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

[Lancefighter]

most of the time in a situation where a planet with a forcefield is being attacked I will have spacedocks set to repeat build the smaller stuff (fighters/autobombs) frd-ing at the planet in question; its often not a matter of micromanagement for me because of that. Of course, if the fighters decide to be stupid enough to stand around under the forcefield, that just gets annoying (which I assume will happen now that bombers can comfortably sit in the space where my forcefields are)

On the note of the 25% damage from under ff, perhaps the 'normal' forcefield line should retain that (actually probably would need more hp, to be a pure defensive forcefield) whereas the hardened ones (I am assuming they are smaller in size, and as mentioned dont get smaller through damage) become a sort of 'offensive-defensive' option; they should have plenty of place to put turrets under or put on top of a z-reactor or fabricator, but not quite enough space to put a commandcenter+econ structures+factories etc... 

edit; This might require making economic structures considerably larger in actual size, come to think of it - If a commandcenter was something along the lines of 1k pixels huge, it becomes slightly more difficult to defend with a forcefield of radius 500, but itty bitty turrets would have no issue being clumped under there /edit

Not really sure if that makes enough of a distinction though... would need slightly deeper looking at than what I've given it atm


Random side note; What units can actually deal 1m+ damage / have sufficient apen to deal more than 20% damage to hardened shields? As it stands, it seems to be just a better shield overall - 1/5 damage taken on 25% the hp comes out to 125% the effective hp

[mindloss]

I suspect it will turn out to be an issue, but maybe not; might as well give it a bit of real world time and see the frequency and severity of actual issues it causes (or doesn't). Would have a better idea how to resolve it then, too.

I've seen players put literally 500 turrets under one set of overlapping forcefields, and then drive back 12,000 incoming ships without any mobile ships to assist.

I don't really like it, seems hack-y and artificial, but just to throw it out there: turrets get the 25% redux and everything else doesn't? If that scenario is the major concern that could work...

On the defensive side, there is NO reason to have piles of forcefields on your side of the wormhole on top of the wormhole.  ... The problem is when the AI ships start inside the forcefield to begin with, and then don't have a reason to leave.  That's something that should be avoidable in most circumstances.

Agreed, but it's bound to come up. This one wacky example I'm playing with now aside, I routinely build FFs adjacent to wormholes/com center/bonus buildings... occasionally those buildings are around hostile wormholes, and even when they're not, you'll have baddies popping through during CPA mayhem. If a bad guy does come through dead in the center of your FF, and makes your FF top target, sometimes you'll be able to handle it fine, and sometimes all you'll have is fighters or whatever and you'll kick yourself if there's the 75% penalty. That, and then you have your general mobs of guys and FRD chaos... overall there's often going to be a small fraction of fire that ends up getting reduced. Well, that's my prediction.

But like you say, may be a non-issue at the end of the day.

Random side note; What units can actually deal 1m+ damage / have sufficient apen to deal more than 20% damage to hardened shields?

Go to reference tab, pick something like Wormhole Guard Post, sort by Shot Damage Them > Me, turn off filters. Looks like several dozen do 1m+, but mostly Spire (storyline?) stuff. There are a few real-world examples though, and like Keith said, you could get Armor Rotters or something which could take them down a peg...

[keith.lamothe]

On the defensive side, there is NO reason to have piles of forcefields on your side of the wormhole on top of the wormhole.  It literally accomplishes nothing except preventing AI ships from leaving your planet if that's what you want to do.

Blocking retreat can actually be really useful, and it could also be marginally helpful to have your tractor and gravity turrets _right_ there (and thus advantageous to have the ff's right there to cover them), but that shouldn't be a major factor.

Anyway, I think play experience feedback is the main thing needed; basically all balance changes can seem either good or bad (or both) "on paper".

But taking the 75% reduction off of fighters-protected-by-forcefields would make fighter-to-counter-bomber-attacking-my-forcefield micro less needed   We'll see.

[Mayjori]

Well, one question now is whether there's still a need for the 25%-damage-output-when-under-an-ff rule.  It's now much harder to indefinitely sustain the fortified position.  On the other hand, it does definitely majorly increase the survivability of offensive turrets and you'd basically never want to _not_ put them under an ff if there's no such reduction.

Another thing would be to increase the range of the fighter and whatnot, but then it would just be a micro question of whether you actually kept them out from under the field, etc.

