Minor Faction Intensity

[keith.lamothe]

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 Hearteater was saying anything that could be construed as the latter

FWIW I think the current level of granularity is preferable to half of that.  More important right now is balancing what we have.

[Hearteater]

@chemical_art and @nitpik:
More granularity for the sake of granularity is pointless.  Why not 100 levels?  1000?  10 is arbitrary.  The problem is how the player interacts with 10 levels of difficulty.  It draws a false parallel to AI difficulty.  AI difficulty is already 10 levels, and a player could very easily assume it works like that.  I know the tool tip tries to explain it, but people are going to go with their intuitive feeling on something before reading a massive tool tip.

@keith:
Then they should bump FS difficult up.  I don't see why 10/10 with default FS (4/10) should be impossible.  10/10 isn't.  If 10/10 FS 4/10 is impossible, what the heck is 10/10 FS 10 for!?  Currently, of all the options available in AIW, only the 1-10 minor factions have impossible settings.  That just seems wrong to me.  Didn't we just get a change to Snake Maps to make the CSG issue not make a game impossible?

If we are going to have game lobby settings that objectively make a game impossible (and x30 Exos does) then can we have the button border+text turn red when the player sets it that high?  It would tie in nice with the insane AI types being red.  A good indicator that you are going into suicidal territory.  It isn't a perfect parallel because those AIs are beatable, and this would indicate you were creating an unwinnable game.

[Diazo]

Keith:

My current contention is that the minor faction exo-waves never get played in the 8-10 intensity range because they are so high.

So I took intensity 8 with it's 4.0 multiplier and made in the new 10.

I then slid everything up, so yes, the current 4 becomes 5 and 5 because the 'default' value for the fallen spire faction.

I also made the steps smaller near 4/5 so the difficulty steps in that range are smaller.

Currently 3(0.75) -> 4(1.0) -> 5 (1.5) is a 33% and 50% increase in wave size. (This is a straight multiplier right?)

In my system that is 3(0.65) -> 4(.85) -> 5 (1.1) -> 6(1.4) so a 30%, 30% and 27% increase in wave size as you go up.

The exact numbers are up in the air, but combining my assumption that no one plays FS on 8, 9 or 10 and taking advantage of the slots that open up to make the difficulty steps smaller in the 4,5,6 range where the 'default' level is makes sense to me.

D.

[Hearteater]

I actually don't believe anyone plays in the 6-7 range either.  I'm sure people have tried it, but I don't think it's feasible.  There might be some odd combo that someone likes, like 4/4 FS 7, but it seems pretty unlikely.

[chemical_art]

@chemical_art and @nitpik:
More granularity for the sake of granularity is pointless.  Why not 100 levels?  1000?  10 is arbitrary.  The problem is how the player interacts with 10 levels of difficulty.  It draws a false parallel to AI difficulty.  AI difficulty is already 10 levels, and a player could very easily assume it works like that.  I know the tool tip tries to explain it, but people are going to go with their intuitive feeling on something before reading a massive tool tip.

By that logic, there shouldn't be granularity at all. 5 is just as arbitrary as 10. Many rts vets playing AI War for the first time would think "hard" intuitively before reading a tooltive, yet the vast majority of them will die if they only follow intuition.  Doesn't mean ai 10 shouldn't exist. Also, the AI doesn't have 10 difficulties, it has at least 22 (7.0 to 7.3 is a step that exists solely for me granularity. Should they be removed too? They are arbitrary.

[TechSY730]

Yea, that is kind of what I tried to say. I think 10 steps of granularity is good. It's just right now, intensity 10 is so high (way past the point that would start being considered "unreasonable" where we want the max to be) that it is throwing off where the granularity is "focused". Right now, 7-10 is almost the same in terms of implications for the player, even though the numbers shift radically. If we bring down the max intensity, but still keep the max at a level that is not "sane", then we can make more "sane" values in the middle, thus giving more granularity where we "care" about it.

[keith.lamothe]

Then they should bump FS difficult up.  I don't see why 10/10 with default FS (4/10) should be impossible.  10/10 isn't.

10/10 is supposed to be impossible   Specifically: if the highest setting doesn't always cause a loss, then someone conceivably isn't getting a sufficient challenge.  This situation would be intolerable   As it stands with the "10/10 is winnable" bug I just kind of gradually crank the screws a bit more each time I see a 10/10 win.  Eventually I probably won't see any more of them, but it's taking a while because I don't want to just peg the lever and create something no one would have fun playing.

If 10/10 FS 4/10 is impossible, what the heck is 10/10 FS 10 for!?

Intensity-10 FS has a purpose even in the winnable-game space if you play on a lower AI difficulty.  Some people like the AI to be more of a background threat compared to that special threat.  Taking FS-10 away because it's overkill on AIDiff-10 would prevent that other use case.  So yea, if you crank both settings to the max you die, but short of having the game not let you pick a high intensity if you also have a high AIDiff, I don't know how that can be changed.

Having some kind of "warning: this scenario is death-on-wheels" in the lobby is something I'm in favor of.  A while ago I asked in the forums about coming up with some kind of "overall difficulty value" based on a given set of settings, but we didn't really get anywhere on that.  We wouldn't need anything quite that general-purpose for this, but the root problem is similar.

