Knowledge Raiding: Too easy/boring?

[zoutzakje]

I actually really like Keith's idea. roll a dice and see what happens. Does make it more interesting. Not sure if I would like to see Super Terminal behaviour changed though. It already gets more difficult over time, including so called "counter hacks" could make it overkill.

[TechSY730]

Even if none of these other suggestions are done, I would strongly push for this. Just waiting around at 1 (or was it 2) knowledge per second for 3000 knowledge is agonizing. (that's 50 minutes for 1/s, 25 minutes for 2/s)

The game-time cost is important because you're getting waves during that time, the next cpa is getting closer, the AI is reinforcing, etc.

The wall-clock-time cost is regrettable, though.  Perhaps if the AI provided some entertainment during the wait

New ship type: Movie Screen
Has no offensive capabilities or defensive usefulness (not even canon-fodder, they should be not auto-targetable), but instead has a large "screen", on which it can play various clips and broadcasts the corresponding audio to any commanders currently viewing the planet it is on.
A possible spawn by the AI during long, agonizing waiting periods, like during K-raids.
(let's say it was a long forgotten Easter egg in the AI's added by the original programmers who were bored of waiting around during testing, and somehow managed to get past QA)

Que dancing frog singing "Hello! ma baby Hello! ma honey Hello! ma ragtime gal"

[Hearteater]

I like the Wild Magic table concept.  One of the options was "all Raid Starships" which is certainly deadly.  But maybe this could be generalized a little (or a generalized option added).  What if there was a chance the AI just switched to a single unit type for a period.  It would be best to flag each ship type as available or not for this feature so that boring stuff like Fighters don't get picked.  But fun and nasty stuff like maybe Eye Bots, SSBs, Viral Shredders, and so on could get picked.

This might seem like a non sequitur, but bare with me for a moment.  I've never liked AI Beachheads, because they aren't really Beachheads.  Specially I don't like their name.  They cut off supply, so they really should be called Nullifiers or Distruptors.  That being said, maybe one of the random things that can spawn in a K-Raid could be one of these .

[keith.lamothe]

This might seem like a non sequitur, but bare with me for a moment.  I've never liked AI Beachheads, because they aren't really Beachheads.  Specially I don't like their name.  They cut off supply, so they really should be called Nullifiers or Distruptors.  That being said, maybe one of the random things that can spawn in a K-Raid could be one of these .

I assume that either you don't realize that cutting off supply would stop the progress of the K-Raid, or the blood of the DM runs in your veins

[Hearteater]

Actually, used to DM quite a bit .  But yeah, the Disruptor (aka, "Beachhead") would require the player to actually send in some ships to knock it out to continue.  Less "set up K-raiding defense, wait 20 minutes" and more get a rapid response fleet ready (maybe cloaked nearby the enemy Command Station) so you can kill the Disruptor ("Beachhead") as quickly as possible to get your turrets/fortress(es) back up.  Makes the whole experience more intense.  Or more evil I suppose, depending on whether you are reading the AAR or writing it.

[TechSY730]

This might seem like a non sequitur, but bare with me for a moment.  I've never liked AI Beachheads, because they aren't really Beachheads.  Specially I don't like their name.  They cut off supply, so they really should be called Nullifiers or Distruptors.  That being said, maybe one of the random things that can spawn in a K-Raid could be one of these

Agreed, the name really doesn't fit. I could see a rename. Also, allowing them in "counter sabotage spawns" would be a great idea.

On a side note, it would be awesome if the AI tried to make an actual beachhead. Sometimes, send in some transports (not carriers, transports) and a couple of escort ships (some inside and some outside the transports), move to some "safe-ish" area of the planet. (Of course, the escorting ships would follow the transport, not just go out and attack)
Once there, it unloads the transports. Out pops not only the escorting ships inside the transports, but also a mobile builder or two, and some engineers, and maybe even a mobile repair station.
The mobile builders immediately start building some AI forcefields (numbers and marks of which depending on AI type, AIP, and current Mk. cap for waves), and an AI fortress (similar Mk. and count desicion process). The engineers of course assisting (prioritizing the FFs first, then the fortress(es))
Maybe even a cloaker starship or a scout starship in the transport for counter sniper protection.
As long as the mobile builders are around, the AI will replace lost stuff.

