = (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.9, <= 9.6 : 3.3, <= 9.8 : 4, 10 : 5) : 5
FleetShipBudget *= postMinStep_DifficultyMultiplier = 284.58
= For a final FleetShipBudget for this wave's fleet ships of 284.58
percentChanceParasiteWave (from AI type) = 0.03
percentChanceBomberWave (from AI type) = 0.06
percentChanceStealthWave (from AI type) = 0.06
= actually chosen WaveType: Bomber
AIP is between the current tech level's AIP threshold and the next tech level's, so promotionRatio (percent of fleet ships to be bought from next tech level up) = 0.02
Bomber waves try to spend 90% of the strength budget on types from the Bomber group
* called PickUnitsForWave with: BomberII
** Picked 13 BomberII @ 20 each = 260.06
Some strength budget remaining from previous pick phases (if any), so spend what remains on types from the Normal group
* called PickUnitsForWave with: FighterII, BomberII, MissileShipII, EyeBotII, MicroFighterII
** Picked 2 BomberII @ 20 each = 40.01
= After picking fleet ships, FleetShipBudget is now -15.49
player.AITypeData.StarshipBudgetMultiplier: 0.25
= StarshipBudget = originalFleetShipBudget * player.AITypeData.StarshipBudgetMultiplier = 71.14
* called PickUnitsForWave with: Flagship, AIRaidStarship, DreadnoughtII, LeechStarshipII, BomberStarship, ZenithStarshipI, SpireStarshipI
** Picked
1 SpireStarshipI @ 192 each = 192
= After picking starships, StarshipBudget is now -120.86
== Wave total ships: 16
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
BomberII : 15
SpireStarshipI : 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
== For a grand-total Strength value of 432
On 7.009 (summary: 22 MkII Fighters, plus 3 starships)
4/10/2014 8:37:18 PM (7.009)
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Starting CreateHomogenousWaveToPlanet at Game Time: 0:06:41 ; Player.AIType: Vanilla ; Player.AIDifficulty: 10 ; AIProgressionLevel: 10 ; AITechLevel: 2
WaveSize = MultiplierFromWaveInterval * MultiplierFromHumanHomePlanetAndChampionCount: 1 * 1 = 1
workingShips = ( effectiveAIP * player.AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - player.AIDifficulty ) : 33.33
workingShips *= FInt.FromParts( 0, Configuration.NonSimRandom.Next( 800, 1100 ) ) : 31.7
workingShips = Max(workingShips,34 * handicap_multiplier) :34
Inside AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, multiplier: 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType call, workingShips :34
numberShips = workingShips.IntValue :34
4/10/2014 8:37:19 PM (7.009)
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Receiving AddInboundWave from Host at Game Time: 0:06:41
WaveSize factor: 1
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
FighterII => 34
ZenithStarshipI => 1
BomberStarship => 2
4/10/2014 8:37:18 PM (7.009)
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Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 1 on wave at Game Time: 0:06:41
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 34
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 34
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 4.25
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.1
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.59
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.9, <= 9.6 : 3.3, <= 9.8 : 4, 10 : 5), numberUnits : 22.95
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 22.95
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 22
CheckWave: populating count of ZenithStarshipI with base magnitude of 1
skipping most calc step due to starship type
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 1
CheckWave: populating count of BomberStarship with base magnitude of 2
skipping most calc step due to starship type
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 2
Wave total ships: 25
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
FighterII => 22
ZenithStarshipI => 1
BomberStarship => 2
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
totalStrengthRepresented = 736
So on 7.009 it rolled a 0.95 on the random roll, and had a 1.2 usefulness-in-wave multiplier (because fighter), and generated 22 triangle ships. 22 / 1.2 / 0.95 ~= 19.3
And on 7.018 it rolled a 0.85 on the random roll, and had a 0.8 usefulness-in-wave multiplier (because bomber), and generated 15 triangle ships. 15 / 0.8 / 0.85 ~= 22
So it was definitely worth a look to make sure it hadn't gone sideways somewhere, but there's actually had a somewhat higher base magnitude now.
Not sure how you managed 14 frigates, though, as those have the same usefulness-multiplier as fighters.
Of course, it came out kind of anemic on the starships, as I did heavily change how those go. However, I suspect that the new starship code will make up for its early laxity later on...
9 Zenith starships. Mk III.
Ah yes, there it is. Though that's due to the Starfleet Commander, I'm sure.
The second counterwave had a spire dreadnought. It wiped a lot of my fleet, but they are quickly replaced.
Nonetheless, a DN sounds... uncomfortable.
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For all marks, you mean?
Yes.
kind of anemic on the starships
I don't consider 4 mkII starships at 5:30 anemic. Also, see later for why you should not, for the love of god, make it send more starships.
Nonetheless, a DN sounds... uncomfortable.
It was. All fleetships and most starships were wiped out. It died before it melted through the home forcefields, though.
===Operation Parallel Processing====
Jumpships + bomber starships knock out the co-processors very quickly.
AIP = 73 (actual AIP is -30ish)
1 massive AI ships (3960 S) are en route to your planets
? ? ?
But I checked for raid engines, and deepstrike just adds threat...
Turns out this was my first encounter with a Hunter/Killer factory. And before I can hunt him down, a CPA announced with 800 ships.
And a 300-bomber wave from Heroic Spire Hammer, with 19 starships. Resolves into:
8 siege starships mkII
2 neinzul frigates
2 neinzul destroyers
1 neinzul cruiser
3 spire frigates
2 spire destroyers
1 spire DN <======= Outranges gravity turret mkIII
The CPA and H/K join the fun. Turns out there was also a hybrid swarm, and six heroic human destroyers hanging out from Heroic's spawn-champs-into-threatfleet behaviour.
I used a martyr on the bombers, and a continual stream of fire, enclave drones and fireflies on the dreadnaught. Once that fell, the other ships had to deal with gravity. They did fight all the way to outside the home forcefield net, but could never quite kill anything what with the space dock cranking out decoy drones, supported by all my engies.
A nerf, I tell you. Enclave starships need a nerf. GravIIIs could use one, too.
I rebuild quickly, and also reach merc caps. I need more defenses.
=== Operation Homeland Security====
And I want to make room for three cities. I'm leaving two planets for now, one a RudeGesture (waves to anywhere could be a straight game-over at the moment) and the Superterminal (which I'll hack once I pull a decent FS fleet together).
I quickly conquer the other 8, bringing AIP to 170. This gives me the missile turret controller and mkV tigers.
