Minor Faction Intensity

[Diazo]

Alright.

I've started playing with minor factions, specifically Fallen Spire and upon setting the intensity of Fallen Spire to only 4 in the lobby I proceeded to get roflstomped by the AI.

Next game I then dropped the Fallen Spire intensity to 2 and I am now the one roflstomping the AI.

This has started me wondering about the scaling on the intensity. I only had the intensity at 4 and I was getting completely dominated, why do the higher settings exist?

I'd also like the scaling steps to be smaller, dropping the intensity by only 2 should not be a big enough change that I go from getting roflstomped to being the one roflstomping.

Combining these two things makes me want to suggest that, on the minor factions intensities that spawn exo-waves, a scaling shift upwards. The current 7 becomes the new 10 and all the other intensities scale as appropriate so that changing the intensity results in a smaller difficulty change then it currently does.

Also note that Keith (in another thread) confirmed that difficulty affects exo-waves, so Fallen Spire 4 on difficulty 7 will be less intense the Fallen Spire 4 on difficulty 9.

However, I have very little experience with exo-waves so I want to make sure I'm not projecting this problem into something bigger then it is.

So, for those of you who do play with exo-waves on, can you post the following from your experinces please?

Which minor faction, the intensity you play at, the difficulty you play on, the map type, and how difficulty you found the exo-waves please?

I'm including the map type because the recent chokepoint thread has made it clear that map type plays a large part in determining how difficulty exo-waves are.

Going through the AARs, I'm am not aware of anyone playing with these factions up really high, but I'm directly asking as my impressions have been wrong before.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Will leave the discussion to y'all for a bit, but FYI the "upper reaches" (say, 8, 9 and 10) of a faction's intensity slider are for when you want them to dominate a game.  I fully expect some of them on 10 would make a game unwinnable unless you really toned down the rest of the scenario (like diff 5, etc).  6 and 7 would be pretty impactful too.  1 and 2 are for minor things (though in the case of FS, Golems-hard, and spirecraft-hard you're getting full benefit, but lower challenge).  4 is for "normal"; previously having marauders on wasn't that big a deal so having them on 4 now isn't that big a deal.  But previously having FS on was totally a game-changer (unless you just didn't pursue it at all) so having it on 4 now is still a game-changer.

[chemical_art]

It's hard to say because find spire scale to difficulty as well as intensity. I will say that only with lots of cheese can I win a normal fallen spire game on difficulty 9

[TechSY730]

Will leave the discussion to y'all for a bit, but FYI the "upper reaches" (say, 8, 9 and 10) of a faction's intensity slider are for when you want them to dominate a game.  I fully expect some of them on 10 would make a game unwinnable unless you really toned down the rest of the scenario (like diff 5, etc).  6 and 7 would be pretty impactful too.  1 and 2 are for minor things (though in the case of FS, Golems-hard, and spirecraft-hard you're getting full benefit, but lower challenge).  4 is for "normal"; previously having marauders on wasn't that big a deal so having them on 4 now isn't that big a deal.  But previously having FS on was totally a game-changer (unless you just didn't pursue it at all) so having it on 4 now is still a game-changer.

I guess the thing is, why should there be 3 settings where the minor faction is so strong, that it will basically dominate the game. Sure, 10 may dominate harder than 8, but in terms of impact to the game, 8 dominates so hard already, that outcomes don't really shift for 9 and 10.

I guess part of the proposal is to shift "near hopeless domination" of the minor faction to only 1 or maybe 2 settings, so the rest of the settings can be more granular in the "sane" regions where we actually care about it.

 
For golem, spirecraft, and botnet exos specificially, I think maybe 4 should be the new 5 or something.
Not sure about FS exos, as there was just a balance shift for them this patch.

EDIT: So maybe 9 should be "very hard to overcome, but doable" and 10 should have a stance similar to what AI difficulty 10 has, balanced such that it should be impossible to overcome without massive exploits/"cheese".

[Hearteater]

First up, I'd really prefer if the scaling affected the faction entirely.  For example:
Golems Hard - More golems seeded the greater the difficulty.  4/10 matches current seeding.
Spirecraft Hard - More asteroids seeded the greater the difficulty.  4/10 matches current seeding.
Botnet Golem Hard - Botnet seeded closer to the player, and at some point a second Botnet is seeded far from the player.
Fallen Spire - Not sure the best lever to mess with here.

Basically, I want the setting to effect how dominate the faction is, not strictly how much it smashes my face in (although that obviously should go up to at minimum counter the increased seeding for the player).

