ai wave attacking planet ???

[martin]

on several occasions on a new game i started it has come up with a wave warning for a planet named that isnt in the gameainst the
the clock would tick down to 0 and no ships would appear on any planet i currently own, a few seconds later the second ai would launch a similar attack against the same planet
this only happened when there werent any warpgates on worlds directly connected to mine

[x4000]

No worries, this is the expected behavior, and is why you should leave at least one warp gate bordering your territory if you want to know where the waves are coming in.  Please see this topic in the wiki:  Why Are Waves Coming In Without Warning?

[Cintia]

Expected behavior yes, intended/wanted behavior? No.

Shouldn't there be a more fancy solution for this? I think it's a bit wrong that removing warp gates 'increases' your defense at first and when you accidentally destroy one too many it actually makes the AI better/smarter.

[x4000]

Yes, this is the intended and the wanted behavior.  I coded this out specifically.

The metal model I am using is that of water pressure: when you have warp gates all over your perimeter, you get attacked at a few of the places much more intermittently per-place.  When you have fewer points of entry, you get many more attacks there.  When you have no direct points of entry, you get "splashed" all over the place (except on lower difficulties, where to keep things simple it just puts those into reinforcements).

[Cintia]

When you have no direct points of entry, you get "splashed" all over the place (except on lower difficulties, where to keep things simple it just puts those into reinforcements).

The reinforcement thing makes more sense in my opinion. Destroying a warp gate has a negative AI progress effect to it thus should be countered with something positive, which it is in most cases. But right now the final step in destroying warpgates is comlepetely the thing you did NOT want to accomplish.

In the spirit of analogies; it's like saving money to buy a present and when you hit the cap you lose everything and are back at 0.00, for no reason. The whole point of destroying warpgates is to funnel the attacks to more concentrated spots. Not to 'splash' them around otherwise you would be better of not destroying *any* since the beginning of the game.

If you really intended destroying the last warpgate to be a 'stupid action that deserves punishment' then I don't agree with that gamemechanic. Especially since there isn't an easy interface that shows the AI's warpgate coverage as a whole.

The least you could do is show what planet the 'splash' wave comes to (even when using an extra hop). Just like normal with normal waves. Maybe with an extra benefit:
1) Mark the wormhole without having warpgate sensors.
2) Perhaps even an increase of 10% of wavetime or size reduction so it would actually be something positive when you destroy all those warpgates and got all that AI progress.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

The whole point of destroying warpgates is to funnel the attacks to more concentrated spots. Not to 'splash' them around otherwise you would be better of not destroying *any* since the beginning of the game.

This isn't necessarily true, however. There's nothing about the current mechanic that would cause you to not want to destroy any warp gates. As you say, destroying them allows you to funnel raids to specific planets which is a major reason to choose to destroy them.

I like the way the mechanic currently works because it prevents warp gates from becoming an "automatic destroy" target. Sometimes I'm in a heavily defensible position on a planet, so I choose to retain an adjoining warp gate to funnel attacks there. On other, weaker planets I might destroy all adjoining warp gates so as to limit their vulnerability. It causes you to keep track of your perimeter worlds and make informed decisions based on your situation instead of simply destroying every warp gate on sight. Additionally, as the linked wiki topic points out, this isn't a situation that typically lasts for very long. Assuming steady progress on capturing planets, it's not long until you have another 1+ connected warp gates and you're right back to getting regular waves of attack.

In my opinion and experience, this mechanic leads to some interesting decisions and scenarios.

[zebramatt]

Agreed - it's fun the way it is!

[Cintia]

I like the way the mechanic currently works because it prevents warp gates from becoming an "automatic destroy" target.

There is already a 10 AI progress cost attached to it so it's never an "automatic destroy" target.
All the reasons you list are a function of the warpgate mechanic itself and not the issue I'm discussing. I like the concept that you can limit/funnel attacks to certain planets. But going 1 step too far resulting in suddenly destroying all your progress with a lot of negative side-effects WHILE you already lost the maximum amount of AI progress points simply isn't good design.

On top of this it also makes the AI look less intelligent. Why were they announcing their waves before and when you destroy their gates they suddenly become more effective with less technolical equipment? It makes no sense and while it may be a understandable byproduct of the current game-mechanics, it doesn't make for a good logical design.

[x4000]

The Ai isn't announcing it's waves, I would just like to note. You have warp sensors  on your planets and can thus detect the warps. When they warp into their own territory, generally you. Do not have a warp sensor there. If you happened to have certain core ships, or sentinel frigates, on the enemy planet that is getting the wave, you would know where the wave is coming in. The difference isn't in what the ai announces, but in what sensors you have.

In any case -- in no way am I going to make it possible on the advanced difficulties for you to have zero waves attacking you if you turtle. That would be far too easy to abuse. At the moment the mechanics vibe the most possible interesting decisions of any mechanic I've considered, and I think most people are quite happy with them. Opinions are always welcome, but by definition not every design decision a game designer makes is going to be popular with every player.

