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

[keith.lamothe]

I'm trying to get the release out tonight but it doesn't look like I'm going to have time, and I'd rather wait to tomorow morning rather than only doing half the fixes for this, etc.

That said, it would save me some time if I had a save where it's a reasonably real-world scenario (I made one for my own testing but it's cheated out the wazoo) and you've got maybe 3-4 minutes left on the showdown timer so I can test a few things (notably including the launch of the final CPA, etc) to make sure they don't just crash horribly and maybe even behaves as intended.  So if someone posted such a save here (I just checked and don't see any such in the thread) I'd appreciate it, thanks

[chemical_art]

Wish i had your save keith.

That said these changes should really help distinguish the showdown devices from fs. now it should feel like the initial waves are more of a distraction while the ai prepa the boss of gcs.

[Toranth]

I'm trying to get the release out tonight but it doesn't look like I'm going to have time, and I'd rather wait to tomorow morning rather than only doing half the fixes for this, etc.

That said, it would save me some time if I had a save where it's a reasonably real-world scenario (I made one for my own testing but it's cheated out the wazoo) and you've got maybe 3-4 minutes left on the showdown timer so I can test a few things (notably including the launch of the final CPA, etc) to make sure they don't just crash horribly and maybe even behaves as intended.  So if someone posted such a save here (I just checked and don't see any such in the thread) I'd appreciate it, thanks

Here's three saves, each at 25 minutes into the countdown.  All three of these saves were in position to survive to the end, so it shouldn't be a problem getting there.
All three are difficulty 7/7.  First is 1HW X, second is 14HW X, 3rd is 2 HW Honeycomb.

just as a note about the final CPA - You may want to stop it from grabbing ships that are on human controlled planets.  In one game, this led to several thousand AI ships disappearing from a world they might have destroyed.

[keith.lamothe]

Here's three saves

Many thanks

just as a note about the final CPA - You may want to stop it from grabbing ships that are on human controlled planets.  In one game, this led to several thousand AI ships disappearing from a world they might have destroyed.

I have no idea why it would have grabbed those in the first place, as it's only supposed to grab... oh.  I think it's been able to grab threat for a few months, looks like, when it's not supposed to (the whole point is to turn non-threat into threat, not reposition threat).  Well, will test that too

[keith.lamothe]

Please let me know how this goes in 6.041+ ; I know there's a lot of requests for improving the journals so I'll see what I can do about that a bit later, but I don't think that really impacts how it plays out for you folks who've already learned (albeit the hard way) how it works.

[Toranth]

Please let me know how this goes in 6.041+ ; I know there's a lot of requests for improving the journals so I'll see what I can do about that a bit later, but I don't think that really impacts how it plays out for you folks who've already learned (albeit the hard way) how it works.

Replayed the Showdown from the 14HW save above.  In general, the balance feels better.  The final CPA got a LOT nastier:  200+ additional Nemesis frigates are not an insignificant addition to the CPA's forces.  However, I'm still seeing a problem.  Namely, although all the loose ships (guards, SF, Nemesis, threat) joined the CPA, there are still 8000 SF ships in carriers sitting around doing nothing.

Also, did something change about the GCS's Strength rating?  In previous games, they counted for about 600,000 Strength in the warning display.  Today, they're counted for about 10,000,000 strength.  I don't see any stat changes besides the Armor reduction, and that game was won, just like the original attempt, so it's not 10x more powerful all of a sudden.  Just confused.

[keith.lamothe]

However, I'm still seeing a problem.  Namely, although all the loose ships (guards, SF, Nemesis, threat) joined the CPA, there are still 8000 SF ships in carriers sitting around doing nothing.

Ah, ok, will take a look at that at some point; the carriers are probably just not in the categories I think they are, etc.

Was that all that was still hanging on, though?

Also, did something change about the GCS's Strength rating?  In previous games, they counted for about 600,000 Strength in the warning display.  Today, they're counted for about 10,000,000 strength.  I don't see any stat changes besides the Armor reduction, and that game was won, just like the original attempt, so it's not 10x more powerful all of a sudden.  Just confused.

I pumped up the number artificially to make threat waiting to attack a planet would be a _lot_ more likely to move if the GCS was either there or was one hop out, etc.  Basically the idea being that the threat has literally nothing more important it can be doing than helping that ship.

[Toranth]

However, I'm still seeing a problem.  Namely, although all the loose ships (guards, SF, Nemesis, threat) joined the CPA, there are still 8000 SF ships in carriers sitting around doing nothing.

Ah, ok, will take a look at that at some point; the carriers are probably just not in the categories I think they are, etc.

Was that all that was still hanging on, though?

Yup, that was it.  Everything else in the galaxy that was mobile headed in.  Them homeworlds were BARE when I strolled around post-victory. 


Noticed another oddity, this time about the Hunter plot.  Those 8000 SF ships in carriers?  When the carriers popped, there were Mk I H/Ks in them.  I checked the logs, and they were in the original contents before everything was dumped in the chipper, and they were still SF H/Ks when they came out.  This is in addition to the SF H/K that was already floating around and joined the CPA.  I suspect the Hunter plot may be "accidentally" forgetting about the H/K when it gets shuffled into a carrier.

