Scouting. IMHO, it's "broken" (as in: Why bother?).

[I-KP]

With most map types roadbock worlds can be bypassed to some degree.  I suppose some players can't be bothered to manually plot their Scout routes around such obstacles.  C'est la vie.

[x4000]

With most map types roadbock worlds can be bypassed to some degree.  I suppose some players can't be bothered to manually plot their Scout routes around such obstacles.  C'est la vie.

Well, that's another thing.  I tend not to do that because I'm extremely occupied elsewhere.  But, with the new behavior of scouts to go to go away from the wormhole after entering their final destination world, that sort of tactic as you are describing has become vastly more easier.  If scouts aren't able to get past a world, just send a big group of them to that world specifically, and some will escape to the side.  Then pilot them manually through that one planet when you think to look at them again, and then send them on a new chain out into the galaxy.  Kind of neat, I had not thought of that myself until just now.  I'm sure that's probably what you were already doing.

[Axiom]

I think my intent has been misunderstood.
I wasn't saying take out the scout ship or remove anything feature wise.

I was saying that as with any game, you are placed in a situation and faced with a problem and usually some sort of limitation.
In this one, I have found the classic question of "where to invest to get the most out of it" and whenever I weighed the benefits of another 20-30 ships that can't shoot vs 170 turrets dishing out thousands in attack rating over 8k+ range, well, it's just a no-brainer.
So a strategy discussion, not a feature request (just like other in depth damage per second / unit optimization vs cost etc threads on other strategy games, yes?).
The premise was "Why invest into a 'featureless' technology" if you can do everything you get from it yourself and put the "skill points", i.e. knowledge elsewhere instead.


Also, given that it's paramount to minimize AI progress, ESPECIALLY with the more planets there are, it's only sensible that you develop a strategy for effective deep striking to begin with.
I.e. you inevitably have to "go the distance" anyhow and there ARE visible targets on the galaxy maps from the get-go(the end-pockets).

As an experiment I've tried for 7 hops and only stopped because on the way I found a MK III that had a fortress, special forces, advanced research, datacube and 4 warppoints(i.e. 4x supply arms for research raiding) and took that along the way. The fleet comprised solely of starships + 14 colonization ships, all of which remained alive after 4 hops. Another 2-3 should have been rather possible. Basically the math would be if you already covered the first 20-30 planets while taking 10 to research enough, you could now hop all the way through the remaining 50+ with less than 10 new command stations placed/needed before arriving "at the gates".

I've found that a non-small-ship approach overall is actually functional so far and I am going to see if this holds true with stronger AI opponents as well.
The basic idea would be to see whether a "take as few planets as possible while unlocking all starships necessary for a deep strike into the final planets" challenge works out.

A bit tougher AI settings are okay, but I don't see the point in changing settings that much in the AIs favor that it effectively bonus-boosts unit caps / progress / "backdoor" cheats and whichever else exists so far into oblivion that it really does just feel like playing against the strategic equivalent to someone who is wallhacking and auto-aim cheating.

I'm just thinking out loud in text here what I've found the game mechanics serve up so it can be viewed and debated..and since I am an (sometimes in an odd way) efficiency freak, these things(starship/"tank" investment + cheap high-level repairs = crushing force) immediately jumped out when I experimented a bit with small vs starships and the absence of a need for scouts just popped up some hours into play when I realized there was precious little reason to use them as spearhead as opposed to a "drag-behind" chartographer.

[RCIX]

A bit tougher AI settings are okay, but I don't see the point in changing settings that much in the AIs favor that it effectively bonus-boosts unit caps / progress / "backdoor" cheats and whichever else exists so far into oblivion that it really does just feel like playing against the strategic equivalent to someone who is wallhacking and auto-aim cheating.

The AI does not, and i repeat, does not cheat. The higher an AI level gets, the better it plays. As in, the more ships it reinforces with and the more ship and overall level tactics are enabled. X has previously stated that he doesn't want ai that just cheats as you turn it up.

[quickstix]

Are you going to invest into muskets or binoculars if you already KNOW the enemy is going to come and attempt to storm your fort?