All Unlocks:
Engi II
Mil III
Enclaves III
FlagshipII
Zenith I
Leech II
FortressIII
Mod fort
Gravity III
HBCIV
Gametime 2:45
Waves are nasty.
Really nasty.
Like that 50-Zenith starship scenario? Happened.
96 assorted starships? Repelled.
How about 3 spire dreadnoughts?
Yeah, that happened too (thank goodness for cloaked rams).
I sent out the Negotiators to become destroyers before the coming exo.
Then, I smash a path to and conquer the nearest artillery golem.
Repaired and returned, decolonized.
A brief aside:
Golems need a huge buff. They die fast (even heavily escorted, it got down to 12%).
I think a good starting point would be 10x health and 2x damage (1/2 reload for arti). Most golems have trouble taking down a mkII planet.
I'm only ever getting edge-case use out of them. In this particular case:
%#&*! Kill the spire dreadnoughts! NOW!
I have the spire modular forts built by the time the first exo arrives.
But thing's didn't start to go wrong until the wave arrived. Three dreadnoughts again (used another martyr on the 700 bombers), and because of how they're built, it takes nine artillery shots to kill them all. By which point they had shredded my gravity line all the way to the home ff net.
Hybrids and threatfleet champs pour in, and a new horror is revealed. An exo group not targeted for home:
It just cruises past while the defenses are otherwise occupied, and kills a command station.
Shark B 4/0
Oh. Right.
The sharkwave also cruises past, killing a different command station. And another.
At this point (primary exo almost completely dead, heroic hammer wave down to starships, some enemy chaff still milling about my homeworld, and no gravity net), the starfleet commander joins the party, announcing 300ish parasites and 82 starships. Mk IV.
Time to call in the mercs. And various stolen ships. And the dyson gatlings I won. They kill the second and third sharkwaves, and I'm able to get the gravity network back on in time for the next wave.
Wave molassified and killed. Situation stable. The plan is to do two more nebula scenarios and become a cruiser, build three cities worth of FS, and ride the Superterminal for a while.
Observations
The lost Zentih tech used to make golems: tissue paper.
Shadow battleship (7000) > Spire f#$%ing Dreadnought (4950) ?
Decoy drones: surprisingly actually a bit useful on occasion.
Gravity: perhaps a bit more nerf? I suggest flattening the ranges at the mkII's, and buffing their health a bit to gentle the blow a bit. Or add logic like tractors: anything in the grav well can shoot at the grav turret.
Waves: Oh the pain.
But aside from the AI types, I think the starship scaling is a bit overboard right now. The starship portion is more threatening than the fleetship portion, despite getting only ~1/4th the budget. This suggests tuning internal starship costs.
I don't think I realized how important the Zenith trader was to really robust chokepoints. I'd have 600,000 more energy, a couple OMDs, and, most importantly, a BHM. If I lose, I'm going to try the same settings except for enabling him, and upping the trains to 4 to compensate somewhat.
State of Empire:
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Observations
The lost Zentih tech used to make golems: tissue paper.
Shadow battleship (7000) > Spire f#$%ing Dreadnought (4950) ?
Decoy drones: surprisingly actually a bit useful on occasion.
Gravity: perhaps a bit more nerf? I suggest flattening the ranges at the mkII's, and buffing their health a bit to gentle the blow a bit. Or add logic like tractors: anything in the grav well can shoot at the grav turret.
It's hard to do the same comparisons with the Spire Dreadnaught as with the Shadow ships, because so much of the Spire stuff has 0.1 Command Grade hull modifiers. Still, I tried.
I used a fully deckout out Spire Deadnaught, with 2 Mk IV shields, 2 Mk IV HBCs, 4 Mk III HBCs, 2 Mk IV Lasers, and of course, the 48,000,000 damage main gun.
Against a Mk I H/K, the DN wins, losing both shields (80 million HP) in the process.
Against a Mk II H/K, the DN loses, doing less than 50% damage.
Unfortunely, those 0.1 modifers matter here. The full Mk IV HBC can supposedly do 4,000,000 Damage per shot. However, anything smaller than a Golem or Forcefield will be missed by most of the 40 beams. An H/K is only big enough to catch 20 beams - 2 million damage. The exact count varies on range, etc, as well. But at the preferred standoff range for both units, 20 it is. 4 sec reload.
Mk III HBCs have fewer beams that are more tightly clustered, so all 12 beams can hit easily. That'd be another 1.2 million damage per gun. 5 sec reload.
Mk IV lasers do 80,000x5, with an 8 second reload.
And the Photon Lance's 48,000,000 damage with an 8(10) second reload.
So, in theory and without modifiers, the DN does 48,000,000 (lance) + 800,000 (2 x Lasers) + 4,800,000 (4 x Mk III HBC) + 4,000,000 (2 x Mk IV HBC w/20 beams each) = 57,600,000 damage in the intial volley.
In 10/12 seconds, after every module has fired twice = 115,200,000 damage = enough to kill an H/K Mk I.
During that time, the H/K will fire 3 times, doing 520,000 x 25 = 13,000,000 per volley times 3 volleys = 39,000,000 damage. Shield modules have a "Structural" hull type, so H/Ks get a 2x modifier, and that explains why the DN loses all 80,000,000 HP of shields during a 1-on-1 fight.
Without modifiers, a DN does 4,800,000 DPS (lance) + 2 x 50,000 DPS (lasers) + 4 x 240,000 (Mk III HBCs) + 2 x 500,000 (Mk IV HBCs w/20 beams each) = 6,860,000 DPS.
100,000,000 / 6,860,000 = 14.6 seconds to kill an H/K (15 seconds) which is probably about correct.
160,000,000 / 4,333,333 = 36.9 seconds for an H/K Mk I to kill a DN without modifiers, 27.7 seconds with modifiers. This matches with the 11 volleys I counted during testing.
6 volleys for an H/K Mk II to kill the DN, 20 seconds or so. The time oddness is because at max H/K range, its shots have an almost 3 second flight time.
20 seconds of DN fire without modifiers would be 137,200,000 damage by DPS, or 2 x Lance + 2 x Lasers + 4 x HBC IIIs, + 5 x HBC IVs
= 2 x 48,000,000 + 2 x (800,000) + 4 x (4,800,000) + 5 x (4,000,000) = 136,800,000 damage. Close enough.
So, by combat strength, a Spire Dreadnaught is worth more than an H/K Mk I, but less than an H/K Mk II.
H/K Mk I = 3960 Strength, and 4950 Strength is 1.25 times that.
