AI War Beta 6.024-6.025 "The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Buff (or Nerf)" Released!

[chemical_art]

The new enclaves are really nice, they are finally just fine! Just one issue though, I think the mercenary enclave should be removed otherwise I will never ever unlock enclaves mk3 but use mercenary enclave instead.

You can only have 1 merc enclave, and it can produce a max of 16 drones per 7-second cycle.  Unlocking mkIII enclaves lets you have two of those, each of which can produce 12 drones per 8-second cycle. 3 > 2.3   Also, you don't have to spend 2.4M m+c to get the mkIIIs.

Also, with the mkIII unlock if you do happen to get an ASC you get 2 more enclaves that each produce 16 drones per 7-second cycle, and 7.5 is a whole lot more than 2.3

 The thing is that there is a cap on number of drones and it gets reached anyway. I guess in the heat of battle they get replaced faster though. I did play with mk1-mk4 enclaves+merc enclav + all turrets unlocked and it is pretty fun, and to respond to the previous poster, they do real noticable damage. Weird thing though is that when all the enclaves are running (mk1-mk4+merc+all turrets) it lags my system as if i had a 5000+ ship fleet, dunno whats up with that.

I don't find their damage that noticable. For the MK I's, each one can dish out a volley of around 66k if each shot of theirs reaches their target against their specialty. Their health is so low that the time they fire more then once are at the very least matched by the times they don't fire at all.

You get 2 enclaves.

With mk I blade spawners, you do a flat 100k that always hits, and you get 5, and they produce the blades at least 2x as quickly. So in essence they do 10x the damage if the drones hits its specialty, 50x the damage if the drone does not.

While enclaves tend to get a bit stronger over later marks since they can produce more drones, I doubt even then they can overcome an initial deficit of 10x damage when they are fully maxed out with the heavy K investment from turrets.

[keith.lamothe]

The thing is that there is a cap on number of drones and it gets reached anyway.

That's not supposed to still be the case; are you saying that as an observation or an assumption?

[chemical_art]

The thing is that there is a cap on number of drones and it gets reached anyway.

That's not supposed to still be the case; are you saying that as an observation or an assumption?

There isn't a hard cap.

However, due to their very low health in any real combat no more then one "cycle" of drones live.

[TechSY730]

Didn't you say you removed the tachyon emissions from non-tachyon astro trains in a previous version?

I ask because I just noticed many of them still have their tachyon beams. It's a pretty short range, yes, but they are still there.

[JAlfredGoodwin]

 "automatically dump any resources over 1.5M metal+crystal into mercenary production (or building that fort or trader toy, or whatever)"

Dont see that in my CTRL menu... where is it?

[Faulty Logic]

Enclaves are worse than they were before.

Right at the start, they are a little better, because of the free drones.

However, at mkII (with all relevant turret unlocks) 2 each of mkI and mkII are less effective than a single mkII was.

The full fleet of enclaves (without the mercenary) gives a best-case drone count as follows:

MkIV: 9 each.
MkIII: 17 each.
MkII: 25 each.
MkI: 30 each.

If you don't have an ACS, it is far worse (0/8/16/20).
Without mkIII, the enclaves are down to ignorable.

These best-case strengths are significantly weaker than what we had before, and the enclaves rarely operate at full strength.

(And the mercenary costs more than most golems, and some trader toys. I think 600k each would be more reasonable.)

"automatically dump any resources over 1.5M metal+crystal into mercenary production (or building that fort or trader toy, or whatever)"

Dont see that in my CTRL menu... where is it?

It's in CTRS - control group specific - suspend  spending if resources less than.

[TechSY730]

The only problem with the "stop spending when <X" control group option is that ships built at a builder inherit the control group of their builder. This means that my produced mercs will also be in that "stop spending when <X" group, which means they will often be ineligible for repairs (as that logic also suppresses repairs).

And yea, drones are still balanced like they were a small bonus. However, they are no longer a small bonus, but the whole point of a starship type now. Their balance needs to be shifted accordingly.

[Marmu23]

 I was wrong, there is no cap to drone production. As for damage, my game is not the usual situation, but with 2 homeworlds, mk1-mk4 enclaves, merc enclaves, all turrets, (so high AIP game), the drones were doing damage comparable to my other starships while eating a large amount of enemy fire that didn't need to be repaired. I would love them in this situation but the enclaves were shelved though as turning them on during big fights made my system crawl, I'm talking about game performance getting halved in fights involving 2000+ ships, while adding 500 fleet ships instead made no noticeable difference.

