But that is for punishing short term player mistakes, not long term gross inefficient player behavior. Also, how can we reconcile the goals of making the AI be punishing enough to your "stalling" to make long-term weak economy have real risk without violating the "The player has the most say over game pace" design goal?
Change the Hunter/Killer Factory Core Guard Post to
just Hunter/Killer Factory and make both AI Homeworlds
always have one. Make it spawn a Mark=TechLevel H/K on difficulties >=7 - 8,6>= and Mark=TechLevel+1 H/K on difficulties >=9 every hour. The H/K should then join the threat fleet and become the "leader" of it.. like Exos have a "leader" ships
(ever seen a whole Exo fleet move as fast a Raid Starship?). AAaaand then they would attack the player and in the best case scenario the player would die. Of course the H/K and the threat fleet wouldn't attack if they were.. "outfirepowered?"..
Destroying a Data Center would delay the next H/K by
10 minutes. Destroying a Co-Processor would delay by
20 minutes and destroying the SuperTerminal would delay by
30 minutes.
Boom! Problem Solved! Action made rewarding!EDIT:H/K's spawning time
So the base time is 60 minutes aka 3600 seconds
Time=3600-AIP/10*AI1DifficultyLevel/2*AI1DifficultyLevel
So on 8,6/9,8 difficulty level(s) at 127 AIP a Mark I Hunter/Killer would spawn every..
Time=3600-127/10*8,6/2*8,6=3130,354
..~3130 seconds = 52 minutes 10 seconds.
Delaying the Hunter/Killer
Data Center
5 minutes on Diff >=7 - 7,6>=
4 minutes on Diff >=8 - 8,6>=
3 minutes on Diff >=9
Co-Processor
20 minutes on Diff >=7 - 7,6>= (When all 4 are destroyed)
15 minutes on Diff >=8 - 8,6>= (When all 4 are destroyed)
10 minutes on Diff >=9 (When all 4 are destroyed)
SuperTerminal
30 minutes on Diff >=7 - 7,6>=
25 minutes on Diff >=8 - 8,6>=
20 minutes on Diff >=9
Aaaannd just for the heck of it.. the H/K could also have a couple of Core Starships, Warbird Starships and Beam Starships with it.
So the player would be encouraged to scout for and destroy AIP Reducers. Threat management would also become more important.
EDIT 2:There could also be structures similar to Hybrid Facilities which would permanently increase the spawning time of the H/K by x minute(s) each.