Great Parasite Nerf Initiative

[eRe4s3r]

Please read this post first - This is not a call for a nerf but a discussion start for how Parasites can possibly fit into the lore (which i think they don't)

And to be more clear, this Initiative has NO URGE TO NERF ANY SHIPS at all, at least not in the sense. - it is AI War - LORE DISCUSSION - The intend is to solidify AI war backstory and lore to make sense and not be illogical to our current state of information and knowledge on AI's or rather, AGI (Artificial General Intilligence)

Yes i just decided that I think it makes more sense not to focus on a specific ship or playstyle but rather to make any ship and thing in Ai War logical correlating with the backstory. Parasites are the worst offenders atm, which is why i originally made the below post. Please read discussion further though - this is not about parasite nerfing

Or short - the GPNI

Problems:
-Its very easy to capture any kind of ship with enough parasites in your fleet
-Even if not intended, parasites can give you about 60-400 ships in any attack that hits your full fleet.
-There is no penalty to captured ships - MK3 reactors basically solve all - late game energy need problems revolving around parasites.
-The AI does not have any counter to parasites

Or short, the gameplay concept of parasite take over is super imbalanced

Suggestion:

Remove Parasites entirely from the game

Allow Merc construction of MKIV and MKIII ships in exchange
Allow that Merc shipyards have a second pool of very limited ships that players have not unlocked (ie, all AI ships excluding core ships)

Let the cries for mercy commence

---

Second Suggestion Phase - Why the concept of parasitic ship capture is a bad idea

How do other games handle this and why is it balanced there.

Nexus, Ship Capture in the sense does not exist - the amount of crew required to operate starships is simply too high. What you can do is send commando units on enemy ships to cripple key systems (energy/weapon/engine) or initiate self-destruct when bridge is taken (low chance for that)

Homeworld 2 capturing is possible but invasion ships are very heavily limited in amount, attach to enemy hull - take over takes time during which capturing units can be shot from the hull and by assisting enemy ships.

[Tankor Smash]

Suggestion:

Remove Parasites entirely from the game

 .  I would really really be against this!

I guess they could be removed and added as a cheat, but still, come on man really?!

[darke]

-Parasites allow acquisition of Units above your cap without paying for them (unlike mercs)

Given that I stopped using parasites as my primary ship time ages back when they were nerfed to not allow capture of ships above your max ship cap I'm pretty sure this isn't valid anymore (I was using them mainly to replenish stuff at my defensive points).

In any event, I stopped using parasites because the massive energy cost of them was loosing more more metal/crystal then I was gaining in ships with the recent change to energy reactors, and due to the ships being built insanely faster there's little benefit of being able to get an extra "600 ships" per assault when I'm building about that much anyway between waves. But I don't use them as part of a parasite-only force deliberately designed to capture ships like most people do, just as a low-mark-level force multiplier.

So I must admit I'm quite perplexed as to why you're wanting to remove them when they're really only used in a specialised way now, rather then two versions ago?

[eRe4s3r]

Mhhh, actually thats a really good point  



ME <-- had too much coffee apparently

I still don't see how parasites are balanced though, the idea to capture AI ships , which are not built for human use, have no bridge and no quarters is just really really odd.

Parasites do allow you to capture IV ships easily and that is why i regard them as very imbalanced, the energy cost is not a problem (now that i played with them extensively)

I dunno really, but i think, and thats a very subjective oppinion, that instead of having parasites the concept of mercenaries should be improved so as to make them entirely useless (the parasites)

A strong economy should be rewarded imo ^^

When i wrote" above your cap" i should have rather written "above your research cap" (ie, you can capture un-researched ships)

But again, thats true, you can not capture above your actual unit cap so i remove that part ;p I had a coffein based overglow ;p

Edit:


On second thought, maybe i should have rather named it the "mercenary boost initiative" my quarrel is not with an game imbalance but with a conceptual imbalance and a logical flaw, ie the capturing of ships which are not supposed to be able to sustain or carry humans or short - its like trying to capture a borg cube. Except the humans in this game, do it in 1 shot.

It makes no sense that the Human race has a Parasite that can -take over- an Machine Race ship. Other games do handle this much better imo, without creating a unit class that doesn't really fit in the lore.