Not unreasonable. The performance difference comes from the fact that HBCs are so good at taking out fleetships, and fleetships are about all the Human player has to counter AI threats.
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kind of anemic on the starships
I don't consider 4 mkII starships at 5:30 anemic. Also, see later for why you should not, for the love of god, make it send more starships.
My comment there was in the context of the 10/10 test I did on 7.018 where it only gave me 1 starship in the first wave. As opposed to the 10/10 test I did on 7.009 where it gave me 3 starships in the first wave.
But, as I also said, "However, I suspect that the new starship code will make up for its early laxity later on...".
And... um, yea, indeed it did.
But, in making observations on the starship counts, bear in mind one very important fact: the Starfleet Commander AI type doesn't get 1/4 of its fleet ship budget for starships. It gets 100% of it.
Do you know offhand how many starships (not counting champs or spire cap ships, just the stuff that can be built at a starship constructor) the non-starfleet-commander AI was sending per wave?
Anyway, with extra wave components scaling, this:
10/10 Heroic/Spire Hammer // Starfleet Commander/Techno Parasite
when translated into binary, actually means:
Please take a Masterwork Adamantine Warhammer and slam it into my face. Repeatedly.
And yet I note it has not yet won this game, which is impressive.
but could never quite kill anything what with the space dock cranking out decoy drones, supported by all my engies.
Ah yes, the Limburger Drones. I've seen them used cheesily more often by the AI than by the humans, but the potential is there.
Golems need a huge buff. They die fast (even heavily escorted, it got down to 12%).
I think a good starting point would be 10x health and 2x damage (1/2 reload for arti). Most golems have trouble taking down a mkII planet.
Yea, they tend to pale a bit on high difficulty or against bigger superweapons. If they're the only superweapons on the board they can still be meaningful centerpieces, like the absurd things RockyBst's been doing with that Cursed Golem in that 10-planet 10/10 thread. But yea, in a game with spire cap ships flying around... golem? There was a golem here?
On the other hand, the Armored Golem cannot get a 10x health buff. It currently has 500 million hp, and 5 billion > Int32.MaxValue (we can't use Int64 for a lot of stuff because it wouldn't fit into our FInt fixed-point math; also if we start throwing billions of hp around on a single unit it's just kind of silly).
This is one of the reasons we need to downscale all the health values, so its possible to have individual units with more durability. Of course, I could just give them some kind of super armor that reduces damage to 5% instead of 20% or whatever, but trying to avoid things like that.
But, of course, that kind of downscaling is going to involve a fairly large amount of work, and other things beat it in the 8.0 poll. But we're making progress towards it.
It just cruises past while the defenses are otherwise occupied, and kills a command station.
Shark B 4/0
Oh. Right.
The sharkwave also cruises past, killing a different command station. And another.
I boggle that you survived.
Gravity: perhaps a bit more nerf? I suggest flattening the ranges at the mkII's, and buffing their health a bit to gentle the blow a bit. Or add logic like tractors: anything in the grav well can shoot at the grav turret.
Hmm, probably the range reduction and health buff. The can-shoot-at-it rule would be significantly more complex (a ship keeps a reference to its tractor-er as there's only ever one, but not to gravs affecting it).
Possibly even a very substantial health buff, such that a MkIII would in many ways a MkII that can survive moderate attack.
I don't think I realized how important the Zenith trader was to really robust chokepoints.
Yea, the Traitor goodies are pretty gamechanging when used en masse.
On the Spire DN's strength cost I'm quite happy to have those use special costs like the champ units do for the Heroic. The main questions are: what values, and why?
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It's hard to do the same comparisons with the Spire Dreadnaught as with the Shadow ships, because so much of the Spire stuff has 0.1 Command Grade hull modifiers. Still, I tried.
Thank you for the investigation, the numbers are very interesting.
I wouldn't have figured a DN to lose to a MkII H/K, but I suppose that's because I largely only ever see DNs amongst large fleets with tons of screening elements (which naturally get shot at first), and H/Ks tend to melt even under frigate beams when there's dozens of frigates.
I'd think a Shadow BB could take a Spire DN because it gets (iirc) a lot more modules and is generally pretty beastly. Without even getting into the extra flexibility. But I might be wrong on that matchup.
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It's hard to do the same comparisons with the Spire Dreadnaught as with the Shadow ships, because so much of the Spire stuff has 0.1 Command Grade hull modifiers. Still, I tried.
Thank you for the investigation, the numbers are very interesting.
I wouldn't have figured a DN to lose to a MkII H/K, but I suppose that's because I largely only ever see DNs amongst large fleets with tons of screening elements (which naturally get shot at first), and H/Ks tend to melt even under frigate beams when there's dozens of frigates.
I'd think a Shadow BB could take a Spire DN because it gets (iirc) a lot more modules and is generally pretty beastly. Without even getting into the extra flexibility. But I might be wrong on that matchup.
A normally equipped Shadow BB can do about 7.3 million DPS to the Spire Dreadnaught, meaning it would take about 23 seconds to deal the 160,000,000 damage to kill it. However, during that time, the Shadow BB will take about 150,000,000 damage from the DN - well beyond the base 60,000,000 HP + 18.75 million HP shields.
A Shadow BB using Shadow Shields gets an extra 100,000,000 HP and could probably take a DN in a fair fight... especially if the BB kept moving, and thus could dodge much of the DN's Photon Lance.
A perfectly equipped Shadow BB (Zenith, with 12 Mk V Lasers and 8 Mk V Missiles) will do 9,465,000 DPS, taking 16.9=17 seconds to kill the DN. It'd take about 134,000,000 damage during that time, or twice its HP (that build has no Shields). Using Shadow Shields, again, it'd work, but not without.
I think it comes down to that the Shadow ship's modules fire much faster and hit a little harder, but the DN has a lot more HP. Also, the H/Ks can dodge half the Mk IV HBC's beams, while the Champions cannot. The DN's shield modules being 40 million HP each vs 18,750,000 for the Shadow ships is another big difference. Even if the Shadow BB goes all shields and the DN all weapons, the DN still wins.
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Ah, ok. So the Shadow BB just isn't in the same weight-class HP-wise as the Spire DN, though its DPS is comparable (indeed, looks like it's generally better).
But the Spire DN does worse vs H/K's than a Shadow BB, right? Because the Spire's weapons are massively hampered vs command-grade hulls?
Anyway, overall this would seem to argue for a Spire DN being priced at least the same as a Shadow BB (7000, when the modules aren't counted, as in wave-spawning), no?
