Does AI strength to AIP need adjustment? (aka, is AIP too restrictive?)

[chemical_art]

If you knew the AI HW was going to be at least X strong when facing them, and won't increase very much at all in strength in that HW until you pass the point where the HW would of been X strong anyways, and that X was strong enough that only a few planet's worth of unlocks would probably not be enough to cut-it, would you be so hesitant to take some extra planets for knowledge and/or capturables?

No, which is why I want static reserves. It is independent of AIP, so you don't feel penalized if you go higher then its equivalent AIP difficulty, but it hurts if you go lower. It is meant intentionally to be the inverse of AIP, where the ultra low is always best and any raises hurts.

Alright, how about if the reserves were static, or had a clamped max as well as a min like I mentioned above?

Then I still would go for the min, because if I could live with AIP of the max, I could have already won the game if I had stayed with the min.

To put it another way. If the min was 200, and the max was 300, then for me rather the two balance points are right at around 200 aip or something beyond 350 for relative difficulty. If I could surive the AIP of 350, I could have already found a way to have won against the AI HW at 200 AIP.

[Diazo]

Okay. I have 2 things to add.

First, of the posters in this thread, all the ones I know the difficulty they play at on high difficulties, I'm talking 9.x to 10 range.

Is this actually an issue in the 7 to 8 range?

Second, my current suggestions for fixing this issue (if it actually is one.)

Data Centers: Too valuable for how easy they are. A data center is (on diff 7) is an entire planet captures worth of AIP, even on 9 it is only 2 data centers for a planet capture worth of AIP. This allows the player to ride the floor way to easily. I'd suggest getting rid of data centers and replace them with Fabs, then scale back AIP response to account for the fact that the average game will now be 50-70 AIP higher as the player moves into the end game.

My reasoning is that we've become too dependent on them as players. In a serious game I will scout and nuke enough data centers that I don't leave the AIP floor until my 4th system capture or so. By removing data centers you are tying AIP to player strength more tightly. Right now a player who is at 100 AIP with 4 data centers popped is almost double the combat strength of a player who is at 100 AIP with no data centers popped.

Therefore the game balance leans towards giving the player with 4 data centers popped a fight and the player with no data centers popped is in serious danger of just losing the game. (Hyperbole to make my point, it's not actually that bad.)

Or nerf the data centers so that they have a snowball effect somehow? The point of this being that popping a couple DCs before leaving your home system is not a big AIP decrease, but popping that 6th data center just before attacking the AI HWs is a big deal.

AI Strength: My other suggestion would be to change how the seeding of worlds works. (I suspect this would be a lot of code, sorry Keith.) The AI HWs and Core worlds would stay the same, the systems adjacent to a players HW would be Mk I and all planets in between would interpolate their mark level based on their relative distance from the players and AI's HW. (With some randomization somehow.)

The point of this twofold. Firstly, this is to give the player room to get his feet under him. I started a quick game last night, just messing around. One of the systems adjacent to my (single) HW was a Mk IV system with 3 guard posts in range of my entry warp point, 2 of them MLRS, and an FF over one of the MLRS. I would have loved to see this in the mid to late game as that setup could seriously hurt my fleet at that point.

As the first system I had to crack to expand towards the AI HWs, it was a brick wall (with cement behind it) for my Mk I fleet.

The second point is this would allow for higher unit counts to be seeded at game start, balanced by cutting down on the reinforcements the AI gets. For this to really work, reinforcements would have to scale so that systems closer to the AI HWs got more units (relatively) then systems closer to the players HW did in the initial seeding.

This would encourage the player to take more worlds in the 'players' part of the map with lower marks to have that bigger fleet to crack the higher Mark systems that are in the 'AIs' part of the map. Again, the purpose of this being to scale down how fast the AIP response is, if the worlds closer to the AI HW's have higher unit counts on map seeding, the reinforcement pulses don't need to be as big to give the player a fight when he reaches that point of the game.

Regardless, I think the actual issue we are trying to solve needs defining, my suggestions work for what I perceive the issue to be, what are you guys thinking?

