3 planet pain: You'll have to account for the fleet increase for this or you could theoretically keep pace for a while. I still think it's a little short but that's a biased opinion. I understand your intent and you're correct. I just don't wanna see my toy completely broken. 
Haha, yea, and I don't want to break something you're having fun with. Though, as you've discovered, optimal use of it (while not nearly as obvious as the early 3.x days, due to time-cost) isn't really a lot of fun, either. And I don't want it to be something that
replaces planet-capture as the main/best way to get K in high-difficulty games.
Boredom: Lord is it. When I was using the defensive troops technique I could at least be oot and aboot with the fleet taking care of other business at the cost of econ. It's not worth it. It's truly optimal to just SIT THERE AND STARE. Woot?
Thank you for confirming my suspicions
Maybe one day there'll be a Boredom AI Type that wins games by changing the mechanics such that the way to beat it is too unspeakably monotonous to endure
1) Wild Mage: This could be toned down to in-system. Part of the problem is the AI never gets a chance to actually get the fleet out the door. There's an easy fix for this and the mechanic is already in game. 20% chance to spawn at the cmd station, 20% chance for each corner of the system like the warp gate dude who ignores warp gates. You'll be surrounded in four directions and the spawns will get a chance to mass up and fight at their preferred ranges. Blade Spawn hell, anyone?
I thought of that but thought it would be too weird since there aren't warp gates out there. But who am I kidding thinking the whole idea isn't weird?
So yea, one of the roll-ranges could be "short-range-warp-jump" like the warp-jumper. Though as I'll say later on I'm thinking making this fun may involve a broader-than-system-specific response anyway.
Sadly, I'm not sure if there IS a way to make it interesting.
I'm pretty sure there's always a way, but often there's a lateral solution that avoids the need for brute force injection of fun via IV. Right now I'm thinking that changing k-raids from "build stationary station in system, fight pitched battle for 50 minutes" (plus wild mage rolls) to "sneak cloaked mobile hacking ship into system, remain stationary 30 seconds to start the hack, deal with widespread AI shenanigans for 20 minutes" (those widespread things being from the wild mage rolls).
Of course, that doesn't guaruntee "fun", I'm thinking that has more to do with "how much do I have to think to pull this off without dying", but correct me if I'm wrong.
K-Raiding could end up the same way if there's too many rules/variances. They sound cool on paper, but I think it needs to be kept in mind, even mentioned occassionally.
This is true, making it overly complex has other issues. But even there it's not so much the complexity that shuts down a strategic option as the ways in which that complexity bounds it. The beach-heading problem, for example, would probably be alleviated somewhat if there were some unit you could bring in (or structure you could build) that would suppress the local AI's "free everyone if the human has more than 2x my firepoer here" behavior. How that would be explained in-game is another matter, of course, and I think there's a relatively long line of problems behind it that would just-as-effectively marginalize beach-heading.
Anyway, I'm mostly just throwing out ideas trying to figure out how to make k-raiding a fun part of the game and an interesting strategic option rather than a not-very-fun part of the game that can be used to short-circuit parts of the challenge of a high-difficulty game and thus borders on
mandatory for said high-difficulty games. And if time permits, some of these ideas will likely see trial-implementation soon. But I need y'all to tell me if it's making the game less fun for you (it will take more than immediate emotional reactions to convince me of that, but this community is pretty good about moving past that stage too).
ARS Hacking: In a heartbeat. I don't think I'd take an ARS again without it. Send your waves, I now have a fleet of the god-ships.
Glad you find it tempting
A few points of clarification:
1) It wouldn't let you pick
anything, it would just let you pick 1 of 3 randomly selected bonus types.
- 1 of which is the one it would have given you on-capture normally, though this will also involve some under-the-hood changes such that an ARS picks its bonus type at mapgen rather than you always getting the "next" bonus type regardless of which ARS is captured.
2) Hacking the ARS would not get you knowledge, but would increase the AI's response to future hacking (either ARS or K-raiding or whatever). If you think of K-raiding in terms of "how much K can I raid before the response gets worse than I'm willing to deal with", then hacking an ARS "spends" some of that "safe buffer" of AIP-less K gain. Just setting up a system of tradeoffs.
World hacking: Hrm, maybe. errr... maybe.
Haha, yea, it's more of a "candy that rots your teeth" option like a Nuke: tempting, and
occasionally it's actually a good idea, but mostly there are far less dangerous ways of furthering your goals.
Super-Terminal: You can blow 400 AIP off the top of your buildup with this puppy. The only thing it costs you is the AI getting different types of ships. I'll be the first to say it: There is no signficant pain to a high AIP Floor. None. Zilch. Nada. On that 9.0 game I could have waltzed into the homeworld if I'd gone back and played with the ST some more by more than halving my AIP. You've already paid the price in AIP, lowering it to the floor is not difficult. It needs to upgrade faster and look to do exo waves by 250 (50*5) reduction. Even then I'm not sure it's enough.
Adding Hacking to it is minimal. I never had to K-Raid until I went to the 9+ level. It was actually pointless, I could handle 20 (or 100) AIP easier then I wanted to lose 20 minutes/2 hours. It will not affect most games the same way that the ST does. If you have an ST in your galaxy, you don't need to hack. You smash and grab, trusting the ST to remove the pain. It's going to need more than hacking to balance it off.
I just don't know what that is that doesn't end up as a super-nerf. Hacking is probably a good start, I guess. Sorry, bit of a rant.
But a good rant to have. I've been getting pretty suspicious of the super terminal having the right cost/benefit ratio. Last week I put in some changes for 5.027 to make them less tame (and, indeed, if mishandled an ST will kill you), but it will probably need more. Trying to steer clear of nerfs (and particularly super-nerfs) as much as I can, but I want the ST to be more of a "riding a bull" experience where you reach a point where you really
want to shut the thing down
And a strategic choice, rather than an obvious "well, duh, riding this thing into the ground is obviously the best way, every single game". That said, on diff 7 and whatnot it doesn't need to be apocalyptic.
Should the ars choices be complete randomized? I would be miffed if all three choices were melee ships and my strategy wasn't that. On the other hand, I'm still getting a choice, and that's better then before, lol.
What I would like if the ships were broken up into "classes" , even if it were very broad like "dps" and "extra effect" and only seen internally, and each ars would contain a dps, extra effect, and a random ship.
I think it will be completely randomized: you may not be fond of it, but we really like forcing a certain degree of variety
Strategy didn't include melee ships? Well, it does now, unless you don't plan to use the I/II caps of these you just got. Figure out how to use what you got
But our root reason for that isn't developer-cruelty, it's that the game is more long-term fun if you don't get stuck in a rut of using the same ship types every game. That said, it doesn't need to be quite as no-choice as it has been, hence the idea of making ARSs somewhat more flexible (though you pay for that flexibility, again encouraging a willingness to play the hand you're dealt). And if there are any ships that are simply
never good to get from an ARS, we want to know about those for rebalancing.
Out of curiousity, what happens currently if multiple players K-Raid a system simultaneously? Double spawn or single?
The spawn size is multiplied by the number of III-stations present, regardless of which player(s) control them.
