Core Guard Post Proposal

[Diazo]

In that case, give the homeworlds the same anti-hacking response mechanic that the SuperTerminal and Knowledge hacking have.

By this I mean once you kill your first core guard post, the AI starts throwing waves of ships at you as long as you have ships in the homeworld system (or the homeworld on alert?), but the wave size only increases each time a core guard post is killed.

Probably low enough numbers could be used for that, but I think in general this approach would have a high chance of making the homeworlds incredibly punishing in at least some cases.

Still, it's interesting, and could make homeworld battles more dynamic.  It might require adjustments to normal reinforcements to the HWs, etc.

It would be low ship count yes. I have not seen the new hacking mechanic in action yet (I will soon in my current game) but my logic was to give the homeworlds a mechanic (almost) unique to them.

It would require a rebalance yes but this is the AI homeworld. If anything should provoke a response it is attacking the homeworld.

It would probably also require a poll of players and their current games to see how hard taking out the homeworlds are. It has been several patches since I've had a homeworld fight so I'm not sure where the homeworld balance is at the moment.

The opening post in the thread was about buffing homeworld core posts however so I'm going to assume tweaks to make homeworld fights a little harder and more interesting are what is being looked for.

The other thing is that in homeworld fights, you are throwing so many units in that a single unit just can't survive. Once your fleet reaches firing range, that guard post is dead so giving them a mechanic beyond 'shoot back' is desired.

Does it need thought and tweaking, yes, but I think it's worth while. It is essentially what the AIP on the guard posts is supposed to do (increase the number of AI ships present), just in a more direct manner.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

It would require a rebalance yes but this is the AI homeworld. If anything should provoke a response it is attacking the homeworld.

I was just thinking that.  In a lot of ways, it would make sense that as soon as you show up on an AI homeworld with any kind of significant military force at all (or perhaps, to make it clearer, when you take out a guard post on that planet) that homeworld would start retaliatory spawns and would not stop until destroyed.

But in other ways, that would be a pretty massive change, and would probably make the two "homeworld attack" phases of a normal game brutal, and make those phases of a particularly hard game nearly insurmountable.  Basically you'd have to either bring a force big enough to do the job in one go, or be able to defend from a ton of ongoing retaliation during rebuilds, etc.  That does sound very interesting to me (and I think "if the AI's going to respond, now is the time!" is a very strong argument for it), but I'm thinking not all the players will feel that way   And there are current scenarios on the harder difficulties where core-raid-engines and core-cpa-posts make it already feel like this, so adding this kind of retaliation on top of that would probably raise up some serious ire.

Worth thinking about, though.  I think there is definitely room for homeworld-attack scenarios to be more interesting, and there are a lot of situations where they could stand to be harder too, but they definitely don't need to be made harder in all cases.

[Diazo]

Well, in my head I was kind of assuming that once your ships left the homeworld system, the spawns stopped.

They would resume once you warped your next attack in, but if your attack goes wrong, you can withdraw and not keep getting pounded by waves spawning.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

They would resume once you warped your next attack in, but if your attack goes wrong, you can withdraw and not keep getting pounded by waves spawning.

Gameplay-wise, that makes sense, and that may be the better way to go.  But logically, once you've demonstrated a serious threat to an AI homeworld, why would it let up and not destroy you?

Hypothetically, I think it could work if the homeworld spawns suppressed the normal reinforcement behavior (possibly for both players, possibly just that one), and kept going for, say, 5 or 10 minutes after your last provocation.  The idea being that the AI may still be intent on eradicating the threat, but it doesn't think that leaving the entire rest of the galaxy without reinforcement forever is a great idea.

[zoutzakje]

that does sound interesting. The AI responding to destruction of core guard posts. But yeah, this would require a lot of balancing to make sure that the first few enemy attacks aren't to weak... and that taking over the second homeworld isn't impossible. Of course this would also have to scale with difficulty.
I like the idea of it stopping reinforcements in the entire galaxy. As if it needs all it's attention to focus on it's homeworld, since it's being attacked. Though it's probably best to make only that particular AI stop with reinforcing it's own planets, otherwise players could go on a rampage through the galaxy if they can manage to stop the ''first attacks'' and still have some fleet left.
Would those enemy ships spawn only from the command station, or from all core guard posts as well, or on an absolutely random location on the planet?
This would be great to see fully balanced ingame (though i know that's going to take some time, IF something like this is going to happen). then homeworlds would really be a lot different from regular enemy planets.