D.

[chemical_art]

Is this actually an issue in the 7 to 8 range?

Yes, because if I were to play 7 or 8, where I could win with a higher AIP game, I still would have a much, much easier time going ultra low aip. low aip games aren't any more powerful at high difficulty to low difficulty. It is just high difficulty weeds out all the other strategies.

[Diazo]

Is this actually an issue in the 7 to 8 range?

Yes, because if I were to play 7 or 8, where I could win with a higher AIP game, I still would have a much, much easier time going ultra low aip. low aip games aren't any more powerful at high difficulty to low difficulty. It is just high difficulty weeds out all the other strategies.

Okay, so see my previous post about the map generation and seeding changes.

Take 150 AIP (remember, no more data centers) and calculate an average 'player strength'. Give the Core and AI HW's enough strength on map generating that the player needs that 150 AIP to take them. Then drop the reinforcements those worlds get from reinforcement pulses.

The intention being that if the player does not have in the 150AIP range of units, he does not have the strength to crack the AI's HW. As he goes higher, the AI HW's get easier, but the waves attacking him get stronger so it's a trade off. Ultra-Low AIP is now not viable, Low AIP (150) is possible with the attacks on the AIs HW tough but the waves easy to deal with, Higher AIP (200+) makes the AI HWs attacks easy at the expense of making the waves hard.

I'm really stuck on the fact that keeping the AIP low in the current version keeps the unit count on the AI HW's low, which is what makes ultra-low AIP so desirable. Changing how the AI HW's gets units  will have to change to really resolve this issue (IMO).

D.

[chemical_art]

The intention being that if the player does not have in the 150AIP range of units, he does not have the strength to crack the AI's HW. As he goes higher, the AI HW's get easier, but the waves attacking him get stronger so it's a trade off. Ultra-Low AIP is now not viable, Low AIP (150) is possible with the attacks on the AIs HW tough but the waves easy to deal with, Higher AIP (200+) makes the AI HWs attacks easy at the expense of making the waves hard.

While the methods differ, the goal, of making a check that doesn't scale with AIP, I agree with wholeheartedly.

[Diazo]

While the methods differ, the goal, of making a check that doesn't scale with AIP, I agree with wholeheartedly.

Yes, regardless of what happens, to 'fix' this issue (which I'm not sure how critical this is, especially in the 7 to 8 range), requires a check not linked to AIP somehow, which is going to require Chris and/or Keith to go "You need X AIP to crack the AI HWs, here's you check in the form of Y".

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Good grief, I go to sleep, I wake up, and *this*

Some good ideas in here.

Revising my earlier thoughts based on feedback:
1) Add "Lazy AI" toggle to AI Mods section of lobby, defaulting to off.
2) If Lazy-AI is off, make strategic reserve always act as if AIP were 200 (if Lazy-AI is on, have it grow normally and cap at 200).
3) If Lazy-AI is off, make popping a data center cause an immediate CPA, with the intensity set to a static AIP level (maybe 50 for the first DC, 100 for the second, etc).
4) If Lazy-AI is off, make popping a core guard post add 10 to the AIP floor.
5) Reduce the AIP-on-death of AI Home Command Stations to 15.  No change based on the new toggle.


And a couple other things I'm thinking about but am considerably more hesitant about:
6) Quarter the effectiveness and the K-cost of the harvester upgrades (so you still get the same boost per K, but it "maxes out" much lower).
7) Double the number of metal and crystal spots seeded by mapgen on non-homeworld planets (with some provision for old saves).


A few notes:

The added rule about the datacenters is to motivate you to want a certain overall level of power before popping each one: you can still get the (fairly potent) benefit of all of them, but you probably can't get it all while sitting on one planet.  Unless you just turn on Lazy, of course, in which case it will happily let you pop all its data centers and send you a thank-you card rather than a CPA

I forget who right now (sorry, my Lazy-Developer toggle is on right now) but someone was concerned about the strategic reserve being locked at 200 would affect CPAs.  It doesn't really, it just provides a population source for CPAs.  The count of ships in the CPA will not change, so its actual threat will not change.