Id go for removing the 25%, especially with the FF nurfs and since from the sounds of it you will be nurfing the hardened shields anyways. In reality the penalty seems to be more of an annoyance than anything, if you are too concerned about the turrets living to long, then keep the damage penalty for the turrets, but everything else can shoot full strength.



Edit: bah responded with same idea as mindloss before i had read as far as his post, only I like the idea, dosnt feel hacky to me

[TechSY730]

Here is my rational. I can understand why the 25% damage for things under strong forcefields is in place for stationary weapons (like turrets), to prevent a near completely unfair, impenetrable defense by putting a ton of turrets under a strong forcefields (like the AI did back when it could use turrets). I could tolerate the 25% cap for mobile ships under strong forcefields as well for one reason, (most) enemy ships cannot go inside a strong forcefield, so there is little reason why you would need your fleet inside a forcefield. Yes, it was annoying to micro, but at least there was an annoyance for both the attacker and the defender. Now that strong forcefields cannot keep enemy ships out, the situation seems unreasonable.

I can see two ways to make it reasonable,
1. Make it that ONLY stationary objects with weapons and fortresses (as they are basically like giant turrets) get the 25% damage cap under a strong forcefield. (Also, note this in their ship attributes list, as it would now be the exception, not the rule)
or
2. Revert the change of the last version, and have strong forcefields prevent enemy ship from entering it.

I have to admit though I have not played very much in 5.016 yet, so all of these things are "on paper" discussion. I should see how badly my mobile defense is hurt by this change before I push much more on this.

[Hearteater]

The only case where the 75% reduction bothers me a little is on melee ships.  They are forced to take the damage penalty to attack enemy ships within the shields area.  You cannot fix that with micro.  Conceptually, the enemy ships aren't inside the shield, so ships attacking them at melee range really shouldn't be either.

A fairly clear solution would be to make it so melee ships lose shield protection and damage reduction for X seconds when attacking an enemy while under a friendly shield.

[zebramatt]

Question: when self-destructing units attack a force field, do they now blow up on the edge of the field or on the generator itself?

[x4000]

Question: when self-destructing units attack a force field, do they now blow up on the edge of the field or on the generator itself?

I'm not sure.  Probably on the outside still.

[KDR_11k]

The only case where the 75% reduction bothers me a little is on melee ships.  They are forced to take the damage penalty to attack enemy ships within the shields area.  You cannot fix that with micro.  Conceptually, the enemy ships aren't inside the shield, so ships attacking them at melee range really shouldn't be either.

A fairly clear solution would be to make it so melee ships lose shield protection and damage reduction for X seconds when attacking an enemy while under a friendly shield.

Melee units can probably just be made immune to the damage reduction without further penalties, if the AI doesn't want to get shredded by melee units in a forcefield it shouldn't park its units on top of the FF.

[x4000]

A radically different way to go could be to remove the damage reduction completely, but to make it so that any time a unit attacks another unit from under a forcefield or fires a shot from under a forcefield, they lose the ability to be protected by that forcefield for 10 seconds or so.  That could be problems all over, though.

[TechSY730]

Just out of curiosity. How much refactoring of the logic would it take to move the FF damage reduction from globally on everything to on most ship types except those with an immunity (or inversely, on no ship types except those with that attribute)

[x4000]

Just out of curiosity. How much refactoring of the logic would it take to move the FF damage reduction from globally on everything to on most ship types except those with an immunity (or inversely, on no ship types except those with that attribute)

Adding an immunity for certain ship types would be about two or three lines of code, plus one line for each ship type we wanted to be immune.  In other words: incredibly trivial.

[TechSY730]

A radically different way to go could be to remove the damage reduction completely, but to make it so that any time a unit attacks another unit from under a forcefield or fires a shot from under a forcefield, they lose the ability to be protected by that forcefield for 10 seconds or so.  That could be problems all over, though.

For mobile ships, that would be fine. However, oftentimes, players put stationary structures under forcefields because you want them to be protected, even if they fire; the protection from the forcefield is worth the damage output loss in that case. For example, OMD and Ion cannons.

EDIT: To be a little clearer, I do not think this new ff "unprotect" mechanic should apply to stationary stuff. Possibly not to fortresses too, because of how expensive they are.

[x4000]

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

[TechSY730]

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

Here is one concern though. If fighters get an immunity to the ff damage reduction, what about the other short ranged ships? It seems like a slippery slope of requests to make the other short ranged ships (especially other short ranged counters of ships that get a structural damage bonus) ff damage reduction immunity.