Champion Units Idea

[Hearteater]

EDIT: This is an idea for AI Units only, players can never have these through any method

So after playing a bit too much Binding of Isaac, it occurred to me there is something there that might be interesting in AI Wars.  What about a small chance that certain big AI units are Champions.  There would be several types of Champions that modify the unit they are applied to.  A simple example might be: Tough, x2 Health.  For a sci-fi setting, maybe they should be called Upgrades rather than Champions.  The goal of this is to create situation were the player needs to react in a different manner than normal to deal with the Champion.
Here's a brain dump of my thoughts:

• Only Mark II or greater units can be Champions, and their Mark designation gets a '+' added (so a Mark IV Champion would show as IV+)
• Units eligible for Champion promotion: Guardians, Guard Posts, Basic "Player" Starships, Spire Starships, Command Stations, Golems (not player Golems), Hybrids, Fortress, Super Fortress, Carriers, H/Ks, Mothership, Avenger
• Champions don't start appearing until difficulty 7.3+, some units (Super Fortresses and other big nasties) aren't eligible for Champion-status until difficulty 8+
• Champion-status randomly added to eligible spawned unit at something like Difficulty*0.2% chance (so 2% at Difficulty 10)
• Not all Champion types are available for eligible units (no one wants to see a x4 health Super Fortress)
• Champion unit names appear as something like: "Heavy Beam Guardian (Unstoppable Upgrade)"
• Champion unit tool tips briefly summarizes Champion (aka Upgrade) features in text blurb appended to the end of the normal tool tip

Generic Champion Features:

• Increased health, depending on the base unit type, applied before any Champion-specific health modification.  Guardians and Starships would all get x2 health, but a Mothership and other big units might only get around +20%.
• Immune to Reclamation

Possible Upgrades (aka Champion types)

• Unstoppable: Immune to Gravity Effects, Paralysis, EMP, Black Hole Generator, Engine Damage, Nukes, and Does Not Require Supply (if it did before)
  
• Far Sight: Immune to Radar Dampening, Radar Jamming, and +25% attack range
  
• Tough: +100% health (so x4 health total), +5000 Armor
  
• Hunter: +60 Movement, Max Armor Piercing, Immune to Gravity Effects
  
• Twin: Spawns with a duplicate Twin Champion and they stick together
  
• Overload: Paralysis for 1 second with attacks, 8 second EMP on death, Immune to Paralysis and EMP
  
• Specialist: Doubles all damage bonuses greater than 1
  
• Nightmare: Stealth, Radar Dampening 3000, Immune to Force Fields, if part of a wave that wave is unannounced
  
• Nano-Repair: Self Repair Time of 15 seconds, Immune to Engine Damage (obviously not available on the big units)
  
• Oracle: Full system Tachyon detection, +25% attack range, +50% system-wide attack boost
  
• Achilles: Takes 1% damage from any attack that does not have a damage bonus > 1
  
• Hammer: +300% damage, Reload increased by 100% (x2 effective DPS overall)
  
• Eternal: When killed, immediately respawns as threat in an AI system, alerted preferred, Core/Homeworld otherwise (Guardians Only)
  
• Alarmist: When it wakes up, it wakes up the entire system, while not dormant, the planet it is on is on alert (Guardians Only)
  
• Awakened: Begins the game awake (as threat), if a Guard Post all reinforcements to it are awake immediately, if an Awakened Champion is part of a wave, that wave spawns as threat at the Warp Gate instead
  
• Commander: Spawns with a full cap of a random fleet ship available to its AI (include these in the wave if the Champion is in a wave), and each Reinforcement pulse it gets another fleet ship spawning next to it (same state, dormant/threat, as the Champion).  Ideally the same ship type would be maintained for reinforcements

[Kahuna]

I like the idea but I think only AI should have these "champions". Instead of being champions they could be experimentals? Enhanced? augmented? or something. For example"Heavy Beam Guardian (Unstoppable Upgrade)" could be "Experimental Heavy Beam Guardian". In the tool tip it could say something like "This *insert-unit-name-here* is enhanced with AIs' experimental technology".

The AI is intelligent so it's researching new technologies too.. it's evolving so watch out

[Hearteater]

Yes, these are defiantly AI-only (which is also why they are all immune to reclamation).  And yeah, the idea that the AI is experimenting is the lore reason behind them.

[Draco18s]

The core idea has some merit.
Unsure on specifics (for example, if its random, and the player builds one, it feels "wrong" as the player had no choice in the matter).

[Hearteater]

The player can't build these.  These are modifications to AI units only.  Updated first post to actually state this clearly as apparently I never explicitly stated that.

[Diazo]

I'm not sure I like this, at least not giving it to the basic enemy AI forces.

If something like this is implemented it should be like the Hybrids, maybe add it to the advanced hybrids in the form of different types so there are 3 or 4 types of hybrids rather then just the one.

Part of the issue is from working with the data files for the wiki you can't do 'random' upgrades to a ship, you have to manually define each one as a new ship type.

