AI War Beta 7.029-7.031 "Extermination Protocol MkII" Released!

[Lancefighter]

Hey so silly other idea, economic stations could project some sort of force multiplier to engineers ors omething. Or have some really big engineer gun of their own. solves the whole 'gosh my starships take hours to build withthis 30k metal/s scrap I'm getting'

which reminds me, thats a super awesome buff to economic stations in my other proposal! each resource node could project a engineer beam thingie!

[chemical_art]

Hey so silly other idea, economic stations could project some sort of force multiplier to engineers ors omething. Or have some really big engineer gun of their own. solves the whole 'gosh my starships take hours to build withthis 30k metal/s scrap I'm getting'

I really like this. It saves engineers, which is always a good thing.

[Draco18s]

BTW, is there any reason why we can't boost the health on all three?  They're the only unit in the game with sub-magnitude-five hitpoints.  Its so low that a single plasma siege splash kills a mk1.

(I think mk1 on mk1 leaves the station at 49.99% health from just the splash-on-forcefield damage)

[TechSY730]

The problem with many of these ideas for buffs for the Economic station is that they don't really fit under the idea of "economic" (for exampls, things like repair/assist beams or speeding construction sound more likenlogisitics related, IMO), which is beginning to lead me to believe that maybe a rename is in order. For that matter, maybe a rename for the logistics too. Maybe to terms that reflect passive support ( former econ station) and active support (former logistics) better that don't contain semantics as much.

I could get behind a bit of a health buff for the command stations, so long as the home command station remains the most durable (even more durable or at least tied with Mk. III command stations). Also, it shouldn't be a huge amont; its mostly the Mk Is that need it.

Command station health is a HUGE balance point after all. Remember how much it took to convince Keith and Chris to agree to the current home command station HP?

[Draco18s]

Should they die fast?  Yes.

Should they die to a single shot from a plasma siege starship?  No.

[Histidine]

Engineer beam / BP boost sounds find as an economy thing, I think. Alternatively, for either one of the econ/industrial or logistics stations: remote remains rebuilder beam.

Personally I'd make the economy and logistics stations cost a bit less K as Faulty Logic suggests, and:

Let Logistics stations project their speed boost (non-stacking) into neighbouring planets, possibly at half strength. This lets them be used as an offensive aid against adjacent AI worlds.
(It also allows highways with just one Logistics station every other world instead of every one, which may or may not be seen as making them more desirable.)

Or, given all the issues brought up with the overlap between econ and logistics, here's an even wilder idea: merge the two. This gets rid of the current third wheel econ line, leaving the player with clear choices:

• Military: Front line option for chokepoints, planets with irreplacables, etc.
• Econogistics: Rear areas, or front line planets where safety is a secondary concern
• Warp jammer: Can't afford the investment to fortify this location, or don't want the neighbouring planets building up garrisons

[TechSY730]

I would be opposed to making the various stations have different unlock costs. Given the way that they (are supposed to) mirror each other in how stats grow over mark, and base stats (adjusting for their specialties), it only makes sense for them to remain symmetric in unlock costs.

Histdine's proposal to merge the econ station and logistics station does seem like a very intriguing way to deal with it.

Right now we have:
- Military (very clear what it is supposed to do)
- Logistics (um, is that active support, transportation like the name would literally suggest, less central parts of economy like salvage? Hard to tell by name and description alone)
- Economic (um, is that only resources and income, or does it also apply to the spending part of economy, or does it refer to passive support in general? Again, hard to tell by name alone)
- Warp Jammer (very clear what it is supposed to do)

With that merge you would have:
- Military (very clear what it is supposed to do)
- Econgistics/Support/whatever it will be named (also very clear what it is supposed to do, everything that supports your efforts that doesn't directly involve shooting stuff or directly helping other things shoot stuff. No more fiddly, vague active vs passive support distinction)
- Warp Jammer (very clear what it is supposed to do)



Maybe that is indeed the core of the problem. We have tried to distinguish two vague classes of support, passive and active, and have sort of painted ourselves in a corner trying to keep things useful while trying to maintain this vague split of "classes" of similar roles. The other half (military) is under no such burden of a split, so it can do both (both actively shoots as well as helps other things to shoot through attack bonuses).

