AI War Beta 4.029 Released!

[Zeba]

Jumping in on the make mrs slower bandwagon. The main reason they are so effective is their blazing speed which lets them keep up with even the quickest fleet so you can simply kite out of the defenders range as the mrs keeps everything nice and repaired. Maybe make it a fair bit slower than a mk IV bomber so that if you choose to stick it with your main group there will be no way you can kite anything which for certain heavily defended worlds(especially if there is an eye) is pretty much suicide. This would make tugs useful again too as you would most likely leave it at the beachhead with a small defensive fleet to pull in damaged ships from your main fleet which in turn is going to force you to retreat to regroup once enough ships have been dragged out of your offensive fleet to be healed.

[zebramatt]

One little frustration I have had with my most recent failed campaign, is forcefields occasionally selecting with military ships when a box is dragged round them. I realise this may be a feature not a bug, so that things like MRS etc can be grouped with the fleet more easily, but for forcefields it seems more dangerous than useful. In a frantic (and ultimately doomed) attempt to deal with a CPA, I dragged a box round all my military ships on a planet and told them to move somewhere. Unfortunately this also moved my FF that was over my CS and two power gens. The AI hit them before I could correct for this, killing the planet, and through the sudden loss of 120,000 energy production, defences on my other worlds. Things did not progress well from there.

Please see Mantis Issue #977.

[x4000]

Keith, I'll take a look at that one, thing, then, no worries.

As to making the MRS slower: that's the sort of thing that would then lead a lot of players to still move them around all over the place, and then complain about how slow they are.

I think... hmm.  The whole idea of having mobile healing right in the middle of the battlefield isn't something I was really going for with these, though that's kind of what happened in the end.  The idea was more to be able to have a mobile outpost that you could unpack on the edge of a battlefield, to then heal your guys with, but not something that travels with the main fleet itself.

Being able to constantly repair stuff in battle strikes me as one of two things:
1. Either a case of having to have a lot of micro to get a huge strategic advantage (bad).
2. Or a case of having to just use a specific ship to get a huge strategic advantage (very bad).

With AI War, it was always my goal to have players to have a reason to retreat with their ships if a battle wasn't going well, rather than just letting their guys die.  Having cheaper, sensible repairs is a part of that.  Having those repairs right on the battlefield creates the opposite effect, where you never retreat because you've got on-the-spot repairs and there's thus no sense in regrouping.

It's not a mechanic I intended, and it's clearly being abused, and it's something I intend to change.  Having engineers work outside supply is critical (for planets without supply, such as those that have been nuked).  But, engineers (and harvesters, in an unrelated discussion from elsewhere) should only be able to work on a planet with an allied command station, regardless of the state of supply.  That would make capturing a golem from a dyson sphere world all but impossible, but that's okay.  Or, well, perhaps the rule could be "Can't operate on planets with an enemy command station." Then the dyson/golem thing would still work.  And then that provides some more incentives for capping AI command stations early, if you want your engineers helping your guys on that planet, etc.

And mobile repair stations... hmm, not quite sure yet.  But this whole concept of on-the-go-massive-healing, whether from engineers or mobile repair stations, has got to go.  If you want repairs, you need to retreat-and-regroup.  That's how real battlefields tend to work, and what the core design intent here has always been.  It's strayed, but that was not intentional.  I know a lot of people make use of the current mechanics to great effect, but it's definitely overpowerful and not strategically interesting (just bring the kitchen sink with you, rather than having to make tactical decisions about retreats/regroups isn't cool).

[snrub_guy]

Oops, thought it wasn't a bug, so didn't bother with mantis. Sorry guys. Good to see the FF stuff is being looked at though.

On MRS- Couple of ideas.

1) How about having to "deploy" the MRS. This could take a few seconds, and causes the MRS to become static until "packing" it back up. But it can only repair units when deployed. This seems like the kind of thing you had in mind, but I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.

2) You could always just make the MRS speed drop dramatically on planets not owned by the player? Or make it so it can't repair while moving?

[keith.lamothe]

I was thinking the same thing, that the MRS is not balance-able, really, without making it something totally other.  Battlefield-medic units have been made to work in a bunch of different RTS games, but every successful one I've seen relies on a pretty hard cooldown or mana system to limit the overall healing output of an individual unit.  If the MRS had a finite number of internal build points (or just burned it's own health to heal) that were spent on repairs, it might be balance-able.  But it might be better to just step away completely.

Perhaps a beachhead type stationary unit that can't repair stuff damaged within the last 10 (or whatever) seconds instead of 3 would be good, or something like that.  It depends on how much planet-hopping should be necessary for repairs.

[x4000]

By the way, snrub_guy, thanks for your kind words on 4.0.  Glad you're enjoying it so well.  Indeed, the early versions of the beta were rough around the edges all over the place, but hence it being such early beta.  No worries, glad we agree it turned out well in the end.

