Knowledge raiding has become tedious and trivial. Change it.

[Sizzle]

<snippage>

Didn't you just defeat yourself?  I must agree that such changes will lead to increased micro needed rather than less.  I don't presume to dictate what can be suggested, but I originally was hoping to reduce the amount of attention and micro needed in the lat game for knowledge raiding, but many suggestion seem focused around increasing the micro required.

I was one of the people who originally said that it was hard enough (for me....) as is.   I'm certainly not claiming I'm a highly skilled AI war player, so for those who have a good handle on the game it certainly MAY be entirely too easy.

I suppose one learns by getting one's arse kicked around by the AI, but mine is sore enough already   Learning curve in AI war is sometimes like drinking from a fire hose.  Sure you get water but .....

[keith.lamothe]

I'm looking at a wider set of problems than the late-game-k-raid micro-heavy issue.  I think the research station network is a good solution for that (not something I can do right away, unfortunately).

Exploitative methods of k-raiding is a separate problem, which I'd also like to solve.  It's somewhat difficult though as people don't seem to agree on what's exploitative

[x4000]

From a discussion between Keith and myself, here's what's coming:

Well, a lot of your questions there really come at secondary issues caused by recent changes to the game, as well as the evolution of various player strategies (some players are more OCD than me, and that causes issues like this).  So, before I answer your questions, let me lay out the initial design intent of knowledge raiding, which I feel is still the design intent to base any decisions around.  And feel free to post any of this in the other thread, if you want.

Core Design Intent: Knowledge Raiding
Background: Normally players simply gain knowledge by capturing planets and then using science labs on those captured planets.  This is one of the major rewards of capturing a planet, although it is not planet-specific.  So, in other words, gaining more knowledge does not inform WHICH planets players should capture, just that they should capture some planets.

Knowledge Raiding: At some point in the game, the players may reach a point where either a) they have made choices that are less than ideal and are now not able to take their primary objective from the AI, or b) they have gotten backed into a corner for some other reason and cannot expand. 

Rather than making these loss situations, the idea is that players can instead expend a great amount of effort and perhaps 20-30 minutes of time to capture knowledge from an AI planet.  If they need to capture knowledge from multiple AI planets that is even more of a penalty in terms of time and difficulty, and that should be something that only happens based on them really having screwed up and needing to "drop back and punt" so to speak.

If it were not for these two cases, I'd actually just take out knowledge raiding all together, I think.  Knowledge raiding that is too easy creates a disincentive to capture more planets, it reduces the number of long-term decisions that have to be made around which technologies to unlock, and it artificially inflates player ship caps to levels where the game is likely to be too easy -- without the corresponding increase in AI Progress.  I think it's telling that so many players are playing on difficulty 8 -- those folks seem to be the knowledge raiders.  Whereas I find the game much more challenging at difficulty 7, and I almost never knowledge raid (maybe 2-3 planets per campaign).

To Your Questions
Reading the above, you may wonder about some of my past comments about various things -- transports and cloaker starships, most specifically.  Essentially, I've posted a number of times that I'm in favor of their use for knowledge raiding.  And that is true -- I was happy that players had found clever sideways uses for those ships.  However, I let that blind me a bit from the nastier side effects of these practices.

First, it removes the need to create beachheads in enemy territory to do knowledge raiding.  In the distant past, the only way to knowledge raid was to clear the enemy wormhole, clear the guard posts that were nearby, erect a force field (since those were immobile at the time), probably erect a space dock (since those could not be given cross-planet build orders), and then bring in some labs to do the knowledge raiding under that forcefield.  Then pack it all up and go.  That process typically took 20-30 minutes for my play group, and it was a fun "different sort of optional quest" that we would sometimes undertake if we felt like we needed the knowledge.

