Moar starship unlocks

[Pumpkin]

So there already is unlockable starships. As I write this post many come to my mind, so I'll write a list.
- Neinzul combat carrier
- translocator
- spire frigate
- electric-I-don't-remember
- the experimental-like protector starship
- another experimental: the warbird
- I'm sure I forget some... *wiki checking* Oh, the Zenith Devastator.

Why not making moar?!? So: many guardians are like "AI only starships". So imagine if some guardians (some; I don't mean "screw guardians make them starships") were regular unlockable starships that can be picked on lobby map and design-hacked for!

Oh, you don't want to change what already exists in the game. Well, then make new unlockable starships inspired by guardians. The Vampire starship, for example! The ability on Vampire claws is quite unremarkable because they have not that many hp. But the vampire effect is quite manifest on Vampire guardians. Yeah, maybe a vampire starship would be a bit overpowered in the hands of a microing human player. But maybe not that broken in big battles (however certainly awesome in little skirmishes). Anyway, this is a little balance issue (maybe an attrition for human vampire starships: die if don't feed for too long, aka starvation).
OMG, I just thought about disassembler guardians. Okay, these would be broken in the hands of a human player. OK, I'll write down a little list of "fun to adapt into starship" guardians:
- vampire
- disassembler
- sniper
- missile
- gravity (bigger version of the Spire Gravity Drain?)
- shield (there is the shield spirecraft, but it's unrepairable and spirecrafts are specials... dunno)
- heavy beam and mlrs (nope just kidding, the Zenith and Spire starships already exist)
- tractor/widow (kidding too, riot control)

And maybe we can go further: give a particular status to unlockable starships (to come out of the current half-status of unlockable-but-starship). There is the suggestion: the already existing unlockable starships are removed from Design Backups and stored in the new "Starship Paragon" (the starship is better stored as a model than as virtual data) or whatever you wana call it, it's just a "special starship DB". The unlockable starships are still pickable from lobby map and available for AI design pick. So there is a new hacking device too, that can retroengineer the starship paragons because if the planet is captured, the AI would selfdestruct it (and there is no corruption available, for balance sake, or maybe there is, I dunno, we'll see).

And "now" there is a new clear status for unlockable starships, we can start toying around. For example:
- Make more unlockable starships inspired from AI guardians.
- Make base starships unlockable starships: I know many are niche tools, like raiders, cloakers, scouts, etc, and are vital to provide several ways to players to work around galaxy's RNG; however, some are just big combat ships: Zenith/Spire, plasma siege/heavy bomber, ... I don't say make them all unlocks, but admit that some are just plain firepower. Zenith/Spire MkI are even Knowledge-locked (for the ridiculous price of 500 each); I feel like it's a shy step toward the idea of taking them away from "available at start".
- Change all fleetships with cap 5 or less (tackle drone and blade spawners come to mind, some big spire and zenith fleetships, etc) into unlockable starships; don't change their stats/price, but give them starship status (many already have the ion oneshot immunity). This way the Advanced Starship Constructor would be a more desirable target (IMO I always take the advanced facto and only take the ASC if it's easy).

Then starfleet would be a true way of play. Then players would feel offered a true choice of going fleetship or starfleet, or in a clever mix.
You hunger for meaningful choices? There is one.

[Pumpkin]

No reply? Posted on mantis.
I'm stashing ideas for the next AI War expansion.

EDIT:
Oh, and a question.
I really don't see why guardians are not AI-reserved starships. And then why players can't hack for. Okay, maybe some guardian/starships should be reserved for AI (human warpgate starship? Really?). But AI-reserved starships don't feel awkward. Why guardians?

Maybe I'm fighting the wind... Are they AI-reserved starships named Guardians for the sake of fun? Then why are they all AI reserved? Why can't I play with SShip vampires and snipers? And what's the difference between the MRLS Guardian and the Zenith SShip that the AI can already use? Same question for Heavy Beam Guardian and Spire SShip.

Sorry, I didn't want to just bring it back. Sounds like I just did it... Ah, sorry again.

[chemical_art]

I would be interested in an expansion that fleshes out hacking. The idea of obtaining AI guardians sounds like a lot of fun.

[Mal]

A lot of what you listed can be unlocked of course by hacking or just choosing more homeworlds if you really want to go this route. The only thing that is not is access to guardians.

I think everyone would love the abilities of a Warp Gate Guardian or the long range missile guardian for sure. Since these are AI Only, maybe you have to spend HAP to get a small cache of them for your use but thats the only way.

I am always a fan of more options and I love Starships for their strong defenses and unique capabilities. Good idea pumpkin.

[Pumpkin]

Unearthing post... please wait.

So I wanted moar starships. And then I stumbled across cheats, and was very interested in the possibilities of ilostit. So I decided to try some silly ideas.

And, as in some sort of weird AAR, I'm back on the forum to let you know: guardians are fun!

