Champions

[Kraiz]

EDIT:  Apparently my browser did some weird stuff when I copy/pasted this from word.  Fix'd

So, I recently returned to AI War, and got a few friends into it.

We were playing a Multiplayer game, and I was fulfilling a Champion role.  Since I had played extensively before, I felt it would be good to let them try to play the game on their own with me giving support and strategic / tactical advice where needed.

However, I found playing the role of a Champion only player to be rather disappointing.  The few maps we tried to play on, the Nebulae were 8+ hops away.  I didn't want to rush out to these worlds and alert every planet on my way, so I decided to get some XP and just use my Shadow Frigate to support the others' positions by Neutering and taking out stray threat ships and Hybrids (I threw them in headfirst with Hybrids on.  Playing AI War where you can barely survive is the best way to play )

Early game this worked out quite well.  Neutered a couple M1 or M2 planets on our borders while they moved to grab other objectives like ARS and a Black Widow Golem (Okay, I "might" be a jerk for that one)

Although, I found I was more or less useless in terms of what I was capable of doing to higher mark planets, or even fleets of ships more than a few dozen strong.  Guard Posts don't generate enough XP on their own to really be a solid source of XP to make the Champions worthwhile.  Even if I were playing with several veteran players, it would take a while to clear and neuter the path to the closest nebula entrance (8 Hops was the closest on one map.  One map, the closest was 14...)

With the Guardians being redone, would it be a feasible option to award XP for Guardians and Hybrids?  Guardians are pretty tough opponents, especially as there are usually multiple per planet, in addition to support ships near the guard posts they are at.

In response, I would be a proponent of increasing the rate at which the levels increase their XP Requirements to deal with the faucet of XP.

I posted this on forums instead of MantisBT to discuss the matter.  I'm not wanting Champions to be super powerful for the Frigates, as they are Frigates after all.  Although, I think there needs to be more for a Champion Only player to do until the Human player can secure a few Nebula entrances for him/her to gain larger XP amounts and unlocks from to become more of an asset.?
is would also keep Champions useful later game when a Human player no longer wants to ?
increase AIP or alert further systems trying to move champions to Nebula areas.?

[TechSY730]

Yet another repost on yet another relevant thread.

I think to "fix" champions, I think adding more nebula missions, possibly new types (like something that requires going out of the nebula at some point in the mission), balancing rewards, (including the module unlocks may not be compatible with hull unlocks that seems to crop up sometimes), and possibly adding someway to unlock stuff outside of nebulae missions, though possibly in a less "time effecient" manner. Nebula missions should remain the primary way to unlock stuff, but some sort of fallback just in case something goes wrong making nebulae too hard with the unlocks you got or something, or you want to reward helping out normal players more directly would be a great idea.



*fix is in quotes, as I'm not sure if there is something broken, just merely something lacking

Something I mentioned up there but didn't really expand on is the unlock system. I can understand randomizing rewards some, as it fits with the procedurally generated nature of the game. But right now, for something so fundamental to whether the unit will be awesome or just "decent", there is too much randomness. Combine this with a lack of ways to get unlocks (nebulas only right now, which I talked about above) and no way to "respec", you can often times get punished for bad upgrade decisions before you really know what you need or be screwed over by the RNG in truly unfun ways and magnitudes. Yes, this sort of thing exists for the rest of the game, but not to the magnitude where it can almost ruin the whole point of a mechanic, and not in such unfun ways.

I would love for some sort of tweaks, small-ish additions to the unlock, experience, and upgrade systems to reduce the magnitude of these effects. The "randomness" and "punish for unlocking before getting relevant info" aspects should most certainly stay, just like the rest of the game has. But they should be toned down some to keep champions fun and "feeling fair", even in "pretty bad cases" of RNG rolls or minor to moderate mistakes.

[Kraiz]

Sorry, was written somewhat hastily.  Didn't do a lot of looking about before I posted this. 

But yeah, I agree that the randomness is nice, but the randomness is either I have great luck with the unlocks or I have my closest nebula 14 hops away...

I just created a new singleplayer game with Normal+Champ, and my first nebula was 1 jump away.  The first nebula brought me from lv1 to Lv10, which seems a bit ridiculous considering how hard it is to even get to L5 outside of a nebula.  Bridging the gap sounds like the best option to me instead of reducing nebula payouts (They have more risk involved with failure, so I think the rewards should be higher).  I think the Hybrids and Guardians giving XP would be a good way to bridge the divide.  In terms of what I think the differences between the XP payouts should be for them, I have no clue.  I'd imagine it would be somethink akin to Guardians > Hybrids > Guard Posts.  I put Hybrids beneath Guardians because the Champs absolutely shred Hybrids pound for pound, and they usually come in packs.  Guardians are a bit more of a threat, especially higher mark guardians like Beam Guardians (OUCH)

[Tridus]

XP isn't really the biggest factor in how powerful your champion is.

