Dysonsphere OP ally?

[BobTheJanitor]

Well that leads back to the problem of them alerting/freeing threat on planets that you'd rather they didn't do so on.

Although... how about if instead of the current behavior, the dyson sphere filled up with build points over time and then after 30 minutes or an hour or whatever it unleashed a big pile of gatlings that picked a random AI world and flew straight to it and went to town. You could even have it announced, like some sort of reverse wave. "Dyson gatling wave en route to Planet X" Then if that's a planet you want, happy days. If it's a planet you DON'T want, you still have to deal with the fact that a bunch of gatlings are going to go cause a ruckus there and may free a bunch of threat to come pouring back at you. The size of the wave can be adjusted to balance them out from completely wiping out the planet by themselves. (Or it could even randomly fluctuate with each wave) They could just stay on the planet until they all die, or if you take it they could just stay there on guard duty in FRD mode.

I think this could provide a pretty interesting risk versus reward scenario for the sphere. And it would avoid having tons and tons and TONS of gatlings flying around all your worlds.

[Panopticon]

That sounds like fun to me.

[TechSY730]

So I think the consensus of this discussion so far is that they either need a cap on the number that can be in the galaxy at once or change the mechanics of how they spawn.

Beyond that, there seems to be little consensus. I guess it is up to the devs now (unless someone else has any good ideas).

[Panopticon]

It seems to me like a cap, either per planet or a hard one, would be the most workable solution. As much as I like some of the other ideas, they all involve a new mechanic or two and that could open up entirely new cans of worms.

[Entrenched Homperson]

I still like my idea xD But I'd be happy with a cap.

[Shrugging Khan]

Caps are boring. I favour something more dynamic.

How about this: For every wormhole jump more than ((NumerOfPlanets / NumerOfGatlingsSpawned) * RandomValue) / (AI1Difficulty / 2)) away from the Dyson Sphere, there's a chance of (10 / AI1Difficulty) that the Gatling in question turns hostile against all and starts moving randomly.

Obviously the formula is bogus, but you see where I'm going.

[BobTheJanitor]

Anything where gatlings go hostile again means the sphere would stay off. There's no point to that, for me at least. You'd have to be prepared to defend any world in your empire at a moment's notice. That's just too much work for not enough fun.

[Sir t]

I like then the wat they are. They work fine.

[TechSY730]

I like then the wat they are. They work fine.

I'd like to see you say that again after 2000 of them are patrolling around your planets and lagging your game. 

[Garthor]

None of the suggestions offered so far actually make the Dyson Sphere particularly compelling.  "Boo hoo the AI was clobbered by the Dyson Sphere clearly I shouldn't have befriended it!" is... really not that interesting.

In my opinion, the best choice would be to remove the concept of friendly and enemy Dyson Gatlings.  If there is a command station (AI or human) at the Dyson Gatling's planet, it does nothing.  If there is no command station, then it spawns neutral gatlings, who then go around pillaging the countryside.  Neutral gatlings would also be a bit different: they would be hostile only to the owner of the planet they are currently on, and friendly to everybody else.  That way, they are a bit more predictable, less like the Devourer golem, and allow you to reasonably build a command station in the Dyson Golem's system.

The disadvantage is that, if they wander onto your turf, you have to deal with them.  The advantage is that, if they wander onto the AI's turf, they have to deal with them.  Fortunately, you also get to make the decision as to whether or not they're spawning.  So, if the Dyson Golem is in the middle of AI territory, far from your borders?  Free that sucker and have it soften up some systems, or at least divert (and destroy) some AI reinforcements.  As your borders expand closer to it, however, the risk / reward becomes greater.  The gatlings are softening up systems that you'll be taking soon, but they're also more likely to wander into systems you control.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'm going to upload a game here to give people an idea of how crazy gatlings can get. This is a post win save of a fallen spire game so don't look at the spire ships or the journals if you haven't played it through yet, go enjoy the campaign first. (spooooooooooilers!) But as you can see the dyson world is very close to my starting world, so it's been spitting those gatlings out for a long time. If you can load this up and look at the worlds, especially any world with a fleet concentration on it, without lagging out your CPU, congratulations on your PC, it's more impressive than mine. (of course botnet zombies didn't help either) But just go to the galaxy map at least and look at the allied ships filter. It's crazy. Personally after this game I decided to play on low caps from now on.

[Ozymandiaz]

It seems to me like a cap, either per planet or a hard one, would be the most workable solution. As much as I like some of the other ideas, they all involve a new mechanic or two and that could open up entirely new cans of worms.

I much perfer the "cap" by letting them loose health as they used to on fridnly planets as well

Then you can adjust the self attrition to determine the effective cap on them, but then you will never see like 100 of them at your planets, but they will always be streaming out from the sphere itself and heading out into the fray.

[Entrenched Homperson]

How about multiple options? Like Cap Dyson Sphere and Dynamic Behavior Dyson Sphere.

[zebramatt]

How about multiple options? Like Cap Dyson Sphere and Dynamic Behavior Dyson Sphere.

This issue has already been addressed in the latest betas.

Previously, allied minor faction and zombie ships would just patrol around player planets endlessly, which was helpful for defense, but problematic for two reasons: first, that it could cause massive amounts of slowdown after many hours of them stacking up, and second, that it could cause massive buildups of AI stalkers, who never dare to attack the planets with so many defenders, which leads to something akin to stalemate situations.

Thus the allied minor faction and zombie logic has been adjusted as follows:

• Neutral planets are now considered the same as allied planets, and the ships will patrol to them like any others.
• If there are more than about 100 of AI threat ships on an adjacent planet, the ships will also patrol to that planet to clean them off.
• If the human-allied team has more than a token military force (more than about 10 ships) on a planet, then these ships will patrol to there, to help aid in that attack.
• This allows for small raids to still happen with raid starships or whatever without assistance from these minor factions, but it enlists their help for larger-scale engagements.

Thanks to many players for weighing in on this, including Burnstreet, Draco18s, TechSY730, vinco, BluePhoenix, and ArcDM for reporting various things related to this, with various suggestions.

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-5.000_Beta#Prerelease_5.007

[superking]

another way of fixing this might be to make the spawn rate of dysons inversely proportional to the number of dysons currently in play... a point would be reached where they spawn at an equal or lower rate than they die, and sanity is saved