Author Topic: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic  (Read 6259 times)

Offline m_hermann

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #15 on: December 12, 2010, 03:01:57 am »
I was wondering what was wrong, 500 -1200 waves suck, I just get rebuilt and the next one shows up. Kind of tough to move on when the bottle neck is my home world.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #16 on: December 12, 2010, 09:27:13 am »
Yea, I figured this mechanic would be game-breaking for a lot of folks, due to the firepower calculation and/or the firepower threshold.  I'm sure the next patch will be an iteration in the right direction, but Chris has been handling this mechanic thus far so I don't know exactly what that will be :)
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Offline m_hermann

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #17 on: December 12, 2010, 09:36:22 am »
There might be more going on. I've moved my blob back from my border world and still got a 1000 AI1 followed by 2000 AI2 at AIP=85

I've got no way to survive


Offline Fleet

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #18 on: December 12, 2010, 10:26:23 am »
Can someone clarify for me how firepower is displayed vs the cutoffs? I see several comments in the release notes about it being recalculated, and then how it is displayed is changed...I'm not sure if the cutoffs take the display change into account, for example, because the cutoff was 10,000, but then all the display numbers were cut to 1/5 of the original. So does that mean, display wise, 1/5 of 10,000 is the cutoff?

Btw, I also am having mixed feelings, mostly because I don't like the idea of being deterred from doing things in my own territory. I get the function of the whole ai eye and deepstrike, but not on my own turf...

Offline vonkolberg

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #19 on: December 12, 2010, 10:39:29 am »
Lore wise, it would make more sense for this to happen only on border planets...

Offline NickAragua

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #20 on: December 12, 2010, 01:52:16 pm »
I haven't tried this new mechanic yet, but it seems like it would make the game extremely inconvenient rather than more challenging - it would basically make it so that I would need to keep my main battle fleet split up at all times, which is more tedious than fun. I would up the threshold (to a point where you can keep at least a full cap of I-IV triangle ships and maybe some starships on a planet) and introduce some sort of timer as well, so that if you have more than x number of firepower at a (border only?) planet for t time then you get an AI present.

Offline Suzera

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #21 on: December 12, 2010, 02:08:03 pm »
The game starts crashing from running out of memory before you really get to the firepower limit in just fleet ships and turrets. I think you have to have spirecraft or one/a couple of three specific golems to go over it, neither of which are typically necessary for winning the game.

Offline Fleet

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #22 on: December 12, 2010, 02:23:35 pm »
I feel I'm being punished by so many of the recent mechanics...i'm worrying about NOT triggering some AI response instead of focusing on what goals I want to meet, and how I will meet them.

Offline BINXTHAMINX

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #23 on: December 12, 2010, 02:31:23 pm »
Have to say i agree with Fleet in this respect

Offline Invelios

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #24 on: December 12, 2010, 02:33:14 pm »
The problem I have with this mechanic so far is the massive firepower rating of Golems. My friends and I are in a stalemate because I wanted a Golem, and the Black Widow Golem triggers this active threat all on its own. Our normal fleets never even got close to reaching this threshold, but as long as I have the Golem there is no way to stop the flood on enemies.

Offline Fleet

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #25 on: December 12, 2010, 02:49:13 pm »
That issue in particular is just a balance issue, and the firepower will be tweaked so that having a golem is viable. I'm more concerned about the creeping limitations on what I can do in my own territory.

Offline BINXTHAMINX

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #26 on: December 12, 2010, 03:21:33 pm »
I love AI War because there has always been a plethora of different strategies i could pursue to topple the AI

Recently i've become aware of a few new mechanics coming into play that actively seek to limit and or punish certain strategies, deep raiding and now this 'bottleneck/blob punishment' are probably the best examples.  Frankly it worries me.  Its almost as though ' the game should be played like this, if it's not, prepare to be punished' --- maybe i like being a turtle strategist in my games (i dont, but some presumably do)  Also its not a question of don't limit this strategy because it lets me win, its about what i find to be the most enjoyable gameplay experience.

I was never a fan of deep striking and thats largely been resolved anyway, but its the principal behind these changes that concerns me. Basically i don't want to be coerced into playing the game in a certain way when ideally i'd prefer to play it another.

Offline Suzera

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #27 on: December 12, 2010, 03:24:17 pm »
I would like to know what you all are doing to get to the firepower cap that isn't black widow or cursed golems. Even building 60k fleet ships doesn't quite seem to do it.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #28 on: December 12, 2010, 03:56:40 pm »
I love AI War because there has always been a plethora of different strategies i could pursue to topple the AI

Recently i've become aware of a few new mechanics coming into play that actively seek to limit and or punish certain strategies, deep raiding and now this 'bottleneck/blob punishment' are probably the best examples.  Frankly it worries me.  Its almost as though ' the game should be played like this, if it's not, prepare to be punished' --- maybe i like being a turtle strategist in my games (i dont, but some presumably do)  Also its not a question of don't limit this strategy because it lets me win, its about what i find to be the most enjoyable gameplay experience.

I was never a fan of deep striking and thats largely been resolved anyway, but its the principal behind these changes that concerns me. Basically i don't want to be coerced into playing the game in a certain way when ideally i'd prefer to play it another.
Whenever a strategy is more effective than is good for the game and we put in something to bring that back into balance, it will feel like we're constraining choice.  I don't think there's any fundamental alternative to that other than simply not _trying_ to achieve such a balance.  But it may help you to know this isn't at all a recent trend though perhaps there was less-than-average over the past two months and more-than-average now that we actually have time to revisit core balance.  For kicks, off the top of my head I can think of this from the past year+ :
- Adding inefficiency to stacking energy reactors.
- Adding "supply" (which stopped a lot of stuff, including knowledge-raiding-across-the-galaxy).
- Limiting the effective deepstrike range of transports.
- Restricting knowledge-raiding to mkIII science labs.
- Core guard posts providing external invincibility to the AI home command stations.
- AI Eyes.
- Making it harder to "ride the AIP floor".

I'm sure I could dig up more, but that's not really the point :)

Anyway, it's really clear that the existing numbers for the firepower-concentration-causing-AI-spawns need adjusting, it just so happens that this change happened right before the weekend and so there's a longer-than-usual pause between releases and it probably feels worse as a result of that (hmm, maybe we should refrain from breaking the game on Fridays...).

The "turtling on a bottleneck" thing is one of the longest standing problems in this game where the AI just hasn't been able to challenge a player once they execute a particular strategy.  Not that there aren't ways that the AI can still provide challenge in that case, but in a ton of game setups that's basically it: you could call the game won, unless the human makes some big mistake.  This new mechanic is an attempt to solve that problem.  Certainly not perfect, it just takes iteration to figure out if we're on the right road and (if so) what adjustments need to be made.

But if Chris does decide to stick with this mechanic (and it does seem fundamentally sound, just in need of a lot of adjustment), I'd be more than happy to implement a "Pay No Attention To The Player Behind The Curtain" cheat that disables the bottleneck-busting spawns.  That way people who simply find it more entertaining to play the game that way can continue to do so :)
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Offline BINXTHAMINX

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Re: I really hate the new "bottleneck/blob punishment" mechanic
« Reply #29 on: December 12, 2010, 04:21:44 pm »
Thanks for taking  thetime to reply at length Keith

Thats another reason why i love AI war - compromise - adding a cheat like that would be nice, though I'm sure given time and the balance fixes etc i may come to rue the day i ever made such a post in the first place  :-[

Change scares me  :P