It turns out that the AI can build things just fine, even though they almost never do it now. You used to see it frequently back when the AI used turrets. Sure, they aren't held back by resources or energy, but they can still build. When building, the AI is subject to the same build time rules humans are. (And the same supply rules too, so this would be an adjacent to an AI world only tactic)

What would it accomplish, IDK. It would be annoying to the human to take it out, though, and would make future waves on that planet while the beachhead is still around much more deadly.

Triggering conditions are also TBD. Should it be a percentage of attack waves? Spawned off planet and then moved in (using similar rallying and escorting logic as exo-waves)? Don't know. It should definitely be an AI plot though. The existing beachheads plot should be renamed to something more appropriate.

EDIT: Hmm, maybe I should move this to a new post, as to not derail this topic.

[keith.lamothe]

EDIT: Hmm, maybe I should move this to a new post, as to not derail this topic.

This thread started as a derail of GUDare's AAR

I think I know why astro trains have never been all that important...

[Minotaar]

Oh, speaking of 'intense'... I think I've got something for you here...
Low-warning counterattack waves? 
1200 AI 1 Ships (II) to (someplace in the middle of nowhere) in 02:30 fits my definition of intense  Would keep your fleet AND your turrets busy, too!
You could make them scale accordingly to total K raided, maybe limit to X hops off the raided planet... It would happen randomly of course, maybe a couple times during a raid.
Oh and changing the ships to spawn in batches every X seconds would also be nice.
Thank god I don't K-Raid much, can just suggest ridiculous things and watch the carnage from a safe distance 

[keith.lamothe]

Thank god I don't K-Raid much, can just suggest ridiculous things and watch the carnage from a safe distance 

You may not be as safe as you think   One of my secondary objectives is to make "just a little knowledge raiding" tempting (and entertaining) to the average player, but when you get hooked, whammo, wild magic surge to the face

[Hearteater]

EDIT: Hmm, maybe I should move this to a new post, as to not derail this topic.

This thread started as a derail of GUDare's AAR

I think I know why astro trains have never been all that important...

I am so close to breaking off on a tangent on Astro Trains in my current AAR.  I have to restrain myself whenever I'm writing it up .

[keith.lamothe]

While I'm at it, another loony idea for knowledge raiding: how about having super-terminal use also drive up the counter previously prescribed for tracking "how much knowledge has been raided"?  And have that counter feed into the strength of the super-terminal's spawns.

The super-terminal and/or k-raiding might need to be made somewhat easier to compensate, as the point isn't to nerf the player, but it would turn the two things into a trade-off (though super-terminal is a TZR feature and k-raiding is base-game, but what we've talked about doing for k-raiding should stand alright on its own).  Do you want knowledge without aip cost, or aip reduction?  The latter is obviously more useful in the general case (unless you're already riding the AIP floor, and probably even then), but the two activities are not equivalent either.

To tie the two together conceptually/intuitively, and to make progress towards feature that had a lot of backing behind it in the past, we could call this category of activity "hacking".  Hacking wouldn't increase AIP in any way, but the AI would get more and more suspicious and take more and more drastic action to deal with this different threat vector, kind of like it has an entirely separate escalation agaisnt Fallen Spire stuff.  The science mark III could be renamed "Hacking Station" or something like that, to help differentiate it from the science lab line.

A couple other "hacking" activities occur to mind that would be relatively easy to implement:

- "Subverting" or "Sabotaging" an AI command station.  Basically you'd build a "Sabotage Station" or something like that just like a K-raiding station, and after the requisite time elapses it makes the AI command station on the planet self-destruct such that the AI thinks it was some stupid accident and no AIP is gained. But to balance this would make the AI way more suspicious (read: ferocious) of future hacking.

