Is AIP too inhibitive?

[Lancefighter]

Perhaps this discussion should actually be something else entirely.
I am not really sure where I was going with this when I posted it late late last night, but I think overall my problem might come to this - I want to be able to maintain my fleet in the field without needing it to be used as defense. Because I play without wave warnings (and cross planet waves), I have about 30 seconds to a minute to respond to waves, if I have scouts stationed in all adjacent wormholes. Slightly, slightly more time if I have scouts an additional jump out, but rarely does it work out well enough for that.*

So maybe in the context of this, I feel like aip is too restrictive - I find myself completely ignoring how strong of a threat some things are. Perhaps because of that I dont really think of how many turrets I actually need .. Or maybe not. I dunno. I should play more games and seriously think about how I deal with waves, if not for my fleet.

But then on the other side of things - at difficulty 8, where I currently like to be, I dont really want to be bogged down by silly things like worrying about a wave. I know that sounds weird, that I want to be able to ignore one of the major aspects of the (base) game, but I want my empire to maintain itself without my fleet's intervention.

Now, I'm not really sure how coherent any of this is, as I barely got any sleep last night anyway, but I think I said something worth reading.

*cross planet waves seem to spawn on average two planets away from their target, and are released as threat-ish things. Because no wave warnings, I just suddenly get massive amounts of threat that I need to keep track of. Is this even a viable way to play the game? I dunno. But I feel its the way I *want* to play the game, which is more important. I am not really sure how this effects my thoughts on game balance, but it possibly is creating this huge discrepancy where I am trying to do many things because I dont see how large or dont believe that the waves are as large of a threat as they are

[keith.lamothe]

If you want to play:

1) Cross-Planet-Waves
2) Difficulty 8
3) Handle waves with only turrets
4) Not really care much about increasing AIP

Then you'll need to structure your empire so there's only 1 or 2 paths a wave can get to your home command station, and pile up the turrets at a critical point on each of those (depending on how bold you're feeling, just pile them all on the homeworld), and be prepared to spend K on more turrets in proportion with just how badly you rack up the AIP   That way waves can come in and crush outlying systems and you'll probably be rebuilding a lot of planets (unless you just chokepoint off your whole empire, which is a quite-common tactic) but you won't lose just because you didn't have enough warning on a wave.

[Diazo]

<Snip cross-panet, no warning, waves.>

Wow.

That would be a seriously different game.

I play pretty much default (warnings on, non-schizio waves from wormholes) and playing like you do would require a serious change in strategy.

Might actually experiment with that setup in a test game next, it sounds like a good way to shake things up.

Really, the no-warning waves it was does it. Not having the time to reposition your mobile ships would be radically different.

D.

[Lancefighter]

I imagine with the no warnings alone it would get a lot more difficult (crossplanet waves actually gives me *some* time to respond, due to the nature of scouting intel)..

It just feels a lot better playing this way. I'm no sitting around waiting for the ai to attack, I am doing stuff.

[chemical_art]

If there is but one complaint about aip, is that its strength increases are linear. This leads to the "ride aip floor or bust" feeling for the super paranoid.

The difference between 10 aip and 100 aip is 10 times the strength of the ai response.

What this means in practice is that either:

1) You ride the floor hard
2) You don't care till after mk II waves for the strength jump there
3) You care only when AIP is high enough that ai offense strains your economy, allowing threat to build up, leading to stalemate.

That doesn't mean its bad. But I now know from trying a sub 30 aip game just how things that are seemingly impossible at 100 aip suddenly are possible at 20 aip.

[keith.lamothe]

The start at 10 AIP is to give people a grace period to get started.

The real difficulty in balancing things is that some players can win the game during the grace period   I imagine that was harder when 1 AIP per 5 minutes was considered the standard, but so many players hated that psychologically that we just accept that 1 AIP per 30 minutes is about as high as people are willing to go.  That's one of the reasons AIP-reducers were nerfed on higher difficulties.

But even with having to take out 8 planets to clear the CSG network, and with reduced-effectiveness AIP reducers, it seems to still be possible to begin the "final attack run" on the AI homeworlds at less than, say, 50 AIP.  By the end it's like 300 or 500, but the AI's dead   Though I think part of that final attack run is clearing the last CSGs.

But I haven't seen whether that's still possible in light of the last 3 or so patches that have contained significant changes to high-difficulty balance.

[chemical_art]

I admit I don't play with CSG on.

But if I were ever to try it with 9+ I'd go "all in" and try to make fallen spire work.

[Faulty Logic]

If there is but one complaint about aip, is that its strength increases are linear. This leads to the "ride aip floor or bust" feeling for the super paranoid.

Actually, it is worse: its exponential (okay technically it's x to the 1.1, not something to the x, but you know what I mean).

