Arcen Games
General Category => AI War Classic => AI War Classic - Strategy Discussion => Topic started by: I-KP on January 04, 2010, 12:33:02 pm
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I don't play on an AI setting that's too easy for me (tend to play ~7.6 or 8 ) but after I've got a few planets under my belt Metal and Crystal concerns are about the furthest thing from my mind; I pretty much end up ignoring them. Only Energy remains a consideration as only Energy defines how large my forces can be at any one time. I know that technically Metal & Crystal drive Energy but in practice it's actually planet numbers that drive Energy (unless you go out of your way to colonise super-low resource systems). Once I am 'established' on a map Metal and Crystal no longer play a part in the game for me (or maybe that's just the way that I play).
Could/should something be tweaked to give Metal and Crystal something of a lasting consideration? I have a few ideas but I'm not going to suggest them unless other people also find that Metal and Crystal become transparent after the very early game.
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For me, metal and crystal are always a concern, even though I'm upgrading to Mark II and sometimes Mark III command stations to try to get as much as possible. This is generally in 4-player games, though, which are by nature a bit more tight on resources given that the planets are split up more.
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Well, I had a very vague idea of having two productions of metal and crystal--one for normal, and one for rare crystal and metal (additional research/capital ships/structures?); effectively, this splits the resource up into four. Of course, this complicates matters but it may be something to look at to diversify the resource role in the game.
EDIT: Effectively, what this does is decrease the use of metal and crystal overall, but has players be wise about using the more rare resource that they have.
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thing is - resources are unlimited. Energy is a tad bit less so (more energy eventually becomes useless because of the energy plant stacking penalties)
You can always wait to get more metal/crystal, but your energy stays the same.
I dont really see the issue with this, in games such as supcom (iirc), metal is territory based, and energy can be quite literally made out of nothing (ok, it costs some metal to build a energy building, but no resource drain)
its similar, and by merely waiting, you can amass the metal you need to build what you want.
Granted,itss also a pvp game, so the other guy will probably blow you up if you just have metal sitting around not in tanks
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It's the ratio of metal to crystal during the campaign that's the constant concern. I'm of the philosophy that if I'm accumulating either resource, then I'm not being aggressive enough (deciding on a baseline to avoid going below unless in an emergency is a separate issue). I generally want to avoid manufactories, as they're a net
gain loss, so the availability of each resource influences my fleet makeup to a degree. I think that they still contribute to the campaign in that the number of metal/crystal harvest points on a planet is of interest and is still a factor I use when picking targets.
EDIT: Manufactories are definitely NOT a net gain. :)
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Could/should something be tweaked to give Metal and Crystal something of a lasting consideration?
When I've gotten to the point where metal and crystal aren't as much of a concern, I'm plenty busy doing other things that I'm actually interested in, such as blowing stuff up, commanding large fleets and otherwise engaging in grand strategy. The last thing I need is having some overcomplicated resource scheme constantly getting in the way.
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Who said anything about there needing to being an overcomplicated resource scheme?
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Who said anything about there needing to being an overcomplicated resource scheme?
I think he was really responding to Spikey.
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Oh. :o ;D
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I am curious as to your ideas, in any case. I can't promise I'll do them, but they might provide a more illuminating discussion in the meantime. They might make good options at some point, anyway, or might work well for self-balancing that aspect of the game. My concern is always not having enough metal and crystal, even with my command stations upgraded, but clearly that is not the case for everyone. So something that helps people self-balance, e.g. spend that overflow (as Mercenary Space Docks were intended to do), might be a good idea in general. If I'm too poor to use it I can just not, and if someone else is so rich they just don't know what to do, they can kick that on. Or maybe you have some entirely other ideas, I don't know.
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Burning off the excess as Mercs might be the answer I suppose. Trouble is they'll also take Energy which is still the only defining Resource. (Do Mercs need Energy still? I can't remember if they do.)
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They do need energy at present, but it actually might be really interesting if they did not require any energy. That might make them a lot more interesting in general, actually.
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I actually find this rather interesting, I'm usually on the other side of things.
I don't know if it's because I'm so aggressive with engineers assisting constructors or if I'm just overbuilding, but I'm always low. And this is with Mk3 Command Stations being the first thing I unlock.
I'll go through my saves and actually get some numbers, but in the (few) multiplayer games I've played, 99% of the time I have the least resources. That's including the fact that I usually have one or two more star systems then anyone else.
