Knowledge raiding has become tedious and trivial. Change it.

[Buttons840]

I've come to realize that I really hate knowledge gathering and raiding because it's very easy, but does requires careful attention from the player.  Once you get a cloaking starship and a transport you can raid any planet for knowledge without difficulty.
A typical knowledge raid goes like this: I start moving my transport and stuff and wait 30 seconds while the transport gets into position and unpacks.  No challenge, no difficulties, nothing of interest.  Yet it all happens so fast I cannot focus on other things or my transport will end up dying along with all inside it.  It's like television commercial, they come regularly and often at the most interesting time, they don't take a long time compared to the program, but you still hate them.

I propose a mark III research station which can be unlocked with knowledge and will gather knowledge from any planet which has supply at, lets say, 2 per second.  The mark III research station would be stationary and cost perhaps 2,000 knowledge (or less?), since 2,000 knowledge is what it costs to make knowledge raiding trivial with transports and cloaking starships.  Knowledge raiding would still be applicable for early portions of the game before you have a lot of knowledge, but as your empire grows and your attention is more divided you can forget this trivial task.

All strategies stay the same.  You still must figure ways to get knowledge in the early game, which is an interesting and fun problem.  In the late game you still have to focus on capturing planets based on supply, as you want to maximize supply and knowledge while minimizing AI progress.

[Nemo]

Are you suggesting a new type of command station? (Like how there are higher level ones that have different effects like the Jammer Station or just better resources, etc.?)

[wyvern83]

A stationary research station that gathers knowledge at range from neighboring systems based on weather it is in supply or not? I think such a structure could be interesting, however it will need to have a proportional trade-off. Without trade-off's you have no excuse not getting it and AI Wars is all about making deliberate decisions with trade-off's.

What kind of drawbacks or penalties do you think it should have?  I would probably suggest something along the lines of an AIP cost and maybe a universal wave modifier, though I'd be interested in hearing your ideas.

Also, was the range limited to immediate neighbors? Or did you intend for it to spread as far as your supply was unbroken?

Making it a new command station would be an interesting way of implementing it, would that fit with your suggestion?

[superking]

I can see an easy way of giving you more work: making transports uncloakable. it makes sense considering how big they are  

I skip transports and cloaking starships and just use flagships to demolish footholds for my knowlege (and then building a turret ball round the wormhole) which is working aok. I guess it depends if you want to waste 3k knowlege on making knowlege farming less micro or not- I like my method because it ensures a constant attrition of AI forces from starship ownage

[Lancefighter]

eh cloaking starship+labs is enough, no transport required.


Before cloaking starships I used forcefields and had a constant battle going on for the right to knowledge raid. This was ok, but the question is how much should i have to micro a k-raid? With cloaking starships, it requires a minor micro to get it through the wormhole, and a few moments to babysit it until it gets to safe range.


can there be somewhere in the middle?

As long as i do a small tachy-check on each wormhole (many mk2 worlds dont have good ones).. It used to be that I could merely bring along lightning warheads and nix the tachys from range, but now i would need to bring a decloaker.. and well, no point after that..

Anyway I digress. Is there somewhere in between constant battle and ignore forever?

[Buttons840]

I can see an easy way of giving you more work: making transports uncloakable. it makes sense considering how big they are  

I skip transports and cloaking starships and just use flagships to demolish footholds for my knowlege (and then building a turret ball round the wormhole) which is working aok. I guess it depends if you want to waste 3k knowlege on making knowlege farming less micro or not- I like my method because it ensures a constant attrition of AI forces from starship ownage

Ok, so I'll do what I do about 50% of the time anyways, fly everything in using a transport, drop it off, bring the transport back for other use.  Later I'll pick it up and move it using the ever indestructible transport.

You give another way to easily gather knowledge using fleet starships and turrets.  Once your in the middle to late game there are plenty of ways to make knowledge gathering really easy, and easy is boring.  That why I proposed this removal of mid to late game knowledge gathering.  Yet, as I said, it doesn't ruin the meta game of maximizing supply and knowledge while minimizing AIP from kill AI command stations.  I have no problem with the early game knowledge gathering because with few resources (ships, techs, knowledge, etc) available you have to adapt a bit to knowledge raid; contrasted with the late game where it's the same boring strategy over and over again.

A stationary research station that gathers knowledge at range from neighboring systems based on weather it is in supply or not? I think such a structure could be interesting, however it will need to have a proportional trade-off. Without trade-off's you have no excuse not getting it and AI Wars is all about making deliberate decisions with trade-off's.

What kind of drawbacks or penalties do you think it should have?  I would probably suggest something along the lines of an AIP cost and maybe a universal wave modifier, though I'd be interested in hearing your ideas.

Also, was the range limited to immediate neighbors? Or did you intend for it to spread as far as your supply was unbroken?

Making it a new command station would be an interesting way of implementing it, would that fit with your suggestion?

Yes, a command station will work, but I don't prefer it.  Next, I intended for the station to be able to gather knowledge from ANY planet with supply, no distance restrictions, etc.  My reason:  My main consideration is removing the tedious and uninteresting management needed to gather knowledge from dozens of planets.  If you limit the mark III research station by distance or other I'll build one, scrap it, and build another for negligible cost.  If you use it to stations I'll swap out the stations using dirt cheap colony ships.  Why not just skip all of this by making it a "build it and forget it" type of building, it wouldn't change the game any, but free up time and thought for more interesting decisions.

