Design Corruptor

[TechSY730]

If a design is corrupted, should future AI unlocks be blocked from getting it too? What about Mk. V unlocks (which are tracked separately)? What about existing instances of that ship (in particular, the Mk. V ones on the homeworld, which may have already had several of those ships spawned, even if it had never been alerted)? What about ARSs that may be offering that ship?


On a similar note, if a design is copied, what about ARSs that provide that ship?

Agreed that it should not be possible to block a ship type from both AIs and still be able to copy it yourself.

[Cyborg]

Rarely have I seen so many bad ideas on one thread.

1) the lore in games is there to support the gameplay. There is no reason to make the game less fun, Deckard Cain.
2) If people feel design corruption is worth more hacking points, that's a totally separate story. Honestly, does one ship really need to be that punishing? I would love to see some backup data that shows removing one ship is some horrible thing that deserves high hacking costs.
3) If a player wants to copy a design and then disable the ship, that should be a valid tactic.
4) we have plenty of mechanics that work against both AI's. The showdown devices for example.
5) the AI was never considered "the best AI;" it's emergent. It does not learn.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Cyborg, the entire point of one hack invalidating the other for the same backup storage is so you can't copy and corrupt the same ship type. That was my impression, and it makes sense that you shouldn't be able to have your cake and eat it. The AI was also meant to be reasonably intelligent, and unpredictable. I don't care about that from the whole design corruption standpoint, but it irks me on other subjects like chokepoints, where the AI smashes headlong into them even though it never actually works.

[Gudamor]

... it makes sense that you shouldn't be able to have your cake and eat it.

Why? If the player is willing to pay the HAP to do both, why should they be restricted from doing so?

Yes, part of the fun of the game is making hard choices, but both Corrupting and Copying already present a difficult choice to the player in that they both use up a limited resource (HAP) that could be spent on any number of other valuable activities. I do not see why these abilities are so powerful that they ALSO need to prevent the player from doing the other.

[keith.lamothe]

Just to clarify, in case there's any confusion on this point: the AIs unlock bonus ship types separately.  They can wind up with both having the same type, but while previously their during-the-game unlocks were the same type for both at the same time, that's not been the case since the late 6.0 days.

So I think it's valid that in a case where both AIs have the same type that you can both corrupt and copy the same design.  You'd only be able to do both if both AIs had that type.  And as a nod to making the design corruption choice still fun in that case, having it corrupt it for both AIs.  There are reasons not to have it do that, but I find that they are all of secondary importance.

[TechSY730]

Will the game stop you from trying to corrupt an already corrupted design? How about copying an already copied design?

If only one AI has it and you corrupt it, will it block the other AI from getting it in future unlocks?

Finally, if making the AIs share AIP based unlocks again makes this more technically feasible, would that be a worthwhile tradeoff to make design hacking work this way (blocking both AIs)?

[PokerChen]

I don't think these extra-galactic infrastructure would be reachable by human hacking.

Not directly by the humans, but the AI stuff in one galaxy talks to the AI stuff in the other.  Corrupting the local copies is only part of what's going on.

I wouldn't find any simple explanation sufficient enough to overcome my expectations of a distributed, multiply-redundant network. That's okay, it's a game. Explaining the necessary loopholes about how the AI works, how it chooses designs, etc. limits our imagination on how its could conceivably work.

 = = =
 I would also find the Mark. V unlocks question interesting. Should players be allowed the tactic of disabling both standard I-IV fleetships and the core defending ships? Corruption to be more valuable in this respect (and might use it), and arguably where it matters.


(BTW, even us diploid organisms seem to be capable of cross referencing intact copies in some forms of DNA repair. There's technically 4 copies of the same information, which allows the machinery to correct any single error.)