[tadrinth]

I feel like it's easier to find places to put Military command stations than to put Economic or Logistics stations.  I'm going to have whipping boys, and those want Milspec.  I'll either have chokepoints and outposts in front of the chokes, in which case those all get Milspec, or I don't have chokes and most of my planets are going to get Milspec stations because they're not isolated from the front lines.  Even then, I think Milspecs are good enough to be worth it even if you don't use all 12 stations, because a single Mil3 can make a huge difference if it's in the right place.

I only feel comfortable putting economic stations on protected, non-front line planets.  I've never had a game where I owned 12 planets that met that description (granted, I'm a noob, but it still seems unlikely to happen much with my low-AIP playstyle).  And if I don't place all 12, I'm not getting full benefit from my K. 

The extra energy production makes these a lot more attractive, because if you're trying to keep AIP as low as possible, and you like core turrets as much as I do, energy is frequently pretty tight. That exacerbates the problem of having planets to put them on.

Same for logistics planets: those go on high-traffic planets that I'm moving fleets through a lot.  I've never had 12 of those at once.  Even when I have a high-traffic route, I don't necessarily have all the planets in it, so having logistics stations spread their benefits to adjacent planets would make them way more attractive. Even just spreading the speed boost would be nice, and I don't think it would affect chokes much.  Hell, make LogIIIs project their speed boost two planets out.  Or grant supply two planets out, so I can build even deeper core turret beachheads. =P This might be map-dependent, also; snake/vine/tree maps probably get more benefit from these. 

There's also the matter of the tradeoffs involved.  Economic command centers compete with just capturing more planets, waiting longer, and especially upgrading metal harvesters. If you have enough planets to place 12 econ stations in reasonably safe locations, you have enough planets that you probably could have just gotten better harvesters.  The energy change makes a big difference here, though, if you can use it. Golems-Medium comes to mind. 

Logistics stations compete with... transports, I guess?  Waiting longer for stuff to get places?  And those wacky Zenith SpaceTime manipulators, and gravity turrets.  And slightly with economic stuff due to their higher salvage percent.  I feel like that's some very stiff competition.  Also, at least some of their awesome seems aimed at putting them on chokes, but if the command station goes down, so do all of your defenses, and Log stations are squishy.  And Military command stations are just generally better. 

Buffing the hp of econ/log stations would make me feel better about putting them on front-line planets, which would make it easier to place them all.

 Lowering their caps and knowledge cost would also make them easier to fully leverage, especially for the MkII stations.  That way if you have a couple of planets that seem like really good places for Econ or Logistics stations, it's a much smaller investment to be able to put down a couple of good ones.  Cap of 3 feels right to me, I can find 3 econ-worthy planets if I need more energy and metal.  Then once you hit 6 planets that want econs or logs, you can get MkIII and upgrade all those planets to MkIII, and then re-use the MkIIs as you get up to 9 planets of that type.

Military command stations feel like they should be the opposite, with the MkII keeping a cap of six but the MkIII going down to a cap of 3 or 4, possibly with a reduction in K cost.  That way you can support your chokes and a few outposts with MkIIs, or have really strong chokes and more outposts. 

Obviously, that's a pretty big change, and I think the current philosophy is focused around making the MkIII stations really awesome to justify the high K investment.  I think this would make the MkIII econ/log station unlocks more valuable, because now they're better and have a higher cap and the total cost is lower. 

