AI War Beta 5.016, "Hardened Forcefields," Released!

[keith.lamothe]

Yep, this is true.  I figure just making melee ships and fighters immune to the effect would solve most of this problem.

Me too.  Other short ranged ships may need it too, dunno.  All-mobile-ships would be simpler but then there would be things like Zenith Bombards that are quite happy to work like turrets for a whole battle

[x4000]

Yep; if most of the very-short-ranged ships had this ability, then that would be fine.  We could even auto-apply it to anything that has a range under some value and which is mobile military, to take the guesswork out of it.  Less than... I dunno, 4k or 5k or something.  I'm not remembering what the actual range values are nowadays; I still think of them in terms of the old pre-4.0 numbers when it comes to the numerics, since I tend to just look at the visual rings during gameplay.

[zebramatt]

We could even auto-apply it to anything that has a range under some value and which is mobile military, to take the guesswork out of it. 

I was going to suggest the very same thing.

[x4000]

Great minds think alike!  Sounds like we're all mostly on the same page now?

[Lancefighter]

as an addendium, it might even be limited to teh size of the forcefield - anything with firing radius less than the radius of the forcefield? Dont quite recall how large ff are compared to fighter ranges, but iirc fighter range is kinda small.

However in that case it would be less easy to understand why something like that is happening.

In either case, id still prefer if it wasnt some arbitrary range that was used, and instead a property on the forcefields themselves (or certain special units themselves)

Then again, we could totally just go back to the old system, where firing out of a forcefield damaged the forcefield..

[dotjd]

I would absolutely hate for the 25% damage mod to be removed, because of one thing: Spire Shield Guard Posts.

[TechSY730]

as an addendium, it might even be limited to teh size of the forcefield - anything with firing radius less than the radius of the forcefield? Dont quite recall how large ff are compared to fighter ranges, but iirc fighter range is kinda small.

However in that case it would be less easy to understand why something like that is happening.

In either case, id still prefer if it wasnt some arbitrary range that was used, and instead a property on the forcefields themselves (or certain special units themselves)

Then again, we could totally just go back to the old system, where firing out of a forcefield damaged the forcefield..

Agreed, an arbitrary range is distasteful. A computed value based on the forcefield sounds better. However, an arbitrary value is already used elsewhere, the HP requirement for determining what ships get fusion cutter immunity.

[Ranakastrasz]

I would absolutely hate for the 25% damage mod to be removed, because of one thing: Spire Shield Guard Posts.

?

You do know that the 25% damage mod applies to the player only, not the AI, right? They get to cheat

[TechSY730]

I would absolutely hate for the 25% damage mod to be removed, because of one thing: Spire Shield Guard Posts.

Except that none if the AI stuff gets this penalty. It is a human player only penalty. (Though allied to human minor factions might be hit by it too)

P.S. Ninja'd

[zebramatt]

In either case, id still prefer if it wasnt some arbitrary range that was used, and instead a property on the forcefields themselves (or certain special units themselves)

To clarify: the suggestion here is that melee and short ranged units will now possess a special property which makes them immune to friendly force field damage reduction penalties; the range of their weapons will be used as a one-off to determine which units constitute "short ranged", rather than having to go through each and every unit and make a judgement call. That is: nothing will be computed in-game to determine whether the damage penalty applies.

Chris's arbitrary "4k or 5k or something" was just illustrative - I imagine the actual value used to determine which units are short ranged will have slightly more consideration! Basing it off the maximum size of a field, or some logical level below that, makes a kind of sense.

[Cyborg]

I don't really like the multiple forcefield repair being "fixed." We didn't really get anything here besides a huge nerf, and it makes hostile knowledge raiding much more difficult. It also makes homebase defense a lot harder.

Now it actually costs a lot more in fleet rebuilding, as one of the main tenets of beachheads involved this tactic. This already takes long enough, don't you think? If you're going to have caps on units including defensive units, I'm really not sure what you expect defensively. Fortresses(those massive, superexpensive low capacity units)? Or what?