These carriers were popped when the GCS went boom, hence the lack of ships in there.

Code: [Select]

On planet Sihe
pouring these internal contents into chipper shredder:
24 ShieldBearerII @ 64 each, so total for line = 1536
23 ZenithAutoBombII @ 16 each, so total for line = 368
1 AIHunterKiller @ 3960 each, so total for line = 3960
Grand total: 48 ships, 5864 strength


[keith.lamothe]

I suspect the Hunter plot may be "accidentally" forgetting about the H/K when it gets shuffled into a carrier.

You're probably quite right about that.  Such an unfortunate accident.  I'm sure the AI will be glad to see it prevented in the future.

[Tridus]

I tried this out in a 7/7 game today (with the patch now, but this game was started before that patch if it matters) with FS and Golems on. I control over half the map. It got *goofy*. Stuff like waves of 4000 beam frigates. Well actually more like 600 beam frigates and an army of carriers that flew up to my spire city and started shooting everything without the city shooting back because I didn't change that default. Kind of off topic, but I've been finding a lot of stuff that bugs me in how carriers are working right now.

Now I've just been goofing around in this game and experimenting with new stuff, so it's not set up as well as I'm capable of (and certainly not as well as the experts could do). But still. The sheer number of ships coming out was being measured in thousands, per wave. That included the counter waves

To comment on something you mentioned earlier - turret controllers simply don't matter when 2000 ships show up (as nice as Spider V's are, they don't matter a whole lot against 2000 ships). I actually had four (Spider, Sniper, Flak, Missile), and while they did damage, they're not any serious threat to stop a counterattack wave of that sizes. Plus you're really unlikely to have Spider V's everywhere, because the cost of a cap on a planet is so massive that it'd really lengthen the game.

I also found Golems totally ineffective against these waves. Even the Botnet doesn't shoot fast enough to do much against so many ships, but stuff like Artillery and Armored were just a waste of time. I'd have been better off turning them off based on what I've read here.

Given how if my fleet was in the area (including 2 Spire Dreadnaughts) the game was slowing down a lot against one of these waves, I suspect if I pulled back and refortified at the point where I have a single choke point it would have turned into a slideshow (three of the four showdowns were behind that, I'm not sure how I'd have defended the fourth one).

Comparatively, my Spire fleet was powerful enough that I could have simply walked into the Ai Homeworlds with it and flattened them. Normal AI waves weren't threatening me, every entry point had a Spire city on it, a Fortress II, Millitary Command III and other goodies. AIP was up to 600, and that's after reducing it a boatload using the SuperTerminal (before reduction was I think pushing 1500).

If I can find time I'll try it again in a less "conquer the galaxy" type of game and see how that goes, but based on how it responded in this case I don't think it's an option that's for me. The AI sent absurdly more stuff than it would in response to the FS endgame, and even that wasn't necessary in this game since I could just fly into their homeworld and beat it directly with little risk.

[keith.lamothe]

If someone gets a chance to try this without superweapons it'd be helpful so I can get an idea of where the balance is on that; I can test the case but I don't really have even 5 hours to get to the point where I might be ready to set it off, etc.

[orzelek]

Could you make the turret controllers mobile so we can protect them better?
From what I can see system abuse is prevented by cost of the stuff you get.

Also does having 2 same type controllers give you double cap of that turret?

[keith.lamothe]

Could you make the turret controllers mobile so we can protect them better?

You mean move them within a planet's area, or move them to another planet?  They should already be seeding way out near the inner grav ring and away from wormholes.

From what I can see system abuse is prevented by cost of the stuff you get.

You mean the cost of the turrets?  m+c, or e, or both?  Anyway, yea, it's supposed to be unlikely that you can cover every single supplied system with a full per-planet cap of even one core type, let alone more than that, but if you've got a fairly robust economy you can probably manage quite a few of them.

Also does having 2 same type controllers give you double cap of that turret?

It should never give more than one controller of a particular type in a particular map, have you seen that?  But to answer: no, it won't multiply the cap, and for that reason it should be avoiding seeding more than one of a type.

[orzelek]

I meant the ability to actually get the controller to some secure place.

If we can't protect them they will have similar issues as Adv Fabs. And this means that usefulnes varies on game settings/rng positioning etc..

As for double controllers - I misread one of previous posts.

[keith.lamothe]

I meant the ability to actually get the controller to some secure place.

If we can't protect them they will have similar issues as Adv Fabs. And this means that usefulnes varies on game settings/rng positioning etc..

Right, the point of them is to both make distributed defense more feasible (because they provide hefty per-planet firepower that doesn't detract from your main choke's available cap) and to make it more desirable (as that's how you keep the controllers).

It's possible that they need to give more turrets each, or as suggested elsewhere to give some of every core turret type, or something like that, but the point is to increase the viability (and desirability) of distributed defense.