**Spoiler-Heavy** Discussion of the Showdown Devices

[Toranth]

Maybe the Super-weapon multipliers are too high in general?  Eternaly_Lost, if you'd done the Fallen Spire campaign to 16 cities, that means 16 cities and the Galactic Capitol at 1 point each.  That's +17 to the super_weapon part of the multiplier.  With just that, it'd mean 34 times the wave size you'd normally get.  I don't think even a 16 city Spire Capital Fleet would be nearly worth enough to make up for that level of difference.


I also think that there's a problem in the mixed goals of the Showdown:  The requirement to hold the devices plus a frequent waves encourages a highly distributed defense.  With Mini-Forts and Core Turrets at per-planet levels, this can turn any system into a not-insignificant roadbump for an AI wave.  This is how I distracted and delayed the AI long enough in my Honeycomb map game to finally beat the timer.  That took 30 hours of gametime to build that level of defense, though.

However, Exowaves and the Final Event need, almost require, extreme choking to get the required concentration of firepower to actually do enough damage (Multi-HW worth of Mk IV and Mk V Spirecraft Rams are about the only other choice).  My honeycomb game could handle the waves, even though I lost many systems... but then I had nothing left to stop the GCSs, because it was scattered amongst 40 other systems.

And finally, there's the diffiiculty difference.  At 7/7, even a 14 HW 5-city FS game with 8 Champions, Golems, and Spirecraft enabled was winnable.  At 9/9, a 2 HW game with only Spirecraft was not.

[Eternaly_Lost]

Maybe the Super-weapon multipliers are too high in general?  Eternaly_Lost, if you'd done the Fallen Spire campaign to 16 cities, that means 16 cities and the Galactic Capitol at 1 point each.  That's +17 to the super_weapon part of the multiplier.  With just that, it'd mean 34 times the wave size you'd normally get.  I don't think even a 16 city Spire Capital Fleet would be nearly worth enough to make up for that level of difference.

Likely, so maybe it should be capped (Say at 7-8 cities worth)? Sure that means you can just build cities* until you get enough ships to blow past the multiplier completely. But each city would not add as much to your fallen spire forces as the Exo fleet grows by.

*If you find enough room in the galaxy that is.

My deference can hold the End Game Exo fleet from the last shard just fine. And most of the waves in that are higher level ships, it just the shear volume of ships that I can't stop it. I had nukes killing waves with more ships in them, then the AI has in most normal games in the whole galaxy.

[Faulty Logic]

Crosspost incoming: Basically, I don't think the Showdown adds to the game as it stands, but could, as a looser FS-style campaign (that is, significantly increase both your own power and the AI response(currently it does a lot of the latter and none of the former)).

it's not ever worth it. You need an FS-grade chokepoint to win, and it attacks harder than the FS finale. There are a few other issues, too.

If it's included in the expansion then a bunch of things should happen:

Make it worth it: basically, this can be another, looser FS campaign, but it doesn't make sense as the current, completely boolean Showdown. I don't think it can work that way.

Rename them to AI Warp Controllers (keep the SD moniker in the entries, if you want), and introduce a secondary hacking mechanic (AI Warp Requisition Antagonism, which also adds to a "defense fund").

You can warp in ships and structures you can't normally access from these devices, if you can stand the response. Bigger stuff requires you to "hack" multiple AIWCs simultaneously.

Examples:
Fully build Z trader stuff.
Mk IV turret tech.
Core Starships (the unit so named, not starshipsV).
Guardians.
Hunter/Killers (mkI only).
AI Forcefields (the kind that don't reduce your firepower).
Fabricators (randomly generated).
A fleetship unlock (ala ARS, but with your choice of any).

The antagonism would scale with some >1 exponent, so you would have to choose wisely. But you could get enough stuff to make the showdown doable. The finale would require all four (and scale with whatever superweapons you have enabled, as well).

Clearer journal entries would be good, too.

And finally, the AI GCSs should use the same graphic as the AI home stations.

[chemical_art]

Haven't done this yet, and haven't read this thread, but that cross post gave me a hint so I'll give a broad stroke.

If this is meant to be a siege breaker, but the threat generated in pursuing the showdrives is exponentially larger then the challenge of attacking AI HW, then they seem pointless in a strategic point of view. It should certainly not need the realm of FS levels of chokes, considering FS gives very sizable benefits and in the end beats the AI.

[chemical_art]

Reading more behind the lines, I'm still wondering about the goal of this.

If the defense of this is harder then FS, why not just do FS directly?

If it is a non-super weapon game, why is the finale unit stronger then the finale unit of the FS campaign (if you pursue the directly approach once you get dreadnaughts)

Is it for bragging rights?

[keith.lamothe]

If the defense of this is harder then FS, why not just do FS directly?

The defense should not be harder than FS-finale unless FS is turned on (or everything else is, at least).

The situation may make it or the FS-finale a better strategic choice at that point.  Depends on how far away those shards are, etc.

If it is a non-super weapon game, why is the finale unit stronger then the finale unit of the FS campaign (if you pursue the directly approach once you get dreadnaughts)

Because killing those two units wins the game immediately, as opposed to just being yet-more-defenders.  I also wanted a bigger boom.  I was also curious to see just how just how nasty an individual unit could be cheesed to death

Is it for bragging rights?

More for variety than bragging rights: Is FS ever really all that much easier than playing non-superweapons?  If you were playing only to win, does FS add anything to the game?