- "Hacking" an AI-controlled Advanced Research Station.  Again, another type of hacking-station, but this time after the requisite period has elapsed it lets you see the 3 bonus types that the ARS is researching (currently it has no concept of this, but it could be added without much difficulty), and pick which one you actually get when you capture the ARS, if the hacking-station is still alive at the time.  Chris has wanted to add some choice to the ARS system for a while, and this would be a way of doing it that involves a bit of trade-off just to get the choice.


Anyway, like I said, it's loony   But I'm interested in feedback.

[Oralordos]

I think I'm liking this category of thought.  Having options that avoid AIP increase while giving nice benefits would be very nice. I'll vote up those suggestions. 

[dotjd]

Ideas mentioned so far that sound cool:

-having the response scale up by amount of total knowledge you raid
-more unpredictability re: surges.  The surges, though, should be gradually phased in.  For example, maybe a flat 5% surge chance per unit spawn chance up through 3000 K, then an additional 10% per 3000 K.  Not too attached to the numbers but you see where the idea is going.
-having the superterminal share the scale up and surge response mechanic.  Maybe multiply the aip reduction by 30, so 2 aip reduction = 60 K?  idk.  You could take a lot of planets and get AIP/K, and then reduce the AIP, or you could raid the planets and get K, but then have less ability to reduce AIP?  Kinda similar to the way the current mechanic works, except with more ways to manipulate and optimize it depending on immediate needs or how daring you are.

Hacking a command station out of existence once or twice per game seems like a good get-out-of-jail-free card for that pesky hyperreinforced mark iv world bordering your homeworld that is the only way to the rest of the galaxy.  I will say, though, that sitting through a K-raid/superterminal sabotage response to do it is probably not the best idea, since if you can do that you're probably very easily able to just kill the command station to begin with.

Hacking an ARS could be a good mechanic, but only if core shield gen mechanics are changed so that you don't need to take the planet to get rid of the core shield gen.  It is, after all, a step towards taking fewer planets.

Also, now I kinda want hybrids to be able to knowlege raid you back.  [edit] wow I hadn't even read the new hybrid plot topic hahah.

[keith.lamothe]

Hacking a command station out of existence once or twice per game seems like a good get-out-of-jail-free card for that pesky hyperreinforced mark iv world bordering your homeworld that is the only way to the rest of the galaxy.  I will say, though, that sitting through a K-raid/superterminal sabotage response to do it is probably not the best idea, since if you can do that you're probably very easily able to just kill the command station to begin with.

It's true that it wouldn't really help get around a mkIV that you couldn't kill anyway.  The point is to be able to get a planet without AIP, but with a serious cost in another fashion.  Using this once would seriously cut into how much "safer" hacking you could do for other purposes, using it twice would be pretty nasty, and a third time is likely to seriously challenge your ability to survive.  Or something like that.  Basically it would be the most "brute force" way of using hacking, and thus the least efficient at not getting your face smashed in.

Hacking an ARS could be a good mechanic, but only if core shield gen mechanics are changed so that you don't need to take the planet to get rid of the core shield gen.  It is, after all, a step towards taking fewer planets.

Actually in that case my intent wasn't to reduce AIP gain at all (though I guess you could combine it with the sabotage-command-station hack), it was to give you a choice over what ship you unlock from that ARS.  But you'd still have to capture the ARS to get the chosen type.

Also, now I kinda want hybrids to be able to knowlege raid you back.  [edit] wow I hadn't even read the new hybrid plot topic hahah.

I guess if people really wanted that I could do that, but the idea of anything at all in the game ever taking knowledge out of your stored total... I'm thinking that would be very un-fun for a lot of players.  Hitting players with some interesting threat is one thing, nerfing the sword in their hands tends to feel very different (even if mathematically identical).

[dotjd]

Doesn't necessarily have to steal your K.  It could give the AI one of your bonus ships or something.  Hope you didn't pick blade spawners.