Sure, you need it. But if you get to level 20 without doing a nebula, you're still going to have a frigate with the base modules. If you do two nebulae, you're going to unlock destroyer size hulls, likely an additional racial hull, and some extra modules to mount. Since the destroyer can mount more modules, more heavy modules, and higher level modules, it's vastly more powerful than a frigate of the same level.

IIRC what the starting frigate can unlock and use caps out at level 5 or 6 if you don't start doing nebulae. So, adding more XP outside won't help in this case.

[Kraiz]

That is true, but I can't come up with a fair and balanced idea to unlock new hulls or equipment without nebulae.

The only thing that comes to mind is Shards.  XP Determines your unlock points and gives you higher mark versions of existing equipment.  Shards are awarded for destroying Nebula minions / Guard Posts / Guardians / Hybrids.  The shards act as Research Points, which are spent to choose from a random list of modules.  After all, you're collecting Salvage and scraps from ships you destroy, they won't always come together exactly how you want every t.ime.

The only thing I don't like about this, though, is that it's another value to keep track of.  Shadow Charge, XP, and Shards is only 3, but I still think that it could be done with XP in some manner without the need for separate values for unlocks.

[Tridus]

There's a thread with some ideas over here, take a look. Short version is some ideas like the AI having relic caches that you need to capture/destroy/whatever, and that'd let you get unlocks outside of a nebula. You'd still need XP for the unlock points to boost module levels.

[TIE Viper]

Here's an idea:
We've all been burned an one point or another discovering our choice of spec path turned out to be wrong.  How about sacrificing a few levels of points in order to respec?  Depending on the circumstances, I'd sacrifice a few points to get a few more back and change the unlocks if I picked a wrong spec path.

It's difficult at the moment to link a mantis to here since I'm using my phone, otherwise I would.  But I'll submit the mantis report.

EDIT:  Ok, I had the mantis up for a while, but I'm on a real computer now so I'll link it now to make it easier.
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11654

[LaughingThesaurus]

I actually dig the XP debt system that Space Pirates and Zombies uses. When you respec a category, you get a bit of XP debt that you have to repay before you can start gaining XP again. You never outright lose levels from it, but it means it takes longer to level for a little while.

[Cinth]

Except in SPAZ (fun game that is) you have an infinite supply of zombies to grind out XP.  With champs, that xp source is finite.  What you'll end up doing is getting all the xp you can gather then respecing and unlocking with no real penalty. 

[LaughingThesaurus]

If you're waiting until endgame to do your respecs, then you're going through the hardest part of progressing potentially gimped.

[Cinth]

Seeing that all the nebula can be completed with missiles and lasers? 

[TIE Viper]

'Can be' and 'definitely have to be' are not the same thing.  Sure I can go through the nebulas only upgrading the basic modules and I have on occasions, but not always.  It would be nice to be able to give up a couple of points to respec into something more useful should I be put into that situation. 

I'm thinking that if you feel like you're in a situation where you think that respec on your champion would make that much of a difference, there would probably be a few points in upgrades you (certainly I) would choose to lose in order to readapt your champion more effectively to the current situation. 

I wasn't thinking about anything extensive.  But cost affordable one time for sure while still being able to specialize.  Definitely not more than two times, and maybe not even more than one time without losing enough points to really be able to specialize. 


A Question:  For all of us achievement hunters (hunters was not the first word that sprang to mind ) out there, is the ability to get the swiss army knife achievement as dependent on us praying to the all powerful RNG gods to get a good order for the nebula scenarios as it feels like?  In other words, to get it, do we have to win every nebula under optimal conditions?  If so, then the order we receive them seems to play an overriding factor compared to player skill in getting it.  I'm wondering if my thoughts on this are correct and if that was the intent?

[Lord Fiddlemeister]

Maybe respeccing could cost resources instead of experience? Either have the champion ship wait for a certain time (10 minutes?) until he's done "respeccing" his ship or have a normal player speed up this process with engineers, but having it cost metal and crystal.

Dying too might work in the same way, meaning that a champion player has a respawn time, but can be quickly rebuild by normal players but costing resources. This way, dying is not the end of the game but still has a penalty. Right now, dying is just another means of transportation for me at times ^^

[TIE Viper]

Dying too might work in the same way, meaning that a champion player has a respawn time, but can be quickly rebuild by normal players but costing resources. This way, dying is not the end of the game but still has a penalty. Right now, dying is just another means of transportation for me at times ^^

I actually really like the way the dying/transportation mechanic works as it is.


The idea behind it costing level up points is to keep your initial unlocks a significant choice.  I don't know that putting it on a timer and/or it costing m+c to respec might not keep your initial choices from mattering.  At that point all it would take would be some time to be able to specialize in anything unlocked.  Given the amount of unlockables being from a relatively small group, I think your choices of which to unlock should matter.  If we had a pool of say 50 modules to choose from, I'd feel much differently about that.