But I haven't seen whether [riding the floor until the HW attacks is] still possible in light of the last 3 or so patches that have contained significant changes to high-difficulty balance.

It is quite possible. In fact, it has seemed like by far the best tactic since the AIP exponential wave increase change (for non-superweapon games). That patch changed "extreme wariness" to "mortal fear" when it came to AIP. In my current game, this is my whole strategy: most of the game was spent below 40. Being able to do all the nebulae exacerbates this problem.

I feel it is a little too restrictive now, even accounting for the doom-bias. I would like to be able to conquer a couple of systems for economic gain without dooming the game, and, unless I am playing fallen spire, I don't think that I can.

[TechSY730]

If there is but one complaint about aip, is that its strength increases are linear. This leads to the "ride aip floor or bust" feeling for the super paranoid.

Actually, it is worse: its exponential (okay technically it's x to the 1.1, not something to the x, but you know what I mean).

But I haven't seen whether [riding the floor until the HW attacks is] still possible in light of the last 3 or so patches that have contained significant changes to high-difficulty balance.

It is quite possible. In fact, it has seemed like by far the best tactic since the AIP exponential wave increase change (for non-superweapon games). That patch changed "extreme wariness" to "mortal fear" when it came to AIP. In my current game, this is my whole strategy: most of the game was spent below 40. Being able to do all the nebulae exacerbates this problem.

I feel it is a little too restrictive now, even accounting for the doom-bias. I would like to be able to conquer a couple of systems for economic gain without dooming the game, and, unless I am playing fallen spire, I don't think that I can.

Hmm, think that should shrink to x^1.05 (adjusting coefficients such that the early waves are around the same size, of course)?
Or just revert the polynomial change in the higher difficulties (going back to traditional linear, like the earlier difficulties), and just go with the conventional "boost the multiplier to waves higher difficulties get" approach?

EDIT:
Keep in mind, complaining that the pacing of 10 feels too steep is not really valid.
If this change made >=9, <10 difficulties feel off, then yea, this could be a sign of a pacing issue.

[Lancefighter]

I think i started to ask the question: Should the buffer for aip be less radical? And then I decided to go play dota.

So yeah - I had a theory where the game starts at 100 aip.. But the thing is, that is the floor of aip. The 'total aip' or whatever is still 10.. So basically, the limit at which the ai operates at is 100 aip, but you can still do stuff early on without hurting yourself that much.

I am not actually sure if the problem is that the difference between 10 aip and 100 aip is 10x ai strength, but if that is true, then I dont think people should be allowed to be that low.....

[keith.lamothe]

I am not actually sure if the problem is that the difference between 10 aip and 100 aip is 10x ai strength, but if that is true, then I dont think people should be allowed to be that low.....

The start at 10 AIP is to give people a grace period to get started.

Of course, the game could just always do 1 AIP per 4 minutes for the first 2 hours and you'd be up to 40 by the end of it, but something tells me the player reaction to that would be less than pleased

[Cinth]

I am not actually sure if the problem is that the difference between 10 aip and 100 aip is 10x ai strength, but if that is true, then I dont think people should be allowed to be that low.....

The start at 10 AIP is to give people a grace period to get started.

Of course, the game could just always do 1 AIP per 4 minutes for the first 2 hours and you'd be up to 40 by the end of it, but something tells me the player reaction to that would be less than pleased

That would pretty much kill the way I play.

[Faulty Logic]

Of course, the game could just always do 1 AIP per 4 minutes for the first 2 hours and you'd be up to 40 by the end of it, but something tells me the player reaction to that would be less than pleased

Ah, the sink-or-swim method. I like the new civilian leaders as a solution to this (the ones that don't double starting AIP). I just wish there could be fewer than ten of them.

Keep in mind, complaining that the pacing of 10 feels too steep is not really valid.

I said "even accounting for doom-bias." Not all my games are 10/10, and I have noticed this problem on other difficulties, but doom makes it really pronounced.

[Lancefighter]

Well.. I dunno. What does the average 10 player do in the first hour of gameplay? Scout, scout, build ships, scout some more, build more ships.

Thats like, prime netflix time, from what I understand. Afk in your homeworld until you have spent all of your knowledge, and have capped your fleets, and arent dead yet.

I might be exaggerating, because I dont really care for this style of play in the slightest..

[Faulty Logic]

That is exactly right, but replace "netflix" with "nebulae" as of Ancient Shadows. Also raiding DCs, clearing cloaking paths, stealing asteroids, building a cache of warheads hidden is missile silos so they don't cost energy (maybe I shouldn't mention that one). And if a Z trader comes and relieves you of your energy problems...

All that said, there are now strong motivations to get moving, notably cpas in all games, and exos if enabled.
And capturing one non-hw planet after a couple data raids is a good idea, because the first one doesn't affect the AIFloor.