AI War state of the game

[Wingflier]

@Wanderer -

It sounds like you're getting argumentative, so I'm not going to respond directly to you.  I think we've both laid out our opinions on the subject quite clearly anyway, people can take away what they want.

I didn't mean to personally insult anybody in the forum with my comments.  I wasn't personally there for the discussion about the Harvester/Econ buffs, it just seemed to me that people were being wasteful with their forces on difficulties too high for them, then asking for the game to be brought to their level.

In terms of your insistence that Econ Stations are just as or more effective than Harvester Upgrades, I don't think you're going to get a single person to agree with you there.  In my experience, every game with MKII+III Harvesters unlocked leads to 999,999 resources fairly quickly indeed.  It hasn't been that big of a problem, in my experience, finding metal/crystal heavy planets to take, especially on Crosshatch.

Once again, I'm sorry for offending you.

[Oralordos]

I played a game where I went for econ III instead of harvesters III recently. I was rather blown away at how fast my resources were coming in. With harvesters III I would have enough to rebuild my fleet without worries, but once I got into massive turret and starship construction, everything slowed down. With econ III, I felt like I could build anything besides superweapons without worries.

[Wingflier]

My point was that you're trading in your defensive capabilities for the privilege of those resources, so it seems fair to me.

In either scenario, (in my experience), you're taking the same number of planets.  One method seems safer than the other.

[Eternaly_Lost]

I digress slightly - What I am saying is that sure, the game could use a little bit of balancing. However, if you have such issues as you are vehemently describing in this thread, maybe the answer indeed should be looking for a game elsewhere. It honestly seems like you are looking for a competitive game (ala sc2/dota/league) than a casual one like aiwar.

I guess my question is, can't it appeal to the whole spectrum?

I mean we definitely have players on both sides of the spectrum here.  For example, with this suggestion of removing MKII and III Harvesters.  Does that negatively affect anybody?  All it really does is scale the difficulty up, meaning players who are wasteful with their fleet have to play on lower ones or they'll be doing a lot of waiting, and possibly losing.

If people are tired of waiting around they have to find ways around that.  Econ Command Stations are a good idea.  Learning to play without your whole blob is a good idea.  Doing Champion Scenarios to keep you busy between rebuilds.  Being more careful not to waste your whole fleet.  I mean these seem like signs of a good player, not of bad game design.

This is just 1 example of many I could use that doesn't negatively affect casuals, but helps to keep the contrast of the game for the people more serious intact. 

And as a final point - I am going to go back to my 2.0 game, and see if I can actually manage to survive the 20 minute wave this time. I honestly encourage you to try it wingflier - I am interested in your opinion of the game mechanics as compared to the current day.

Give me a link and tell me how please.

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@Keith - I'm about to assault a MKIV ARS World in my current game with my whole blob.  I'll tell you exactly what it consists of, how many enemies there are, and what comes back alive.

Then I'll probably do an ARS hack without repairing anything, and tell you what comes back from that too.

I can say that losing Mk III Harvesters would certainly make my games take longer. I play fallen spire almost exclusivity and the Spire Fleet are real resource hogs. I run games were I was trying to see if I could make it so that I don't have to wait for things to build as much. 20 Worlds at +400% Handicap and I still have Hulu running when I need to refleet.

With Fallen Spire, Both Mk III Harvesters and Eco Stations are right on the start to unlock as you need every mineral and crystal you can find.

But I think that does bring up another point. I often find I don't have enough resource and don't care at all about AIP (Normally I end around 2000+), because I have the big ships that can knock things over, being attacked by ships were just one of them will happy much away everything that is not a Spire Fleet ship rather quickly.

For people that play the game without Fallen Spire, I can see why they don't like AIP and have way too many resources, but for those that do play Fallen Spire. AIP is a joke and you never have enough resources or power. 20 Spire Dreadnought takes forever and a day to rebuild.

[Wingflier]

On an unrelated note, I restarted my game on the exact same map and layout, except this time no Champions and no Harvester Upgrades.

At less than 40 minutes, I'm already feeling the pain.  My resources are much skimmer, to the extent that if I hadn't popped a distribution node (and gotten lucky), I probably would have lost the game against the first Heroic wave:  29 Beam Frigates and 2 Zenith Shadow Frigates spamming bomber drones (damn those things are tough to kill without Champions of your own).

