Forts in times of distributed defenses

[Hearteater]

I've already made clear why energy values won't balance turrets. And the reasons for per-planet appear largely to have been turret controllers. I don't consider that by itself sufficient validation.

[TechSY730]

Energy could balance turrets if the matter converter caps per planet were made tighter. Right now, 10 is too big, IMO. That's so big, that even with max turrets on all planets you care about, that isn't really enough to get close to the hard limit of energy that 10 per planet provides.

Some additional provision may be needed for the more "intense" game modes like fallen spire or showdown, where even 10 matter converters per planet can sometimes get tight, especially on high difficulties.

EDIT: Also, the turret changes were mostly motivated to
a) simplify turret management as your empire grows and changes
b) give something to bring defense-in-depth into competitive balance with "mega-chokepoint"

Turret controllers were mere the first step in experimenting with this sort of change. It wasn't itself the motivation for the per-planet caps.

It is entirely possible that some turrets right now are just simply OP, which would severely mess with the before and after comparisons of the caps changes.


EDIT2: And no, per-planet caps were indeed not a needed change for keeping the game "reasonable". This wasn't something so much as to change the "flow" of the game, or to make the game "fair" or "reasonable", as much as it for opening up viable options for the player.

[Kahuna]

the only  reason I can recall anyone arguing for per-planet caps was because on some map types it is impossible to choke point. This made it difficult to do high difficult games on those maps. But that arguement was made from a high-level challenge perspective.

What counts as "high level"? As far as I know there are only 2 people who are able to win games at 10/10 difficulty level. Faulty Logic and me. Faulty prefers ships over Turrets so it certainly isn't the per planet cap turrets that's winning the games for him. He does like to play with Fallen Spire and superweapons though but still. Wanderer seems to have retired.

I was actually against the per-planet change even before Mark V Turrets. Mark V Turrets made the game way too easy. The current per planet Turrets might be too strong. Sniper and Spider Turrets are clearly overpowered. They could be easily balanced by simply increasing their Energy cost by 10% or 20%. And yes Energy does matter. 5 Matter converters is already -1000M/s which is a lot. And no you can't just sit in your base waiting for ever.. you will get killed by CPAs. If you wont get killed then you're good enough to increase the difficulty level.

[Kahuna]

Energy could balance turrets if the matter converter caps per planet were made tighter. Right now, 10 is too big, IMO. That's so big, that even with max turrets on all planets you care about, that isn't really enough to get close to the hard limit of energy that 10 per planet provides

There are many kryptonites but this one is mine.

Ok Super Cat.. stay calm.. take deep breaths..

Sure you can build 100 Matter Converters but where the hell are you going to get the lost income from? Your butt? I mean I had 4 planets (in total) with Mark II Economical Command Stations.. I had unlocked 4 additional Turrets and I had to run 5 Matter Converters which cut my metal income almost in half.

Or maybe I'm getting this all wrong.. maybe you're playing on a difficulty where capturing (and holding) at least 20 planets is normal.. if 4 only of those 20 are whipping boys then no wonder it seems like Turrets don't cost anything. And yes I do remember. The game is supposed to be balanced around 7 difficulty which is considered to be normal. But to me it seems kind of strange to balance the game around a difficulty level that is so easy pretty much nothing matters. Hell.. even advanced warp sensors, Mark IV autocannons, Harvester Exo Shields and Mark III Harvesters are a viable option on that difficulty. Yes.. Harvesters are really bad atm. The only viable economical unlock at the moment is higher marks of Economical Command Stations. Unlocking Mark III Harvesters and Mark III Military/Logistics Command Station isn't a realistic option because it would cost way too much Knowledge. And the player can't choose how many resource asteroids a planet has. The Knowledge cost of Harvesters should be cut in half. I mean in addition to a boost in metal income Economical Command Stations give Energy and store some of the excess metal.

Speaking of stuff being viable.. wouldn't it also be good to take in account the high difficulty level perspective of things? I mean there ate some really useless things in the game.. that are an absolute waste of metal, energy and knowledge. Investing into garbage can ruin the game for you on high difficulty level. So if something is garbage on 10/10 it's also garbage on any other difficulty level.. but the low difficulty levels are so easy it doesn't matter what you do so it's ok to unlock that piece of garbage. In a perfect world all techs would be balanced.. all techs would be viable on all difficulty levels. Now utopia will never happen.. but 10/10 difficulty can help identify these problems so they could be made viable.. getting us closer to the utopia. I'm all for strategic diversity.

Also. A cap of Fighters cost only 4900 Energy. A cap of Bomber costs 9800 Energy and a cap of Missile Frigates 19600 Energy. Turrets cost 19200 per cap. So are Fighters and Bombers overpowered too?

[Kahuna]

The current per planet Turrets might be a bit too strong. Sniper and Spider Turrets are clearly overpowered.