Also, why 1-10, why not 1-5?  1-10 creates the false impression the range is tied to AI difficulty.  Oh, I can beat 7/7 so I should set my faction to 7.  Ouch.  And it also has the odd effect that we start the faction at 4/10.  That's awkward.

With a 1-5 scale, the is no confusion the scale relates to AI difficulty.  1 would be the starter "intro" to the faction.  5 would be dominate the game.  For conversion from what we have now, we might end up with:
1 = 2
2 = 4
3 = 6
4 = 7
5 = 8

[Diazo]

This is why I've asked for numbers please.

A lot of people are throwing out what they think, but I'm not convinced we are all on the same page.

What's the highest intensity Fallen Spire game that has been won on difficulty 7? Difficulty 9?

What about golems and spire-craft?

If no one's ever won an intensity 7 fallen spire game then I think we have a reasonable case, if people are winning on intensity 8 or 9, then things are probably good as they are.

@Keith: If 1-2 are supposed to be easy(easier) and 8-10 are supposed to be "get roflstomped, that only leaves 5 settings (3-7) for "balanced" play. That still leaves a huge jump in between each setting which (I feel) is too big and I would like the 'step' of going from intensity 3 to 4 to be smaller, so I put forward the suggestion in my opening post.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, frankly, the numbers for the different intensities on FS really haven't been balanced since they were added.  Just not enough feedback on them to do much.  Things are pretty similar for other factions, though I don't think the effect is as significant there.  If folks have more feedback on it now I'm happy to tweak the numbers.

Intensity 4 FS was given exactly the same numbers as it had before any variable scaling was added.

The exos on FS scale this way by intensity:
1 - 0.25
2 - 0.5
3 - 0.75
4 - 1
5 - 1.5
6 - 2
7 - 3
8 - 4
9 - 5
10 - 6

and this way by difficulty (this is the standard difficulty-specific multiplier used for a bunch of "extracurricular" threats like hybrids and exos) :

1 - 0.15
2 - 0.30
3 - 0.45
4 - 0.60
5 - 0.75
6 - 0.90
7 - 1
8 - 1.5
9 - 2.5
10 - 5

(the inbetween difficulties are linearly interpolated between the integral ones on either side)


If you can beat FS 4 on AI-Diff 9, then you can probably beat FS 7 on AI-Diff 7.  Whether you can beat 8 or 9 depends on how badly you beat the first case.

[Hearteater]

Are those multiplied together?  Is FS 10 on 10/10 really x30 Exos?

[Diazo]

The exos on FS scale this way by intensity:
1 - 0.25
2 - 0.5
3 - 0.75
4 - 1
5 - 1.5
6 - 2
7 - 3
8 - 4
9 - 5
10 - 6

and this way by difficulty (this is the standard difficulty-specific multiplier used for a bunch of "extracurricular" threats like hybrids and exos) :

1 - 0.15
2 - 0.30
3 - 0.45
4 - 0.60
5 - 0.75
6 - 0.90
7 - 1
8 - 1.5
9 - 2.5
10 - 5

(the inbetween difficulties are linearly interpolated between the integral ones on either side)

Yeouch.

That's a 24 times increase from minor faction intensity 1 to 10.

@Heart: I am assuming that yes, those multiply.

Off the top of my head I'd like to see something more like:

The exos on FS scale this way by intensity:
1 - 0.25
2 - 0.5
3 - 0.65
4 - 0.85
5 - 1.1
6 - 1.4
7 - 2
8 - 2.5
9 - 3
10 - 4

and this way by difficulty (this is the standard difficulty-specific multiplier used for a bunch of "extracurricular" threats like hybrids and exos) :

1 - 0.15
2 - 0.30
3 - 0.45
4 - 0.60
5 - 0.75
6 - 0.90
7 - 1
8 - 1.4
9 - 2.2
10 - 3

I realize that is massively lowering them (perhaps I'm swinging the pendulum too far) but I have yet to see anyone say they've stuck any of these factions on 5 or higher and won.

This still allows at intensity 10 a four times bigger increase over the 'default' we had.

I'm actually still waiting for numbers of any sort to be posted. I've never actually completed a game with exo-waves enabled so I can't contribute numbers myself.

D.

[chemical_art]

I'm OK with lowering the exo waves.


What I am not OK with is lowering the minor factions. They don't have as much impact, so they need higher multipliers to compensate. A few make game changing impacts, but those few have been reworked for their edge cases (Trains were just a balance problem, their high intensity was just a symptom.)


