Poll: Big Items For 8.0

[keith.lamothe]

Thats really many options and not so many votes. Hard to choose.. could use at least 2 more votes
Poor turret caps...

Who knows, maybe we'll get through the winners and do this again before 8.0.  Just depends on how things go

[TechSY730]

Am I the only one here that likes how turrets work now?
I like the contention of how many turrets to place on important stuff vs how many on chokepoint vs how many on non-chokepoit border worlds vs how many to place on "inner" low priority planets. It makes you think carefully about average case defensive performance vs your risks if something goes wrong.
I naturally spread my turrets out through different planets anyways. (With judiciously placed tractor turrets, even a small number of offensive turrets can really help out)

Also, I'm going to keep the superweapon vote instead of shifting it to resource economy balance. The new "command station foldouts" solve much of the imbalance between econ station vs harvester upgrades, to the point where it is no longer high on my "list".

[chemical_art]

Voted for stat devaluation and superweapon balace. I find the relationship between fleetships and starships good. However, there isnt enough number space for.the.interactions of superweapons to make thm super .

I did irc one as well, to help give the.community a really easy to access global chat. It would be nice.for new players.who.have quick questions and for vets who are bored.

[keith.lamothe]

Am I the only one here that likes how turrets work now?

(automated machine-gun turrets rotate to face the dissenter)


Anyway, the general idea behind that rework is that you'd still need to pick where to put chokepoint-level turret populations but you could put a smaller amount on any planet if you had the m+c+e for it.

[orzelek]

Am I the only one here that likes how turrets work now?

(automated machine-gun turrets rotate to face the dissenter)


Anyway, the general idea behind that rework is that you'd still need to pick where to put chokepoint-level turret populations but you could put a smaller amount on any planet if you had the m+c+e for it.

Thats why I wrote poor turrets - in open pool discussion they won't get enough votes since only some of us would really like this update. Chokepoints are the norm - trying to break out of it is painful

[keith.lamothe]

Thats why I wrote poor turrets - in open pool discussion they won't get enough votes since only some of us would really like this update. Chokepoints are the norm - trying to break out of it is painful

FWIW I'm not going to put 100% of my AIW time towards the stuff in this poll, so it's certainly possible some form of turret cap rework (or whatever) will still happen, it just won't have the flexibility of implementation it would have if I specifically said "ok, this is a community priority, so I'm focusing on it for a few weeks" or whatever.

[Tridus]

Am I the only one here that likes how turrets work now?
I like the contention of how many turrets to place on important stuff vs how many on chokepoint vs how many on non-chokepoit border worlds vs how many to place on "inner" low priority planets. It makes you think carefully about average case defensive performance vs your risks if something goes wrong.
I naturally spread my turrets out through different planets anyways. (With judiciously placed tractor turrets, even a small number of offensive turrets can really help out)

The turret rework came up because the core turret controllers work differently and their goal is in direct contention to how the rest of the turrets work. When you can throw mk V turrets *everywhere* because they have a per-planet cap but using them means you can't use mk I-III turrets, the result is awkward and suboptimal. If you unlock mk II turrets, puting the full cap of mk 1 and II on one planet is a bit better than using your core turrets there, but is that really worth the K cost when you can't use them on any other planet at all? mk III is clearly better... on one planet.

The other issue is that Keith wanted to encourage distributed defense, and while how the core turrets work does that, the normal turrets do not. Reworking all the turrets so you get fewer of them but can use them everywhere fixes the discontinuity between the normal turrets and the core turrets, encourages distributed defense (like he wants to do), and still lets you build a chokepoint by adding a low-cap building that increases turret caps on one system.

That's what the goal is there. I suspect it'd get more votes if we had more to give. On the upside it seems like a smaller scale change than some of the other stuff on the list, so maybe there will be time for it anyway.

[ZaneWolfe]

In order;

Hacking as its own resource: This was a big discussion and was, iirc, heavily hinted at being included in 7.0, and I am really sad to see it was not. There are so many ways to make hacking into something great that I don't feel the need to list them. Only ask that it gets done, or at least start seeing something on it, before October.

Champions Revisited: I actually like Champs and Nebulae, but I'm also well aware that something needs to be done to make them more integrated with the main game. Personally, I think rather than removing nebula, the best thing to do is to add in more things for the champions to do in normal space. This would go a LONG way IMO to making them more interesting to the majority of players.

Fallen Spire Diversification: There are no words for how much I love playing with the FS. I have never turned them off since I first tried them out and I probably never will. They are that fun to play with. That being said, the shard retrievals are rather tedious at times. And given that shards can now spawn inside your own territory, you can now set things up that you barely have to put any effort into the recoveries. You make sure the shard is going to be on your side of a heavy chokepoint and boom. All you have to do is wait for the shard to get to your HW while the AI smashes pointlessly into the walls of your fortress. Granted you can't do that every time on every map, but even when in AI space the retrievals are a little old. You bring in your biggest, baddest fleet blob and make sure nothing gets close to the shard. It is really a binary thing. You either have enough to do it, (whether its a strong enough fleet or a sturdy enough chokepoint) or you don't. Lastly, and I know its really unlikely to happen, but I would love if the FS campaign could interact in someway with other spire tech you have. Be it the spirefleet ships, the Spire Champion, or the Spire Corvette. (I didn't include the base Spire Starship, since it really isn't true spire tech)

