AI War Beta 7.021-7.022 "Champion Alter-Ego" Released!

[Faulty Logic]

Emo Golem

It's sad, and so projects its pain onto everyone around it. With an array of energy-burst cannon.

I'm quite happy to adjust the response, but what specifically seems off about it?

The main cost of having a champion isn't the number or rate of nemesis frigates, but their existence at all. It means you can't hold outposts reliably, even if you're really careful with the AIP:champ size ratio.

And that cost won't go away, while the benefit decreases sharply.

Then again, there are plenty of ways for players to self-balance, and the current normal champ deal is too good, so I'm not sure what should be done. But alt certainly looks like a worse deal than normal.

Does anything survive large engagements?

I'm guessing it's mainly a targeting priority thing, rather than a stats thing.  The Armored is a beast numerically.

Nothing will reliably survive exo-slugfests, and nothing should, but that wasn't what I was talking about. I expect the Armored to do a little better against, say, a normal planet's worth of angry ships, or a small wave.

[Kahuna]

Yep and since she cuts herself (attrition) a new unit should be added: SSRI Drone. Only these SSRI Drones would be able to repair the Emo Golem.

[keith.lamothe]

The main cost of having a champion isn't the number or rate of nemesis frigates, but their existence at all. It means you can't hold outposts reliably, even if you're really careful with the AIP:champ size ratio.

We could have alt just not do the nemesis frigates (or at least not the offensive ones) that way, then.

Perhaps when alt's on it just periodically launches a (pre-announced) big exo-wave of enemy champs that heads straight from an enemy HW to one of your HWs?

That sounds a bit easy-on-the-player to me, but that kind of idea is fine if it provides a reasonable counterbalance so the players don't feel like they're getting the champs for free, but also don't feel like they can't do distributed defense or outposts.  Though perhaps some would be sorry to see the "nobody expects the nemesis inquisition" effect not carry over to alt.  It's mainly a question of what's the most fun.

Then again, there are plenty of ways for players to self-balance, and the current normal champ deal is too good, so I'm not sure what should be done. But alt certainly looks like a worse deal than normal.

Yea, the normal approach is a really good deal for the player as long as they don't beeline to BB at AIP 10 or whatever.  But only for players who want to deal with the nebulae, which is a smaller set than I had anticipated.

One thing I want to avoid is "well, I'd have more fun playing alt, but normal is more favorable to my chances to win, so I'll just suffer through the nebulae".  That would be very much missing the point.  I do hope to be able to make the nebulae more fun (some way of influencing ally behavior, etc) but ultimately they represent an amount of effort/time that some players just can't add on top of the normal game without diminishing the overall fun of the game.

Nothing will reliably survive exo-slugfests, and nothing should, but that wasn't what I was talking about. I expect the Armored to do a little better against, say, a normal planet's worth of angry ships, or a small wave.

Does anything survive those?

Champs, I guess?  Possibly some of the bigger FS capital ships, but presumably those are never deployed without screen.

[Fleet Unity]

I for one like the nebula missions I think they are fun maybe its just me but what I usually do before I do any of them is set up auto defenses like fortress , ships ect. But I am also careful as I know while you are doing the missions alone, but with another player you can sometimes be defeated by those shadow frigates or other ai ships sent in response to the champs going thru the nebula and alerting planets if you are not watching over your planets. I have lost a few times when I was too busy doing the missions and not watching the main game but I learned from this and try to set up as many turrets, mines, ect as I can until I am done with the missions. Also doing one right after another is a sure fire way of getting overwhelmed. Also the AI always seem to attack the planet I last had my champion on the second they know I may not be able to get it back in time smart ai I always thought it would be nice if there were more nebula missions and allies as well as other special items you could unlock. I also like the stories about them they were good. I also like the extra ships you get to build and the other rewards you can unlock. It may take awhile but in my opinion its worth your time if you are careful and if your team works as a group as if you have more than one player.

[Faulty Logic]

Does anything survive those?

Not without tactics. But it isn't really a problem for other golems because they have other uses.