If you use the binoculars though, you can stay one step ahead of the enemy. If you know what weapons he has, you know how to plan against it and thus, you will take fewer losses and more kills because of it.

I'll give you an example of my current game. I use the expansion by the way, so I have to deal with things like Alarm Posts, where if I don't scout them out and take an adjacent planet, I soon have hundreds or thousands of ships from different planets bearing down on me.

I need to decide what planet next to my home to take first. I have two options. To my right is a fairly weak planet with only one wormhole besides mine. Seems good right? Well, here's the problem, on the other side of that planet is Mk3 planet with an ion cannon and forcefields. Not a planet I want to alert to my presence (and hence reinforce) and not one I can take with my current fleet. It's also a nasty chokepoint. If I didn't scout that out though, it would have been a waste taking the preceeding planet and then trying to get enough ships to take on the Mk3 planet, all the while with the AI reinforcing and making an Ion Smash extremely difficult. A waste of time and resources.

On the other side is a fairly weakish planet, with a Gravity Drill Station and 3 wormholes. Seems more difficult, but on the other sides of those wormholes, there is an advanced research station on a Mk4 planet (and opposite to that planet, an advanced factory), a Mk3 planet and a Mk2 planet. The Mk4 planet might seem impossible at this early stage, but because it isn't alerted to my presence and reinforcing yet and only has about 150 mobile ships on it (and only basic defenses), I'm fairly sure I can take it if I work quickly to take the preceeding planet. This has the reward of an advanced research station and an advanced factory on a weaker planet next to it. Scouting also tells me of a golem, a starship fabricator and a Zenith power plant further on, which makes this route much more attractive and helps me plan my tactics efficiently.

All of this, and I haven't even left my home planet yet.

Scouting makes work faster and more efficient. Sure blasting your way through a map might work, but smart and tactical thinking will bring about the same result faster, and with fewer losses. It's like storming a building. You can take it room by room, but what if you had a plan of the building and knew exactly where every objective was? They both work, but in different ways, and with different consequences and outcomes.

The less you hit the AI, the less the AI will hit back. AI War is not a symmetrical game, the AI plays by different rules than you. Your playstyle might work, but so do many others. It's all about personal preference.

[Axiom]

To address your main point: you keep saying you scouted stuff. I do that, too. I just don't use scouts for it. I use my fleet.
As for the starting position: sure, just use the basic scouts for free and you know your first surroundings. It's the later tech that's uninteresting as with 2-3 research raids you can get your starships together and take out MK IVs without a hitch.
I'm sorry if the expansion changes some stuff, but I'm arguing strategy for the normal 2.x game, not the expansion. Obviously that would be a seperate logic if it has seperate units and just doesn't apply here.

Sure blasting your way through a map might work, but smart and tactical thinking will bring about the same result faster, and with fewer losses. It's like storming a building. You can take it room by room, but what if you had a plan of the building and knew exactly where every objective was? They both work, but in different ways, and with different consequences and outcomes.

1. You have a galaxy map. You know where hubs and pockets are.
2. Ideally you don't take anything along the way, you just push through to endpoints or to hubs(more knowledge per AI progress).

As mentioned in a prior post, I did my how-many-hops experiment.
I jumped 13 hops with just starships + 32 colony ships last night out of which 30 survived. I came past 2 fortresses(took one of those out), several AI starships, took out a datacenter along the way and found out I ended up 2 hops from the AI homebase(there sure are always a lot of cores near those..).
Now I have a base in front of his, chock full with defenses and freshly repaired starships and several captured ships.
Not one planet along the way I pre-scouted and my scouts couldn't even get half the way my fleet did even if they tried.

The less you hit the AI, the less the AI will hit back. AI War is not a symmetrical game, the AI plays by different rules than you. Your playstyle might work, but so do many others. It's all about personal preference.

