AI Homeworld Defense

[chemical_art]

I ask this curiously:

Does the fact  defenses shut down the majority of tactics (teuthida, core wraith post) add to the value of fun, or only increase !fun! due to having little if no "good" solutions.

[chemical_art]

There is a key problem with AI HW in its current form. Actually, it is an old problem.


If you can smash the most dangerous post (probably first) and survive any threats until a refleet, odds are you will win sans a terrible mistake (that one doesn't save-scum from).

This is not climatic in any way.

The current solution to address this has been wiping out tactics. This has certianly increased the wall (and potential for stonewalling) dramatically. But it doesn't address the core point: If one can smash the worst post (typically the one that shuts down the most tactics) and live to refleet, the rest is easy.

This would be like an endgame boss, but the first form is strongest, and any forms afterward only get weaker, and there are several versions of it.

[TechSY730]

There is a key problem with AI HW in its current form. Actually, it is an old problem.


If you can smash the most dangerous post (probably first) and survive any threats until a refleet, odds are you will win sans a terrible mistake (that one doesn't save-scum from).

This is not climatic in any way.

The current solution to address this has been wiping out tactics. This has certianly increased the wall (and potential for stonewalling) dramatically. But it doesn't address the core point: If one can smash the worst post (typically the one that shuts down the most tactics) and live to refleet, the rest is easy.

This would be like an endgame boss, but the first form is strongest, and any forms afterward only get weaker, and there are several versions of it.

This is sort of a fundamental result of non-rebuildable defenses in a game with somewhat simplistic mechanics for abilities, combat, and movement, or at least it seems to be based on all of the iterations of how AI homeworlds work we have been through.


Yea, TBH, given how little this engine offers in terms of individual unit "fanciness", I can't think of any system that wouldn't be a grind of some form or too easy for players who know what they are doing.


EDIT2:
So, unless someone can come up with a system that will be less likely to "fall apart" in either direction as the game evolves or with an odd RNG roll, what is the least evil? So grindy its boring, so similar to the rest of the game its boring, or so easy its boring?


EDIT:

This is sort of a fundamental result of non-rebuildable defenses in a game with somewhat simplistic mechanics for abilities, combat, and movement.

Wait, non-rebuildable is one of the criteria...hmm...that could be something worth persueing
EDIT3: I'm talking about severely nerfing some of the kinds of things you could see on an AI homeworld, but make those things that got such a nerf rebuildable by the AI. Or something along these lines.

[Histidine]

Regarding homeworld tachyon coverage:
I think Hearteater's ideas are worth looking at again.
For an easy HW-specific fix, note that all core guard posts already have considerable tachyon coverage; greatly increasing their range (while removing the AI Home Command Station planetary coverage) might have the desired effect.

Respawning defenses... interesting, but it needs to not be one of those things in some games where the enemy regenerates faster than you can kill it. That'd be pretty frustrating.

So, unless someone can come up with a system that will be less likely to "fall apart" in either direction as the game evolves or with an odd RNG roll, what is the least evil? So grindy its boring, so similar to the rest of the game its boring, or so easy its boring?

So easy it's boring, by far.

If you encounter an endgame that's too easy, you finish the game (albeit with a disappointing end) and move on to the next one.

If you encounter an endgame that's too grindy, one of two things happen. You slog through, finish the game (albeit with a disappointing end) and move on to the next one, which is the same as the too-easy scenario except it takes more time and is more tedious.
Alternatively, you give up, quit and leave the game unfinished.

TBH, I would also be opposed to any sort of hard timer based thing being a core mechanic in the AI homeworld defense. But on different reasons that are more fundamental than the current balance of the game.

Out of curiosity, could you elaborate why, or would that be too off-topic here?

[TechSY730]

Regarding homeworld tachyon coverage:
I think Hearteater's ideas are worth looking at again.
For an easy HW-specific fix, note that all core guard posts already have considerable tachyon coverage; greatly increasing their range (while removing the AI Home Command Station planetary coverage) might have the desired effect.

I love this idea. Long ago, the non-wormhole guard posts were the normal "assured to be there" tachyon units. I think for the homeworld at least, the tachyon sentinels, the core guard posts, and the AI homeworld having a decent but finite tachyon range would be far less frustrating, but still make it difficult to abuse cloaking to terribly much without some work. (Though, teaching the AI how to use mobile tachyon units still should be pursued, so those holes in stationary tachyon emission aren't too abusable)
Then planetary tachyon coverage could be moved to a new brutal pick (that unlike the old Core AI eye, it would be at least feasible to take on to kill it directly), to mimic the fact that sometimes human players have a Mk. III military foldout on their home.

Respawning defenses... interesting, but it needs to not be one of those things in some games where the enemy regenerates faster than you can kill it. That'd be pretty frustrating.

Yea, the idea would be that they would be much weaker than the stationary HW stuff, but you get a dynamic that as you are refleeting your offense, they are "refleeting" their defense. Thus, it is a little less "grindy" when you do attack, but gives the AI a chance to recover if you don't use a strong economy and good aggression to your advantage, thus discouraging just repeated "max army, and only when maxed, move in" tactics, but a more dynamic more consistent harass and/or reinforcement to take out the homeworld.