I spawned some MkI-III pairs of guardians like if they were regular cap-2 starships unlocked up to MkIII without the ASC MkIV, so nothing out-of-cap or overpowered. And then I went to AI territory and see how they feel. And believe it or not, it's like having a new expansion! I'll make some specific notes on the ones I tested, but first some general notes. Their metal cost doesn't match at all: it's something like 1/10 of the price of a starship of the same mark, and for a power equivalent in most cases. I feel bad about the scrap, like if killing one of them on your planet would be 10 times less rewarding. Well, this is a very little balance issue, because the AI doesn't have metal, but when salvage/reprisal was added in the previous expansion, I feel so many AI things deserved a true metal cost, and many didn't get it. It remember me of the bug about the mercenaries counting toward reprisal with their full cost. Also, trains having 1 metal is ridiculous, killing them is not even scrap-rewarding. And there is some more. And Guardians among them, now that I paid attention to their metal cost. There is also a tiny little issue about speed: as they are speedboost-immune, they don't benefit from the human-territory-speed-x2. On more little thing that would require tweaking if my dream become true some new starships are inspired from Guardians: they have a passive regeneration, like the GPosts and the like (because the AI has no engineers), so they just need to get rid of this AI-only perk.

And now, specific commentary. However, know that I didn't tested all of them, because the flak, lazer, needler, mlrs or the like are rather mundane; a bit like the Zenith and Spire starships, they are just firepower with ammo bonuses. And also some like the Warpgate or the SpecialForces are very specific to AI mechanisms.

I tried the Vampire, that I wanted so badly. As I expected, they are very fun: the vampirism effect is much more important and fun than on the fleetship Vampire Claws. Also, they are not as imbalanced as I was believing. They are fast (only seen on AI territory, because of the speedboost immunity) and it's fun (comparable to heavy bombers). Their sheer firepower isn't that insane; for instance I tested a pair of MkII on a FField+GPost and it wasn't overwhelming, just like what should do some regular starships. Their regeneration isn't overpowered neither: the MkI on the same test were unable to compensate the dps of the GPost. I thought that "Wormhole GPost leeching" would be a broken strategy, but for a reason that must explain itself with the vampirism formula, attacking a wormhole GPost grant less life than attacking something else. Maybe it has to do with the percentage of life each vampire's attack remove from the target: on small target, each attack remove a high percentage of life and grant more regeneration, and on a high-heal target like WHole GPost the percentage is very low and the regeneration is low too. Maybe. I think that in real game they would be either full life or dead by overwhelming enemy fire. Some sort of bully starships, with a long lifespan while they don't attack too strong opponents.

This gives me some ideas. Maybe they deserve a passive regeneration and repair-immunity, like fleetships Vampire Claws and ZViral Shredders. Another idea would be a Neinzul twist of the vampire, loosing life slowly, unable to repair, and need to "feed" on foes; this one would need to have more health in quantity and instead of being fragile but virtually immortal while it remains safe, it's big but can't stay calm at home; some sort of unstable berserker hungry for battle. However the WHole GPost leeching would be an issue for this one little berserker/neinzul/vampire.

The Zombie guardian is also damn fun! It's like having a BotNet in the size of a regular starship, or a very interesting twist on the Leech Starship. One could get the Neinzul Combat Carrier and unlock high mark of the Neinzul Enclave to double the drone-spawning fun, or get the Zombie Starship and unlock high mark of the Leech Starship and go reclamation/insanity. Also not broken because it has the same flaw as the Leech, namely being unable to harm unreclaimable stips and structures like GPosts. Anyway, a well-rounded an fun-perk support starship is waiting there!

The Sniper guardian was also on my toplist. I know there already is the sniper fleetship, but having snipers as starship support is great. They are quite slow, but IMO it's very thematic: a heavy gun that has infinite range but needs time to be brought along the main army; a sort of medieval siege engine. The fact that the Siege Engine Starship has a range rather short that render it unable to outrange the battle make it less thematic; however I don't want to change the SE, but maybe change its name. the sniper "starship" feels much more siege.

What else did I tested? Oh, the Gravity and Spider combo. However I was unable to warp a wave with the cheat commands and test it on a defense case. There is nothing brand new here, as gravity reaper/drain (don't remember which one) and riot's shotgun (or spider bot, albeit being sniper-like) already do something like that (the gravity/tractor turret combo is also in this line of trick). But having starships that do specifically this (and in a "starship" way) would be very interesting in expanding the SShip library.

P.S.
Note to self: test the Tractor Guardian; however, the Spire Tractor Platform is cap-5 and candidate for the Starship conversion.

P.P.S.
Other perk never seen in Starship/Guardian land: teleportation. What about a starship-sized Teleporting Battlestation?

[Traveller]

A comment specifically on the neinzul vampire idea you mentioned:  That sounds like a lot of micromanagement.  Fleetships are okay because they're cheap and expendable, and you build them specifically to die, but a starship isn't nearly so expendable and you'd build it expecting it to survive.  Get distracted, and it'll die not because of a strategic or tactical mistake, but just because you didn't micro enough.

