Defense Supply Mechanic

[Nodor]

I think this mechanic would make non-choke maps MUCH easier.   I just spent 2 hours dealing with the loss of 14 systems to 30 Mark 2 Etherjet tractors.  Having "free" turrets to put on every single planet would effectively prevent the AI stealth ships from sliding past your whipping boy/choke points and causing havoc in your backfield.

This mechanic also doesn't change the whipping boy mechanic/option.  - It just changes the stuff used on the whipping boy from turrets to fleet ships.   It almost forces the player to stockpile fleet ships and starships on the whipping boy planet and utilize a small starship fleet for all offensive actions.  Using just raid starships to take on every planet isn't fun. 

I am concerned about the impact this change would have on the choices around knowledge expenditure for superterminal hacking operations.  In one multiplayer setup, we have 4 fortresses, a full cap of Grav turret 3's. and a mix of about 700 turrets (mostly 2&3's).  To this we plan to add 28 (Marks 1-4) attritioners, a small spire fleet and a substantial portion of our tiny numbers of fleet ships.  I am hoping for a 200-250 point AIP drop from this investment.  Once the superterminal hack is done, these resources will need to be redeployed to a non-dead end world. With this new scheme, the turret use would be entirely replaced with mark 1-4 fleet ships - instead of the turret upgrades and the redeployment phases would involve giving a move order.   I think you would still get a "similar" return on knowledge investment, but this change would make fleet ships king, so no other upgrades would matter.  I might still buy the necessary turret upgrades for the fallen spire stuff if I'm doing a campaign, or extra force fields, but instead of buying turrets or starships I would be buying "mobile turrets - aka fleet ships". 

The Superterminal impact above is a strategic choice to maximize stationary defenses applied to a particular purpose over mobile defenses, with the long term goal of paying for those defenses through AIP reduction.  I am concerned about removing that strategic choice. 

[Wanderer]

I think you would still get a "similar" return on knowledge investment, but this change would make fleet ships king, so no other upgrades would matter.  I might still buy the necessary turret upgrades for the fallen spire stuff if I'm doing a campaign, or extra force fields, but instead of buying turrets or starships I would be buying "mobile turrets - aka fleet ships". 

They're not king now?  If I spend 3k in turrets on a game I've spent a LOT of K there.

[keith.lamothe]

The Superterminal impact above is a strategic choice to maximize stationary defenses applied to a particular purpose over mobile defenses, with the long term goal of paying for those defenses through AIP reduction.  I am concerned about removing that strategic choice.

The superterminal (and to a lesser extent, other hacks) is another important point.  With what's being suggested here probably your recourse would be to build a military III station (highest defense control other than the home station) and potentially add in a bunch of defense towers if we go with that idea for letting you pay (increasingly) more to get more, and then really stack up the turrets.  But yes, you would not be able to go as far with it, and I really don't have any desire to make the ST harder via this particular mechanic (the recent changes are still panning out in terms of feedback-and-iterate, but I think we can balance the ST with what's already there).

[Wanderer]

There's another side to the ST defense.  With more spread out defenses, offworld spawns won't be as painful to deal with when they get to your systems.  In particular the Raid Exos.

[keith.lamothe]

There's another side to the ST defense.  With more spread out defenses, offworld spawns won't be as painful to deal with when they get to your systems.  In particular the Raid Exos.

By "offworld" do you mean some spawns going to a different planet?  I didn't actually do that for the ST (just the other hacks), though in the future I may.

Either way, yes, there is some benefit to encouraging defense-in-depth, or at least making it feel less sub-optimal, as now there can certainly be a feeling of "any turret not on my main chokepoint(s) is a turret not in the right place".

[TechSY730]

To me, it sound like people are saying that they won't stop placing most of their turret cap on their planet unless they are forced not to.
No one is forcing you to use a single chokepoint approach.
As I said, if people are using a single chokepoint approah because it requires a near cap of turrets to defend effectively, then that means turrets are underpowered. In that case, turrets should be buffed or knowledge costs of higher mk turrets are too high.

Now, one could argue that it is impossible to balanace the game where both multi-checkpoint and a single "mega-chokepoint" approaches are possible, where getting balance in one approach would always cause the other approach to be over or under powered. If that is the case, then I can see why removing the "mega-singlechokepoint" approach would be needed. However, I am pretty sure that these two approaches can be balanced and both be options be available at full strength.