@Wingflier: I do hear your insistence that the player economy is overpowered, and I agree (as some others do) that it is on the OP side of the line, but I really don't agree that it's as far off as you claim.  Just the other day I was hearing from players who are deterred from building mkIV/mkV (and even mkIII to some extent) units because of the m+c cost.  That's not even getting into non-base-game stuff.  From what I can tell you're just a lot better at the game than many 9/9 players so you don't really wind up spending as much as many people would in similar situations, so it looks OP to you.

[Wingflier]

Keith, all those changes look good to me.

I don't think the Economy is super imbalanced at this point, I just think it offers too much for the Knowledge cost. Looks like your changes address that. The "Lazy-AI" idea looks incredible. Seems to satisfy people on both sides of the fence.

Thanks for reading all our feedback and making a solution that works for everyone.

[chemical_art]

Keith, brace yourself.



I mean, sit down for this.




Get yourself your beverage of choice.






Are you ready?





I'm going to be completely upfront.




I won't sugar coat this for you.





Everything you have proposed is great. No changes needed whatsoever.

[TechSY730]

Keith, all those changes look good to me.

I don't think the Economy is super imbalanced at this point, I just think it offers too much for the Knowledge cost. Looks like your changes address that. The "Lazy-AI" idea looks incredible. Seems to satisfy people on both sides of the fence.

Thanks for reading all our feedback and making a solution that works for everyone.

So your complaint is mostly about the knowledge efficiency of the harvester unlocks? (Aka, the "boost-per-K" is the very thing that is too high right now?)
That I can agree with. Harvesters are substancially more general purpose than the econ stations, and thus should have a fair to good bit worse knowledge efficiency, rather
than being about in "parity" like they are now.


Anyways, yea, that "Lazy-AI" (or rather, it being off) looks cool. Except for the (admittedly non-core idea) economy changes. Like Wingflier, balancing their knowledge costs seems more appropriate. EDIT: Then we can do things like adjust per-planet counts and actual outputs. Changed my mind on this point. It would probably be less "painful" if both harvester stats AND harvester knowledge efficiency were tweaked at once.

[keith.lamothe]

Keith, brace yourself.

I knew at this line that you were about to agree with me.

I... I think I'll recover.

[Diazo]

Alright.

I do like everything proposed overall, but still a couple things from my end.

1) Size of strategic reserve. Can we get info on how big this is somehow beyond warping a ship into the HW? It would let us know how big a fleet we are going to need before we actually attack. Actually, how big is the strategic reserve at 200AIP? Maybe lock it at 250AIP? 150AIP? I understand the intention of locking it at a specific AIP to be to prevent a tiny fleet from warping in and raiding everything. Maybe reduce the speed of deployment but make each deployment pulse bigger?

2) This does nothing to really make me change how I play. At 15AIP for the home command I'll probably now just pop it rather then double-killing them, but core and HW reinforcement is still tied to AIP and nothing else, therefore the low-AIP strat is still optimal.

My liking things includes the harvester/resource changes. Because I do favor the low-aip strategy, harvester upgrades are not mandatory for my games. This change would signficantly reduce the gap between Mk I and III harvesters and make them less 'powerful'.

D.

[chemical_art]

Keith, all those changes look good to me.

I don't think the Economy is super imbalanced at this point, I just think it offers too much for the Knowledge cost. Looks like your changes address that. The "Lazy-AI" idea looks incredible. Seems to satisfy people on both sides of the fence.

Thanks for reading all our feedback and making a solution that works for everyone.

So your complaint is mostly about the knowledge efficiency of the harvester unlocks? (Aka, the "boost-per-K" is the very thing that is too high right now?)
That I can agree with. Harvesters are substancially more general purpose than the econ stations, and thus should have a fair to good bit worse knowledge efficiency, rather
than being about in "parity" like they are now.

I could understand if there were a ton of econ upgrades, but right now there are two: Harvestors and econ stations.

