Making the difficulties less granular

[Mánagarmr]

1 is a sandbox AI that basically does nothing.
2-5 is...easy?
6 is easy.
7 is a fully fledged AI, the "target" difficulty.
8 is hard
9 is harder
10 is WTF***ERY

Now, we also have granular going from 7-10. 7.3, 7.6 etc. Wouldn't it be easier (hah, see what I did there) to make it so that 2-6 is actually used?

Make 2 the easy diff, 3 normal and 4 the "balanced difficulty" (even blends nicely with all the minor faction values that are balanced for 4/10) and rescale it all to still make 10 the horrible thing it is, but also make more use of the sub 5 difficulties. Because as I see it right now, those are never used. A new player might select 1 or maybe 5 for their first game. Then everyone goes for 7+.

Is there really a point in having 4-5 steps of the difficulty "slider" that isn't used, AND is confusing when compared to the minor faction values? Imagine a new player setting diff to 6/6 then Hybrids 6. It's supposed to be easy, right? WRONG.

Suggestions? Ideas? Opinions?

I know that the difficulty is used in places in the code, but that should be easy enough to adapt to the new system, I think.

(mod edit: target 4-symbol sequence detected, initiating assassination protocols)

EDIT: I see what you did there, Keith! (Also, I'm sorry!)

[Draco18s]

Actually, 5 should be the "target" difficulty.  You've got just as much "harder" as you do "easier" at that point.

But admittedly, we can collapse 2-6 and put the target at 4 fairly easily.

I approve.

[Lancefighter]

The sandbox ai once sent a wave at me while I was afk. Thankfully, I had built a turret to fend it off.

[TechSY730]

For the earlier difficulties, I was thinking something like

New value <- Equivalent difficulty in the old values.
1<-1
2<-3
3<-5
4<-6
5<-7
6<-7.5
6.5<-7.75
7<-8
7.3<-8.3
7.6<-8.6
8<-9
8.3<-9.15
8.6<-9.3
9<-9.45
9.3<-9.6
9.6<-9.75
10<-10

(some of the old difficulties don't exist, use the existing formulas to interpolate what they would be like)
This "formula" needs some "smoothening".

This way, the "balance point" becomes the center, 5 (which honestly makes more sense) and gives more granularity where it counts (the higher difficulties, thanks to the super linear nature of the difficulty number to AI strength.)


This would wreak havoc in documentation and existing save games though, unless the AI difficulty gets scaled to the new difficulty curve on the relevant upgrade of a save game.

EDIT: The goal of this proposed spread is not to reduce granularity, but refocus it where it matters.

EDIT2: Reversed direction of arrows to make t clearer what was old and what was new.

[LaughingThesaurus]

This seems like a great idea actually, so long as the jumps between difficulty values are more drastic between changes. I mean, there's the obvious difference between 7 and 10, or even 9.6 and 10, but making the 9-difficulty range four separate values seems a bit odd to me. Widen the gap a bit so that the new '10' ends up being a bit stronger than the 10 we have already. I know, not as if the AI really needs MOAR, but having those teeny tiny jumps at high levels is a little bit like the old 2-5 range. Such tiny jumps that you wouldn't really notice.

Also, obviously difficulty 1 needs to stay where it is because difficulty 1 is hilarious and leads to jokes like this one:

The sandbox ai once sent a wave at me while I was afk. Thankfully, I had built a turret to fend it off.

that make me laugh.

[Fluffiest]

This would come out of nowhere and bushwhack players who don't read the forums. If you currently play on difficulty 7 and don't see this one coming, you'll start getting minced by what are now difficulty 8 AIs.

[KDR_11k]

While we're at it, follow the meme and go to 11.

Apparently AI War is not mentioned on the TV Tropes page for the four point scale...

[Mánagarmr]

While I adrmire your attempt, my whole idea was to remove the granularity (the decimals). Simply having straight 1-10. Most games get away with a difficulty that is 3 levels: Easy, Normal, Hard. Sometimes 5. Why do we need over 20? Shouldn't 10 be more than enough?