"Who wants this system? Oh, Diazo's low on resources, give it to him."
Having said that, I also don't (usually) find myself hitting a wall and being forced to stop so I can wait for resources to build stuff.
In other words, I find it about right.
Diazo.
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All I know is that in most games I am still lacking of crystal, and I believe turrets need diversification with its costs because they all are crystal demanding.
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Could/should something be tweaked to give Metal and Crystal something of a lasting consideration?
When I've gotten to the point where metal and crystal aren't as much of a concern, I'm plenty busy doing other things that I'm actually interested in, such as blowing stuff up, commanding large fleets and otherwise engaging in grand strategy. The last thing I need is having some overcomplicated resource scheme constantly getting in the way.
Thanks. Its the vocal minority such as yourself that caused Dawn of War 2 and now the rest of the C&C franchize to completely abolish all resource gathering and base building, half of whats fun in a strategy game :P
Jokes aside (that wasnt a joke though), i agree on both points in this thread, for me metal and crystal is always a concern, but that is because i always have my factories set to infinite-loop all shiptypes, with their rally point at whatever hotspot I'm currently defending/assaulting. I love always having the fleet maxed and reinforced.
This playstyle makes for some drops in metal/crystal quite frequently, and i often have to use batches of 5 crystal or metal manufactories to switch on and off in order to balance income / usage.
However i do see how it can be irrelevant in the long term (huge maps), or if you capture alot of planets rather than trying to keep AI Progress down.
I suppose it just depends on your playstyle. :)
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Maybe it's just my style of play then (high AI, 80+ worlds). Metal & Crystal become irrelevant after the fourth/fifth world taken in most games (but almost always irrelevant after the eighth world) and only Energy remains a consideration going forward. (Most of the funky capturable stuff is energy demanding too so there isn't much to find out there that will ever tax metal and crystal reserves.) I'm a 'minimum noise' kind of player which means a typical AIP of not more than 200 before the first AI falls. Not a fan of suicide runs either so unit churn is pretty low. (Bizarrely, my style of play would probably benefit the most from a Veterancy mechanic, even tho I do still think Veterancy is not necessary for AI War.) My score is always very low however because I don't tent to need to rebuild as much as some. (Incidentally, I'm in favour of the suggested score re-analysis because it does currently reward suicide game play rather than anything else.)
If Mercs didn't need Energy (perhaps they sort out their own energy requirements) I would have something to spend my huge reserves on. Not sure if that has a balance/exploit implication tho.
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I completely forgot about Mercenary Docks! I got all excited when they were introduced as well, but I just plain forgot about them! :-[
That being said, I need to increase my AI progress rate (1/30) because my lack of agression sees my games go on, and on, and on... Not that it's a bad thing, but it is nice to finish a game every now and then. It's also the reason I end up with plenty of resources, although I do stay mindful of energy throughout the entirety of the piece.
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(Most of the funky capturable stuff is energy demanding too so there isn't much to find out there that will ever tax metal and crystal reserves.)
I don't quite understand the logic here -- energy = metal + crystal. If you want to power a golem, for instance, you need a ton of energy, which also means a ton of extra metal and crystal. Assuming that my docks are always cranking out ships at a constant rate (given that my ships are being spent and dying constantly, rather than just waiting around), that's a certain amount of metal/crystal per second that I need to maintain. Then add on all the energy reactors, and that's yet more that I need to maintain. As I go through the map and unlock more types of ships through knowledge and capture, my "total replacement cost" for rebuilding all my ships as they are spent goes up and up and up.
It makes it so that I'm choking on metal and crystal the entire time. I can get into the 100k or 200k of one or the other if I get out of balance before I notice and come in with manufactories being tweaked. But, then I tweak it and that immediately goes back into the 20k or less range. I can't remember the last game where I had more than a 300k balance of metal or crystal, and certainly never at 600k. I think the difference in style is coming where I see all of the ships as expendable robots, not human lives that I'd preserve. I tend to have a pretty decent kill-to-loss ratio, between 120% and 400% depending on the game, but I also tend to lose a LOT of ships throughout the game -- easily 1,200 ships an hour.
I'm a 'minimum noise' kind of player which means a typical AIP of not more than 200 before the first AI falls. Not a fan of suicide runs either so unit churn is pretty low. (Bizarrely, my style of play would probably benefit the most from a Veterancy mechanic, even tho I do still think Veterancy is not necessary for AI War.) My score is always very low however because I don't tent to need to rebuild as much as some. (Incidentally, I'm in favour of the suggested score re-analysis because it does currently reward suicide game play rather than anything else.)