So far things have been much more intense and exciting, I haven't been above 100,000 on either side yet.  Defending my base has been much harder without Military Orbitals as well.

[chemical_art]

On an unrelated note, I restarted my game on the exact same map and layout, except this time no Champions and no Harvester Upgrades.

At less than 40 minutes, I'm already feeling the pain.  My resources are much skimmer, to the extent that if I hadn't popped a distribution node (and gotten lucky), I probably would have lost the game against the first Heroic wave:  29 Beam Frigates and 2 Zenith Shadow Frigates spamming bomber drones (damn those things are tough to kill without Champions of your own).

So far things have been much more intense and exciting, I haven't been above 100,000 on either side yet.  Defending my base has been much harder without Military Orbitals as well.

Just curious, but what happens if you invest the 9K you would have invested in harvestors III into the command station of your choice. In my games it makes a big difference mid game, as anything you invest three planets worth of research should be.

[Cyborg]

@Wanderer -

It sounds like you're getting argumentative

Oh please. This from the guy who not only revels in arguments but creates actual threads describing why arguments are amusing and worth participating in.

Anyways, on-topic,
1) I do not want to go back to Netflix + AI war
2) I don't use the champion stuff. The new expansion just didn't do it for me. I have no idea how overpowered it makes you or not, but I recommend either turning it off or turning the penalty factions up. In all of your examples so far, it mentions the new expansion units. Maybe that's worth looking into or just turning it off.
3) Blobbing happens a lot. Not always, though. I often do guerrilla raids, and using the cloaker starship can be highly amusing.
4)  I laughed when you mentioned core shield generators. The irony is, Chris put those in to "make the game harder" because folks were deep striking too much. For some, this provided some amount of choice of which planet to go to.
5) Use the difficulty sliders. They are there for a reason, and they exist on almost all of the penalties. Also, you could try playing against two scorched earth AI. It is not uncommon for forum goers to post action reports of crazy game setups. People do this for fun. If you cannot set up a game that is fun, you're doing it wrong. Demanding that the vanilla AI setups do everything for you just isn't realistic after you have been playing awhile.

Or, maybe this thread is just patting yourself on the back for being good at this game? I can't tell what  is ego and what is actually a legitimate complaint, because the mechanics you are complaining about have been part of this game since 2.x, when I joined. And might I add, 3.189 was the peak of this game in many ways.

[Lancefighter]

Honestly, the championship/nebula ships add so much to a fleet, and the majority of ai worlds gets very little (.3 of a player as far as difficulty goes. Its not really that much..)

It maybe could be more. I just feel like if champions started spawning all over the place for the ai (like the heroic ai.. for every ai type) itd be a lot better? I dunno.

[Cyborg]

Honestly, the championship/nebula ships add so much to a fleet, and the majority of ai worlds gets very little (.3 of a player as far as difficulty goes. Its not really that much..)

It maybe could be more. I just feel like if champions started spawning all over the place for the ai (like the heroic ai.. for every ai type) itd be a lot better? I dunno.

If you're trying to make tit-for-tat equality between the player and the AI, what's the point? Light of the Spire was so much smarter; you actually incurred greater challenge all the way to the completion of the campaign, where it became a winning condition. Or you could deviate and just use the ships you have. 

[TechSY730]

Cyborg (and others) make a good point. The AI responce to champions hasn't been as "fleshed out" and balanced as it has been with the fallen spire. As such, the balance of champ games is a bit out of wack at the moment.
Games without champs seem much closer to a reasonable balance point.

[Draco18s]

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.

*Raises hand*
Here.

[chemical_art]

Honestly, the championship/nebula ships add so much to a fleet, and the majority of ai worlds gets very little (.3 of a player as far as difficulty goes. Its not really that much..)

It maybe could be more. I just feel like if champions started spawning all over the place for the ai (like the heroic ai.. for every ai type) itd be a lot better? I dunno.

If you're trying to make tit-for-tat equality between the player and the AI, what's the point? Light of the Spire was so much smarter; you actually incurred greater challenge all the way to the completion of the campaign, where it became a winning condition. Or you could deviate and just use the ships you have.

I maintain to this day that having the offensive AI response for what is inherently an aip independent bonus be dependent on AIP is broken in some way.

