Defense Supply Mechanic

[Diazo]

edit: Or how about 2 types of ship caps, one galaxy wide for mobile stuff and a per planet cap for defences and a unit would be subject to one or the other of these caps?

All caps discussed here are for turrets only.  These already have caps in place, and if you chokepoint you have a 'cap' for how much you can shove onto a single world already.  This discussion is more along the lines of reducing how much of each cap of defensive turreting you can shove on x world, while also increasing their ability to do what they were meant to do, defend.  It's quite possible (and something I'm hoping for) that the existing caps will disappear, and control caps will be the only capping of turrets left, so really it's just a change of capping mechanics for turrets.

I suppose that would get rid of my biggest objection of have 2 different caps apply to a unit.

It would also avoid the trap of having to unlock more turret types to allow more turrets on the planet, having a Defense Control pool and each turret a certain amount of Defense Control cost avoids the trap of unlocking more turrets to increase your effective turret cap.

Also, would wave sizes required tweaking? One of the reason for such huge wave sizes is that you can build hundreds of turrets on a single system at the moment and for the AI to be any sort of threat it needs those big waves.

Having said that, I still feel this is going in the wrong direction. I suspect that's because I never run into the single planet chokepoint defense setup simply because of my map type so I don't have the experience with it to really be talking about it and so I see it as a smaller problem then it actually is.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Adjustment of ship caps, turret power, and the rest seems pretty invasive.  How would you allot for that with the 'on/off' switch?

We've already done that with golems-medium and spirecraft-medium: changing stats based on a lobby option.

Whether I would do that would depend on the magnitude of the difference.

[Hearteater]

What are you thinking the highest Defensive Control producing CS would support? A full cap of all offensive turrets with some Gravity and Tractors thrown in at Mark I?  At Mark III?  If it is even close to this much Defensive Control, then unless you unlock Mark II+ turrets games will largely unaffected (which isn't necessarily bad).

For creating defense in depth, what about a cloaking Command Station with moderate Defensive Control.  This could be your lead system with turrets designed to attrition the incoming waves, and would be followed by the more serious defense.  By putting the Command Station out of the way you don't need to worry about rebuilding anything except turrets.

[Wanderer]

Personally I think that's silly   Safe AI.  That's gonna fly.  Yeaaaaah.  But it does explain the breeding issue.

Safe AI my foot.  My personal lore is much kinder to my psyche.  All those human home settlements?  Yeah, a bunch of 16 yo kids are driving my ships around like it's their personal video game.

I'd actually like it to apply to forts too.  And while I don't mind folks putting all their FFs on a single planet, I'd like them to have the option to throw one or two up in the field, but I wouldn't want them to be able to put a dozen way out in the middle of nowhere (just get supply if you want to do that).

Well, Fortresses are as defensive minded as turrets, so I could see that, I'm just hoping to get more versatility out of them.  In particular since I tend to drop fortresses on inbound worlds not on the prime world so they can chew up inbounds during exos and the like.  As long as there's still a way I can do that without significant pain, I'll live.

FF Control could just be as cheap as dirt and you allow for that.  Make an assumption of 1 control point available on every planet by default.

I thought about that too, but then I realized: then once you unlock basic II, why ever build basic I again?  And if you unlock MLRS III, why invest in Basic/Laser/Missile/etc upgrades?  Those upgrades would then only give hull-bonus-variety to your dps output, but wouldn't add any raw dps, and I think it would get pretty hard for a player to justify spending K upgrading another turret type just for that.

I wouldn't want to see higher-mk turrets eat more Control, that would actually annoy me.  I rarely upgrade turrets as it is except for basics and lightnings, and that's really just to up my cap of them since they're cheap.

I'm not sure I'm against the turrets not improving via generic DPS though.  I know the core design philosophy is built around caps of earlier builds being useful still, but I miss my 'everyone's upgraded!' feel from other games in the genre.  Particularly when I go into a MK IV world and half my ships are so underpowered/armored/hitpointed they're nothing but cannon fodder.  However, the idea of counter to the counter is prevalent and necessary.  If you build everything for anti-bomber, and wave of fighters come in, smack poof.  I play schizo so I hadn't really thought about it, but I'm constantly defending against so many hull-types that the idea of trying that is pretty ugly.

However, on the other hand, if MLRS III is 3x more powerful than the Is the rest are balanced against, what's that x4 multiplier really going to mean to me?  Okay, I can see your point.  I just don't have a good idea yet as to how to avoid it without continuing the 'cap' mentality.  I have an idea but it's not fleshed out yet.  It would be each turret of a specific type costs a slight increase more in control than the last one. 

So, 1 MLRS costs .02 control.  2 .041.  3 0.63... you get the idea.  Different Marks would get their own internal counters.

However, talk about overcomplicating a mechanic fast...  Just not sure that's worth it.

[Diazo]

Okay.

The point of this discussion is to give the AI a means to break a shield wall choke point, or at least threaten it.

We've talked about the Defense Control, what are other ways to do this?

