AI War state of the game

[chemical_art]

Damage modifiers would be more favorable, yes, but I suspect that nearly any player fleet actually caught even mildly-unawares by an H/K will be mostly dead before much of it can get in range.

What do you mean?

It has neither a particularly fast nor long ranged ship.

It is a fearsome ship to be sure, but its threat is not that it curbstomps fleets.

I have no doubt the first time an H/K occurs to a player that is not aware the fleet stands a significant chance to be wiped out. But with alertness it can be countered with a decent chance for success. Keep in mind it is worth several golems (at least from what I understood).

Its threat is that your passive defenses mostly do squat against it so you need your mobile fleet, and while you are trying to pound the H/K it has thousands of other ships covering it. It's bonuses melt big things and your shields, and its most fearsome when it has pierced your outer defenses and is blitzing home command, but its an average fleet killer for its cost. A black widow, an armored golem, and supporting fleetships would be much stronger anti fleet group I think.

[relmz32]

I have been toying with the idea for spec forces to have special forces posts and spec forces sub-commander posts. In this system, spec forces posts do not provide AIP on death, but sub-commander posts do. For reference, there would be about the same number of spec posts in the galaxy(could someone provide numbers for this?), but there would be a set of sub-commander posts seeded additionally, where they cannot be seeded next to each other and prefer Core worlds. 

Both Sub-commander posts and Spec force posts would spawn units when their system was triggered.
Units spawned as spec forces would rally to the nearest sub-commander post.
When an "important" world is under attack, the forces at the sub-commander post would trigger an alert for the human players and send all rallied forces to the world with a spawned guardian to "lead" the attack (also to keep the strike grouped and from stringing into the system).

Sub-commander would 'protect' systems only within a couple(2-3 jumps) of their location, but Always their AI Homeworld.

This would give the game a feeling of fighting the AI Overlords as well as their Lieutenants which could have a cool feel.


I would be happy to flesh this idea out with whoever, i think it could be a cool minor faction or some such. If you have any ideas or criticism, they would be greatly appreciated.

[keith.lamothe]

It has neither a particularly fast nor long ranged ship.

Sorry, for some reason I thought it had a mothership-like range.  I think at one point it did.

[Pluto]

It strikes me as interesting that while I have a heck of a time beating the AI's now, I'm still thinking of ways to make it more dangerous, more difficult.  What will we think of next?

I'll need to play a non-FS game; I have a gut feeling that I'll grow an appreciation for special forces much faster when I have a less-consolidated empire, and minus the ship extras from FS.

relmz's idea is along the lines of my specific thoughts; a manner of addressing specific threats.  The hard part would be making it less predictable (so it couldn't be used as an easy way to bait out forces, for example).

Btw: The H/K I ran into took out two golems.  It'd take a chunk of a fleet out.  It's significantly more deadly than say, an Mk3 Fortress.  Especially early to mid-game.

[Gallant Dragon]

Why has the OP left the thread?

[Kahuna]

H/K's aren't as threatening on defense then on offense. This is partly because turrets get .1 modifiers against them, while your own mobile fleet mostly gets at least 1. Doubly so if you fight them with not much meaningful other threat as well (again, when they are on offense they have a huge support fleet, on defense they have a much smaller escort fleet)

Polar Bear isn't as scary if you have a shotgun.

[Toranth]

Damage modifiers would be more favorable, yes, but I suspect that nearly any player fleet actually caught even mildly-unawares by an H/K will be mostly dead before much of it can get in range.

What do you mean?

It has neither a particularly fast nor long ranged ship.

It is a fearsome ship to be sure, but its threat is not that it curbstomps fleets.

I have no doubt the first time an H/K occurs to a player that is not aware the fleet stands a significant chance to be wiped out. But with alertness it can be countered with a decent chance for success. Keep in mind it is worth several golems (at least from what I understood).

Its threat is that your passive defenses mostly do squat against it so you need your mobile fleet, and while you are trying to pound the H/K it has thousands of other ships covering it. It's bonuses melt big things and your shields, and its most fearsome when it has pierced your outer defenses and is blitzing home command, but its an average fleet killer for its cost. A black widow, an armored golem, and supporting fleetships would be much stronger anti fleet group I think.

If I did my math correctly, then a Mk I H/K will completely wipe out a full cap of Mk I - Mk III triangle ships.  It'll be mostly dead, but you'll have lost about 900 fleetships in the process. 
A Mk II H/K will wipe out a full cap of Mk I - Mk IV triangle ships.
That's... a pretty solid curbstomp, I think.