Basing these costs off of how it compares to an H/K seems reasonable for a rough pass, but FYI the unit of strength is actually "high-cap mkI fighter equivalents". In other words, 1 MkI fighter on high-caps = 1 strength. On normal caps it'd be 2 strength each. And on high caps a half-size-cap ship type (like a zenith beam frigate) would be 2 strength each.
So a mk*cap is 192 strength, though I generally round it to 200.
So, in theory, a 7000-strength cost ship like a Shadow BB should be very roughly equivalent in utility (as AI ships in a wave, in this case, as that's when the 7000 cost is used for that ship) to 35 mk*caps, or 5 caps of mkV ships. I'm curious if that's even close to true.
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Basing these costs off of how it compares to an H/K seems reasonable for a rough pass, but FYI the unit of strength is actually "high-cap mkI fighter equivalents". In other words, 1 MkI fighter on high-caps = 1 strength. On normal caps it'd be 2 strength each. And on high caps a half-size-cap ship type (like a zenith beam frigate) would be 2 strength each.
So a mk*cap is 192 strength, though I generally round it to 200.
So, in theory, a 7000-strength cost ship like a Shadow BB should be very roughly equivalent in utility (as AI ships in a wave, in this case, as that's when the 7000 cost is used for that ship) to 35 mk*caps, or 5 caps of mkV ships. I'm curious if that's even close to true.
I tried doing an actual combat simulator for "How many fighters to kill an X" a while back, but I kept running into problems. One of these days I'll finish it...
A quick test, using a bunch of Spire Stealth Battleships Mk V (cap 5 on normal) shows that the DN can beat 30 SSBs every time, and 35 about 50% - a lot depends on positioning of the ships.
A Shadow BB is equally matched against about 25. I'll need to try some more loadouts to see if something else works better.
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I tried doing an actual combat simulator for "How many fighters to kill an X" a while back, but I kept running into problems. One of these days I'll finish it...
If you find it entertaining to do :) I have various ways of doing math models. There's even a really old mode in the AIW executable for just simulating fights, but it's pre-unity and I'm sure I've broken it to smithereens over the years with various shenanigans. I'm also not terribly confident in the results of fights nobody was actually watching, as there are lots of little details like moving around mid-fight that would be glossed over. Though even such results can be useful for doing a rough pass. Which is better than numbers which bear no correlation to reality.
A quick test, using a bunch of Spire Stealth Battleships Mk V (cap 5 on normal) shows that the DN can beat 30 SSBs every time, and 35 about 50% - a lot depends on positioning of the ships.
A Shadow BB is equally matched against about 25. I'll need to try some more loadouts to see if something else works better.
Very interesting, it honestly hadn't occurred to me that 35 fleet ships of any description could take on a Spire DN and possibly win. But I guess SSBs are pretty tough-as-nails. I imagine the Spire Railclusters are fairly nasty too.
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Do you know offhand how many starships (not counting champs or spire cap ships, just the stuff that can be built at a starship constructor) the non-starfleet-commander AI was sending per wave?
24 normal starships in a 1022-fighter wave.
Ah yes, the Limburger Drones.
They do nothing against photon lances.
But, of course, that kind of downscaling is going to involve a fairly large amount of work, and other things beat it in the 8.0 poll. But we're making progress towards it.
I was hoping a golem buff could be done easily, before the rework. I thought you had said stat changes were fairly trivial at some point, though I could be mistaken.
Mr. Armored golem could go up to 2 billion HP, and quadruple/quintuple the dps, to fit within int32.
A cursed golem dies instantly to an OMD. A hive has less health than a core flagship, and can barely take a typical mkIII planet with a full swarm. Even in the absence of other superweapons, they are so expensive and fragile as to almost never be worth it.
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OMDs need a nerf.
EDIT: Buff Spirecraft too.
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OMDs need a nerf.
EDIT: Buff Spirecraft
I disagree. OMDs are rare, and easily counterable. Spirecraft are more complicated. Some of them are practically useless, some are close to right, some are OP.
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OMDs one shotting the big stuff is pretty stupid.
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OMDs one shotting the big stuff is pretty stupid.
Why? It's what they were designed to do. Though I agree they shouldn't one-shot golems, because golems are supposed to be massive and tough, but for everything else, they're fine.
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I was hoping a golem buff could be done easily, before the rework. I thought you had said stat changes were fairly trivial at some point, though I could be mistaken.
The stat changes themselves are a matter of minutes (often seconds), yes. I was referring to the data type constraints.
Mr. Armored golem could go up to 2 billion HP, and quadruple/quintuple the dps, to fit within int32.
Beyond a certain point the unit is just considered invincible (like the dyson sphere or zenith trader), and there's some math that works on the sum of two health values, etc, so in practice I've set the value to at most (iirc) 800M hp for any given unit.
Anyway, will think about the golem stats. Where do you think one should stand relative to, say:
a) a MkI H/K
b) a Spire DN (or BB, or whatever)
c) a Shadow BB (or CA, or whatever)
?
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Anyway, will think about the golem stats. Where do you think one should stand relative to, say:
a) a MkI H/K
b) a Spire DN (or BB, or whatever)
c) a Shadow BB (or CA, or whatever)
a) wins
b) dreadnoughtish, a little higher.
c) wins against a shadow BB
I think they should be able to a take a nothing-special mkII system fairly easily, a nothing-special mkIII with ~half damage, and a mkIV system would be toss-up (current state: mkII with significant damage, fails miserably at other two).
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And you think they should continue to have roughly the costs they do now, even with that kind of power?
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Do you mean metal costs or exo-lethality costs?
Definitely more metal (1.5-2x their current costs); exos could get a little (1.25x at most) deadlier, but they're in-ballpark.
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In general I mean the counterbalance. So on easy and hard increasing their metal costs, and on hard slightly increasing the exo response. On medium there's AIP and higher energy costs. But I suppose for those I'd need to ask someone who uses them on medium :)
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I always use them on medium. I strongly suggest you don't raise the AIP and energy costs - 3 standard golems are already the equivalent of 2 planets AIP increase, and cost 2 planets worth of energy to run anyway.
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I'd agree with not upping the medium price. It's already exorbitant.
===Operation Continuing Negotiations====
But first, I forgot to mention an imminent 1600-ship CPA. I use one of my massive piles of money to build a couple martyrs and vaporize the CPA.
Then I do two nebulae, achieving cruiser size for my champions.
With seven modular forts and an artillery golem, waves are merely bad, and not crises.
