10/10 difficulty

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, for some reason I had mixed up Kahuna's second 10/10 win with a no-golems game and thought it had been pulled off more or less vanilla.  Turns out that's not true   But there were a bunch of crazy disadvantages flying around there too so it's hard to say where the balance fell.

Faulty Logic's games did have resistance-10 and dyson-10, which is certainly a big advantage.  On the other hand one was crosshatch, which I thought would get into the mathematically-impossible realm on 10/10 because that's just so much territory to defend.  But as you pointed out there were specific tactics to get around the fact that no gates were being raided (to really seal it off would have been fatal, therefore to try was pointless).

Anyway, mostly I'm just looking at making sure the available AIP reduction isn't letting 10/10 AIs get murdered in their sleep.  Kinda anticlimactic, etc   A few other things, too, but on balance it looks like most of the runaway-ness of recent wins has to do with specific units being more useful than the game is prepared for.  And/or the consequences of having them being too low.

[Wanderer]

I've been thinking this through a bit more and with the Logistics stations in play for defense and Riots having extreme range for their ED weapons unless they're nerfed into oblivion the Logistics station will pretty much always allow a kiting defense in this combo.

Now, the question to me isn't "Should the tactic be blown to pieces" it's how is it brought down to a mangeable level where it's not the 'only answer' for any difficult defense, similar to EMP/Tazer concerns. 

The riot control Laser I has a range of 23,000, the MG has 14,000.  The shotguns are 12k in range as well.  I think this is where any attempt to balance this combination should truly be applied.  Tazers and Tractors basically go out to 4-5k in range.  I'm just not sure what the design idea behind those weapons having such long range was, other than the ED might be considered pointless if you were already being shot to death.  However with that range really the only things that could get at the Riots (with halved speed on the enemy and a boost on the riots) would be snipers, Blade spawners, and other infinite distance shooters.

Of course, part of the counter to this is the fact that it requires a ton of micro to keep in effect and they really don't have an amazing fire-rate, merely 1 shot/second/laser.  I'll have to give this a test run before I make any serious suggestions about it and try to determine if it's as effective as it appears to be on paper... and Carriers are immune to... errr.... no they're not.  Hunh.  You could stall out Carriers?

[Hearteater]

Two thoughts on ED, Logistics, and kiting:

1) Maybe ED and Logistics/Gravity shouldn't stack, but apply the lower only?

2) Maybe ED (at least at higher difficulties) should self-repair on all ships (at least AI ships) over time.  If ships not taking ED started repairing after 10-20 seconds, the breathing room kiting gives you would be reduced over the long run, but not for short periods.  Honestly, I'd be ok if all ships auto-repaired ED after a period.

[Kahuna]

The Botnet's already on the chopping block, otherwise Kahuna had a rather cheeseless win.  Kahuna doesn't tend to get into the nitty gritty of what happened and when, so it can be hard to tell if there are specific items or tactics that were more (or less) effective.  However, that was a pretty significant combo of Minor Factions, particularly allowing for the Super-Hybrid/Dyson plot in any form.

The only other significant tactic that I was able to witness was instead of using Military CCs logistics were used to slow the enemy and a reliance on kiting and long range turrettry.  Kahuna, tell me if that's inaccurate?

I used the Botnet Golem mainly for defense and it did help a lot but Cursed, Black Widow or Armored Golem would have worked too. I think I would have preferred Black Widow because of the engine damage and the tractor beams. Destroy engines --> push the enemy back with the tracktors --> stand down mode to let the enemy ships go (and pretty much stay still cause engines are gone) and push back more enemies. Works with Riots too. I didn't unlock any additional  Riots btw. Actually I might post my research order to my doom topic.

I used MarkII Military CCs on the 2 battlegrounds and Economic CCs on the other planets. Previously I used Logistics but I wanted to try Military CCs and it worked.
So MarkII Military CCs and turrets. Specifically Sniper, Spider, Missile, Tracktor and Gravitional turrets. Later I unlocked MarkII Missile, Tracktor, Gravitional and Heavy Beam turrets. No Forts were used. Some EMP mines later in the game. I only had MarkIIs of the ships. So I focused on strong defense and doing (somewhat)surgical (deep?)strikes on important targets(ARS, Golems, CS-A1s, AIP reduction) with an easily rebuildable fleet. No expensive MarkIIIs/IVs. I also tried to avoid losing the Starships. I also kept only 6 planets.

About the Minor Factions and AI options. What I should have done.
Disable Human Colony Rebellions, set Zenith Miners to ~8, set spirecraft to 4 and Neinzul Preservation Wardens to 2. Set both enabled Hybrids to 4 and the enabled Advanced Hybrids to 4.