I'm on my way (already won, just building up mercs for theCoup d'état)  to winning an 10/10 80 planet normal map no handicap no super weapons game just to prove the current mechanics are inadequate.

However, AI Wars is still being updated, so to use any examples that involve this broken mechanic doesn't really add much value to any discussion to AI Wars as a whole.

It would be equivalent of doing a 10/10 game with Fallen spire on 1/10, then winning, then saying 10/10 isn't hard enough.

[Wingflier]

Oh please. This from the guy who not only revels in arguments but creates actual threads describing why arguments are amusing and worth participating in.

In the off-topic forum.  I try to be a bit more serious and "professional" when we're talking about AI War.

1) I do not want to go back to Netflix + AI war

Then perhaps you should play on a difficulty that is relative to your skill level.  I'll use the same argument against you that people have been using against me when I complain that I have infinite resources:  If you keep losing your whole fleet, and having to wait around to rebuild it, you're putting the difficulty too high.

There are several options that the game presents you with, outside of upgraded Harvesters (such as Econ Stations) that boost your resources.  But these also hurt you in other areas.  That's what balance is about.

5) Use the difficulty sliders. They are there for a reason, and they exist on almost all of the penalties. Also, you could try playing against two scorched earth AI. It is not uncommon for forum goers to post action reports of crazy game setups. People do this for fun. If you cannot set up a game that is fun, you're doing it wrong. Demanding that the vanilla AI setups do everything for you just isn't realistic after you have been playing awhile.

I would hardly call a 9/9 game on Crosshatch with a Heroic and Special Forces Captain + Advanced Hybrids "vanilla".  That's just me though.

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I agree with you that Champions cause major balance problems.  Ever since I turned those off, and stopped using the Harvester upgrades, my game has been much more satisfying and intense.  I've stood at a razor's edge this entire time.

I just got hit with a wave of ~150 Zenith Beam Frigates and 4 Champions at once.  When the enemy has many beam frigates as you have SHIPS, you know you are in some deep shit (so fun).

Or, maybe this thread is just patting yourself on the back for being good at this game? I can't tell what  is ego and what is actually a legitimate complaint, because the mechanics you are complaining about have been part of this game since 2.x, when I joined. And might I add, 3.189 was the peak of this game in many ways.

It's actually just the opposite.  I don't consider myself to be a particularly amazing player, and yet I'm winning so easily against the highest difficulties with such ridiculous strategies.

Even Chemical_Art would tell you he doesn't feel like a great player, but he's on his way to beating a 10/10.

We aren't trying to be egomaniacs, it's just the opposite.  We're trying to be humble and realize the game should be better than we are.

[Pluto]

Just out of curiosity...  Wouldn't just setting yourself a handicap do this exact same thing?  In fact, it'd potentially be worse - you lose the resources without gaining any knowledge (as you'd still need to get the harvester ups).

There's so many ways to flip around the difficulty..  and this isn't an artificial restriction, it's just another knob on the difficulty meter(s).

I mean, I can relate to you - I went through this same situation on Dwarf Fortress.  I couldn't find ways to make it difficult without an artificial gimp switch.  However, I think there are quite a few ways here in AI War that aren't artificial.  A low-econ game is really easy to start with.  Or give the AI's a corresponding bonus handicap.  Or turn them to 10/10.  Or turn hybrids to 10.  Or handicap yourself.  Or all of it at once.

I think there's a lot of options here that are available, and that changes to the existing system don't need to be made.

Though I would second a response to champion's/nebula scenarios/etc.  There's no downside at all.  Just free ships, free resources.  I use all LoS stuff on hard, as I don't want something for nothing.

[Wingflier]

@Pluto -

Thanks for reminding me, I completely forgot about handicaps somehow.

The reason I'm pushing for the game changes though is not for my personal gain.  I think the game could be better and more fun for everybody.

I mean I guess you're right, I could just crank the handicaps to make it more difficult, but that's not really making the game any deeper or more strategic, it just means the AI is hitting me with more crap at once.

Ideas that this discussion have sparked, like what Keith is doing by making the AI attack you when you're down - those are things that make the game better, make it feel more alive.  I think there are dozens of things like this we could do to improve the game without hurting the casual or new players.  I'm not trying to be an elitist ass, as much as it may seem that way.