AI Homeworld Defense

[Draco18s]

For every brutal pick, a node controlling it is found on a nearby core world is found. On planet capture, this node transfer to player. Results in immediate increase of massive aip. If held for long period of time, eventually brutal post destroyed.

I'll wait for the elaboration, but offhand I do not like.  Taking a homeworld already results in a massive AIP spike (the home station is 100, and each core guard post is 10).

[Fluffiest]

Pressed for time, will elaborate later.

Idea:

For every brutal pick, a node controlling it is found on a nearby core world is found. On planet capture, this node transfer to player. Results in immediate increase of massive aip. If held for long period of time, eventually brutal post destroyed.

I think this could be developed into a type of hacking to disable core guard posts, without having to hold the core worlds.

[Toranth]

For every brutal pick, a node controlling it is found on a nearby core world is found. On planet capture, this node transfer to player. Results in immediate increase of massive aip. If held for long period of time, eventually brutal post destroyed.

I'll wait for the elaboration, but offhand I do not like.  Taking a homeworld already results in a massive AIP spike (the home station is 100, and each core guard post is 10).

Remember that as of 6.017, the AIP for AI Homeworlds changed: the Home CS gives +20, each Core Guardpost gives +1 and +10 floor.

I dislike the idea for a different reason.  If you try to take and hold a core world for a long time, certain picks (Core Raid, H/K Factory) become suicidal.  In addition, putting the AI HW on alert for a long time OR *requiring* a 5000K unlock of the Warp Jammer.  Unless, of course, you're already so much more powerful than the AI that you can afford to not care about things like hundreds of Mk IV ships every 3 minutes, H/Ks, and thousands of Mk V reinforcements, in which case why are you bothering with this node-thingy?
Finally, I do not like anything that is a "massive AIP" increase - Again, if you can afford it, then you probably don't need it.

[chemical_art]

Keep in mind this idea is completely optional. Brutal picks still van be killed exactly the same as now.

This idea is meant to provide a siege if the AI manages to get a defense setup that cannot be cobfronted directly.

Some brutal picks naturally resist any attempts at siegrs, but since this method is completely optional I dont really see the problem. The fact that one strategy is not good all the time is an asset, otherwise it would be too strong. Besides, these posts provide less direct defense so needing to to siege is not needed.anyway.

As for.why I suggest AIP instead of hacking, there are a few reasons. If hacking is used, it wouod be too easy to save the resource and burn it for.this method. If you balance it based on this idea, those  who do even a little who did a little hacking elsewhere cant use it. In short it would be a jightmare to balance.
Secondly, the idea is it is meant to cause ai activity as a whole to increase. With hacking, once the.hack o is done then the response is done. Seems a little too small in scope. AIP allows a lot more comprehensive approach, and provides great pressure to finish the game quickly.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Imagine playing a low AIP game, and then just taking that node. You up AIP to closer to 200 where it still isn't making the HW any stronger, and still kill a brutal pick. You can 'save AIP'.

[chemical_art]

Imagine playing a low AIP game, and then just taking that node. You up AIP to closer to 200 where it still isn't making the HW any stronger, and still kill a brutal pick. You can 'save AIP'.

If it imcreases the aip floor as well would it be so bad?

[Draco18s]

For every brutal pick, a node controlling it is found on a nearby core world is found. On planet capture, this node transfer to player. Results in immediate increase of massive aip. If held for long period of time, eventually brutal post destroyed.

I'll wait for the elaboration, but offhand I do not like.  Taking a homeworld already results in a massive AIP spike (the home station is 100, and each core guard post is 10).

Remember that as of 6.017, the AIP for AI Homeworlds changed: the Home CS gives +20, each Core Guardpost gives +1 and +10 floor.

Thanks for the correction.  I may be on the homeworld assault in my game, but doesn't mean I've picked up the new numbers and internalized them.

[Diazo]

Okay.

There's been a lot of ideas tossed out here that are actually quite interesting, but not easy to implement.

To try and do something about this issue, I'm going to ask people what there favorite small changes are, change small enough that Keith could maybe find the time to get them into the next patch  (or two).

First, I'm coming from the position that if you have played the early/mid game right and built up your fleet so it is ahead of the AIP power curve, the HW's should be pretty easy. I consider the HWs a strength check to see if you have played the rest of the game correctly as opposed to some sort of big endgame boss.

In that regard, I'm thinking a nerf to most Core Guard Posts, mostly pretty small but stuff like the Tethudia or Grav Reactor probably need a bigger one.

Or reduce the number of Core Guard posts across the board, but give the AI HW a 100% to spawn using the new mechanic of all guard posts next to the command station. (Not sure if the Core Fort should stay or go in this case).

