Wave Size and Timing based on Points of Ingress

[Wanderer]

I personally feel the coefficient should have been higher and the early game dropped a bit down.

I didn't really want to drop the early game because it seemed like the opening 10/10 waves already felt really small.  In my champion testing it's usually a new 10/10 game where I set up some halfhearted defenses and send my champ into the nebula.  The waves usually don't even require my attention, and I'm certainly not straining myself setting up the defense.

Or do you mean 30/50 AIP instead of just 10?

Yeah, I was more thinking during setup and taking your core worlds before you get to expand into the great wide open.  The opening wave, to me, is really 'get off your ass and do something' more than really a significant wave (now, thank gods).  Take two local worlds and you're at 50 AIP, and still trying to find some momentum/economy (unless you've already jumped to MK III harvesters), but the impact of quintupling your AIP is staggering comparitively, and that's without gate-raids.  The next two worlds bring you to 90, and merely double it.

Because of this, the game in my mind has a few loose stages, but not necessarily the ones from the wiki. 

1) Hide and explore, figure out opening options.
2) Expand slightly and defend heavily.
3) Grind your way out and lower the AIP as much as possible.
4) Strategically reorganize yourself to intelligent defenses instead of whatever you could get your hands on.
5) Begin homeworld grind and secondary objectives, along with ARS/CSG captures.
6) Start homeworld assaults.

Personally I'd like #2 there to not be as impactful and #4/5 to have more meaning once established, maybe even allowing #3 to blend into #5.

[TechSY730]

BTW, I still feel like the wave growth function for the higher difficulties could use an exponent nerf. Like take the exponent from 1.1 to 1.05 (adjusting coefficients as needed to preserve early game difficulty). Despite how small it is, 1.1 has proven to be quite a huge impact, possibly a bit too much so.

The primary purpose of that was to make 20 AIP in the late game as important as 20 AIP in the early game.  I personally feel the coefficient should have been higher and the early game dropped a bit down.  Do you have some alternatives to that idea?  It was the best idea I had at the time to present to Keith.

O(n*log(n)) or O(n*(log(n)^k)? (Where n=AIP in this case, and k is some yet to be determined constant > 0)

Actually, are these asymptotically less than O(n^1.1)?
Even if so, it would require some clever choices of coefficients, log bases, and for k to keep it from becoming harder in the early-mid game, even though it would grow more smoothly, and less extremely overall.

EDIT:
Suprisingly, n*log(n), for base 10 log, dominates n^1.1.

Something along the lines of n*(log(n))^.6 gives something closer to what we want. However, at that point, you begin to wonder what it is you are modeling...

[Volatar]

Uh, theres a ton in this thread. I read it all but can't even begin to reply.

I'll just stick my finger in and say I like the border fortresses idea a lot.

[Diazo]

Actual suggestion time

Okay.

Having read over everyone's posts and seen where people are coming from, I'm going to make an actual suggestion on what I'd like to see happen.

This suggestion is affecting the wave size multiplier relative to the number of ingress points only.

While I think things like the fortress rework or the mini-fortress border control unit have potential, just tweaking the wave size is much more straightforward and does not actually impact single ingress at all.

The following conditions went into my suggestion:

First, this number of ingress points affecting wave size is phased in over the first 2 hours of the game so I'm not concerned with the real early game with this change.
Second, this should not change single-ingress waves at all.
Third, single-ingress should stay the optimal defensive situation, multiple ingress needs to stay harder then single ingress, just not as much harder as it currently is.
Fourth, this difficulty is accomplished by required mobile units to back your turrets up.
Fifth, this is intended to affect early-mid game more then late game. As you get into late game, gate-raiding should be a larger part of controlling the AIs access to your empire rather then trying to defend a long front continuously by taking advantage of this mechanic.

So, with that in mind, here is my actual suggestion.

For comparison, here are the current multipliers:

# of Ingress	Min Wave Size	Max Wave Size
1	Diff*90	Diff*150
2	Diff*60	Diff*120
3	Diff*30	Diff*120
4	Diff*0	Diff*120
5	Diff*-30	Diff*120
6+	Diff*-60	Diff*120

My suggestion is to change them as follows:

# of Ingress	Min Wave Size	Max Wave Size
1	Diff*90	Diff*150
2	Diff*50	Diff*110
3	Diff*40	Diff*100
4+	Diff*20	Diff*90

This takes the maximum wave size at 2 ingress points from 80% to 73%, 3 ingress to 67% and 4 ingress to 60%.

The minimum wave size is 55%, 44% and 22% respectively so the average wave size at 2 ingress is 89%, 3 ingress 93% and 4 ingress is 96% of previous.

This keeps the average wave size roughly the same but lowers the maximum wave size while increasing the minimum wave size to balance everything out.

