Hello all, I played AI war back when it was at 3.00 and found it a fun and extraordinary game, now coming back to it with all the immense and impressive changes (to art, mechanics, units, factions, hacking...etc.) the game has grown into something that is able to appeal to people with dramatically differing playstyles in a way that no other game I have ever played has managed quite so well. I suppose I want to say thank you for creating it... but I also hoped to suggest something of an improvement... in the spirit in which the game has developed by numerous community inspired modifications.
It's a little wordy, but it covers:
Quests, new objectives spawning in-game, how to handle them
Equipment, new methods of unlocking them and choices players could be given
Minor factions, new ways for champions and minor factions to interact.
XP and levels, what should give XP? What should levels do?
Champions, as an RPG element could benefit from more RPG staples. They have xp, energy (mana), abilities (singular rather than plural most of the time), a nice paper-doll model with slots...(should it be called a paper-doll?), lots of equipment choices and even nebula scenarios (all great) and yet they feel a little disconnected with the base game. I think the reason is that most mechanics simply don't apply to them or apply only to them. (resources, knowledge, waves, AI plots, types, minor factions etc. all don't affect them as far as I'm aware (no xp for killing most things outside nebulae, no costs that would require normal territorial expansion, no benefit to being used defensively, no interaction with spire, neinzul, dark spire... minor factions or plots). While on the other side, shields, xp, shadow charge, immense speed and nebulae are champion-only and feel like a very separate game.
So, where to start?
Quests
"Let me see my objectives list... I know where two data-centres are, one equipment cache, there's a mysterious artifact and a neinzul nasty-bugger that looks interesting" - future me
Simple in theory, harder in practice. Keeping it simple then, nothing too major but with scope for growth as the other mechanics have grown over time. (nothing like the complexity of scripting and writing complex nebula scenarios, multi-sided dynamic battles are impressive and fun but must have been tricky).
Quest could be added as items listed along with the other objectives that develop and emerge as you scout the universe, complete with rewards for either your champion or general war effort. Most would have little effect on standard gameplay, but increase the difficulty of low-AIP champion-focused games or give new challenges and rewards to high AIP games.
Example quests:
Deepstrike goals (assasination, escort, capture, bug, hack, probe, steal, sneak) located at least 3 jumps from your worlds that (disappear/move/develop/upgrade/spawn ships/trigger AI waves/etc.) If or when nearby planets are colonised/in-supply/on alert, or other prerequisite quests are completed.
I know that sounded complicated so I'll give you a few more fleshed-out examples:
1. Deepstrike planet x, remove and recover the remains of an advanced guardian/guardpost. It has a bodyguard squad and will trigger heavy hacking-type and deep-raid responses should your force be detected (or perhaps outnumber the defenders). If an adjacent planet has supply (or merely colonised) it will relocate to better protect itself.
Reward: Champion module unlock/free turret unlock. (you choose)
Penalty: Increased bodyguards on all future quests, increased hacking responses (the AI is responding to your sneaky behaviour)
2. Capture and develop artifact on planet x. It will be relocated or worse destroyed if an adjacent planet (has supply, is colonised, AI base destoryed) and so the initial raid must be a deepstrike to remove the AI station. We must then colonise and protect the planet if we wish to make use of it for our champion.
Deep raid, colonisation. +/- defend planet for the next 10 min.
Reward: Single slot module... or whatever. Lots of options here.
3. Bring a shadow hacking terminal to the ARS, forgoing the choice of ship type for choice of champion hull... The AI has been studying these relics and has a far greater knowledge of advanced technology than we would like.
Reward: Gaining hulls through normal game-play, or boosting your preferred hull type.
Penalty: Lose the chance to choose your bonus ship, hacking dangers
These could be used to encourage normal development, requiring some planets to be gained and held to fully develop a champion, increasing AIP and normal game development. Inversely, quests could encourage a low planet number/AIP game by maximising the number of potential quest locations and spawning quest defenders to help stop your one-man army roaming the universe unimpeded at low AIP. (Still low AIP but now most planets behind enemy lines would be significantly better defended against champions due to quest targets being protected and the player choosing not to target weakly defended spots due to the +AIP on them and lack of a reason to do so (no quests). Currently only pesky anti-starship arachnids slow champions at low AIP and even then you can absorb shots with shadow charge to take them out).
Equipment.
"Ooo shiny! Cap'n it's a compression coil! I can upgrade the engines!" - The chief engineer of my firefly-class ship.