It's Fallen Spire time.
Everything up to the second city was pretty routine. I also conquered the ARS/Dyson world, for nanoswarms and the k for forcefieldsIII and missile and laser turrets mkIII, to maximize the cruisers, destroyers, and modular forts.
The second golem exo is at about 70%. Should be enough time.
The shard is four hops into enemy space. Surveyed.
And it's right on top of my fleet. Hooray!
FS timed exo at 50%. Boo!
2500-ship CPA announced. Double boo!
~1000 ship, ~100 starship wave announced, synchronizing. Triple boo!
I lost the entire mobile fleet (save the artillery golem) escorting the shard back, and it was down to 12%.
By the time the last shard chaser dies, the gravity net is in ruins, and I've rebuilt only part of the fleet (specifically, the enclave starships).
Oh, and the CPA announces. With Exo synchronization.
A combination of champions, the arti golem, a few judiciously applied rams, the merc fleet and streams of fireflies/tigers/nanoswarms/decoys saved the day, but the defenses are in tatters.
But I'm positively rolling in money, so they're back up pretty fast. I burn a couple more martyrs on the CPA, and construct the second city.
It was nice to have an exo response without a wave to back it up.
City built, spire fleet built, cleaned up the stragglers. Survey shows a stroke of luck: a shard already in my territory.
State of Empire:
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With seven modular forts and an artillery golem, waves are merely bad, and not crises.
It's an interesting scenario where a mere wave can even reach "bad" status vs that kind of firepower.
A combination of champions, the arti golem, a few judiciously applied rams, the merc fleet and streams of fireflies/tigers/nanoswarms/decoys saved the day, but the defenses are in tatters.
Sounds like it's keeping you honest at least some of the time. And hopefully entertained at the same time.
But I'm positively rolling in money, so they're back up pretty fast.
Better than having to resort to Netflix :) How's the balance feeling on how much salvage you get?
Seems like it may be somewhat too generous (either in general or just with the stuff that tends to come in exos; two separate cases to consider) but also seems pretty close in terms of avoiding long refleet times. But I may be wrong and it's actually pegging the resource cap way too much or something like that.
City built, spire fleet built, cleaned up the stragglers. Survey shows a stroke of luck: a shard already in my territory.
Oh, what a pleasant surprise. Is... is that shard ticking?
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Seems like it may be somewhat too generous (either in general or just with the stuff that tends to come in exos; two separate cases to consider) but also seems pretty close in terms of avoiding long refleet times. But I may be wrong and it's actually pegging the resource cap way too much or something like that.
Well:
(http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=15124.0;attach=8307;image)
Also note the 44 matter converters
but on the other hand, this is from diff 10 technologist starfleet commader on my homeworld. At greater-than-cautious AIP. Outside of endgame FS exos, that's about the most possible metal per time unit from salvage.
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Over Three Hundred And Forty Thousand scrap. Per second.
But yea, Starfleet Commander.
Also, that's your homeworld, with the 50% efficiency. On a non-homeworld you'd probably either be getting 12% (Mil III) or 10% (Warp Jammer). I don't see many people tanking against a Log station, let alone Econ.
Anyway, if a wave of that size is on your homeworld you're either playing very dangerously or the AI has smashed through a goodly chunk of your territory. Either way the additional benefit is justified.
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Over Three Hundred And Forty Thousand scrap. Per second.
That was the very highest scrap got to. Until...
(http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=15124.0;attach=8340;image)
I think my actual economy is negative, and I'm subsiding purely on salvage. Then again, I'm tanking everything on my front lawn.
===Operation Silver Tongue====
I recall the third city chasers and counter city exo being REALLY nasty, so I want the full nebula fleet.
But first, I conquered a hive golem/bulletproof V world, and a StarIV world, both next to the Dyson sphere, so with core turrets and warp jammers, they might hold out. Addendum: NOPE.
I also hacked the two entry worlds for k.
Unlocked warp jammers, engineerIIIs, RiotIIs.
CPA triggers exo synchronization (this has prevented any golem exos but the first from hitting me with full strength) and a starfleet wave just so happens to coincide. The immediate aftermath is pictured above.
Conquered a Sentinel Frigate ARS (also comes with translocators) to get non-deepstrike access to all but one nebula.
I'm not actually holding any of these structures, of course, but I'll put the ships in cold storage. As for my EnclaveIVs, they aren't allowed to leave the home ff net.
Jumpship-sabotage-hacked a raid engine and BHM to facilitate nebula access.
As neinzul cruisers, carved a cloaked path to two nebulae.
Did the 3v2 and ravenous shadow nebulae.
Then what I've been dreading all game happens: a double wave. Spirecraft time:
2 martyrs on each wave take care of the ~3000 fleetships. The 170 normal starships, 12 spire battleships, and 9 shadow battleships are repelled, after reducing the home forcefield network into the red.
Oh, and while I was so occupied, a mischievous super hybrid completed the Dyson Antogonizer.
But that's a problem that can wait. A little.
The two Negotiators smash through to the 2v2 nebula, completing it quickly.
It takes careful engiIII movement, and some sacrificial starships jumped in to appease the OMD to get them to the brawl. And that just finished.
Unlocked SentinelIIIs.
Colony rebellion declared on a Zenith starship V world. The plan is to liberate it, and build the third spire city after the looming golem exo.
And then hack the superterminal, take the rest of the worlds I'm going to, and then endgame.
State of Empire:
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I think my actual economy is negative, and I'm subsiding purely on salvage. Then again, I'm tanking everything on my front lawn.
Considering that a planet's orbiting scrap decreases to 10% of its current amount over roughly 4 minutes, that must be quite a roller-coaster of an economy :) Though probably even 0.1% (so, 12 minutes post-death) of an exo's contribution dwarfs many player economies. And by the time it gets down into the mere hundreds-per-second you've already spent what you're going to spend until the next major action. At least if you're raking in that juicy 50% efficiency.
Then what I've been dreading all game happens: a double wave. Spirecraft time:
2 martyrs on each wave take care of the ~3000 fleetships. The 170 normal starships, 12 spire battleships, and 9 shadow battleships are repelled, after reducing the home forcefield network into the red.
Pretty impressive when a double-wave ranks up there with an exo. That's basically a capital fleet slamming directly into your forehead. And being neatly processed into the bank account.
"Got a junker fleet? We'll buy it off you!"
Oh, and while I was so occupied, a mischievous super hybrid completed the Dyson Antogonizer.
But that's a problem that can wait. A little.
