Prerelease 3.180 (Completely New Endgame)

[Ozymandiaz]

Haven't tried the latest golem changes (can't really, since they're not out yet ) but something you might find interesting regarding balance is what Supreme Commander 2 did with their experimentals (which you compared the golems to).

SC2 uses experimentals as support units, so it's uncommon that you can use them as your sole fighting force, but they become significantly more useful when combined with a fleet (because the fleet guards them from surprise attacks and the like, and has a sort of insulating effect against an attacking army). They only carry as much power as 5-10 normal units, but they exert that power over a much greater range compared to army units. I think this would be an interesting role to put golems in: maybe drop their power by 5x, their energy consumption by 2 or 3x, and up the range a ton, and remove some of the more exotic penalties. Then have each golem give a small boost to ships around it (health for armored, make engines invulnerable for black widow, range for artillery, etc.)

I think it could be cool. How about it?

I think that would water the Golems down too much to be "just another unit".

I mean no offence (its just my opinion), but imo SC2 got it wrong in what it did with the experimentals, making them seem less experimental and more generic

[RCIX]

But it solves the problem of them being the unit everyone rushes to at the expense of everything else. It really is the only effective way to have a superweapon without it being boring as far as affecting the gameplay or not really being useful. And the only reason it's disappointing is that SC1 had the one-man armies, and SC2 degraded them to support unit (which no one liked mainly because "its worse than sc1" )

To make them less generic though, you could give them more support abilities (like doing multiple boost types from single units, or both having a strong forcefield around it and repairing nearby ships, etc.), so that they stand out from the normal and starship crowd.

and if you ask me, having big huge ships that have interesting abilities and act as long range fire support for fleets are far more interesting than just a thousand+ rolled up into one unit.

[3dfx]

Suggestion:

Why not let the AI use missles too,like nukes and so on,but only on harder AI lvl\s (8 and up).
The game just displays the target planet that the warhead is heading for,and the player must track down and eliminate the incoming threat.

[superking]

dreadnaughts dont do any bonus damage to hybrid hives atm 

[Ozymandiaz]

But it solves the problem of them being the unit everyone rushes to at the expense of everything else. It really is the only effective way to have a superweapon without it being boring as far as affecting the gameplay or not really being useful. And the only reason it's disappointing is that SC1 had the one-man armies, and SC2 degraded them to support unit (which no one liked mainly because "its worse than sc1" )

To make them less generic though, you could give them more support abilities (like doing multiple boost types from single units, or both having a strong forcefield around it and repairing nearby ships, etc.), so that they stand out from the normal and starship crowd.

and if you ask me, having big huge ships that have interesting abilities and act as long range fire support for fleets are far more interesting than just a thousand+ rolled up into one unit.

I understand your point of view, but I still think the Golems should be more then just support units. Having them do a ton of boosts and such could be a nice idea tho, could make a nice new Golem . As I see it, if you take away all (or most) their penalties and make them superb support units, you will generally want to use them all the time if you come across them. I would rather they be made something special that is not everyday use, and to that end it seems the lessened wave multiplier that is coming now is a good idea to me. It makes them more usable then now, but having reinforcement multiplier is a bad thing in most cases.

Oh, as for "the only reason it was disappointing in SC2" reason, I do not agree with . I can respect SC2 as a tactical game, but it is in no way a strategic game of the same scale as the previous one (I was also outright disgusted with the single player part of SC2, but that is another matter not relevant to the strategy ). In the same respect AI War is more similar to SC1 then SC2 since it operates at a much larger scale, and in that scale a "one man army" have a better place then they do in a smaller tactical game.

Suggestion:

Why not let the AI use missles too,like nukes and so on,but only on harder AI lvl\s (8 and up).
The game just displays the target planet that the warhead is heading for,and the player must track down and eliminate the incoming threat.

It does that now...

Not nukes tho.

[quickstix]

CONTREVERSEY AHEAD. You have been warned.

I'm going to do a little free thinking out loud to see if there's any merit in a rethink of the Golem. I think Golem's are neat, but they're quite an investment and sometimes I wonder if the return is worth the cost. Golems almost seem like TF2's Heavy, very cool and popular, but difficult to use in practice.

So... (Finding a place to hide under)

The way I see a Golem is as an offensive support unit. This requires a careful balance though; consider the Golem on it's own.

Making the Golem all powerful would make all other strategies pointless. However, if the Golem isn't powerful enough you spend half of your time fixing the thing because whilst the Golem becomes the focal point of the AI, the Golem tanks all the damage because it can't kill enemies fast enough.

Thus, a Golem must be supported by a fleet. However, this fleet must stay near the Golem, as if it strays away the AI will focus fire on the Golem, forcing it to tank damage again (because as before, making it all powerful is a bit overpowered). Therefore, a Golem's role becomes that of a support unit, boosting the effectiveness of the main fleet. This is where I see RCIX's line of thinking. Having a big huge ship that is simply many ships rolled into one is a bit boring.

So, seeing as I've noted the Golem as a fleet centrepiece unit, we should perhaps view a Golem as a ship with varied abilites and fire support which enhance a fleet in a variety of ways (in balance with any main weapons/abilities). Random ideas off the top of my head: long range Golems could be more damage focused, (eg. rate of fire, accuracy, range, attack boost), short range golems focus on up close and personal (health/shielding, speed boost to get in close, engine damage?) support golems on repair/force fields.