Equipment currently is seemingly random, ARS hacking helped to reduce the random nature of fleet ship unlocks while providing an extra challenge for those that wanted it. Equipment caches could be used to allow important choices, going down one hull line or upgrading one module type- using the same mechanic as the linked weaker core shield network where destroying one removes all. So which one to take (and whether to forgo opening one until you have them all) is a strategic choice.
(If I was doing it I'd just upgrade the core shield network to also being caches... make them much more fun and give them a reason to exist... who actually likes core shield generators?)
Equipment caches A-E could then contain items only for one hull type or for all (but usually weaker).
e.g. on objectives:
Equipment cache C - Human hull/tech,
Equipment cache C - Neinzul hull/tech,
Equipment cache C - Spire hull/tech,
Equipment cache C - Unknown,
"The equipment cache marked C has been stored by the AI for future research. It appears to contain (spire tech) materials. It is linked with similar C caches and is boobytrapped to prevent material falling into the wrong hands. We can destroy the cache now to release the stored contents but this would destroy the other caches still under AI control..."
"...or we could capture all the planets with C caches and open all owned caches simultaneously."
Additional methods of gaining or improving equipment would be nice. Constructed, researched, found through interactions with minor factions, as rewards etc.
Talking of construction... Champions currently are an investment of time but not any in-game resources. Additional investment options would help link them with the core game.
Either one-off costs (building bigger hulls requiring 500k metal and crystal for example, or 5k knowledge or gained through ARS as an option - see shadow hacking above). Perhaps when a champion dies they respawn with tiny hull and the large hull needs to be rebuilt? Perhaps too annoying but having low build-time but high-cost modules wouldn't hurt.
Ongoing upkeep to boost a champion (e.g. Shadow feeder devices with -100k energy costs, Shadow generators with -500metal/crystal but +1/s shadow charge, +100 max shadow charge or any other champion only benefit... forced module unlocks, module upgrades, additional ship traits (like unlocking vampirism for neinzul ships), new abilities or cheaper/stronger abilities
Minor Factions:
"Damn you roaming enclave! This is my nebula!" *insert evil laughter*
We have nebulae, (should look up the plural...), perhaps if minor factions unlocked new nebulae or more story telling elements. E.g. Vengeance generators could spawn on worlds with nebulae connections and trigger special events in the linked nebulae. Adding their forces to the battle as troops die on the planet or vice-versa.
The fun would be: Enabling a module that gains energy as units die (shadow charge), or a mobile Vengeance module that has a localised vengeance generator effect but increases damage taken from all attacks.
Roaming enclaves both hostile and friendly could travel with you into nebulae (encouraging making the linked-planet player-controlled to avoid nasty surprises).
Dyson Spheres could spawn on nebula linked planets and always have the linked scenario or a new one. OR, the laser gatlings could travel to the nebula, helping or hindering based on the linked world.
(In general the idea is that the nebula would have some link with the real world... being easier or harder based on being in friendly or enemy space and giving different rewards based on location, with some predictability.)
XP and Levels
"The AI is alerted to my presence... very much so. I have a cross-planet attack of...oh dear. Plus two nasty-sized 'normal' waves that just happen to coincide, an exogalactic thingy... and a counter-attack wave, and a deep-strike wave... and a threat-fleet that is downright scary... but on the up-side....all the more XP for me! ...if I survive"
Currently some AI buildings give XP, it's a little patchy... I had assumed all AIP increasing buildings gave XP but I think it's only guard posts and command stations. No AI units give XP except in nebulae where most do...
My initial thoughts:
Make guardians, AI champion-hulls, all AIP increasing buildings give XP when the champion is at that planet. It doesn't have to be a large amount, simply a small bit of flavour and an incentive to raise the AIP. (At high AIP no new guardposts spawn but guards do, therefore currently encouraging a low AIP sniping of guardposts... not amazingly fun or difficult... high-AIP guardian-hunting sounds nasty but amusing)
Another thought on this. XP gains scaling with AIP would encourage higher AIP games.
"The bigger the challenge, the more you can learn"
So if guardians/starships were given a harvestable XP multiplier based on AIP/2 or proportional to AIP^2, so really high AIP get really high multipliers and level 500+ champions.
Defending against AI waves of 30 ships and 1 starship at AIP-20 would garner a trivial, completely insignificant amount of experience (say 10xp for that 31 ship wave) while going up to (approx) one level gained per wave at 200 AIP, multiple levels at *gulp* 400 AIP (say 10,000 xp for that 1500 ships wave at 200 AIP).