What I do consider interesting is for the minor factions with exo-costs of "seeding" more benefits to tie in with harsher response. That would make them have more "impact" and be better in line with the intent of intensity. FS of course is already almost breaking the ceiling so doesn't need this.

[keith.lamothe]

Are those multiplied together?  Is FS 10 on 10/10 really x30 Exos?

Ayup.

10/10 is (supposed to be) death.  A hostile faction on 10 is probably death unless you've got an otherwise-tame scenario (even then, could be dicey).  Putting them together could legitimately just modify mapgen to not place the human home command stations.  You'd pick that in order to lose recreationally.

The exos on FS scale this way by intensity:
1 - 0.25
2 - 0.5
3 - 0.65
4 - 0.85
5 - 1.1
6 - 1.4
7 - 2
8 - 2.5
9 - 3
10 - 4

I'm a bit confused why you would adjust 4 downward, since 1 is just "how big FS exos were before factions had variable intensity" and I didn't think that was noticeably unbalanced.  There were _specific_ exos that were a bit out of whack (the first city shard and the first city construction), but overall I'd thought it was in a pretty good place.

For the rest we could certainly try it, though I'm curious to hear what others think of the numbers

What I am not OK with is lowering the minor factions.

The table I posted and Diazo amended was only for the FS faction, btw, it's different for each minor faction (as with each faction it's something different that's being modified; with the dyson it's spawn interval, etc).

[Hearteater]

I don't see much point in something like 10/10 FS 10 being available, especially when 10/10 FS 9 will also destroy you just fine.  In fact, so will 10/10 FS 8.  I've always felt the max difficulty should maybe, somehow, possibly, be beatable with an insane amount of cheese or luck.  If I just wanted a ton of ships to appear and wipe me out, there are cheat codes to do that.  So in order to make 10/10 with max FS just feasible enough to tempt us into jumping off that cliff, I'd prefer:

Fallen Spire Difficulty (only 5 difficulties instead of 10)
1) x0.75
2) x1.00
3) x1.50
4) x2.00
5) x3.00

AI Difficulty (add this value to the above multiplier)
1) -0.50
2) -0.40
3) -0.30
4) -0.20
5) -0.10
6) -0.05
7) +0.00
8) +0.25
9) +0.50
10) +1.00

Again, I think 10 values for minor factions is excessive.  In this layout, 1/5 is intended to introduce people to the minor faction.  2/5 is the balance point, and 3+ are for people who want the faction to more heavily dominate their game.

[chemical_art]

I still don't see why there should be 5 when there were 10. It allows more graduation, and part of the point of the OP was asking for shifting for more graduation. It seems silly to remove the outlier (presumably to allow a smaller range) then proceed to remove the options reducing the graduation.

[keith.lamothe]

Fallen Spire Difficulty (only 5 difficulties instead of 10)
1) x0.75
2) x1.00
3) x1.50
4) x2.00
5) x3.00

AI Difficulty (add this value to the above multiplier)
1) -0.50
2) -0.40
3) -0.30
4) -0.20
5) -0.10
6) -0.05
7) +0.00
8 ) +0.25
9) +0.50
10) +1.00

That would make diff 10 exos (on "standard intensity" faction) only 40% as strong as they are now.  I buffed them upward from 3x to 5x a while ago because a few folks were actually doing pretty well against FS exos on diff 10.  This would take them down to 2x.  I'm not seeing how this would work

[nitpik]

I don't understand the problem with more options. Previously, we had two options - on or off. Now, if we want, we can adjust each faction's intensity from weak to stupid overpowered.

If 9 wrecks you, then the existence of 10 doesn't affect your gameplay. So why take it out? Someone somewhere is probably trying it just for fun to see what it looks like.

I think the issue is
          "I've always felt the max difficulty should maybe, somehow, possibly, be beatable with an insane amount of cheese or luck."

I much prefer the development philosophy of "here's a number you can tweak - go nuts, but 10 will probably kill you"
to
"Well, we'd like to add a sliding scale for hybrid difficulty, but we won't implement it into the game
until we have carefully playtested it to make sure that the highest number we pick is both a challenge to anyone but also actually beatable if someone uses a certain skill set, and certain other options which affect it, etc...".

I don't think we'd have minor faction options at all with the latter, but you should not feel bad that you can't beat 10/10 with 10 Golems, 10 FS, 10 Hybrids, etc....