Maybe I'm just disappointed because I use this all the time, and I'm not sure what the alternative is. I suppose in the Spire campaign it's less of a big deal because you have big weapons, but you really feel this change in so many different scenarios. What is the alternative or the expectation?

[keith.lamothe]

What is the alternative or the expectation?

The expectation is that using forcefields should let you hold off a serious attack for a reasonable period of time but not an indefinite one, and that the performance of the forcefields is not dependent on you microing them and the engineers under them (like with the previous tricks of scrapping a generator and speed building it back, or putting it in low power while others take the brunt until it can be repaired again, etc).

There's also the expectation that y'all will not rest if you lack decent defensive options and will provide useful feedback, and that we'll try to find ways (including straight-up buffs to the ffs, as we've already done, but hopefully more creative solutions are possible) to make sure you have those.  I'm not picking up a general feeling that defense is no longer feasible, but in my own experience it certainly is a lot harder.

What difficulty are you playing on, by the way?

[dotjd]

You do know that the 25% damage mod applies to the player only, not the AI, right? They get to cheat

good to know!

[Cyborg]

My solo game is a pair of eights(spire), and my multiplayer game is a pair of sevens(not spire).

I can play with this a little bit longer. I'm just at a loss for how I'm going to do hostile knowledge raiding and stonewalling at my home planet. Hostile knowledge raiding is something I do all the time in nearly every game that I play. It keeps my AIP down, provides some amount of challenge, and generally an entertaining mission for me("Let's see if I can get that knowledge over there given..."). Without double force fields, I would have to blow my fleet. The very thought of rebuilding it all.. I mean, those are those moments where you fire up Netflix because it takes so long.

I don't have a scenario right now where my home planet is getting destroyed, but when I do play the spire campaign, that's not all that uncommon for me to have that happen. I'm not going to get too worked up about this because I think that things are still changing with this, but I will weigh in on this again with a saved game when that happens.

[keith.lamothe]

My solo game is a pair of eights(spire), and my multiplayer game is a pair of sevens(not spire).

Yea, 7 should stay pretty reasonable unless you slip up or aren't prepared for something, etc.  8 might become a bit too stiff and you may need to dial back to 7.6 for a bit to learn new tricks (or just learn them the hard way on .

I'm just at a loss for how I'm going to do hostile knowledge raiding and stonewalling at my home planet. Hostile knowledge raiding is something I do all the time in nearly every game that I play. It keeps my AIP down, provides some amount of challenge, and generally an entertaining mission for me("Let's see if I can get that knowledge over there given...").

Ah, yes, I can see why this would hit you harder than most.  Our intent for K-raiding is that it's an almost-last-ditch thing you do when you're otherwise stuck and can't afford more AIP, etc.  It used to be _much_ easier and some players felt compelled to k-raid _every_ planet they could and thus their games became very grindy.  So for that and other reasons we nerfed the dickens out of k-raiding.  I didn't realize anyone still did it on a large scale   My suggestion is to not k-raid unless you need to, though I understand that it's easier said than done when you're used to a significantly higher ratio of K to AIP.

As for stonewalling at your home planet... yea, I feel that pain too.  Basically it just can't be done to the degree that was possible before because your ff pile has an inherently finite amount of hp.  One of the big reasons I put in nerf on perpetual ff piles is that I was able to stop basically any attack at my home command station doing that one tactic.  Don't get me wrong, those were some of the most epic battles, but that one tactic just felt unbearably cheesy.

Without double force fields, I would have to blow my fleet.

I'm not sure what you mean by "without double forcefields".  You can certainly still pile up as many as you like.  In fact if you spend the knowledge on hardened generators you can have over twice the formerly possible total "ff power".  The nerf was on the mid-battle regeneration stuff. 

The very thought of rebuilding it all.. I mean, those are those moments where you fire up Netflix because it takes so long.

This does seem to be a recurring theme in your feedback, yes   A tricky area, too: we really don't want you to ever have to wait around, but if you can just build a fleet instantaneously then a whole bunch of other balance goes out the window, etc.  Makes me wonder about some more aggressive time-compression options that let you just skip most of the processing if there are no active human vs AI battles anywhere... but that gets into experimental and weird-bug territory, etc.