Champion Options

[Faulty Logic]

I wish there were more options regarding the champions, their rewards, and the response. The champs still need some balance work; this lets players find their own.

Something like:

Champion Easy: you get a champion, no response.

Champion Moderate (number): old way of counterbalancing (offensive increase (5xnum % for waves, 2xnum% for CPAs, num% increase for exos), HW nemeses).

Champion Hard (number): Nemesis response, with 4 being the default (so champ-hard-4 is what is currently happening with them).

Champion Lone Wolf: Boolean modifier to any of the above: just a champion, no minions or modular forts.

Maybe have a nebula difficulty scalar as well.

[Aziphos]

I think an option to play without nebula’s would be nice (like the lone wolf...just with altered experience gaining and an unlock of new champion types by level).
I really like the nebula quests but at the moment they seem to be the most invariable feature of AI-wars.

[Cinth]

I think an option to play without nebula’s would be nice (like the lone wolf...just with altered experience gaining and an unlock of new champion types by level).
I really like the nebula quests but at the moment they seem to be the most invariable feature of AI-wars.

You do have the option to play without the nebula

Champs aren't any different than say the FS campaign (once started).  Play with it or not, player gets benefit once enabled, and player gets more benefit (AI as well) as they progress along the campaign.

[Histidine]

Feature suggestion for next AIW expansion: Valley Mode.

Fly around with your champ and purify the galaxy! Direct the survivors to build useful buildings like farms energy collectors and clinics repair stations while fighting monsters waves and keeping morale up.  Every so often you get fight the AI's nemesis champions, all distinct personalities who nevertheless have one thing in common: they like to insinuate that you are just as evil as them (with the exception of the brainwashed Spire who is forced to fight you). The CSG network is the source of your enemies' immortality, but so is it yours: once it goes down every death you suffer bleeds the human survivors directly. Your ultimate goal is to destroy the two central processing nodes for the evil AI "Demonaica" and win the war.

For extra points: A third of the tracks should be reused from Shattered Haven.

[Aziphos]

Quote:
"You do have the option to play without the nebula "

I know and I do .
The difference to the fallen spyre campaign is that the fallen spire missions are dependant of fleet composition, map type....and so on. (in my last game with fallen spyre I thought hybrids wouldn't make a big difference...)
The nebula missions are a bit independent of the game-options.
While playing with Champions may change the whole game and gives completely new strategic possibility’s, the nebula missions can be solved using the same strategy whenever played.

[Cinth]

The campaigns play out the same way every time you play them.  The outcomes don't change game to game, just how you accomplish the goals. 

And the map seeding can play a big part in being able to get to all those nebula, like it plays into how you handle chase exos.  If you take both in isolation (the only way to compare them), Fallen Spire is more monotonous than nebula.  Every chase exo plays out the same (with relatively minor variation).  The AI response plays out the same too.  It's going to send out exos every so often.  This never changes between games.  The only reason FS feels like it plays out differently is because of the field of battle.  FS plays out in normal space.  Nebula play out in isolation.

[Tridus]

The big difference though is that Fallen Spire is played while playing the main game. You're doing an extra thing, but you're still taking systems, building fleets, and fighting the AI in the main game.

Nebula scenarios are essentially a mini game. If you're in the nebula controlling your champion(s), you're not in the main game fighting the AI. It splits your attention and slows the game down, more so if the nebula scenario is one that requires you to pay close attention and use your ability. In that sense it's far more monotonous than Fallen Spire, since I can spend 30-60 minutes in a nebula and come out with a couple of modules for my one champion, at worst (at best the ship hull improves and I get a modular fortress). Doing FS stuff requires me to take control of more of the map and gets me things like fleets and fortified choke points and furthers the war with the AI.

I guess that's the issue I have with champions now that I'm playing with them more. To really get them powered up (ie destroyer or higher) I need to do what feels like pause the game for a while and go do nebulas.

[Cinth]

Nebula were intended to fill those gaps where you were usually refleeting.  If that's when you do them, then there isn't that major gap (other than the one that would have been there anyway).  And you don't pay attention to what you are doing vs the AI?  The champs do require more micro than just about anything else in the game but that is the way they were designed.  And like I said before, the nebula feel the way they do because of the arena in which you fight.  Fallen Spire takes place in the normal galaxy, in the same place you fight the AI.  You are feeling the two birds, one stone thing there.  If FS happened in its own arena, it would feel just like nebula.

[Tridus]

If that was the goal, I don't think they do a very good job right now. I can refleet in a fraction of the time I can do most of the nebula scenarios, and what ends up happening is with my attention divided to deal with the nebula, my war on the AI slows right down until the nebula is over.

Maybe it's just not a game option that suits how I play. *shrug*

[Cinth]

Refleeting is subjective too.  Very dependent on you do unlocks and your controlled planets and likely, how you play in general.  I would try to not discourage anyone from any option, but maybe try to figure out better ways to integrate them into your game before you give up on it. 

[keith.lamothe]

Refleets used to take a lot longer   And in some situations still do, but I think most people just plunk down the K for an economy that works.

[Mick]

I've only really tried the shadow expansion for the first time fairly recently, and the scenarios feel the same to me as well. I get the impression they work much better as a co-op feature, because I find it jarring to split my time between scenarios and other stuff.

[Cinth]

Yeah, that too.  I don't mp so I often forget that aspect.

[Lord Fiddlemeister]

I do agree with everyone that nebulas for champions are the most invariable part of AI War. I love playing as a champion but the nebulas make you too detached from the actual game.

Maybe we could have some interactions between nebulas? Say you have to help escort a couple of ships from nebula A to nebula B, meaning that you have to fly along an armed escort to protect them from the AI.
Another example could be that you need to deliver an item to another nebula without getting destroyed (bonus for no hull damage?) or hack the AI and give the results to a minor faction.

Missions like these would make you feel a lot more active and allows a normal player to help with the missions as well.


Another solution could be to just create more missions, or even randomly generated, and have the missions randomly picked from a big pool. This would mean that at the very least, you won't be doing the same missions every game, although I'd prefer the first solution.

[Cinth]

The shadow ships are the only ships capable of warping into a nebula.  Normal players have the fun job of fighting the AI

I think B is the best choice, expanding the current set of scenarios.  Scenarios are tactical exercises.  Small scale combats.