Missing the friendly enclaves

[Cyborg]

Anyone else missing friendly enclaves landing on your planet and defending it for you?

[zoutzakje]

nope... only played with Enclaves once, and they weren't very friendly as I recall

[Philo]

I never got the chance to see how they are, but they'd be nice. Neutral, and friendly enclaves.

[Cyborg]

I never got the chance to see how they are, but they'd be nice. Neutral, and friendly enclaves.

They were awesome. They just need to be able to be X-targeted.

[keith.lamothe]

I never got the chance to see how they are, but they'd be nice. Neutral, and friendly enclaves.

They were awesome. They just need to be able to be X-targeted.

As in: let you shoot at them?

[Cyborg]

I never got the chance to see how they are, but they'd be nice. Neutral, and friendly enclaves.

They were awesome. They just need to be able to be X-targeted.

As in: let you shoot at them?

Yes. If their assistance is interfering with your strategy or otherwise disruptive, they should be optional. If you destroy them, perhaps you invite retribution, but targeting them would be nice.

[Elukka]

I didn't even know they were removed. I did some googling and found out they were removed because... some people complained their AI wasn't clever enough? Really now? :/
They were a fun feature that added some life to the game world. I wouldn't expect them to have the smartest AI. (the hostile ones don't, either) I'd like them back, I really don't see how this is a good rationale for removing a feature unless there was something else behind it I don't know about. Surely we wouldn't want, say, the dyson sphere removed because its gatlings will sometimes stupidly suicide against superior forces?

[Cyborg]

I didn't even know they were removed. I did some googling and found out they were removed because... some people complained their AI wasn't clever enough? Really now? :/
They were a fun feature that added some life to the game world. I wouldn't expect them to have the smartest AI. (the hostile ones don't, either) I'd like them back, I really don't see how this is a good rationale for removing a feature unless there was something else behind it I don't know about. Surely we wouldn't want, say, the dyson sphere removed because its gatlings will sometimes stupidly suicide against superior forces?

Sometimes our community shoots itself in the foot, but usually it's helpful. I'm sure the enclaves will be back in the long-term, just have to make sure Keith keeps it in the back of his mind for the next development cycle.

[keith.lamothe]

Definitely thinking of ways of bringing them back that will be better all around   Currently the best I can think of is to let the friendly enclaves "break the rules" so they don't have to be either extremely buff or extremely cowardly.  For example, if they die they just respawn at a human homeworld.  There would need to be something to balance that so you didn't have this ever-growing force of immortal allies (for framerate reasons, at least), but it's the most promising idea I've come up with thus far, all things considered.

[c4sc4]

Why not just have the friendly enclaves just sit on whatever friendly planet and whenever an enemy attacks the plant, it starts to spawn ships? Maybe have the enclave like to stay near your command center. I don't see why they have to have some complicated AI, I mean, other friendly ships just roam between you planets and attack enemies on your planets.

I don't play with enclaves enabled because there are no friendly ones. Without having some kind of benefit to having enclaves enable, the enemy ones annoy me too much.

[Cyborg]

My personal suggestion would be to have a random chance of having an enclave stop by when you eliminate a command station. Sort of a risk/reward scenario there, which players generally like.

The other thing you could do is tie a random chance to getting an enclave, perhaps a roll every so many minutes, if you have researched the warp sensor or something like that. In other words, a function of knowledge. If you did this, I kind of think they should be tied into turrets somehow, since they are defensive in nature, and it would be an encouragement to research more turrets or different kinds of turrets.

Random chances to have one of these for doing something gives it a very gamey feel but also tied to achievement.

To prevent them from being overpowered, just make them one mark below the AI *or* build points towards a random Neinzul ship; have them build up like a carrier.

There are so many fun ways you could incorporate these.

[TechSY730]

If you want, you can look at some of the older discussion on this at bug #2801

[Spikey00]

IIRC my main qualm with the enclaves were that they would go through an AI planet that had thousands of III+ ships in a serial part of the galaxy, and it kept doing so (I assume it wanted to attack a planet that was behind, but it had no chance of crossing).  New enclaves would eventually respawn but equate to the same thing, which would cause AI aggro let alone contribute anything for the players as the Neinzul ships were easily picked off by the hardened AI system.

I remember Keith did change the behavior it so they would retreat after losing a total % of their hull, but I feel that wasn't enough.  They shouldn't be travelling into a bee's nest where they have zero chance to survive.