Core Guard Post Proposal

[zoutzakje]

I agree with GUDare. We got plenty of tools to take out the AI. If you're running into a stalemate, you're doing something wrong. Just keep trying different approaches and tactics (or bump down the difficulty if it really bothers you).
A while ago I got stuck in my 9/9 crosshatch game. There was a mk IV world with more than 300 ships bordering my homeworld. I had only about 120 ships available (ultra low caps). Charging head on would be suicide and doing nothing and let that planet build forces wasn't an option either. So I build a few transports, decided to use cloacker starships for the very first time, loaded a bunch of blade spawners in the transports, moved them to the edge of the enemy world, and let them do their job. Freeing small pieces of threat at a time, loading my blade spawners into the still cloacked transport again when enemies got close, and wait for them to move to my wormhole and attack so my fleet and turrets could clean them up. It took me a while, but that planet belongs to me now.
I'm just saying, there are so many things we can try and use. We don't really need an option to free all threat at once or something like that. Like I said, if you're often finding yourself unable to make any progress at all, you probably need to lower the difficulty.

[Diazo]

Alright.

I think this has split into two conversations now.

About Core Guard Posts/Homeworld: Should something be done here to make the Guard Posts more of a threat and/or a mechanics change of some sort so that the homeworld attack is somehow different then taking out a really hard Mk IV world.

About the Stalemate situation: I agree that you have all the tools needed to avoid a stalemate situation, I think the issue is that it is not made clear that a stalemate situation is developing. Say you have a 3 system dead end one way and the rest of the galaxy another. You go capture the 3 system dead end and then turn your attention out to the rest of the galaxy but a stalemate has developed that you can't get past. How do you know this if you have not run into a stalemate situation before? Having said that, I'm not sure how to warn the player about it developing. As Keith said, I think it is a desired game mechanic because it keeps you moving, I just think it need to be communicated better.

Maybe a setting that would warn you up in the top left if an adjacent system was above X number of ships? (only if you had a scout present?)

D.

[NickAragua]

I agree with GUDare and zoutzakje on the stalemate issue - I don't find it to be a problem. I don't think I need an additional mechanism to force the AI to attack me with built up troops, there are plenty of those mechanisms in place already. For example, Dyson Sphere, Devourer Golem, pulling your fleet blob out of a system to bait the AI guys in, jumping into a system with a big AI pile up using tractor-enabled ships to snatch up a bunch of AI dudes and bring them back through your wormhole...

I also don't feel like homeworlds need to be made more difficult. They're full of MK V ships and you can enable Avengers if you want to make things harder on yourself. Also, if you find AI homeworlds easy, then perhaps you don't need a mechanism to break stalemates.

[Nodor]

Also, if you find AI homeworlds easy, then perhaps you don't need a mechanism to break stalemates.

This might be the issue.  Those of us who have suboptimal strategies for dealing with Mark 4 planets filled with bad guys, find AI Homeworlds challenging.   Those of us who do not, would not.   With a big enough tactics kit, the AI Homeworld becomes another stalemate target - and doesn't have a "special/epic" feel. 

I think, it's better to ask, if we wanted homeworld killing to require a different set of strategic or tactical tools/challenge, than stalemate causing worlds cause, what would be a fun way to provide that challenge or force players to use different tactics. 

Nasty gaurd posts feel like fortresses to me.  They don't change up the tactics, just up the required firepower.  Something more along the lines of "after this guard post dies, everything the AI owns on the planet is immune to damage for 15 minutes, but cannot move and has it's range and damage doubled" (cumulative) is more interesting because it will cause a change in tactics.

[Hearteater]

That's worse than tough guard posts.  Each home world would take at minimum 15 minutes/guard post.  So with say 8 core guard posts, that's 2 hours to clear.

[keith.lamothe]

That's worse than tough guard posts.  Each home world would take at minimum 15 minutes/guard post.  So with say 8 core guard posts, that's 2 hours to clear.

I read it as "after this guard posts dies", meaning that not every type of guard post would do it.  Probably only one type would, and it wouldn't always even be there.  The others would do other sorts of wacky things.

[TechSY730]

I don't see why the mechanics of the homeworld and the stuff on it should work drastically differently. (OK, maybe units only found on homeworlds, but other than that, why mess with established mechanics for only two planets?) Human homeworlds are nothing special beyond having extra resources and having a home command station on them. Why shouldn't the AI homeworlds be any different? (again, with the exception of the tougher than normal, sometimes having "strange behaviour for guard posts" guard posts)
What I do see is a change in behavior of the AI player. If my home is under a credible attack, I go into "panic mode" and throw everything I got into taking out the threat. That is not a new mechanic, but rather a different behavior. I would be happy with a similar alteration in behavior of the AI under these circumstances.


Not saying the core guard posts shouldn't be buffed, or more variety shouldn't be added to them. Rather, I am saying I don't want the game engine to treat AI homes differently, but rather I want the AIs to react more "severely" when AI homes are under attack.
Implied in this is that I don't really want any new core guard posts introducing mechanics not seen anywhere else in the game.
Currently, every mechanic each core guard post has is seen somewhere else in the game in some , though maybe not with the combinations of mechanics that some guard posts have, or to the same magnitude.

[Nodor]

That's worse than tough guard posts.  Each home world would take at minimum 15 minutes/guard post.  So with say 8 core guard posts, that's 2 hours to clear.

