Bonus Ship Ommission File

[Draco18s]

because the AI defends everything

Defends everything equally.  Except some things which are defended more equally than others.

[chemical_art]

I have little use for raiders, for raiders starship MK I's can do so much, and anything a cap of I's and II's can't do tends to be out of reach of raider type fleetships as well.

[Volatar]

I think it has been brought up before, the key problem with AOE lightning is that the damage to each individual target is significantly lower than the damage that target will take from a single shot from another source thus that other source that does the actual killing won't actually kill in fewer hits. The lightning damage just slightly increases the overkill of the final shot.

Maybe the mechanic needs to be replaced with a different one then? Maybe like, chain lightning. Might be able to reuse the retargetting missile code for that.

[KDR_11k]

It used to be rather nasty for human fleetballs because repeated lightning strikes from all the lightning turrets the AI had would wear it down over time. With guardians the AI lightnings have become rare and against the AI it has never really mattered because AI fleets don't last that long.

Well, unit HP also used to be much lower.

Teleporters just don't have a role. They're all rather weak compared to other ships but as there are no undefended AI targets they must be capable of defeating the defenses on their own (as they won't get any help from other ships). Also how much need is there for teleporting when anything significant the AI fields is mobile anyway and the openness of space just means you can simply fly around whatever is in your way. I just don't see teleporting as adding anything at all to the combat. It may be useful for non-combat ships but in combat it's usually a better idea to keep all your unit types together.

Armor has the same issue as lightning, the numbers are just too small compared to regular weapons, except for a few crappy bonus ships the damage values on the weapons tend to be 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than the armor values of the target so the armor's effect is mostly lost to overkill as well. Armor rotting takes a lot of shots to be effective while most fleetships die in 1-3 hits from their counters. Maybe it matters more in Epic combat or against superweapons (but don't most of those have 0 armor anyway?). Perhaps armor should be applied before the damage multipliers? At least the old shields had a visible effect on range.

How about having armor able tio absorb 100% of a shot's damage instead of being capped at 80% or whatever it was but the armor is damaged for, say, 1% of the absorbed damage (i.e. not counting the part that hit the hull) of each shot?

BTW, the Infiltrator is described as armor piercing, while that's strictly speaking true I don't think the description was intended to point out its meagre 300 points of AP. That probably referred to the FF immunity back when those were called shields.

[Draco18s]

Armor rotting takes a lot of shots to be effective while most fleetships die in 1-3 hits from their counters. Maybe it matters more in Epic combat

Epic doesn't make any difference.  Things still die in 1-3 hits from their counter, which is THE reason my friends don't play any more.  There's nothing wrong with units having an 8:1 win:loss ratio against units they counter, but doing it in 1-3 hits is absurd.  BECAUSE things are hard-countered so...hard is one reason that makes superblobbing the viable tactic.  There's no room to attack a target and get whittled down by the defenders that counter you, and then retreat before a total loss.

[TechSY730]

Things still die in 1-3 hits from their counter, which is THE reason my friends don't play any more.  There's nothing wrong with units having an 8:1 win:loss ratio against units they counter, but doing it in 1-3 hits is absurd.  BECAUSE things are hard-countered so...hard is one reason that makes superblobbing the viable tactic.  There's no room to attack a target and get whittled down by the defenders that counter you, and then retreat before a total loss.

Ah, so that's what you meant by hard-counters being too prevelant.

Not sure how other RTSs deal with this though. Don't many other RTSs have common ways for a bunch of units to be one or two-shotted by their counters?
In any case, if this is to change, it would require a pretty complete revisiting of weapon values, bonus multipliers, HP, and other stats that factor into average lifetime in a battle. In other words, no easy feat.

[Wingflier]

To me it seems that hard-counters are a little bit too prevalent as well.

It seems a little silly when a unit can kill what it counters in 1 or 2 hits, but does abysmal damage to everything else.  Not only is it unrealistic, but it creates balance concerns as well.

