The past few weeks I've been thinking about how Golems are used and their impact on the game, and some of the "problems" I see with the current state of affairs. After reading the following two threads, I think I'm not alone in my views, so I figured I'd post my thoughts:
For simplicity, let us assume that the Player starts with a single homeworld, that the game is using Broken Golems and / or Botnet Golems Hard, and that the AI is 7 / 7 difficulty, as these settings are considered "Normal" / the primary balance point (in particular, Exo waves don't receive extra multipliers). Let us also assume that no other plots are enabled, and that there is no automatic AIP increase.
Finally, the reader should of course assume that, as a newb, I Don't Know What I'm Doing, so I'm sure there are some things that I'm not taking into account or that should be handled by a more sophisticated playstyle than I employ.
Exo Wave ResponseWe should begin by noting a basic principle / semi-invariant of the game "loop": the AI's efforts to kill the Player are in direct proportion to the actions taken by the Player. This invariant is maintained by increasing the AI's efforts whenever the Player takes some action against the AI. The precondition for this loop (beginning the game) establishes this invariant with the minimal AIP vs. the Player holding his homeworld. Should the Player take absolutely no action (i.e., just lets the game sit running), then the invariant requires that the AI's efforts do not increase (automatic AIP increase aside, which violates this invariant to "encourage" the Player to take action, which is why I am assuming it is off).
An implied corollary to the invariant is that the form that the response takes depends on the type of action, with AIP serving as a counter / indicator for how many "general" actions the Player has taken (e.g., killing a command station or other AI-valued building) and therefore the AI's current level of galaxy-wide effort. Other mechanics, such as hacking, use their own counters to ensure that the response and effort correspond to the Player's actions.
In this light, the Exo Waves that occur on Broken Golems Hard are specifically intended to counter the added strength of the Player's forces due to Golems. However, by tying the strength and timing of the Exos strictly to AIP, the above invariant and corollary are violated --- the strength of the AI's Golem-related response is independent of any Golem-related actions (or lack thereof) taken by the Player. We can see evidence of this as follows (some of these points are raised in the Exo Waves thread linked above):
- Exo waves can occur before the Player has even found any Golems (much less brought them online), causing an aggravating "loss by RNG" due to the seeding of the Golems.
- Refusing to take any Golem-related actions (i.e., choosing not to capture any Golems) is not a effective strategy, as it has no effect on the Golem-related response.
- Similarly, it is possible for the Golem-related response to outstrip the Player's ability to compensate for it, especially when the AIP leaps due to the use of nukes or killing an AI homeworld, even if the Player's strategy is "TAKE ALL THE GOLEMS."
Proposed SolutionMy proposed solution draws from the Fallen Spire plot. Fallen Spire Exos
are consistent with the invariant and corollary, as the strength and timing of the FS Exos are determined by the number of Spire cities the Player holds. The Player can choose not to take any FS-related action and win the game normally; he gets none of the bonuses from the FS ships, but also does not have to fend off extra forces that he did not instigate. It also means that the Player can choose not to progress any further because he lacks the ability (for whatever reason) to handle stronger Exos (noted in the last paragraph of
this post).
We could apply the same thinking to the Golem Exos: base the size of the Golem Exos on the number of Golems the Player has brought online. Every time the Player brings a Golem online, the "Golem progress" value increases, similar to how the "FS Progress" increases for every city built. This preserves our invariant: the Player is again in control of the effort put forth by the AI. This means that Exos do not spawn before a Player has brought a Golem online (and can therefore presumably defend against the Exo), Players can play without penalty by refusing to bring a single Golem online, and the Exo strength cannot become insanely more massive than the total firepower of all Golems in the galaxy.
By preserving the invariant, the Player can actually apply some strategy to their Golem-related actions --- "I want that extra Hive Golem, but I'm barely holding on right now..." rather than "I'm barely holding on right now, so I
must take that extra Hive Golem."
It is also worth noting that Broken Golems Medium already upholds the invariant --- if the Player takes no Golems, then there is no associated AIP increase. By making the Exo response proportional to the number of Golems brought online, this smooths / makes consistent the difficulty progression for the overall Broken Golems plot.
Note that this does not mean that Exos could never be tied to AIP. I would expect that some players enable Golems simply for the added challenge of having to deal with the "always-on," AIP-based Exos. To this end, I would propose having a separate "Exo Plot" that behaves the same way that Broken Golems Hard does now (always-on, AIP-based), though the difficulty would likely have to be scaled back, as there are no associated "superweapons" to counter-balance it.
Level of Progression and the Botnet GolemMost likely, not all Golems would provoke an equal response; instead, it would be better to make the progression proportional to the power they add to the Player's arsenal / threat they pose to the AI. For example, as noted in the threads above, the Regen Golem should provoke a lower response than the Hive Golem, as the latter increases the Player's capabilities much more.
This has an added benefit: using this mechanic, the handling of the Botnet Golem can be simplified somewhat. Instead of having a separate Botnet Golem plot, Botnets could be handled in the same fashion as other Golems, albeit with the most severe "Golem progress" increase. It also means that multiple Botnets could be seeded again for even more Exo-related hilarity.
