Forts in times of distributed defenses

[Kahuna]

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

Well to me 9/9 difficulty seems pretty much lobotomized so I'm not surprised. But whatever CPA pressure is insufficient on x difficulty level depends on the player's skill level and tech unlocks.

[Kahuna]

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.

[Kahuna]

I did some "research" in my current game. I actually built a SuperFortress in a 10/10 difficulty game. I've never completed building a SuperFortress before. Building it took long as hell.. I have quite a lot in defenses in general. 3 choke points. AIP is 142 atm and an average wave has over 2000 ships.

Now once again all of this depends on the player's skill level and on tech unlocks. I've used almost all of my Knowledge on defensive tech. I just stopped a 19000 ship CPA with just my defenses and 2 Mark I Lightning Warheads.. so yes.. it is possible to just sit behind Turrets. But why is that a problem? If the player chooses to use all Knowledge on defensive unlocks then it should be possible to do that.

Take a look at the Test1.sav file.
Pause as soon as you see the "Load completed!" text and take a look at the Ashlorev planet. 3799 ships will arrive there in 1 second. Shortly after that 1921 CPA ships will also arrive there making a total of 5720 ships. My defenses will pretty much auto stopped them. I just ordered the SuperFortress to target the Carriers and Laser Turrets to target EyeBots. Also as you can see there's 19837 threat. That's the CPA I mentioned^^ I had Auto FRD Engineers and Rebuilders disabled during the CPA. I also transported my fleet and additional Engineers and Rebuilders to Zijo when the CPA arrived there.

EDIT: Oh the hilarity.. the minefields alone destroyed 1125 ships. Would have destroyed even more if the AIs didn't have those damn Tachyon Micro Fighters.

Test3.sav is after the CPA.

I just wanted to test the Fortresses in this game. Now that the CPA is dealt with I can capture Sucma and hack the SuperTerminal (P5) and and the Advanced Factory for Mark IV Bombers.

[Fleet Unity]

I did some "research" in my current game. I actually built a SuperFortress in a 10/10 difficulty game. I've never completed building a SuperFortress before. Building it took long as hell.. I have quite a lot in defenses in general. 3 choke points. AIP is 142 atm and an average wave has over 2000 ships.

Now once again all of this depends on the player's skill level and on tech unlocks. I've used almost all of my Knowledge on defensive tech. I just stopped a 19000 ship CPA with just my defenses and 2 Mark I Lightning Warheads.. so yes.. it is possible to just sit behind Turrets. But why is that a problem? If the player chooses to use all Knowledge on defensive unlocks then it should be possible to do that.

Take a look at the Test1.sav file.
Pause as soon as you see the "Load completed!" text and take a look at the Ashlorev planet. 3799 ships will arrive there in 1 second. Shortly after that 1921 CPA ships will also arrive there making a total of 5720 ships. My defenses will pretty much auto stopped them. I just ordered the SuperFortress to target the Carriers and Laser Turrets to target EyeBots. Also as you can see there's 19837 threat. That's the CPA I mentioned^^ I had Auto FRD Engineers and Rebuilders disabled during the CPA. I also transported my fleet and additional Engineers and Rebuilders to Zijo when the CPA arrived there.

Test3.sav is after the CPA.

I just wanted to test the Fortresses in this game. Now that the CPA is dealt with I can capture Sucma and hack the SuperTerminal (P5) and and the Advanced Factory for Mark IV Bombers.

Like you said "Now once again all of this depends on the player's skill level and on tech unlocks" and if you choose to unlock all defensive technology you should be able to just sit at a planet or planets. As if you spend most of your knowledge on that you are going to have a smaller fleet to attack with and that's going to slow you up. I mean knowledge is the only finite resource in the game and unless you are playing on a very low difficulty level taking a lot of planets for knowledge is usually going to get you killed. Even if you have more than one player if everybody spent it on defensive technology your fleets are going to be very small and you would all need a ton of energy and metal to support a lot of fortress and or turrets so you will not be attacking much and would most likely quickly become over matched if you only unlocked a few military ships.

[Kahuna]

Like you said "Now once again all of this depends on the player's skill level and on tech unlocks" and if you choose to unlock all defensive technology you should be able to just sit at a planet or planets. As if you spend most of your knowledge on that you are going to have a smaller fleet to attack with and that's going to slow you up. I mean knowledge is the only finite resource in the game and unless you are playing on a very low difficulty level taking a lot of planets for knowledge is usually going to get you killed. Even if you have more than one player if everybody spent it on defensive technology your fleets are going to be very small and you would all need a ton of energy and metal to support a lot of fortress and or turrets so you will not be attacking much and would most likely quickly become over matched if you only unlocked a few military ships.

