This conversation is... everywhere. Good grief. From economic nerf advocacy to micro-twitch tactical gaming on par with SC II. I couldn't even begin to get involved in everything being discussed without a few hours to write the dissertation and that's just in the last 2 pages.
I... good grief. Alright, let's see if I can throw my $0.02 in on the high notes. I'm going to work backwards, I only have 15 minutes here before I need to be on the road to meet with friends.
Economic Nerfs vs. the blob:
For the love of all that's holy why? Let me spell this out for you:
If you nerf the econ guerilla attacks become unreasonable, you only blob because otherwise losses are even less recoverable. You can't 'donate' units, you MUST fight with everything. No Raid SS attacks on the flank. No Eyebot assaults for an unreasonable guardian. You blob, you bait, there is no fight, there is only overkill... or waiting 2+ hours to recover. No more multiple assaults on MK IV worlds, they're brick walls.
End result is going back to the Econ stations and ignoring the Harvesters anyway. If you're going to do an econ nerf, you need to go across the boards.
Energy resources:
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the problems here. On one hand, we don't have enough energy to actually power up our arsenal until 6+ worlds. On the other hand, we have too much. Huh?
I know I haven't caught up with my AAR fight in a while but I had to build 2 matter converters simply to support my small empire when I wanted to bring cloak starships online along with a beach-head. Now, you're saying we have too much when we *know* the superweapons (golems and FS) require boatloads of it. What am I missing here? I sure as heck don't feel that I'm overflowing with wattage.
For the record, said game is NOT a 10/10.
Multiplier manipulation:
Keith has stated the game design goal of the multipliers: To create counter-ship fights. Most multipliers are in the 4-6x range, with a few hitting 8s (I'd have to look again). Halving them again practically removes any reason to bother. Is that the point? That blob on blob instead of strike ship vs. particular foe is the point? Wing's heavily advocating significant micro and this would actually defeat the purpose, not improve it. Everything meet everything! FIGHT! Well, why not, they've only got fighters but who cares, nothing's really that much better.
Same strategy repetition:
Errr, yup. The higher in difficulty you go, and the more experienced you become with the game, the more familiar you are with the 'Best' methods of defeating the enemy. This is a common issue in anything not PvP. The execution of said 'best method' is where it comes into play. Better selection of worlds to choose. Minor tweaks in small areas to react to changes by the AI (example, using something other than raid SSs against the AI that feeds an OMD onto every planet).
You are never given every tool in the box in any particular game. For example, if the AI drags out Blade Spawners on you, you're not guaranteed to ever have a sniper type unit (other than turrets). You counter with cloakers instead, or transport drops, or Riot III grav wells. These basic tools must be available because every counter is not constant. That you've learned to use these basic tools well enough that there is no feeling of intensity leads me to one of two conclusions: Either you've mastered the game to the point that you're no longer enjoying it, or you haven't revved up the difficulty to where you're on the edge and execution of the strategy is the key.
You can plan your strategy, but it's all about the execution against more formidible forces. There's a reason I play at the severe levels. You're absolutely right. If you're not seeing a need to change, or even tweak, your strategy, the AI isn't dangerous enough to you.
AI not responding enough at AIP 10/AI increase in danger:
You're quite correct here. The AI at AIP 10 is a wuss. It's supposed to be by lore, it doesn't care about the humans anymore. That champions introduced the ability to become a super-power without any AIP gain is a different issue. There's an easier cure to that. Have nebula defeats raise the FLOOR (not the AIP, just the floor) for each nebula conquered. You can't sit on the homeworld and take out half the universe for free anymore.
As to the AIP increases being too strong, I tend to disagree. I believe they should be a little lighter in the front end and even heavier in the back, at least at the top-most levels, than they currently are. Right now taking another planet at 220 AIP is just 'meh, whatever, who cares', and taking another one at 30 AIP nearly DOUBLES the expected inbounds. That ratio seems horribly off to me.
Regarding 10/10 defeatability:
Keith has stated, repeatedly, that 10/10 is not meant to be winnable, and is supposed to roll you around in the dirt and then kick you a few more times. If you cheese the hell out of it that's, well, cheesing the hell out of it. It would be impossible to balance some of the outlier options to not allow it when they're combined and still have them interesting in normal play.
@Histadine:
The problem with your proposal is an original design goal from the first generation of this game. Namely, that caps of ships don't become useless as soon as you can produce the next one up. You're talking about a population cap instead of a per ship cap, basically. Common enough of an idea in most RTS games.
However, that idea was forcibly discarded for this game so that 'early mark' ships aren't made completely obsolete during an upgrade. It doesn't fit in any lore but was a base design decision.
Dammit, I've been typing for 10 minutes longer than I intended and there's cute girls with smores around a campfire about 45 minutes away. I'll try to catch up with any rebuttals tomorrow.