Nothing that can't be solved by a little judicious Negotiation.
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by the time it gets down into the mere hundreds-per-second
That never happens. It's always at least a few thousand per second.
Nothing that can't be solved by a little judicious Negotiation.
True. Two battleships can pretty much waltz around the galaxy.
===Operation Rebel Freedom====
I took the whole fleet (save golems and enclaveIVs) and group-moved it to the rebel planet. Negotiators sent out to dissuade the super hybrid and his infernal device.
There was no meaningful resistance, and they both come back. Jumped in the engiIIIs, and I had the rebel fleet built within a couple minutes. I also sucked out all the k, of course. I'll save it for now.
AIP up to 305.
By the time everyone gets back home, a CPA has announced. This will call in the 92% golem exo, and the 70% FS exo.
Repelled.
Double wave: also repelled.
Time to get that third spire city up.
===Operation Final City====
The shard chase was fairly easy, though the exos kept trying to get the shard, so the fleet (rather than the turrets) had to kill them, so I took a whole lot of casualties. Stupid H/KmkIII.
Built all mkII/III spire implosion artilleries.
Built 32 mks of ram.
Built 4 martyrs.
Built third city hub.
4 exo groups. Each led by an H/KIII. With two golems in support. Three arrive essentially simultaneously, too.
I have to deal with the two going right for home. And I do, but I needed the whole fleet and all the forts back near the home ff net.
Meanwhile, the other two went a city. The merc fleet/spire city managed to reduce the first exo group to just the H/K and two armored golems. The second exo, once its target had been destroyed by the first, got distracted and went around killing the sniper turrets on an unimportant planet.
The repaired main fleet arrives at the bare hub, and finishes the first group. Then backtracks to kill the second.
There isn't much fleet left by now, but the exos were repelled.
Rebuilt by the time the next timed FS exo shows up.
Went back down to refresh the rebel fleet.
Repelled double wave.
Time to start the Superterminal hack.
110 AIP later: that was really easy. The hacking response never left "very low." I'll save the rest of my hacking (125) for other things. And I should be able to take five or six more planets now, and can take my time:
State of Empire:
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Meanwhile, the other two went a city. The merc fleet/spire city managed to reduce the first exo group to just the H/K and two armored golems. The second exo, once its target had been destroyed by the first, got distracted and went around killing the sniper turrets on an unimportant planet.
The destruction of those sniper turrets was the keystone of a masterful strategy to... to... the orders were around here somewhere.
110 AIP later: that was really easy. The hacking response never left "very low."
Hmm. Maybe I need to feed it more raw meat.
In related news, just put in some golem buffs for 7.020. Basically targeting health and dps stats which (taking into account utility like the Cursed's range and the Widow's tractors and ED) accord with their internal pricing of "Like 3 caps of MkV fleet ships". That ballpark is around 240M Health and 9M DPS. Which is also roughly in the same ballpark as a Spire DN (160M Health and 6.5M DPS) or a Shadow BB (78M Health and ~7M DPS).
Armored Golems already had over 3 times the health of a Spire DN, in addition to their "takes 20% damage from anything that does not essentially ignore armor" attribute. So in some cases 15 times as durable as a Spire DN. So I did not increase their health. But their DPS was doubled (to 5M DPS).
The Artillery, Black Widow, and Cursed all saw health increases (now even the Cursed, the lowest-health at 175M, has more than a Spire DN). The Black Widow and Cursed also saw DPS increases into the neighborhood of 5M.
Anyway, potentially this doesn't address the issue fully but it seems worth trying before making further changes. FWIW, my current target time for releasing 7.020 is Monday morning, but it might be Tuesday morning.
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Maybe I need to feed it more raw meat.
I agree. Hacking response low and very low is practically ignorable.
Excellent news on the golem changes. I'll tinker once the next version is out.
===Operation Double Archive====
Repelling the FS exo wasn't super hard. As usual, they broke through and trashed one city, but by then I had cleaned up the main attack and could catch and squish the invaders. The core turrets and engiIIIs/fireflies help a lot with defense in depth.
Syncing the reprisal wave was a nice try, but ultimately fruitless.
I conquered the black widow world and design hacked for spire corvettes, which I then unlocked to mkIII. I also performed jumpship shenanigans to destroy the two spire archive command stations (one of which has a hive golem), so I can colonize them quickly once the opportunity arises.
Golem exo arrives and is crushed.
Double wave arrives and is repelled, though the defenses weren't completely back up, and I took a bunch of casualties, including the spire refugee outpost, sadly.
Refleeted, all defenses back online.
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
Another two waves announce, though I have a bit more than a minute between them now. Repelled with the help of martyrs, then I immediately jumpship-colonize the archives. They should extract before any new waves are announced. The jumpships also carried my meager spire capital ships and enclave starships, for security.
I stomped the main fleet over to the upper archive, capturing a cursed golem along the way, sucking it's planet dry, and abandoning it immediately.
Then, I neuter a core world, which also grants access to the last nebula (one of the worst possible, just a repeat of the human 1v1. So no gatlings or enclaves or more than one cap of nebula starships. I still get 500 k, though.).
Hive golem repaired, and I spent the high-mark asteroids on penetrators.
Archives extracted. Fleet returned home, arriving just in time to repel a new set of almost-double waves. Unlocked Assault transports, RiotIIIs, shieldIIIs, zelecIIIs, zenith starshipIIs, and spire starship mkI.
FS exo imminent. My defenses/fleet can probably handle it just fi -
I recognized that thought process from basically every time I've lost to an exo, so I built the mkII and mkIII implosion artilleries, and some rams/shield bearers.
My paranoia pays off, as the exo declares with 70000 strength in massive ships. Including 5 H/Ks mkII, and one mkIII.
The home command station had red health when it was over.
Stragglers in my hinterland mopped up.
State of Empire:
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Maybe I need to feed it more raw meat.
I agree. Hacking response low and very low is practically ignorable.
Sort of. An unattended hack at Very Low currently produces between 500 and 700 fleetships, while a merely Low will produce somewhere around 1000-1500 (this is where other things start happening, like Waves, Starships, etc, which messes up the count).
A single spawn at Extreme, like if you let a SuperTerminal run a few seconds too long, can produce results like this:
spawnedType:AIRaidStarshipV quantity:116289 (strength-each:64)
Maybe there should be a difficulty-factor in the Hacking response? That way, players like Faulty to whom 500 or 1000 threat isn't even noticable can get a nastier response, while the 7/7 players don't have to deal with crazy "Game Over" results.