Currently, of all the options available in AIW, only the 1-10 minor factions have impossible settings.

2x Scorched Earth could be pretty rough.  As could, say, 2x Warp Jumper on 9/9 with 2x waves.

I think there are actually quite a few impossible configurations, leaving aside non-standard-intensity factions/plots.

That just seems wrong to me.  Didn't we just get a change to Snake Maps to make the CSG issue not make a game impossible?

That was different: all the forms of "impossible" we were just talking about are mathematically possible to win (and actually realistically possible if you find some kind of cheese like the old multi-HW-riot-tazer-lock or whatever).  The problem with a csg behind a homeworld with a grav reactor on a snake map is that there is literally nothing you can do to win that game (short of memory editing or whatever).

My current contention is that the minor faction exo-waves never get played in the 8-10 intensity range because they are so high.

8+ intensity?  Sure.  You'd generally only play 4 on those unless you specifically wanted heavier exos.  I have seen folks play intensity-10 on them.  I don't know if they win but I suspect that isn't their goal.  Intensity 10 is probably winnable on Diff 7 for FS, golems-hard, or spirecraft-hard.

[Histidine]

Considering FS and golem/spirecraft Hard exos already scale with difficulty, do they need to ramp up so dramatically with minor faction intensity as well? Even FS 4 -> 5 is a dramatic 50% increase.

Has anyone won 7/7 on FS 10?

[Hearteater]

By that logic, there shouldn't be granularity at all.

Incorrect, however I don't see any reason to argue it further here, especially this late at night.

Incidentally, is anyone else missing posts with the "Show unread posts since last visit"?  This is like the 3rd time today I've been posting something and looking back see a post in the middle of a thread that I missed.  Almost like it is scrolling just past the most recent post sometimes.  Never had that problem before.

[Diazo]

My current contention is that the minor faction exo-waves never get played in the 8-10 intensity range because they are so high.

8+ intensity?  Sure.  You'd generally only play 4 on those unless you specifically wanted heavier exos.  I have seen folks play intensity-10 on them.  I don't know if they win but I suspect that isn't their goal.  Intensity 10 is probably winnable on Diff 7 for FS, golems-hard, or spirecraft-hard.

Okay, this is the disconnect we are having at the moment.

I don't see people playing intensity 10 fallen spire ever. I think I saw one AAR with Fallen Spire at 7 once (can't remember if it was a serious game or a mess around game.)

It is why I asked people to actually post what intensity they play these on. (Can we get some numbers please?)

If my contention that started this thread about people never playing exo-wave minor factions at intensity 8+ is wrong, then the thread kind of falls apart.

D.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I still don't see why 10 should be scaled back so heavily though. Just because a majority of the playerbase doesn't end up using it doesn't mean it should just get canned. Sure, you can't play difficulty 10 minor factions on difficulty 10 AI because you could never possibly win. However, I'm the kind of guy who like plays on difficulty 6 and 7. If I'd played more, I'd find ways to make minor factions on 10 actually playable for me because I would want the different experience. I always love getting the unique experiences in, and taking away options takes away more unique experiences. I could absolutely set it up so that I laugh in the face of AIP, except for when the exo waves hit like a bowling ball knocking the humans over. It's like Keith said, it gives you the option to make the fallen spire exos or otherwise the biggest threat, and the main AI threat relatively weak or otherwise.

[_K_]

10 intensity minor factions are fine IMO. High level minor faction is supposed to be an overkill on 7 AI difficulty, but they are probably quite doable at AI difficulty 4. Too bad nobody plays at that difficulty.

Using 10 as max intensity does make it feel parallel to AI difficulties, where 7 is normal.

But i'd say its the problem with the AI difficulty scale. AI diff 1-4 are almost never played, so i would rather see this scale changed than the current minor faction scale.

[TechSY730]

10 intensity minor factions are fine IMO. High level minor faction is supposed to be an overkill on 7 AI difficulty, but they are probably quite doable at AI difficulty 4. Too bad nobody plays at that difficulty.

Using 10 as max intensity does make it feel parallel to AI difficulties, where 7 is normal.

But i'd say its the problem with the AI difficulty scale. AI diff 1-4 are almost never played, so i would rather see this scale changed than the current minor faction scale.

I think both could use a little tweaking. It's just that we know more about the balance of AI difficulties than we do exo difficulties.

For the AI difficulty scale thing, I can dig up the thread talking about that. (tomorrow, it is WAY past my bedtime right now)

[Cinth]

I've played FS on 10 several times.  Granted my style of game shouldn't be basis for anything. 

Basically I wanted to see how big exos would get (really big) and how big one would need to be to smash through one of my super fortress worlds.  This was back before the 10/10 changes though.

I also ran once with FS and DS on 10 to feed the death spiral

10 is fun for one offs and stuff like what I mentioned above, 4 or less for any serious game.

[Eternaly_Lost]

10/10 AIs with FS 4/10 is quite possible now a days.

It used to be that the end game fleet could not win with a run time of days of being active, but I think I ended up submitting enough games to prove that, that it is finally no longer the case.

One of these days, I am going to run 10/10 AIs with FS 10/10 to make sure that is still the case. Provided that I can even get to that. It not easy when the shard chase waves come with Hunter Killers.