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

[keith.lamothe]

Anyways, can we PLEASE have special forces rate be added in, as it was intended to be nominated anyways?

Adding stuff midway tends to mess with the results, so I'd like to avoid that.  The nominations are harvested by the AI (regexes, actually), and it cares nothing for your "intentions"

I feel that this is a big enough "fun inhibitor" that I don't think it can wait another week or two to be considered.

It's been in the game long enough without serious misadventure and there are enough ongoing games having plenty of fun that I think that's simply not true   Can it shut you down on Diff 10?  Sure, and good for it

But I just put in a change for them for 6.003 anyway, since the numbers that had been there were basically the first-guess and it has had a significant impact all around.

[Lancefighter]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3569927/Screenshot_2012_10_28_16_51_31.png
Special forces you say?

[keith.lamothe]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3569927/Screenshot_2012_10_28_16_51_31.png
Special forces you say?

They're just getting started

[Lancefighter]

Theyve stopped responding when I roam around systems blowing stuff up with my spire fleet.. I hope theyre planning something good

[TechSY730]

But I just put in a change for them for 6.003 anyway, since the numbers that had been there were basically the first-guess and it has had a significant impact all around.

Thanks.

Yea I may have...overstated my view some, but thanks for your consideration.

[Winge]

My vote is for Gravity emitting units.  Really, that applies to both sides:  they are just way too strong.  My recommendation would be that the provide an integer division per mark (if needed, could use bit shifts, could actually work out pretty well, although a divisor of 32 might be a tad too strong for a Mark V unit...).  I also voted for the Colony Ships of Exploding Death, although I was considering the Ravenous Shadow too.  Both of these seem a little bit too out of control.  I like the scenarios themselves, but if you do not go anti-Starbase early on, then these scenarios are very brutal.  Moreso than even some of the later ones (well, now that the stacking multipliers have been brought back in line).

[Lancefighter]

Remember when I said they were planning something?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3569927/Screenshot_2012_10_28_23_14_08.png

I figured it out now.

Ill give you a hint. Two thousand mk2 zenith bombards has an alpha strike in excess of 700 million damage.

I estimate the fleet shown above has a little over a billion raw hp. Bombards have a 2x bonus to everything in my fleet. Their alpha strike was enough to reduce a GAME ENDING SPIRE CAPITAL FLEET to nothing. Please tell me you dont think that is balanced?

edit; bonus pic, 30 seconds later! (most of the stuff had been dead for a while before i got around to pausing.. the shock..)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3569927/Screenshot_2012_10_28_23_25_58.png

[Hearteater]

AI: Game ending Spire fleet huh?  How'd you like to see MY game ending fleet?

[Lancefighter]

The silly part is, the AI could walk that fleet onto either of my chokepoints, and outrange all of my static defenses forever, easily winning the game with a little bit of micro.

Thankfully, special forces will never be released as threat.

[TechSY730]

Bombards have a 2x bonus to everything in my fleet.

Well, that was part of your problem...you used a strong concentration of units that are weak to a unit type the AI got and was packing its special forces with (as for whatever reason, it seems like your AI decided to focus on long range stuff for its SF, hence the strong favor for zombards and missile frigates).

However, that does bring up a good point. Their base damage and raw range are enough that they don't really need bonuses. Giving them bonuses makes them near uncounterable in some cases. This is a very similar issue that the hunter/killers have with their 2x structural, 2x ultra-heavy, and 2x heavy bonuses (the H/K has so much DPS, is doesn't need these. With them, they start feeling really cheap and uncounterable, in a bad, unfun way)

That, and it may be a good idea to tighten up the special forces strength cap, so it can't bypass the purpose of the special forces ship count cap quite so easily by often choosing low cap ships. As you can see in this case, the special forces strength cap failed to do its job (especially because there are around the same number of zombards as missile frigates, which if the special froces strength cap was in a sane place, the ship cap cost scaling would of dominated its choices, as it would run out of "strength room" to pack more zombards in, and it would have to fill in the remaining strength with missile frigates or something else).


Wait, why was the special forces on your planet? Did you "wall off" parts of the galaxy that still had SF posts on both sides, so it had to route through your planet? Was that actually threat fleet?

[Lancefighter]

Focus? No. It had 2k fighters. And 2k microfighters. And 2k bulletproof. And 2k bombers.

It also had 2k zbombards (which it unlocked after all the rest, mind you).

Not really sure how zbombards come in 2k packages, when their ship cap is usually 1/5th of everything else

[Faulty Logic]

A few questions:

What difficulty are you playing on?
Why do you only have 2 planets with over 400 AIP?
Why do you not have spire battleships/dreadnoughts?
Why did you not warhead the special forces?

I do agree that the SF should be at least semi-proportional to ship caps, and that the zombard is particularly nasty in large groups.

[TechSY730]

Focus? No. It had 2k fighters. And 2k microfighters. And 2k bulletproof. And 2k bombers.

It also had 2k zbombards (which it unlocked after all the rest, mind you).

Not really sure how zbombards come in 2k packages, when their ship cap is usually 1/5th of everything else

How was it between the time the AI got zombards and, well, the above?
It may have opted to get 2k bombards instead of 10k more of other triangle ships.
Though, seeing it is unlikely the SF ship cap would allowed for 10k ships (especially on top of the ships it already had) that seems to be a strong sign that the SF strength cap (which is weighted based on cap) is WAY too loose.

That, and there may be a bug where the AI is not always paying full "cost" for SF ships based on ship cap scaling. Aka, it should take the AI 5 times as long to get 2000 zombards as it would take to get 2000 of a triangle ship. If it wasn't even close to that magnitude that long, you may have been the "lucky" guy to trip over the bug.
Do you have the special forces logs? (are those in the normal reinforcement logs?)

[Lancefighter]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3569927/Screenshot_2012_10_28_15_55_45.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3569927/Screenshot_2012_10_28_16_51_31.png

Bombards have been gaining numbers similarly to other units for a while now.

its an 8/8 game, the 2/20 is number of planets with enemies on them?
I had just finished researching battleships and dn, was building them while this excursion took place
I simply didn't notice the 2k bombards earlier. I could easily cut through everything else with my fleet.. Except enemies that outrange me and have the burst to instantly kill the entire fleet. Also, they didn't seem to want to fight me..

[Faulty Logic]

the 2/20 is number of planets with enemies on them?

Riiiight. 

8/8 SF should not be able to challenge a five-city FS fleet, even at ~400 aip. I agree that the zombard cost to the ai needs to be examined, but don't think the ship itself is terribly OP (how would 8,000 bombers have been? Or 450 spire blade spawners?).