[Hearteater]

I do like the reacting to guard post destruction.  If so, I recommend spawn size not stack with multiple guard post deaths or it will encourage kill one and retreat.  I think it would work well if home world defensive spawning is just either on or off, and killing a guard post turns it on for X minutes, with each new guard post death just resetting the timer if spawning is already on.  That would discourage long, drawn-out, raids of one guard post at a time since that maximizes the duration of the spawns.  But you wouldn't be completely screwed if you had to raid a few guard posts individually because the spawns would stop after a short period.  I also really support disabling reinforcements elsewhere for the duration of the spawn (for that AI only).  Maybe an X value of (2.5 + difficulty / 2) minutes.

[Wanderer]

They would resume once you warped your next attack in, but if your attack goes wrong, you can withdraw and not keep getting pounded by waves spawning.

Gameplay-wise, that makes sense, and that may be the better way to go.  But logically, once you've demonstrated a serious threat to an AI homeworld, why would it let up and not destroy you?

Hypothetically, I think it could work if the homeworld spawns suppressed the normal reinforcement behavior (possibly for both players, possibly just that one), and kept going for, say, 5 or 10 minutes after your last provocation.  The idea being that the AI may still be intent on eradicating the threat, but it doesn't think that leaving the entire rest of the galaxy without reinforcement forever is a great idea.

My personal ire being the only important ire... ... This in theory could work.  It would allow you to 'snipe' down one of the impossible posts (CPA/Raid), THEN deal with the recovery.  However, 5 minutes of constant aggression spawn coming in on the back of a Raid Engine assault after you've gotten yourself pounded to pieces getting into the AI HW in the first place...

... I'm not sure.  It's an interesting scenario, and interesting idea.  I like it, in general.  From a gameplay perspective it will make things go from 'wow this is a hard HW' to 'WTF?' however.  I don't know how many people here followed my 9.3 AAR vs. the dual Raid Engines + AI Eye.  Those alone almost made the homeworld impossible to take.  The proposal to make every HW have the equivalent of an AI Eye (constant spawning while attacking and then for a while after) + raid engines/CPA engines... I'm just not sure.  It's just a brutal combination.

Logical combination?  Yes.  Brutal?  Yes.  This is not something I'd ever want to see turned up to 11.

[chemical_art]

Here's what I would want:

The AI homeworld attacks to increase their offense...at the cost of their defense.

Because the mechanics I hear right now do indeed increase offense, but also increase defense. I will say this to the end of time: Increasing defenses on the AI homeworlds will increase the single most infuriating and unfun thing of ai war FOR ALL TIME:

That stalemate of "I can't crack the ai, but I'm not dying. But as the AI keeps increasing their defenses, eventually, eventually, it will spill over to offense, and then I die."

I'm serious, it is this concept for why I don't get those "You have lost" screens. There are no sudden "Wow! That was a great counter blitz! I wasn't expecting that response." It is continuely "They have made a massive shield. I can't pierce it. Now they will make the shield larger, until they bash me with it and despite me having a sword I can't pierce it and the enemy won't stop hiding under it."

One thing that makes for exciting games of any sort is fluidity. That feeling of as time goes on the game gets faster, more high paced, the stakes higher. This can be seen in sports during the last few minutes. Seen in strategy games where resources dry up and the factions fight hard to get the remaining resources.

One thing AI war severely lacks as the game moves on is fluidity. Early on, the game is fluid. Player fleets can move and wreck havoc frequently. But the AI can easily wreck havoc and take worlds and end games as well. It is very high adrenaline. But once mid game comes along the player MUST be cautious. The fleet balls form. The choke worlds occur. The player gives single strikes every once in a while. Once end game comes along. It is grindy. The ai attacks force players to hunker down, and strike out rarely. The AI can't strike and end the game quickly either. It must slog through the player planets in a horde if it breaks the outer shell.

The homeworld attacks already feels like a great gamble: If you fail them, then at best the player flees with most of the fleet, and during the many minutes the homeworld is on alert it is pumping out V's like no tomorrow. Then the player proceeds with at least 30 minutes of rebuilding. At worst, the player loses his fleet, and it takes over an hour, and in the meanwhile the homeworld has rebuilt its fleet or gotten stronger even, while the ai empire has strengthened everywhere else.



So what I want, desperately, is for the AI homeworld to somehow return to the game's start of fluidity.

