Knowledge Raiding: Too easy/boring?

[Cyborg]

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.

It's been a strategy for years. They may not want it to be a strategy anymore, but that ship has come and gone. You can't introduce a mechanic, leave it for years, and then say it's not a strategy.

[keith.lamothe]

I was wondering when your strategy-limitation-sense would start tingling, Cyborg

It is a strategy, but up to now it's been a largely unbounded strategy, except in the sense of requiring a certain "upfront" cost in committed fleet and/or static and being really boring to do repeatedly.  It's also been a very marginalized tactic because of how annoying it is to do.

So I'm trying to:
1) Make it less annoying to do, making it more of an available strategy for normal games, not just the situations where you get majorly stuck (though it needs to still be useful for that, for a few times in a game).
-- specifically, you don't have to build the raider on the target planet anymore, and thus an individual raid doesn't take nearly as much time

2) Make it not-boring.  Previously you could just park your fleet on the command station and that's where the ships always came out, the same number every tick, composition always computed the same way.
-- specifically, the actual AI response has a lot more variables in position, composition, and intensity.

3) Make it so that "is the player willing to k-raid 20 planets?" does not make the difference between a scenario being nearly unbeatable and that same scenario being relatively easy.
-- specifically, the more you k-raid, the more dangerous it gets.  Note that there is nothing in this where the game says "nope, you literally can't do that because I say so" like the core shield gens do, it's just that the AI retaliates more and more fiercely in proportion to how much you've shown that you're a threat from this angle (hacking).  If you can keep handling the response, you can keep raiding.
-- side note: same deal with the super-terminal.  500 AIP reduction from the ST is really huge; you'll still be able to do that but it will take more than chokepointing a 2000-radius circle.

4) Make it less obvious from a strategic perspective.  Before it was more a question of "do I want to deal with the hassle?" than "is this strategically a good idea?"
-- specifically: with three different ways to hack (k-raiding, ST AIP reduction, more flexibility in what you get from ARS's), and them sharing a common danger mechanic, you have to make decisions about what is most important to you.

[chemical_art]

I will say it helps steamline the different maps.

In simple or realistic games there are so very, very many opportunities to k-raid. While with other maps like concentritic or snake they are very greatly limited. In addition, the super terminal is very powerful, but not in every game or able to be used. Now these two things are tied in with an universally appealing idea of ship choices.

As a result games are now "streamlined". You can take advantage of k-raiding or superterminals, but if you are in a game where you can't you get the option of choosing ships. 

[Cyborg]

I was wondering when your strategy-limitation-sense would start tingling, Cyborg

I'm going to try it out and give a better report, but this quote describes me fairly well. I don't like guided tours nearly as much as discovering the path that I want to choose. The vast majority of my favorite games are all about choices.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm going to try it out and give a better report, but this quote describes me fairly well. I don't like guided tours nearly as much as discovering the path that I want to choose. The vast majority of my favorite games are all about choices.

Right, and ever since the CSG ruckus this particular point is one I always consider when making any kind of change to what the player can do.  Limiting choices = bad.

That said, it's also bad to have a particular choice that gives wildly disproportionately higher reward than its cost would justify (riding an ST for 500 reduction isn't easy, but it's not hard enough right now to justify basically winning the game as a result, etc). 

Also, it's bad to have useful choices where the bulk of the "cost" is simply player wall-clock-time (energy optimization as a textbook example of this that we've tried to mitigate by those keybinds while we think of something more interesting, but k-raiding also really isn't a lot more interesting after you've figured it out).

But even in those cases, simply pruning off choices is not a good way to deal with it.  It might be better than doing nothing, but it's really-bad-tasting medicine.

So the idea is to not make k-raiding and the ST unavailable or simply flat stop-working-at-some-point, but to make them get harder so you have to make choices about just how much you want to handle to keep getting the benefits.  The game isn't deciding to disable k-raiding, it's you deciding what level of risk is acceptable.  And on top of that, adding the ability to make choices about what types you get from the ARS's, for similar tradeoffs.

Anyway, I think I'm repeating myself

[TechSY730]

I still think that the CSGs is a great way to help new players to know what they should be looking for instead of just rushing the homeworld and then complaining that the homeworld is too tough. Though this intended design purpose, among its other purposes, needs to be made a little clearer, otherwise it feels like an arbitrary road block.
However, once you know what you are doing, you then know what kinds of things you need for your specific game and play style, and you also know what you can afford to skip. At this point, you can turn the CSGs off.