[PokerChen]

 When I get time to test the enclaves... but anyway, the drones might theoretically work much better if they spawn in larger numbers per wave, and synchronised.
Having the 10/9/8/7 second-gap is an equivalent situation to the AI sending 5 ships at a time (constantly) to bum-rush your turret lines...

 Assuming that the enclaves are capable of holding their drones in on a friendly planet, I would lean towards a universal 30-second cooldown and 5x of each drone. This way, a full enclave fleet will spawn 240 drones (40 mark-III, 80 mark-II, 120 mark-I) or 400 drones with an ASC. It should also mitigate Marmu's performance case since I'm assuming it's the drone spawning logic that's chugging the system.

 Alternatively, don't the natural enclaves use a system of build points and release drones based on that?

[Lancefighter]

The only problem with the "stop spending when <X" control group option is that ships built at a builder inherit the control group of their builder. This means that my produced mercs will also be in that "stop spending when <X" group, which means they will often be ineligible for repairs (as that logic also suppresses repairs).

i was under the impression that was kinda the point. You spend a lot on repairs on something that cost more. (I'm actually just not a fan of ships inheriting the controlgroup of their docks)

[Kahuna]

Wow awesome patch! Brb gonna restart my current game. I really wanna try Mark IV Bomber+Laser Gatling combo with the new Assault Transports supported by Mobile Space Docks!
Edit: Arrr I always "have" to restart my games.. I'll never finish one >.< think imma stick to this version for a while. So far seems like a good patch to stick to.

[TechSY730]

The only problem with the "stop spending when <X" control group option is that ships built at a builder inherit the control group of their builder. This means that my produced mercs will also be in that "stop spending when <X" group, which means they will often be ineligible for repairs (as that logic also suppresses repairs).

i was under the impression that was kinda the point. You spend a lot on repairs on something that cost more. (I'm actually just not a fan of ships inheriting the controlgroup of their docks)

I understand why this new threshold also applies to repairs. However, even though I don't want my merc docks to produce once I get below what I consider to be a surplus, I do want them to still be repaired, as repairing is much, much cheaper than building new.
Thanks to a dock produced unit inheriting the dock's control group, I can't do this without manually removing the mercs from that control group each time.

Any chance that there could be a per planet version of this new "don't spend when less than <N" option that would apply for dock type constructors on that planet only (as opposed to everything on that planet)? It would work really well with the garrison controls actually.

[keith.lamothe]

Enclaves are worse than they were before.

Our anti-Enclave conspiracy continues! Bwahahahaha!

* keith.lamothe examines a small piece of paper labeled "Reminder: Your Priorities".

Ah.  Hmm.  Well.


On the enclaves/drones, I considered buffing the drones while making the changes but I did a fair bit of testing with them and found their overall impact on the battle to be quite effective.  Largely from their "blunting" effect on the enemy offense and their ability to engage while costing me nothing (thinking more about position than m+c), rather than their offensive punch.

But I suppose I have different criteria for what's worth it

Anyway, I'm happy to change their stats.  Here are the per-ship numbers (the raw numbers, so epic combat style, high caps; also these are mkI numbers with health and DPS as individual units rather than by cap) with some reference points:

ObjectType	Health	BaseDPS	BonusDPS	Hull Type	Movement Speed	Attack Range	Armor Piercing	Shot Power	Shots Per Salvo	Seconds Per Salvo	Bonus	Bonus Names
Bomber	78000	203	1220	Polycrystal	36	4000	0	2440	1	12	6	Heavy;Artillery;CommandGrade;UltraHeavy;Structural
Fighter	82500	255	1530	Light	42	3200	750	1020	1	4	6	Medium;CloseCombat;Polycrystal
MissileShip	78000	245	1470	Artillery	22	10000	0	2450	1	10	6	Light;Neutron;Swarmer;UltraLight;Refractive;Composite
NeinzulLaserDrone	2000	200	1000	Swarmer	45	5000	750	600	1	3	5	Heavy;Refractive;UltraHeavy;Polycrystal
NeinzulMissileDrone	2000	200	1000	Swarmer	45	10000	0	1000	1	5	5	Medium;Neutron;UltraLight;Composite;Polycrystal
NeinzulMLRSDrone	2000	300	1500	Swarmer	45	4500	150	500	3	5	5	Light;Neutron;Swarmer;UltraLight;CloseCombat
NeinzulNeedlerDrone	2000	250	1250	Swarmer	45	3500	450	500	1	2	5	Heavy;Artillery;UltraHeavy;Structural

