AI retaking planets

[x4000]

The data center mechanic would be rather exploitable(take the planet, capture whatever you want on that planet, say an ARS, let the computer retake it and kill the data center to get the aip back).  I'd much rather see the replacement warp gate/command center's not give aip.

That's a good point.  This whole thing is something we might explore in the next few months or as part of the next expansion, but there are a number of things above it on the priority list, for now.  Especially important is the new endgame scenario stuff, plus getting the "entourages" for starships/avenger working, and then I do think that having more command station options for both players and the AI would be more interesting, and so on.

[WinterBorn]

Minor Faction Recolonizer Golem

There has been discussion of the AI recapturing planets for over a year. The 1st post I saw was from the Admiral with the idea of having recapped systems get a data center to offset the AI increase of redestroying the com stat and warp gate.
Others have suggested A non AI increasing replacement set of structures.
For the actual recapture mechanic - most sugestions revolve around some kind of AI recolonization fleet and a Colonizer ship.

Perhaps as an alternative -- a new minor faction with its "Recolonizer Golem" -- this faction would attempt to capture a human system for themselves and would be hostile to Human and AI (or maybe just humans). the spawn rate of these recolonizer golems could be similar to Human rebel colonies.

AI recolonizing planets - a group of threads that has been around about a year now.

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,459.0.html
http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2609.0.html
http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,897.msg29181.html#msg29181

I think this could be an very good new agressive behavior for the AI. As it is now if I lose a planet to the AI it does nothing with it. Recolonizing AI's would mean that I could lose a planet and the AI would rebuild turrets, minefields, etc. Forward staging bases could get wiped out and become very hard to retake. I would also expect the AI to rebuild stronger since it had to fight to retake the system.

{SNIP}

[x4000]

I hear you -- sorry, didn't mean to seem like I had missed it.  That's something that would definitely never see the light of day until a new expansion, though.  Golems take Phil at least a day, often several days, to create the art for, and as you can imagine that means that it's not exactly cheap for Arcen to do new golems.

[WinterBorn]

I hear you -- sorry, didn't mean to seem like I had missed it.  That's something that would definitely never see the light of day until a new expansion, though.  Golems take Phil at least a day, often several days, to create the art for, and as you can imagine that means that it's not exactly cheap for Arcen to do new golems.

 LOL no problem, you are very gracious. Your teams support is awesome. BTW I'm having fun participating regardless of the outcome of any of my suggestions or observations. I haven't been involved in field testing since the 80's and I’ve missed it.

As an outsider it seems like what we do on the forum is a bit like the story of the 5 blind men describing an elephant (1 with the trunk, 1 with the ear. 1 with the tail, etc.) Only your side can see the whole animal.  
 
I was just trying to think laterally on allowing the AI to push back on the human in another way without redoing the AI. The retaking of worlds could possibly be implemented as an AI variant (is this the tail), as an occasional CPA variant (ear) or as  a new minor faction (the trunk?)

TY

[x4000]

All good, and I'm glad to hear it works out so well on your end.

But you are right, I think that it is a bit of a disadvantage not being able to see every last internal working of the team, and what costs us money, and all that sort of thing, and every last line of code, for sure.  I definitely try to give as much visibility into that as possible, but there are certainly limits when it comes to things like pay rates for staff, etc.

That's part of why we do the expansions like we do, is that that's our opportunity to do a huge amount of stuff that would otherwise cost us too much money to be feasible.  Personally I use some of my "hobby time" to do extra stuff for AI War, but Arcen is paying a fair bit for all the work that Keith does that we give away as free DLC.  The remastered soundtrack that Pablo is working on is also "free" to Arcen because Pablo is salaried/royalty-pulling, and so it just reduces his availability to work on other things, not causing more of a monthly expense to Arcen, for him to work on music/sound stuff for AI War (same story as with me, in essence).

As things progress, we're aiming to have more of the staff on that sort of salaried/royalty-pulling type model, which is great for staff in general (everyone on the team sharing in the success of the games, etc), but in terms of people like Phil, there tends to be just so much work that he could do, that it's crazy.  There's so much art for Tidalis, and then an even more insane amount for Alden Ridge, and then even more for AVWW, and whenever we do something new with AI War there tends to be a lot of art, etc.  Having Keith on as a second programmer has really helped me not having to split my focus as much as before.  At some point in the future (not anytime soon), we will probably have to do something similar with artists just to even get the future projects done in any reasonable timeframe, given the amount of art there.  But Arcen definitely doesn't have the money for that right now, so it's pretty moot for the time being.

There's always so much more that I want to do than is feasible, but hopefully as our team grows we'll be able to do more and more.  Of course, my experience is that potential scope tends to expand to exceed the available manpower no matter what.

[ShadowOTE]

I'm anything but an expert, but art always seems to take up more time and effort than programming, simply because there's so much to do crammed in at the end of a dev cycle. Game mechanics are, if not simple, at least fairly straightforward. Getting the art right and making everything look right is anything but easy, especially since the game tends to be in a state of flux for the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the development time, so you often see art departments working on concept art instead of details while developers use placeholders until it's stable enough to start making things look nice.