Aaahhaa! Mystery solved!
A cap of the old per galaxy turrets cost 300*96=28800 Energy while the current per planet turrets cost 48*400=19200 Energy. Why were the turrets buffed in addition to making them per planet capped? The per planet cap change alone was a noticeable buff.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Kahuna, most of the cap prices are unchanged or only affected by rounding for nice numbers (360/unit => 700/unit) when halving their caps when I compare with the Wiki, which seems to correspond with the values I remember from May/June. Laser is the only turret that has significantly changed its cap price, bringing it into line with the other mainline turrets.

Code: [Select]

Needler    19200 -- unchanged
Laser    19200 -- down from 28800
MLRS       19200 -- unchanged
Missile    19200 -- unchanged
Flak       19200 -- unchanged
Lightning  19200 -- unchanged
Sniper     33600 -- down from 34560
Spider     33600 -- down from 34560


[Kahuna]

Laser is the only turret that has significantly changed its cap price, bringing it into line with the other

Facepalm...

[Faulty Logic]

Unlocking Mark III Harvesters and Mark III Military/Logistics Command Station isn't a realistic option because it would cost way too much Knowledge. And the player can't choose how many resource asteroids a planet has. The Knowledge cost of Harvesters should be cut in half. I mean in addition to a boost in metal income Economical Command Stations give Energy and store some of the excess metal.

Huh. I unlock military III stations every single game. I also find harvesters preferable to economic stations, when I unlock anything economic. Econ stations do (usually) provide superior metal/energy, but this is balanced by not being a military or logistic station.

Logistics and Warp Jammers, though, are never worth the k.

In terms of the main thrust of this thread, I think some defenses should remain at the per-galaxy cap, which allows and forces strategic choices, as opposed to everything, everywhere.

In fact, I think we have too many per-planet things as it is. I understand core turrets being that way, as it's the only way for them to compete with mkV fabricators, but I think the defensive game lost a lot with that change.

I think turrets mkIII and mkIV should go back to per-galaxy (leaving their cap as is), and controllers should lose their extra half-cap of mkV turrets, but remain per planet.

[Toranth]

I unlock Mil IIIs early in every game as well.  The full decloak, knockback, improved durability, all on top of +100% damage?  Perfect for my playstyle, which consists of turrets where required, and lots of fleetships.

And that's part of the problem with the old Mk V turrets.  When they were per planet, but other turrets were per-galaxy, capturing/hacking the Mk Vs become essential.  Every game started with "Explore to find the Mk V Turret Fabs, then capture/hack at least 3 of the good ones, THEN proceed with the rest of the game."  I almost never used normal turrets anymore, except for Fallen Spire games.  Instead, I could focus on fleetships, like I prefer to do.
But without anything being per-planet, we're reduced to the "Chokepoint uber alles" scenario, where the only way to have enough defenses to fight off a large exo or CPA is a chokepoint.  Which means you can't protect stuff like Fac IVs or Fabs, and there are all the usual complaints about how worthless they are because they die in minutes.

I switched from supporting chokepoints to per-planet caps because it meant that
a) normal turrets were useful again
b) all map types were equally viable (I like Honeycomb, but could never play it under the old Chokepoint regime)
c) Beachheading was useful for more than temp niche cases
d) Forts and per-galaxy Mk V turrets could still make chokepoints to deal with Exos and Showdowns and their ilk
aka, I found the game more fun. 

I find that energy costs are close to balancing out the defensive power of turrets.  In many of my games, 50% of my final economy goes to Matter Converters to support my fixed defenses, especially in my 10/10 games.  That's no minor matter, and a serious drawback should I ever fleetwipe, or even just lose a few worlds to an Exo or CPA.
(In fact, I'd love to be able to unlock an improved efficiency Matter Converter Mk II...)

[Kahuna]

I didn't mean Military Commsnd Stations aren't worth it.. though that what it actually sounded like.. my bad.

[orzelek]

I haven't read all this discussion.. but balancing by energy might fail from slightly different reasons.

Econ has been buffed and rebalanced quite few times to prevent netflick syndrome. This leads now to much more income being available that can fuel our new increased energy needs.
How to re-balance that without getting the netflick back I'm not sure. All of this is interconnected - and waiting for fleet rebuilds also requried a fix. Maybe buffing salvage while nerfing econ could help with this a bit.

Also - how many people treat now econ upgrades as mandatory?
Reading stuff here it seems for me that quite a lot esp. those playing on higher difficulties.

[TechSY730]

Energy could balance turrets if the matter converter caps per planet were made tighter. Right now, 10 is too big, IMO. That's so big, that even with max turrets on all planets you care about, that isn't really enough to get close to the hard limit of energy that 10 per planet provides

There are many kryptonites but this one is mine.

Ok Super Cat.. stay calm.. take deep breaths..

Sure you can build 100 Matter Converters but where the hell are you going to get the lost income from? Your butt? I mean I had 4 planets (in total) with Mark II Economical Command Stations.. I had unlocked 4 additional Turrets and I had to run 5 Matter Converters which cut my metal income almost in half.

