Balance bug or not

[Red Spot]

Hi,

Sorry to make my first post on this forum one concerning the following. Just to have it said, this is an awesome game, the first one that I know that has an AI that does "own" you without the "blatant in your face cheating while giving the impression of equal sides"


Anyway, I'm at the start of my first game using the 2 DLC's that are available through Steam.
See the screenshot, I have started from the selected planet and secured the 6 dead-end planets and placed econ-command stations there. Moving on the the planet that leads to the rest of the universe. I first cleaned it out without destroying any hardware, not even the gate.
After that I realised that if I where to take the planet the lvl3 planet next to it would become a mayor pain clearing out, so I first destroyed that sectors gate, special forces post, command-center shield-post(the one preventing your from destroying the C-center) and last but certainly not least the counterattack post.
After that I took the planet next to my home-planet. It took the AI a couple of minutes on the lvl3-planet to beaf up the planets defences to about 600-800 lvl3 ships. However, every wave that is spawned gives no destination and ends up waiting at the entry gate to my part of space. I now have a wave of 1734 anti-armors coming in, which likelly will just increase the number of units on the problem planet.

This by itself isnt that big a deal, sniper/guerilla warfare here we come
However, whatever I do my ships never actually fire when on this planet. Wether I get ships in and rush them to their target, cloak them under a starship cloaker, load them into transports, or even load them into transports and cloak the transports .. the ships only fire at their targets 1 out of maybe 6 assaults and just get shot to pieces the other 5.
On 1 succesfull run, where there where about 1600 units camping in the planet, I managed to take down the C-center to about 500points of health, 0%, but the next quickly set up assault failed so misserably it is starting to suck the fun out of this campaign.

I hope this is something that can be looked into, not even the total the number of ships, but more that waves will end up in your terf(intended?) and your ships will still fire even on a crowded planet.



Thanks

Edit: Also, is there a way to get the wave/threat numbers to reflect no of ship again, I like it that way a bit more.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the forums, glad you enjoy the game

1) I don't see an attached screenshot.
2) What version are you playing?
3) Can you attach your savegame?
4) It's normal for waves to be launched to "" if you've destroyed all warp gates bordering your territory (wasn't exactly sure if you've done that).

Thanks

[Red Spot]

1) I tend to do that .... ask my collegues about sending emails with attachments .. ahem (screeny has been attached in the meantime)
2) The latest, afaik I only do not use the beta as it also says I have 1 beta DL still to download, I am also not in Trial-mode.
3) http://members.ziggo.nl/red_spot/Red%20Spot.sav (Just saved it as the next wave only popped up as I loaded it.)
4) I have read on the wiki it should, as it does, say "". But no waves every arrive, and I have created such a warm welcome for them Anyway, yes I have destroyed the gate in that sector as a means to buy me a few minutes to take the planet, and as it is the only AI-planet bordering me there are no other gates.

Just a quick guide to me marking planets:
F9 - Fabricator/advanced research
F8 - Data center
F6 - Planatairy stuff that makes the sector an interesting one to consider taking
F2 - Planatairy stuff available

[x4000]

Looking at that screenshot, it seems very definite you're playing on a beta version, because the core shield generators are showing up in your screenshot, and those were added since the last official.  If there are still beta updates showing, then I suggest updating to the latest, as what you're describing may have been a bug in an intermediate beta version.

If that still doesn't work, if you can post a savegame with instructions on how to duplicate, we're happy to look into it -- usually mantis is preferred for that, but whatever.

Glad you're enjoying the game, and thanks for your support!  We don't considered bug/balance reports to be an insult, we're actually really grateful for them.

[Red Spot]

I just installed(I think) the last beta. It doesnt show anywhere, that I could tell, wether I am running a beta or not.
Anyway, I'll hit the map generator a few times and see if I can create a similair(yet different map again. See how that goes

Edit: not sure if it slipped past in the first post, but: "Edit: Also, is there a way to get the wave/threat numbers to reflect no of ship again, I like it that way a bit more." ?

[x4000]

It doesn't actually say in game which ones are betas, that's true, but you can see the version number in there.

Edit: not sure if it slipped past in the first post, but: "Edit: Also, is there a way to get the wave/threat numbers to reflect no of ship again, I like it that way a bit more." ?

You can hover over the item in question and it will show the number of ships there, if you're wanting to know specifically how many ships it is.  But at the moment there's no way to get the wave/threat to show numbers of ships instead of threat, as I think that would be counterproductive -- when large events with big ships happen, you won't be able to tell and can just lose out of the blue, for instance.

[Red Spot]

I'm running 4.051 now.
This seems to run nice, cleared out a similair area of space without any weird things. Did change my strat a bit though as it seems it isnt that smart to only have 1 AI-planet connecting to your planets .... 

[x4000]

By the way, I got to thinking about this more, and the next version will have:

* There is now a new "Show Firepower Instead Of Ship Counts In Resource Bar" option in the interface tab of the settings window.  Firepower was just too abstract to be the default thing displayed.  The chief problem here was just with a few mega-sized ships in free mode, anyhow, so those can be handled through alerts.

[Red Spot]

Pretty much why I asked, I found myself constantly looking at the stats to see how many ships would come from which planets.
F3 can be a big difference it seems, upper and lower limit, you probably want to be aware of that when protecting your assets
(Havent yet had the change to use it in a longer running game, so it could still be the preffered way of showing it at that stage.)

[Red Spot]

As I already have this topic going about 'not very sure if this is balance or bug'.
I have uploaded a new screenshot, see the first post, is it intentional that you do not capture it when you take the planet?
I almost took the planet untill I realised that station would remain a pain in my rear

[x4000]

Yes, you have to kill it, it's not a capturable.  Note that it doesn't have the "captured on planet ownership change" ability listed.  If it doesn't have that, it's not capturable.

[Red Spot]

Thanks. Wasnt really sure if it was intended to be killed or left alone, or it should actually change owner when the planet does.
Somewhat of a pain to have those on a 'defensive planet'

[x4000]

Yeah, those things are wicked.