Prerelease 1.201A (Pausing for many ships, economy, more bg art upgrades)

[x4000]

We'll see what everyone thinks when they see it in practice.

[CautiousChaos]

sounds better to me too!

[x4000]

The new version arriveth:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,966.msg6049.html#msg6049

And with that, I'm off to catch up on some sleep.  Talk to everyone tomorrow!

[Admiral]

Why is this now 1.201 instead of 1.014?

Odd. I guessed why you upped the number. I even guessed why you upped to 1.2 instead of 1.1. But, I can't for the life of me guess why you went to 1.201 instead of 1.20 or 1.200! LOL

[Admiral]

Well, if they are paused, then they are the lowest priority of all, I'd say (except if it is a command station).  They are not getting any closer to being done, and they can't do anything to hurt the AI or help the human player.  They are inert.  As soon as they come back to life, or the AI has nothing better to do on that planet, they'll go after these inert buildings anyway.  I see what you mean about abuse, but I'm worried more about making the game more difficult for newcomers with too complex a system for this.  Hence why I'm trying to alter the AI logic instead to combat the abuse potential.

Obvious strategy (exploit?):

Build tons of turrets. Pause at 99% completion. Put high-value target behind them. Let enemy attack and ignore incomplete paused turrets. Unpause and watch the mayhem when they complete in 1 second.

Do this for all defenses and now you have essentially un-killable defenses for all your first attacks at those locations.

[x4000]

Why is this now 1.201 instead of 1.014?

Odd. I guessed why you upped the number. I even guessed why you upped to 1.2 instead of 1.1. But, I can't for the life of me guess why you went to 1.201 instead of 1.20 or 1.200! LOL

I added the 1 at the end because people have trouble with 1.2 versus 1.002 verus 1.002 (which never existed).  So, with having 1.201, it makes it pretty clear what is going on and easy to differentiate.  That's the only reason.

[x4000]

Well, if they are paused, then they are the lowest priority of all, I'd say (except if it is a command station).  They are not getting any closer to being done, and they can't do anything to hurt the AI or help the human player.  They are inert.  As soon as they come back to life, or the AI has nothing better to do on that planet, they'll go after these inert buildings anyway.  I see what you mean about abuse, but I'm worried more about making the game more difficult for newcomers with too complex a system for this.  Hence why I'm trying to alter the AI logic instead to combat the abuse potential.

Obvious strategy (exploit?):

Build tons of turrets. Pause at 99% completion. Put high-value target behind them. Let enemy attack and ignore incomplete paused turrets. Unpause and watch the mayhem when they complete in 1 second.

Do this for all defenses and now you have essentially un-killable defenses for all your first attacks at those locations.

This is different from having the turrets completed only in that the turrets will have less time to get shots in against the AI ships, I'd say.  I think this would not work to your advantage, because as soon as the turrets are up the AI will retarget to them if they were going to (I think...).  Plus, turrets are extremely low on the priority list already, so more likely the AI would kill the important thing and then fly off to wherever.

[darke]

This is different from having the turrets completed only in that the turrets will have less time to get shots in against the AI ships, I'd say.  I think this would not work to your advantage, because as soon as the turrets are up the AI will retarget to them if they were going to (I think...).  Plus, turrets are extremely low on the priority list already, so more likely the AI would kill the important thing and then fly off to wherever.

I did notice the AI seems to target nearer, lower level, still-building turrets over further away, higher level, actually-attacking-them turrets for some reason. It looked like the further away turrets were in range, it just didn't seem to want to attack them.

[x4000]

This is different from having the turrets completed only in that the turrets will have less time to get shots in against the AI ships, I'd say.  I think this would not work to your advantage, because as soon as the turrets are up the AI will retarget to them if they were going to (I think...).  Plus, turrets are extremely low on the priority list already, so more likely the AI would kill the important thing and then fly off to wherever.

