Problems with AI Raid starships

[hullu]

Many of the comments here are somewhat missing the point.

It's the difference of raid starships compared to anything else that is causing this annoyance. There is no passive defense that is going to stop them (unless they come alone). They end the game in a seemingly unfair way (and no, this is not symmetric since the AI has 'external invulnerability x1600', player just doesn't have the same advantage for these). Of course this usually even happens suddenly since your fleet + defenses take care of most threats passively, and not every time you look at your world to doublecheck for micromanage need. Also, you can't replace your home command station with a military one (oh how I wish I could). Also, there is no other unit (or I haven't met them) that can cause this. When you see 'your home command station is under attack' alert, it's more often than not too late to micromanage.

I really don't mind raid starships, except in one single instance - home command station. I'd love to have a warning system where I'd get a warning with font the size equal to YOU LOSE saying RAID STARSHIP IN HOME SYSTEM. I really am not exaggerating, I would love that, it would save me a lot of autosave-loads which usually means around 15 minutes of time thrown away.

There just is no other ship type in the game that ends your game suddenly without a warning.

[TechSY730]

Hmm. How about giving a new "raider shot" to raid starships and raider guardians, and give an immunity to these shots to Home Command Stations, AI Home Command Stations, fabricators, Mk. IV factories, and MAYBE a few fallen spire irreplaceable buildings.

The devs will need to stand firm that once they have figured out a good SMALL list of things that can get this immunity, they should not be giving more things this immunity just because players find it tricky to defend and start wining about it.

Maybe this restrictiveness should go further and only give the immunity to Home Command Stations and AI Home Command Stations.

EDIT: Do you think that raider fleet ships should also get this new ammo type?

[BobTheJanitor]

Well the problem is raid starships are designed to snipe out important targets of opportunity, so you don't want to just make those targets immune to raid ships or you've taken away the point of their existence. The thing is that these are a little unbalanced on either side of the equation. Really, what can humans kill effectively with raid starships? Warp gates, data centers, maybe ion cannons. I guess you could kill a command station but I don't know why you would want to do that without a fleet in the system to deal with the guards. Whereas the AI can use them to kill fabricators, ZPGs, factories, captive human settlements, command stations, etc. We can't kill their home comm station because of their magic shields, but they can kill ours just fine. The number of good targets for sniping by a quick ship is much higher on that side than on this side. That is all probably by design, but it doesn't fix the aggravation of losing something irreplaceable to a ship that you didn't even know about until your stuff is dead.

[TechSY730]

You are right. Raid starships are supposed to be a ROFL at your defenses type ship. Some fire power can get to them, but because the AI has much more firepower per planet on defense than human planets on average (by design), then that "some firepower" is of the same ratio of a higher firepower. In other words, human raid starships on average have more firepower to trudge through on AI worlds than vice versa, even though both cases they raid starships can "cheat" the same ratio of firepower. End result, human raid starships tend to die faster. If you have an issue with this, then this would require a reimagining of the AI's defense system (unlikely) or a reimagining of the raid starship's role (more likely, but still unlikely). There is an imbalance of the usefulness of ships when used by the AI and when used by the humans, (by design).

Also, the AI gets tools for defense humans can never get. (Whether this is a good direction to take the game is VERY debatable)

I would like to point out how short the list of raid shot immune buildings would be. Non-home stations on both sides will still be perfectly vulnerable to raid starships. All other AI exclusive stuff is still perfectly vulnerable. My list pretty much only ensure you can't win the game by killing a MVP unit with something that can bypass defenses, which is not a fun way to lose.

[hullu]

That is all probably by design, but it doesn't fix the aggravation of losing something irreplaceable to a ship that you didn't even know about until your stuff is dead.

Again, this.

How about give us a control to get a _big_ warning if a raid starship is in any of our systems? It is pretty much the only thing in this game that can destroy irreplaceably stuff literally before you even know it's there. That warning control would be enough for me, it would give me the option to always go micro when a raid starship is around - although I thought this game was supposed to be against micro;)

[chemical_art]

...

Pretty much how I feel. There ARE ways to deal with raid ships on the player side. Defense in depth seems most effective for me. In general, if I feel like I am always defending a planet that has something irreplaceable, then I feel like I am doing something wrong. I myself always build my command station right next to critical unique structures (factories, etc.) so that its translocating shots cover both and both are protected by a single shield as well. This combined with a dozen or so turrets leaves a planet pretty safe until a defending fleet arrives.

[TechSY730]

I am sort of against putting a warning specifically for and only for raid starships. It seems to me to be bad taste to specifically single out certain type of non-utility ship in the code. Raid starships are a niche case, but do they really justify special treatment by the code (the alert code in this case) where no other non-minor faction miltitary ship gets it?

[hullu]

I am sort of against putting a warning specifically for and only for raid starships. It seems to me to be bad taste to specifically single out certain type of non-utility ship in the code. Raid starships are a niche case, but do they really justify special treatment by the code (the alert code in this case) where no other non-minor faction miltitary ship gets it?

I agree. It still is the reason for most of my sudden game losses. Most being almost every one. Which is kind of unbalanced to begin with for one single unit, isn't it?

I'm all whiny now

[TechSY730]

Another suggestion. Put a hard cap of the ratio of raid starships to other ships that can be sent on any CPA, event attack, or normal wave, on top of a hard cap on the number of raid starships they can send in each of these events. These caps will consider the sum of all raid starships across all marks, not just a seperate one for each mark.
The most aggrivating cases seem to be when a raid starship slips through your defenses while those defenses are busy with thousands of other less threatening units. This will help make that case rareish. Similar logic already exists for several spire bonus ships and superpowerful starships.