I see, that would certainly make for the difference! I haven't seen the score thread yet, I'll check that out later this week probably.
If Mercs didn't need Energy (perhaps they sort out their own energy requirements) I would have something to spend my huge reserves on. Not sure if that has a balance/exploit implication tho.
Yeah, that is true. Makes them too easy to maintain, then. Of course, since energy = metal + crystal, you can still spend your metal and crystal on them with no problem, especially if you have a goodly number of planets.
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I completely forgot about Mercenary Docks! I got all excited when they were introduced as well, but I just plain forgot about them! :-[
:)
That being said, I need to increase my AI progress rate (1/30) because my lack of agression sees my games go on, and on, and on... Not that it's a bad thing, but it is nice to finish a game every now and then. It's also the reason I end up with plenty of resources, although I do stay mindful of energy throughout the entirety of the piece.
Stay tuned for some of the new minor AI factions that will hopefully be released later today. I haven't announced three of them yet (for the base game, no less), in addition to the four known ones for the expansion. I think they may also help give you an impetus to move, but I'll leave it at that for now. :)
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Thanks. Its the vocal minority such as yourself that caused Dawn of War 2 and now the rest of the C&C franchize to completely abolish all resource gathering and base building, half of whats fun in a strategy game :P
Heh, ironic that I find myself on the other side of the resource debate. I remember despising Big Game Hunters way back in Starcraft.
Who said anything about there needing to being an overcomplicated resource scheme?
Apologies, I was responding to Spikey.
In any case, the point I was trying to make is that I disagree with the sentiment that the current resource system needs to be changed in any drastic way. If your play style results in too many resources, you can always crank up the difficulty, that'll knock your resources down quick enough. In lieu of messing around with the resource system, I prefer seeing more stuff on which you can use your resources - thus, I like mercs, golems, etc.
The real limiting factor in resource use is knowledge, in my opinion. If I was able to research more cap ships or more regular ships or whatever, I'd be spending a lot more of my resources. Maybe if there was a way to produce extra knowledge - perhaps at some catastrophic resource cost, like 100k of each resource for 10 points of knowledge, or something like that. That way you'd only be "building knowledge" if you were at the point of having a Scrooge McDuck-style vault and building planet-sized statues of yourself instead of ships.
Ultimately though, this sums up my opinion quite nicely:
energy = metal + crystal. If you want to power a golem, for instance, you need a ton of energy, which also means a ton of extra metal and crystal. Assuming that my docks are always cranking out ships at a constant rate (given that my ships are being spent and dying constantly, rather than just waiting around), that's a certain amount of metal/crystal per second that I need to maintain. Then add on all the energy reactors, and that's yet more that I need to maintain. As I go through the map and unlock more types of ships through knowledge and capture, my "total replacement cost" for rebuilding all my ships as they are spent goes up and up and up.
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Metal and Crystal are entirely a biproduct of capturing planets (which is something you will be doing anyway); I find them to be a tertiary consideration. Planets control your Engery which in turn is the only resource that directly governs the strength of your forces (and the Metal and Crystal consideration for Engery Generators is paid for by the Command Station that you will be building there to take the planet anyway[1]). Even Knowledge is secondary to Energy: you can have all the Knowledge you want but what you can build from that glorious knowledge list is, guess what, limited only by your Engery (and the number of Planets you've taken which directly equate to the number of Knowledge gathering opportunities). Metal and Crystal do very little other than control the rate of your production (not what or how much you can have at all) and as AI War is very much a 'go at your own pace' kind of game you get to choose when the big battles happen to the most extent (or at the very least you know roughly when the AI is about to do anything big) thus build speed isn't as impactful as it might seem. Getting fixated on the Metal and Crystal incomes I find to be a complete red herring. If ever you are stuck for Energy the most efficient solution is to take another planet, pretty much any planet (preferrably one that has something worth capturing on it as a bit of a bonus), and slap a MkII Generator on it; the Command Stations provide more than enough Metal & Crystal on their own (particularly the MkII/III versions) thus making anything that the planet offers utterly insignificant by comparison. It's all about Planets and Energy - everything else looks after itself.
[1] Assuming you never build the hugely wasteful MkIII Generators.