[Nodor]

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.

With the 5.030 change so the Science vessel can see the possible ship options  - this could get very interesting (and political in multi-player). 

Assumptions and logic trains:
Scenario 1:
Each ARS defaults to ship 1, and has 2 different ships specific to the ARS - if that ARS is hacked.  Optimal is to scout all, and figure out which 2-3 to hack to maximize your ship preferences.

Scenario 2:
Each ARS displays the ships in random order, but the ships are unique to each ARS.  - Optimal is still to scout all, and figure out which ARS's to hack. However, this lowers scouting requirements because if you run into a ship with something you want, you have to hack that ship to be assured of getting your choice.

Scenario 3:
Each ARS defaults to ship 1 but options 2 and 3 are identical accross all ARS.  Optimal is to scout all, hack the ship(s) with the default(s) you do not want first to "spawn" new choices.  If you don't want #2 & 3, hack the ARS with the ship you want the most, select the one you want, (if that resets options 2&3).


And of course since everyone agrees which ships are best.. multi-player hack choices will be .. discussion based. 

[keith.lamothe]

With the 5.030 change so the Science vessel can see the possible ship options  - this could get very interesting (and political in multi-player). 

Scenario 1:
Each ARS defaults to ship 1, and has 2 different ships specific to the ARS - if that ARS is hacked.  Optimal is to scout all, and figure out which 2-3 to hack to maximize your ship preferences.

That's closest; it displays the buttons in the order their techs were defined, I believe, but the list of "available ship types" on the planet is not necessarily in that order, and if you capture it without hacking it always gives you the first one in that list.  But that's not necessarily the first one displayed.

Scenario 3:
Each ARS defaults to ship 1 but options 2 and 3 are identical accross all ARS.

No, not identical at all.  Only rarely will there be any overlap.

And of course since everyone agrees which ships are best.. multi-player hack choices will be .. discussion based.

Haha, yea.  But at least in 5.030+ each player can pick which one they want out of the list of 3 once they hack (though picking which ARS to hack would be tricky).

[Nodor]

So we have a modified #2.

x% chance of ship 1, then y% for 2 and Z% for 3.  Where X>Y>Z.     So, if you really want a ship (especially the third) you hack the station.  If option 1 is good, and 2 is at least ok, it's probably not worth it to hack.



 

[keith.lamothe]

x% chance of ship 1, then y% for 2 and Z% for 3.  Where X>Y>Z.

What gave you that impression?

[TechSY730]

x% chance of ship 1, then y% for 2 and Z% for 3.  Where X>Y>Z.

What gave you that impression?

So its 33.?3% for each type? (Well, actually, it would be an arbitrary, undefined ordering, but in the absence of other information, that is effectively random)

EDIT: Aw man, the font used does not support unicode codepoint 0x0304, combining macron. That ?3 is supposed to be a 3 with a bar over it.

[Nodor]

x% chance of ship 1, then y% for 2 and Z% for 3.  Where X>Y>Z.

What gave you that impression?

Your comment about ordering.  "That's closest; it displays the buttons in the order their techs were defined, I believe, but the list of "available ship types" on the planet is not necessarily in that order, and if you capture it without hacking it always gives you the first one in that list.  But that's not necessarily the first one displayed."

Was read as "not necessarily, but usually displayed in order".  This appears to be misread. 


Given an effectively random pick (based on data available to the player), if you want one specific ship you have to hack the ARS.    If you don't care which you get you don't. 

[keith.lamothe]

Was read as "not necessarily, but usually displayed in order".  This appears to be misread.

Ah yes.  As I wrote "not necessarily" I had that sort of niggling sense in the back of my head that I was using a term more precise than was warranted, sorry

Given an effectively random pick (based on data available to the player), if you want one specific ship you have to hack the ARS.    If you don't care which you get you don't.

Exactly right.  The flaw with that is that it still encourages savescumming: save, capture-without-hacking, if you like that one keep it, otherwise reload and hack.  I could change that by reordering the buttons so the one that you would get without hacking is displayed first, but I'm not sure how well the tech menu code will like that (having gone by definition order since the beginning of time).