[TechSY730]

1) Size of strategic reserve. Can we get info on how big this is somehow beyond warping a ship into the HW? It would let us know how big a fleet we are going to need before we actually attack. Actually, how big is the strategic reserve at 200AIP? Maybe lock it at 250AIP? 150AIP? I understand the intention of locking it at a specific AIP to be to prevent a tiny fleet from warping in and raiding everything. Maybe reduce the speed of deployment but make each deployment pulse bigger?

Yea, what is the equation for strategic reserve strength?

2) This does nothing to really make me change how I play. At 15AIP for the home command I'll probably now just pop it rather then double-killing them, but core and HW reinforcement is still tied to AIP and nothing else, therefore the low-AIP strat is still optimal.

It's also tied to what planets are alerted.
Anyways, I think the idea is the reinforcements, on a strong average, regenerate much slower than the strategic reserve at the kinds of AIP we are targetting (~200).
So yes, the first time you assault the HW, fighting it at AIP 200 will be harder than at AIP 40 (assuming an equal sized attack force), because the reinforcements have had time to build up. But on subsequent assualts after rebuilding, the reinforcements haven't had time to build back up like the strategic reserve has. Thus, on the second and subsequent assualts, the difficulty from the reinforcements is only slightly higher at AIP 200 than AIP 40, while strategic reserve remains the same. The hope is that this slight difficulty can be outweighed by the advantage of being able to rebuild faster due to you taking more stuff (thus, more AIP), so that both reinforcements AND strategic reserve have had less time to rebuild. (This is where the economy and capturable balance enters the equation)

My liking things includes the harvester/resource changes. Because I do favor the low-aip strategy, harvester upgrades are not mandatory for my games. This change would signficantly reduce the gap between Mk I and III harvesters and make them less 'powerful'.

D.

I guess the question of whether only the knowledge costs needs adjustment, the harvester stats need adjustment, or some of both depends on how much you feel the relative OPness the difference between Mk. III and Mk. I vs the knowledge cost per increase in harvester stats.

Personally, I think more of the issue is the knowledge cost, but the Mk. I vs Mk. III disparity may need to be addressed as well (Like, IMO, maybe about 35% due to the Mk. I to Mk. III gain OPness, 65% due to the knowledge efficiency OPness)

[keith.lamothe]

1) Size of strategic reserve. Can we get info on how big this is somehow beyond warping a ship into the HW? It would let us know how big a fleet we are going to need before we actually attack.

Well, it's not actually a set number of ships.  It's a strength pool, and the AI converts that into ships (paying the appropriate amount of strength per ship according to its type and mark, etc) at need.

But I could have it post an estimated strength level (maybe in terms of MkI Fighters) to your alert box while you have a scout on the planet.

Actually, how big is the strategic reserve at 200AIP? Maybe lock it at 250AIP? 150AIP?

I can post the formula here in a bit (hunting that avoid-planet-not-working bug atm) but 200AIP is a decent first guess, I think.  Or, rather, in theory I'd want the 200AIP level to be such that you'd realistically need maybe 10 planets worth of firepower (in K and energy) to have a comfortable margin of superiority against it on, say, Diff 8.6.

Maybe reduce the speed of deployment but make each deployment pulse bigger?

Well, how big are the pulses now?  I don't think it limits them on the AI HWs except by population count (it avoids bumping the ship count above 4000).  It checks for deployment roughly every 11 seconds, I think.  There's also a rule whereby the AI HW will not deploy a pulse unless the reserve is at least 25% of its max, to avoid it "dribbling out" every 11 seconds if you've knocked it all the way down.

2) This does nothing to really make me change how I play.

I suspect that, on your 10/10 games, it would cause you to die... oh, right.  Yep, won't change how you play

My liking things includes the harvester/resource changes. Because I do favor the low-aip strategy, harvester upgrades are not mandatory for my games. This change would signficantly reduce the gap between Mk I and III harvesters and make them less 'powerful'.

Yea, I think it could be step in the right direction.  Ultimately it shouldn't be too netflixy anyway.  You've still got econ station upgrades if you really need to turn more K into gold, so to speak.