AI War - A Guide to Golems

[keith.lamothe]

(or even hard golems, honestly, medium 4 lyfe)

People keep saying that.  Methinks I need to crank up the exo-causing parameters of the broken-golems-hard minor faction

On the Artillery golem, I think the baseline of comparison should be what sort of DPS it can do. I don't have the exact numbers or I'd look. Big giant shots, when they come 8 seconds apart, may not look so huge any more compared to the DPS of a cap of bombers or whatever.

Oh, no question that it's way bigger: 12,500,000 DPS (Arty) vs a bit less than 500,000 DPS (cap of mkI bombers).  Even a full cap of mkI-mkIV would still be less than 5 million, I believe.  Of course, that's without the bomber 6x bonus multipliers.  Then it becomes 3 mill and 30 mill, respectively.  Well, closer to 20-25 mil for the mkI-mkIV since the dps-cap doesn't go up quite linearly due to the caps being smaller at higher marks.

[Hearteater]

(or even hard golems, honestly, medium 4 lyfe)

People keep saying that.  Methinks I need to crank up the exo-causing parameters of the broken-golems-hard minor faction

I'm sure you'll read about my feelings in my AAR when get a few more Exos in.  Especially if I can't reach that Botnet golem for awhile and don't find another nearby.  Thanks to the patch I'll be continuing that game (I didn't want to abuse tractors) and I'm going to enjoy testing out the new Plasma Siege Starships.

[chemical_art]

Exo waves seem easy if they are bottlenecked. But they are not always. Plus, bringing up the difficulty thing earlier, if they think it is easy, turn up the difficulty by one then come back. Exo waves are fine the way they are. Especially with the buffs golems are getting. Just because it seems easy because a whole fleet is there to intercept means they should not be harder. They may get beat back alone, but due to their independent nature they have a habit of riding on the opposite direction of a wave, or during a CPA. This is when they are most a threat, and plenty of threat they are.

DPS is not the end all be all. Remember that arty kills ONE unit in 8 seconds. Any other golem can easily kill 5, more often 10 times more enemies in such a time. And it is a frail and slow unit.

[PokerChen]

I'm pretty sure the Arty's base damage went down, even though it isn't listed in the patch notes.  I don't think it is still doing 100 million.  I think I read somewhere Keith mentioning something like 40 million damage.

No, I didn't change it.  If folks play with it and find it's overpowered, I'm listening.  Personally I'd prefer it if each golem had a form of usefulness similar in magnitude to where the botnet is, and if necessary increasing cost/danger of using/getting them, rather than bringing their usefulness down.

Not that I'm personally opposed to nerfing the botnet, but I haven't seen a consistent theme of people wanting that.  What I see is a consistent theme of people having fun with the botnet, which is what I want.

In this case then, after we get to some kind of milestone tweaking, how do people feel about increasing the danger of getting these beasties? If the AI is afraid of humans allying with the Spire, then it would also be reasonably wary of humans picking up some abandoned BFG it didn't salvage for itself?
Example suggestions:
- Targeted strikes against the golem? I know the AI isn't meant to be aware of the contents of human planets, but perhaps the golems are big enough to detect from far away.
- Increased Exo wave intensity (not frequency). This depends on the actual golems the human player has. What I mean is, its very counter-productive for an AI to send convertible fleet-ships against the Botnet golem.
- (Edit) Make the AI send hive golems after you (with just 100 bees each to "soften" the blow).

= = = =
Keep in mind that 100,000,000 damage is enough to KO some of the smaller spire capitals. If it isn't yet, this is worth prioritising for AI-controlled golems over lame starships. People on Fallen Spire might actually enjoy an AI-strike force consisting of several Artillery golems. Heh.

Edit2: If it is the case that we should be playing at the maximum difficulty we can cope with, on what difficulty level should a golem be not overpowered? That is, since we're judging this by OP-ness, we might want a target difficulty as well to scale that OP-ness by.

We can't balance these golems on a per difficulty level, can we?

[BobTheJanitor]

To some extent they are balanced on difficulty, since their negatives will alter depending on your difficulty. On medium golems,  you take extra planets to power them, so you drive up AIP with all the associated issues that brings. On hard, the exo waves are meaner based on your difficulty level. (at least, I think they are... they get more build points to work with, or something?)

[keith.lamothe]

On hard, the exo waves are meaner based on your difficulty level. (at least, I think they are... they get more build points to work with, or something?)