[BobTheJanitor]

A big warning would help. Or if that route isn't good, some sort of new specific defense. I know the whole point of raiders is the ability to bypass defenses, but you always want to have a counter for everything. For cloakers, decloakers. For fast ships, grav turrets. For standard fleet ships, tractors and various turrets. For big ships, your own big ships. For sniping units, radar jammers (that's more an advantage to the AI, since we can't build those, but at least we can capture them). The list goes on. But when you get to Raid Starships, the only real counter seems to be fore-knowing that it's there, and microing all your units on the planet to go after it immediately. It can't be tractored or slowed or tripped up with mines or stopped with forcefields. Since you can't watch all of the battlefield all of the time, they might as well be invisible. You may not even know they were there until you go to build some new units from a fabricator and it's not there any more.

Anyway, if there was some tech we could unlock that specifically countered raiders, I would be quite likely to invest in it. Maybe it could be a made a bit more generalist, since having a unit that's just an anti-raid starship unit doesn't feel very elegant. Maybe some new shield that can't just be shot through that could be applied to irreplaceable things like fabs, power gens, or factories. If said shield was shot, it could send out some kind of warning wave that focuses every turret and ship on the planet on its attacker. Or even pull in ships from nearby planets (maybe for the mark II version). Or maybe some sort of distraction unit that will draw the attention of ships on to itself and if destroyed will counterattack with a one shot powerful barrage of damage on the thing that killed it, while also sending out an alarm message to the human team. If it had a high enough metal/crystal cost and low cap it wouldn't be effective to seed these across every planet, but putting them on worlds with valuable capturables would be a viable strategy. I'm not too worried about something to defend the command station. Although it's annoying to lose this (and to only hear about it because the AI just taunted you) it's not that hard to replace... well unless it's the home station of course.

[TechSY730]

I think there was a mantis bug report for "important structure exo-forcefields", which is a lot like you were describing, but I'm not what became of it.

EDIT: There is also a new human build-able external invinsibility generator proposed. The suggestion is also on Mantis

[Burnstreet]

I would like to point out how short the list of raid shot immune buildings would be. Non-home stations on both sides will still be perfectly vulnerable to raid starships. All other AI exclusive stuff is still perfectly vulnerable. My list pretty much only ensure you can't win the game by killing a MVP unit with something that can bypass defenses, which is not a fun way to lose.

Sounds good.

With LotS, the Raid Starship has been succeeded as the "ROFL at AI defense" ship. Spire Penetrators are much easier to use and you can kill an AI homeworld with less than full cap of them. Even when you are 10 hops away, they still have a high chance of returning alive. Luckily the AI does not use these.
If the core world does not have a spire shield guard post, some mk1 ones are enough. If it has, you can either build higher marks or just build more MK Is, scrapping the ones that have shot.

[TechSY730]

I would like to point out how short the list of raid shot immune buildings would be. Non-home stations on both sides will still be perfectly vulnerable to raid starships. All other AI exclusive stuff is still perfectly vulnerable. My list pretty much only ensure you can't win the game by killing a MVP unit with something that can bypass defenses, which is not a fun way to lose.

Sounds good.

With LotS, the Raid Starship has been succeeded as the "ROFL at AI defense" ship. Spire Penetrators are much easier to use and you can kill an AI homeworld with less than full cap of them. Even when you are 10 hops away, they still have a high chance of returning alive. Luckily the AI does not use these.
If the core world does not have a spire shield guard post, some mk1 ones are enough. If it has, you can either build higher marks or just build more MK Is, scrapping the ones that have shot.

Okay, maybe give spirecraft penetrators that raid shot type too? It should barely touch its effectiveness, but it will stop you from easy gimping the AI home. (Or the AI to your home if the AI is allowed to get them in spirecraft (hard) or the AI type that uses spirecraft)

Other than that, glad you like the idea.

[zebramatt]

Hmm. How about giving a new "raider shot" to raid starships and raider guardians, and give an immunity to these shots to Home Command Stations, AI Home Command Stations, fabricators, Mk. IV factories, and MAYBE a few fallen spire irreplaceable buildings.

The devs will need to stand firm that once they have figured out a good SMALL list of things that can get this immunity, they should not be giving more things this immunity just because players find it tricky to defend and start wining about it.

Maybe this restrictiveness should go further and only give the immunity to Home Command Stations and AI Home Command Stations.

EDIT: Do you think that raider fleet ships should also get this new ammo type?

Is this in Mantis?

[TechSY730]

Hmm. How about giving a new "raider shot" to raid starships and raider guardians, and give an immunity to these shots to Home Command Stations, AI Home Command Stations, fabricators, Mk. IV factories, and MAYBE a few fallen spire irreplaceable buildings.

The devs will need to stand firm that once they have figured out a good SMALL list of things that can get this immunity, they should not be giving more things this immunity just because players find it tricky to defend and start wining about it.

Maybe this restrictiveness should go further and only give the immunity to Home Command Stations and AI Home Command Stations.

EDIT: Do you think that raider fleet ships should also get this new ammo type?

Is this in Mantis?

Not yet. I'll copy it over as soon as I get to a real computer and not just my phone.

EDIT: Now I have. http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2679