Nominations for Most Important Pre-8.0 Polish

[Draco18s]

Autocannon minipods used to have a group bonus, actually.

[Toranth]

Autocannon minipods used to have a group bonus, actually.

That was before I started playing, but I made a similar suggestion a while back.  I was told, quite reasonably, that the problem was that the AI didn't have unit caps, so a) if the bonus was capped, the AI always had the full bonus while the player didn't, or b) if the bonus is uncapped, the unit is always far better in AI control than in human hands.

[lemon10]

Autocannon minipods used to have a group bonus, actually.

That was before I started playing, but I made a similar suggestion a while back.  I was told, quite reasonably, that the problem was that the AI didn't have unit caps, so a) if the bonus was capped, the AI always had the full bonus while the player didn't, or b) if the bonus is uncapped, the unit is always far better in AI control than in human hands.

Yeah, that makes sense. Oh well, guess they will have to do with a simple buff.

[Tridus]

How about the turret changes that were proposed a while ago?

[onyhow]

@Tridus: which one again? Changing standard turrets to per planet cap and Mk V to galaxy cap?

[Tridus]

@Tridus: which one again? Changing standard turrets to per planet cap and Mk V to galaxy cap?

Been a while, but IIRC it was changing all the turrets to per planet and then giving you some kind of building to let you build more than that on a couple of planets, for choke point worlds.

Since Keith wants to encourage distributed defense, but the current standard turrets encourage chokepoints instead. Also makes unlocking mk2 of a turret but not mk3 largely pointless if you have the core version, as you can't use them together and until you can drop enough of the other ones in one place, mk5 is better.

The way the mk5 turrets don't play nice with the other marks is really awkward and doesn't sit well.

[onyhow]

Yeah, that's from my thread and with Toranth's suggestion...

Also the fact that mk 5 are way stronger and if you want to squeeze your normal cap turrets out to be stronger than mk 5, you have to spend a LOT of knowledge...and can do that only on around 1-2 systems, max. Or: choke all over again.

I wonder about energy cost and such tho...

[Kahuna]

People chokepoint because that's the most effective way of defending. Nerfing chokepointing nor changing Turrets wont change that. Stacking Turrets in one place would still be the most effecive way of defending.

The AI needs to change. If the player has many AI Warpgates adjacent to his planets the AI could send more but much smaller waves. If the player has only 1 or none adjacent AI Warpgates the AI would send fewer but larger waves.

Basically..
Multiple Warpgates --> AI sends waves more often but they're much smaller (Like Neinzul Youngster)
1 or 0 Warpgates --> AI sends fewer waves but they're much bigger (Like Sledgehammer)
..so this would reward the player for not stacking every single turret in one spot.

Waves would mostly be easier but when AIP gets high defending could actually get harder because the player has much more planets to defend. So strong fleet and Transports would be more important in that situation. Also defending against CPAs would probably be harder. Can't always be sure which of the 6 planets the CPA is going to hit. If you have a chokepoint or two the CPAs will always hit the same one or two planets. So it would be a trade off.

This would also support the current Turret cap thing instead of per-planet thing.

[Toranth]

People chokepoint because that's the most effective way of defending. Nerfing chokepointing nor changing Turrets wont change that. Stacking Turrets in one place would still be the most effecive way of defending.

The AI needs to change. If the player has many AI Warpgates adjacent to his planets the AI could send more but much smaller waves. If the player has only 1 or none adjacent AI Warpgates the AI would send fewer but larger waves.

Basically..
Multiple Warpgates --> AI sends waves more often but they're much smaller (Like Neinzul Youngster)
1 or 0 Warpgates --> AI sends fewer waves but they're much bigger (Like Sledgehammer)
..so this would reward the player for not stacking every single turret in one spot.

Waves would mostly be easier but when AIP gets high defending could actually get harder because the player has much more planets to defend. So strong fleet and Transports would be more important in that situation. Also defending against CPAs would probably be harder. Can't always be sure which of the 6 planets the CPA is going to hit. If you have a chokepoint or two the CPAs will always hit the same one or two planets. So it would be a trade off.

Yeah, last time we had this discussion the idea of set strength waves split amongst multiple targets, with defenses converted to mostly per-system, came up.  Unfortunately, Exowaves are still around, and since they are forced to be concentrated attacks by their very nature, chokepointing will still be necessary.  While I do like the idea, I'm not sure how we can make it possible to build anti-exowave defenses without also making it trivial to defend against normal waves OR without making normal waves so difficult that you can only have one or two ingress points.

Also, there is currently a wave-strength factor that counts number of ingress points:  fewer produces slower, stronger waves (up to 50% stronger), more means slightly faster, weaker waves (down to 80% normal strength).

[keith.lamothe]

@Kahuna:

FWIW the AI already does the "if only 1 ingress point, save up for larger waves" thing.  And somewhat larger for 2 ingress points, iirc, and somewhat smaller waves past a certain number of them.  That has a reduced effect during the first 2 hours of the game (because the starting homeworld is, obviously, just the one ingress point) but after that I think it can be as much as a 50% increase in how long it spends charging the wave.

We could try having it go up to, say, +200% vs a single ingress point, if desired.  Might be a long time between waves.

(ninja'd)

[Kahuna]

Unfortunately, Exowaves are still around

Exos (and CPAs) would work the same way normal waves would.
Many ingress points --> weak exos more often
Few ingress points --> strong exos less often

EDIT: The difference between many ingress point waves and few ingress point waves would have to be much more significant than it is now.

[Toranth]

Unfortunately, Exowaves are still around

Exos (and CPAs) would work the same way normal waves would.
Many ingress points --> weak exos more often
Few ingress points --> strong exos less often

EDIT: The difference between many ingress point waves and few ingress point waves would have to be much more significant than it is now.

If Exowaves were so weak that normal anti-wave defenses could defeat them (aka, not including anything more than 1 Golem or so), they'd be too weak to matter.  But if Exowaves are still strong enough to smash anti-wave defenses, then the human player should chokepoint as the optimal strategy.  Making Exowaves harder when there are fewer ingress points means encouraging chokepoints even more.
Unless, as you suggest, the ingress-point count factor becomes very dramatic.  If it is 200% normal for 1 ingress, and 50% normal for 5 ingress points, and the same applies to Exos, then maybe? 

Also, are you suggesting waves still come one-at-a-time, just faster/weaker?  Or multiple waves simultaneously?

[Kahuna]

and the same applies to Exos, then maybe?

Yes that's what I meant.

Also, are you suggesting waves still come one-at-a-time, just faster/weaker?  Or multiple waves simultaneously?

I meant faster and weaker. But multiple simultaneous and weaker waves could work too?

[Fealthas]

The one thing I would think about is fabricators. Currently if you get something like a Bomber Starship 5 it takes forever to build unless assisted, and its very awkward to have to micro your engineers everywhere over different planets. It would be nice if fabricators built super fast.

This comes from a player who likes to have all his docks on 1 world...so am I missing something that some of you do to make this process easier?

[Lancefighter]

Hacking.

I feel like in the current state of aiwar, there is no reason to ever not hack a fabricator - its straight up better than any other option. I dont know if this is a bad thing or not, but it gives a nice change of pace to the typical painting of boring systems.