Knowledge Raiding: Too easy/boring?

[keith.lamothe]

Another thing on the ST: that 500-strength (which means 250 ships on normal) absolute cap really hamstrings it.  Granted, it first trades off 150-strength-for-plus-one-tech-level until it hits V, and then trades off 33-strength-for-minus-one-recharge-second until it hits 1 second (and 250 V ships every second is a bit much for... anything, I hope), but it does let things drag out a lot.  The cap on fleet ship spawns is necessary to keep it from nuking the cpu/ram of your machine, but I want to look into having it convert excess strength into starships/guardians/etc rather than just dropping it on the floor.

[TechSY730]

So in the release notes, you have to keep the new "ship design hacker" on an AI controlled planet for it to do its stuff. According to that, if you try to take out the planet and bring in that hacker on the now neutral planet, it won't work.

IMO, that seems like a counter-intuitive gotcha, considering that the other ships in its class (the science labs) work just fine on neutral planets. Not to mention my first instinct to use this new unit would be to take out the planet, get the hacker in, and once that is done, then take the planet.

I understand why you did this, so the counter-sabateur mechanic can kick in, but can this be made clear somehow? Or better yet, find a way to get it to work on neutral planets while still keeping the challenge.

On a positive note, I am glad to see sabateur related mechanics fleshed out a little more.

[keith.lamothe]

The new ship's description includes "The process requires the hacker to remain stationary on the ARS's planet for 10 minutes while the planet is still under AI control."

Basically the idea is that the ARS goes dormant once the AI loses the planet; you've got to reprogram it while it's still working.

[TechSY730]

The new ship's description includes "The process requires the hacker to remain stationary on the ARS's planet for 10 minutes while the planet is still under AI control."

Basically the idea is that the ARS goes dormant once the AI loses the planet; you've got to reprogram it while it's still working.

That line should be enough. Thanks.

Are the three bonus ships to choose from are random, using the same filtering logic (to protect against duplicates) as the normal unlock system?

[keith.lamothe]

Are the three bonus ships to choose from are random, using the same filtering logic (to protect against duplicates) as the normal unlock system?

I took the logic that picks the next unlock and used it to pick 3 bonus types for each planet with an AI-controlled ARS on it and save those with the planet.  The normal unlock logic will also be changed to simply pick the first saved bonus type for that planet rather than just the next one in the set given by the map seed; in other words: right now the next bonus ship type you get is always the same regardless of which ARS you capture, but in 5.028+ each ARS will have a different "default" (non-hacked) unlock.  Probably a happy side-effect for some players.

[TechSY730]

Are the three bonus ships to choose from are random, using the same filtering logic (to protect against duplicates) as the normal unlock system?

I took the logic that picks the next unlock and used it to pick 3 bonus types for each planet with an AI-controlled ARS on it and save those with the planet.

I figured that was the approach you would take, as that seems like the easiest way (and also code reuse, yay!)

The normal unlock logic will also be changed to simply pick the first saved bonus type for that planet rather than just the next one in the set given by the map seed; in other words: right now the next bonus ship type you get is always the same regardless of which ARS you capture, but in 5.028+ each ARS will have a different "default" (non-hacked) unlock.  Probably a happy side-effect for some players.

Actually, that sort of change is completely non-visible to players unless you are luck-manipulating, save-scumming, or monitoring internal state via a memory-viewer or a debugger.

[keith.lamothe]

Actually, that sort of change is completely non-visible to players unless you are save-scumming

Fixed that for you

[Commiesalami]

2 Questions (Apologies if I missed them while scanning through the thread):

In a multi-player game do both players need to hack the ARS to get the chance to select their ship?  Or can one player hack the ARS and then all players get to pick their ships?  I know the former can be easily solved by building multiple hackers at once and then gifting them so all go through their countdowns at the same time, but then again this may increase the responce by the number of ARS-Hackers. 

Also are the ARS-Hacks retalitations any different in scale compared to other standard knowlege hacking?  Or can we just assume that the ARS-hacking respone will be the same as knowlege raiding?

[keith.lamothe]

In a multi-player game do both players need to hack the ARS to get the chance to select their ship?  Or can one player hack the ARS and then all players get to pick their ships?  I know the former can be easily solved by building multiple hackers at once and then gifting them so all go through their countdowns at the same time, but then again this may increase the responce by the number of ARS-Hackers.

Right now when you capture an ARS in a multiplayer game all players get the same bonus type.  In 5.028+ if you don't hack it that's what will happen.  If you do hack it, everyone will get whichever bonus type is unlocked; the only difference is that someone is picking the bonus type (from a set of 3) rather than it being picked for them.

So in theory a player could make the decision without consulting the others and tick them off mightily, but before they just raged at the rng for giving them all one they didn't want

Also are the ARS-Hacks retalitations any different in scale compared to other standard knowlege hacking?  Or can we just assume that the ARS-hacking respone will be the same as knowlege raiding?