And therein lies the problem with knowledge raiding at present: it's become a core thing that people rely on for their strategies, which messes with difficulty and tons of other things about the balance of the game.  Whereas, instead it was meant to be a nontrivial side quest.  Granted, it was intended to be a nontrivial side quest with no AI Progress penalties because of the fact that it's tied to the otherwise-a-loss-scenarios.  So if someone was really super OCD about it, they could spend a ton of time doing knowledge raiding and reap an enormous strategic benefit from it.  However, that does come with a key time cost, so that AI has been retrenching during that time, which is the disincentive for knowledge raiding to ever become so core.

So, how do I feel about the cloaker starships and transports?  I thought it was clever at the time, but now I'm thinking not.  It's to the point where I almost think that the current science labs should only work on player planets, and that a knowledge-raiding science lab III should be a fixed-position structure that gathers at 2/s knowledge on any planet in supply.  Thus players can use cloaker starships and transports all they want, but they won't get any knowledge out of enemy planets with the existing labs on that.  And thus you can take the AIP increase off them, as I'm not real fond of that, either.

So the idea would be that this new Stationary Science Lab (which would be labeled as Mark III) that we could build would cost maybe 4X that of a Mark II science lab, and would take something like 40 minutes to build.  The players would thus have to build a beachhead just to protect it and all the engineers that they'd need to erect it in a faster time (which assumedly they would -- even just one engineer would halve that time to build, simply having two would get it down to 10 minutes).  And then, assuming that they only built one of these Stationary Science Labs, that would leave them with another 16 minutes of guarding it before they had actually gotten all the knowledge at the planet if its gathering at 2/s.

And then, beyond that, I actually think that these Stationary Science Labs should potentially give a buff to AI reinforcements to that planet, and/or stir them up so that ships from the other guard posts come over to try to kill the lab.  Why?  To your question about it still being challenging at the end of the game.  Basically, knowledge raiding should always be an exciting and challenging side quest, as interesting as actually taking a new planet (but with less rewards, hence only doing it when you're really hurting for knowledge).

I know that some players are going to really groan at that design, but that's just because they've gotten used to playing with a key aspect of the game being far too easy based on their prior strategies, and they may be playing on a difficulty that is too hard for them when the game is actually played as it was intended.

[keith.lamothe]

I had been about to post that quote myself, haha

Anyway, to summarize:

K-raiding was never intended to be used nearly as much as it has been, and is not supposed to be necessary unless you made some mistakes or were dealt a really harsh map or whatever (or perhaps were playing on a higher difficulty than really fits).

So we're  moving ahead with:

- adding the MkIII stationary knowledge-raiding station
- removing knowledge-raiding capability from Mk I and Mk II labs
- giving some buffs to the Mk II lab since without k-raiding its current incarnation doesn't have much purpose
- removing the recently-added AIP-on-death from all science labs

Edit: Translation for folks who didn't like how tedious it was to knowledge raid every planet: you're free! you're not supposed to k-raid that much!

[x4000]

Edit: Translation for folks who didn't like how tedious it was to knowledge raid every planet: you're free! you're not supposed to k-raid that much!

That's such an excellent way of putting it.

[superking]

K raiding costed nothing but time (which is fairly inconsiquential in AI war) while producing a valuable resource that translates into much bigger, higher tech fleets

of course we knowledge raid too much, its the optimal stratergy! 

[x4000]

K raiding costed nothing but time (which is fairly inconsiquential in AI war) while producing a valuable resource that translates into much bigger, higher tech fleets

of course we knowledge raid too much, its the optimal stratergy! 

Only in recent-ish versions.  As recently as 1.013 or so, it was a real pain in the rear to knowledge raid, and cost way too much in terms of time.  That meant that the AI was getting ahead of you in terms of ship counts all over the place.  But as the game evolved, the costs became far less significant, and thus we arrived at this point where, as you rightly point out, it became the optimal strategy.  That's what this update will fix.

[superking]

cool, I would like that  cruising around with the 2500 ship blob is over-rated

[Ktoff]

This will definitely make things more interesting and invalidate a couple of strategies wher only very few planets are ever taken (i'm thinking of kjara :-) )

And since i was also kind of relying on knowledge-raids....Ok... i'll just need to take more planets, i mean 8planets =1 golem+ resources sooo, why not

Speaking of golems, more planets will make it less of a pain to build enough powerplants....

