Is there a reason to expand?

[Quitch]

I recall the tutorial saying you would typically take 30-40 planets on an 80 planet map. Well, I'm clearly playing the game VERY differently.

In an AI sector there are very few mobile threats bar the odd patrol, and a massive wedge of ships deals with them no problem without breaking its stride. Plus, the less planets you have the more defensible you become which is important considering the turret caps. A large territory looks self-defeating to me, as you expand you increase AI Progress so need to destroy warp gates to limit attack vectors which in turn leads to bigger and bigger attacks as AI Progress increases.

Meanwhile the caps on ships means I've never found much of a need for more than a normal docks and an advanced factory, this still allows me to pump out huge forces which I busy myself with scouting and territory maintenance.

At the start of the game it's about establishing a resource base, taking six or seven nearby high resource areas and one advanced factory, but once that's done I never feel a need to expand my base. I don't worry about advanced research because it takes a lot of knowledge to make a new ship useful and I'd prefer to spend that on existing tech. I might clear out ion cannons in sectors I need to travel, and my ships will destroy command posts too close to the warp routes, but that's it. There's simply very little threat in an AI sector which stops you from merrily sending forces from base to their target eight hops away. Of a force of 500 ships I'd expect to lose twenty to thirty en-route, leaving me with more than enough to destroy almost any target I might have in mind (usually a data centre).

Finally when the time comes to destroy the enemy homeworld I'll clear out the sector before it and send ships there in the hundreds and once I'm at critical mass, launch in.

I suppose I just don't see the point in masses of planets which are only a danger to me, I seem to get enough resources from seven or eight planets for everything except starships.

On difficulty seven I'm easily able to replace losses from raids and rebuild forces so I don't need more planets. Perhaps on higher difficulties, but it's just so easy to move through unmined enemy sectors, and if they are mined usually a counter-sniper, tachyon drone and a few turrets will do the job and keep the route safe.

I've been (perhaps prematurely, I'm going to fiddle the difficulty in other ways, higher progress, more aggressive personalities) thinking of ways to give me more reasons to expand. At first I thought higher AI progress would means I needed the resources to get out there, but my problem with that is it devalues data centres since by the time you've built a force and destroyed the centre, you've probably regained most of that progress in auto-AI progress. What I think would make for an interesting trial is the ability to link the AI progress to the number of planets the AI owns, with most of the galaxy under its control the AI progress counter ticks up pretty quick, so in response you take out planets and suffer the short-term hit of a progress gain while getting the long-term bonus of slowing the automatic-progress. This would probably hit a critical point mid-game where you've slowed the progress but taken a lot of boosts from taking over sectors and now need to launch some desperate raids against data centres to get it down before you're overwhelmed.

This gives the player damn good reason to expand and brings command posts more into play than they are now, but an obvious couple of downsides are that there's a danger of the game peaking prior to the end, the point where you've slowed AI progress down and own your territory and also it plays contrary to the game's intention of the AI becoming more and more deadly as the game progresses. Still, the way I play at the moment and the opponents I have faced the most difficulty point was protecting my first sector and I've been pretty safe after that.

I'm going to try some more aggressive opponents in my next game though, they would need to destroy more than I can build and thus force me to expand for additional resources. Currently I easily outproduce raid losses which is why I don't need to expand.

[Revenantus]

Given that you can have 30 space docks simultaneously manufacturing ships, many of them assisted by engineers, it doesn't seem possible that resource production could ever exceed the player's ability to utilise it. Therefore, I think the main factor affecting how many planets you'd want at any given time is how quickly your ships are being destroyed and therefore need to be replaced.

Destroying the warp gates adjacent to a system allows it to be defended by a fairly minor force, so as long as it has, say 5, resource points, the increase in the rate of ship production seems to be a net gain over the increased number of AI ships. This is true to an even greater degree if you have unlocked the ungraded command stations. Obviously it's important to consider how many adjacent systems there are and therefore how much you will need to raise the AI progress in order to make the system secure.

I recently played a game against the AI on difficulty 7 (moderate AI types) and was victorious with 15 planets. Admittedly I didn't need more planets to win, but maybe I could have won more swiftly if I'd been more expansive. I agree with you that the best early strategy is to establish a resource base and take an advanced factory.

I'm going to play a couple of games against the technologist AI types, I have a suspicion that being more expansive will be much more beneficial given that I expect to lose ships at a much greater rate. Again, the question is whether the increased production will offset the additional AI ships.

I'd definitely agree with you that the AI often doesn't do much to prevent the player sending large forces on long expeditions to valuable targets. Although, the mad bomber AI type is much harder to do this against as it always deploys bomber starships towards your forces which tend to inflict much heavier losses. Maybe the enemy AI ships should be more likely to leave their command posts and attack your forces the further away you are from a system you control?

Maybe the way of looking at is not, "Do I need this planet to win?", but "Will I win more quickly if I take this planet?"

[Quitch]

The problem, I think, with speed of victory is that you control the game time, so time spent waiting for ships is not an issue.

EDIT: Though a more aggressive AI progress timer might do that.

Perhaps this is just a sign that a higher difficulty level is for me as the AI should chew up ships at a faster rate.

[Revenantus]

True, in the absence of the AI progress timer the player controls rate of progression, however the player could still challenge themselves to defeat the AI in a shorter period of time.

I'm not yet sure whether a high AI progress timer will make me more expansive or selective with my targets; I think it will make lightly defended planets with fewer resource points considerably more attractive given the smaller amount of time they take to conquer.

[x4000]

Wow, this is a really interesting thread, and there's too much here for me to quote directly from it.  The main takeaway that I have from this, however, is that it's just too easy to make very deep raids into AI territory.

Quitch -- while your idea of tying the AI Progress to the number of planets the AI holds is potentially very interesting, in practice I think that just means that the AI will kill you even faster if it is going to, and then over time it will get easier and easier if you do survive.  Other than that, with the rest of your comments there was just lots me nodding.

Revenatus -- same thing, in general just lots of me nodding.  I also agree that the higher AI progress will encourage the capture of fewer planets, not more.  Also, playing on higher AI types means that you have to be more selective with targets, too.

Anyway, so from what I'm hearing I think the solution is pretty clear for me:  I need to make some adjustments in how the AI reacts to deep raids into its territory, and I also need to make it focus more on wormhole defense, like the players do.  It has some turrets, etc, near wormholes at the start, but I don't think it adds to those over time right now.

Even so, with those changes, I expect that having a fewer number of planets will be a viable strategy if you are careful.  I think that's this game's version of a turtle, in many respects.  However, what I hope to accomplish is making it so that you can't have SO few planets.  I'll have a version 1.008F in a little while, which will include some AI shifts there.  I'll post a link here when it's ready, and we'll see what you think when you later have some time to check it out.

Thanks for the great discussion and suggestions, both of you!