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Stay tuned for some of the new minor AI factions that will hopefully be released later today.
:o
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Given that I primarily play 4-player co-op, that does skew things a bit for my perception. But, I play a healthy amount of solo, too. In 4-player, you almost never have enough resources to do everything that you want, even though there are more resource spots on every planet, because you just can't take as many planets per player as in solo. So that then makes it so that all of the territory concerns are hugely different there -- you have to figure out how to maximize the territory that you have, which is where MkIII reactors come in, and where the higher-Mk command stations as well. In solo, those things are less of a concern, but by the same token the total number of ships you have in solo is lower, so it is more difficult to muster really large attack forces.
In many cases, I find that I simply cannot take another planet while also defending myself with the resources I have in 4-player (depending on the map), which leads to interesting quandaries past a certain point in those games. Last week I took one new planet, which had an ARS on it, and lost all six of my other planets (and my teammates also lost two of their planets) in the process. We recaptured those planets (I had already previously lost my home anyway), but that was the cost of diverting forces to a raid two hops away, where they needed to be committed despite the wave of 1,600 mkII ships that then decided to be incoming just as soon as I got there.
Anyway, my point with that is that there are a variety of playstyles, which affects how people look at the various resources, and additionally with different numbers of players that can also have some effect. Even the ships you are using can make a big difference -- if you're playing with Zenith Bombards and aren't being super careful to keep those alive, your energy and metal and crystal are going to be really hurting most of the campaign.
My takeaway so far is that most people seem pretty happy with the resource balance as it currently is, although there are a variety of different playstyles that can cause wildly different opinions on specifics. It seems like the majority are not finding metal and crystal to be in too great of abundance, though, so I'm reluctant to do any reductions or anything. IKP, if you want more of a challenge, you can always give yourself a negative handicap to keep the resources lower to match your playstyle and provide a challenge more tuned for your specific needs. The best part? Negative resource handicaps give you a score multiplier in the adjusted score that shows on the high scores list (not the "raw" score shown ingame).
Also also (a complete aside): some of your other concerns about score are probably mitigated with the adjusted score on the high scoreboards list, as that's very differently calculated than the raw score in the game itself. Frugality with units really goes a long way there, as KTL ratio is a heavy component of that weight.
Back to the subject at hand: I guess this comes down to some beliefs about game design. I'll give two examples (excuse the length of this, but I'm making a point).
First, New Super Mario Bros. Wii. In that game, there are really two games (at least). First, there is the game for "normal mortals" who are nonetheless pretty good at Mario. Blocks are a certain way so that you can play off your historic Mario knowledge, secrets are designed to be searched out and found in a certain way, everything is tuned to a certain progressive difficulty for those folks (which includes me). Then there is the other game, which I have never played, but which you can see in their "Super skills" videos. The levels are all laid out in a way that the people with insane skills can complete the levels at breakneck speed -- for one example, there is one castle in world 7 where there is a row of coins that is totally pointless for normal players, but which if you hit a P block way back further in the level, and then run at that insane speed all the way to those coins, you can slide along them as brick blocks and leap off on the far side right before they come back to coins and dump you in the lava.
Second, there is Left 4 Dead 2. There are a whole lot of things I could discuss about that are relevant here, but I'll stick to two points. First, on normal difficulty (which is where I play with my wife), there is a lot of room for error and just "having a good time." You can lose, and we sometimes do, but you also don't have to be pitch-perfect with every aspect of the game. Even the Witches, one of the most feared enemies in that game, aren't all that bad (still terrifying, but not instant death, which is very different). There are at least two different games there, with the same levels. But, even on just normal difficulty level, there are a variety of different sub-games based on what weapons you play with. I tend to favor certain automatics, a few melee weapons, and stuff like the grenade launcher. Given that I never play with shotguns, that means that a whole avenue of tactics is pretty much not at my disposal. The grenade launcher is a discipline in itself, though -- my wife hates it, but is great with the SMG, which I can't stand.
What's my point? Well, my point is that any game has more components than any one player will ever use. Some of the coins in Mario games are pointless except to the very best players. Depending on the weapons player prefer in L4D2, some parts of the game are very difficult or trivially easy. Depending on the difficulty you play on with L4D2, you can treat it as just a fun diversion, or as a highly tactical simulation of a zombie invasion. What is "right" is whatever the given player wants to do -- these are games, after all.