I don't think either of these actually solve the issue with the HWs that has been discussed, but I feel they would improve the situation.

D.

[TechSY730]

Okay.

There's been a lot of ideas tossed out here that are actually quite interesting, but not easy to implement.

To try and do something about this issue, I'm going to ask people what there favorite small changes are, change small enough that Keith could maybe find the time to get them into the next patch  (or two).

First, I'm coming from the position that if you have played the early/mid game right and built up your fleet so it is ahead of the AIP power curve, the HW's should be pretty easy. I consider the HWs a strength check to see if you have played the rest of the game correctly as opposed to some sort of big endgame boss.

In that regard, I'm thinking a nerf to most Core Guard Posts, mostly pretty small but stuff like the Tethudia or Grav Reactor probably need a bigger one.

Or reduce the number of Core Guard posts across the board, but give the AI HW a 100% to spawn using the new mechanic of all guard posts next to the command station. (Not sure if the Core Fort should stay or go in this case).

I don't think either of these actually solve the issue with the HWs that has been discussed, but I feel they would improve the situation.

D.

Some of these ideas came from others in this thread.

*Nerf the "gimmicks" of the brutal picks. For those with global or near global effects, nerf the "gimmicks" of thoe rather harshly. For the rest, only nerf the "gimmick" a little bit.
*Buff the "standard stats" (normal damage per second and health mostly) of those brutal picks that now seem like they too weak after the above nerf
*Buff the "standard stats" of the core guard posts by 1 "mark" (So if they were balanced sort of like a theoretical Mk. 7 post, make it more like a Mk. 8 post)
*Remove the planetary AI tachyon beams from the AI homeworld, replace with a large-ish but still finite tachyon range
*Somewhat buff the tachyon ranges of the core guard posts and brutal picks
*Create a new brutal pick with a somewhat low spawn chance, which would have the planetary tachyon beams (it would be much, MUCH less durable than the things that used to have it, the AI core eyes. The idea is that it would be tricky but still possible to take it out if you wanted to do cloaking stuff but this was chosen. Again, this would be a rarer brutal pick)
*Increase the proportion of strategic reserve that the AI is willing to use for non AI homeworld defense
     -Extra credit, but not central to the above, have the AI quickly "undeploy" strategic reserve on non-AI homeworlds if the AI homeworld comes under attack. Presumably, the AI would quickly deploy those back onto the homeworlds. THis would prevent excessive cheese by abusing the above too much.
*Cap how much AI strategic reserve, to a fixed percentage of the current strategic reserve strength cap, that can be deployed per second per planet (it should be a low enough rate that you can form strategies involving not having to face the "death ball" immediately, but fast enough that one couldn't cheese around it)
*ONLY IF NEEDED AFTER THESE CHANGES, increase the AI chance to reinforce a AI homeworld even if not alerted
*ONLY IF NEEDED EVEN AFTER THAT CHANGE AS WELL, give the AI a bonus to how many "points" it can spend on an AI homeworld if the AI homeworld was chosen as one of the places to reinforce to that cycle

The only tricky one I can think of is the AI response to the hive golem on the AI homeworlds, which would probably require new logic rather than just tweaking stats.


The idea of these changes is to make the homeworlds be more like "the rest of the game, but more", which was discussed above as a better "quickfix" than making it too easy or keeping it too grindy. These changes try to nerf the things that make the AI homeworlds "different", but buff the things on the AI homeworlds that are basically "beefier" versions of pretty much what you encounter in the rest of the game.

The brutal picks should still remain pretty harsh, but the idea is that ones that "hard counter" a whole class of strategies or ship types will now only "soft counter" them.

[Draco18s]

First, I'm coming from the position that if you have played the early/mid game right and built up your fleet so it is ahead of the AIP power curve, the HW's should be pretty easy. I consider the HWs a strength check to see if you have played the rest of the game correctly as opposed to some sort of big endgame boss.

Ironically, this is easy to hug up with just a few lobby options.

For instance, my current game is likely unwinnable because I put astro-trains on 2/10, which makes trains neigh impossible to intercept and destroy (two of the three stations were only 2 jumps apart and almost adjacent to one of the homeworlds, paired with a bug where a cargo train could delilver to the station it left from if that was the only remaining station).

Both AI homeworlds have a superfort on them protected by forcefields.  One of those I lobbed bombers at (load bombers into transport, add 5 decoy transports, mass-rush the superfort) and did a mere 32 million damage to the outer shield (12%).

Aside from that, I did outdo the AI's power curve.  I have about 120 total AIP and it never got any higher than 220 (never fully ticked over the Mk2 threshold).  I snagged a number of golems, fabricators, etc.  I should be ready to march in and own the computerized jerks, but I can't.

