AI War Beta 5.076 "Clusters Of Pain" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

Yeah, ok, I think the Dark Spire faction may be in need of some balancing.  I started a 10/10 game, and within an hour, the Dark Spire had conquered the entire galaxy.

Thank you for donating your galaxy to !!Science!!

Definitely a faster snowball effect than I anticipated, will probably drop the per-previous-spawn bonus from 10% to 1% or 0.1% or something, dunno.  Maybe drop the ratio of strength-died to strength-spawned a bit too.

I'd started with pretty low numbers in testing but it didn't really do a lot.

Out of curiosity, was the devourer on?  I expect the interactions of those two could be... devastating.

[Toranth]

Yeah, ok, I think the Dark Spire faction may be in need of some balancing.  I started a 10/10 game, and within an hour, the Dark Spire had conquered the entire galaxy.

Thank you for donating your galaxy to !!Science!!

You're welcome!  Will I be getting some cake with that?

Definitely a faster snowball effect than I anticipated, will probably drop the per-previous-spawn bonus from 10% to 1% or 0.1% or something, dunno.  Maybe drop the ratio of strength-died to strength-spawned a bit too.

I'd started with pretty low numbers in testing but it didn't really do a lot.

Out of curiosity, was the devourer on?  I expect the interactions of those two could be... devastating.

Nope, no devourer this time.  That would indeed get... nasty (excuse me while I go try that).

No, instead what it looks like is that when my Champions entered the system, they killed a bunch of guardians at the wormhole.  This triggered 3 or 4 spawns, which then killed a bunch of other ships, etc.  However, I still think there's a problem in there:  It looks to me like when any single planet reaches the spawn threshold, any planet that has ever contributed to the spawn pool gets that entire spawn's worth of points applied to it.  So when a few DS ships escaped that system, to nearby DS systems, where they killed some ships, spreading the activation.

Maybe that's what you intend, I dunno.  But I would have expected it to only spawn ships for the current planet where things were dying (aka, each Dark Spire system's spawn pool would be seperate).  Having them all linked, and all getting the full spawn strength seems to beg for this to happen sooner or later, no matter what the intensity or upgrade rate is.
Notice it only took 80-ish spawns before 12,000+ ships had appeared.

[Mánagarmr]

Wait a minute...if my logic circuits aren't failing me...doesn't this meant that if the spawn threshold is set low enough the Dark Spire will be in a perpetual snowball? 4 guardians die, prompting a Dark Spire spawn...the spawn itself is either killed, or destroys more ships, prompting a new spawn, and another, and another. All you really need to do is to trigger a spawn somewhere deep in AI space and watch the Dark Spire consume the galaxy? O_O

[LaughingThesaurus]

At risk of spoiling myself for much later, and since I can't experience it myself, what exactly does the Dark Spire faction DO? Preferably, I'd want to know in PM form so we can keep being relatively vague in the thread.
I'm guessing that... the dark spire will destroy any planet, yours or AI controlled alike, until they are eradicated or the whole galaxy has been taken over.

[Mánagarmr]

Sent you a PM, Laughing.

[Toranth]

Oops, yeah, spoiler warning-ish?  I'll try to be a bit vauge, but...

Wait a minute...if my logic circuits aren't failing me...doesn't this meant that if the spawn threshold is set low enough the Dark Spire will be in a perpetual snowball? 4 guardians die, prompting a Dark Spire spawn...the spawn itself is either killed, or destroys more ships, prompting a new spawn, and another, and another. All you really need to do is to trigger a spawn somewhere deep in AI space and watch the Dark Spire consume the galaxy? O_O

As far as I can tell, the spawn itself does not contribute to the threshold, so killing the spawn before it kills stuff (or killing it on a different planet) ends the chain.

Out of curiosity, was the devourer on?  I expect the interactions of those two could be... devastating.

So I went there.  Things were fine for the first 30 minutes or so.  I built up defenses heavily, never left the homeworld for any reason.  The devourer crossed several DS worlds during this time span, without problems.  Things were killed, stuff spawned, then died.  Finally, the tipping point was reached - by accident.  From what I can tell, the Devourer went to a system adjacent to two DS systems.  Each DS system had a bunch of AI Tackle Drone Launchers on it.  The Launchers started producing drones, which attritioned out in a few seconds.  This caused spawns, which killed stuff, which caused spawns, and so forth.

By the time there were 100,000 Dark Spire filling 3/4 the galaxy (the last cluster was behind a Black Hole Machine), the game was so slow that most ships had no orders and basically stopped attacking.  By the time there were 175,000 Dark Spire, even the lowest performance profile and +10 was getting about 50% speed.  This is also about the time ships finally began to enter my home.  Lots of fighting, killing, etc took place there.  Performance issues are causing more trouble than enemy ships by this point.  And that's when the game crashed.

Basically, by the end, every AI reinforcement cycle was causing 1200 DS (40,000 strength or so) to spawn.
EDIT:  Not the reinforcements, it seems, because the logs say "CANCELLED because global ship count >= 125000".  But they were still getting 1200 ships every 2-3 minutes.

[Mánagarmr]

I have a feeling the Dark Spire might need a decisive kick in the balls. xD It sounds slightly OP at present.

[chemical_art]

CANCELLED because global ship count >= 125000"

lol, the more you know...

[Soyweiser]

Perhaps certain types if ships killed should not up the counter? Lets say, reclamation immune ones. (Which would suck as most starships are immune to that iirc).

[Minotaar]

CANCELLED because global ship count >= 125000"

That sounds about like this. What, there was an upper limit? 

[keith.lamothe]

However, I still think there's a problem in there:  It looks to me like when any single planet reaches the spawn threshold, any planet that has ever contributed to the spawn pool gets that entire spawn's worth of points applied to it.

Yes, that's exactly what it does

It's not so bad when the base spawn amount and spawn-growth-rate are low enough, but the general idea is that once a spawner is "activated" it's a permanent liability to whoever holds the system (or is nearby).  By the same token, activating a bunch of them doesn't dilute the spawns (which would make them far more manageable, can't have that!).  The result for cascade-hilarity is quite intentional, though I think I may need to ratchet back on the number of spawners so you're not tripping over them quite so often.

[KDR_11k]

Sounds like you didn't create a minor faction, you created a freaking zombie apocalypse.

[LaughingThesaurus]

^ Shh! Don't give him ideas! There are already zombie ships in the game. The last thing we need is an apocalypse of them. D=
...actually, isn't that the Botnet?

[keith.lamothe]

Sounds like you didn't create a minor faction, you created a freaking zombie apocalypse.

That's the same thing the AI said when we added Fallen Spire.

[Soyweiser]

Sounds like you didn't create a minor faction, you created a freaking zombie apocalypse.

That's the same thing the AI said when we added Fallen Spire.

The Fallen Spire? That is one rocking faction!