Take the light and ultra-light category of units:  These units typically are never much of a threat to your base because one, they are super easy to kill, and two, they have no bonuses towards structures.  It's bad enough that these units have a small amount of HP compared to the bigger units with a "heavy" hull-type. 

Having low hp in AI War is basically a death sentence.  Any unit that has an aoe effect such as explosions or multiple shots can dispatch small groups of units quite easily.  Take the new unit just released:  The Saboteur - this thing absolutely tears through things with light hp by its mere design.  There are dozens of units like this designed to dispatch large groups of small units quickly.

So as I was saying, it's bad enough that units with the "light" hull type have low hp (and high numbers), but in addition, the units made to counter them (such as MLRS, MLRS Turrets, Rail Guns, and many other weapons) ALSO have a bonus against the "light" hull type!  So basically, because of the current hull-type, aoe, and multiplier system, weak units evaporate very quickly, regardless of what type of hull they have.  "Strength in numbers" really means very little in AI War, unless those numbers are comprised of beefy, hard-to-kill units such as bombers or other expensive "heavy" units.  The multiplier many "anti-light" units get against the light hull-type is insane, it just makes light units die in massive swarms.  Meanwhile, units with the "heavy" or "ultra-heavy" hull-type are countered by units that typically do large shots of single-target damage, meaning killing those is a much more singular process, and there's typically a lot more overkill involved in doing so.

In other words, I think the "hull-type" system we have is inherently imbalanced.  Light units by their very nature do not need extra multipliers against them because they are already...well...light!  Heavy units, which are the most dangerous to your base (such as a tank in modern times or a starship in a sci-fi universe) DO need multipliers since they are so heavy that regular attacks don't even phase them.  This could be more easily and universally accomplished with armor and armor-piercing than with unintuitive hull multipliers.

I think that with the current system, "heavy" units (whether literally or in spirit) will always be more powerful and effective, even with their higher costs, because they actually belong in a hull-type multiplier system, where "light" units do not.

[Draco18s]

Not sure how other RTSs deal with this though. Don't many other RTSs have common ways for a bunch of units to be one or two-shotted by their counters?

Well for one, by not having hull-type multipliers.

Even so, though, it should be possible to tweak the DPS / armor / HP values to increase the number of shots it takes to kill stuff.

[Faulty Logic]

I think I found (part of) why TDLs seem OP:
They do damage equal to the square of their mark. A mkI's attack is 17,600 (normal cap) to 5 targets. A mkII does 35,200 to ten targets, for a best-cas DPS of 4 times the mkI...
Core TDLs are freaking nightmares.

(Crossposted)

[TechSY730]

To me it seems that hard-counters are a little bit too prevalent as well.

It seems a little silly when a unit can kill what it counters in 1 or 2 hits, but does abysmal damage to everything else.  Not only is it unrealistic, but it creates balance concerns as well.

Take the light and ultra-light category of units:  These units typically are never much of a threat to your base because one, they are super easy to kill, and two, they have no bonuses towards structures.  It's bad enough that these units have a small amount of HP compared to the bigger units with a "heavy" hull-type. 

Having low hp in AI War is basically a death sentence.  Any unit that has an aoe effect such as explosions or multiple shots can dispatch small groups of units quite easily.  Take the new unit just released:  The Saboteur - this thing absolutely tears through things with light hp by its mere design.  There are dozens of units like this designed to dispatch large groups of small units quickly.

So as I was saying, it's bad enough that units with the "light" hull type have low hp (and high numbers), but in addition, the units made to counter them (such as MLRS, MLRS Turrets, Rail Guns, and many other weapons) ALSO have a bonus against the "light" hull type!  So basically, because of the current hull-type, aoe, and multiplier system, weak units evaporate very quickly, regardless of what type of hull they have.  "Strength in numbers" really means very little in AI War, unless those numbers are comprised of beefy, hard-to-kill units such as bombers or other expensive "heavy" units.  The multiplier many "anti-light" units get against the light hull-type is insane, it just makes light units die in massive swarms.  Meanwhile, units with the "heavy" or "ultra-heavy" hull-type are countered by units that typically do large shots of single-target damage, meaning killing those is a much more singular process, and there's typically a lot more overkill involved in doing so.