So for example, if with a massive human attack the AI begins to spawn additional units, ok, that's fine. But what I want is that if the human fleet leaves, the AI fleet, both spawned units and guards, is to counterattack directly. All of the spawned units must be aggressive, or you boost defense (they should be zombies for this reason). To encourage fluidity, I'd encourage half of the current guards to attack as well. This would restore fluidity. You'd enable the "2 minute drill" to become a part of the AI war dynamic.

It doesn't have to be the above suggestion, but what I desperately do want is something to make it so that when the ai homeworld is attacked, that something, something, is done to prevent the greatest weakness, in my opinion, of the game to not occur. That unfun stalemate. I would rather have the ai counter attack with units that would be on defense. Maybe make it so that all the border ai worlds use their forces to attack? Somthing involving a desperate counter attack for a short term defense for a mid term lost for the AI. That way, that fluidity that makes the beginning of the game so fun can return. Having the AI simply throw more units, without them paying in some way, just makes it unfun. As to the AI not playing fair? They already don't, spawning several cap fulls of V's.

[TechSY730]

One thing that makes for exciting games of any sort is fluidity. That feeling of as time goes on the game gets faster, more high paced, the stakes higher. This can be seen in sports during the last few minutes. Seen in strategy games where resources dry up and the factions fight hard to get the remaining resources.

One thing AI war severely lacks as the game moves on is fluidity. Early on, the game is fluid. Player fleets can move and wreck havoc frequently. But the AI can easily wreck havoc and take worlds and end games as well. It is very high adrenaline. But once mid game comes along the player MUST be cautious. The fleet balls form. The choke worlds occur. The player gives single strikes every once in a while. Once end game comes along. It is grindy. The ai attacks force players to hunker down, and strike out rarely. The AI can't strike and end the game quickly either. It must slog through the player planets in a horde if it breaks the outer shell.

Thank you.

I have been looking for a better term than "pacing" in my discussions about this, but you summed it up much better, and also gave a much better term.

However, without some severe tweaks to how the AI manages offense and defense, and the limitations the player is under, I don't see any way to make the game more fluid as it goes on.
In fact, I can't see any way to do it without either lifting some of the restrictions humans are under and thus removing one of the "charms" of this game, or deliberately making the AI player "stupider". (some smart AI behaviors that unintentionally slow down and make "grindy" the mid and late game, not sending smallish attack forces that don't stand a change in response to well defended planets, sending some of leftover defenders to attack instead of being willing to just get scrap a decent proportion of them, and concentrating on defending planets near the humans first which tends to lead to hard to take adjacent planets. There are many more things like this)


Of course, I'm not saying this is impossible, merely that I cannot see how to do this. But then again, that's probably one of the reasons I'm not a developer for a large scale RTS game.

[chemical_art]

One thing that makes for exciting games of any sort is fluidity. That feeling of as time goes on the game gets faster, more high paced, the stakes higher. This can be seen in sports during the last few minutes. Seen in strategy games where resources dry up and the factions fight hard to get the remaining resources.

One thing AI war severely lacks as the game moves on is fluidity. Early on, the game is fluid. Player fleets can move and wreck havoc frequently. But the AI can easily wreck havoc and take worlds and end games as well. It is very high adrenaline. But once mid game comes along the player MUST be cautious. The fleet balls form. The choke worlds occur. The player gives single strikes every once in a while. Once end game comes along. It is grindy. The ai attacks force players to hunker down, and strike out rarely. The AI can't strike and end the game quickly either. It must slog through the player planets in a horde if it breaks the outer shell.

Thank you.

I have been looking for a better term than "pacing" in my discussions about this, but you summed it up much better, and also gave a much better term.

However, without some severe tweaks to how the AI manages offense and defense, and the limitations the player is under, I don't see any way to make the game more fluid as it goes on.
In fact, I can't see any way to do it without either lifting some of the restrictions humans are under and thus removing one of the "charms" of this game,or deliberately making the AI player "stupider" (things like not sending smallish attack forces that don't stand a change in response to well defended planets instead of constantly suiciding small groups of freed ships, or sending some of leftover defenders to attack instead of being willing to just get rid of a decent proportion of them, or concentrating on defending planets near the humans first which tends to lead to hard to take adjacent planets, etc)


Of course, I'm not saying this is impossible, merely that I cannot see how to do this. But then again, that's probably one of the reasons I'm not a developer for a large scale RTS game.