Circling back around to AI War, if someone plays a strategy where metal and crystal are never a concern, to me that says there are other huge concerns that they have. In other words, you are probably doing much more tactical management than I do -- I don't have time to manage most battles, because I tend to do multiple things at once, and so I take more losses. Some players feel like scouting is completely useless, others feel like its the backbone of the game (I'm in the second camp). And of course opinions vary wildly on the various ships themselves. So my point is that it's not a major concern to me if metal and crystal are not always a forefront concern in some playstyles. I'm very careful to always curtail anything that is exploitative, but that's not the vibe I'm getting here -- what you've said is that it makes metal and crystal not a focus, but shifts the focus elsewhere. Grenade launcher versus SMG is what I hear, and that's A-OK with me. The only time I have a problem is when the grenade launcher is so powerful that people are a fool to use anything else (even if using the launcher is really difficult or something, that's still not good).
This has been a very interesting discussion, but my conclusion thus far is that I-KP has found a new way to play that is interesting, which is very different from what most people do, and which has different meta-rules for how to succeed. I always love it when people bend the games in ways like that, particularly when it's not an exploit I have to nerf. :) Variety is good!
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Didn't think about applying a handicap. Will give that a go.
I wasn't having a dig, or suggesting that something was wrong, it's just the way that I resolved the game processes down to their most important drivers for my style of play. It is to AI War's credit that you aren't nailed down to only one MO.
And now you've gone and mentioned L4D2 - my current obssession. Expert all the way for me and the SMGs are my preferred Tier 1 weapon (105% Accuracy with the Uzi, somehow).
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Didn't think about applying a handicap. Will give that a go.
I wasn't having a dig, or suggesting that something was wrong, it's just the way that I resolved the game processes down to their most important drivers for my style of play. It is to AI War's credit that you aren't nailed down to only one MO.
No worries, I know you weren't having a dig, and didn't think you were. My main reason for the long post was to explain why I am not too keen to rebalance this based on the data I have at the moment, versus some other things that I jump on and balance's immediately. I figured that to some outside observers, my logic might seem arbitrary on that point if they didn't know what I was weighting. :)
And now you've gone and mentioned L4D2 - my current obssession. Expert all the way for me and the SMGs are my preferred Tier 1 weapon (105% Accuracy with the Uzi, somehow).
Ah, very cool. We definitely have a lot of L4D fans here on the forums, from what I can tell. I used to play FPSes on the highest difficulty (and still do, with some specific older ones), but I found that turned them into something far more tactical and stressful than I really want out of the genre. So mostly I play on normal, or one down from the highest difficulty, for something a bit more relaxed. Sometimes I just want to run around and shoot things for relaxation, preferably while exploring interesting environments. :)
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Concerning the energy costs for Mercenary Space Dock Employees. While I see how maintaining them at no cost to energy would leave the road open to exploitation, as a passing thought with no penalty to sharing, I bring to consideration that they could have less of an energy cost to their increased metal & crystal cost. This was just a passing thought, however, and I have no means to defend. Nor will.
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I just wondered if there could be a way to bring knowledge into the resource/energy calculation. Okay, you can get the improved command stations if you spend knowledge, but there could be additional ways to spend knowledge to increase resource/energy output. Like a decrease of the stacking penalty or resource consumption for the plants, or something like mkII miners.
To keep the balance, these things would have their adequate price of knowledge of course. And you could turn the overall production of res./energy a bit down to encourage the use of these additional upgrades. So the player can chose whether he wants to not spend any knowledge on these and run a more resource less game, boost his economy a lot loosing a lot of knowledge, or find a balance between both to get an income like it is right now.
Someone might complain that then you have to spend more knowledge than before to achieve the same economy. The missing knowledge would totally mess up the tactics for knowledge-spending someone might have. Well, you could give more knowledge points at the start to equal this. The player can choose to spend this extra-knowledge on the upgrades, not more or less. Nothing would change compared to the current state. But he could also decide to save the extra points for something else or spend even more on economy. So nothing HAS to change if you don't want it to.
What do you think?
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mkII miners.
*drool*
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Hi everybody,
just have to drop in. Have the game&the expansion for a couple of days, and like it a lot! I have not been so much into a game for years (compliment for the music!).
In the few games I played, I always had too much metal, but am really short for crystal. I guess its because I like starships and turrets, and I feel like these are heavy in crystal compared to smaller ships. And, at least on my maps, metal seems to be more abundant than crystal.