It's more of a problem with the armored because it doesn't really have utility outside of get-in-and-smash. So it should be really good at smashing. And part of that is surviving the requisite hammers to the face. It's also slooow, and short ranged. I wouldn't want either of those to change, though.

I know you can't buff the health before a lot of work scaling everything back, but could you, I don't know, make its armor apply twice, give it vampirism/low self-regen time, or have it deploy little armored decoy drones? The other  thing would be to just really crank up the dps so things don't survive long enough to kill it.

We could have alt just not do the nemesis frigates (or at least not the offensive ones) that way, then.

Perhaps when alt's on it just periodically launches a (pre-announced) big exo-wave of enemy champs that heads straight from an enemy HW to one of your HWs?

Ooh, that would be cool.

That sounds a bit easy-on-the-player to me, but that kind of idea is fine if it provides a reasonable counterbalance so the players don't feel like they're getting the champs for free, but also don't feel like they can't do distributed defense or outposts.  Though perhaps some would be sorry to see the "nobody expects the nemesis inquisition" effect not carry over to alt.  It's mainly a question of what's the most fun.

As always, I think the most fun is adding customization. So, in addition to whether they want nebulae, players could choose whether they want nemesis exos or threatfleet nemeses. Or both, or neither.

I'd also add the option to get the mod forts to the main unlock routines in addition to the hull sizes and new hull types, and a set of seven minions to every fabricator, to avoid

well, I'd have more fun playing alt, but normal is more favorable to my chances to win, so I'll just suffer through the nebulae

[vigilo confido]

You mean the OMD will not oneshot mark V plasma siege starships from the AI anymore? Something tells me you noticed the fine details in my desynced game Keith.

[RockyBst]

Anyway, the caps are probably fine as is (though maybe it needs to be more like 16/8/4/2/1 so it's a more obvious half-each-mark).  And the higher-mark ones requiring such rarer elements is actually pretty cool.  But I think it'd be better to balance their health/dps quadratically (if that's the word; mk N gets mk N-1 stats *2) rather than linearly.  So a MkV would have 16 times the health and DPS of the MkI.

That only addresses the combat-oriented ones.  Which aren't many.  But the non-combat ones can be given special abilities like the MkV Jumpship's immunity to blackholes, etc.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. As it stands at the moment you can get 8*Mk. 1 plasma starships at once, but only 1* Mk. V plasmas. A decrease in utility for cost / rarity as you get higher doesn't really make massive amounts of sense. I'd only rebalance it for these two though, I think the rest of them are pretty much spot on already.

We could try that.  I went with the railcluster's stats, really, and figured it was a tough-as-nails enough combatant that having a ship that was individually as tough as a cap of railclusters (plus other abilities) would be worth using

So it's kind of halfway between a "keepaway" unit and a "just kill them" unit.  Which perhaps is not a middle ground that works, but we'll see.

On reflection, considering it has starship level health, I can definitely see a niche for them as part of a distributed defence. A mil 2, mini forts and one of these should be able to hold off 2-300 ships. I'm just so used to the ion blaster being wet tissue paper that you had to micro away after its first salvo so that it didn't get completely over run. Of course, it's still going to go down in a single salvo from one of the new black widow golems

But yeah these seem like a decent reptite soaker, especially when you have roaming enclaves / wardens on.

[Aeson]

But I think it'd be better to balance their health/dps quadratically (if that's the word; mk N gets mk N-1 stats *2) rather than linearly.  So a MkV would have 16 times the health and DPS of the MkI.

Doubling the stats with each increase in mark is exponential growth as the stats work out to (Mark I stats)*(2^(Mark level - 1)). Quadratic growth would be something along the lines of (Mark I stats)*(Scaling Multiplier)*(Mark Level)^2, which for a scaling multiplier of 1 would actually result in higher mark ships being better than they are currently, given that the highest mark remains at 5 (Mark level squared gives Mark 1/2/3/4/5 ships values of 1/4/9/16/25 times the 'strength' of the mark I version, as opposed to the current model of 1/2/4/8/16 times the strength of the mark I version; if you extended things to seven or more mark levels, you'd see that which scaling formula results in greater power switches at the higher end of the mark numbers, with mark 6 being about equal under either formula (32 times the strength of the mark I under the exponential system, or 36 times the strength of the mark I under the quadratic system)).