[Cintia]

In any case -- in no way am I going to make it possible on the advanced difficulties for you to have zero waves attacking you if you turtle.

Yes. Waves are an important aspect of the gameplay.

The Ai isn't announcing it's waves, I would just like to note. You have warp sensors  on your planets and can thus detect the warps. When they warp into their own territory, generally you. Do not have a warp sensor there. If you happened to have certain core ships, or sentinel frigates, on the enemy planet that is getting the wave, you would know where the wave is coming in. The difference isn't in what the ai announces, but in what sensors you have.

Yes, I understand the reason, but that doesn't change the fact that it makes the AI seem less intelligent. Not being able to see the wave warning is quite dangerous. If the AI was 'smart' they would know that and would always start the wave 1 hop away so the humans wouldn't see it. You're defending the logic of the game mechanic, which I get. But the 'how it appears' isn't always the same.

On top of that: destroying a warpgate around a planet completely removes AI waves comming in to that planet, yet if they really *wanted* (ie: represents AI intelligence..) they could still attack the player homeplanet by just taking the next fastest warp. Of course this wouldn't make for good gameplay. The current game is more like a puzzle, which I like. But this whole "last destroyed" warpgate issue is that it makes the AI intelligence seem transparent and silly.

Whenever I destroyed a warpgate I could say to myself "They can't attack me now because the AI can't warp 2 hops and traveling would take too long". Now that I know the real mechanics and that the AI can bypass the warpgate limitation anyway, it suddenly translates into "They can't attack me now because the game developer made it that way. Period".

[x4000]

If the AI really cared about you, it would just swarm you with 20,000 ships from all its planets and would kill you immediately.  The AI's motives and where its attention lies has been discussed at length elsewhere.  Suffice it to say, story in an RTS game for me is vastly secondary, and even having the AI always appear as intelligent as possible is secondary.  What is primary for me is having game mechanics that are interesting and that provide a fun and good play experience.  The AI is in support of that, not the other way around.  If something is a semantic argument, providing a cosmetic or theme-based shift at the expense of gameplay, I'll always choose gameplay.  Sometimes that bugs people, which is unfortunate, but I think it does a service to the game itself and mostly that is appreciated by most people most of the time.

It's not that I'm unwilling to make a change here -- but so far nothing has been suggested that provides an equal-to or superior gameplay experience while addressing the concern you have, so therefore I'm not going to make a change yet.  If there's something that someone has that meets the criteria of making the gameplay just as good or better, then I'm all ears -- players often surprise me with sideways solutions I've never thought of.  But I put quite a lot of thought into this mechanic back when I was originally designing it, and I haven't yet come up with anything that's superior.

Hope that makes sense.

Whenever I destroyed a warpgate I could say to myself "They can't attack me now because the AI can't warp 2 hops and traveling would take too long". Now that I know the real mechanics and that the AI can bypass the warpgate limitation anyway, it suddenly translates into "They can't attack me now because the game developer made it that way. Period".

If that's the way you choose to see it, there's not much I can say to that.  But I think it's pretty clear that the AI prefers to warp its fleets directly into your planets; and only when it can't, it warps into its own planets and then uses conventional propulsion to attack you.  There are disadvantages for the AI in doing this, by the way -- its ships tend to get more spread out, it's at risk of being attacked along the way, it gives you more time to prepare, and it has a less ideal way of exiting the wormholes to deal with Lightning Turrets/Electric Shuttles.  I understand that you perceive this to be a major discrepancy in how the AI thinks, but I don't see it the same way.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

There is already a 10 AI progress cost attached to it so it's never an "automatic destroy" target.
All the reasons you list are a function of the warpgate mechanic itself and not the issue I'm discussing. I like the concept that you can limit/funnel attacks to certain planets. But going 1 step too far resulting in suddenly destroying all your progress with a lot of negative side-effects WHILE you already lost the maximum amount of AI progress points simply isn't good design.

But if destroying warp gates not only removes attacking waves, and destroying all adjoining warp gates provides me additional levels of defense bonuses, then I would say in most cases it would be worth the AI progress cost to destroy them. Destroying all of the warp gates doesn't mean you've negated all of your progress. In fact, you've accomplished precisely what you set out to do: prevent the AI from warping attacks directly into your planets. However, that also means that the AI will turn to plan B, which may be more difficult to defend against.

With that said, it sounds like you're arguing from a more thematic point of view which I think is very different from how I'm approaching it.

[zebramatt]

It's thematically consistent the way it is now, anyway: the AI reinforces its planets constantly by warping in ships from outside the galaxy, then every so often sends a cross planet attack at you; these ships are not warped directly to your planets - they arrive there from AI worlds. At the same time, it constantly sends waves against you, directly warped into your planets. If you remove this option from the AI, it simply diverts it resources into more indirect attacking. Why would it not? It would be stupid for the AI not to bother just because you blew up a few Warp Gates!