If you assume that it's an asymmetrical game, efficiency is what will bring an edge. Or rather, it's the only edge you can have if the premise is reduced resources/caps/etc.
You can choose to make it harder on yourself as a personal preference, but that doesn't mean that there can't be ideal practices and most bang for the buck units and approaches.
I like to optimize and I have found that there are ways to get quite decent self-progress while keeping a low AI progress and that all depends on sensibly placed knowledge unlocks and coordinated deep striking.
So: Sure there are tons of playstyles, but I wasn't disputing that.

I was just saying that the function of scouts is easily replaced by any other unit that can actually shoot as well and that knowledge investments into that particular branch are very likely misplaced for what is expected of them(some kind of advantage or otherwise unattainable info).

[Axiom]

..the strategic equivalent to someone who is wallhacking and auto-aim cheating.

The AI does not, and i repeat, does not cheat. The higher an AI level gets, the better it plays.

X has previously stated that he doesn't want ai that just cheats as you turn it up.

Let me just quote some of the available cheats(called "styles", which, normally, I'd assume from the title to be different ways of making use of "legal" playstyles and not getting special treatment) for the AI:


Attritioner
Planets are all moderately defended, except that each one has an Attrition Emitter, which drains the health of any human ships in the system.  Does heavy attacks on the players.


Backdoor Hacker
Planets are all moderately defended, and they have a permanent path into each player's home planet (so creating the usual defensive perimeters won't work)
Has a permanent Exo-Galaxy Wormhole on each player's home planet.


Counter Spy
Planets are heavily defended, and advanced scouting is almost impossible because of the counter spy defenses on each planet, which insta-kill all cloaked ships.


Scorched Earth
Heavily defended planets.  Whenever it loses control of a planet, it destroys that planet and all the resources there.  Ships will survive.


Shadow Master
Like the Stealth Master, except every planet is equipped with a powerful device that keeps all ships permanently cloaked, even when firing, even if they wouldn't normally have cloaking.  The only sign of this enemy is the device itself, which can be difficult to reach what with all the invisible enemies firing at you from the nether.




So we have: wallhacking (backdoor hacker+shadow master can get at you even while you can't get at him or see where he's coming from), one sided attrittion, instakills and resource deprivation while the AI doesn't even have to use resources.

And you are telling me the AI does not get "cheats"? He has a third more unit caps per STATION(250) than you get per basic tier(170 usually), he has tiers you don't even get to unlock(core/V) and with these "styles" he basically doesn't even follow normal unit structure, behavior and properties anymore.

I'm sorry, but this is definitely masochist-only stuff and not something I want to be randomly subjected to, personally. And yes, I do consider not being able to see what's shooting at me no matter what I research or unlock a wee bit of a cheat. (Could you even shoot back?)

So yes, the AI, if one opts-in, madly cheats it's butt off against you, in order to "be more challenging". This is definitely not a same-vs-same game(Here, you play naked so I can stab you right in the heart, but I get to wear three kevlar vests, also use an M16 and shotguns vs your pocket knife and also can randomly call upon orbital laser stations if I so choose. Oh and did I mention, you must wear this here blindfold, too...Me? Oh I get these protective goggles. Now, on to a fair fight!), but there are limits to what's enjoyable to me and this is what I was referring to.
Others can feel free to love these "super-challenges", I was just voicing my opinion.

AI levels are all fine and well(they just accelerate AI progress level boundaries etc it appears), but when the cheatstyles come in it gets a bit much.

It's not "playing better" if you get insta-kill and overpowered units, it's just better units and features.
Playing better is what the PLAYER has to do: win against bad odds with inferior stuff.
Not the other way around.

[Velox]

     The AI doesn't cheat - it plays by completely different rules.

     Actually, scratch that.  It's not even playing the same game.

[Volatar]

    The AI doesn't cheat - it plays by completely different rules.

     Actually, scratch that.  It's not even playing the same game.

Exactly. The AI is very ADD.

Metaphorically, the AI is playing some other game outside the galaxy, and only turns to look at the monitor that displays our portion of the galaxy (one of many monitors in the AI's gaming room) every so often.

"What the... those humans took 3 systems? Better send a wave and reinforce the nearby planets..."

and later, when you get to the AI's home planets, they break away from their other game and really come down on you. The AI progress meter is a measure of their attention.