So, unless someone can come up with a system that will be less likely to "fall apart" in either direction as the game evolves or with an odd RNG roll, what is the least evil? So grindy its boring, so similar to the rest of the game its boring, or so easy its boring?

So easy it's boring, by far.

If you encounter an endgame that's too easy, you finish the game (albeit with a disappointing end) and move on to the next one.

If you encounter an endgame that's too grindy, one of two things happen. You slog through, finish the game (albeit with a disappointing end) and move on to the next one, which is the same as the too-easy scenario except it takes more time and is more tedious.
Alternatively, you give up, quit and leave the game unfinished.

Hmm, this may be an unpopular suggestion, but how about just nerfing pretty harshly the brutal picks, nerfing the core guard posts somewhat, and nerfing the strategic reserves somewhat as a short-term "stopgap" measure until we figure out ways to get "interesting stuff" in, given that lack of difficulty is the least "bad" of the three "fun killers" I mentioned above.
Then we can "turn the dial back up" until we find a better balance of interesting, challenging, and fun.

TBH, I would also be opposed to any sort of hard timer based thing being a core mechanic in the AI homeworld defense. But on different reasons that are more fundamental than the current balance of the game.

Out of curiosity, could you elaborate why, or would that be too off-topic here?

Basically, it would violate the "player has the most influence over the 'tempo'" design goal too much. Core CPA posts and Core raid engines don't always appear, and you have a way to stop them after the first one, kill them. If it was a core part of the AI homeworld, there would be no way to avoid it. Plus, if it is supposed to be a race against the clock or face near certain death, the time would have to be carefully tweaked and kept up to date as the balance of the game shifts. Not to mention things like combat style (which influences things like unit move speed and other such major pacing things)

[LaughingThesaurus]

I'm curious

There's a game I will tastefully call DRP. It's a game that features a lot of fighting against giant robots called Titans. The thing is, it's also one of those games where you can generally ignore all the power-ups and fight the titan straight-up if you're good enough. The titans also have a lot of old school boss-y elements. They'll sweep lasers across the field from various angles where you have to find the safe spot against, they'll shoot radiation spheres to zone off parts of the battlefield, stuff like that. Now those, those are really fun bosses to fight. In fact, you can even configure a titan such that it gets bigger and more dangerous weapons the less health all of its parts has. That's something you can actually use to make a titan more dangerous the fewer weapons it has left as you blow them up.

Now, from what I know about homeworlds, there are some weapons and the game is absolutely capable of handling, say, sweeping beams. The game could also likely handle drone-like projectiles that do damage when they come into contact with certain ships and stuff. What if homeworld assaults felt more like final bosses in the sense that you actually have to handle your fleet carefully and move deliberately to avoid attacks like those? I mean, as opposed to strictly locking down certain types of things to make them impossible to use. I know that'd be a massive amount of work, that's the biggest problem. If not that idea, you could go for the idea of reducing the intensity of brutal picks, but giving the home command something of a foldout the more core posts die on that world. Make it more multistage, make it actually progress to a point where the "defenseless" command station actually has a bit of a legion of defenses around it once you're able to damage it. That could make things more interesting, and leave room to tone down the brutality and tone down the 'locking down' of tactics while keeping it a challenging fight.

[Histidine]

So, unless someone can come up with a system that will be less likely to "fall apart" in either direction as the game evolves or with an odd RNG roll, what is the least evil? So grindy its boring, so similar to the rest of the game its boring, or so easy its boring?

So easy it's boring, by far.

If you encounter an endgame that's too easy, you finish the game (albeit with a disappointing end) and move on to the next one.

If you encounter an endgame that's too grindy, one of two things happen. You slog through, finish the game (albeit with a disappointing end) and move on to the next one, which is the same as the too-easy scenario except it takes more time and is more tedious.
Alternatively, you give up, quit and leave the game unfinished.

Hmm, this may be an unpopular suggestion, but how about just nerfing pretty harshly the brutal picks, nerfing the core guard posts somewhat, and nerfing the strategic reserves somewhat as a short-term "stopgap" measure until we figure out ways to get "interesting stuff" in, given that lack of difficulty is the least "bad" of the three "fun killers" I mentioned above.
Then we can "turn the dial back up" until we find a better balance of interesting, challenging, and fun.

Oops, I didn't notice the third option in your edit
I'd say "similar to the rest of the game" is the best option, because 1) extending the status quo tends to be fairly "safe," and 2) the rest of the game is fun and interesting (or should be, anyway), so by extension the final battle will be even if it's more of the same.

[TechSY730]

Alright, so how about severely nerfing the brutal picks' "gimmicks" or somewhat nerfing the brutal picks' "gimmicks" but bring down the number the AI can get by 1 or 2; nerfing the strategic reserve a bit (mostly, the regen rate and/or deployment rate); and somewhat buffing the non-brutal pick core guard posts. Not by a huge amount though.