Thank you for understanding my sentiment! It's why I start so many games in fun, they quit due to boredom.


If you are willing to throw the book into the very far left field, you can restart fluidity.

For example...

Not on the AI homeworld, but on a core world, similarly to how spire ai knowledge things are spawned, can be another structure of the next expansion.

I don't have a name, but here is what happens. You take the world to claim the structure...here is what happens:

All ai reinforcements also spawn an ai zombie unit. So if a world gets 50 ships, it also gets 50 zombie ships in addition. This effect is throughout the galaxy.

What do you get in return?

* 50% increased caps. (permanent)
* +500 on m / c while held
* 250 AIP is destroyed
* counter attack post like effect on player homeworld if destroyed (2 minute warning). Strength is fixed to have a MK I H/K with a radom mix of other ships.
* cloaked unless command station is destroyed, then remains cloaked for 10 minutes (like rebel colonies but shorter time)

Now, does that increase fluidity? You have just pressed the "blitzkrieg" button on the ai in terms of constant chaos, the human player surges in power, and now the siege of the AI homeworld is in full swing with forced alert. The cloaking effect is to prevent the inevitable warp waves for the exo-hole to prevent game ending effects without a little bit of a chance to "recover" through micro or counter attacks.

EDIT:

If you want to really turn things up, do this.
Normal reinforcements spawn 50% of the base rate.
For every single normal ship spawned, 6 zombies are spawned.

[Hearteater]

The proposal to make every HW have the equivalent of an AI Eye (constant spawning while attacking and then for a while after) + raid engines/CPA engines... I'm just not sure.  It's just a brutal combination.

Yeah, that's why I think typing the spawns only to the death of a core guard post makes sense.  I could honestly imagine the AI expecting you to die to its existing forces and only going into defensive mode when you surprise it by killing something valuable.  This makes even more sense if the AI is losing the ability to reinforce the galaxy during this defensive mode.

And it probably would be pretty cool if once it is done spawning, it took those ships out for a counter attack push.  To keep the spawns reasonable to deal with on defense, but give the counter-attack a chance of threatening the player, it could "recruit" X ships from adjacent systems as it travels.

So say 100 units spawn, but the human has backed off so they are just sitting on the home world.  The spawning stops due to some timer and so now the counter-attack begins.  Using 20% for X, it recruits 20 ships from adjacent planets (taking freed ships first, then freeing if needed, but not spawning anything new).  Since this is a home world, all these ships will come from core worlds.  So now the force is 120 strong (20 are traveling to join up) and let's say it waits 60 seconds in each system for regrouping.  So after 60 seconds a force of 120 goes after the player.  As it enters the next system, it grabs 24 more ships (20% of its 120 strength) and waits 60 seconds for regrouping.  This continues, and if the player's defense is 4 hops away, a force of around 207 ships will hit about four minutes after defensive spawning stopped.

[Nodor]

On the fluidity note: I would like excessively expensive knowledge cost to increase caps.   I.E.  Pay 15K?  24K?  some such number for a 50% increase to either a fleet or a starship cap.

Very often I find myself in a position where I am using ship type to take everything via micro because of AI ships/tactics.  For instance, raid starships for blade spawners, Plasma Siege Starships for Sentinal Frigates, transports to pull ships off of raid engine worlds etc.   (I have a fleet ball in these instances, but it's used for defense.)

Having more of that "useful ship" would help with the "slog" stage.   Now, it would need to be priced such that no one could afford to do it more than twice.

Sadly, this style of play would be hell for an AI home system spawning things in reaction your presence.

[TechSY730]

(quote stripped to prevent post from getting too long)

(quote stripped to prevent post from getting too long)

Thank you for understanding my sentiment! It's why I start so many games in fun, they quit due to boredom.


If you are willing to throw the book into the very far left field, you can restart fluidity.

For example...

Not on the AI homeworld, but on a core world, similarly to how spire ai knowledge things are spawned, can be another structure of the next expansion.

I don't have a name, but here is what happens. You take the world to claim the structure...here is what happens:

All ai reinforcements also spawn an ai zombie unit. So if a world gets 50 ships, it also gets 50 zombie ships in addition. This effect is throughout the galaxy.

What do you get in return?