Maybe it would be an idea to rebalace the cost of metal and crystal a little bit, maybe in a way that not all turrets/starships are heavy in crstal. For example, laser/tractor turrets lot of crystal/less metal, missile based about half/half and basic turrets more metal/less crystal. Something similar could be applied for Starships (Fleet=even, Dreadnought=more metal, Raid/Leech: More crystal).
I am commonly in the situation that I need to (re)build a lot of turrets fast, if I want to set up a beachhead, or face some heavy attack on my planets. Would be great if I could adapt the turret-choice to my resources.
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Hi drumlin
Are you using manufacters? Maybe these already solve your problem.
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I use a few...not enough I guess :)
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just have to drop in. Have the game&the expansion for a couple of days, and like it a lot! I have not been so much into a game for years (compliment for the music!).
In the few games I played, I always had too much metal, but am really short for crystal. I guess its because I like starships and turrets, and I feel like these are heavy in crystal compared to smaller ships. And, at least on my maps, metal seems to be more abundant than crystal.
Maybe it would be an idea to rebalace the cost of metal and crystal a little bit, maybe in a way that not all turrets/starships are heavy in crstal. For example, laser/tractor turrets lot of crystal/less metal, missile based about half/half and basic turrets more metal/less crystal. Something similar could be applied for Starships (Fleet=even, Dreadnought=more metal, Raid/Leech: More crystal).
I am commonly in the situation that I need to (re)build a lot of turrets fast, if I want to set up a beachhead, or face some heavy attack on my planets. Would be great if I could adapt the turret-choice to my resources.
Glad you're enjoying the game (and the music!)
Really, having a lot of manufactories is by design, so that you can balance your economy if it turns out to be inherently unbalanced. I also specifically made the starships and turrets cost more crystal, versus having most of the base ships cost more metal, so that there is incentive to go one way or the other based on your current situation. In other words, if you find a lot of metal-rich planets but normally play starships, that's then an incentive to play with more fleet ships in that specific campaign... or seek out crystal-rich worlds. That was something I'd intentionally unbalanced to give players more situational considerations other than just "I'll always build my favorite thing." :)
If you're always short on crystal, then I'd suggest either crystal manufactories, and/or specifically looking for crystal-rich planets to take when you are scouting. Hope that helps!
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I just wondered if there could be a way to bring knowledge into the resource/energy calculation. Okay, you can get the improved command stations if you spend knowledge, but there could be additional ways to spend knowledge to increase resource/energy output. Like a decrease of the stacking penalty or resource consumption for the plants, or something like mkII miners.
To keep the balance, these things would have their adequate price of knowledge of course. And you could turn the overall production of res./energy a bit down to encourage the use of these additional upgrades. So the player can chose whether he wants to not spend any knowledge on these and run a more resource less game, boost his economy a lot loosing a lot of knowledge, or find a balance between both to get an income like it is right now.
Someone might complain that then you have to spend more knowledge than before to achieve the same economy. The missing knowledge would totally mess up the tactics for knowledge-spending someone might have. Well, you could give more knowledge points at the start to equal this. The player can choose to spend this extra-knowledge on the upgrades, not more or less. Nothing would change compared to the current state. But he could also decide to save the extra points for something else or spend even more on economy. So nothing HAS to change if you don't want it to.
What do you think?
Regarding this (which I realized I missed until now), it's an interesting idea on some level, but I don't feel like it accomplishes much in terms of adding new decisions or strategy to the game, but it does add complexity. Really, I prefer to keep most aspects of the economy relatively simple, so that players can focus on aspects that are generally more fun. Thanks for the suggestion, though!
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Concerning the energy costs for Mercenary Space Dock Employees. While I see how maintaining them at no cost to energy would leave the road open to exploitation, as a passing thought with no penalty to sharing, I bring to consideration that they could have less of an energy cost to their increased metal & crystal cost. This was just a passing thought, however, and I have no means to defend. Nor will.
...And this one I missed, too. Also an interesting idea, but I think that some advanced players would exploit this too heavily (by taking too few planets to support real ships, but using mercs instead to get an ultra-low AIP and thus mangle the difficulty). So, in the end, I'm just leaving mercenaries alone. Again, thanks for the suggestion, though!
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For what it's worth, I'm always short on metal! But I haven't yet invested heavily in starships. Maybe that's why.
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Probably so -- I tend to be more of a fleet ship guy myself, and so am usually hurting for metal moreso than crystal.