[chemical_art]

I actually would want to push the AI homeworlds themselves to be more independent of the AIP power curve. I want them to be a strength check independent of this, so that way the pressure to get more power (at the risk of AIP and defeat) is tenable. The AI HW already does this somewhat with strategic reserves and core guard posts, and I want that pattern to continue.


More broadly, I feel the AI HW are simply too different from the rest of the game because they hard counter so much. In general, though, if I can manage the worst brutal post the world as a whole tends to fall apart over time.  That is a key problem that I've yet to hear a good solution too, how to make AI HW less anti-climatic. Either they are a stonewall, or a slow grind that accelerates to a rapid victory (relatively, meaning for example I may need 3 waves to wreck one brutal guardpost, 1 to wreck the next, 2/3 of a wave to wreck the next, etc)

[TechSY730]

I actually would want to push the AI homeworlds themselves to be more independent of the AIP power curve. I want them to be a strength check independent of this, so that way the pressure to get more power (at the risk of AIP and defeat) is tenable. The AI HW already does this somewhat with strategic reserves and core guard posts, and I want that pattern to continue.

Not sure how to do this without changing the AI reinforcement system.

I guess you could make the AI not use the standard reinforcement system for AI homeworlds, but I don't really like that idea.

Maybe remove the "bonuses" the AI gets for HW reinforcement (such as, but not limited to, those times it chose to reinforce the AI homeworld even if it wasn't alerted or there wasn't any "overflow" on alerted planets), and instead replace that with a chance to get reinforcements there under a new logic that is independent of AIP.

That way, normal reinforcements still will go up with AIP, but any bonuses beyond what would be implied by normal reinforcement rules would be independent of AIP

More broadly, I feel the AI HW are simply too different from the rest of the game because they hard counter so much. In general, though, if I can manage the worst brutal post the world as a whole tends to fall apart over time.  That is a key problem that I've yet to hear a good solution too, how to make AI HW less anti-climatic. Either they are a stonewall, or a slow grind that accelerates to a rapid victory (relatively, meaning for example I may need 3 waves to wreck one brutal guardpost, 1 to wreck the next, 2/3 of a wave to wreck the next, etc)

Fixing this would require quite a bit of work and brain storming, which is why I suggested for a "stop-gap" to go ahead and make the AI homeworlds more like the rest of the game (nerf the AI homeworld unique "gimmicks" and global effects, but buff those things that are similar to the rest of the game in return). Still anti-climactic? Sure it is. But at least it isn't as frustrating to do.

[Diazo]

More broadly, I feel the AI HW are simply too different from the rest of the game because they hard counter so much. In general, though, if I can manage the worst brutal post the world as a whole tends to fall apart over time.  That is a key problem that I've yet to hear a good solution too, how to make AI HW less anti-climatic. Either they are a stonewall, or a slow grind that accelerates to a rapid victory (relatively, meaning for example I may need 3 waves to wreck one brutal guardpost, 1 to wreck the next, 2/3 of a wave to wreck the next, etc)

As long as the defenses on the HW are static, this is how it is going to be.

That was my original inspiration for the "move everything to the command station" suggestion. Once you get that first post down, you've won the game, it's just a matter of how long it takes, so move all the posts together so it does not take long to finish everything up.

D.

[chemical_art]

As long as the defenses on the HW are static, this is how it is going to be.

That was my original inspiration for the "move everything to the command station" suggestion. Once you get that first post down, you've won the game, it's just a matter of how long it takes, so move all the posts together so it does not take long to finish everything up.

D.

Part of what brought upon my OP though was because defenses hard counter so many things. An implicit part of this problem is that the hard counter tactics are global.

Concentrating all the defenses in one central point doesn't address this, it compounds it.

[Diazo]

As long as the defenses on the HW are static, this is how it is going to be.

That was my original inspiration for the "move everything to the command station" suggestion. Once you get that first post down, you've won the game, it's just a matter of how long it takes, so move all the posts together so it does not take long to finish everything up.

D.

Part of what brought upon my OP though was because defenses hard counter so many things. An implicit part of this problem is that the hard counter tactics are global.

Concentrating all the defenses in one central point doesn't address this, it compounds it.

Implicit in that would be a rebalancing of the guard posts so that they have the desired power when they all overlap like that.

Moving all the posts as they are to be placed next to the command station would make the situation we are talking about 100x worse.

Doing so would both make the game over quicker as you are only fighting a single concentration of AI forces on the HW and allow you to balance the guard posts for always overlapping with the other guard posts. (As opposed to now where the guard posts are generally balanced for fighting solo against the player and so when they overlap is it really scary.)

D.