* 50% increased caps. (permanent)
* +500 on m / c while held
* 250 AIP is destroyed
* counter attack post like effect on player homeworld if destroyed (2 minute warning). Strength is fixed to have a MK I H/K with a radom mix of other ships.
* cloaked unless command station is destroyed, then remains cloaked for 10 minutes (like rebel colonies but shorter time)

Now, does that increase fluidity? You have just pressed the "blitzkrieg" button on the ai in terms of constant chaos, the human player surges in power, and now the siege of the AI homeworld is in full swing with forced alert. The cloaking effect is to prevent the inevitable warp waves for the exo-hole to prevent game ending effects without a little bit of a chance to "recover" through micro or counter attacks.

EDIT:

If you want to really turn things up, do this.
Normal reinforcements spawn 50% of the base rate.
For every single normal ship spawned, 6 zombies are spawned.

Hmm, an interesting take on the "lift some of the restrictions on the player" route, but with a permanent increase from the AI in return. As these spawn on AI core worlds, that would help with late game fluidity, but what about mid game? Mid game "slowdown" due to need for "walling" for us humans and "walling" by the AI in response is one of the big reasons why I get bored with mid-games sometimes.

On the fluidity note: I would like excessively expensive knowledge cost to increase caps.   I.E.  Pay 15K?  24K?  some such number for a 50% increase to either a fleet or a starship cap.

Very often I find myself in a position where I am using ship type to take everything via micro because of AI ships/tactics.  For instance, raid starships for blade spawners, Plasma Siege Starships for Sentinal Frigates, transports to pull ships off of raid engine worlds etc.   (I have a fleet ball in these instances, but it's used for defense.)

Having more of that "useful ship" would help with the "slog" stage.   Now, it would need to be priced such that no one could afford to do it more than twice.

Sadly, this style of play would be hell for an AI home system spawning things in reaction your presence.

Ah, also taking the "lift some of the restrictions on the player" route, but with a great knowledge cost instead of a new behavior from the AI to make it more aggresive.
If you hoard your knowledge well, this kind of upgrade could help with mid-game "stagnation"

[TechSY730]

Sorry for double post, but previous post was getting too long.


With this admittedly WAY too small sample size of two ideas, it seems like ship caps are getting in the way of fluidity, despite them being a core part of AI war pacing and human firepower power regulators, and one of the unique aspects of AI war in comparison to most RTSs.

While merely taking them away and rebalancing to only one form of "population control" is most certainly out of the question, I wonder how adverse the devs would be to some sort of "upgradable caps" for the humans. (I know the engine can support dynamic caps, just look at spire capital stuff from the fallen spire) (I'm assuming that the AI would continue to do wave and reinforcement sizing math based on the original caps, otherwise this sort of upgrade would be sort of a no-op)

Me? I don't really care. I think fluidity can be restored without introducing something that can modify ship caps, but at the same time, upgradeable ship caps has been something requested by players for quite some time.

EDIT: And no, don't give me the line that unlocking higher mark stuff and unlocking and finding more ships types is supposed to be a substitute for this sort of upgrade. The problem is that, one, it take too long to max out via these ways, and two, even if you do max out these ways of increasing firepower potential, you will still sometimes fall short of having enough to restore fluidity. And usually, by the time you reach the practical maximum firepower potential (via the practical number of ways to get new ship types and higher marks in a normal game before the AI starts crushing you due to AIP), you almost certainly will not have enough firepower to restore fluidity.

This is the problem that needs to be addressed, the current max caps of the human often isn't enough to even get to a reasonable offensive pace/fluidity.
So either increase the power of a cap of human stuff without also making the AI just as strong proportionately (though a stronger is fine, just not enough to make it a "no-op buff"), make it easier to get new things to max caps out of, or have a way to increase caps (with a similar caveat for how much the AI gets tougher).

[Wanderer]

I don't tend to end up stagnated anymore but that's because I had to modify the playstyle to meet the game.  My first 10-15 games or so ended up stagnated (at AI 6!) because I'd take too long, or take too much.

I realize the concern, but really, you need to be more aggressive to avoid the problem.  WRECK systems that are in reach.  Obliterate their ability to do more than barely reinforce alerted systems. This breaks the stonewall theory.  I even wreck the Jump Point for the AI for the whipping boy so that's not a problem either.

You can travel for four worlds from any neutral planet.  Use that.  Obliterate the enemy.  Lay waste to them before they build then use small patrols (Mobile Builders are great for this) to use redirection points (cloaking) for your MK I fleet to patrol and scour any alert worlds if you don't want to micro that part. 

That ends up leaving only coreworlds as a problem.  You are human, they are math.  Get angry.