[ZaneWolfe]

I know that for an FS game, I NEED those Econ stations, to support the costs, both metal and energy, of my FS fleet. I also need to use Mil stations because those front lines are going to get hammered with exos. With Spire shields my Mil station railguns deal full damage, while not the most powerful every single shot helps, and that 100% planet wide damage boost is also tremendously valuable. Honestly its the Logistic sations that I've never really used. Either I need more economy boosts or I need to defend a location with full force, leaving no real place for Logistic stations in my empire. Cap wise, I think the current caps are fine. In a normal game you might never use all of them, but in FS or a High AIP game you are going to have a lot of territory. However, even with the current caps I never touch Logistics, because MKI Econ is limitless. I think a real question here is, "Do we need 3 classes of command stations, or only 2?" As someone already pointed out, Military stations are our defensive posts, while Econ stations fuel our offensive power. Logistics are the bastard child, the hybrid. However, I find that I am somewhat at a loss as to how best to fix it. If you flat out merge Econ and Logistic stations, they are going to be VERY powerful. But for front line bases, Military is still going to be best IMO.

Somewhat really crazy idea. Perhaps a merger would be best, but splitting the powers of a Logistic station evenly between Military and Economy. Move the Gravity power and teleport negation to Military stations, and the speed boosting power and higher salvage over to Economy. Increase the cap of Military and Econ by 3. This makes it clear which is which. Econ for your backyard, helping to fuel your army and getting your forces to the front lines. Military for your front lines, helping keep the backyard clear. You could play an Econ station at the front, giving it more salvage power and speeding up your forces, but lose the slow and attack boost. If something does get past your front line, the speed boost will help your forces get there faster, but the AI will no longer be slowed down, and its teleporting units will be free.

[Tridus]

A merged log/econ station might make sense, so long as it's not overpowered. If you kept the log station's resource production for it (and the econ station's energy production), you then have a situation where Harvesters don't have competition in the "spend K to get more resources from a planet" category.

There's been tension for a while between harvesters and econ stations, where one is usually better than the other (for quite a while in the past, harvester unlocks were really bad). Doing that would help differentiate them more.

[tadrinth]

To add onto my idea for lowering the caps on command stations:  An unlock could be added that just doubles or triples your MkIII cap.  More complex from a gameplay perspective, but I think that would be easy to implement; just add MkIV versions of the command stations with the same stats as the MkIIIs.

That's pretty inelegant, though. 

[TechSY730]

ZaneWolf's idea is also intruiging, although it could be argues that a speed debuff on top of the attack boosts and teleporting beams the military already has could be overpowered.

Also interesting is that if there are only two "mainline" station types, then military wouldn't have to be quite so terrible at economy (metal incomenrate, salvage efficiency, etc).


However, with the salvage changes, I do think that gave logistics a good buff, and with the salvage cap thing now being proportional to metal storage cap,that gave econ stations an additional purpose too.

We may want to wait a bit for the "metagame" to settle a bit before writing off these buffs and declaring a need for drastic action.

[keith.lamothe]

We may want to wait a bit for the "metagame" to settle a bit before writing off these buffs and declaring a need for drastic action.

That's a good point.  I may do some simple buffs of econ and log and then we'll see where things settle.  With the turret changes energy may become more of an issue (thus motivating econ stations), etc.

[DrFranknfurter]

I like the choice of more stations not losing one... at difficulty 7 I got more use out of the new logistics as they can handle waves, harder difficulties expose their weakness and I've used them much less (I die using them). Econ never get any front-line use. Would they get more use if they were defensive? (Planet-cloaking? Shields? Either to avoid damage and let enemy forces slip past or to tank an enemy attack till your fleet can arrive).

I do like the idea of Mil and Econ being opposite,
Planet Tachyon vs Planet Cloak,
Planet Damage boost vs armour boost,
weapons vs weapon-less.
Why not merge it with the warp jammer? You never want waves to hit your econ systems and warp jammers costs feel painful so I've never used them.

Logistics does feel like a third wheel... it needs something big to be attractive. Make it mobile? Give friendly ships teleportation (Planet wide teleport)? Give it a global multiplier to ship speed? None of them sound right.
Projecting supply makes a great deal of sense thematically while prompting you to use it on the front lines so I really like that suggestion.
Giving it a boost to % salvage rate for each station would encourage use behind front lines.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Why not merge it with the warp jammer? You never want waves to hit your econ systems and warp jammers costs feel painful so I've never used them.

If nothing else, then because the homeworld gets free economic stations if you unlock them. A warp jammed homeworld would not improve the game, though it sure would make it easier.