I think the concept of having to "deploy" the MRS is an excellent one.  Only being able to repair while deployed is a great concept, and having that process take even something like 30 seconds is really cool and would solve most of my complaints with it.

[Winter Born]

Right now 3 things repair ships:
engies, forts, and the MRS.

engies = cheap, fast to build, often 1 shot kills
forts = small repair radius, no leaving the system (were great with 1 tug assigned to repair everybody in a system)
MRS = large repair radius, tough, moderate speed, high capacity to repair (high repair rate/high simultaneous repair capacity), fits in transports, WH transit

Possible nerfs:
Unable to be loaded in transports -- it can still support border pushes but not deep strikes
Slow speed -- Blob moves correspondingly slowwww if kept with the blob.
Reduce # of active repairs (scale for ship caps)
reduce its health related stats making it easier to kill if it is in the blob


Rework the MRS in a bigger way
Make the MRS the Mk4 engineer unlock or maybe a whole new starship line

Mk1 MRS slow, wimpy, weak, low repair capacity (15 @ a time, scale with ship count) - this would be unlocked @ game start to teach the mechanic
Mk2  slow, stronger, 2x repair capacity (ship cap 4)
Mk3 todays MRS (ship cap 2)
Mk4 system wide repair range, will not fit in a transport (ship cap 1) The king of beachhead support (at a price ).


Edit The concept of unpacking an immobile unit to repair is excelent -- You have to protect it and it cant move with the mob er blob.

[zebramatt]

Oops, thought it wasn't a bug, so didn't bother with mantis. Sorry guys. Good to see the FF stuff is being looked at though.

You should check Mantis regardless - more or less everything makes its way over there eventually!

If the MRS... just burned it's own health to heal... it might be balance-able.  

I was just about to suggest the same thing!

Deployment sounds immensely workable, though!

Are we thinking stationary when deployed, mobile when undeployed?

[Malibu Stacey]

On MRS- Couple of ideas.

1) How about having to "deploy" the MRS. This could take a few seconds, and causes the MRS to become static until "packing" it back up. But it can only repair units when deployed. This seems like the kind of thing you had in mind, but I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.

2) You could always just make the MRS speed drop dramatically on planets not owned by the player? Or make it so it can't repair while moving?

I was about to post the exact same as your first suggestion so consider it seconded  

Perhaps if the MRS was more vulnerable while moving too, say a lower HP regeneration rate when not deployed which reverts back to the current (or higher) once it is deployed? That should tackle the issue of pairing shield bearers with it making it invulnerable.

[Zeba]

1) How about having to "deploy" the MRS. This could take a few seconds, and causes the MRS to become static until "packing" it back up. But it can only repair units when deployed. This seems like the kind of thing you had in mind, but I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.

Haha I was thinking the same thing. This would again make you use the tugs to keep your ships from dying which would force you to eventually regroup to get back your ships.

edit; lol welp this seems a popular idea.  

re-edit; and changing them into a starship class ship that is vulnerable to mass drivers is also a nice idea.

[keith.lamothe]

This would again make you use the tugs

Tugs? What Tugs?

Implementation-wise it could simply be a colony-ship type unit that builds the actual repair station which is a separate unit with 0 move speed and the actual repair stats, etc, and has the ability to in-turn build the mobile packed-up version (which can then transition back, etc).  My guess is to have the building start from half-health to avoid insta-gib, but thus provide a time and resource cost for the transition.

[snrub_guy]

By the way, snrub_guy, thanks for your kind words on 4.0.  Glad you're enjoying it so well.  Indeed, the early versions of the beta were rough around the edges all over the place, but hence it being such early beta.  No worries, glad we agree it turned out well in the end.

I think the concept of having to "deploy" the MRS is an excellent one.  Only being able to repair while deployed is a great concept, and having that process take even something like 30 seconds is really cool and would solve most of my complaints with it.

Yeh don't worry, I understand a Beta is expected to be rough. And you are welcome, I hope LotS is really successful for you guys.

Glad you liked the idea! It would certainly change the dynamic of the unit a bit in the direction you were thinking.

[Winter Born]

a starship line of Repair stations - immobile when deployed to repair things.
increasing Mk levels = faster deploy/pack times, larger repair radius, more repair capacity (# and rate of repair)

[Winter Born]

This would again make you use the tugs

Tugs? What Tugs?

Implementation-wise it could simply be a colony-ship type unit that builds the actual repair station which is a separate unit with 0 move speed and the actual repair stats, etc, and has the ability to in-turn build the mobile packed-up version (which can then transition back, etc).  My guess is to have the building start from half-health to avoid insta-gib, but thus provide a time and resource cost for the transition.

could be cloaked while building

[Zeba]

Tugs? What Tugs?

Wait wat? When were tugs removed from the mrs?? 

Well that shows you how much I used that feature of the mrs it seems..