I guess i should have worded it less sensationalist but its the best way to get a lot of feedback on this

Maybe my suggestion to remove them wasn't enough of a hint, i don't call for a nerf but for a discussion about how and if parasites can possibly fit into the game lore. At the moment, i regard the parasites as a sort of "logical issue"

[darke]

I have mentioned a couple of times about making it harder to parasite higher level ships then the ship doing the parasiting, last comment about it was here: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,884.msg5429.html#msg5429

It doesn't seem to be particularly wanted since it's the only ability which changes effectiveness based on the mark levels.

[eRe4s3r]

Ah, i know that topic/post! ;p

I am surprised nobody brought up that it doesn't make any sense to capture a flying brickwall of electronics and AI components (surely the human race is not using AI's anymore to command their ships?)

I am not for such a nerf because it would create an not super effective, but still logical broken unit.
Basically, instead of having ANY parasites i would rather have an intensive improvement of mercs.

[darke]

The player's ships are installing a virus in the AI's computers thus taking over the flying wall of electronics. Thus the shooting-them-with-stuff to get the machinery doing the hacking past the ship's external defenses.

I never imagined any of the ships had actual humans in them, even the player's ships. Humans fighting in space are too valuable to risk if the entire human race is at stake since it takes so long to breed them. All the player's ships would be cut from the same cloth as the AI's, they just have fly-by-wire controls back to humans flying them around (with low level AI support) whom are sitting in relative safety in the the command stations.

[eRe4s3r]

A Virus? i don't think that is logical, and realistically seen its impossible.

You are saying a human beings virus can compete with a multi billion gigahertz AI, its firewall and anti virus signatures? By the time you have even established connection you would utterly swarmed by electronic attacks, by the time you get your finger to hit the first key on the keyboard your ship wouldn't be under your control anymore, by the time your finger comes to the 2nd key, your ship would blow up or vent all air , and you'd be dead.

I don't think the concept of an AGI really is very understood by all. Its a sentient being that resides in ALL machines at the same time. When you connect or have as much as a open wireless connection, it will instantly decode the cypher hack it and make it work for itself.

There is no way any human being, any human electronic or any human-based AI can compete with enemy self-improving self-replicating AI. That is why all ships - SEE BSG , need a full human crew, no connected networks, not even a SINGLE connected computer, even network cables emit electronic frequencies that can be read and manipulated without physical connection.

Logical seen, the AI in this game is playing VERY nice. If it would be a dick, it would hack your homeworlds networks and overload all nuclear/fusion generators, poison all food and water and destroy all production and electricity systems.

So Fly-By-Wire would work exactly as long as it takes the AGI to decode the cyphers, and then your ships wouldn't by fly-by-wire, but fly-by-AI. Trying to win against AI's with electronic gadgets is like trying to fight a fire in your garden with a nuclear bomb.

Basically what i am saying is this - There are several gaping Plot Holes in AI War lore, and we need to fix it.

If officially and lets consider that you are right - So parasites are in fact no parasites, but EW-Ships (Hackers) and they have no human crew, the first logical lapse is - that you are saying to overtake an ai with an ai virus. The only thing that'll do is merge the 2 AI's and what you get might be 10 times as dangerous as before.

Secondly, Fly-By-Wire would be via electronic signals the ai could intercept (so why does it not do it?) and block (doesn't do that either) it would just have to hack 1 ship you control, send a virus back to you and you'd be SOL (and your homeworld defenseless)

Third, how exactly do you propose communication by-wire over many solar systems? Why doesn't the ai simply install a signal jammer?

Ehm, you see, this is the kind of stuff i made this topic for.

The most gaping plot hole of all however, is that all ships of the ai, are the ai An AGI Is not a disconected computer, it is abord all its vessels at all times.

There are no sub-commander AI's, the AGI sentience itself is everywhere at once.
Which is why the idea of infecting a single ship of the AGI sentience with a virus is absurd. You would always fight the central AGI head-on, no virus you could develop that the AI couldn't disassemble in a nanosecond.

[x4000]

"Plot holes" in AI War?  For there to be a plot hole, there has to be a plot, I'm sorry.  The only plot for the game is the up-front explanation on the main menu, which is internally consistent.  There are other technical explanations for many of the other ships, which work well enough to not stretch disbelief too much.  The mechanics of some things, like parasites or vampires, stretch creduility a little bit more, but it's easy to make up something pretty straightforward (parasites are salvage ship, parasites have a virus they use to take over disabled ships, vampires have an energy siphon, whatever).