Yes, AI difficulty does factor in (see the "Multiply by difficulty modifier" step in the article here).

[Wanderer]

Opinion on an idea for a minor gentling of the BotNet.  Make it cost 10% of the health of whatever it captures.  Have the BotNet shut itself off at 20% to avoid suiciding.  Either that, or maxes off at 3000 zombies or so.

One botnet has literally erased all threat to the home systems, since they're patrolling like friendly dysons.  A CPA came in and got swallowed by the zombies.  I didn't even get a 'station under attack' warning.

I can get my hands on 3 (lucky spawn rolls), leaving one on defense at the whipping boy.  The only thing slowing down utter erasure of the galaxy at this point is Ion Cannons, Advanced Hybrids, and having to micro to avoid getting the BotNet swamped and dead against guardians.

Well, that and I'm purposely playing slow to see what these Advanced Hybrids will do.  The BotNet is damned near an 'I Win!' button.

[BobTheJanitor]

Not sure if I'd like that. The botnet is already relatively fragile for a golem. This could just lead to lots of aggravating accidental dead golems. If any nerfing was to be done, I'd rather see it done to the zombies themselves. And not really anything harsh, perhaps just slightly upping the likelihood that they will go over to an AI world die instead of patrolling. Nothing too heavy handed. I still remember the old botnet where zombies would just charge off through the galaxy at random and die instantly. There has to be some happy medium between that and the current endless streams of patrolling zombies. On the other hand, I do so love my free zombie army, so leaving it as is won't draw any complaints from me.

[Wanderer]

Not sure if I'd like that. The botnet is already relatively fragile for a golem. This could just lead to lots of aggravating accidental dead golems. If any nerfing was to be done, I'd rather see it done to the zombies themselves. And not really anything harsh, perhaps just slightly upping the likelihood that they will go over to an AI world die instead of patrolling. Nothing too heavy handed. I still remember the old botnet where zombies would just charge off through the galaxy at random and die instantly. There has to be some happy medium between that and the current endless streams of patrolling zombies. On the other hand, I do so love my free zombie army, so leaving it as is won't draw any complaints from me.

A couple of other ideas, then.  Make it a vacuum.  The first 300 ships it sees, it sucks into its hold.  It then takes some time for it to convert the internal systems to zombies.  Similar to a Maw, but instead of killing them it fires them out eventually as zombie fodder. 

Make it cost energy (10 power*mk) for every zombie currently active for it to keep control.  Don't ruin the equipment, but make it unsustainable at rediculous levels.  And let me kill zombies if I need to... or not, double edged sword.

Bring it down to 10 shots/2 seconds instead of 50.  That'll at least put it in harm's way for a little while, and won't be able to convert 80% of a wave.

Give the zombies on spawn a command.  25% Roam current system forever, 25% beeline for AI Homeworld, 25% become a PC guardian, 25% aggression zombie.  Add in additional choices as desired for flavor.

Right now it can walk into a massed system (2k+) with a reasonable point guard to soak the initial guardians and can completely convert it inside of a few minutes.  I take out 800 ship waves with one under a single FF inside of a minute or two.  That's overpowered to me, especially with them becoming never ending player guardians on top of it.

[Mánagarmr]

12,500,000 Million DPS (Arty)

[keith.lamothe]

12,500,000 Million DPS (Arty)

Ah, yea, that would be a bit bigger that the truth. (quietly edits out "Million")

[keith.lamothe]

For the botnet: having zombies charge the AI, ever, tends to result in nasty unexpectedly-freed-ships problems.  For some players that's fun, for a lot of them it's not.

I do see how it becomes a problem when it can destroy an effectively unlimited number of enemy ships, not to mention establish a nearly endless protective force.  Eventually that erodes the fun of the game because it becomes a matter of "Get a botnet or two, get something that deals with the relatively few things a botnet can't handle, win game" and some players will feel like they have to get a botnet if it's there or else they're not playing optimally.

On the other hand, I don't want to lower the number of valid strategies players can pick from.  That just leads to one-way-to-play-the-game from a different angle.

That said, I think one of the suggestions will help contain part of the insanity: have a max of 2000 zombies on the player team (4000 on high caps, 1000 on low caps).  I think the botnet is the only way to get player-allied zombies, so that would work, I think.  The AI needs to not have a zombie cap for other mechanics, but it doesn't appear to be getting that kind of use out of the botnet anyhow.

