Can we have more intelligent enclaves?

[Echo35]

So, questions:
1) What difficulty are you playing on (apologies if you already told me)?
2) What's the earliest enclave spawn?
3) How often are the enclaves spawning after that?

Both the AI are on Difficulty 7, I don't remember exactly when the first Enclave spawned but it's about 4 hours into the game now and they're a huge pain, and they seem to come every time I manage to rebuild my turrets. I haven't timed it yet but it seems to be maybe every 20 minutes maybe? I'll actually check the time next time to be exact.

[keith.lamothe]

Perhaps I should put in some logging for them

[True-Chaos]

The thing with roaming enclaves is... You *need* to make sure that enclave ship itself is killed, otherwise it will just drop its ships, run away and start building more... and while its building more, the counter is timing down to summon the *next* one...

At one point in my last game I had 4 of them running around causing havoc till I hunted them down with sieges... Since I've issues kill on site orders in regards to the motherships they don't hurt nearly so much (Tip: If you have a forcefield near the entry wormhole, use it to block the wormhole so the mothership can't retreat instantly!)

[Echo35]

Perhaps I should put in some logging for them

Either something in the last update neutered them or I killed all the Enclave ships on the map because no more have shown up. They were attacking me with such frequency before it's entirely possible I killed the Enclaves off entirely, unless of course they spawn at will like the AI ships do.

[keith.lamothe]

@True-Chaos: Yea, there is an interesting "gotta kill 'em all" twist with the roaming enclaves, wardens, and hybrids, because they do try to get away and will be back if they do.  Between the forcefield-covering-exit and other tricks, though, I think it's quite doable

@Echo35: As indicated by the code/summary I posted earlier, roaming enclaves spawn out of thin air (hybrids don't, they can actually be stamped out, you might be thinking of those).  But as True-Chaos said, if you don't actually get the mothership then quite a pile of enclaves can accumulate, determined to give you grief.  Of course, as I said a few posts back, they were also nerfed in 4.049 to carry 30% of the ships they used to carry

[orzelek]

That nerf of yours made enclaves actually much more dangerous... since there are now more of them they tend to travel around and continuously generate younglings.

And since they are quite durable now they can live for quite long even if chased by fleet.

[Echo35]

@Echo35: As indicated by the code/summary I posted earlier, roaming enclaves spawn out of thin air (hybrids don't, they can actually be stamped out, you might be thinking of those).  But as True-Chaos said, if you don't actually get the mothership then quite a pile of enclaves can accumulate, determined to give you grief.  Of course, as I said a few posts back, they were also nerfed in 4.049 to carry 30% of the ships they used to carry

It's not that they are showing up with less ships. They haven't shown up period. Guess I scared them off?

[TechSY730]

At low AIPs, the nerf does make things easier. At high AIPs, the "nerf" can make things MUCH more difficult. More precisely, once the AIP exceeds something around 3 * AIPNeededForExtraEnclave, things will be harder than before. The 3 comes from the fact that the new enclaves only hold 30% as many ships. However, since each enclave has its own health and weaponry, I am counting that towards the remaining 3% "extra firepower".

EDIT: After reviewing the previous posts, the AIPNeededForExtraEnclave is currently at 50, which seems a little low. At 150 AIP, the enclaves become just about as hard as before, and get worse from there. In most games I've seen, it doesn't take too long for 150 AIP to be reached. Anyone want to weigh in on this?

[keith.lamothe]

I'm certainly happy to tweak the numbers, for 4.050:

* Changed number-of-enclaves spawned for a roaming enclave spawn-event from 1 + (AIP / 50) to 1 + (AIP / 75).
* When multiple roaming enclaves are spawned as part of a single spawn-event, they now spawn on a randomly selected planet (of the eligible planets).  This can still result in multiple spawns on a single planet, but it's much less likely.

[TechSY730]

An extra enclave per 75 AIP sounds about right. To get to 3 per spawn, the AIP needs to be 225, which seems to be around the points where the late-early game transitions into the early-mid game. That is to say, by this point, your defenses should strong enough to handle what the old enclaves could of thrown at you, thus now you can handle 3 of them.

Thanks. 

[Spikey00]

AI changes to friendly enclaves, eventually?  Please?  D:

[Echo35]

I would just like to say Keith, I have more info about that. One showed up and attacked at about the 5 Hour 11 Minute mark. Well I'm now on the 5 Hour 54 Minute mark and my Threat Indicator started having a seizure. Thankfully I have scouts out everywhere, so I moved over to the planet that said was generating Threat. Guess what? Five (5) Neinzul Enclaves are making a beeline for the planet that has been having its butt kicked by the Neinzul so far. Five! My AIP JUST hit 200 a few minutes ago, and I usually only get one or two Enclaves there, but now suddenly five are incoming.

And yes, I've been killing the Motherships. They're the first priority for my defenses, so I haven't let any live so far.

EDIT: Interestingly, of those 5 the AI attacked and killed 3 before they made it to my homeworld. I thought the AI didn't attack Enclaves that were hostile to the player?

[keith.lamothe]

AI changes to friendly enclaves, eventually?  Please?  D:

I've been thinking about it.  How have they done in 4.049?

[orzelek]

Friendly enclaves are present... they also show that kind of stupidity like attack AI planet behind that Mk IV AI planet thats just on the next jump.

I think I have currently one alive and kicking... not sure what happened to others. It was able to survive mainly because that IV was pain in the back and I was in process of withering it down. Also younglings are much less useful when genned on AI planet than when used against player. At least on Mk IV world.. When attaking Mk II word friendly enclave can be quite helpful.

[keith.lamothe]

Just an FYI to everyone interested in this subject: I just rebalanced the 4 main youngling types (not the nanoswarm yet, it's a totally different mushroom), and with buffing the base mkI stats up to be in balance with the other stuff and also linear-izing the stats (generally just health, armor, attack, and armor piercing) with mark level, the result is that the mark III types used as a template for the minor faction variants are quite a bit more powerful than they used to be.  That's fine and intentional, but as a roflstomp-preventative-measure I've cut the "hangar" size of roaming enclaves and preservation wardens by half and doubled the time they take to build their internal ships.  Not sure, it may even need to be cut down more since these mkIII guys are really quite a handful now, but it's a start

EDIT: Interestingly, of those 5 the AI attacked and killed 3 before they made it to my homeworld. I thought the AI didn't attack Enclaves that were hostile to the player?

There are actually 3 alignments of roaming enclave: AIAlly, PlayerAlly, and EnemyToAll.

You don't tend to see the EnemyToAll ones since they tend to spawn on AI planets (close to you) and don't really have anywhere to run most of the time, but they actually have more health than the AIAlly variant (the PlayerAlly variant has still more).