Chokepoint Balance

[Wingflier]

I like chokepoints as they stand for most cases. They are luxuries in most games, an impossible dream in others, and occasionally an absolute necessity.

The only real issue is exos. Without a choke, they are virtually impossible to deal with. I don't know how to deal with this, but some kind of exo-strength scaling with number of ingress points would be a good start. Until then, if you play an open map with exos, you are electing to play a brutal game.

Diazo and I both play Lattice maps on 9/up and we find a way to deal with them without chokepoints.  I think it's perfectly doable.

[Diazo]

I like chokepoints as they stand for most cases. They are luxuries in most games, an impossible dream in others, and occasionally an absolute necessity.

The only real issue is exos. Without a choke, they are virtually impossible to deal with. I don't know how to deal with this, but some kind of exo-strength scaling with number of ingress points would be a good start. Until then, if you play an open map with exos, you are electing to play a brutal game.

Diazo and I both play Lattice maps on 9/up and we find a way to deal with them without chokepoints.  I think it's perfectly doable.

Erg, I'm not sure I can count as that unfortunately, my current Fallen Spire AAR is my first real experience with exo's and they are roflstomping me, hard. (I usually play all minor factions off.)

Having said that, the best way I have come up with to balance chokepoints so far is to track waves.

To do this, every system would have an individual 'attack' modifier. Every time an AI wave attacked a system, it's 'attack' modifier would go up by 4%. Every time an AI wave attacked another system, a system's 'attack' modifier would go down by 1%. So with 4 systems exposed to the AI you would be keeping things even, with 3 or less waves would slowly be getting larger so you could not use the same chokepoints all game, and if you exposed 5 or more systems, the 'attack' modifiers would go down. (Subject to some floor and ceiling of course.) Exo's would average this modifier for all exposed systems somehow.

You could cheese this by capturing a system just before an exo, but a system is 20 AIP, that is not cheap to do more then once.

This is a pretty major change though and quite a mechanics change as well so it would require a lot of refinement.

D.

[Faulty Logic]

Diazo and I both play Lattice maps on 9/up and we find a way to deal with them without chokepoints.  I think it's perfectly doable.

I'm impressed. Diazo's having trouble according to his AAR, though. How do you deal with them (exos) on an open map?

[Wingflier]

I'm impressed. Diazo's having trouble according to his AAR, though. How do you deal with them (exos) on an open map?

Well you cover your entire Homeworld from head to toe in Gravity Turrets.  Make sure your Command Station is covered in plenty of forcefields.  Then partially build (to 90%) a bunch of Matter Converters, in case they take a more...roundabout path and knock everything else first.  Unlock MKI and II Heavy Beam Cannons, and build them all in front of your Home Command Station Shields for an unbelievable amount of piercing damage.  Keep you entire force on your HW, on the closest wormhole to your base.  If you have a Champion, you can shield the Comm Station 5-6 times for an insane amount of health, which also gives your shields time to repair.

But the real trick is securing a Wasp Golem which is simply a 1-Hit KO to any Exo-Strikeforce.  It kills everything in seconds.

I don't play Multi-HW though, that could be an entirely different beast altogether.  All I know is that for single HW, it's perfectly doable.

[Cinth]

This topic makes me sad 

[Lord Of Nothing]

This is just off-the-top-of-my-head, not sure if it would be a good idea at all, but I'm considering:

a) Convert all very-important capturables (AdvFact, ASC, Fabs... probably leave ZPGs and Ions and such as-is) to use this approach I mentioned in the other thread:
"Have the unit be invincible, but it shuts down for an hour after a human command station dies on the same planet.  So it's not fully gone, but you lose use of it for a time long enough (pending tuning) that it hurts bad enough that you genuinely care about not losing the planet."

c) Whenever you lose a system with such a capturable, the AI gets a bit of "blood in the water" temporary boost to its aggressiveness.  Like throwing an extra wave at you or adding 10% or whatever to the next 30 minutes' worth of waves, etc.


The idea being that losing such a capturable could start a snowball that could kill you relatively quickly, but that if you survive that you can get back on your feet without permanent loss (and thus with less risk of stalemate).

Just my $0.02, but I really like the idea of these two. However, I do also agree that per-planet turret caps seem, to me, to actually remove some of the long-term strategy from the game, for the 'build everywhere' reason already stated.
Finally, I would suggest that some of the  'Blood in the water' value should remain until the capturable has been rebuilt, regardless of time, otherwise it seems to take away from the actual choice of capturing- yes, there's the AIP, but I feel that running a drive-through advanced factory needs a substial additional penalty over and above holding it in the 'proper' manner. Otherwise you get situations where (And i'd probably do it even though it is, IMHO, cheesy) the player dumps all their engineers it on the way to the AI homeworld/ other tough target with no intention of holding it, builds everything on super-speed, and leaves.