1: Sandbox
2. Easy, introduction
3. Easy, your second game.
4. Normal (maybe old 6?)
5. Intended (7)
6. Challenge (
7. Hard (8.6)
8. Very hard (9-9.3)
9. Insane (9.6)
10. Doom. (10)

This way, you still have a lot of "hard" granularity without resorting to decimals and utterly confuse people with them.

[TechSY730]

Ok, if you are looking for a 10 step difficulty system.

New difficulty <- equivalent difficulty in old difficulty scale.

1<-1
2<-3
3<-5
4<-6
5<-7
6<-8
7<-8.5
8<-9
9<-9.5
10<-10

[Mánagarmr]

Yep, that looks doable to me. But of course, we do still have the "OMG this lvl 7 AI is making mincemeat out of me!"-scenario if this is implemented

[Hearteater]

You just re-scale all current games to the new level, so difficulty remains the same.  Actually, it would probably happen that the current Difficulty would remain unchanged, and during game creation the Difficulty selection bar would pick a number that maps (aka, translates) into the Difficulty number we have now.  So if I picked 5/5 in game creation, I would get my difficulty set as 7/7 behind the scenes.  This would keep all game logic the same.  All we are adding is a "Selected Difficulty" value to show the player, instead of directly exposing the actual Difficulty.  Current games would just leave their actual Difficulty alone, and select the nearest possible "Selected Difficulty" to display.

[Eternaly_Lost]

Part of the issue with changing difficulties numbers, as I recall keith saying in another thread(When we were talking about an AI set to 11) somewhere, is that quite a few places in the code has things that is basically x/( 11 - <AI diif value> ) or something along those lines( I recall that a edited save to have an AI value of 10.999 game basically instantly sent waves in, no warning).

Attempting to change the numbers around either require setting up something like this (If ai value = 5 use 7) or changing how that codes works. And we know that code effects things like Wave timers, Wave sizes, and other rather critical stuff. Not exactly something to do lightly and I don't think it worth the time for them to change things around like that just to make the scale have the normal game at 5 rather then 7.

So what if the full game is 7 rather then 5 out of 10? I don't see this as much of an issue to fix at all, and I see a lot of bug hopping up if we try and move the numbers around when we don't need to do so.

[Hearteater]

My previous post already solves that issue .

[Mánagarmr]

Part of the issue with changing difficulties numbers, as I recall keith saying in another thread(When we were talking about an AI set to 11) somewhere, is that quite a few places in the code has things that is basically x/( 11 - <AI diif value> ) or something along those lines( I recall that a edited save to have an AI value of 10.999 game basically instantly sent waves in, no warning).

Attempting to change the numbers around either require setting up something like this (If ai value = 5 use 7) or changing how that codes works. And we know that code effects things like Wave timers, Wave sizes, and other rather critical stuff. Not exactly something to do lightly and I don't think it worth the time for them to change things around like that just to make the scale have the normal game at 5 rather then 7.

So what if the full game is 7 rather then 5 out of 10? I don't see this as much of an issue to fix at all, and I see a lot of bug hopping up if we try and move the numbers around when we don't need to do so.

I already mentioned that in my post. But yes.

[Coppermantis]

I do agree that it seems like 5 would be the middle of the road since it is literally the middle. (Not including 7.3 and weird stuff like that) Most games have "Easy" "Normal" and "Hard" with some having "Casual" and "Brutal" as the extreme ends of the spectrum. 5 would make sense as a normal difficulty setting.

Also, I agree with making the minor faction intensities having the same scale as the AI difficulty. Making both have 5 as the normal, standard difficulty, 2-3 being easy, 7-8 being hard and 0-1/9/10 being casual and brutal, respectively.

 Right now it isn't unclear per se, because of the tooltips, but it isn't logical.