There you have it. Again, I'm only thinking out loud here. This is only my point of view and I may be completely missing the point of a Golem.

It's funny, because the Bomb Bouncer is probably actually OP, due to it's ability to hold off indefinite amounts of artillery as well as destroy arbitrary amounts of air and land units, especially in quantity. /offtopic

I've never actually played SC2, but I'd just assumed maybe there was a decent counter not mentioned in the video. SupCom2 is one of the first games I plan to get when I finally get a decent computer.

[superking]

Golems are cool as is

Viral Clusters cost 2 AIP each to destroy, and averaging 4/world expansion ends up costing the player a great deal more AIP than a normal AI type would. If it is to be easier, might be an idea to abolish the AIP cost of clusters (and this might apply to bomber clusters for the correspondong bomber cluster AI also)

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, the viral clusters weren't intended to have AIP, sorry about that.

The ordinary clusters and the nests are intended to have AIP, but they have at most one per planet so it's a bit different.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

2000 Tigers coming to your homeworld through your backdoor.  It's "FUN"! according to some game ppl seem to play.

Great endgame change btw.

King

[RCIX]

A lot of capturables are like that where you always want them if you come across them though. But [my idea for the golems is] you really need a good fleet to get the most out of your golem, so you're not neglecting your other weapon options by any means; you just have the ability to get this big honking ship that acts as a long range fire support ship, meatshield, and fleet booster which can massively help your force if you spend a lot of time and money getting it online.

[Spikey00]

(Hmm, the next version isn't out, and Chris is no where to be seen... this must mean Chris is having/had his child right now!

:shock: PREPARE THE PARTY AND VARIOUS LIQUORS!

Oh wait, this isn't a good thing for us AI War-ers.)

[Trezamere]

I might be mistaken, if so ignore this, but aren't you supposed to only have MK I maybe II planets next to your homeworld?  Cause I just started a new campaign (Diff 7) with the latest beta and there was a Mark IV planet sitting right next to my homeworld with a MK III or IV Ion Cannon... Needless to say it was a problem and we were killed sometime later when like 6 Hybrid Hives and a ton of their followers popped into my homeworld (the portal was conveniently right next to my Command Station), while the bulk of my fleet was trying to clear out a particularly nasty MK III planet 4 systems away.

[Ozymandiaz]

A lot of capturables are like that where you always want them if you come across them though. But [my idea for the golems is] you really need a good fleet to get the most out of your golem, so you're not neglecting your other weapon options by any means; you just have the ability to get this big honking ship that acts as a long range fire support ship, meatshield, and fleet booster which can massively help your force if you spend a lot of time and money getting it online.

I can agree on making the Golem work best in a fleet, and I never really use a Golem solo now either. But making it dependant on a fleet I thik is taking it too far, is all.

I might be mistaken, if so ignore this, but aren't you supposed to only have MK I maybe II planets next to your homeworld?  Cause I just started a new campaign (Diff 7) with the latest beta and there was a Mark IV planet sitting right next to my homeworld with a MK III or IV Ion Cannon... Needless to say it was a problem and we were killed sometime later when like 6 Hybrid Hives and a ton of their followers popped into my homeworld (the portal was conveniently right next to my Command Station), while the bulk of my fleet was trying to clear out a particularly nasty MK III planet 4 systems away.

I have had that happen to me as well, the MK IV planet bit. With the new start economy I found it easier to deal with as I can fairly easily get a fleet of 600 ships with all the low tier units and go smash the planet. and handle the backlash.

The Ion cannon tho, they do make it a tad harder. It kind of seems the Mk III, IV and V cannons are a bit more common here and there then I thought.

[keith.lamothe]

The planets adjacent to human homeworlds are all initially set to Mark I (iirc) during mapgen, but later on in mapgen it does some sweeps through all the AI planets to see which ones it should "upgrade", and that can result in Mk III and IV planets.  Even the tutorial has a Mark IV planet right next to your homeworld

But perhaps the higher grade ion cannons could be made to not seed quite so close.

And if you start a game and find a wormhole really close to your command station and that the wormhole leads to a Mark IV planet (or one you otherwise cannot reasonably take soon) you may just want to consider starting on a different planet or an entirely different map seed.  Even a normal wave of bombers could be the end of you in a case like that, etc.  Of course, some folks find that fun, so it's up to taste.

[x4000]

Thanks for the reply Keith, I was talking about the reinforcements and cap change, specifically. My ship caps stay the same, the AI has far fewer ships, that seems (on the surface) like a major balance shift in my favor. My build rates stay the same, the AI's reinforcements are reduced, again that's clearly a benefit to me. Similarly, the reduction in cap on the AI homeworld and core worlds drastically reduces the chance of an unmanageable "backwash" of AI units, which is one of the greater risks of losing in the late game. I Know you guys are as fond of a challenging experience as I am so I'm sure I'm missing something, I just don't get it.

To this specific question, don't worry about the game getting easier.  You've, uh, only seen part of what's coming in 3.181.

But I've been really getting frustrated with the ongoing challenge of making the game perform well in enormous battles where 75% of the ships on a planet aren't actively engaged in fighting at any given time, but ARE actively engaged in slowing down the simulation.  Some of this new stuff is focused on that, while also focusing on making those offensive battles more interesting, anyway.  I really like how the defensive battles play out, but I think the offensive ones have been getting increasingly grindy -- there's more than one way to make an offensive battle challenging, and we're trying for some more interesting ones now.

Stay tuned!