If you guys want to come up with lore and backstory, that's fine and actually pretty cool.  However, I won't ever change the gameplay in order to support lore if it harms gameplay -- which nerfing/removing parasites would, as potentially would having mercenaries that are too much stronger (the vote on that is still out, but I am cautious). 

This game is Chess in space, it's got a story only as the briefest of explanations for what is going on.  Chess has all sorts of "inconsistencies" such as the fact that Castles cannot move in real life, and Bishops do not fight (let alone walk diagonally).  And a Queen would hardly be the most powerful unit on the battlefield, etc, etc, etc.

Some games are about story, and that's great.  I look forward to Heavy Rain, and I adore a number of RPGs and other story-centric games like Silent Hill 2.  Awesome stuff, emotionally/intellectually significant to a degree, I wouldn't do without it.

Then you have mechanic-centric games, such as Pac Man, Chess, even Lode Runner.  They have the barest of stories, which players are free to fill in if they want in their minds, but at core they are simply about interesting gameplay mechanics and player skill.  These games would not be well served by having their gameplay design being constrained by "story consistency" or whatever.  They are abstract representations of some sort of activity (war, running away from bad guys, etc), and through their abstractness many unique new ideas are born. 

If you take away the abstractness, in many cases you take away from the ability of the designer to do The New.  As soon as the designer starts trying to fit everything into real life too closely, you start winding up with something a lot more generic and uninteresting.  Will I do story-heavy games in the future?  Absolutely, yes!  I am a (so far) failed novelist and I love to write.  However, as it turns out I'm a much better game designer than writer, and I know when to let the latter overtake the former and when to not.

I'll have to turn this into a blog post, incidentally, because this keeps coming up from time to time (not just on these boards).  I understand the desire for immersion, but I hope that people haven't forgotten the need for imagination.

[eRe4s3r]

Well, but to clarify - The IDEA that an AI instead of an AGI is our enemy is already stretching my imagination a fair bit. An AI is nothing but a scripted program, not what people think it means at that. An AGI is what the story claims has developed (sentient non-programmed ai).

For that you have to understand that i have a heavy background in Artificial Intelligence Philosophies ;p So it kinda pokes me that we have "suspended disbelief" in something that doesn't need to have it. Immersion is automatically destroyed when suspended disbelief is expected, its like talking OOC (out of character) in a RPG.

AI war implies we fight against a Sentient AI, not a scripted dedicated computer that can be attacked by a virus. If it could, why are we fighting again? Just broadcast the Parasite Virus globally and the war would be over (That is the logical flaw i aim at) ;p

Any unit you create does not have to be realistic (as in our world realistic), but i has to follow your own narrative at least. And Parasites go against that narrative. They would imply humans have a weapon to disable AI ...

[liq3]

AI war implies we fight against a Sentient AI, not a scripted dedicated computer that can be attacked by a virus. If it could, why are we fighting again? Just broadcast the Parasite Virus globally and the war would be over (That is the logical flaw i aim at) ;p

You could argue parasites are really hackers, which require themselves to be in close proximity to enemy ships to disable and take over them.

Another could be that the smaller ships have separate AI to the whole, and takes order by say, radio, and when parasites attack they block out the larger AI's orders as part of the process.

Or even another is they that they salvage the wreckage. The ship's main computer could supposedly be completely fried, so they install their own software and put crew in.

[eRe4s3r]

Then lets call them hackers and i wouldn't complain, but parasites is a really bad name for a unit that can't possibly do what it does, in what its name implies (a parasite requires a host and lives of it..)

Maybe i am reading too much into its name? But i still find it an odd unit...

[x4000]

Even if this is a virus, it's not at all consistent with a sentient AI.  There is a big difference between a centralized(ish) server-based intelligence like the AI, and an individual piece of hardware (individual ships).  If you cut the Ia's connection to those ships, then it's just a computer, same as the human ships.  Same as if you cut our connection off to a body part, it's just a piece of meat (but one that can be used in other capacities, still functional in and of itself if you had the technology).  When a ship is destroyed, it's connection with the controller is clearly lost either way.  The ability of parasites is "reclamator," you may notice, which lets them then turn that destroyed ship back for their own purposes.

[liq3]

Maybe we should rename to Reclamators?

[eRe4s3r]

I vote for it!  

I still think there ought to be a lore x4000 - Even if you say you don't need one, i think we do. If only to put everything in the game into a lore that actually works (doesn't have to be realistic) but without a lore stuff like this is bound to confuse.

I also think we really need a better written Introduction, you know an actual story