I set Neinzul Rocketry Corps to 10/10 because the missiles never really did anything @ 4/10. At 10/10 at least they cost me few hundred ships and few "not so well protected" CCs during the game. Sometimes the Lightning Warheads damaged my Starships and/or Golems. Not a big deal though. I think they should be made more dangerous. Hell.. maybe Hybrids could do something nasty with them?

[Kahuna]

Kahuna doesn't tend to get into the nitty gritty of what happened and when, so it can be hard to tell if there are specific items or tactics that were more (or less) effective.

Yeah sorry about that. School taught me to hate writing (and reading) If you want to know something just ask^^

[Faulty Logic]

Wanderer's tactical evaluation of my games is mostly correct. Kiting was not limited to the Riot Starships, my entire fleet could do it with a log command and 78 speed boosters. The resistance and dyson gatlings certainly saved me some headaches, but were never critical. Finally, for DCs, on spokes or crosshatch, anywhere they are, you can find and pop them.

Also...

surely until someone beats 10/10 with the Core and a Technologist Raider we've still got a monsterously tough game in there? 

Challenge Accepted.

[_K_]

As for the kiting problem, the riot starships have very weak DPS on their own, especially on the long range weapons. I'd suggest trying to tweak the logic of the AI units so they dont all chase the kiting units, but instead go for the command station and then either retreat, or go raiding other player systems.

I mean, an ideal smart player would quickly kill the CC, atteck the next system, leaving some units camping the wormhole in case the opponent sends his fleet to defend the system.
The most stupid thing you can do against units that can endlessly kite you is try to chase them.

In general, i believe the AI should be using more non-focused attacks, hitting the player from many sides, forcing either a fleet split, or loss of systems. Direct battles on player's most fortified planets is totally inefficient unless you can crush the defence.
Sure, in case thats the only place you can send waves to, you have no other options. But the ships marked as threat could get smarter about when and what to attack.

Among other things, this would require the AI to reevaluate turret power so that it doesnt send pointless agression towards well-defended systems.
So yeah, thats what i suggest. I know you guys are proud of your AI, but apparently there are still many things where it messes up or doesnt work at full efficiecy. And we do want the 10/10 to be as smart as possible, right?

[TechSY730]

As for the kiting problem, the riot starships have very weak DPS on their own, especially on the long range weapons. I'd suggest trying to tweak the logic of the AI units so they dont all chase the kiting units, but instead go for the command station and then either retreat, or go raiding other player systems.

I mean, an ideal smart player would quickly kill the CC, atteck the next system, leaving some units camping the wormhole in case the opponent sends his fleet to defend the system.
The most stupid thing you can do against units that can endlessly kite you is try to chase them.

In general, i believe the AI should be using more non-focused attacks, hitting the player from many sides, forcing either a fleet split, or loss of systems. Direct battles on player's most fortified planets is totally inefficient unless you can crush the defence.
Sure, in case thats the only place you can send waves to, you have no other options. But the ships marked as threat could get smarter about when and what to attack.

Among other things, this would require the AI to reevaluate turret power so that it doesnt send pointless agression towards well-defended systems.
So yeah, thats what i suggest. I know you guys are proud of your AI, but apparently there are still many things where it messes up or doesnt work at full efficiecy. And we do want the 10/10 to be as smart as possible, right?

If your command station or other valuable structure is exposed (like if there is no forcefield), there is a high chance that the AI will start focusing on that. However, it would be good if they could start focusing their attack a bit earlier than that. In particular, on the offense, the AI should be wary about sending a ship with ship type A that is slower than a ship with ship type B if B's speed >> A's speed (making sure to take gravity and engine damage into account as well)


Threat ships, when choosing a planet, do spread out and pick rather randomly which wormhole to stalk, or at least they are supposed to. In game, they seem to be far more likely to just stalk the planet they are closest too. Not sure if this a bug in their planet selection logic, or what.


Agreed on the AI is undervaluing turret firepower thing

[Martyn van Buren]

Also...

surely until someone beats 10/10 with the Core and a Technologist Raider we've still got a monsterously tough game in there? 

Challenge Accepted.

Excellent.  When you do that I'm going to feel a lot safer about killer robots taking over the world.

[Cinth]

~snip~ Carriers are immune to... errr.... no they're not.  Hunh.  You could stall out Carriers?

Don't carriers have inf engine health? Wouldn't that make them immune?

[Mánagarmr]

Carriers are immune to engine damage, yes.