Right, well, I suppose an individual thread on discussion of the new defender mode is necessary. I understand that it is most definitely under development, so this is mainly for feedback purposes.
Waves and difficulty
I believe defender mode should be very frantic. I'm testing a 60 minute defender mode against two 7 vanilla AIs with only one planet and two waves were announced incoming after 15+ minutes, which is odd to me because defender mode should be, in my vision, a very hectic battle. At the moment I am +10 timescale and waiting for the wave while I spam turrets and alt-tab to start this post. Shouldn't defender mode have constant waves, and I mean constant waves to pressure the player(s) into even having trouble holding the wormhole, by in which I mean a wave should be announced within a minimum of one to five minutes.
Also, maybe this is because I started a game with 10 planets, but I didn't see that all planets were V; most were just III/IV.
Incremental knowledge and energy
Beyond that, I believe knowledge should be constant and infinite, instead of giving the player(s) 30K at the start; this would also naturally scale with the campaign duration setting. Similarly, I feel as though energy shouldn't be limited to the amount of power plants you have, and this amount should increase as the game progresses. Currently it's a, "oh, I already have all this power but I can't really use it," and later it's the opposite where the player has absolutely no more power, especially if they chose only a few planets.
Counterwaves warp-ins
Are there any plans on creating waves on-planet, similarly to a counterwave? It would obviously increase the difficulty, as it is currently too easy to just turtle at the wormhole(s) because the AI always comes from the same areas.
AI structure reinforcement warp
To another addition of the idea above, there should be objectives and such implemented, such as occasional AI special guard posts being sent onto the player planets far away in order to force the player to mobilize a fleet to destroy it before it incurs more AI ships. Structures could also appear on the AI planets to force the players in having to traverse their territory.
Important non-crucial structures
Currently, it's a "command station must survive, nothing else matters" condition for winning; however, if there were other important structures on the human planet, say:
- Slight economical booster,
- Mild planetary defense,
etc.
These structures would be indestructible per say, but could be disabled on taking too much damage. Adds more flavour to the mode instead of just 'defend your command station.'
Heh, I got into a game during this typing, so I'll probably have more to say if I remember... for now, I guess that's all.
