Poll: Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: AI-side (I)

[Cinth]

What if the AI Eye wasn't protected by all the guard posts on a planet? Maybe kill off 3/4 the guard posts and the AI Eye goes poof? I think that might work just as well as changing what mark ships it produces.

I'm not sure. That's a lot more arbitrary than killing all posts. "Kill all the guardposts" are easier to naturally understand than "kill most of them".

We have three ways of dealing with Eyes now.
Brute force while dealing with its spawns. Raids that don't trigger it but are aimed directly at it.
Killing the guard posts.
All 3 are time consuming, but really only one has a rather nasty cost in. (potentially)
I ran into one guarded by an Alarm, 2x counter, 2x SF.  Really all I want to do is get at the systems on the other side but first I have to clean off this one... and with all that ... I don't wanna lol

That's really what spawned the idea. Unhooking posts with side-effects for killing them. And then seen a  lot of fuss about Spire shield + Eyes (raids and bomber starships anyone?) and was like... dude, this could totally work.


Edit: Fixed my fail quote box :p

[Kahuna]

Nothing is more fun than AI Eye + Spire Shield Thing with Ion Cannon and Zombie/Laser Guardian under the shield
-_____________- the next time I'll just nuke it

[Hearteater]

Ways of dealing with an Eye:
1) Destroyed all the guard posts: either rush them down while it spawns, use small starship-heavy raids, or cloaked assassination teams
2) Brute force the Eye down while it spawns: Artillery Golem does this well
3) Destroy the AI Command Station and speed build your own Command Station, which destroys the Eye regardless of Guard Posts
4) Nuke the system, which destroys the Eye (and pretty much everything else)

[kasnavada]

Ideas of dealing with eyes...

For balance issue :
Make it so every ship it spawns removes some of its health, until it dies. The eye balance can they be ajusted easily.

Make eyes react to other triggers. Currently, eyes react to the number of ship. Which make them useless against golems, uber with ships with a cap of 270+. For example :
- maintain (ship * 100) * neighouring system cleared.
- maintain (ship * 20) guard post killed in system.
- maintain 1:2 firepower  instead of ship number.

Make eyes depend on destructible objects (ships / guardians / other) instead of guard posts. For example, the eye spanws with a handful of bombers with needs to be destroyed to remove the guard post. A visual link to the objects protecting the eye would make it make it simple to understand what to do to kill them.

Have a train orbit the eye to protect it from damage.

To make them more fun :
Create "eye" AI mode with more eyes. Create different eyes, some with 200k hp, some with 1 billion... having 10 different kind of possible eyes like with got guard posts and starships.

Create specialized eyes, some which would spawn only bombers, some starships...

Also, "randomly" generate groups of 50+ ships when (condition) like :
- other guard posts are attacked,
- alarm,
- neighbour system attacked,
-

I'd love to see eyes getting some more love . In my opinion, the major factor of "need a nerf" eyes currently have, is that they just have a single way of being easily defeated.

PS : Of course, number shown in post are indicative, and need to be balanced.

[Cinth]

Nothing is more fun than AI Eye + Spire Shield Thing with Ion Cannon and Zombie/Laser Guardian under the shield
-_____________- the next time I'll just nuke it

Naw... just get enough Raid ss and bomber ss to it. Raids clean under the glass and protect your bombers. Even works pretty good against grav drilled worlds.

Ways of dealing with an Eye:
1) Destroyed all the guard posts: either rush them down while it spawns, use small starship-heavy raids, or cloaked assassination teams
2) Brute force the Eye down while it spawns: Artillery Golem does this well
3) Destroy the AI Command Station and speed build your own Command Station, which destroys the Eye regardless of Guard Posts
4) Nuke the system, which destroys the Eye (and pretty much everything else)

And I learn another tid-bit lol.  Cloaked ships was on my try to do list. And nukes are bad for your health :p

[Kahuna]

Nothing is more fun than AI Eye + Spire Shield Thing with Ion Cannon and Zombie/Laser Guardian under the shield
-_____________- the next time I'll just nuke it

Naw... just get enough Raid ss and bomber ss to it. Raids clean under the glass and protect your bombers. Even works pretty good against grav drilled worlds.

Ye but early game I don't always build RaidSSs. They're expensive and fragile. Ofc I should in that situation.

[Cinth]

Nothing is more fun than AI Eye + Spire Shield Thing with Ion Cannon and Zombie/Laser Guardian under the shield
-_____________- the next time I'll just nuke it

Naw... just get enough Raid ss and bomber ss to it. Raids clean under the glass and protect your bombers. Even works pretty good against grav drilled worlds.

Ye but early game I don't always build RaidSSs. They're expensive and fragile. Ofc I should in that situation.

Know what ya mean. Having 4 eyes back to back in the first 5 planets can change one's strategy for dealing with such things