I kinda liked having 50000 K and 80 AIP. 
I'm sure you did
I'm not really a fan of the beach-heading option, because my playstyle is dependent on the whipping boy being able to stand on its own without fleet intervention once it's up. One beach-head would wreck me utterly, unless I didn't whipping boy a choke planet, which seems counter-optimal to me.
Yea, I've noticed that tendency of yours
And ultimately the single-defensive-path thing is fun as long as it doesn't encapsulate all challenges. But I've been giving serious thought to an idea inspired by one of Hearteater's suggestions in the energy discussion. Not actually involving energy at all, but:
1) Assign each command station type a "Provides Defense Control" value.
2) Assign each "defensive" unit (so all turrets, forcefields, fortresses, etc) a "Consumes Defense Control" value.
3) If the total defense control consumption on a planet exceeds the provided defense control on that planet, all units that consume defense control act as if out-of-supply.
And that's it for the basic idea; there's other things that would need addressing like:
- how to handle balance in multiplayer (probably a planet with X control can support X control worth of units per player, rather than X total, since the incoming attacks are generally scaled up to match the number of players)
- the interface has to show these values on tooltips and probably the totals on the planet in the alert window
- the construction interface needs to not let you place stuff that would go beyond local defense control
- this would put more pressure on to balance the turrets amongst themselves, relative to their control-cost, as otherwise the "less desirable" turrets quickly get a backseat rather than being obvious "sure, throw that one in too" (which has its own issues, but I think is better than totally ignoring a unit)
- need to give mobile builders and/or new variant(s) of mobile builder provides-defense-control values (but probably there would be no stacking, the planet just has the highest value provided)
-- and with this, we could actually remove the restriction on human turrets, fortresses, forcefields, etc that they can only be used while in supply; you wouldn't be able to drop a
lot of them "in the field" as presumably a mobile builder doesn't have much control.
Also thinking:
- A human home command station would provide effectively infinite control, so that if you absolutely positively must have a single planet with
all the firepower, you can. It's just gotta be the one planet in the galaxy the AI
wants to be on
Not that whipping-boy'ing the HW is non-viable (you've done it here to great effect), I just think it's probably a more interesting/tense situation than something safely separated.
- Logistics stations would have more control than Economic stations (econ stations may need a buff to energy production or something like that).
- Military stations would have more control than Logistics stations.
- With this, turrets could be buffed a bit (higher power, lower cost, etc). The result likely being a total increase in how effective a human defense can be across multiple planets, but without being able to always stop nearly any AI attack in the same 25 square foot area
- As this would make planet-loss more common, it would be polite for me to provide some kind of ability to simply rebuild command stations without going through the manual process of building a colony ship, selecting the colony ship, ordering it to the target planet, waiting, selecting the colony ship, picking the station type, and placing the station.
Anyway, not dead-set on the idea, but it does seem like it would help keep things more dynamic and reduce complacency-in-defense (unless, of course, you have a Dyson Ball), as "complacent" is not typically a feeling associated by our players with "fun"
... er, sorry, derailed there
If folks want to talk about that at length probably a new thread is desirable, lest it compete with the tale of the 4th Vogon Conquest of Earth.
Who'da thought one could beat a computer in a staring match?
I can't. The Dyson can.
Touche
As the Dyson builds, it'll continuously get more ships, which according to our recent discussions should cause permanent over-whelming #s bonuses during the reinforcement phase on its two neighbors.
Hmm, I don't know off-hand if the (minor faction) dysons count for that. But they probably do. Anyway, you'll be able to tell in 5.032 by turning on the reinforcement logging for a few minutes
That's 4 reinforcements I'll basically never have to deal with as the Dyson scours its own borders. I don't think I'll exhaust the alert list though because of the satellite nature of my planet conquering.
And if you wanted to exploit things a bit more you could plant a fortress on one of the neutered backworld AI planets next to yours.
Well, someone has to make up for the WhineMaster...
Ho ho. I'm pretty sure the Hybrids took care of him for complaining about their Rose vintage.
I'm really hoping to get a chance to play with those really juicy Harvesters before they get themselves nerfed back to reasonability by K cost or reductions. If you do have to make that choice, please make it reductions. K-Cost was too high period before, unless it was god-mode resources.
Yea, basically I just want the total m+c gain of spending 9000 K on harvesters to equal the m+c gain of spending 9000 K on econ stations at the number of resource spots one normally has at 13 planets. Then you know that if you want a
really-early game boost harvesters are best because of the homeworld, and if you want an early-mid game boost econ stations are the better bet (but take up the station slot) and if you plan to have more than 13 planets (or cherry-pick for resource-spots) harvesters are the better mid-late game choice. I think the current numbers reflect a math error on my part when I switched down to the lower K-costs, and/or an error in computing average resource spot density.
Man, talk about some wild time differences in raids. At the same AIP I go from 892 ship raids to 105 ship raids. It's just wild.
The AI loves that roulette wheel. I could tighten up the time range a bit, but it seems this gives a bit more variety. The lower end of the timescale seems a little pointless on standard waves, though; it would make sense with cross-planet-waves because they'd probably just join a threatball instead of attacking, but that's just a lobby option off in a corner.
After that, we're moving the whipping boy. This could be dangerous but it's really my only significant chance.
Ooh, danger, an actual chance for the AI to win!
and give me a build point for new ships that isn't in the Ozarks.
But the new ships need a shakedown cruise on the way to the front. A scenic tour. A last glimpse of clear vacuum before death in an atmospheric density of firepower. Ah well, nevermind that.
About a minute later I realize *1* missile frigate missed the command to head for home and has been continuing the deepstrike. Joy. A minute of deepstrike threat, for those who haven't fought it much, is a LARGE volume of ships.
You wouldn't
believe how much bribe that stupid frigate demanded before it agreed to do that...
Remember a while ago I mentioned EVERY one of my planets is currently running double reactors to power my fleet? Yeah, brownouts galore.
That's basically the entire point of the energy system: to pull the rug out from under you just as things start to go bad
An exciting defense
Nothing gets the blood moving quite like the realization that it might not be moving much longer.
They pop the DC there and pound a few Ion Cannons out of spite.
Yea, Ions get that a lot.
the next system down, which has two forts, about 10 posts, and another AI Eye. Greaaaat.
They aim to please!
Frustratingly my nearly empty maws wouldn't EAT anything!
Odd, if you have a save where that's reproducible, I can take a look.
Highly amusingly my riot I mgs (Tractor/shield as center modules) engine killed a bunch of ships before they went down, so there's a fleet of ~80 ships floating at me at speed 1. If they ever get off Kirk I'll be surprised. Just firepower sitting there waiting for me to come back. One of the reasons I just don't like generic ED. It messes me up more than it helps. If I remember I'll put in a mantis request for a Riot SS gun that doesn't ED.
Well, could you move around them and/or pick them off from maximum range? Anyway, yea, I don't mind coming up with some other utility option for the light hardpoints. Possibly single-target paralyze (for fun may just use the zenith paralyzer graphic or part thereof: just nailing them to the hull!)
I'm timing things so that right after Confederation gets its 2x reinforcements, I head in for Earth. That gives me ~3 minutes to work on Earth before it'll get another reinforcement.
I feel like an enabler
2) The Blade Spawners are happy go lucky on FFs again.
3) When they're NOT happy for FFs, they're targetting powered down units, so the blades don't actually HIT anything, they just sit there, idling and dying.
Ack. Save?
But not sure, if I fix the maw bug and the blade spawner bugs, how will the AI stand a chance?
