If aiwar was a pvp game...

[NickAragua]

However, I imagine that there will be a meta-game consisting of stalemates, and large emphasis with mercenary ships to counter massing defenses and etc.; pushing is going to be difficult when players have established a main front[, which would be a problem from my prospective].

then again though, any player buildups could easily be EMP/lightninged, and human players cant insta-replace losses like the AI can- dispersion will be important

Heh, that reminds me: Nukes. Since we don't worry about AI Progress, we just crank out nukes, then just run a chain to the enemy homeworld - nothing you can do to stop it, unless you get a hold of a warhead interceptor somehow.

Of course, I wouldn't be playing it pvp anyway, because I need my pause function.

[Lancefighter]

yes, well, I'm beginning to think warheads in general would need to be left out of any pvp game - nukes, lightning, etc all are too powerful without some sort of repurcussion.


I have, on the other hand, considered a new level of 'progress' - citizen malcontentedness. As this gets higher, your resource income gets lower..
Dropping nukes might be nice for the initial shock and awe campaign, but after that you better be able to stand your ground without much resources

[TheMachineIsSentient]

I think you could have missiles, as long as they were expensive and took a lot of power. To balance them, you would need interceptors or ships capable of shooting them down.

[lanstro]

Could always allow AI progress to still exist in the pvp mode.  Each player will have his/her own separate ai progress, and that will influence the waves that are sent against that player.

Could even allow each human player to see the wave counters for each other human player: would open up some dynamism with when to attack (ie, wait for opponent to engage with AI wave, then move in at a different front).

On the other hand, that would add an element of randomness, which is not necessarily desirable in a game that lasts more than an hour.

[Lancefighter]

that was thrown around on irc as well, but in the end: how can we really balance out the waves between players? Should we hit them both with a wave according to their aip at the same time? Should waves occur randomly? I am personally against random waves (and aip based waves should have the same random seed to create the total wave number), because it means that a player can feel cheated by the AI and lose.
However at the same time, I dont want to so much have waves happen at exactly the same time, because it just seems superficial at that point - as if your maintaining waves just because ai war compstomp has ai waves, and want them to look fair for pvp

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Yes, there was a lot about AI waves on IRC (more people should join!), and some disagreement. I was seeing it as a way of keeping the game moving and keeping the players responsible for their actions. Without external pressure, I see both players as stockpiling instead of moving, and there needs to be some impetus to keep the players moving. That's why I suggested a race condition to the center, but it could be waves, or any of a number of other mechanics. I want to see big battles between players, but I don't want to see two hours of resource gathering and trying to hit the ship capacity.

[Sarnian]

Unlike the AI, a human opponent could only focus his/her attention on one thing at a time (though I'm told women multitask better than us gents)!

I'd start with a distraction raid, escalate the combat when I have the other side's attention to keep them hooked, then launch a strike of bomber-stuffed transports at their home world while they waste time beating me elsewhere!

[ShdNx]

Unlike the AI, a human opponent could only focus his/her attention on one thing at a time (though I'm told women multitask better than us gents)!

I'd start with a distraction raid, escalate the combat when I have the other side's attention to keep them hooked, then launch a strike of bomber-stuffed transports at their home world while they waste time beating me elsewhere!

My thought exactly. The more you can confuse and distract the enemy, the better!

It would be quite very interesting to see a PvP modification of AIW, however it wouldn't really be the same game anymore, since it would need to be completely rebalanced, like some of you have already pointed it out.