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as a pure starships guy, dreads and fleet combined (usually fleets before dreads, but still) I am almost always short on crystal...
>.>
Usually because when I build defenses, I do it in style. I drop something like 20ish of every type of turret (except maybe lightning and tractor) on every WH i want to defend.. muhaha.
Then I realize my surplus crystal just went down into a toilet somewhere. Oops!
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Well, it is true -- when I got into hyper-turret mode, I get short on crystal real fast. But then I generally get quite a surplus of crystal right afterward if I'm not using enough manufactories.
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Thing is, I dont use manufactories much. relating back to TA - if your using metal makers as the backbone of your economy, your doing it wrong. Ever since then, I've always seen increasing territory as a much better alternative to creating those resources that you require..
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Depends on your situation, really -- TA didn't have AI Progress. But I certainly see where you're coming from.
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yeah, but I've found that AI progress doesnt seem to mean a great deal in most games.
Perhaps i need to go harder >.>
it just seems like after taking 5-6 planets near my home, I have all the resources I really need, with the limiting factor being /time/ (to build starships, of course)
Silly question; what does it take to play a game with the famed x4000? 8)
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yeah, but I've found that AI progress doesnt seem to mean a great deal in most games.
Ha! Well, okay, that's interesting. Definitely sounds like you are playing on an easier difficulty than your true skill, then. Of course, as this thread clearly demonstrates, different people feel different amounts of resource pain based on their playstyles.
Silly question; what does it take to play a game with the famed x4000? 8)
You know, I've not played AI War with anyone outside of my alpha test group (which consists of my dad, my uncle, and my uncle's colleague, and has been my weekly RTS group for years and years before AI War was even dreamed of), and my wife. I haven't even managed to play a game with any of the other Arcen staff, interestingly (the fact that we are largely all in different time zones doesn't help). Well, I did play a few hours with Pablo when I was showing him the game when he was signing on as composer. Just not enough hours in the day, and I really don't want to get into the appearance of favoritism amongst the fanbase. But, who knows -- I will probably branch out more at some point. Just not right now, when I'm so busy I keep missing sessions with my alpha group to code more. :)
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yep, next game I can play I will definately hitch up the level a bit more
And I mean, as per the favoritism, just er... sit in irc... or better yet, announce a time when youll be hosting a game sometime :) whoever shows up shows up....
But just sayin, your 4 person team probably has a rather similar playstyle each time, it might be useful to play with us 'common folk' now and again :)
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That's why the forums are so helpful. Really, my core group is used to looking for flaws in what's going on, and are used to me stopping the game a couple of times per night to give an update I coded on the fly. I'm not trying to avoid playing with others, but you work with the time constraints you have, right? I've been working so far today for... hmm, 14 hours. And I've still got another good 2-3 hours to go. Then tomorrow I'll wake up late, come back into the office, and work for another 8ish hours. Then more in the late evening. Then repeat.
I play with my alpha group partly because they are good at testing certain things, but also because I... uh, built the game to play it with them. :) We've been playing co-op RTS since '98, and I was sick of the cruddy other implementations. So I created my own. It's basically the main time I "see" my dad each week, and keep up with him and my uncle, etc. So it's no offense to anyone, or that I consider others "common folk" or anything. But I'm just not much of an Internet gamer anymore, haven't been much of one since college really, and so I just don't think of it. I'm pretty much either working or spending time with family, so there's rarely a time where I sit down and can even play single-player games if I'm not doing it under the auspices of testing.
Not trying to rant by any stretch -- but I get that question quite a lot, more by email than anything, and I figured it's better to give a complete answer than to seem stuck up or somesuch. Anyway -- I imagine I'll play with others before another year goes by, but right now all the AARs are super helpful.
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nono, I actually rather appreciate it. Its a lot better to know why someone does/doesnt do something than be told it and expected to believe on faith.
Problem kinda becomes that I'm not very good at writing :\
Although I think its cool that you wrote a game just to play with your family more :)
the common folk comment was really just in jest..
I was just kinda figuring that if you work all day in the office.. uhm.. doing whatever it is a single man (more or less.. different time zones you say o.0 ) office.. you must find /something/ to do all day long... >.>
Ah well, dont worry about it
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nono, I actually rather appreciate it. Its a lot better to know why someone does/doesnt do something than be told it and expected to believe on faith.
Cool.