The rational is to make the "unique" things much less of a factor, but making the things that are basically like "Mk. 7 guard posts" even more threatening, like "Mk. 8" or something, as as how to deal with core guard posts is very similar to how you deal with normal guard posts, because how the contribute to the battlefield is very similar to the normal guard posts. This way, the homeworlds become more "samey" for the time being.

Again, this would be a temporary, short-term "stopgap" until we can find better, "less likely to kill fun if the RNG map seeder hated you that day" ways of introducing "uniqueness", then we can start turning up the "uniqueness" knob a bit (while rolling back these other changes somewhat) until a better balance can be found.

[Histidine]

+1

Homeworlds will still have a unique feel due to the "special" core guard posts (including brutals) that don't have normal equivalents, the strategic reserve and special forces, so it'd be pretty good all around I think.

[Diazo]

Okay.

Off the wall thought here that I'm not sure how valid it is but how about turning things on their head.

What the AI homeworlds really are is a strength check, a strength check which makes the early/mid game fun.

What I mean by that is that the fun of the early/mid game is the 'puzzle' element, the figuring out of how to increase your own combat power while increasing the AI's combat power the least.

Then we come to the AI HW which is a strength check because you throw your entire fleet at the HW and there is no really 'puzzle' element there, so how can we change that?

What my proposal is to change this and give the HW it's puzzle element back. This would be an alternate win condition but rather then having to destroy the AI's HW, you have to get a 'disruptor drone' to the exo-galactic wormhole to collapse it, the 'puzzle' challenge being that you have to get the drone to the exo-galactic wormhole, rather then a simple 'destroy everything' goal that the current end-game is.

The done itself would be nothing special (decent but not high health, no cloaking, etc.) and so would require that fleet you've built up over the game to survive long enough to reach the exo-galactic wormhole, but the player is no longer required to simply destroy everything and can handle winning the game in a more 'puzzle' way which I think is more in line with the rest of the game leading up to it. IE: The player has a goal and can destroy as little or as much of the units on the AI HW as they want to reach that goal.

You'd probably have to capture some sort of structure in a Mk IV system to allow construction of this disruptor drone, or capture multiple systems to give your scientists enough data on different wormholes to collapse the exo-galactic wormhole for balance purposes.


The rest of the thread is still valid though, this post came out of a though  I had that the build up to the AI HW attack is this careful dance of building up your forces as quietly as possbile, and then the HW is a simple slug-fest and trying to change the AI HW into something more 'puzzley' to keep the feel more like the early/mid game.

D.

[chemical_art]

I consider the strategic reserve already a pretty effective regenerating defense.


I do think having the strategic reserve should be able to be brought down more when fighting on non AI worlds. Especially core worlds. It would be in the AI's interest very much to remove a human threatball when they on their doorstep.


Reducing the range, if not power, of brutal picks would help a bit, as well as making normal posts more in line of MK VI or VII to make them more fearsome.

[chemical_art]

EDIT2:
So, unless someone can come up with a system that will be less likely to "fall apart" in either direction as the game evolves or with an odd RNG roll, what is the least evil? So grindy its boring, so similar to the rest of the game its boring, or so easy its boring?

As someone else replied, so easy it is boring is better then grind, because both held to a disappointing ending, but more causes a lot more toil and not finished games due to frustration.

[Diazo]

Alright.

As fun as my last post would be, here's something that actually has a chance of being implemented.

First, the AI HW's are strength checks right? Seeing if you've built your forces up to win the game?

Fine, let's make it as short and painless as possible.

Remove all Core Guard Posts from the game and convert them to Core Guard Modules.

Each AI HW now gets a 'Guard Ring' just outside the core force field over the AI Home Command station (so the Guard Ring is not protected by the forcefield).

The new Guard Post Modules now slot into the Guard Ring as appropriate, with the Guard Ring have more module slots as the difficulty goes up.

Everything would then require a balance pass to account for the fact that they are not longer being balanced as solo units, but as overlapping fields of fire with the other Guard Post Modules.

This turns the AI HW's from a long grindy engagement to a short, sharp one. Have you played the early/mid game correctly and built your fleet up enough to take out the guard ring? If yes, you've won the game. If no, you go back and build your fleet up some more. Either way, you learn the answer quickly, you are not stuck bashing your head on a wall (or netflixing while your fleet rebuilds).

The Core Fort would have to go though, shutting down anything not polycrystal would break the scenario I am imagining.

D.

[zleorg]

What about adding a new structure we can capture that on regular intervals releases part of the strategic reserve? If you are able to capture and hold these then you'll effectively be reducing the grind on the HWs. It would also give more use to the new turrets. If you're not able to cleanly deal with the released units it'll build up as threat pretty quickly and kill you, a lot like how the super terminal works. So if they each release 10% if you get 5 you'll have it down to 50% on the HW.

I could see it either taking them straight from the reserve or just releasing waves and reducing the reserve max by a % so you wouldn't have to time your attack to coincide with the wave.

[TechSY730]

So, what would be good value for the "HW reserved" strategic reserves. 40%?

Actually, what is the current system for how the AI is willing to use strategic reserve on non homeworlds?