Nemesis Response Scaling

[Cinth]

Don't think it could get any worse than running into a MK III + MK II Zenith and a MK II Spire SS on a MK III neighbor (that happened).

That wave I mentioned earlier is harsh because Core Guardians have an immunity list longer than my forearm :p

[keith.lamothe]

Don't think it could get any worse than running into a MK III + MK II Zenith and a MK II Spire SS on a MK III neighbor (that happened).

That wave I mentioned earlier is harsh because Core Guardians have an immunity list longer than my forearm :p

I could arrange for it to spit out starships instead

More seriously, what do you want it to translate stuff into, that keeps (AI-)units-per-planet count under 5000?

[Cinth]

Don't think it could get any worse than running into a MK III + MK II Zenith and a MK II Spire SS on a MK III neighbor (that happened).

That wave I mentioned earlier is harsh because Core Guardians have an immunity list longer than my forearm :p

I could arrange for it to spit out starships instead

More seriously, what do you want it to translate stuff into, that keeps (AI-)units-per-planet count under 5000?

I'd actually like to blow up the fleet ships that make up the wave if the count is under 5k.  That 3 second rule is probably what needs to be adjusted.

[Faulty Logic]

- Make the caps of nebula starships and modular forts (the three you get from the nebula, at least) be multiplied by either the number of champs in the game or the number of human homeworlds in the game, whichever is greater.

I'd support this.

[Toranth]

Having a 4K ship wave get compressed into 600 core guardians is very harsh and starts happening relatively early (mid to high end MK II progress).

Kill the little guys, then kill the carriers, rinse, repeat.  That should cut back on the compression.

The problem with this is
a) The Grav Turret nerf makes carriers advance 4 times as fast as they used to, and
b) Carriers are still Forcefild Immune for movement.

I just recently had a game where, at about 200 AIP, I had both waves come about 10 seconds apart to the same chokepoint.  Shiptypes were raiders and autocannons, so the combined shipcount was about 10,000 ships.  I simply couldn't kill the little guys fast enough the prevent the Carriers from strolling past my defenses to the exit wormhole into my empire and bypassing everything.  I reloaded and tried popping the carriers first, but the resultant horde of Mk V Guardians shredded my defenses.

[keith.lamothe]

Having a 4K ship wave get compressed into 600 core guardians is very harsh and starts happening relatively early (mid to high end MK II progress).

Kill the little guys, then kill the carriers, rinse, repeat.  That should cut back on the compression.

The problem with this is
a) The Grav Turret nerf makes carriers advance 4 times as fast as they used to, and
b) Carriers are still Forcefild Immune for movement.

I just recently had a game where, at about 200 AIP, I had both waves come about 10 seconds apart to the same chokepoint.  Shiptypes were raiders and autocannons, so the combined shipcount was about 10,000 ships.  I simply couldn't kill the little guys fast enough the prevent the Carriers from strolling past my defenses to the exit wormhole into my empire and bypassing everything.  I reloaded and tried popping the carriers first, but the resultant horde of Mk V Guardians shredded my defenses.

In that case you probably need to meet the enemy further out.

Or warheads.

[Cinth]

warheads.

 

[keith.lamothe]

warheads.

 

Or more defensive depth

[TechSY730]

Yea, the "conversion costs" are...um...off in many cases, which does sort of muddy the issue.

However, how many ships can you "get away with" for how long before you start running into those game-crashing garbage collection issues? Could the carrier logic be pushed to "only consolidate if > 2000" ships, and waiting longer than three seconds before consolidating already "loose" stuff.

I think the combination of the, in some cases, unbalanced conversion costs combined with how aggressively it does this logic sometimes leads to a lot of the fustration. The conversion costs I know can probably be dealt with little risk to the game, but making the logic less "aggressive" may reintroduce those situations that were tripping those crash bugs in the runtime environment. That's why I asked.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the "conversion costs" are...um...off in many cases, which does sort of muddy the issue.

Well, I'm not sure they're off in that case, actually.

However, how many ships can you "get away with" for how long before you start running into those game-crashing garbage collection issues?

It isn't so much the memory in that case as it is that your CPU dieth the death even at 5000 v 5000 (that's potentially 25,000,000 comparisons for something like collision checking or targetting.

But memory becomes an issue at some point, yes.

Could the carrier logic be pushed to "only consolidate if > 2000" ships

That doesn't seem to be the operative rule Cinth is running into, but rather the frequency of carrier pops.  I can try making that less sensitive by having it somehow keep track of roughly how many carrier ships to expect on the planet in the near future, so it doesn't have to be quite so pessimistic, though that will be somewhat tricky.

[Cinth]

warheads.

 

Or more defensive depth

I'd need to be able to build outside of supply to get more depth in my defenses.

That doesn't seem to be the operative rule Cinth is running into, but rather the frequency of carrier pops.  I can try making that less sensitive by having it somehow keep track of roughly how many carrier ships to expect on the planet in the near future, so it doesn't have to be quite so pessimistic, though that will be somewhat tricky.

This indeed.  I can easily have over 10k ships plus defenses sitting at my choke planet if I thought it was needed.  ~4000 AI ships added to that isn't going to make a big difference in how the game runs (it's gonna go slow).
 Would it be easier to track how many ships are in the carriers on a single planet and have them convert at a threshold if x amount are released?

[LordSloth]

Would this help, Cinth? I ask because I typically operate at a different scale, approaching this level only occasionally in co-op play, and I'm not entirely clear on the issue.

A complementary proposal to whatever other changes happen: "auto-target carriers" should have a number field added.

-1: auto target all AI Carriers
0: never auto target an AI Carrier
1+: auto target an AI carrier if current AI ship population + targeted carrier cargo <= X. In essence, a setting of 1000 would try to keep the total system population under 1000, and if it can get away with it, pop a carrier. If you set it for four thousand, then it would pop a full carrier if there were three thousand units present.

[Cinth]

Your 1+ sounds a bit like what I asked about.

[keith.lamothe]

I'd need to be able to build outside of supply to get more depth in my defenses.

Or you can take additional forward planets in front of your chokepoint.  So the enemy runs over them and you're going to need to rebuild them fairly often, but you get to bleed the enemy in the process.

[Cinth]

I'd need to be able to build outside of supply to get more depth in my defenses.

Or you can take additional forward planets in front of your chokepoint.  So the enemy runs over them and you're going to need to rebuild them fairly often, but you get to bleed the enemy in the process.

I don't like letting the AI ever setting foot on a planet I control, let alone having a planet be sacrificial.  Besides, defense in depth would need to draw its resources form the wall they are already trying to breech.  Concentrated firepower usually is more effective than firepower drawn out over a distance.