They play by different rules.

All those AI types you reference are "hard" and "medium" type AI's. Try some easy's, on a high difficulty level if you like a challenge, but scouting is perfect the way it is from my point of view.

[NickAragua]

- Scouts build quickly and are cheap. A raid/leech starship takes non-trivial resources and time to put out, while, with scouts of any kind, you'll have 40-50 of the little guys out in a couple of seconds.

- As of the next version that'll get put out, the presence of the two or three starships will cause a system to go "On Alert", meaning the AI will start spawning reinforcements there. With scouts, you can bring forty into a system and the AI won't care. If you accidentally hit a mark IV/V system, you suddenly have a lot of extra future pain to contend with. Yes, your starships will eventually move away, but meanwhile, the AI has brought in an extra batch or two of reinforcements.

- I use the galaxy map extensively to plan out my next targets.

- I agree with the OP that scouts become largely useless once you've mapped out the galaxy, as the major fixtures (advanced factories/research stations, ion cannons, data centers, etc) don't move, and if I'm going to take over a system, the number of "little ships" isn't really a concern.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

Another aspect of scouts that I find extremely useful is visibility into neighboring planets. As I'm initially scouting AI planets that border my own, I typically try to leave at least a single scout on each one of them. As I take planets, I move the scouts onto the new neighboring planets. This not only provides excellent next hop visibility for your attack fleet (particularly important as all of those planets are on alert) but it has also saved me on a number of occasions by providing advanced notice of where a cross planet attack was originating from.

[quickstix]

AI levels are all fine and well(they just accelerate AI progress level boundaries etc it appears), but when the cheatstyles come in it gets a bit much.

It's not "playing better" if you get insta-kill and overpowered units, it's just better units and features.
Playing better is what the PLAYER has to do: win against bad odds with inferior stuff.
Not the other way around.

Chris wrote a response to similar opinions from wargamer.com:
http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2768.msg17251.html#msg17251

To sum up the arguments: Scouts don't alert the AI and let you see far ahead. Fleets and starshps might let you see ahead, but will alert the AI. In the upcoming official update (and current pre-releases + expansion, which is what I play) larger ships, such as Starships and Golems, will put the AI into full alert status and cause it to reinforce more heavily. Two different playstyles, but I find the former (Scouting) much easier. If scouting doesn't work for you, that's great, everyone has their own style, but many others (including myself) have found scouting to be a valuable asset.

This isn't something I've decided from the numbers game or details about what is optimised better (although there is nothing wrong with that), but simply by playing the two styles and finding that scouting is an approach that fits in better with my style of play and one which I enjoy more.

[RCIX]

This is definitely not a same-vs-same game(Here, you play naked so I can stab you right in the heart, but I get to wear three kevlar vests, also use an M16 and shotguns vs your pocket knife and also can randomly call upon orbital laser stations if I so choose. Oh and did I mention, you must wear this here blindfold, too...Me? Oh I get these protective goggles. Now, on to a fair fight!)

That's the whole point. As X mentioned in that wargamer reply thread, some of the most interesting situations in books and movies come from having impossibly long odds. However, almost no one has tried to model this in an RTS, so Chris took a shot. There's no way you can even compare your position to the enemy's, anymore than you can compare the Atlantis team's position to the Wraith in SG Atlantis. There's no reason you can't use much if not all of that tech, it's just that you lost control of it. If that's cheating, i don't know what isn't!(And the fact that the AI doesn't see everything on the map...)

Also, to make your analogy more fair, it's like you have to face down 5 giant monsters off across the country; Are you really gonna pay attention to a naked guy with a pocketknife when you got 5 T. Rexes to deal with?  Not until A: the guy gets some clothes and a gun, or B: you deal with the monsters.

And regarding your scouting methodology, it's not always the best idea. The reason is scouting with your fleet can and will draw attention, especially where you don't want it. What happens when you alert a Core or IV world with your "scouting"? It will then become a pain in the neck to get by there since the AI is now reinforcing what could be a really vital choke point.

Edit: and you may find this link to be interesting.