More "plot" for the Dyson?

[Martyn van Buren]

This is bugging me a little, and I wonder if anyone else has the same sense?  It seems to me that the Dyson is currently a bit too simple to deal with --- it's basically human resistance fighters++.  I think it's supposed to be challenging to free because of the neutral gatlings, but in practice I find that whenever I encounter one it and the AI have basically kept each other in check, so all I need to do is send a cap of Raid starships in to pop the command station, wait a few minutes for the Dyson to clear the world out, and then send in a small fleet for the remaining cleanup.  It does have a small cost in lost resources/AIP/possibly not being able to hold fabs, but these tend to be trivial.  Maybe I've just had good luck so far, though, so I'd appreciate someone telling me if I'm wrong.

I certainly don't think the Dyson should nerfed --- as Keith said about botnet golems, it's cool to have these powerful things floating around that can change up how the game works.  But I think it could be made more of an issue to free the Dyson.

I'd like it to be a bit more complex, something on the order of a human colony rebellion, which gives you a bonus of similar importance but can also force you to take and hold an inconvenient world.  The advanced hybrids plot seems to provide one form of this --- but I suspect that only a relatively small minority of players are good enough to deal with that option (I'm not).

I have three ideas.  I think the best one is this:

1. Make the Dyson more dangerous during the process of freeing the world.  Upon "noticing" the player --- i.e., when the player first brings a non-scout ship onto its world --- the Dyson creates a small army of anti-player gatlings.  It continues to spawn these as part of its normal routine, perhaps in a ratio of 1 anti-player to 1 anti-AI to 1 neutral until the player has removed not only the command station but all of the guard posts from its world.  Or it could spawn anti-player gatlings faster but only as long as there are player military ships on-world (it's important to balance this so accidentally setting a Dyson off doesn't end the game for a new player).  This would make taking a Dyson a lot harder and more of a strategic choice, but leave its advantages entirely intact.

The other two would require a lot more coding and would be more confusing, but they are just in case someone likes them:

2. Require the player to use a countdown-timer "diplomatic ship" to persuade the Dyson of their benign intent.  Survey ship could perhaps do double duty.

3. Have the AI take the Dyson seriously as a threat, heavily reinforcing the planet or spawning exo-waves targeting the Dyson.  The Dyson would probably want to be destructible but have enough health and armor to last hours against the AI.  Thus, the player would wander into a pitched battle rather than a mostly-empty world upon finding the Dyson.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, one way of making the Dyson a more challenging option is to enable hybrids

[Shrugging Khan]

Actually, the antagoniser has preemptively responded to your complaint

[Martyn van Buren]

Oh, I know, but that seems like lighting a furnace to burn a hair.  I was hoping for a moderate strategic roadbump on the order of a human colony rebellion, not getting slaughtered by vicious megadeath starships.

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, I know, but that seems like lighting a furnace to burn a hair.

... And?  That's how we do things

I was hoping for a moderate strategic roadbump on the order of a human colony rebellion, not getting slaughtered by vicious megadeath starships.

Then stop the super hybrid when you see that it's constructing something; it's basically the same idea: there's something happening on a planet some number of hops away, and you need to go there and do something about it or stuff's going to hit the fan (+100 AIP from a human colony going down on a challenging game is baaaad news, albeit not as bad as the antagonizer).

[Eternaly_Lost]

Not all options have to make the game harder, some can make it easier. I see the Dyson as more of that option. I personally think the Dyson is fine as it is right now.

[Martyn van Buren]

Okay, fair dues.  Am I wrong to think, though, that the antagonizer is only the last of a long list of nasty things advanced hybrids can throw at you?  Anyway I think I might just want to start my next game on 6/6 with advanced hybrids on.  So one more question --- do they scale a lot with difficulty?  As in, if I try that will I get the full hybrid experience?

[keith.lamothe]

Okay, fair dues.  Am I wrong to think, though, that the antagonizer is only the last of a long list of nasty things advanced hybrids can throw at you?  Anyway I think I might just want to start my next game on 6/6 with advanced hybrids on.  So one more question --- do they scale a lot with difficulty?  As in, if I try that will I get the full hybrid experience?

They don't scale much with difficulty, but do somewhat.  Their list of tactics is the same.

You can get the antagonizer on normal hybrids, it just doesn't go further than that.

[keith.lamothe]

I was hoping for a moderate strategic roadbump on the order of a human colony rebellion, not getting slaughtered by vicious megadeath starships.

Oh, and if by this you meant "hybrids on at all", well, yes, I see your point on that making the game way harder right there, without the dyson plot

[zoutzakje]

making it more difficult to make the dyson sphere friendly is not a good idea. Occasionally you have these cases where the dyson sphere spawns at an unfortunate location and the AI types aren't really helping either, like in my current 7/9 game. Assassin and Golemite, the harder one being the dif 9 -.-  Found the Dyson sphere 4 hops from my homeworld. Great, I think, until I realized it was on a Mk IV planet and there is Black Widow golem on it. the dyson sphere only spawns a single dyson at a time and the black widow golem kills it instantly. Because of the dyson sphere's ability to put planets on alert, the DS planet has now over 1k ships on low caps after 2 and a half hours ingame time. It is nasty. Even if i manage to take out the golem, there will still be all those ships that could easily wipe me out. Trying to find a way to free the dyson now. I think attritioner + martyrs might work to take out the enemy ships. And the golem... Does the new paralyzing tractor turrets also apply for AI black widows? if yes, it's gonna be tough to kill it. I have a full cap of mk I - III bombers ready so who knows what I can accomplish with those....
Either way, in cases like these, freeing the dyson really isn't easy   (and somehow I always seem to have bad luck... dyson sphere's bordering core worlds and such...).

[Martyn van Buren]

Ah, cool!  I was wondering if I had missed some cases like that.  That sounds plenty intense --- I also didn't know it could put worlds on alert.

[Hearteater]

Heh, that's why it was recently changed so it couldn't spawn next to core worlds...because it put those on alert too.  From the very start of the game.

[zoutzakje]

yup, I still managed to win a 7/7 game where a coreworld had been put on alert from the start because of the dyson. But I had to abandon a 8/8 game because of this. The alerted coreworld was leaking mk V ships into my systems non-stop after several hours of game time.

[doctorfrog]

What if it started asking you for stuff?

"Hey man, can I borrow a cup of energy?"

You build an energy reactor, it makes some more friendly gatlings.

"Hey, guys, um... can I have some of your scouts? I just wanna know what's going on out there."

You give it some scouts, it takes ownership and starts sending gatlings out to a few worlds further out where those scouts rest.

"Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, you know that old golem you have there that you're not using? How much you want for it? Is it for sale? Aw, man, you're the coolest!"

After a bit, you see this souped up, but still really crappy golem, painted a primer gray, tearing across the different worlds, spewing smoke everywhere and generally just causing trouble, and there's this really trashy blonde in the passenger seat.

And occasionally it gets drunk or maybe a mysterious green cloud obscures it for a bit, and it wrecks a few of your worlds, no big whoop.

edit: Seriously though, I'm fine with the Dyson golem the way it is. Its downside in general is that it puts other planets on alert, which results in an increase AI buildup anyway. If you're going to make it even more capricious, make sure it's a toggle, or I may as well have it turned off.

[Ktoff]

Doesn't really sound fitting for the dyson to me, but I really like the idea.

Maybe something for the next expansion? Sounds a lot like material for (yet another) plot...