- Counterattack Guard Posts are no longer core-game. They're still available as an AI plot if you want them (and there's the AI type that gets a bunch of them either way), but their core-game role is now filled by Warp Relays, which can be very threatening but are much less likely to act as annoying speedbumps.
You think that having a game mechanic, that can allow the AI to ignore both warp lanes (strategic map) and in-system movement (tactical map) at will - basically, whenever a player plays defensively - is going to be
less annoying to the player than the annoyance from the counter attack posts, which are a finite resource seeded at game start?
I can see the new player advice.
- Why destroy warp gates? To prevent the AI from warping in waves there to attack you.
- Why build strong defenses? To defend your systems and stop the AI.
- If you don't do this, the AI attacks your weak defenses or warps waves into your poorly defended areas, where you erroneously left warp gates intact.
- If you do do this, the AI gets to ignore that you've destroyed warp gates and built defenses and warps waves into your poorly defended areas anyhow.
- Unless you defend strongly in depth in all planets that are (1+AI tech level) from the enemy, of course. Or choose not to conquer them in the first place - a buffer zone of hostile planets between your outer and inner ring of defenses, so to speak. Or choose to attack the AI whenever it refuses to attack your defenses.
This seems terrible to me. One thing is
bypassing defenses. This is
ignoring them when they are too strong.
Bypassing defenses, which in strategic terms means obeying the normal topology of the map and risking interdiction, carries risk as well as reward.
AI war has three basic types of movement: a) Free travel between systems along warp lanes , b) Free travel between systems when there's a warp gate at either end (the hypothetical means of the AI sending in fleets from the other galaxy as well as the player warp gates), and c) free movement within each system allowing access to warp lane entrances. I can't help feeling that anything that allows waves that ignore that setup - which includes the current counterattack posts, I might add - weakens the design.
I found the counterattack posts the worst part of the current design because of how they detracted from it and how annoying they were, but the Warp Relays - as suggested - seem fit to beat them by far.
So might I suggest that this change be
shortlived. It is a beta, after all, and it seems to me that attempting to address the fact that some players prefer playing defensively on defensive maps (rather than open maps, that other players prefer) with "if they do it, let's ignore their defenses and erode the value of defensive terrain in general or force them on the offensive" rather than improving the AI's ability to deal with such terrain in a way that is based on the strong underlying topology setup, is a counsel of desperation.
Let me turn to something that is already in the game for the obvious inspiration: Player warp gates. A human player can warp production to anywhere he desires, so long as he's constructed a specific receiving gate in the location - the construction buildings being assumed to come with in-built portals to warp things out. This creates a lane-independent shortcut between two controlled areas, that is vulnerable to interdiction (constructor can be destroyed in transit, gate itself is vulnerable once constructed), and can occasionally allow the player to directly deployed ships in very dangerous territory indeed, so long as it is guarded.
So, how about this:
- If the AI feels that it has been stopped by strong defenses so it shouldn't attack the defended location and has felt so for long enough that it is willing to perform a deep strike bypassing defenses and also feels that it has it is strong enough to beat a system along the warp lanes within range (tech+1) through the defended location, it starts to construct a Warp Relay Constructor. A slow unit with very strong defenses and no offenses and comes in five marks, costs 0 AIP to destroy. It is constructed at mark AIP-tech + WRCbonus (bounded to 1-5), where the WRCbonus depends on circumstances (see below), and the higher the mark, the longer it takes to construct (and the more time the AI has to gather threat).
- When the Warp Relay Constructor is completed, the AI sends the fleet and the Warp Relay Constructor through the warp lane to the defended system and beeline for the wormhole leading onwards to the target system with the fleet guarding it along the way. The fleet is responsible for sticking close to the WRC, for shooting at targets of opportunity with a preference for those that have the WRC in range, and destroying force fields over the target wormhole that the WRC is aiming for at any time as well as shooting any movement inhibitors/tractors, so the fleet can continue following it.
- If the Warp Relay Constructor finally reaches the target system, it moves away from the wormhole towards the edge of the map and unfolds into a Warp Relay, which is immobile and less tough than the constructor.
- Immediately when the Warp Relay is unfolded, both AIs schedule a normal wave to a neighbour of the system the Warp Relay is in, if any of the neighbours of the system is human controlled and not jammed. After this it functions as a normal (but very tough) Warp Gate, that costs 0 AIP to destroy.
- If the Warp Relay Constructor does not reach the target system, this is remembered. Every time a Warp Relay Constructor fails to reach its intended system to deploy, WRCbonus increases by one.
- Every $interval (an hour? two?), WRCbonus decreases by one.
- Black Hole Machines can no longer be bought from the Zenith Trader by the player and are destroyed upon planet capture, making them an AI only toy.
I don't have a real feel for what stats such a Warp Relay Constructor - or the deployed Warp Relay - should have to make this a challenge, but off the top of my head, this is the sort of thing I'm thinking of (and may for all I know be completely crazy, but since when did that stop anybody from making wild ideas?)
Mk1: 100 million HP, 50,000 armor, speed 40. Immunity to instant shots, tractor beams, and force fields (can move through them) as well as all standard starship immunities such as paralysis. Obviously cannot be swallowed either. Basically, any really simple hard counter is out.
Mk2: 200 million HP, 100,000 armor. Additionally gets a several hundred million point shield.
Mk3: 300 million HP, 200,000 armor. Additionally gets immunity to slowing effects.
Mk4: 400 million HP, 400,000 armor. Additionally gets protector starship style active defenses.
Mk5: 500 million HP, 800,000 armor. Additionally increases in speed to 60.
EDIT: If it needed to be
really nasty, it could cannibalize friendly ships within a certain range to repair itself. But that would be evil.
The Warp Relay, when deployed, gets half the armour and double the hitpoints.
The ideal approach for the player is thus to destroy the Warp Relay Constructor while it is under construction (and vulnerable due to not being active or at full health), destroying it with his fixed defenses, or, worst case, interdicting it during transport as it tries to bypass one or more of his systems in order to reach its destination along the warp lanes, and he has all his standard toys to do that, but if it survives the trip to deploy, then he may have problems.
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