[orzelek]

Please don't forget one thing:
Per planet turret cap doesn't meant you will have turrets everywhere. Unless you have 10 ZPG's stationed somewhere and regularly are swimming in power.
It will give the ability to fortify 2-3 planets - costs of sustaining that will go in power consumption.

[Wingflier]

This is just off-the-top-of-my-head, not sure if it would be a good idea at all, but I'm considering:

a) Convert all very-important capturables (AdvFact, ASC, Fabs... probably leave ZPGs and Ions and such as-is) to use this approach I mentioned in the other thread:
"Have the unit be invincible, but it shuts down for an hour after a human command station dies on the same planet.  So it's not fully gone, but you lose use of it for a time long enough (pending tuning) that it hurts bad enough that you genuinely care about not losing the planet."

b) Make most turrets per-planet-cap.

c) Whenever you lose a system with such a capturable, the AI gets a bit of "blood in the water" temporary boost to its aggressiveness.  Like throwing an extra wave at you or adding 10% or whatever to the next 30 minutes' worth of waves, etc.


The idea being that losing such a capturable could start a snowball that could kill you relatively quickly, but that if you survive that you can get back on your feet without permanent loss (and thus with less risk of stalemate).

I REALLY like these ideas.  You should implement

[Faulty Logic]

I oppose A and B: A because it relies on annoyance more than anything else, B because carefully choosing the location of your defences is an established part of the strategy.

C sounds Fun.

If we want to protect fabs/FactIVs/ACSs from exos, but still have defending them normally be necessary, we should implement a non-recharging rebel-style cloak (can survive ~1 hour without a human command station).

[eRe4s3r]

Chokepoints are one of the 2 things that AI war is designed around. You can't tell me it isn't. 1 to 1 connections are by design in this game, if you wanted us not to have and completely abuse chokepoints, you should not have made jumping the way it is now ^^

Basically, the wormhole travel system MAKES chokepoints. You can not ever fix them without also changing how wormholes and indeed, travel work.

And it doesn't matter whether turrets are capped or not, chokepoints are threat suckers. They suck up threat around them, threat that isn't generated further away from them. Or it helps spreading out AI threat growth and *guiding* attack paths. Chokepoints are not a game balance issue because of defense, but because of the things the AI does when a cokepoint is established and breached (with neutral buffer).

75% of my pwnage defense is AROUND the chokepoints connecting jumps (ie, not on the chokepoint world). Because the AI won't go there when it's "on" the chokepoint. Which is what literally makes it a chokepoint to begin with. The AI is stuck duking it out on the chokepoint..... not on worlds where losing anything would matter.

My 2 cents. Either travel system is completely changed, or chokepoints will never stop being the pwn-it-all of defensive tactics. All turret caps do is make the chokepoint even stronger because it would teach players proper chokepoint building ;P

Also, I have no idea how ye would deal with exo's without chokepoints either. Wasp Golems are chokepoint dependent (imo). I certainly wouldn't even enable EXO's on a say, grid map with everything has 4 way connections.

#######

But as for Capturables, I never liked that they could actually die. It just makes them.. less valuable. If it isn't a very very good unit I would never go out of my way to capture or HOLD a MKIV factory anyway

[Histidine]

Rambling thoughts
It seems that everything boils down to the AI's offensive abilities being balanced around their ability to bash through brick walls (i.e. player chokepoints) with their heads. If the AI had some way to bypass chokepoints, perhaps they could be scaled down accordingly.

Here's an idea for encouraging defense in depth:
If a wave (or the threatfleet) lands on a world that's too heavily defended for it to stand a chance against, but otherwise has little worth killing, it has a chance to do something different. Specifically, it attempts to rush past the planet and into the wormholes further into AI territory (killing the BHM first if there's one). FS exos already ignore worlds that don't have cities or the home command station, do the other exos do anything similar?

This wouldn't change outlying worlds with capturables (MORE LIKE INDEFENSIBLES HURR), since there's nowhere else nearby for the wave to attack anyway.

Another idea: Beachhead-like ability. Instead of cutting off supply on the planet, warp the ships past it into the planet to its rear.


On capturables: I'm fine with anything that doesn't make the only thing I use the Fac IV for be the Scout Mk IV, honestly.
Perhaps (as TechSY suggested) the number/strength of the exo groups that go for capturables should be limited, if it isn't already?


The idea of per-planet turret caps is a bit tempting, but I'm not sure such a radical change is warranted. More per-planet defenses would definitely be nice, though. For now, how about more levels of minifort (maybe a mini mod fort)?