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Maybe I need to feed it more raw meat.
I agree. Hacking response low and very low is practically ignorable.
Worth a shot, at least. Though as Toranth notes we don't want to make it drop premature Game Over moments on folks playing in the 7 to 9 range. But iirc there's already a strong difficulty-based factor in the hacking response magnitudes. Will check when I have time.
Syncing the reprisal wave was a nice try, but ultimately fruitless.
(disembodied sound of fingers snapping)
Double wave arrives and is repelled, though the defenses weren't completely back up, and I took a bunch of casualties, including the spire refugee outpost, sadly.
Ah well, the refugees couldn't have been anything important, after all.
FS exo imminent. My defenses/fleet can probably handle it just fi -
(hopes up)
I recognized that thought process from basically every time I've lost to an exo, so I built the mkII and mkIII implosion artilleries, and some rams/shield bearers.
Drat.
The home command station had red health when it was over.
It's not a real exo unless your CIC is open to space.
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Maybe I need to feed it more raw meat.
I agree. Hacking response low and very low is practically ignorable.
Worth a shot, at least. Though as Toranth notes we don't want to make it drop premature Game Over moments on folks playing in the 7 to 9 range. But iirc there's already a strong difficulty-based factor in the hacking response magnitudes. Will check when I have time.
Right now the only place difficulty seems to appear is as a linear factor in the base-strength of the response.
From my current Diff 9 game:
spawnStrength = max(1,(AIDifficulty * Handicap)) * 2.5 = 22.5For diff 7, it'd be 17.5, for diff 10, it'd be 25. 7.5 points base difference, so diff 10 is only 40% more difficult.
Aside: Does the TDL/Blade and Riot cheese factor do anything any more?
If you wanted to really ramp it up, you could increase the number of wild-rolls with difficulty - that's a superlinear factor, usually. Right now its one plus one roll per 50 points of HaP spent. Changing it to one per 25 on Diff 9 and one per 10 on diff 10 would be a very dramatic increase in response power.
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===Operation Lay Siege====
Just a few more things to do before endgame.
I quickly rebuilt, then sent the fleet out to conquer the last core shield generator, the ever-mildly-annoying E-network.
Hacked a fabricator for mkV teleport raiders.
Captured another artillery golem, and escorted him home.
I'm out of money.
New round of exos. I'm starting to run low on asteroids, but no significant casualties.
Hacked a StarIV constructor with some difficulty, and spent the last of the hacking on 3000 more k.
Repelled the golem exo with ease. I'll want another batch of disposable spirecraft for the upcoming FS exo, though.
Offensive assets:
Shield bearers, sentinel frigates, zelecs, and fireflies to mkIV. Triangles and nanoswarms to mkI. Also full merc caps, assorted reclaimed fleetships, and 20 gatlings.
Flagship, Zenith, Spire, Enclave, Corvettes, and Riots to mkIII(IV). Leech starship mkII.
3 cruisers, 7 destroyers, 28 frigates from FS.
2 fully armed and operational champion fleets.
The resistance fleet.
Assault transports
Teleraids, telestations, tigers mkV. Decoy drones. One cap of bulletproofVs and translocators, but I lost their actual fabricators.
Golems: 2 hive, 2 artillery, 1 widow, 1 cursed.
Spirecraft: 7 penetrators (mkV, 2 mkIV, 4mkII). I'll probably build more before the final attacks.
I'll wait for the 85% FS exo (and 7.022 to fix the UnhandledErrors), then whittle down the first homeworld with teleport/jumpship strikes.
Then I'll get everyone into a massive pile and smash the other one.
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After repelling the exo (this one put most of it's strength into a mkV H/K, so it was pretty easy to implode it), I repaired and sent the fleet out to the former archive world up top.
And then started cranking out core teleport raiders. It took a while, but I destroyed all the guard posts.
Called the fleet back to repel the next set of exos, not quite synchronized. Then the CPA.
Triggered the FS reserve exo, and murdered it when it came to my homeworld with a huge batch of one-time spirecraft/double hive swarm. And all the fixed defenses and normal fleet at home, of course.
Then I took everything, including the golems, to smash the other homeworld without issue. First one was killed by a spare penetrator II.
Victory. This is my first red victory since way back.
Unfortunately, I realized I didn't actually save before exiting, so no screenshot or save this time.
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Then I took everything, including the golems, to smash the other homeworld without issue. First one was killed by a spare penetrator II.
Well that was easy.
Unfortunately, I realized I didn't actually save before exiting, so no screenshot or save this time.
Hmmm so you don't have any evidence.
jk I believe you. Good job. I'd like to win my favorite AI combo: AI 1: Raid Engine/Oneway Doormaster and AI 2: something. Raid Engine/Oneway Doormaster / Alarmist/Special Forces Commander and then enable the Hunter plot so when I destroy a Special Forces Guard Post I get attacked by Hunter/Killers! It will be extremely brutal and I'll probably die.. but I want to win 10 difficulty Raid Engine at some point.
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Congratulations! That was a lot of brutality to fight through.
Beating 10/10 with reds... sigh ;)
Seems like the AI just needs bigger hammers at this point, but the hacking response in particular did stick out as needing enhancement. Anything else, specifically?
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Seems like the AI just needs bigger hammers at this point
Agreed. Waves, CPAs, and the Golem/spirecraft exos could use some more punch. Especially waves against a single choke.
Anything else, specifically?
Hmm, a few things.
Hybrids suffer from outdated stats.
Normal champion response should be cranked up some.
The strategic reserve should grow past its start once AIP gets really high.
AI ships will often stop moving to duke it out with enclave drones. Ion cannon will shoot at enclave drones before other fleetships. And enclaves are still a bit too strong. Drones every 7 seconds?
Gravity turrets should be a near-number one target priority for the AI. I've had ships in molasses that were shooting at enclave drones even when they were in range of the grav turrets. We might want further gravity nerfing, but I'd like to see what that does.
Bug: threat/threatfleet apparently don't consider neutral planets in their targeting. Which means that the best defense of a capturable is an empty system.
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The strategic reserve should grow past its start once AIP gets really high.
This is certainly in need of improvement. Right now, in a diff 9 game, the Reserve has a cap of about 12,000 strength all game (since AIP is fixed at 200 for non-Lazy). By the time AIP hits 200, the Special Forces are throwing around 40,000 strength.
For Diff 10, it's 24,000 for the Reserve and about 80,000 for the SF.
Those numbers should be reversed, if anything.
Of course, I also think the Reserve spawned units should match the tech level of the planet, rather than being Mk V always.