In other words, I think the "hull-type" system we have is inherently imbalanced.  Light units by their very nature do not need extra multipliers against them because they are already...well...light!  Heavy units, which are the most dangerous to your base (such as a tank in modern times or a starship in a sci-fi universe) DO need multipliers since they are so heavy that regular attacks don't even phase them.  This could be more easily and universally accomplished with armor and armor-piercing than with unintuitive hull multipliers.

I think that with the current system, "heavy" units (whether literally or in spirit) will always be more powerful and effective, even with their higher costs, because they actually belong in a hull-type multiplier system, where "light" units do not.

One of the reasons why I felt that the ultra-light, light, medium, heavy, and ultra heavy hull types were, well, a mistake (an argument could be made for the swarmer hull type as well). They sort of confuse multiple systems. Overall durability already has some good stats for it, armor and HP. There is no reason to "stack the books" against the lighter stuff even more by tacking on a hull type for small stuff with it. In my mind, hull type should be just that, a type, aka, a material. There is no need to artificially cheapen or make more valuable a hull type multiplier by having some hull types be tied, (de facto even though it isn't in code) to a concept of overall durability. We already have stats that model that.

If we sort of get no hull type strongly associated with an average durability (with the exception of the "special purpose" hull types, structural and command-grade), I think that will aid the system greatly.

Also, if this happens, then we can safely reduce some of the multipliers and overall reduce the average multiplier without worrying that something will start becoming too hard to counter.

This will require some major re-balancing though, and probably should be adjusted with the armor (numeric stat) reblance/system tweaking that may come.


P.S. Yes, I am aware there are some exceptions, like standard fighters with light hull type (standard fighters actually have a good cap HP, but their short-ish range sort of counterbalances that) and raid starships (very durable, and has the ultra-light hull type), but that doesn't change the overall trend, and the names themselves are rather confusing too (light hull type is not intrinsically tied to low overall durability, but thanks to what the name means, we tend to think of it that way, which includes the devs, which is why many of lighter ships have light hull).

Not sure how other RTSs deal with this though. Don't many other RTSs have common ways for a bunch of units to be one or two-shotted by their counters?

Well for one, by not having hull-type multipliers.

Even so, though, it should be possible to tweak the DPS / armor / HP values to increase the number of shots it takes to kill stuff.

Hmm, from what I have seen, most other RTSs don't have many hull-type multipliers, if any. Instead, they seem to group multipliers based on unit physical size (small, medium, large), and let a numeric armor stat model overall armor durability. Hull materials, if mentioned at all, are pretty much just "fluff". (Like Starcraft and Starcraft II)

For games with hull-types (which may or may not also have a concept of unit size), they usually don't have very many of them (like Command and Conquer, which has a "hull type" for each of the unit types: infantry, vehicle, aircraft, structure, navel, construction yard, FAR fewer than the number of type AI War has)

Not sure how we should go from here. What should the hull type model, unit physical size, unit types, or hull material? Should there be a different stat modeling another one of these in the damage equation? Should all of these have a stat that takes part in the damage equation? How many hull types (and the other stats, if we go for them) should there be?
Right now, the hull types are trying to sort of model all of these, with different hull types covering different concepts to model, which unfortunately means it is sort of failing to model any of them.


As for the second point, yea, there could just be an across the board damage nerf and/or HP/armor buff (I would prefer that HP does not get buffed; HP has been inflated enough already), but even that would require a good deal of work, and would still shift the balance in hard to predict ways.

[Volatar]

Perhaps we could double armor across the board? That would kill two or three birds with one stone.