[chemical_art]

If I did my math correctly, then a Mk I H/K will completely wipe out a full cap of Mk I - Mk III triangle ships.  It'll be mostly dead, but you'll have lost about 900 fleetships in the process. 
A Mk II H/K will wipe out a full cap of Mk I - Mk IV triangle ships.
That's... a pretty solid curbstomp, I think.

It doesn't relatively curbstomp fleets for its cost. Remember a I H/K it costs 2 tiers higher then an armored golem, meaning in terms of cost a single MK I H/K is several armored golems...what would the results be if you fought a 3 armored golems? Or if instead of an H/K you fought several thousand fleetships?

Fun fact: If the H/K I didn't get a bonus to ultra heavy, the (human) armored golem could (it seems) beat it.

Fun fact #2: The H/K I is consistently beaten against three (weaker) AI armored golems.

[Hearteater]

Great, now H/Ks are going to get buffed .

[chemical_art]

Great, now H/Ks are going to get buffed .

It seems fitting I point it out.

To be fair though, it is extremely rare to fight 3 armored golems at once. H/K's are their own category so are always picked for that ship "class" if needed, so are fairly routine.

In addition, as I said, unless you focus your whole fleet on defense, it will shrug any passive fire and proceed to melt your shields protecting your command station. Every 3 seconds its dishing 26 million damage toward your shields. That's just for the MK I.

It's a specialized craft: Command Station slayer. Or also known as the "fortress world popper". That role it does very well.

It's built to take on virtually any world that is not defended by player mobile fleet and wipe it out. So it is natural that if you take it out of its role, and into a pure fleet fight, it is not so good.

[Diazo]

Okay.

I've let this thread simmer in the back of my mind for a while and my one line response is that you need to boost the difficulty by a level or two.

Right now I'm currently faced with some planets that have been on alert for a while. I send in the entirety of my mobile fleet and I kill maybe 10% of the AI's forces in the system before I get wiped out.

I'm not winning any war of attrition here and "sending in my fleet blob to get good results" is just getting my ships dead.

Now, I do have to qualify that this planet has been on alert for a few hours on diff 9.0 so I have screwed up strategically somewhat.

So, what I'm trying to say is that this game has plenty of challenge, it sounds like to me you are good enough strategically that the tactical level is turning into battles of no consequence because you have managed the strategic level well enough. So, that sounds like to me that you can boost the difficulty of your games a bit.

Having said that, I can certainly get behind anything that makes the tactical level more interesting but I would probably be against something that made the tactical level take longer or made it noticeably more complex. I just have not really seen any suggestions that do that yet.

D.

[blastpop]

My take-

My main problem is I play occasionally and lately play even less. I really like the game and continue to support Arcen when new expansions and new games come out (AVWW). I appreciate the high degree of professionalism and support for their products. They are to be admired for this and held out as a good example for the PC game hobby.

That  said due to my other commitments it is difficult to play frequently enough to get good at the game. I more or less fumble with it and play the aspects that tend to most interest me.  Consequently I have some experience, though it is lacking compared to most, with AI War. I really feel sorry for the newbie first starting out with the game and the steepness of the learning curve. This in my opinion is exacerbated by all the changes and frequent improvements made to the game. Sort of a double edged sword. Climbing that hill of learning can be very challenging and unless you like that type of challenge could put one off. Yes, there is good help here amongst the community that is friendly and thoughtful.  The difficulty lies in the forums since many of the prior comments may no longer be applicable to the base game and expansions. Witness the change logs for the game if you have any doubts about what I am saying. Add to that the expansion changes and one can only presume the tactics, strategies and problems discussed in the forums are mostly applicable to the game with all or most of the expansions in play (something I hope to achieve at some point with my game play).

All said and done, I think the goodness of the game, expansions, forum and long history serve well for the existent players, but are a strong barrier to entry by new players.

I am sorry if this point has been brought up before, I'd rather play than read through all the comments and discussions.

[Pluto]

It also struck me that Hybrids may be what I'm envisioning.  I'll go give them a shot.

[keith.lamothe]

All said and done, I think the goodness of the game, expansions, forum and long history serve well for the existent players, but are a strong barrier to entry by new players.

I am sorry if this point has been brought up before, I'd rather play than read through all the comments and discussions.

It's certainly been brought up before, and I think about it a fair bit, and I do try to make the game easier to get into (the "Beginner Game" setup and the in-game instructions to new players to use it being the most recent big effort there), but in general from what I've seen we have a decent influx of new players who "get it" and say it's a uniquely enjoyable experience.

Certainly room for improvement, but I'm not worried about it either

[blastpop]

Keith, I am glad to hear my concerns have been given consideration on an ongoing basis. Being an outsider looking in can be a different perspective. Whether its valid or not, you ultimately have to decide.

Time to play a game....