[orzelek]

If it is a non-super weapon game, why is the finale unit stronger then the finale unit of the FS campaign (if you pursue the directly approach once you get dreadnaughts)

Because killing those two units wins the game immediately, as opposed to just being yet-more-defenders.  I also wanted a bigger boom.  I was also curious to see just how just how nasty an individual unit could be cheesed to death

If you are starting the balance from "how powerful stuff I can make and it will be cheesed" then it states one thing for me.
It's not your standard 7-8 diff level player stuff.
I would stand by with chemical_art idea - it's more for bragging rights than actual game winning. It seems that winning in any other way is easier - and trying to keep low AIP actually works against you for this plot.

[keith.lamothe]

If you are starting the balance from "how powerful stuff I can make and it will be cheesed" then it states one thing for me.
It's not your standard 7-8 diff level player stuff.

By "cheese" I'm thinking more "kill with surprisingly little effort/casualties".

You don't have to cheese it to kill it.

[chemical_art]

Considering it is by far the strongest unit in the game, and that everything around it has a.lifetime measuredcin seconds, i dont see.how you could beat it without cheesing

[keith.lamothe]

Considering it is by far the strongest unit in the game, and that everything around it has a.lifetime measuredcin seconds, i dont see.how you could beat it without cheesing

Can you kill a mothership without cheesing?  Two motherships?  Etc.

This one is stronger than that, but not so much so that it doesn't still have the inherent frailty of any unit in this game: under a ton of concentrated firepower, it still dies.

Its armor overcoming "max armor piercing" is a bug and will be corrected, btw.

[chemical_art]

Iirc the mothership has between 600 to 1000 mill health depending of your fleet comp. The new ones have 4000 mill health. Its true you can face multiple mothers but you always face 2 of the mean ones and they wipe your forces...different magnitudes of cheese, although i understand the underlying point.

[Toranth]

If the defense of this is harder then FS, why not just do FS directly?

The defense should not be harder than FS-finale unless FS is turned on (or everything else is, at least).

The situation may make it or the FS-finale a better strategic choice at that point.  Depends on how far away those shards are, etc.

In the one game I recorded those numbers for, the 30 minute Showdown had more than three times as much Exowave strength as the entire 30 minute FS finale.  In fact, it had almost twice as much Exowave strength as the entire FS campaign combined: from first shard to Exogalactic Transceiver including several of the timed Exowaves.
And that's not including the normal waves, counter waves, and CPAs.

Its armor overcoming "max armor piercing" is a bug and will be corrected, btw.

Hurray!  As it stood, the GCS basically had 5 times as many HP as listed since only Mk IV and Mk V Spire Rams did more damage.


As for the current showdown state, I disagree that it is not winnable.  The problem I see is that it takes a Diff 9+ level player who is playing on Diff 7 to be able to do it.  I've tried several games on Diff 9 now, an even with chokepointing it gets crazy.  On those occasions when I randomly survive the timer, I can't stop the GCS and Friends from stomping me.


Some ideas:
1)  Change the GCSs not to beeline to your HW for a little while.  Perhaps wait 30 minutes (to disengage from the network), or until they've taken X amount of damage (say, 5%).  This gives the player a little time to recover and enjoy the galaxy with no waves going on.  It could also allow the player to take them one at a time, which could be significantly easier.

2)  To encourage truly distributed defense, instead of having your 34 times strength wave sent to one system, have that much total strength spread equally amongst all systems that can receive a wave.  The Counter-wave could do the same thing, spread among all systems that CAN'T normally receive a wave (or amongst all systems, period).
Tone the Exowaves down a bit, and otherwise leave it alone.

Again, I like it - but not for higher difficulties or serious play.  It is so much harder to win over the base game victory conditions that there's no point other than bragging rights.  Of course, that's what Achievements ARE...

[keith.lamothe]

Iirc the mothership has between 600 to 1000 mill health depending of your fleet comp. The new ones have 4000 mill health. Its true you can face multiple mothers but you always face 2 of the mean ones and they wipe your forces...different magnitudes of cheese, although i understand the underlying point.

Different magnitudes, though I'm not sure if they are to the degree you may be thinking.  Two points:

1) In terms of raw HP the MS has 800M, and the GCS has 900M.  Currently the GCS has "more than infinite" armor which, while amusing, breaks a lot of things like implosion, railcannons, etc that are balanced around the idea that they ignore armor.  Once the GCS's armor comes back down to the MS's armor level, they'll only be about 13% more durable than a mothership.

2) Two spawn at the same time, but they spawn about as far apart from each other as it is physically possible to do so while also being as distant from your HWs as it is possible to be.  That's because that's how the AI HW locations are picked in the first place.  So you have the opportunity to engage each of them individually to hit them with ambushes (honestly, an FS-fleet or 8-champ ambush can probably kill one in one salvo) or otherwise wear-down/assassinate them.  If/when they reach your fixed defensive line then yea, they're going to wreak havoc like havoc has never been wreaked before (on a per-unit basis, anyway).  What I'm going for here is more like the sequence of missions in Descent Freespace 2 where you take down the Sathanas, etc.  There's another one coming, sure, but at least there aren't that many

[chemical_art]

Ah, my memory for the motherships hp was half that it really was. Hearing the gcs.return to ane amounts of armor will help too.

I was thinking of toranths idea before it was.even presented it and i like it. A breather is needed after the first wave of onslaught, both to enjoy the lack of reinforcements and to rebuild..

Idk how the values of the waves go down, but if the strength of the.waves before.the gsc is even remotely near the levels of the final fs event, there is not a compelling reason to do the showdown over fs.

What if after the 30 minutes show devices are alive, they confer the player hcs immunity until the showdown devices are toast.

[keith.lamothe]

It would be kind of tricky to get it to wait after spawning, but I am going to reduce the GCS speed so it's more of a "plodding wall of doom" than something that zips across the galaxy faster than you can organize a response.