[eRe4s3r]

Another idea: Beachhead-like ability. Instead of cutting off supply on the planet, warp the ships past it into the planet to its rear.

Just for a moment think what happens when a group of 10000 MK3 ships with 2 golems just "skips" a primary heavily defended world that isn't a chokepoint but that is simply the 1 of 2 planets connected to your homeworld. I think that is about as cheesy as it can get.....

The real question should be, what would it add to the game to break chokepoints? I am not seeing any benefit.

The actual core issue is that the AI is brain-dead when it comes to advanced strategies. A chokepoint is designed to be a chokepoint. You don't attack chokepoints, you blockade them and wait for the enemy to come out. The AI however doesn't do that, it does some weird firepower voodoo and thinks it can win based on numbers.... which it never can.

In my view, the best way to make the AI cope better is to add an "blockade" function where the AI when facing a chokepoint either searches planets before the chokepoint to attack or simply puts it's entire threat around blockaded wormhole (meaning, it camps on 1 jump out and instantly jumps in and attacks whatever comes through the wormhole. Especially because choke-points often border to a neutralized system. That way a chokepoint would give relief from attacks but make the attacks beyond all the more harder and dynamic.

After an hour or so without attack, additional threat is assigned to protect the various important sectors in the region (maybe up to 6 jumps out) so that chokepointing the AI creates heavy defense forces around important structures. Like Datacenters, Research labs and the like.

[TechSY730]

Since the topic of how AI behavior influences this has come up again, let me repost this:

I think for "letting the AI get past chokepoints", teaching the AI how to deep strike may be a good idea. Like, there would be a chance that fast-ish units, or units with properties that are good for raiding (FF immunity, grav immunity, tractor immunity, cloaking, etc) will try to go to another planet in (with a preference, but NOT absolutley so, towards human planets going closer to the homeworld or other valuable structure) upon first coming from a wave or from AI space to non-AI space.

With the upcoming nerf to gravity, this would be quite threatening. Imaging those raid, bomber, maybe cloak, maybe FF immune ships having a chance to ignore stuff on your chokepoint, and just head straight for the "next planet in". If they can make it, they would have a far better chance to take out valuable infrastructure (like energy collectors) that may help take out the chokepoint indirectly.

Again, this should be a chance. Many, if not most of the time they should just use the current, "general purpose" logic.
Also, possibly, the stuff that wouldn't fall under the "raid classification" described in the first paragraph could have a chance to do this too, but just much less so. So occasionally, you may see your a whole wave try to do this, instead of only part of it (if you are playing schitzo waves).

Just to clarify. Unlike exos, there would be no leader, no speed hacks for the units that choose to do this. Just a simple move to another planet, instead of...whatever the AI uses for normal attack logic.
Also, the units chosen would not have altered warp ins. They would have to warp in the normal location just like the rest of the wave. They just choose to beeline to an "inner planet" instead.

[chemical_art]

To counter those runners wouldn't be any different from exo-s, just drop 2 or so forcefields to prevent any stragglers from leaving. Even better if with your military command center can cover your wormholes.

It would still encourage chokepoints, except now you want chokepoints with not a crazy amount of nodes.

[LordSloth]

To brainstorm on capturables, I'm going to throw out a few ideas without vetting for common sense, or any kind of sense. This is a brainstorm, so disregard as you will, I'm not very attached to them. Perhaps I'll have the chance to do some serious thinking over the course of the day.

Instead of killing a capturable, the AI reclaims it with the equivalent of a warp counter attack post. (leave remains, post spawns near remains with enough guns to kill an engineer).
Capturables have a fifteen-minute permacloak. Factories generally go down to either random threat you forgot about or because you have something more serious to worry about. If you have horrible stuff going down, you've got fifteen minutes of panic before it becomes vulnerable. Fight off that CPA *and* secure & reclaim the system. Fifteen minutes permacloak overlapping with twenty minutes of self-attrition outside of supply.
Theoretical new far future crystal isn't used for ships, but for repairing installations like this. If you can't protect, you need to seize new territory instead. Asteroids for permanents, in other words. Also use crystals to rebuild a repaired golem that got shot to pieces. Fallen spire use shards to power things after all. Perhaps slivers are enough to power mere human technology like factories.

As to the exo-galactic strike forces, I wonder how those are now that gravity has been nerfed. Perhaps the ability to build your own gravity drills would support a lattice-style map a bit better. An alternative to logistics, the gravity station slows down all forces, even five minutes after its destruction.  This would greatly hamper the operational capability of the human forces if my experiences with gravity drills on a cluster map is any experience, but would also dramatically increase the amount of time humans had to respond to threats... if they're not on the wrong side of things.