I did notice the AI seems to target nearer, lower level, still-building turrets over further away, higher level, actually-attacking-them turrets for some reason. It looked like the further away turrets were in range, it just didn't seem to want to attack them.

It does prefer to kill off stuff that it can kill more quickly over stuff that is still at full health, so that's probably part of it.  That's a good point, though, it probably should not do that.

[Velox]

This is different from having the turrets completed only in that the turrets will have less time to get shots in against the AI ships, I'd say.  I think this would not work to your advantage, because as soon as the turrets are up the AI will retarget to them if they were going to (I think...).  Plus, turrets are extremely low on the priority list already, so more likely the AI would kill the important thing and then fly off to wherever.

I did notice the AI seems to target nearer, lower level, still-building turrets over further away, higher level, actually-attacking-them turrets for some reason. It looked like the further away turrets were in range, it just didn't seem to want to attack them.

It does prefer to kill off stuff that it can kill more quickly over stuff that is still at full health, so that's probably part of it.  That's a good point, though, it probably should not do that.

     I'm guessing it's a holdover from the old economic system, where a quick plasma bomb could wipe several hundred resources off the balance sheet of a careless/over-aggressive turret-builder?  It's a lot less costly to splat down a bunch of turrets around enemies stuck in a tractor beam and hope some finish building than it used to be.  Might it make sense to put in a "can't build under fire" delay of some sort, similar to the "can't repair under fire" (but perhaps even longer?)

     I've been thinking about the low->full power warm-up period that I saw proposed earlier, and it's making more and more sense to me, at least for fixed units (and especially shooty fixed units.)

[x4000]

It does prefer to kill off stuff that it can kill more quickly over stuff that is still at full health, so that's probably part of it.  That's a good point, though, it probably should not do that.

I'm guessing it's a holdover from the old economic system, where a quick plasma bomb could wipe several hundred resources off the balance sheet of a careless/over-aggressive turret-builder?

Yeah, that's definitely true.  Before that was a pretty good strategy for the AI, now not so much.

It's a lot less costly to splat down a bunch of turrets around enemies stuck in a tractor beam and hope some finish building than it used to be.  Might it make sense to put in a "can't build under fire" delay of some sort, similar to the "can't repair under fire" (but perhaps even longer?)

I'm not sure about this one, mainly because it's something that would be pretty opaque to new players.  I think there is a high risk of potential player frustration with this one.  This is one of those cases where I think I'd prefer to just make the AI a bit more intelligent in this regard, and then see what we think about whether other more dire measures are needed.

I've been thinking about the low->full power warm-up period that I saw proposed earlier, and it's making more and more sense to me, at least for fixed units (and especially shooty fixed units.)

Yeah, I could see this one moreso than the "can't repair under fire" one, just because it is more similar to things RTS players would already have encountered.  It's kind of like deploying the trebuchets in AoE2, or the big artillery in SupCom, or other similar mechanics like that (machinegunner bipods in DoW or CoH). The only problem is, I always felt like those delays were a bit annoying and just slowed the game down, so it really made me avoid using those units in combat just because they were a pain to micromanage.

If done right that might not be an issue over here, but it does give me pause.  My hope is that some of the rules about when ships can and can't be taken in/out of low power mode will prevent most exploits that might be possible.  Frankly, starting shooty ships out in a low-power state is only to the advantage of the AI as far as I know, so my main concerns are simply around exploits relating to energy.

And if players wanted to be really sneaky, they have always been able to accomplish something similar to this current issue by putting ships in a transport (which is pretty resilient), and then having them all pop out at the last second to get the AI.  But, there too, I'm not sure what that would really accomplish in favor of the players.  I guess I'm just waiting for someone to develop an actual exploit before I start shoving more restrictions at the player, because I can't think of any working exploits right now (which of course doesn't mean there aren't any, as has been demonstrated a number of times in the past!).

Thanks for your thoughts, though, they are much appreciated and I'm glad the issues were raised (and if there's more to add, feel free -- I've certainly changed my mind about things in the past).