It works for big game developers (Ars Technica has a great article from earlier this week showcasing Blizzard's ridiculous amount of artwork - over 1.5 million pieces for WoW alone!) but they tend to be working on AAA titles and have huge amounts of backing. From what I've seen, smaller studios and Indie game designers tend to have smaller pockets, and usually end up going for stylized art instead of HD uber-graphics, since game mechanics and implementation >> eye candy. That said, stylized art can really work for you if you know what you're doing. Tidalis looks amazing, AI Wars feels grity and has an art stlye that fits the "humanity's last stand" plot, and I'm looking forward to seeing what future Arcen games will look like. Plus, look at what other groups have done: Defcom is amazingly well done because the art style fits the game, World of Goo is charming and cute with a hint of the insidious nature of the world it's set in if you look a bit deeper, etc.

[x4000]

We're definitely really lucky to have Phil, as he's amazingly fast at what he does.  Really, everyone on the team is very fast.  But you're right, art is one of the challenges because of the natural arc of a project.  Fortunately, for Arcen's projects we have them structured in a way that Phil can be working on more or less permanent art the entire time (more things like backgrounds and related objects that won't change early on, then more gameplay-related stuff later in the cycle, for the reasons you mentioned).  So that keeps us out of the weeds concept-art-wise.

But part of it is also that we don't do a heavy amount of animation, which is something we are limited on based on the amount of time that would take, etc.  As it stands, programming tends to last after the art is all done (on things like TZR), but with Tidalis it's about even from the look of it (but with two programmers and one artist).  If we were doing crazier animations and such, our ratios might be different there.  And with Alden Ridge and AVWW, where our core engine will be more mature from the start (not switching platforms during the middle of that one), I think the skew will definitely be towards the art being the limiter there, once again.  I can't guess as to which will be the limiter on the next AI War expansion, but with two programmers working away at that I suspect it would be art just based on that.

So, we'll see.  As things go, we'll make adjustments and so forth as needed, but part of my job as project manager is making sure that nobody is doing too much work that is just going to be thrown away and not make it into the final game.  We all do work like that, of course -- sometimes things just change -- but compared to the AAA studios we're pretty lean and mean on that score, and I think that really helps us hit our ridiculously aggressive schedules.  Even other indie studios tend to take a lot longer on their games than us, but it really depends on the team, their staff level, the amount of art detail they are doing, the number and type of platforms they are pursuing, etc, etc.  So it's really apples to oranges from one studio to the next, I think, but I'm really happy with how things are going with Arcen overall.  I look forward to being able to grow a little bit more and so get a little more done as a team, but even now the amount that we are able to get done is pretty stellar in my opinion.

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, the real hit in the art department comes from animating stuff so it looks realistic. I don't even want to think about how crazy the engine for Crysis 2 must be, let alone how many art assest that game's going to require.

[x4000]

No kidding.

[EaglePryde]

It would be nice to see the AI actually try to retake and rebuild planets but that makes up for some balancing problems.

Most things a player can have are with a cap.

If the AI tries to retake planets then we have to defend better. We have to hold each planet we come by or it will be taken in one way or the other making us even more exposed to an attack. And we can't let planets stay neutral if we normally wouldn't need them or try to leave them alone to save our resources/defences because of a cap. Because every neutral planet would be an option for the AI to gain a good position inside our territory for attacks.

A planet that is normally cleared, can be left alone. But if we give the AI a chance to retake and rebuild we'll have to increase the overall cap or something like this. Maybe there is an even better way to even things out.

I would love to see the AI try to retake systems but that really is something that needs some good amount of brainwork if it should be done right.

[Buttons840]

From a lore perspective I always just considered that the AI was never programmed how to build new command stations.  Then again, lore isn't a good argument for or against because lore can be shaped to fit anything.

I don't care much about this issue, but it should be optional if it is included.

[WinterBorn]

It would be nice to see the AI actually try to retake and rebuild planets but that makes up for some balancing problems.

Most things a player can have are with a cap.

If the AI tries to retake planets then we have to defend better. We have to hold each planet we come by or it will be taken in one way or the other making us even more exposed to an attack. And we can't let planets stay neutral if we normally wouldn't need them or try to leave them alone to save our resources/defences because of a cap. Because every neutral planet would be an option for the AI to gain a good position inside our territory for attacks.

A planet that is normally cleared, can be left alone. But if we give the AI a chance to retake and rebuild we'll have to increase the overall cap or something like this. Maybe there is an even better way to even things out.

I would love to see the AI try to retake systems but that really is something that needs some good amount of brainwork if it should be done right.

That's why I was thinking a new minor faction that would take planets from the human and be hostile to the human - sort of an AI ally -- As a minor faction it would be easy to turn on and off and it doesn't change the programing of the core AI.

[keith.lamothe]

As an outsider it seems like what we do on the forum is a bit like the story of the 5 blind men describing an elephant (1 with the trunk, 1 with the ear. 1 with the tail, etc.) Only your side can see the whole animal.

It's actually more of a morphing phasic creature with a metabolic extension into the 4th dimension...

[zebramatt]

As an outsider it seems like what we do on the forum is a bit like the story of the 5 blind men describing an elephant (1 with the trunk, 1 with the ear. 1 with the tail, etc.) Only your side can see the whole animal.

It's actually more of a morphing phasic creature with a metabolic extension into the 4th dimension...

Hey, you leave my mother-in-law out of this, you!

[WinterBorn]

As an outsider it seems like what we do on the forum is a bit like the story of the 5 blind men describing an elephant (1 with the trunk, 1 with the ear. 1 with the tail, etc.) Only your side can see the whole animal.

It's actually more of a morphing phasic creature with a metabolic extension into the 4th dimension...

Just read the post on the number of ships planned and already avaliable -- I think your description fits and maybe conservative with the number of dimensions thah wave or will have extensions.