I'm somewhat sad to see the Spirecraft Ion Blasters go, as conceptually the idea of the mobile Ion I-V was interesting, but since it never really worked that well I don't know that I mind too much, and the translocator seems like an interesting replacement for it. Might be interesting to see a true mobile ion cannon show up as a superweapon at some point, if infinite range would have corrected the Ion Blaster's shooting issues.

[chemical_art]

Glancing at the notes, I notice that for the alter-champion notes that the other rewards (extra ships, resources, K) are not included in any way. Is this intentional or am I missing something? I don't feel like experimenting with the new mode if it is still nerfed compared to the original in such a large way (thus, I cannot confirm if it is true, either)

[Toranth]

I'm somewhat sad to see the Spirecraft Ion Blasters go, as conceptually the idea of the mobile Ion I-V was interesting, but since it never really worked that well I don't know that I mind too much, and the translocator seems like an interesting replacement for it. Might be interesting to see a true mobile ion cannon show up as a superweapon at some point, if infinite range would have corrected the Ion Blaster's shooting issues.

While I'm also a little sad to see them gone, low range was too weak, while infinite range would be almost too powerful.  Also, there was never a use for Mk I or Mk II Spirecraft Ion Blasters, since there was so little Mk I or Mk II stuff floating around in the mid-to-late game.  The knockback version starts being useful at Mk I, which is new.

Although I think starting at Pysite may be a little high now.  Implosion and Siege Towers start at Reptite, for comparison.  Before, it made sense because the Mk V Ion Blaster had to be Titanite for how powerful it was.  But now?

[keith.lamothe]

Glancing at the notes, I notice that for the alter-champion notes that the other rewards (extra ships, resources, K) are not included in any way. Is this intentional or am I missing something? I don't feel like experimenting with the new mode if it is still nerfed compared to the original in such a large way (thus, I cannot confirm if it is true, either)

Considering that the normal-progress form of champions is frankly overpowered I didn't think that giving it all to the player without having gone through the challenge of the nebulae could be done without just breaking the balance altogether.  At least not until we have a better idea of what the counter-balance should be with the alt-progression.

I mean, sure, I could have it throw more response stuff in return, but those would be some pretty big hammers get thrown at you.  The impression I was getting from the requests was that people wanted a way of playing with the champion that didn't necessarily involve changing the fundamental gameplay (as nebulae do, at least by inserting significant chunks of different gameplay throughout the game).  So having exo-level responses seemed contraindicated, as that changes the playing field substantially.

That said, if the alternate option is not interesting to you then that's fair enough.  Feel free to hold off until it's more mature

As always, I think the most fun is adding customization. So, in addition to whether they want nebulae, players could choose whether they want nemesis exos or threatfleet nemeses. Or both, or neither.

I'd also add the option to get the mod forts to the main unlock routines in addition to the hull sizes and new hull types, and a set of seven minions to every fabricator

We do err heavily on the side of giving more options rather than less, but we also have to keep it at least somewhat under control or it gets to the point where people don't have the mental energy to deal with the lobby (in a way that generates a good experience, at least).

So I don't want independent toggles for all the various parts of the champion rewards and responses.  Not that you were specifically suggesting that (I think), but just to explain where I'm coming from.

But potentially the alt toggle could be converted to one of those 1-to-10 things (default 1, I think) where:

- XP gain per knowledge is multiplied by intensity

- X*10% more progress towards unlocks per capture (so capturing 2 ARS's on intensity 5 would actually result in 3 rounds of unlocks, rather than the 2 they do now, etc)

- Add a %-progress-shown periodic "champion exo wave" where it just throws a chunk of champions from an AI HW directly at one of your HWs, but on Intensity 1 this is pretty small

- Have the offensive-threat nemesis spawns not occur below Intensity 5, and have them ramp up from there

- Have 1 Mod fort (randomly chosen from the 3) be added into the unlock rotation at Intensity 2, 2 Mod forts at intensity 4, and all 3 at intensity 6

- Have 1 (per intensity) of the "you can build our stuff from here" starbases (chosen at random from the splinter factions, but unique until all are chosen) spawn near your home command station at some point in the unlock rotation.  Possibly with the ship caps adjusted, not sure if that will be needed.