-Speed of killing stuff
-slower speed of killing stuff should result in less deaths and more damaged ships after battles, buffing the usefulness of mobile repair stations
-anti-armor suddenly gain more usefulness

[Wanderer]

Perhaps we could double armor across the board? That would kill two or three birds with one stone.

-Speed of killing stuff
-slower speed of killing stuff should result in less deaths and more damaged ships after battles, buffing the usefulness of mobile repair stations
-anti-armor suddenly gain more usefulness

That would be dealing with a symptom of underperforming usefulness, not the core problem of getting the mechanic to perform the expected task.

[TechSY730]

Perhaps we could double armor across the board? That would kill two or three birds with one stone.

-Speed of killing stuff
-slower speed of killing stuff should result in less deaths and more damaged ships after battles, buffing the usefulness of mobile repair stations
-anti-armor suddenly gain more usefulness

Problem is that wouldn't make much of a difference, as the average armor, IIRC, was like 1.2 orders of magnitude (base 10) below that of the average, non-selfdestruct weapon damage. Merely doubling it, although would make some difference, it wouldn't be by much. In other words, armor is so pathetically low on average right now, that even double armor would still be very low.

Part of this is due to the 20% minimum damage due to armor regardless of weapon - armor ratings. I have stated in the past that I feel this is too high. It used to be 5%, but that proved to be too low. How about 10%? If it was taken down to 10%, then doubled armor, though still would be noticeably behind in terms of orders magnitude, would start being at least sort of visible.

That, and what about things that already have plenty of armor, like raid starships?

That would be dealing with a symptom of underperforming usefulness, not the core problem of getting the mechanic to perform the expected task.

There is that too. Right now, it isn't very well defined what armor (the numeric value) and hull-type are supposed to model, thus leading to the rather disjointed state of them we have today. I think we need to nail down what needs to be modeled and what stat should model it before we can figure out what values to change them to.
This may imply adding or removing stats, or adjusting how existing stats contribute to the damage-equation.

[Hearteater]

First, modern RTS do use hull types.  SC, SC2, Warcraft III (at least).  They call them armor types, but they are exactly the same thing.  Attackers have multipliers against certain "types" of targets.

Second, what "hull types" are modelling is irrelevant. Size, armor composition, class.  Doesn't matter.  You can call them whatever you want.  They can be colors.  The final result is dividing ships into X categories for receiving damage.  Any argument about what we call those categories is just an argument about aesthetics.

[rabican]

 "Strength in numbers" really means very little in AI War, unless those numbers are comprised of beefy, hard-to-kill units such as bombers or other expensive "heavy" units.

bombers aren't resilient,  polycrystal is the worst hulltype in the game, for 99% of the time, and hp is nothing much.

Also, most of the high caps low hp(cap over 100) ships aren't light, but ultra light or swarmer. 2 light , one of which has decentish hp.

I think people generally underestimate the power of the swarmer types. Their deaths aren't an event , i'm just happy they aren't shooting anything that takes less than a second to replace. They aren't really suited for deep strikes in ai territory but meh, better than their reputation, in human hands at least. In ai hands, well, they are joke of course, partly due to ship number caps on planets.

Don't feel that multiplier system is bad, some of the extreme values could be toned a bit though. And nothing wrong at all with armor system .

Do ships really get one shotted that much? Apart from guardians one shotting things , and swarmer types dying from a sneeze, i can't say i've noticed this much.

5 replies while i was typing this, bleh

Part of this is due to the 20% minimum damage due to armor regardless of weapon - armor ratings. I have stated in the past that I feel this is too high. It used to be 5%, but that proved to be too low. How about 10%? If it was taken down to 10%, then doubled armor, though still would be noticeably behind in terms of orders magnitude, would start being at least sort of visible.

I really think the 20% is pretty right. If the hulltypes weren't involved,  then that woudl be different story.

The real problem as you said is that for 90%ish of the ships armor is so low that its effects are only useful against very few ships .