[Diazo]

During my step back to think about this, I realized that this mechanic would make the game contradictory.

One of the goals of the game is to minimize where the AI can attack you from via map positioning and gate raiding.

The ultimate realization of this being the single system shield wall that the AI has to pass through to get to your systems.

We are now talking about ways to make this no longer optimal when a lot of the rest of the game revolves around this.

Are we sure we should not leave this as is, just with the caveat that if you play a snake-type (or similar map) you are making the game significantly easier?

I know keith is talking about this change for other reasons then to break the invulnerable shield wall system and those are still valid reasons but changing how turrets work in order to weaken a shield-wall system seems to go against existing game mechanics.

D.

[LintMan]

I'm not too keen on the per planet limits, either.   If all this is to make AI beachheads more playable, why not just tweak them instead?

To me, killing supply for the whole planet seemed to be the "nuclear option" anyway.

Some possible alternatives...
- Make the supply suppression a local area effect around the beachhead, maybe 8-15K range.  That would suppress most of a dense nest of turret death around a wormhole, but leave the more distant stuff (such as the shield over your Factory IV) operating.
- Similarly, when the beachhead enters the planet, it emits a one-time blast that paralyzes or destroys almost all structures within its radius.
- Add some counter-turret area effect capabilities to the beachead.    Even a smallish radius of counter-sniper/counter-missile should be enough to mitigate the "25 sq ft of death"

[keith.lamothe]

One of the goals of the game is to minimize where the AI can attack you from via map positioning and gate raiding.

The ultimate realization of this being the single system shield wall that the AI has to pass through to get to your systems.

We are now talking about ways to make this no longer optimal when a lot of the rest of the game revolves around this.

It may be that this would go against the grain, but not because it gets away from minimizing entry points.  You can have one entry point and one layer (planet) of defense, or one entry point and multiple layers (planets) of defense.  The number of "angles" the AI can come at you is the same, but currently it's generally optimal to "frontload" as much of the defense on the outer layer as possible and only putting backup defenses on the inner layers where it's helpful (raid starship immigration processing) or utterly critical (homeworld).

A change which makes multi-layer more competitive isn't going against the grain, I think, but I could be wrong.   And there are probably better ways of achieving it, this one just stuck out at me when I heard Hearteater suggest something like it during the energy discussion.

Are we sure we should not leave this as is, just with the caveat that if you play a snake-type (or similar map) you are making the game significantly easier?

No, I'm not at all sure that we shouldn't leave this as is   I'm not quite sure the other way, though.

[chemical_art]

Two competing theories here:

On the one hand, the single chokepoint people want a single defense point. They base their whole strategies around having a single chokepoint. With the current cap mechanics of a global cap on turrets, this effect is most efficent.

As a result of this, to play on a higher difficult then current skill, one can compensate by picking maps that aren't normal or realisitc. Tree, concentric, X, etc.

On the other hand, there are those who enjoy not having the 25 sq foot wall of death. They want more fluid games, where losing one world doesn't mean game over, and strategies are not on keeping that single world. They want a more "bend but not break" philosophy? They want a competing strategy. Competing strategies if somewhat balanced I think is good.


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My idea?


Follow the idea of the reproduction of the Z shredder. On a single world, you can build a cap of turrets with no problem. However, to build further then that cap, you face expodentally (x ^1.5) higher build costs and energy costs per cap. So to build twice the cap is three times as expensive, three times the cap is five more expensive and change times as expensive, etc.

What would this allow?

It would allow a great deal of flexibility. Having a single focal world would be more efficent then having 5 exposed worlds. Having 3 worlds would be more efficent then 6 open worlds.  This would also make upgrading turrets viable. Getting those II's would make the base effect of the turrets 3x more efficent in your cap usage, and even more powerful then the current usage.

[keith.lamothe]

On the other hand, there are those who enjoy not having the 25 sq foot wall of death. They want more fluid games, where losing one world doesn't mean game over, and strategies are not on keeping that single world. They want a more "bend but not break" philosophy? They want a competing strategy. Competing strategies if somewhat balanced I think is good.

That is a good point, and a lot of what got me thinking more seriously along these lines was your desire for less stalemate.