AI ships will often stop moving to duke it out with enclave drones. Ion cannon will shoot at enclave drones before other fleetships. And enclaves are still a bit too strong. Drones every 7 seconds?
Enclaves don't actually do that much damage. A Mk I enclave can have 5 spawns alive at once, for a maximum DPS of 57,000 per unit, and a cap of 114,000 DPS. In practice, you only get that if your target is directly on top of the Enclave - Even a short range travel time of 3-4 seconds is about 12-18% reduction in damage by the drones.
Compare that to other starships: About the same as Raid starships, but without any of the bonuses. Slightly better damage than Leech and Flagships, but again, no reclaim or attack bonuses. 40% less damage than Plasma Sieges. Much less than half the Bomber starship DPS, and barely third of a Spire Starship's damage. Aka, it fits right in the middle of the starship range.
Since damage isn't really their thing, Enclaves have two purposes:
1) Free units you can throw into Guardpost/Fortress/whatever range to get off 1 shot before dying, that won't cost you any Metal or Reprisal.
2) A mass of disposable targets that mess up AI targetting priorities.
Note that 2 actually works against human units, too, if you ever attack-move or FRD when there are Enclave Guardians around. Humans can redirect, though, when the units act stupid.
1) This is a very long, slow process if you really want to 'siege' an inconvenient fortification. Taking out bad pair, say a Fortress and MLRS under glass, can take Enclaves litteraly hours. Some set ups, like most Bunkerer and many Rude Gestures, are so fortified that even a full cap of 9 Enclaves can't do anything.
2) This is a usually a mixed benefit. Drones can soak up shots, but killing drones lowers the Enclaves DPS - a drawback unique to this unit. If you made the AI units completely ignore drones, then kiting and attacking fixed units would be OP. Otherwise, no matter what, the AI will waste shots on disposable units.
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Normal champion response should be cranked up some.
Yea, I was in that code recently to copy a starting point for the alt-nemesis stuff and I was like "wow, this is being really gentle". At least in terms of how much worse it is on diff 10 than diff 7. That is to say, not by much.
The strategic reserve should grow past its start once AIP gets really high.
Meaning that it should gain something once AIP goes past 200 (on lazy it acts according to min(200,aip), on non-lazy it just takes 200 all the time)? In terms of defensive assets, or offensive ones? I'd like to avoid having it just spawn an impenetrable wall of MkV stuff on the homeworld. Though I guess you'd just warhead it ;)
But having it redirect that into wave strength like the reinforcements would be a way of making the AI still get full benefit from the extra AIP without potentially creating a stalemate.
That said, redirecting into waves is probably not going to seriously threaten a good player. I could just have it stash the extra strength away for the next CPA. That might be too brutal, but I guess we could find out.
AI ships will often stop moving to duke it out with enclave drones.
Do you have a save where I can observe this? There's some pretty explicit code to make it prioritize just about anything over a drone, and debugging it will be much easier with a live case.
Ion cannon will shoot at enclave drones before other fleetships.
Ah, yea. I should just make the drones immune to insta-kill so it doesn't even bother trying to kill that which is going to be dead in a few seconds anyway.
And enclaves are still a bit too strong. Drones every 7 seconds?
Let's try to make the AI a bit smarter about them before we do that. As Toranth says they're not really all that powerful, they just play merry havoc with the other side's behaviors.
Gravity turrets should be a near-number one target priority for the AI. I've had ships in molasses that were shooting at enclave drones even when they were in range of the grav turrets. We might want further gravity nerfing, but I'd like to see what that does.
Yea, it'd be good for them to prioritize grav turrets in some way. I typically try to avoid giving very broad ham-handed "this is what you should kill" rules (though I don't mind ham-handed "this is what you should ignore" ones as much) as that can lead to very stark and undesirable patterns of emergent behavior, but I've thought for a long time that gravity was far more effective than it should be due to the AI not taking it seriously.
Bug: threat/threatfleet apparently don't consider neutral planets in their targeting. Which means that the best defense of a capturable is an empty system.
Hmm, do you have a save where I can see this? The intent of the code is very much to consider all planets (or at least all non-AI planets, and sometimes even AI ones), so I think there may be some case-specific subtleties at work.
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For Diff 10, it's 24,000 for the Reserve and about 80,000 for the SF.
Those numbers should be reversed, if anything.
I disagree. It makes sense for the SF to be bigger. The SF defends everything, including the homeworlds, while the SR is just a homeworld bonus.
Enclave drones do cost you a little reprisal.
Aka, it fits right in the middle of the starship DPS range.
But it has planetary range.
Otherwise, no matter what, the AI will waste shots on disposable units.
Yeah, that's not a problem. It's a problem when the AI stops moving toward my fleet to fight a neverending drone stream.
Do you have a save where I can observe this? There's some pretty explicit code to make it prioritize just about anything over a drone, and debugging it will be much easier with a live case.
You can see a mild form of this behaviour in the attached. At the core world, the enemies will stop and start, shooting at drones, rather than beelining to my fleet (where photon lances await them).
It looks like they forget about their old target when taking potshots at the drones.
I'd like to avoid having it just spawn an impenetrable wall of MkV stuff on the homeworld.
I don't want that either, but it has a long way up from its current state to "impenetrable." And yes, warheads (though, interceptor).
Hmm, do you have a save where I can see this? The intent of the code is very much to consider all planets (or at least all non-AI planets, and sometimes even AI ones), so I think there may be some case-specific subtleties at work.
Yeah, the attached has this as well. Plenty of threat, and a completely undefended core turret controller (Monolith, the P9 planet).
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Making AI prioritize grav turrets will be a bit of a.. contradiction. Those turrets had at least one wave of buffs so that they actually survive to have some effect - and now they would get focus fired ?
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You can see a mild form of this behaviour in the attached. At the core world, the enemies will stop and start, shooting at drones, rather than beelining to my fleet (where photon lances await them).
It looks like they forget about their old target when taking potshots at the drones.
Turns out they figured the other stuff wasn't worth attacking due to being waist-high in Decoys. I've given them a pep talk that it's better to hurl themselves upon the photon lances to maybe get a shot into one of the Decoys (that will be replaced by the MSDs anyway) than to shoot at enclave drones that will be dead in seconds anyway. In retesting they seemed much encouraged.
Yeah, the attached has this as well. Plenty of threat, and a completely undefended core turret controller (Monolith, the P9 planet).
Huh, quite right, it really wasn't considering neutral planets. It will now.