Exactly.

[Kahuna]

Nope, wouldn't help.  The most efficient way to do the micro you're referring to would not change with your suggestion.

If you instead overlap your forcefields like a venn diagram with the command station in the center (spot 7):


Then you don't have to move any of them to repair any of them.  Or move them small amounts.  As soon as one isn't protecting the command station, it ceases to be covering it, touching the others, and thus repairable.  The repair of a half-dozen engineers is fast enough to bring it back up to 90% before it takes damage (even the 1 point from the forcefield network rule).

I tried this and it doesn't work.

EDIT:
However.. if you disable "Force Field A" and all FFs protecting the FF A you can repair it. You can't repair the FF A if it has taken damage in x seconds NOR if the FFs protecting the FF A have taken damage in x seconds..
..so to repair a Force Field in middle of a combat.. it must not have taken damage in x seconds.. and if it's protected by other Force Fields those Force Fields also must not have taken damage in x seconds..

[Hearteater]

It does work, but normally you need Mark IIs in position A, B and C, and then start all your Mark Is in the middle. This puts the Mark II out shell outside of the Mark I inner shell's protection. This means no Mark II is protected by anything except itself. Once all three Mark IIs get beat back, the Mark Is need to hold until the Mark IIs get repaired. A pile of engineers can snap-repair the Mark IIs very quickly. The setup is still ultimately vulnerable since the Mark Is can never get repaired so eventually they'll get worn down and then once the Mark IIs get pushed back you'll lose your CS.

[Kahuna]

Well yes. That's true.

[Malkiel]

So.. many points being made....

I'm just gonna start listing things with opinions and hope supercat survives my post.

1) snipers are good, spiders are broken, the two working in tandem is the issue. I'd say make spider go back into the per galaxy role, half sniper cap and double stats for it, leaving it the second best raid starship counter in the game (behind military command stations because knockback beats raid SS better)

2) one of the big points being brought against per planet capped turrets in this derail is multiplayer, because you can lay them on several players thick.  if you reduce the energy that players can harvest from allied systems, this would remove the ability to defense in depth to the point of triviality in multiplayer. the amount of the decrease remains questionable in quantity, but perhaps allow non primary controllers in a system to only harvest 50K?

3) Energy was supposed to be a lot more limited way back when, I know I'm not the only one remembering mk1,2,and 3 energy collectors, with mk3 being the desperate "crap it's a brownout" and then you onlined them.. I would endorse a 1 per planet matter converter cap.

4) resource gathering upgrades are a joke for the K cost associated with them, I feel it should be halved though I'd be willing to defer to Faulty Logic or Kahuna if they disagree, but right now it seems tantamount to insanity to unlock those for me.

5) this one is mostly for diff. 9 and above players as a question: do you even use the forts you can unlock? I'm about an 8.6 player, and I find them a waste. It is worth noting that I was never really a chokepoint player even before the turret cap changes. I kinda think forts have no purpose, and if on higher difficulty play they are basically not used, it would indicate they need more of a buff than a simple cap change.

that about covers it.

Since map types matter: I play low aip strategies on 60-80 world realistic maps. I tend to shut off superweapons aside from golems(hard 4), exodian blade, and showdown devices. I play against any/any ai types, including technologist types in the selections. I have only played seriously on simple, realistic, and a single win on grid type... just so folks can see where my game comes from. I have never taken fallen spire past first city, and recently started disabling it since I wasn't using it anyways.

[Aklyon]

I'd rather leave Sniper/Spider turrets alone. Spiders cost more than average to unlock higher marks because they're useful, as far as I'd thought and being my favorite turrets aside, why would they need to be put into a raid counter position? Raid starships aren't exactly durable in the first place the last time the AI had thrown one or two at me, and if one actually makes it to your home it'll get blown up anyway unless theres no defenses there. They're like Alt-nemesis champ exos, but not threatening. (Though they might be if they showed up in large numbers, I guess?)

MP has multiple homeworlds, and thus bigger waves. Less energy would be a rather bad problem there unless we're supposed to take an entire third of an 80 clusters map, and doing that without FS leads to waves as big as the CPAs are (half waves or normal waves, either way), and ~570 AIP. Which either we're not good at defending against (aside from the obvious edges, planets usually only have one player of defenses there), or you need all the current energy to build enough turrets to kill that many ships without breaking your fleet to pieces every time cleaning up the remaining ships.

We already have a matter converter cap, if the patch notes are right. Its at 10.

I tend to play at 7 with golems/spirecraft easy, blade, nomads 6, and showdown devices, and FS. Usually pick my AI types in SP or we do Random Easier/Medium in MP with Alt-champ 5.