I don't think it should have any draw backs besides knowledge and resource cost, just like every other technology.  If you unlock them in the early game they can be very useful, since knowledge raiding is tricky in the early game.  If you unlock them in the late game, then they aren't specially useful, because knowledge raiding is trivial anyways, but they do free up your time and thoughts for more interesting decisions.

[Ozymandiaz]

Most of the time the AI seems to have tachyon beams. And they build their cloaked tacyons so damn fast that even if I kill em they come right back up

Cloaky starship is nifty enough, but I only really use it for knowledge raiding , but I must factor in loses so I need several of them usually. Als need several to make sure I cover all the labs.

but, most of teh time I really just send my fleet in, kill all the stuff at entry point then send my labs. This I do on the move with my fleet so its a decent way to grab knowledge with minimal fuss and losses .

[Ktoff]

I usually do not bother with the starships, just load a transport with 10-20 Reserach stations fly to the edge of the map, gather knowledge and move on. With 20 you usually can gather all the knowledge you need before anything but sniperfire has reached you, with 10, you load up again and fly to a different corner.

This is much faster and much less bother than the old 'shoot up everything that attacks my ships' tactic with turretballs and even works (easily) on alerted MkIV planets (if you do not mind freeing a couple of ships).

It has become relatively easy but micro intensive. (plus there is no trade-off) This clashes with the goals of AI War to be not-micro intensive and with difficult strategic descicions, doesn't it?.

Cheers,
KToff

P.S. That is to say, the additional knowledge (quicker to raid lots of planets) comes in handy especially with all the new unlocks...

[Buttons840]

I usually do not bother with the starships, just load a transport with 10-20 Reserach stations fly to the edge of the map, gather knowledge and move on. With 20 you usually can gather all the knowledge you need before anything but sniperfire has reached you, with 10, you load up again and fly to a different corner.

This is much faster and much less bother than the old 'shoot up everything that attacks my ships' tactic with turretballs and even works (easily) on alerted MkIV planets (if you do not mind freeing a couple of ships).

It has become relatively easy but micro intensive. (plus there is no trade-off) This clashes with the goals of AI War to be not-micro intensive and with difficult strategic descicions, doesn't it?.

Cheers,
KToff

P.S. That is to say, the additional knowledge (quicker to raid lots of planets) comes in handy especially with all the new unlocks...

So you support my proposal?

Let me ask, does anyone enjoy knowledge raiding over the course of the entire game?

As I've said, I don't mind it early on, but get tired of it later when there is more going on.  Usually once I have a handful of mark III (and IV) ships unlocked I'll give up knowledge raiding, saying to myself "It would be nice to have some upgraded starships or turrets, but it's not worth the effort of knowledge raiding."

[Ktoff]

I don't think i entirely agree with the direction that you proposed in the opening post.

However, knowledge raiding has become incredibly easy. I would never say 'this is not worth the effort', knowledge is still to valuable. But knowledge feels less valuable since it has become easier to raid. It was not really a challenge to raid planets before, but you usually needed a decent amount of ships or a turretball that you build somewhere off the main reinforcement points. This also meant, that you thought twice about doing this for MkIII or MkIV planets.

On the other hand i am not terribly sad about this change, as i find that with all the new content i enjoy having more knowledge. And even with the new tactics it still is the scarcest resource. Soo i would enjoy a little extra challenge, but i would prefer not to have my strategies nerfed :-)

[keith.lamothe]

Well, one "solution" would be to make both transports and science ships non-cloakable, but I don't know that that would succeed in making the game more enjoyable.

[Buttons840]

There would still be plenty of easy ways to gather knowledge.  

All I'm saying is it's so easy it's boring and tedious.  (Like the old "time to check up on my engineers" routine.)  Either make it more interesting or provide some way to automate it.

@Ktoff:  Yes, knowledge is always valuable, but there comes a point where I say "I have enough to win, so I wont be bothered with knowledge raiding any more."

I'm beginning to repeating myself too much.  I've made my points and I'll try not to comment again unless I have something new to say.

[keith.lamothe]

There would still be plenty of easy ways to gather knowledge.

Like?

I don't know whether Chris would prefer taking out the "requires-micro" or the "easy" part of the requires-micro-but-easy of knowledge raiding (knowledge gathering in friendly territory should be easy, and perhaps I can extend auto-explore to provide an order whereby the selected science ships automatically go to friendly planets that aren't exhausted).  I'm just trying to get a feel for what it would take to remove the "easy".

[keith.lamothe]

For instance, it's theoretically possible that human knowledge gathering ships could provoke a tag-teamer-like reaction once they gather over 100 points or something.  That could become an exploitable way of provoking the guards of an AI planet and killing them defensively rather than offensively, though, so not sure.

[Buttons840]

There would still be plenty of easy ways to gather knowledge.

Like?

There's been 2 alternate knowledge gathering strategies mentioned already, besides the transport/cloaker combo.

I skip transports and cloaking starships and just use flagships to demolish footholds for my knowlege (and then building a turret ball round the wormhole) which is working aok.

I usually do not bother with the starships, just load a transport with 10-20 Reserach stations fly to the edge of the map, gather knowledge and move on. With 20 you usually can gather all the knowledge you need before anything but sniperfire has reached you, with 10, you load up again and fly to a different corner.

I kind of like this last proposal.  That many research stations would use a lot of power, but only for a brief time, then they'd be back in the transport using 0 energy again.