Dysonsphere OP ally?

[Entrenched Homperson]

I wouldnt mind they had an eractic travel option. Maybe something percentage based.

Like if a planet has 4 wormholes it would be a 25% chance to go to any of them, but when it returns to that system, it loses a chance to take the same path again, getting -10% to take that wormhole, which is evenly distributed to the rest of the wormholes. This way there would be a balanced chance of them attacking/patrolling in seemingly "Mysterious" patterns. You'd still have patrolling but occaisonally they would end up attacking an AI system, at least enough that they where not so boring about the way they patrol... xD

[Ozymandiaz]

I do not like the Dyson AIP idea.

I rather think just making the dysons go to random or hostile places will sove the issue, not to let them accumulate. Or even bring back the self attrition to make the numbers managable again.

Introducing AIP basically measn you use AIP to get super defence, or makes you not want to free it (already cost 20 AIP) at all if its far away from you. And imo thats not good at all

[Panopticon]

I thought about suggesting making them more active, and having them bust into more hostile worlds, but that really sounds abusable to me. You could pretty much sit there and let the game run while you beef up your frontline defenses and let the Gatlings just prune everything in your path.

[BobTheJanitor]

The problem with having them enter worlds on their own, besides fighting your battles for you, is that they can also cause some ugly things to happen by alerting worlds you didn't want to be alerted, or freeing ships that you maybe didn't want to be freed. Suddenly getting a bunch of border aggression where you didn't expect it could be problematic.

[NickAragua]

Let me go ahead and shamelessly bring your attention to my suggestion (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2719). IMO, this should nicely balance their defensive behavior but still letting them help your attacks.

Combine this with a moderate nerf to the allied Dyson gattling's spawn rate, and certainly a hard cap on the number of any one type (to prevent absurd situations like 1700 of them patrolling) from happening.

I like the idea of those guys going in to help you out on attacks. Since they're not directly controlled by you anyway, they're likely to provoke things you don't want them to provoke, and there are plenty of things that slaughter gatlings no problem (e.g. anti-armor ships) but on the other hand you get some extra firepower to help out.

Forget AIP increase. There's enough things in the game that increase it that I would simply just turn the Dyson guys off.

[whiskeypriest]

I wouldnt mind they had an eractic travel option. Maybe something percentage based.

Like if a planet has 4 wormholes it would be a 25% chance to go to any of them, but when it returns to that system, it loses a chance to take the same path again, getting -10% to take that wormhole, which is evenly distributed to the rest of the wormholes. This way there would be a balanced chance of them attacking/patrolling in seemingly "Mysterious" patterns. You'd still have patrolling but occaisonally they would end up attacking an AI system, at least enough that they where not so boring about the way they patrol... xD

I think this is a really good system. The value of having an ally should be limited by the fact that the ally sometimes does things that aren't useful. As it works now, the ally basically just builds turrets in all your systems at no cost and with no cap, which is so useful that there's no real downside. If the gatlings had a mind of their own and occasionally attacked, it would be more balanced and a little more logical.

[Panopticon]

The thing is, as Bob pointed out above, that could lead to disaster in this game. A disaster where you didn't really have any influence one way or the other beyond befriending the Dyson Sphere. AI War is an asymmetric wargame, where you spend almost the entire game totally outclassed by the AI opponent. With my AIP suggestion at least there are in-game tools to mitigate that sort of penalty, Data Centers, AI Superterminals and Spire Civilian Leaders are the ones that come immediately to mind. An ally who triggers border aggression and alerts all over the map would bring a crushing defeat down on you pretty quickly. Or the game quickly becomes a snoozefest where the Dyson does the majority of fighting.

[BobTheJanitor]

I really think any kind of balancing will have to be of the light touch variety to keep this from becoming useless. Either reducing the spawn rate or capping it out would probably be best. On the other side, you could make it more threatening before it's freed in some way, so that freeing the dyson becomes a goal you really have to put on your to-do list. I'm not sure how to make that work without also giving it the potential to crush you if you accidentally wake it up too early.

I also found out that my gatling friends are terrible at taking out Spirecraft Siege Towers. One made it past my outer defenses and crawled all the way back to my homeworld while hundreds of gatlings just ignored it. I'm not sure if the radar damping throws them off or what, but they weren't even giving it a glance.

[Panopticon]

Yeah, I'm really starting to think the minor adjustment approach is the way to go too. Especially since the guys have said no more big changes for a while. I'd rather see little tweaks to the Sphere over a few betas instead of something that has the potential to completely break them until they can get around to trying something else.

[TechSY730]

The thing is, as Bob pointed out above, that could lead to disaster in this game. A disaster where you didn't really have any influence one way or the other beyond befriending the Dyson Sphere. AI War is an asymmetric wargame, where you spend almost the entire game totally outclassed by the AI opponent. With my AIP suggestion at least there are in-game tools to mitigate that sort of penalty, Data Centers, AI Superterminals and Spire Civilian Leaders are the ones that come immediately to mind. An ally who triggers border aggression and alerts all over the map would bring a crushing defeat down on you pretty quickly. Or the game quickly becomes a snoozefest where the Dyson does the majority of fighting.

I don't mean to be condescending, but my suggestion makes it such that they will only attack planet you, 1, have a significant force there already (so a single raid starship will not trigger it), 2, they will only go in after you have been there for some time (so popping in and popping right back out will not trigger it), and 3, it will only be for planets adjacent to where they are already patrolling (thus, they will not unintionally deep strike planets you want to be left alone).

I think these three caveats prevent any of the unwanted, unexpected threat stuff you are worried about, as they will only attack a planet that you were clearly trying to attack heavily to begin with.

Maybe I should add these three points to the comments in the suggestion report, so others don't get scared by it as much.

[Panopticon]

Nah, that's not condescending. You took the time to explain yourself clearly, and I usually appreciate that unless I haven't had enough coffee. There is no pleasing me when I haven't had enough coffee. It's not like you made a single sentence reply in caps-lock or anything. 

[BobTheJanitor]

It's not like you made a single sentence reply in caps-lock or anything. 

YOU MEAN CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL POSTING?!

But seriously folks... I like the idea of having gatlings help attacks, but it's kind of counter to the point of the thread, which is that they're already too good. Having them join your assaults would actually make them even better. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be great, just that it's not really solving the existing problem of having your own personal gatling army patrolling your worlds.

[Entrenched Homperson]

 

So...  Can I point out that 2 or 3  gatlings can't take out an alerted computer world on there own. They can maybe clear a wormhole after a while, but this isn't game breaking. At 7.3/7.3 The things just go one after the other to there death against the AI. If they followed an "Assisted Chaos" sort of pattern like I was talking about, they would rarely attack in enough numbers to any significant damage. If you have neighboring planets that aren't alerted, lol. I never have that problem 

A small change to that scheme could make it so they never enter a planet 2 or more hops away from the friendly systems it's connected too, then you wouldnt have to worry about alerts. This would only really be important if you had neutral planets between you and the AI.

[Shrugging Khan]

Dysons can't move. Period.

[Red Spot]

I'd think a routine as follows would be nice (just to add to all the suggestions .

The game checks periodicly/when a gatling enters a planet how many of them are on the planet(and free), when x of them are there they as a group get send out to the nearest AI planet.
One time 'x' will be low enough it doenst damage the AI, an other, very unlikelly because of the nature of the feature, it will set 'x' large enough and actually pull it of to clean out an AI planet.

This way you still have some build-up, they still swarm your terf and it still all happens randomly. However now it also has a cap, it also can at times actually cause painfull situations and also can have(keep) the potential of neutering planets.