Send in empty transports or other "cheap targets" to lure all of the nasty ships to the far side of the map.

Kill a gaurd post, to freeze everything in place.   Move snipers into the vacant part of the map.  Start building sniper turrets in the vacant part of the map. etc. Keep killing guard posts to keep ships frozen until you finish clearing the ships.

In a perfect world, almost impossible without planning, but relatively easy when planned (and excuted) well.

 - And guardpost destruction could have different planet wide impacts.  (Guard post destruction could simply spawn an immobile?, killable?, unit with a Nienzul youngling style lifespan with the effects of a black hole machine, interplanetary munitions booster, radar jammer, logistics station, tractor beams, tachyon/emp pulses, etc.)  It also doesn't have to follow that these are owned by the AI, killing a guard post could give the player the "logistics station spawn". The idea is that rather than make them hard to kill, they impact how you play.
 

[keith.lamothe]

On the one hand, most of the core guard posts basically scream "I should be more of a threat than I am".

On the other hand, homeworlds can already be quite a drawn-out affair, and making each core guard post take signfiicantly longer to kill (in the way that a fort does, albeit lower magnitude) doesn't seem like it woud make it more fun.

On the third hand (wait...), there is a fair bit of fun in "puzzle" homeworlds where the choice and placement of guard posts (and ffs and forts, etc) is something you have to factor in when deciding how to take it out.

[Wanderer]

On the homeworld posts, I agree, there needs to be more challenge/variety in the individual posts.  I really like the idea of the homeworlds being a more unique puzzle than the rest of the galaxy.

HOWEVER.

Certain restrictions need to get into play if that's the case.  There is a level of combination of certain events that, while from an individual post's perspective isn't so bad, the combination could be inane.  Let's take a quick example: 

2x Raid Engines.  Enter in with strike team to remove one.  There's another post there that disallows posts to be killed within (say) 1 minute of the last one.  Your strike team will not survive to the next one.  You cannot handle that massive threat and still deal with the issue.

Some existing combinations on homeworlds are already powerful enough to not need any additional guard posts, they're just there to beef up the Mk V troops.  Make them into powerful stoppers as well and you could easily end up with an overpowered homeworld that you simply cannot beat if the trend towards forcing more AIP gain is continued.

+1 for puzzle.  -1 for WTF combinations that can occur.  If restrictions can be made to be put in play that specific combinations that cause a near impossible blockade can be put in place, I'm all for the "Let's get dangerous" idea.

[rchaneberg]

I'm all for the "Let's get dangerous" idea. 

+1

I'm all for anything that will make the game more "fun", especially if it means that I get to barely fend off (or not) some massive threat. That being said, I play with almost everything enabled all the time, so my games are always interesting and I always have tools to deal with it.
It may be worth making some of the more insane guardpost suggestions expansion-specific, leaving the base game posts with fairly straightforward mechanics, even if they are more deadly on their own.

[keith.lamothe]

It may be worth making some of the more insane guardpost suggestions expansion-specific, leaving the base game posts with fairly straightforward mechanics, even if they are more deadly on their own.

It's our policy to not add new things that require a particular expansion after the official release of that expansion.  Some new content is necessarily expansion-tied (indeed, the newest hybrid plot implicitly requires both CoN and TZR because it requires hybrids and the dyson sphere, but no new dependencies were actually added in the process), but in general if it's a new unit not added specifically as part of an expansion feature, it's base-game.

That said, there's nothing that prevents lobby options from influencing what core guard posts are available, some of them are already only possible at certain difficulties.

[Cyborg]

Anything that would make the core worlds feel more like a base of operations would be fine. If each post got stronger, then defeating those should come with a corresponding benefit.

Be really careful with this, going after worlds right now already carries with it plenty of repercussions. Don't be in such a rush to have some incredibly close battles when this game is more of a long-term campaign than a short sprint. You can already achieve some really close battles by playing the fallen spire campaign. A really poor outcome would be creating situations where defeating a core world inevitably makes you vulnerable irregardless.

[rchaneberg]

It's our policy to not add new things that require a particular expansion after the official release of that expansion.  Some new content is necessarily expansion-tied (indeed, the newest hybrid plot implicitly requires both CoN and TZR because it requires hybrids and the dyson sphere, but no new dependencies were actually added in the process), but in general if it's a new unit not added specifically as part of an expansion feature, it's base-game.

That said, there's nothing that prevents lobby options from influencing what core guard posts are available, some of them are already only possible at certain difficulties.

There's definitely something to be said for that, and I do really appreciate that you proceed in a principled manner when adding new content, but I was thinking about guardposts that fairly directly lift mechanics from units that were introduced in the expansions. For a terrifying example: a Martyr guardpost, having a short radar dampening range with a brutal aoe explosion on death; or an attritioner guardpost lifting the the feedback damage from the spirecraft attritioners.

I don't feel that adding things like that would violate that principal except in the most minor of ways, especially if there were base-game additions as well.

Man, think about having to raid against a guardpost with the regen golems ability, keeping the firepower on the planet constant or even increasing it with reinforcements for the first phase of the battle. You wouldn't even have to attack it directly to kill it, but it's effects would certainly be noticeable while it was around.

Also, out of curiosity, what guardposts are gated by difficulty?

[Volatar]

An attrition guard post actually sounds like a really cool idea. Would definitely become a first target in any attack.