First and foremost this post is meant to be constructive. I'm not a native speaker so maybe some words are more harsh than intended:
Anyway, the question is this: during your play of AI War, how will this feature affect your game in a way you feel is negative?
I very much like the intended goals of the new mechanic which I would define as the following: 1. During a game there should not be the option to take only very few planets just in order to rush to the AI Home planets and destroy them.
2. Related to this (and I think some confusion came from not actually speaking about it) is the problem that it is possible to win the game with a much lower AIP than intended. I think 300-400+ when entering the first AI's home planet is intended. Current AIP reducers and hopping only to a few strategically important planets can let you enter the AI home planet with ~150 or even lower. The problem is perceived not as a problem with the AIP reducers but with the low number of planets a player has to capture at minimum.
(3.) Provide more or less fixed goals you can see on the map between "survive" and "kill the AI's" in order to give the player a feedback about his progress.
That said I think the realization is weak:1. A player has to do something but doesn't get something. Black Hole Generators, Grav Drills, ARS on heavily defended planets are all good in terms of game design. You have to fight through difficult effects, defenses but you get rewarded or you can decide to deal with a grav drill for example by going around it strategically or destroy it. These structures are goals on your way to victory but optional ones. Shield Generators let you capture some planets you don't want to capture and you don't get much from them.
2. The mechanic for B-E generators is flawed. Other than taking a planet with a Generator B-E anyways because it is otherwise strategically important it makes no sense to take B-E Generator planets unless you scouted major parts if not the whole map. It may very well be the case that a Generator planet is one of the planets you will use for staging your final assaults. Therefore Generators are no goal in between but aside from A Generators only the so called "road bumps" you have to clear towards the end of the game.
3. The mechanic lead players to take planets and progress the AI according to goal 1&2 but as you can see these planets are mostly worthless to the player or they will take it because of other reasons. In my current game I first had to go through several filters to see the planets I have to take then there were no planet I would like to take at all. But I still have to kill D&E Generators so I will take and leave two planets, progress the AI by another 40+ points and immediately leave the planets again. My incentive to take the planets in earlier stages of the game would be low. (40 planets map I control 9 planets and have to take one or two on top of that to get to the AI).
4. The mechanic not only does not reward the player but it punishes players that are not deepstrike/rushing the AI. I think this is the major reason. The argument that if optional everyone would deactivate it is flawed. Some already said they won't and if you want to win a game more easily than intended, activate Easy Golems, Easy Spire and so on. There are already ways to make the game easier while hunting for achievements.
Although I think the majority of people just likes the game and plays it as intended and with this mechanic these people get punished for some people who seem to exploit game mechanics of a purely single player/coop game.5. If you see this as a road bump as described above it is added to a list of road bumps: AI Eye (which doesn't really deblob), Raid Engine, Alarms. Most people are fine with these and I only dislike the AI Eye personally. But if you add too much of these road bumps onto planets in the future every planet will have to be treated by the player somehow in order to progress.
The solution:1. If the core of the concept should stay intact there have to be an award tied to "more work".
2. If the goal is to make the player hold more planets then make him hold it. Zenith Power Generators for example are only good for the player as long as he controls the system and it isn't destroyed. ARS and Generators on the other hand don't really care about the planet.
3. I think the mechanic to achieve the above goals is critical to the game and defines it to its core. Instead of fiddling with the current mechanic I would toss around ideas first for a long time.
EDIT: 4. The mechanic of Generator networks that self destruct if a piece of the link is broken and which grant invulnerability seems rather forced to me story-wise. Whatever the mechanic will be in the end I could have more style. For example a network of adjacent planets, a kind of Astro Train thing which supplies the AI homeworld with Energy from Tankers, the aforementioned pieces of lost data to be recovered to destroy a forcefield...
In short: I had to kill some generators and all I got is this T-shirt?
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