Each drone has a max lifetime of 30 seconds, losing 1/30th of its max health per second, so here's the max "drone power" "in the air" for each mark of enclave:

Enclave	Cap	MkIDrones	MkIIDrones	MkIIIDrones	MkIVDrones	Cycle Time	Total Mk*Unit Of Drones Per Cycle	Total Mk*Unit Drones Per 30 seconds
MkI	2	4	0	0	0	10	8	24
MkII	2	4	4	0	0	9	24	80
MkIII	2	4	4	4	0	8	48	180
MkIV	2	4	4	4	4	7	80	343

Of course, a mkIV drone dies just as easily as a mkI in practice due to being made of something less durable than wet tissue paper.

Nonetheless, I think it's worth pointing out that 2 mkIII enclaves with full upgrades produces nearly the equivalent of a mkI triangle cap's firepower every 30 seconds (for free, right in the field).  2 mkIV enclaves with full upgrades produces nearly twice that.


Anyway, what needs to happen here?  My first guess here is something like:
1) Make individual drones roughly as durable as individual triangle ships
2) Buff Drone DPS by about 50% to account for the difficulty of full application.
3) Set all marks of enclave to have the 7-second cycle time so they're synchronized (if they all enter battle at the same time, anyhow).  Per-unit this is just a buff to the lower marks, but if synchronization is actually important it's more than that in practice.

Altering the actual drone count, or synchronizing the "waves" across marks without altering the relative number of drones produced would be much more tricky because everything is only producing 1 of each type/mark per cycle anyway, so we can't just increase that by 17% or whatever; it's either double or nothing unless we start spawning stuff unevenly.  Double could be done in theory, but might not be CPU-friendly.

Another alternative is to have the higher mark enclaves produce additional quantities of the lower mark drones (so a mkI produces 4 mkI drones, and a mkII produces 8 mkI drones and 4 mkII drones, etc) but again the cpu's not gonna be too happy about a mkIV producing 16 mkI drones, 12 mkII drones, 8 mkIII drones, and 4 mkIV drones every 7 seconds, times 2 for both enclaves, times 16 because you're Cinth (though that CPU has long since given up, I'm sure).

Yet another alternative is to simply remove the turret research prereqs for the drones, or make it so that the enclaves have a certain base amount of drones per cycle but get more with turret research (the way I did it supports this just fine) though in that variant we're once again up against the question of double-or-nothing and consequent cpu issues. 

Though on the cpu stuff, if people are doing any kind of serious in-the-field production, it seems like they'd already be hitting this harder than they would with drones.

[TechSY730]

I'd rather see something like drones having roughly 50% individual health of a triangle ship for roughly 50% dps of a triangle ship. Of course, exact percentages may vary due to other factors like move speed, range, bonuses, etc, but that seems a reasonable goal.

Or if that would be too weak, how about 50% health, but 75% dps?

[Cinth]

Another alternative is to have the higher mark enclaves produce additional quantities of the lower mark drones (so a mkI produces 4 mkI drones, and a mkII produces 8 mkI drones and 4 mkII drones, etc) but again the cpu's not gonna be too happy about a mkIV producing 16 mkI drones, 12 mkII drones, 8 mkIII drones, and 4 mkIV drones every 7 seconds, times 2 for both enclaves, times 16 because you're Cinth (though that CPU has long since given up, I'm sure).

I haven't had a chance to actually get the enclaves into play yet so no direct observations from me. However, I do have extensive play time with the champion drone bays so I'll share that as it might be relevant.

 8 BB Zenith hulls with drone bays in all the large slots has minimal impact on the games performance.  I've never really had an issue with drone bays here, even if I used split loadouts on the types.
 The only time drones have had an impact on the game were when I loaded bays onto the mod forts.  For whatever reason, having drone bays in the forts makes the game chug along in 3 second cycles.  Play 2 seconds and pause a second.  This is happening no matter how many bays I load up, it's something to do with the fort and bays (I imagine 256 drone bays would be taxing but I don't load that many).