Brainstorming for Expansion 5

[Oralordos]

Stick the rogue computer virus faction on mantis and I will upvote it.

[Wingflier]

Stick the rogue computer virus faction on mantis and I will upvote it.

DOOOOOOOOOOOO ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

[KDR_11k]

Just don't make it as tedious and repetitive as SPAZ. Those Zombies were a pain to deal with, especially since the unit AI was too dumb to avoid infection and any unit you didn't control directly would get infected sooner or later, wasting a ton of resources.

I think of all the expansions I liked Zenith Remnant the most because it added so much everyday stuff like all those planet modifiers (attritioner, jammer, boosters and inhibitors, ...) that made some planets play very differently. Fallen Spire or Champions are pretty much different game modes but ZR was something you'd feel no matter what game setup you picked. I guess it also had the advantage of having the most space to play with when it came to adding new units, leading to a huge and diverse bonus ship selection. The neinzul are all a very specific playstyle while the spire of both LOTS and AS are leaning more towards the plain overpowered... Spirecraft on the other hand are so niche that while I always enable them I never use them.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Just don't make it as tedious and repetitive as SPAZ. Those Zombies were a pain to deal with, especially since the unit AI was too dumb to avoid infection and any unit you didn't control directly would get infected sooner or later, wasting a ton of resources.

I think of all the expansions I liked Zenith Remnant the most because it added so much everyday stuff like all those planet modifiers (attritioner, jammer, boosters and inhibitors, ...) that made some planets play very differently. Fallen Spire or Champions are pretty much different game modes but ZR was something you'd feel no matter what game setup you picked. I guess it also had the advantage of having the most space to play with when it came to adding new units, leading to a huge and diverse bonus ship selection. The neinzul are all a very specific playstyle while the spire of both LOTS and AS are leaning more towards the plain overpowered... Spirecraft on the other hand are so niche that while I always enable them I never use them.

I really doubt it would be. The zombies in SPAZ affect any ship they attack, and there's really no pressure to deal with them either. It's only just tedium, despite how terrifying (but mostly annoying) they really are.

As for mantis, I've got it up just now.
9936: Plague Infection Campaign Type
And it even glows! ...slightly.

[KDR_11k]

I'm thinking some kind of alternate universe, Warpspace or whatever you want to call it:

- Each planet has an alternate universe version, these are linked up in the same way that the normal planets are.
- Some planets have warp faults that allow ships to pass between normal space and Warpspace.
- The AI's forces are not present on the Warpspace versions of the planet but instead they're populated by all kinds of alien monstrosities.
- Travel through warpspace is faster or maybe sometimes safer than normal travel and doesn't trigger deepstrikes.
- A special unit can generate temporary warp faults.
- While your units are in warpspace random effects may hurt them, including random instakills. These random effects show up as warp quakes and stay active for a while before fading again.
- Travelling through a warp fault widens that fault and allows the warpspace monsters to pass through.
- Maybe all notable AI structures have twisted warpspace equivalents, e.g. the home command would be a massive, dangerous monstrosity or raid engines would appear as something like a hive golem.

The goal is some sort of unexplored, foreign and scary land that you can traverse and get benefits from but should never feel safe in. Give the game more of a mystique.

[Mánagarmr]

Warpspface

FTFY.

[LaughingThesaurus]

So, an alternate dimension version of every planet. It's kind of like the plague in that the creatures there are unfamiliar and scary, but comes with its own advantages without necessarily putting pressure on the player.

I'd suggest throwing in more ways for it to hurt the player, assuming warpspace is an option. For instance, the AI can't survive IN warpspace, but their advanced warp technology allows them to send waves through warp faults, essentially providing you with no possible way to create a global chokepoint... or something. Some kind of pressure should come with it, possibly, to make it a bit more interesting. After all, I doubt those twists in wormhole space will just sit there doing nothing while you wait to go in.

Otherwise, I quite like exploring a twisted and forbidden locale as well. It's unfamiliar, different, and scary. Maybe you can hijack some kind of cool tech from there, or the creatures/structures of warpspace have their own similar-to-AI format where you can take them apart, clear a road, and use warpspace more to your own whims. Maybe, of course, go on a mission to blow up the heart of warpspace for some awesome rewards, at the cost of closing off all of the warp faults.

Go wild!

[Hearteater]

Expansion ideas huh?  I think I have one floating around here .

[Lancefighter]

Guys. I have a really good idea for an expansion. Some of you might not like it. Some of you may love it.

But here it is.

PVP

[Wingflier]

Why don't we fix the PVE portion of the game first

[LaughingThesaurus]

PVP

So basically, invent an entirely new game with AI War. There's a lot of stuff that would need to be completely scrapped for PvP gameplay.

[LordSloth]

As unambitious as it is, I'd like to see more Easy AI types, to add some variety to that end of things.

An AI that has riot starships, perhaps. An AI that unlocks swarm-type ships (non-neinzul, if possible, non-cloaked...) etc.  It's a bit easier to come up with cruel ideas, like my "sniper master" (with lots of gravity effects or tractors or engine damage), but I'd appreciate a few new, somehow interesting easy AI types.

[KDR_11k]

Chaos warp AI: All wormhole exits on a planet are randomly remapped for it (with the mapping changing regularly) so when its forces go from one planet to the next they come out of a random wormhole there (the mapping is to make sure that a force that enters a wormhole still comes out as a single force on the other end instead of being spread evenly across all wormholes). If they appear right on the wormhole they want to go through, well, that saves a lot of time. Waves of course follow this mapping too.

[Coppermantis]

I recall that the AI's exogalactic affairs being a subject of an expansion. Perhaps this could be expanded upon.

My proposition:

The lobby has a new toggleable option called "exogalactic campaign" or something of the sort. This drastically changes the way the game seeds in the following manner:

The Humans start with up to two home planets (one for each former AI Home planet) with an exogalactic wormhole on it in addition to the regular stuff. It acts as a spawning point for friendly minor factions. (Enclaves, Rebels, etc.)

The rest of the galaxy is divided equally between two factions: The AI and their primary enemy, a race of incredible power such that the AI cannot crush it as it did the Humans, Spire, and Zenith.

As far as the rest of the details, I haven't thought about it much. However, everything on this setting would be significantly more powerful. The enemies use advanced tech in spades with lots of golems, spirecraft and other horrifying things. They have production facilities that produce these things directly, rather than warping them in as in the base game. This allows the humans to do direct economic damage by destroying/capturing these (heavily defended) facilities.
The Humans start out at a higher tech level, although still lower than the others so that it is still AI War in that you must lie low and take out only what you need, except that everytng has been dialed up to 11.

Maybe once one faction begins to have a significant advantage the losing side will request an alliance with the Humans to even the odds.

Obviously this is a pretty extensive change, but I think that something of the sort, if not this exact execution, would be cool.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I believe the AI only ever crushed certain specific spire. The main spire capital fleet and the highest tech spire stuff is actually so powerful that the AI feels a need to hold it off as much as possible. This is part of the premise of the fallen spire campaign.