General Conversation comments:
Regarding those of you who are finding they have overwhelming amounts of energy... are any of you NOT playing with champions? I'm curious because I'm wondering if that's where I'm confused why y'all think it's overwhelming.
If you nerf the econ guerilla attacks become unreasonable, you only blob because otherwise losses are even less recoverable.
Who used guerrilla attacks to begin with?
Well, I do, for starters. Particularly against worlds with Eyes, so I tend to do it a lot.
You're preaching to save a dead child. We've all pretty much agreed that blobbing is the best strategy. Nerfing the econ isn't going to change that either way.
Agreed. I'm just not entirely sure where the idea that nerfing econ would remove the blob.
I agree with you that blobbing is a major issue with the game, but the way to fix it is not to LITERALLY OVERLOAD the player with so many resources he can't spend it all.
I'm afraid you've misunderstood me. I DON'T think blobbing is an issue. I thoroughly disagree with you on this. I do
not want to spend half the game doing unit micro.
Econ Stations are a choice, Harvesters are not a choice. Harvesters have no downside aside from the knowledge you spend. Econ Stations take the place of a much more defensible or practical Military/Logistics Station. You may lose the game during a major attack because you had an Econ Station and not any of the other 3.
To get equivalent economy from harvesters you have to take less strategical viable worlds to get equivalent economy from them. In particular, you have to aim for 3/3+ worlds. So with econ stations I can take a fab world and get equivalent econ, no matter the resource count. If that fab world doesn't have decent resources, I'd need a second world for equivalence. Now, you can argue if the difference between econ and logistics is valuable enough, and I'd say no, not unless logistics are reduced in economic power. Harvesters in early game are a coinflip. A powerful force that took forever to build, or a light force you can easily rebuild. I spend many a game at famine economy and I blob, and I have harvester IIIs. Now, that may just mean I suck at this game, I don't know. I do know that I do not have your perma-1mill econ, and that's with Harv IIIs and targetting max econ worlds.
In other words, I think the price for Econ Stations is fair. I see no problem with a player having max resources if he's paying the penalty in his defense. This is why your argument on this is flawed.
No, you're not seeing the difference in the argument. You either have to target worlds that contain those resources, which may or may not be as strategically viable. You pay in AIP or bad positioning. Again, I do not have max-econ most of the time.
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.
My specific solution to this problem was not to change the multipliers, that was somebody else's. My solution was to add a bonus ship omission file and add Super Guardians to the game: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9450
Agreed, I apparently phrased that poorly. I did not mean to imply that removing multipliers was your idea, but that removing the multipliers would be counter to your preference in the long run.
Everything else you talked about wasn't really worth addressing.
Oh, well, thanks for that then.
You may not want anything to change but that's just your personal preference.
That's an odd comment considering how many changes I *have* advocated, particularly ones that have removed cheese and made the game more difficult. I happen to disagree with these changes, though, you're correct. I for one do not wish to partake in intensive ship micro in AI War. I have other games I play for that.
Maybe someone else does. My point to the previous poster was that nerfing the economy by removing MKII and III Harvesters would make it MORE likely that you would use guerilla raids, not less likely. Guerilla raids are efficient, they don't waste your entire army on the trip. With a small amount of resources, you can accomplish a lot.
That's what I'm trying to explain to you, and that wasn't your point you made. You went on a tangent about econ stations instead of anything about blob vs. guerilla. All you said there was that blob was better... unless we're not talking about your response to me.
If the econ is low to the point that you can't rebuild, you don't raid because you don't want to lose the ships, you always arrive in force, to reduce the economic impact of the raid. No more one-way trips for units, you always need them back. This will discourage raiding.
Furthermore I'm advocating an energy economy cut, that would mean you couldn't even build full caps of everything without taking some extra planets. Obviously that would lead to a lot of scrapping and rebuilding so low-power mode should probably be reintroduced (or some sort of cold storage building)
Fired up a brand new game, 9.6/9.6. Starting energy (due to homeworld builds) was 183,500.
I then MK II'd all the fleet ships (IREs were the random thing I clicked on).
96 MK I Fighters: 50 E each 4,800 E
96 MK II Fighters: 100 E each 9,600 E
96 MK I Bomber: 100 E each, 9,600 E
96 MK II Bomber: 200 E each, 19,200 E
96 MK I Frigate: 200 E each, 19,200 E
96 MK II Frigate: 400 E each, 38,400 E
96 MK I IRE: 100 E Each, 9,600 E
96 MK II IRE: 200 E Each, 19,200 E.
Total: 129, 600 E, after blowing all your Econ on MK IIs. Your MK Is are 1/3 of that, at 43,200 E.
Where you get into problems is turretry, starships, and defenses (like FFs). You cannot build your entire arsenal right now without taking more planets, however trying to balance it against the fleet alone is, in my opinion, a poor choice. A single FF costs as much energy as an entire cap of MK I Fighters... so does a single Raid SS. A cluster of 3 MK I raid SSs is nearly the energy cost of the Frigate cap.
So, already, you can't build everything without power from multiple planets, and that's without mark boosting, but the fleet itself isn't going to be where you take the hit. Now, it'll probably take about an hour to actually build that MK II fleet in the early game without harvester boosts (and no econ planet captures), and some of that will be variable depending on if the howeworld is crystal or metal heavy. How low do you bring 'startup' power to make sure that you couldn't build off your entire MK I fleet? You wouldn't be able to build much of any of the other things, then, either. Fleet ships require the lightest energy requirement of everything you have.
It seems like the current problem with AI War is not primarily with the game, but the players. They want to play on the highest difficulties so they can feel good about themselves, but then they complain that the highest difficulties are too hard because "they have too long for my wasted fleet to rebuild" or "I need enough energy to have a Fortress on every planet without spending a dime" or "I should be able to blob my entire fleet around without a hitch". If you want to do those things, fine! Play on difficulty 5. If you're doing them on difficulty 9, and it isn't working out, the game shouldn't have to be changed for you.
That's an incredibly falicious view to state as the generic actions of the highest level players. Faulty, Kahuna, and myself (as a quick example) have all been continuously advocating ways to improve the difficulty of the AI, *particularly* at the highest end of the spectrum. The majority of those fixes are only in play at the 9+ level, so newbs don't get run over with them. Keep your words out of our mouths and sure as hell don't fire off false impressions of us. As to my personal comments about Eyes (which are the dev's gift to anti-blobbing) my usual complaints are how long it takes to kill a spireshield under one or the volume of them, not their existance, because it forces reliance on low-cap ships.
I do happen to disagree with most of the methods you're advocating, because I don't see them putting in a difficulty level like you describe. If anything, you'll be railroaded into even less options and paths to complete the game at high difficulties, not more.
The reason that difficulties EXIST is so that people don't have to put artificial restrictions on themselves.
I agree. What I want to know is why are you using 9/9 as your current baseline? Crank it up.