Also: AHA! Where are the secret developer discussion fori (forae? forums?) I want in ;-)

[Buttons840]

I had been about to post that quote myself, haha

Anyway, to summarize:

K-raiding was never intended to be used nearly as much as it has been, and is not supposed to be necessary unless you made some mistakes or were dealt a really harsh map or whatever (or perhaps were playing on a higher difficulty than really fits).

So we're  moving ahead with:

- adding the MkIII stationary knowledge-raiding station
- removing knowledge-raiding capability from Mk I and Mk II labs
- giving some buffs to the Mk II lab since without k-raiding its current incarnation doesn't have much purpose
- removing the recently-added AIP-on-death from all science labs

Edit: Translation for folks who didn't like how tedious it was to knowledge raid every planet: you're free! you're not supposed to k-raid that much!

I approve, but wish to point out that mark 1 and 2 science labs now fill a absolutely trivial role, gathering knowledge on planets you control.  You mine as well remove them from the game and have command stations gather knowledge directly, leaving just one science station of some sort for knowledge raiding on adjacent planets when it's absolutely necessary.  Despite my approval I must point out that less knowledge means fewer toys, and fewer toys is less fun.

Personally, I play on level 7 which can be kind of easy at times, so I gave up the practice of energy micromanagement to increase my own challenge; a self-imposed rule of sorts.  I will also give up the practice of knowledge raiding now that I know it's not intended to be frequently used.

[Ktoff]

I approve, but wish to point out that mark 1 and 2 science labs now fill a absolutely trivial role, gathering knowledge on planets you control.  You mine as well remove them from the game and have command stations gather knowledge directly, leaving just one science station of some sort for knowledge raiding on adjacent planets when it's absolutely necessary.

I second that! Or even easier, just give us a lump 2k knowledge per planet. Because without sciencelabs it will be hard to gather knowledge on allied planets.

Cheers,
KToff

[keith.lamothe]

For command stations generating knowledge... actually I would be pretty happy with that.  Or just giving all 2K knowledge when you claim with a command station. But there is the big case of multiplayer and getting K from allied planets, particularly if you joined in the middle of the game.  Just giving the lump sum to them up front might be a bit much.  Whereas the current model of science labs handles all of that fairly gracefully.

On that note, in the discussion of the short-lived AIP-on-death thing you might not have noticed the "auto-gather-knowledge" command that was added for (mobile) science labs.  Basically they'll eventually get all the knowledge in your contiguous friendly space (meaning they won't try to cross non-friendly space), even hiding under forcefields (or, failing that, next to the command station) while they gather knowledge.  That should take most of the micro out of it, I expect.  If you planet-hop there's a bit there, of course.

[Sizzle]

I agree that the current Mk I and II labs handle allied gathering rather gracefully.

Perhaps giving Mk II labs a substantial speed boost so that they can run around gathering science faster , along with a powerful (read can't be tachyon'd) cloaking device so that they can a) make trips that include enemy territory, and b) make the trip to allied territory if you're separated. Make them blind at the same time so they can't be used to scout.

[keith.lamothe]

Perhaps giving Mk II labs a substantial speed boost so that they can run around gathering science faster , along with a powerful (read can't be tachyon'd) cloaking device so that they can a) make trips that include enemy territory, and b) make the trip to allied territory if you're separated. Make them blind at the same time so they can't be used to scout.

Yea, I was planning on a speed boost.  Perma-Cloak+Blind sounds like an interesting possibility too

[Buttons840]

I agree that the current Mk I and II labs handle allied gathering rather gracefully.

Perhaps giving Mk II labs a substantial speed boost so that they can run around gathering science faster , along with a powerful (read can't be tachyon'd) cloaking device so that they can a) make trips that include enemy territory, and b) make the trip to allied territory if you're separated. Make them blind at the same time so they can't be used to scout.

I will laugh if this is done.  After so much talk over making science stations uncloakable they now have their own cloaking device built right in.