This solves my big issue with multiple ingress points, that of the maximum wave size not decreasing so that is what you have to plan for, irregardless of the fact that the average wave size was decreasing.

It also stop at 4 ingress points. The -30 and -60 at 5 and 6 ingress points could lead to laughably small waves so I don't see the need to have this calculation go any farther then 4 ingress points.

Now, while this is what I feel is appropriate for the higher difficulties I play at, I do need someone to confirm that this will not result in cheese at difficulty 7 by having 4 ingress points result in  laughably small waves.

Does someone have logging enabled in a difficulty 7 game that they could post the MainThreadLog.txt please?

And that's my suggestion, thoughts everyone?

D.

[Volatar]

My problem with wave size modifications is that it is not intuitive at all.

Never forget the 90-10 rule. 90% of your players will never read forums or patch notes (especially detailed Arcen ones).

It is obvious that few points of ingress is good to every player. Obviously it means your defenses are more concentrated. This is all intuitive.

Wave size? Not intuitive. In fact, you need to have compared the same setup on the same difficulty with the same AI's at the same AIP at the same point in the game over a period of several waves (because RNG) with only the number of ingress points changed to discover the difference. There is no concrete feedback on the difference.

Players should never have to research on forums or wikis or guides to learn about such an important game mechanic.

Heck, I have followed the patch notes religiously since before 2.0 and I somehow had no idea that waves were already modified in size by ingress count.

[Wanderer]

Heck, I have followed the patch notes religiously since before 2.0 and I somehow had no idea that waves were already modified in size by ingress count.

They're not, actually.  What's modified is the 'build timer' that has always been a randomization.  You either get a series of small waves in quick succession or it waits awhile and dumps a massive one on you.  The sizes didn't change with that modification, just the timer boundaries for min/max depending on number of ingress points.

[Diazo]

That is the catch with all this, it does not change the absolute number of ships the AI attacks the player with over the course of the game. (Ignoring things like AIP and so on.)

What this wave size modifier does is determine how long the AI waits between sending attacks.

If that game several small wave size modifiers are rolled by the RNG, you will get more frequent, but smaller waves.

If larger wave size modifiers are rolled you get less frequent, but larger waves.

The absolute number of ships sent over all waves totals up to the same number however.

That is why I feel it is okay to mess with this number, it is only changing when the ships come, not the total amount of ships sent at the player.

If multiple ingress points somehow reduced the absolute number of ships sent that would be broken, yes.

However, going back to my list of conditions for this change, I do want to keep single-ingress the best defensive situation, I'm just trying to make multiple-ingress somewhat harder to defend, not the current cliff wall it currently can be.

How well my suggestion accomplishes this is up for debate of course, but that is where I currently stand.

D.

[TechSY730]

I haven't had a chance to look at the numbers in detail, but this sort of tweak (adjusting min/max time adjustments based on inpoints even further, especially the max time) is the sort of thing I would vote for. Especially because it does not alter the number of ships on average as time goes on (which is one reason I really like this logic)

[Mánagarmr]

Yea, but people are already not very happy about the amount of mass threatball formation that happens; if it just dumped every wave on your (outer)doorstep it wouldn't be likely to win popularity contests.

Though it might win some games.

If you truly want that kind of behaviour, you can just play with Cross-planet waves. Problem solved, enemy stacks on your gates until critical mass is reached.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, but people are already not very happy about the amount of mass threatball formation that happens; if it just dumped every wave on your (outer)doorstep it wouldn't be likely to win popularity contests.

Though it might win some games.

If you truly want that kind of behaviour, you can just play with Cross-planet waves. Problem solved, enemy stacks on your gates until critical mass is reached.

Having them actually spawn on the other side of the wormhole would be somewhat different, actually, at least on schizo, due to move speeds.  But yea, the basic idea is already there.

[rabican]

New command station : Neinzull hive.

Mobile, lot less firepower than regular fortress but around same health.  Builds up and spawns younglings when attacked(or manual release like hive golem).

Cabable of taking out random threat and 10aip waves by itself.  After that it needs help. Also better versus waves that come far apart because it needs time to build up forces.

[_K_]

Ugh, didn't read the thread entirely but heres a suggestion:

I think it is alright that a single ingress point is an optimal solution to AI's waves.
However, waves are not the only way the AI can hurt the player. What i would suggest is to make the AI focus more on the non-wave aspect of attacking if there are very few ingress points.
One way to do that would be to make the AI not send all if its ships assigned to a wave to attack, but have a percentage of these instead spawn as threat on random planets. 20% for 1 ingress point, 10% for two, 0% for more. Or, not maybe just 20%, but a random value between 0% and 40% (for 1 point), so there is a chance the wave still comes in full force and the player cant just relax the whipping boy defences.
If the threat balls logic works correctly, this would make the AI more likely to attack other border systems that dont have much defence, hopefully making chokepoints less desirable.