[Pumpkin]

A comment specifically on the neinzul vampire idea you mentioned:  That sounds like a lot of micromanagement.  Fleetships are okay because they're cheap and expendable, and you build them specifically to die, but a starship isn't nearly so expendable and you'd build it expecting it to survive.  Get distracted, and it'll die not because of a strategic or tactical mistake, but just because you didn't micro enough.

Many health, slow attrition. Not youngling-lifespan. You would see it slowly starve and think "hurry, to battle!" or maybe, knowing its starving issue, it would always be on the breach, in every fight. Maybe a 1 or 1/2 hour complete attrition would be interesting, if you're disturbed by such balanced concern.

[Chthon]

Just a few rough ideas here:

Warp gate reprogrammer hacking mission.

It's a time sensitive hacking mission, requiring you to know that reinforcements are coming through a warp gate at a certain point in time. Performing this mission successfully before the reinforcements (from a wave or whatever) will cause the warp gate to transmit an AI virus to all incoming ships scrambling their friend/foe targeting causing them to either join your forces, become neutral zombies, or become friendly zombies. This effect lasts a few minutes, and repeated attempts at this mission could cause the AI to retaliate by sending one or more larger waves to other nearby warp gates on a mission to deal with this threat with a short cooldown. This cooldown would be too short for the player to react to, as it would not be announced till it was already too late.

Warp gate redirection hacking mission.

Another time sensitive hacking mission. Allows you to redirect AI reinforcements to a artificial human warp gate. This warp gate will not affect the AI ships in any way, and will only be able to accept so much strength of ships every hour based on it's mark. Any ships past this strength limit will instead overload the warp gate, destroying it, and arrive at it's original destination. Useful for dealing with rogue waves that are about to bypass your best defenses temporarily. Repeated attempts risk spawning additional strength in the incoming wave in an attempt to overload the human defenses on two fronts simultaneously. This effect lasts until the artificial human warp gate is destroyed or overloaded.

These are just some ideas I had on the spur of the moment, and while they might not be perfect as is, perhaps we could discuss them as part of fleshing out the hacking system. After all, hacking is attempting to undermine and override the AI's attempts at dealing with us in a non-violent manner. Attempting to prevent the AI from handling it's reinforcements properly is an idea that I thing would be very interesting, especially if it could backfire spectacularly.

Edit:

Wormhole information hacking

Choose a wormhole and if the hacking is completed successfully the AI completely forgets that the wormhole exists for a spell. The AI will eventually recover the knowledge about the wormhole and then scout where it goes, but can give some reprieve from AI attack on a certain front. Note: It does not make the AI forget what is on the other side of the wormhole, if the AI cannot find a path to it, it will begin searching for a path to it immediately. Likewise every time the AI discovers the humans using the wormhole, it will have a chance to rediscover it as well. Successful hacking destroys all wormhole guardposts, Tachyon scanners, and any other object around that wormhole, with the exception of certain mission critical components that may be next to the wormhole. Hacking must be done on an AI world, and needs to be within a certain range of the wormhole in question. This prevents the player from forcing the AI to path weird through their own territory in a tower defense like fashion.

[Pumpkin]

I don't see the connexion between starships and hacking. This sounds much more connected to this, for example. However, there is interesting ideas.

[Red.Queen]

Warp gate redirection hacking mission.

Another time sensitive hacking mission. Allows you to redirect AI reinforcements to a artificial human warp gate. This warp gate will not affect the AI ships in any way, and will only be able to accept so much strength of ships every hour based on it's mark. Any ships past this strength limit will instead overload the warp gate, destroying it, and arrive at it's original destination. Useful for dealing with rogue waves that are about to bypass your best defenses temporarily. Repeated attempts risk spawning additional strength in the incoming wave in an attempt to overload the human defenses on two fronts simultaneously. This effect lasts until the artificial human warp gate is destroyed or overloaded.

I really, really like this one.  Its usage case is very clear, and the way it potentially backfires exactly matches the action.  Try to dodge 1 wave at a vulnerable place?  Nope, you get two waves now.  Sucks to be you!  I can even think of a few places to look for code that could be cannibalised for making this effect, I think there's already logic for the AI sending a regular wave as a way of expressing its displeasure at your hacking.  If that was not quite a good fit, there's always the Raid Engine or Counterattack Post or... if you're feeling really sadistic, the CPA Post logic...  >D

These are just some ideas I had on the spur of the moment, and while they might not be perfect as is, perhaps we could discuss them as part of fleshing out the hacking system. After all, hacking is attempting to undermine and override the AI's attempts at dealing with us in a non-violent manner. Attempting to prevent the AI from handling it's reinforcements properly is an idea that I thing would be very interesting, especially if it could backfire spectacularly.

I like your style.  This adheres to not one but two of my own design rules -- 1. Everything should have a risk, 2. If it makes me laugh evilly when I hear it, it's probably a good idea.