Or maybe I'm getting this all wrong.. maybe you're playing on a difficulty where capturing (and holding) at least 20 planets is normal.. if 4 only of those 20 are whipping boys then no wonder it seems like Turrets don't cost anything. And yes I do remember. The game is supposed to be balanced around 7 difficulty which is considered to be normal. But to me it seems kind of strange to balance the game around a difficulty level that is so easy pretty much nothing matters. Hell.. even advanced warp sensors, Mark IV autocannons, Harvester Exo Shields and Mark III Harvesters are a viable option on that difficulty. Yes.. Harvesters are really bad atm. The only viable economical unlock at the moment is higher marks of Economical Command Stations. Unlocking Mark III Harvesters and Mark III Military/Logistics Command Station isn't a realistic option because it would cost way too much Knowledge. And the player can't choose how many resource asteroids a planet has. The Knowledge cost of Harvesters should be cut in half. I mean in addition to a boost in metal income Economical Command Stations give Energy and store some of the excess metal.

Speaking of stuff being viable.. wouldn't it also be good to take in account the high difficulty level perspective of things? I mean there ate some really useless things in the game.. that are an absolute waste of metal, energy and knowledge. Investing into garbage can ruin the game for you on high difficulty level. So if something is garbage on 10/10 it's also garbage on any other difficulty level.. but the low difficulty levels are so easy it doesn't matter what you do so it's ok to unlock that piece of garbage. In a perfect world all techs would be balanced.. all techs would be viable on all difficulty levels. Now utopia will never happen.. but 10/10 difficulty can help identify these problems so they could be made viable.. getting us closer to the utopia. I'm all for strategic diversity.

Also. A cap of Fighters cost only 4900 Energy. A cap of Bomber costs 9800 Energy and a cap of Missile Frigates 19600 Energy. Turrets cost 19200 per cap. So are Fighters and Bombers overpowered too?

Where does all the money come from? For many (but not all) players, it comes from turning the game speed up and waiting.

Yes, there are options in the game to keep this from being feasible long term, like AIP over time, hybrids, exo sources, and other things. There are also some non-optional things in the game that make this not feasible, like CPAs and border aggression. However, it seems a lot of players seem to be turning the optional sources of these pressures off, and on lower difficulty levels, the non-optional factors don't really start becoming threatening for a long time, making the "waiting strat" quite practical for large chunks of time.

So, I guess the thing is, are the non-optional sources of "semi-time pressure" too weak at lower difficulty levels (7 especially)? Is there something that can be done to make the optional sources of "time pressure" less scary or more enticing, or are they fine as they are now? Should some of those or some aspect of those be retrofitted to be non-optional? Maybe opt-out instead of opt-in (like auto AIP over time is opt-out.) Why do so many players play with 0 AIP over time? Is that really an issue?


Yes, at the upper half of 8 difficulty to 10, the base "time pressure" mechanics do become a strong enough factor that simply "waiting around for economy" often becomes non-viable. This isn't always the case at the "normal" difficulty levels.

EDIT: Actually, you touched on this in the post I quoted. Maybe 7 is simply too easy right now, mostly regarding the strength of the AIs offensive behaviors over time and AIP.

[Hearteater]

Yes, at the upper half of 8 difficulty to 10, the base "time pressure" mechanics do become a strong enough factor that simply "waiting around for economy" often becomes non-viable.

This is not a true statement. CPA pressure is insufficient at 9/9 on the current patch to cause me any concerns about waiting for my refleets. Even if it was, having feedback delayed hours of game time is poor design.

[TechSY730]

Yes, at the upper half of 8 difficulty to 10, the base "time pressure" mechanics do become a strong enough factor that simply "waiting around for economy" often becomes non-viable.

This is not a true statement. CPA pressure is insufficient at 9/9 on the current patch to cause me any concerns about waiting for my refleets. Even if it was, having feedback delayed hours of game time is poor design.

Sorry, I meant, strong enough such that relying on that as a long term crutch is not viable at higher difficulties. I'm pretty certain you could not speed up the game to +9 or +!!!, wait an hour or 2 in real time (who knows how many hours of in game time that would be...), and be fine with only occasional fleet reshuffling to where waves coming in while at a negative income for almost that whole time because you have just that much stuff trying to be built. That would not work on 9/9. Waiting for refleets is NOT the kind of time scale I was talking about.

I was talking about extreme cases like waiting for a refleet + highly negative economy (much higher than the normal negative economy that happens during refleets) due to so much energy usage for like 75% of the game time. That sort of stupidity is not viable at higher difficulites. I would be impressed but not surprised if that someone did that or something like that with that of that magnitude of "waiting-ness" at difficulty 7. If someone can show this is indeed possible, then that is a real sign of an issue.

Things like salvage and smarter threat (seeking out weak planets) have helped give some "immediacy" to the response of the AI from your mistakes. More things along that nature is good.
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?

[keith.lamothe]

Message sent with back with decapitated Scout:  "Every 30 minutes you dawdle, a capturable in AI territory will have an... accident."