The uses of XP and levels are currently for unlocks, no scaling of stats with level. More unlocks is an obvious option for increased fun, but also some path choices would be nice. (E.g. making your champion a tank, glass-cannon, healer etc.) I don't think it needs massive changes, it's already quite fun and the modules are many, varied and all have very unique effects.
Still, Spending XP to upgrade: Hull, shield capacity, recharge rate, speed (lower base of all significantly).
(Limiting module levels is good for balancing the nebula battles, but it makes it having max level modules for your ships current max tier not just easy but also almost mandatory. I'd like to be able to have a tank with ridiculous levels of shields, armour and an armour booster or a glass-cannon with long-range attacks and piddly 1-hit shields, a sneaky cloaked ship using completely different tactics or a general jack-of-all-trades that can quickly reconfigure modules on the fly when not under fire (personal construction rate of 1?))
Spending XP to gain, or preferably using artifacts to gain: Cloaking, vampirism, teleporting, attack-boosts, armour, armour boosts... radar dampening... any of the fun mechanics of other ships that you otherwise may never have noticed or used. I like that cloaking+vamp is already in and encourages you not to use shields (they don't cloak), it even changes the shield ability to two other interesting ones, the other three hulls could gain something by being more unique. E.g. Spire gain bonus against stationary targets with the main beam, plasma cannons (require the ship to stop to fire!). In general I like the hull-only modules but the randomness of unlocking them is almost the opposite of the customisation RPG elements usually encourage. Though luck isn't entirely bad as it does force you to try new things.
I think it would be worth considering how levels are gained. The two extremes are elder scrolls levels of micro-changes where everything scales to your level and you have finely graded levels for each skill (so 85 points in alchemy... erm laser modules), or dawn of war II where each point unlocks a new ability (unlock use abilities while cloaked). Both have merits, micro-changes feels more fluid, macro changes make each choice really count. Also, scaling enemies based on your level punishes you for getting stronger (but it also keeps it challenging... just in a way that people really really dislike).
example of a micro-change/macro-changes:
Specialised weapons - select a weapon and it gains xp as a share of your xp, advancing in levels up to your ship level. (So you could have level 20 lasers, with negligible difference between 19-20).
Unlocking missiles is a nice macro-change, replacing a shield slot and is only for certain hull type. It's a massive change in role and an interesting one. (it would be more interesting if you could out-range things more easily in the nebula...)
Utility slots would be a nice addition, neither weapons nor shields but a slot for special abilities.
I like both, currently it's nice to be given lots of weapons to try out at level 1 and not feel forced into using any one in particular. (Some feel much better than others in the nebulas... plasma siege stuff is IMHO overpowered in general, whatever is using it and wherever it is being used, especially when directly comparable to missiles which feel a little weak. Not that a scary cool weapon is a terrible thing... but I would like my bases/constructors/cloaked ships to be immune to the area effect when they strike a forcefield... but it does work to keep you on your toes when used against you. My allies in the nebula are unreliable at best so being a support unit is tricky, but I like to fly close and share shields, intercept hostile forces... having allied attack-boosts, wider shields, armour boosts or some enemies that can actually be paralysed/engine damaged could help. (Still nice for some modules to be more useful outside and some inside nebulae).
Last little thought on champions... AI controlled champions like the AI Human-shadow frigates... feels wrong on so many levels. Like ninja-robot-pirate-zombies shouting "I'm in yo base killin yo men" or whatever the meme is. Infinite engine health and massive speed are annoying... with powerful modules they end up killing my worlds and giving me game overs when I'm least expecting it (paying attention to the nebula) with no waves or interesting things going on and with massive modular forts protecting my homeworld.
I'd remove them if it were up to me (they do step on the toes of heroic AI types) and instead work on other forms of balancing... or give them engine health and lower the base speed significantly to stop them attacking in groups and rushing your bases. OR give you more of a warning... (I'd like an all-planets option for the warning of x enemy units present, perhaps an additional for a warning for x champion hulls present if they are to stay forever).
Thank you (whoever you are) for reading this, hope it encourages a healthy debate on the issue. Hope it didn't sound too critical, love the way the game has grown and found the champions a fun element... but one that had room to grow. Like ivy before it touches a wall... Most of my suggestions are probably a little late but, better late than never.