Pretty sure all of these are kind of broken, but for your consideration:

Give Carriers teleporting? (ow)
Or give Carriers a 5 second EMP on wormhole exit?
Give a chance a wave will instead be a wave to any system, like the warp jumper AI?
Or give a normal wave a 'child wave' that is really small, like 2% the size of the wave, but it can warp to any system so you have to put up small defences in every system?

The real issue is the fact that you can 100% guarantee any AI ship has to go through the chokepoint system so give the AI ways to go around the chokepoint somehow (in a balanced fashion).

I'm still thinking the concept of the beachhead is the way to go, just change their mechanic so they are a challenge, not a lose the system mechanic. What about "Every 10 seconds the Beachhead warps 20 ships near it to the next human system up the warp chain"?

D.

[keith.lamothe]

What are you thinking the highest Defensive Control producing CS would support?

Haven't put a lot of thought into that yet.  Maybe something like:
Home Command Station - ALL of it; if you're brave enough to do your main defending within theoretical striking distance of your sole "must defend" unit, then more power to you.
Military III - maybe about 1/3rd of the total defense power that can currently be deployed?  1/4? 1/5?  As you say, if you don't go very deep into turret research that may mean you can stick it all on a Mil III planet.  I don't see a fundamental problem with that, it would just be a matter of seeing how it works out.
Military II - about 2/3rds of what a military III grants
Military I - about 1/3rd of what a military II grants
Logistics III - about 1/2 of what a military III grants
Logistics II - about 2/3rds of what a logistics III grants
Logistics I - about 1/3rd of what a logistics III grants
Economic III - about 1/4 of what a military III grants
Economic II and Economic I - you get the idea

For creating defense in depth, what about a cloaking Command Station with moderate Defensive Control.  This could be your lead system with turrets designed to attrition the incoming waves, and would be followed by the more serious defense.  By putting the Command Station out of the way you don't need to worry about rebuilding anything except turrets.

A cloaked command station for the intended purpose of getting periodically steamrolled but taking the wind out of the AI's sails would be interesting, yes

Safe AI my foot.  My personal lore is much kinder to my psyche.  All those human home settlements?  Yeah, a bunch of 16 yo kids are driving my ships around like it's their personal video game.

As much as Chris likes Ender's Game, he'd probably go for that

I wouldn't want to see higher-mk turrets eat more Control, that would actually annoy me.

Right, I think they would have the same control cost much like they have the same energy cost as lower marks (there might still be some hanging on to the older idea of increasing energy costs, but their days are numbered)

I know the core design philosophy is built around caps of earlier builds being useful still, but I miss my 'everyone's upgraded!' feel from other games in the genre.

Yea, those two are kind of diametrically opposed   I tried to add some degree of min-max and "upgrading" with the modular stuff on the spire capital ships, but obviously that isn't every game.

With this, you'd presumably put your highest-mark turrets on the most important defensive positions, and unlocking higher-mark turrets would actually let you increase how much "bang" you got for your defense-control "buck".  And one of the decisions facing you is where to put the lower turrets, much like you have to figure out how to use the lower-mark fleet ships (of course, I suspect they just get thrown in the grinder with the rest of the fleet ships).

The point of this discussion is to give the AI a means to break a shield wall choke point, or at least threaten it.

Not exactly.  My original reasons are:

1) Make it more likely that defending against a large AI attack (think CPA, exo, double-max-time-wave-on-high-diff, much of anything if AIP has gone out of control, etc) will require defensive action on more than one planet.

2) Give the player more choices on the offense, specifically letting them deploy turrets, forts, FFs, etc.

[TechSY730]

I'll be honest.

I don't really like the idea of introducing a new form of unit quantity limitation. I don't really see why both per planet limitation mechanics and global limitations.

Two things that this mechanic seems to be proposing.

One, to allow beachheads even outside of supply. OK, that's cool.
But what I don't like is,
Force a lesser reliance on single planet chokepoints.

Why should that happen? If people like forcing the AI to "funnel" into a single planet, and can afford to do so, why shouldn't they? Plus the AI has something to deal with that, CPAs (though that does fall flat where the chokepoint be established by map geometry rather than by gate raiding). Also, in the expansions, exo-waves.
I think its been pointed out that you don't had to use a near max turret cap on a single checkpoint defense model. If people gravitate to this approach because it is the most obvious, fine. Let them, but players who use different defensive approaches can do something different.
If people gravitate to his approach because turrets require near max cap in order to defend effectively, then that means that turrets are underpowered.

Maybe the point of this mechanic is so you can boost the effectiveness of individual turrets without boosting the maximum defensibility of any single planet. My question is why you would want to introduce a new mechanic to supress the later while still boosting the former. IMO, the opportunity costs of placing turrets on the chokepoint takes away from turrets on the "backdoor" or "important planets" is enough of an incentive to at least consider not placing everything on one planet.

Some form of this mechanic for turrets not in supply I wouldn't mind. However, it would probably be better to provide a way to buff beachheads without introducing a grand new, quantity limiting mechanic.

[Wanderer]

Give Carriers teleporting? (ow)
Or give Carriers a 5 second EMP on wormhole exit?