For the other part (the botnet's personal ability to accidentally waves), I think the problem is that the dps is basicallly... infinite.  10,000,000 * 50 every 2 seconds. 250,000,000 dps.  That's twenty times what the buffed arty golem has, and applied more efficiently.  No bueno   Actually, it's more than the Devourer on-paper (which has same base power and 2-second salvo time, but 45 shots instead of 50), but I think there's something about the devourer that actually makes it automatically kill whatever it hits (I once made the avenger mkIV briefly to put it in a fight vs the devourer, and the fight was over before the devourer's first salvo was done hitting).  For reference, the armored golem does 500,000 * 4 / 2, 1,000,000 dps.  Personally I'd like to bumpt that up a bit, not because it's not balanced but because I want to raise the overall "balanced" bar for golems.  Not sure if that's the right way to go, though.

Anyway, not sure what the answer is.  Could leave dps the same and see if the zombie cap is enough.  Could lower the number of shots to 10 as suggested.  Or perhaps could reduce the damage per shot to 500,000 or something like that: an advantage of this is that if it doesn't kill something, and something else does kill it, it's "normal reclaimed" instead of "zombie reclaimed".  That could lead to bug reports if people see normal reclamation happening while they have no normal parasites in the fight, however.

[Hearteater]

I kind of liked the maw-like consume idea.  Have it deal somewhat poor damage, but have its hits "teleport" ships into its "belly" as long as room exists.  Let it hold maybe 250-500, and spit them out as zombies after 3 seconds/mark.  So Mark Is would come out in 3 seconds, but Mark Vs would take 15 seconds.

As for behaviour, I don't have a botnet yet (I have one in my sights though) but wouldn't making 90% of the zombies stay in the system with the botnet work?  Then on defense you put it where you want to defend, and on offense you send it in to what you want to attack, and the zombies follow.  Some small number of zombies wander around patrolling.  Which is actually sort of how I assumed it worked anyway.

[PokerChen]

That said, I think one of the suggestions will help contain part of the insanity: have a max of 2000 zombies on the player team (4000 on high caps, 1000 on low caps).  I think the botnet is the only way to get player-allied zombies, so that would work, I think.  The AI needs to not have a zombie cap for other mechanics, but it doesn't appear to be getting that kind of use out of the botnet anyhow.

The ship-limit idea should be tweaked in the event that players want to upgrade their zombie fleet. Mark IV zombies would be most efficient on the ship-cap, and difficult to get if you already have 2000 mark-I, or worse, 2000 mark-I infiltrators from that recent wave... This creates a lot of optimisation angst.

Is it possible to code for, say, 20 caps-worth of ships instead? A fighter-I will then contribute ~0.01, a sentinel frigate-I will be ~0.05, and a zenith bombard-IV will be ~0.09. This preserves the innate balance between ship-types and saves us the trouble of picking fights with our Botnet.

For the other part (the botnet's personal ability to accidentally waves), I think the problem is that the dps is basicallly... infinite.  10,000,000 * 50 every 2 seconds. 250,000,000 dps.  That's twenty times what the buffed arty golem has, and applied more efficiently.  No bueno

DPS is a little high, but since Botnets never target non-fleetships it's not much of an issue.

The better fix to me on the DPS-side of things seems to be dropping the damage rather than number of shots, assuming infinite zombie cap. I want to not waste damage reclaiming mark-IIs, for example, and the golem can still concentrate fire on mark-IVs to reclaim them in one salvo.

A simple number cap would immediate switch my choice to dropping the shots, and then I could realistically camp my botnet next to a neutered mark-IV command station to get my fill of 2000 ships. 

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, some good ideas.  We could:

- Make it a maw, but have the maw damage do zombie reclamator damage.  Probably also make the maw damage more along the lines of "process never takes more than 3 seconds" or whatever.
- Have its normal shots not do zombie reclamator damage, and tone down drastically the dps, and have them be able to hit whatever instead of the current target restrictions.
- When something is botnet zombied, have a 90% random chance that the result will be "coordinated by" the botnet that reclaimed them in a similar way to how a hybrid's drones are coordinated by it or an exo's non-lead-ships are coordinated by its lead-ship.

This would make the eternal patrolling zombie army effect rather lessened, which I'm not sure how folks will feel about, but this seems like it would be pretty cool in its own right.