So perhaps the point isn't so much making the single-chokepoint approach less effective as it is making alternatives that are competitive with it in efficiency.  After all, there are already options and difficulty-levels available that can challenge even the strongest chokepoint (albeit the beachhead needs more nuance to actually be voluntarily chosen), if someone really wants that.

Follow the idea of the reproduction of the Z shredder. On a single world, you can build a cap of turrets with no problem. However, to build further then that cap, you face expodentally (x ^1.5) higher build costs and energy costs per cap. So to build twice the cap is three times as expensive, three times the cap is five more expensive and change times as expensive, etc.

Is that fundamentally different than the original idea plus GUDare's request for "control towers" that can be built like reactors (and thus with constant cost per tower but decreasing benefit) and increase how much can be put on the planet?

[chemical_art]

Is that fundamentally different than the original idea plus GUDare's request for "control towers" that can be built like reactors (and thus with constant cost per tower but decreasing benefit) and increase how much can be put on the planet?

I don't fully understand the idea. Do the control towers account for the total number of turrets on a planet, or just the number of each turret you can place. If the turrets take up a "point" of the control tower supply you need UI space to keep track of that, and you don't encourage the current mechanics of using all marks.  My idea is that you can build a cap of I's, and have the costs of that be complete independent then the cap of II's.  You don't build additional buildings. You still want all your turrets.

Unless the towers drained resources per second, then there would be little incentive to not more then the optimized amount, since there would be a one time cost since they wouldn't die frequently (this is assuming you attempt a chokepoint). So you'd have several towers at least, which leads to turret inflation. But with my idea there would not be any upfront cost. You only pay when you replace turrets, so you are not penalized all the time . If you were to pay resources per second, which you need in order to seriously not have 2 or 3 towers on every world, you encourage a single world still since you don't want to pay for 3 defenses to have attacks hit one each, or all three of them when you can bulk up one world which will take all three but more consistently beat them.

[chemical_art]

Tower mechanics:
-A new resource for players to track.
-Complex balance to ensure building multiple ones on a single planet is as efficent as a few on several worlds.
--If there is an upfront cost that increase expodentially, you either hurt the single world by increasing costs dramatically upfront or make it little reason to not build over the limit constantly, hurting inflation.
--If there is cost over time, you hurt multi-fronts because you want as few as possible, and the most efficent means is as current mechanic of chokepoint.
--In either case, cost is not as dependent as it current is. If you lose turrets you rebuild them right now. Now you spend money on infrastructure, making planet loses harder but non-planet loses not as painful. That hurts the desire for flexibility when planet loses hit even harder then now.

[writing more]

Expodential costs:
-Uses cap mechanics as currently; nothing new to learn. No buildings, no UI cluter. You can tell the impact by having the cost move dynamically...you can show the increased cost like you show reactor inefficency: Red text indicating the current changes.
-One single code to tweak as needed.
-Planet loses remain as they are now.
-Costs are based on defenses lost in attacks: not based on infrastructure of either one time costs or costs over time.

[keith.lamothe]

I don't fully understand the idea. Do the control towers account for the total number of turrets on a planet, or just the number of each turret you can place. If the turrets take up a "point" of the control tower supply you need UI space to keep track of that

Yes, I figure a X/Y on the alert display is fine, if either X or Y > 0.

and you don't encourage the current mechanics of using all marks.

In the same way, no, but if you have multiple layers you'll probably put your high-mark stuff at the important layers and the low-mark stuff in the less important layers.

Unless the towers drained resources per second, then there would be little incentive to not more then the optimized amount, since there would be a one time cost since they wouldn't die frequently (this is assuming you attempt a chokepoint).

I was figuring they would have an energy cost, which translates to (m+c)/s. 

Anyway, the idea of upwards-scaling costs on turrets is interesting, and probably simpler all around.  I'm not sure if it would really motivate the player if it's only a difference in m+c at time of turret construction, but it's worth thinking about.

By the way, if by "Expodential" you mean "Exponential" or "Explodential", those are perfectly valid words (in my book), but I don't think I've ever heard of it spelled quite your way

[rchaneberg]

If the goal is making defense in depth more attractive an option, why no just make a command station thats cloaked?
You could then design your defenses to attrition the enemy forces rather than to bottleneck them at the wormhole.
the recent exoshield changes included adding cloaking as well didn't they, because with both you could just rely on remains rebuilders to rebuild your defensive net, rather than rebuilding everything.