Maybe expand the types of guardians there are would be what you are looking for?

D.

[KDR_11k]

Some of those mutations seem horribly overpowered (unannounced waves?) and I think they should generally avoid having planet-wide effects. Maybe boosting a handful of minions (a small fleet, 20 or so) but they shouldn't be total game changers.

Also they should probably be AI plots, not directly tied to the difficulty level.

[Hearteater]

Well, I'm sure this wouldn't be easy to implement, but it certainly isn't impossible.  One option would be to make the Champion modifier class act as a middle-man for ship-stat method calls so that it can modify them as needed.  Another would be to dynamically create Champion Ship Types in game as each is rolled up.  There are many options.  I'm sure if Keith or Chris wanted to, they could find something that would work without being too unreasonable to implement.

Not sure if this was a concern, but this option could be controlled by an AI Plot (like Avenger, Beachhead, Astro Trains, and such) so you don't need to play with it if you don't want.

@KDR_11K:
If you are playing at Difficulty 10, there is a 2% chance a given Starship is a Champion.  1 in 16 has unannounced waves (the Nightmare upgrade), giving you a 0.125% chance of getting an unannounced wave.  If there are 2 Starships, 1 Golem (from a Golemite) and a Carrier in the wave (basically the only units eligible for Champion-status), there is a 0.6234% chance of an unannounced wave.  That's at max difficulty with 5 potential Champion units in a wave.  On average, it will happen once every 160.4 waves.  With 2 AIs and waves every 6 minutes, you are looking at around one unannounced wave per 8 hours.  And that assumes there are only 16 Champion types.

But if that's still too much, consider that some Champion types can be limited to certain difficulties, Champions in general can be tied to an AI Plot so you don't even need them on, and that unannounced wave could just as easily be 1/2 warning (which the Neinzul Youngster AI already has built-in) or maybe just a flat 20 seconds of warning.  I'm certainly not suggesting my ideas or numbers are at all balanced.  They're pretty off-the-cuff, although I don't think any are unreasonable starting points.

Planet-wide effects are good in that they make the player actually think about the situation.  And when you kill the things, you've made progress.  Unlike killing a Warp Guardian, which can very easily just respawn later.  A specific problem Champion is incredible unlikely to respawn.  And Champion structures can never respawn (with the exception of Eternal, which probably wouldn't be allowed on most structures).  Each Champion creates more engagement purely because they are "over-powered" in unique and unexpected ways.  You could go 100 games and never see an Eternal EMP Guardian.  But you will remember that one game where he was always there to mess with you.  Compare that to if all EMP Guardians worked that way by default.  It would just become one more thing to deal with every game and would get old fast.  In this way crazy abilities can actually be added without breaking the system when they are very rare exceptions.

[Kahuna]

Some of those mutations seem horribly overpowered (unannounced waves?) and I think they should generally avoid having planet-wide effects. Maybe boosting a handful of minions (a small fleet, 20 or so) but they shouldn't be total game changers.

Also they should probably be AI plots, not directly tied to the difficulty level.

Yes. They should be optional (AI Plot) and not so OP.

[LaughingThesaurus]

While I like the idea, I do agree that it should be thrown in as an AI Plot, rather than being difficulty-based. Maybe even with higher intensities being what gives them the higher spawn rate, rather than the difficulty setting. Seems like the core game should be keeping the complex stuff optional, like it has been.
As far as the actual champion types themselves, I'm not really worried about any individual one being too game-breaking. Just as long as you don't throw multiple affixes on the same guardian.

[KDR_11k]

I know it'd be exceedingly rare but an unannounced wave could end the game for you right there.

[Hearteater]

Yeah, I wasn't intending multiple affixes to the same unit.  That could get extremely bad.

As bad as unannounced waves seem (again, they don't have to be unannounced), I've missed my fair share of waves without dying.  That's part of setting up a good defense.  If you need to be actively part of every wave you often don't get a chance to get anything done.  I think Beachheads are far more deadly than a <1% chance of an unannounced wave.

[TechSY730]

Funny about the timing of this suggestion...

[LaughingThesaurus]

I actually agree thoroughly unannounced waves would be a really huge deal on super high difficulties too. What if it just gets rid of all the wave's details for that wave? As in, "Wave coming in 4:00". No information on ship composition, which planet it will attack, and maybe it won't even necessarily follow the rules of normal waves, and would be able to come from theoretically any angle (so long as a planet it AI controlled, it can attack from there, regardless of warp gates?). That's a surefire sign that you need to back off and set up a strong defensive perimeter everywhere, rather than just getting at least 2000 ships shoved in your face with nothing you can do about it.

[Minotaar]

Nobody ever plays with Beachheads, and you guys want to create something even more rare and punishing. Think about that for a second 
As for the Champion thing, I think the design philosophy of no invisible upgrades should be preserved. Having to constantly mouseover Guardians or whatnot would be really annoying. I'd much rather have a few completely new Guardian types.