The actual spawns use the same logic, but the time to perform the ars-hack is shorter.  Of course, it can't be shortened by bringing in more hackers, unlike k-raiding where you could scoop up all 3000 knowledge in one tick's worth of raiding if you brought in 500 raiders   But woe unto your computer on the spawn...

[Commiesalami]

In a multi-player game do both players need to hack the ARS to get the chance to select their ship?  Or can one player hack the ARS and then all players get to pick their ships?  I know the former can be easily solved by building multiple hackers at once and then gifting them so all go through their countdowns at the same time, but then again this may increase the responce by the number of ARS-Hackers.

Right now when you capture an ARS in a multiplayer game all players get the same bonus type.  In 5.028+ if you don't hack it that's what will happen.  If you do hack it, everyone will get whichever bonus type is unlocked; the only difference is that someone is picking the bonus type (from a set of 3) rather than it being picked for them.

So in theory a player could make the decision without consulting the others and tick them off mightily, but before they just raged at the rng for giving them all one they didn't want

Awww, I was really hoping for players to be able to unlock different ships but this is an great improvement.  Also how does the act of hacking an ARS compare to the knowlege raiding in terms of empowering hacking responses?  I'm guessing that they increase AI response exact same.  hacking an ARS + 1 knowledge raid = hacking 2 ARS's = 2 knowledge raids

[keith.lamothe]

Also how does the act of hacking an ARS compare to the knowlege raiding in terms of empowering hacking responses?  I'm guessing that they increase AI response exact same.  hacking an ARS + 1 knowledge raid = hacking 2 ARS's = 2 knowledge raids

As the notes and ship description will try to make clear: the hacking antagonism from hacking an ARS is different.  For comparison:

Every 1 knowledge raided is about 26-27 antagonism (3000 => full planet's worth of knowledge => 80000)
Every Superterminal tick is 1500 antagonism (20 => full planet's worth of net reduction => 30000)
The first ARS hack is 30000, the second is 60000, the third is 210,000, the fourth is 600,000, and the fifth is some really high number but you already died from trying to hack after having 600,000+ hacking antagonism

Numbers are tentative, of course.  As these stand the superterminal is the most "efficient" way of doing it, to balance off the fact that you have a lot less flexibility in where (1 specific planet) and when (all in one go) you conduct that operation.  I'm sure there'll be refinement

[Commiesalami]

Also how does the act of hacking an ARS compare to the knowlege raiding in terms of empowering hacking responses?  I'm guessing that they increase AI response exact same.  hacking an ARS + 1 knowledge raid = hacking 2 ARS's = 2 knowledge raids

As the notes and ship description will try to make clear: the hacking antagonism from hacking an ARS is different.  For comparison:

Every 1 knowledge raided is about 26-27 antagonism (3000 => full planet's worth of knowledge => 80000)
Every Superterminal tick is 1500 antagonism (20 => full planet's worth of net reduction => 30000)
The first ARS hack is 30000, the second is 60000, the third is 210,000, the fourth is 600,000, and the fifth is some really high number but you already died from trying to hack after having 600,000+ hacking antagonism

Numbers are tentative, of course.  As these stand the superterminal is the most "efficient" way of doing it, to balance off the fact that you have a lot less flexibility in where (1 specific planet) and when (all in one go) you conduct that operation.  I'm sure there'll be refinement

So it looks like only 1 or 2 ARS-hacks will be 'safe' without an endgame fleet and/or a spire fleet, A good thing to keep in mind.  Also scouting for a superterminal before taking any ARS's is a much higher priority now.

[Cyborg]

For knowledge raiding, is the intention of the pre-release notes to say that we should not be doing more than 4 of these planets? This is beginning to feel like the core shield generator discussion again where we are being forcibly guided into how many planets we are supposed to have or take. On higher difficulties, knowledge is what keeps you in the game.

I'm willing to test this, but I'm thinking that we need to bump how many planets is allowed or change the consequences. It looks like we are getting a big nerf to an entire strategy. I get the point that some folks feel it can be exploited, but I wonder what difficulty they are playing on because usually you have to juggle multiple waves and events at the same time you are doing knowledge raiding. If that's not happening, maybe the raid should just take longer so you run into that. Right now, it looks like the workaround is to just construct and deconstruct your hostile science lab to finish off the planet and survive the raids when they get too big.

[Hearteater]

My understanding is K-Raiding isn't supposed to be a strategy.  It is supposed to be a method of getting out of a bad spot.  If the game is too difficult with limited K-Raiding, I'm guessing they fix that rather than making K-Raiding easier.

[TechSY730]

My understanding is K-Raiding isn't supposed to be a strategy.  It is supposed to be a method of getting out of a bad spot.  If the game is too difficult with limited K-Raiding, I'm guessing they fix that rather than making K-Raiding easier.

Exactly. I suspect that this change will expose some pacing issues in the current balance. (Maybe not major ones, though there may be some major ones)