Ow, nonono. Ow.

Give a chance a wave will instead be a wave to any system, like the warp jumper AI?

Counterstrike guardposts already waste 20 minutes of my time for each one I have to pop.  I'd rather avoid more of these, particularly without notice.

Or give a normal wave a 'child wave' that is really small, like 2% the size of the wave, but it can warp to any system so you have to put up small defences in every system?

Which defeated the point of the 60 AIP or so I built up popping Warp Gates for my satellite systems.

The real issue is the fact that you can 100% guarantee any AI ship has to go through the chokepoint system so give the AI ways to go around the chokepoint somehow (in a balanced fashion).

I'm still thinking the concept of the beachhead is the way to go, just change their mechanic so they are a challenge, not a lose the system mechanic.

This has value.  If a Beach-Head was a 1 minute EMP every 4 minutes instead of a 'your fleet will respond, NOW, even if most of them are 30 minutes away' type of event, it might have more possibilities in my selection list for 'things I want to play with'.

There's other components to this though, Dario, that I'm not sure you're seeing.  With a control mechanic like this in place, balancing could be done for multi-front defenses that don't require overpowering waves to handle both divided defenses and chokepoint overloads.  This would actually HELP you balance off your fronts into defendable regions.  While I do also play on simple maps, I still find chokepoints there.

Add to that this allows for possible reasonable defenses on satellite worlds while still keeping 'approach control' on your main sector(s) because of rebalancing, instead of having to put up very token defenses because your primary worlds are more important than the satellites.

The argument of 'open more turrets up' is one I expect to hear for that.  I have an answer: At the K price of turrets, it costs me 1 world to open up one MK of turrets, roughly.  This defeats the point as you need around a cap of turrets to seriously slow/stall a CPA offensive, which is what satellite systems need turreting for.

[keith.lamothe]

The counterstrike mechanic is cool to an extent, but as mentioned, "Approach Control" is vital: just because I'm not all that fond of the "defend this 25-square-foot-area by throwing suns at it" approach to comprehensive defense doesn't mean I want to create a situation where you have to defend everywhere   The former is much closer to ideal than the latter, even if I think it's still off significantly.

[Diazo]

Okay, I'm going to sit back and watch this thread.

What I thought the discussion was and what the discussion is appear to be two very different things.

I'll comment later once I've had some time to think it over.

D.

[Martyn van Buren]

I tend to play realistic and I gotta say I'm really apprehensive about this kind of change.  Especially in an FS game there is just no way to move forward unless you can get down to two or three places you really have to defend, and on realistic it takes a lot of work to do even that.  I tend to wind up with something like a massive turret/mobile fleet ball on one side of my empire, and then a more open front a few worlds wide with less fixed defenses but more of my spire fleet on the other side, which at least lets me get them all in transports right away after an exo.  If I didn't have the option of papering one side of the galaxy with turrets, I'd face an even bigger mess of transporting ships around to defend weak spots and then having to rush them back for attacks.  Anyway, I think that sounds a bit confused, but please be careful to leave a good deal of flexibility on defense.

[keith.lamothe]

If I didn't have the option of papering one side of the galaxy with turrets, I'd face an even bigger mess of transporting ships around to defend weak spots and then having to rush them back for attacks.

That's a good point.  I recall an FS game where I had two main entry points and a lot of my defensive strategy depended on the fact that I could drop all the laser turrets known to man on one of them to free up an extra portion of my capital fleet to defend the other.

[Wanderer]

Martyn, this should enforce more flexibility on defense.

A good chunk of this discussion comes from the hard-shield whipping boy defense that is also used to defend against CPAs and any other possible inbounds on a single system.  Because the choke-point lends itself to optimal play by doing double duty (heavy assault and whipping boy) defending, the counters to that are too severe for anyone not playing a choke-point.  Imagine tripling CPA wave sizes.

I'm not sure enforcing diversity creates flexibility, but that's basically what it'll do.  For anyone who's currently setting up multi-world defenses across entire fronts, you wouldn't even notice these changes.  This will primarily affect chokepointers, like myself, who rely on one, maybe two, worlds of defense to keep the entire realm safe from the big bad wolves.

[Wanderer]

If I didn't have the option of papering one side of the galaxy with turrets, I'd face an even bigger mess of transporting ships around to defend weak spots and then having to rush them back for attacks.

That's a good point.  I recall an FS game where I had two main entry points and a lot of my defensive strategy depended on the fact that I could drop all the laser turrets known to man on one of them to free up an extra portion of my capital fleet to defend the other.

Another reason why I want the control towers, so for those particular systems you need to 'over-oomph' for whatever reason, the option exists, it's just expensive.

[keith.lamothe]

This probably isn't news to anyone, but it just sunk in for me: if the only point of this idea were to give players an option to increase the number of distinct planets they need to defend in order to protect themselves successfully, then there's no point: that option already exists in the form of map types like concentric (good if you like 2 or 3), realistic (a bit more brutal), and crosshatch (brutality incarnate).

I think there's more to it than that, but I think it's an important thing to realize.