Turret Caps redone: Right now the hardest part of distributed defenses is really easy to point out. The caps on turrets are NOT per planet. Since the number of turrets I have is limited galaxy wide, then I am only got to put them where they can be the most useful. Even if I have the economy to support  2x-5x the current cap of turrets across my empire, I can't actually build that many. This means that a chokepoint is just so much better than trying to distribute my very limited number of stationary defenses across more than 3-4 worlds. Changing them to have per planet caps with a limited number of controllers I could build that would give me a larger cap on my chokepoints would mean that I could actually keep worlds outside of my choke alive without having to give up an unacceptable level of firepower for my chokepoint worlds. Also this would be a good incentive to some, at the very least to me, to play with the Dark Spire again, as right now I can't take worlds with a DaS VG on them unless I want to put a Spire City on that world, because its the only way to get enough defense on that planet come late game (assuming 4/10 DaS settings) without taking away from the worlds that I NEED to have major defenses on.

[Kahuna]

Anyway, the general idea behind that rework is that you'd still need to pick where to put chokepoint-level turret populations but you could put a smaller amount on any planet if you had the m+c+e for it.

How about adding some kind of munitions booster turret/structure with a cap of 3, 4 or something like that. All turrets would have per planet caps but this munitions booster would increase the amount of turrets you can build on a planet. The cap on these munitions boosters could be much higher than 3 or 4 but would cost a lot of energy. It wouldn't be possible to stack these boosters.

So in short:
-Turret Munitions Booster.
-Greatly increases the number of turrets that can be built on a planet.
-Has a cap of 3, 4 or something like that OR has much higher cap but also has high energy cost.
-All turrets would have smaller per planet caps.

[Tridus]

Anyway, the general idea behind that rework is that you'd still need to pick where to put chokepoint-level turret populations but you could put a smaller amount on any planet if you had the m+c+e for it.

How about adding some kind of munitions booster turret/structure with a cap of 3, 4 or something like that. All turrets would have per planet caps but this munitions booster would increase the amount of turrets you can build on a planet. The cap on these munitions boosters could be much higher than 3 or 4 but would cost a lot of energy. It wouldn't be possible to stack these boosters.

So in short:
-Turret Munitions Booster.
-Greatly increases the number of turrets that can be built on a planet.
-Has a cap of 3, 4 or something like that OR has much higher cap but also has high energy cost.
-All turrets would have smaller per planet caps.

That's roughly what was proposed, yeah. Turret caps would come way down, and go per-planet. The turret booster or whatever it's called would increase the caps on a given planet, and be a low cap building.

[Oralordos]

I voted for the IRC chat. It's something that I found very nice in Tome. Having something like it in AI War would be all kinds of cool.

[lovekawakawaii]

Just having a combined Metal + Crystal resource sounds like a very good change for the game. I haven't really used hacking much since it was first introduced, but having it as a number in the menu instead of a tooltip that won't go away also sounds like a a good change. I think it's better for armor to block some amount of damage, that way it interacts differently with different types of units. A percent based armor system is indistinguishable from just adding more health.

[Arkillion]

Except for Planetary/Armor booster and rotters etc..

Hacking is my #1, AI war is not complex enough... need more stuff !
#2 is Hybrids, because I LOVE hybrids and if they would do more stuff that would be awesome
#3 is FS new missions
#4 is the in game chat

[LaughingThesaurus]

I went and voted for a balance of newer content and rebalancing of the older content. So...

1: Hacking as a resource. As it is I don't really hack much because of how vaguely it's represented, and because of how limited it is (you can never bring the response down as far as I know). I think if it were more fleshed out, it'd be another tool in the arsenal for me to actually use, rather than something that sits around unless I'm beyond desperate for progress.
2: Revising and upgrading champions. Nebula are slow and repetitious, beyond the first few times (where they are, admittedly, really cool). I think champions could use a few adjustments. In particular, adjustments must be made so that either nebula are quicker or you don't need to do them... and, of course, reworking everything so that you never end up in a situation of 'my equipment sucks so I can't win'. I'd like victory to always be 100% in the hands of the player, rather than random number generation in some cases. I remember getting a 3-way fight as my first nebula, and it was a very slow loss given that I had no extra anything to help out.
3: Superweapon rescaling. It makes me a little sad to see people use golems, or fight against golems, and report them dying within seconds. Superweapons should be "super"weapons that don't die without a really strong and focused effort. You don't see a swarm of fighters taking down the Death Star-- oh. Well, still. That's how I feel.
4: Downscale the stats. Numbers don't mean much with a whole load of zeroes pinned to them. I'll often look at the stats and be like "Oh dude, 80 million HP, but uh... oh. Most ships have 3 zeroes at the end of their HP anyway, so it really's just 80,000 HP. May as well be." The zeroes are just there doing nothing. Fetch the number clippers and clip them off. Make some refinements.

[lovekawakawaii]

Here's an idea for the hacking. When you hack the AI too much it starts hacking you back.