That wouldn't add in the Dysons or Enclaves that get rewarded to you from those two specific nebulae scenarios.  If that's a big deal I can probably work them in somehow as just one-time spawns on the home command station.

Thoughts?

[keith.lamothe]

While I'm also a little sad to see them gone, low range was too weak, while infinite range would be almost too powerful.

Yea, the mechanic just didn't work for them, so I didn't took an easier route that didn't involve making it work.

That said, some kind of Ion Golem that's supposed to be a giant individual ship (with a suitable rate-of-fire of MkV ion shots, infinite range) could be interesting.

Although I think starting at Pysite may be a little high now.  Implosion and Siege Towers start at Reptite, for comparison.  Before, it made sense because the Mk V Ion Blaster had to be Titanite for how powerful it was.  But now?

Oh, sure, I honestly didn't give thought to the asteroid costs of either the Siege towers or the Ions in these shifts.  Partly because it involves changing or adding unit definitions for each "recipe".  But we could bump the Translocators down to Reptite-for-mkI.

[chemical_art]

Thoughts?

Well, you had said earlier ...

One thing I want to avoid is "well, I'd have more fun playing alt, but normal is more favorable to my chances to win, so I'll just suffer through the nebulae"

Well, those mini-forts, etc, not existing already runs into this problem. Now, saying how you manage the counter to these is OK, but right now not having X bonus in the alternative form already makes the normal form better as long as you can micro. At least, it seems to me. Because the "costs" of nemesis still exist, right? So you still pay the "costs", but with less "benefits"

The idea of a "champion" intensity toggle is interesting, with greater toggles causing greater results, but it seems obtuse. There will be "optimal" values which cause max reward per intesity with other "minimal" rewards per intensity. Could be tricky to implement, and is completely unlike the others which toggles either pain or pleasure (and not both). THAT said, it feels like a more "mature" toggle.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, those mini-forts, etc, not existing already runs into this problem. Now, saying how you manage the counter to these is OK, but right now not having X bonus in the alternative form already makes the normal form better as long as you can micro. At least, it seems to me. Because the "costs" of nemesis still exist, right? So you still pay the "costs", but with less "benefits"

My intent was to give fewer rewards for lower cost, with it still being a good deal but with less micro.  But intent and effect are not always the same

[quoteThe idea of a "champion" intensity toggle is interesting, with greater toggles causing greater results, but it seems obtuse. There will be "optimal" values which cause max reward per intesity with other "minimal" rewards per intensity. Could be tricky to implement, and is completely unlike the others which toggles either pain or pleasure (and not both). THAT said, it feels like a more "mature" toggle.[/quote]Very good point about the other spinners not scaling both benefit and cost.  I'd rather not split this one but I could see it being a reasonable thing to do.  Would probably want to move it to the minor factions thing anyway.

That way, if one wanted, one could get the Nemesis stuff without the Champions (or vice versa).  Not that any of you ever add gratuitous extra pain to your games.

[chemical_art]

Well, those mini-forts, etc, not existing already runs into this problem. Now, saying how you manage the counter to these is OK, but right now not having X bonus in the alternative form already makes the normal form better as long as you can micro. At least, it seems to me. Because the "costs" of nemesis still exist, right? So you still pay the "costs", but with less "benefits"

My intent was to give fewer rewards for lower cost, with it still being a good deal but with less micro.  But intent and effect are not always the same

Well, part of the confusion for me the heavy "cost" of champions are the nemesis. They only get nasty if you pursue an ultra-low heavy AIP game. The alt-model already prevents this with it tying into K and other unlocks. So removing benefits due to lowered cost just seems like nerfing champions, since you have the higher aip anyway.

Removing the "cost" when the cost would not exist anyway is not a perk worth losing benefits over.