Alternatively, if the Botnet remains as a separate plot (e.g., because the Botnet's ability to inhale entire waves cannot be balanced against a single "Golem progress" increase), then its Exo progression should still satisfy the above invariant. In this case, the "Player's action" is the increase in firepower due to the zombified ships. Thus, we could (engine permitting) use the number of inhaled ships as the basis for the increase, or use a similar metric. Other similar metrics could be used (combined zombified firepower, for instance), so long as the "Botnet progress" is based on the Player's actions with the Botnet Golem.
- I should note that I think this would be overkill: tracking the number of ships zombified specifically by the Golem would be hard on the programmers / engine and impossible for the Player, and the Exo wave response (as noted in the above threads) generally contain ships that the Botnet cannot inhale, meaning that the response, while proportional, is not going to be directly equivalent anyways.
Progression PermanenceA more difficult point to address is the permanence of the progression --- the fact that once the "Golem progress" increases, there is no way of lowering it. In the case of the FS cities, this permanence of increase is matched by the permanence of the Player's action / benefit: it is practically impossible to destroy a city once it is built. The player can be temporarily deprived of its capabilities (due to its attached buildings being destroyed or the Player losing supply), but the Player can recover from this loss, provided he survives. Therefore, the Player does not have a sense that the response invariant is violated (in that the Player's actions have been undone, but the AI's response has not), because the Player can take steps to regain the benefits of the actions that he has taken.
In the case of Golems (both with the current AIP-based Exos and the above "on-activation" Exos), it is possible that the Golem is destroyed, undoing the Player's actions. Some players have noted that this becomes all but a certainty as the Exos increase in power, essentially forcing them to avoid using the Golems in defense against the Exos caused by the Golems, which seems somewhat perverse.
There are a few ways we can deal with this. We could maintain the status quo: the destruction of a Golem has no effect on the Golem progress. This treats "Player's actions" in the response invariant as the discrete actions taken by the Player, rather than the effects / visible outcomes of those actions --- i.e., a Player's actions, once done, cannot be undone. This is obviously the simplest to implement, and it is a valid interpretation of our invariant and is consistent with our notion of AI response (i.e., the AI is responding based on how much of a threat it views the Player to be, which is not necessarily how much of a threat the Player actually
is). However, as noted above, this approach can leave the Player with a sense that the battle becomes more lopsided over time. For example, if the Player loses all his Golems, then the Player is left with (roughly) the same situation as if he had taken no Golems, but the AI is responding as if the Player still had all of these Golems.
Another is to base the progression on the number of Golems the Player currently has. It takes the converse approach to the above --- Player actions are viewed in terms of the Player's benefit, rather than just a one-time event, and therefore they can be undone. It also makes the game seem a bit fairer / less frustrating, as it does keep the Player from essentially losing the game because they lost their Golems on a single Exo wave gone wrong. However, this is a somewhat more complicated solution --- namely, I don't know how the internal FS progress counter is maintained, though I would expect it is simply incremented every time a city is created rather than by counting the number of cities the player currently holds. Maintaining a counter on "number of Golems alive" may be a bit tricky from the programming side of things.
Finally, we could in some fashion make the benefits of bringing a Golem online "permanent" in the same fashion as the Spire cities. Obviously, we don't want to make the Golems invincible (though that would be AWESOME
), but we could give the Player some way of rebuilding a destroyed Golem. Offhand, there are a few ways of doing this, and I'm sure the community can come up with others:
- Have Golems leave remains.
- Instead of a Broken Golem, have a Broken Golem Factory (parsed as "a Golem Factory that is broken"), an expensive but hardy structure that must be brought online. Afterwards, this factory can make a single type of Golem, with ship cap determined by the number of factories for that type of Golem (similar to FS Shipyards).
- One that I personally favor: when a Golem dies, a perma-cloaked "____ Golem Core" is spawned on the player's Homeworld. This core takes ~50% of the cost of the Golem to construct, and can build a "Broken ____ Golem" at 25% health (the core is consumed in the process).
It is worth noting that making Golems recoverable does not necessarily eliminate the well-designed "take care of this thing" aspect of their usage. For example, if there is an extra economic penalty associated with a Golem's death / rebuilding, then unless your econ is UH-MAZE-ING, the Player is going to protect the Golem to keep your econ from getting completely kneecapped during the rebuild. And the rebuild time still gives the AI time to send further waves or forces to kill the Player, so the Player may not be able to afford to lose the Golem even for a little while.
ConclusionThere are a few other changes I would suggest for Golems --- in particular, I think the purpose of the self-attrition mechanic would be better served by a constant resource drain. But I'll save those thoughts for another time.
Spirecraft are another notable exception to the response invariant, and I think that a similar approach would be useful there. However, their situation is more complicated due to their construction mechanism, their multiple mark levels, their self-sacrificing / non-repairable mechanic (in some cases), and their overall fragility for being considered a "superweapon" (at least in my experience). Handling these complications would likely require a more complex change to the plot's mechanics than the changes to Golems outlined above. However, I don't think that it would be a sin to change the Golem mechanics and leave the Spirecraft mechanics in place while a suitable set of changes to Spirecraft is found.
All in all, I think that the presence and use of Golems would be improved by making the above changes. However, as I noted above, there may be factors that I'm not aware of / considering that others with more experience should of course point out.
tl;dr: Basing Golem Hard Exos on the number of Golems activated = more better than.