Although I think its cool that you wrote a game just to play with your family more :)
Two, actually. AI War and Alden Ridge both came about from that motivation, although Alden Ridge won't be released until 2011. But my wife and I loved playing Lode Runner: The Legend Returns together, and I wanted more-of-that-but-very-different. So, Alden Ridge -- you're chased by guys like in Lode Runner, and you use tools, and that's about where the similarities end. My wife and I have already gotten a lot of enjoyment out of that, mainly a while back; she designed about 30% of the levels for it, and we both played each other's levels a lot and she had a number of ideas for new features, etc. Actually, other than Lars (Fiskbit), she's the only other person beyond me who's played that game more than a few minutes.
Incidentally, A Valley Without Wind is another game that my wife and I plan to play a bunch together, and that's one of the main motivators for me there. We loved playing PixelJunk Monsters together until we exhausted it, and I wanted AVWW to basically be PJM + Chrono Trigger + Plants vs Zombies + my own ideas.
Not all my games are family-motivated, but those three happen to be. The puzzle game that is coming next, the RPG called Cayenne that will come way in the future, and several puzzle and adventure games that I want to make are all purely based on my own interests... although, I imagine my wife will play all of them. And I know my mom is really itching to get her hands on the puzzle game (actually, a lot of the staff moms are).
/tangent
the common folk comment was really just in jest..
I know, I could tell. I was sort of jesting back, but also sort of responding publicly -- this isn't exactly private correspondence, and others will read your comment and maybe not know you were joking.
I was just kinda figuring that if you work all day in the office.. uhm.. doing whatever it is a single man (more or less.. different time zones you say o.0 ) office.. you must find /something/ to do all day long... >.>
What do I do all day long... well, answer forum and email correspondence; coordinate with other staff on the various parts of the game; handle business issues, contracts, vendors, etc; seek out new marketing and publicity and distribution opportunities; and program and design games. Sometimes it's after lunch before I even get past the correspondence and business side of things. December was particularly bad what with having to get set up with a new tax accountant, a new payroll service, new health insurance, and handle the handoff to my replacement at my old job. Plus all the holiday stuff, and I had a birthday in there. January is crazy so far because of two regional retail deals that have just been finalized, another new digital distribution partner, and of course all the stuff with the expansion and DLC. Next week I can actually start sleeping again. ;)
Not that I'm really complaining, mind -- this is my dream job, and I was the one who set the schedule that has been so hard on me. But even a dream job isn't just "happily ever after" like most people (myself included, really) tend to assume. Maybe in a few years, if we get really popular. ;)
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Ah yes, the inevitable 'everything you say will be quoted and misquoted' that comes with being someone who matters
so after your 1 week hiatus for sleeping, you will keep the rest of the month open for 'play with the dev(s)' month? :P
nahh I understand, :)
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After immediate release of the expansion, then I have to go on hyperactive business/correspondence duty for hopefully not more than a week, while the rest of the staff gets ahead on me with the puzzle game. Then I get to switch to the puzzle game and work as fast and hard on that as I can, because every month in development costs Arcen a couple of tens of thousands of dollars and there's only so much cushion. If the AI War expansion sells really well that buys more cushion -- but I'm very much trying to make sure that we can self-fund both the puzzle game (which is easy), and AVWW (which is probably going to work out, but which makes me mildly nervous given how many variables are still there).
Ah, the life of a small businessman -- I'm working hard so I can be sure to still be in business next year, you know what I mean? It's not an idle concern, not that we're in imminent risk of going under or anything. But, a number of indie developers have had one hit or one semi-hit and then squandered the opportunity that gives them; I don't want to join those ranks.
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oh I totally know what you mean - I was a huge fan of an indie tactical game, Threadspace Hyperbol.. Unfortunately, it was an awesome game with nearly no publicity... -> dead game :( devs had to more or less abandon ship.. we are lucky the servers are still running
I do hope something like that doesnt happen with Arcen. Good to see you have it all planned out though :)
but you sure you couldnt maybe take a weekend or two? >.>
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Well, you never know. But this is not really the right time for me to just be relaxing, I think. There are some other considerations in my personal life that I'd rather not talk about just yet that keep me under a lot of pressure to make sure this all works out (besides the obvious). But, we'll see.
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ok cool :)
well i mean, if you ever do find some free time.. Even months from now when you get a chance to breathe :)
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Yup. My hope is that it's going to get progressively less crazy over the year. Fingers crossed!