Prerelease 3.180 (Completely New Endgame)

[Spikey00]

I would love to see what you have planned--the offensive battles definitely are grinds late-game--any new additions to make the game more interesting to play would be a welcome sight.

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You fiend, you are back and yet you have not delivered yet! 

[Vinraith]

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!

After I thought about it yeah, it occurred to me that there'd been a lot of performance complaints (and I've had a few problems in larger battles myself). It's a pity to lose those 4000 ship on 4000 ship battles, they're awesome, but I guess modern PC's just aren't quite up to them.

And yeah, I know you and I think very similarly about challenge in games like this (it's one of the reasons this is among my favorite games) so I figured I had to be missing something. That the notes are simply incomplete, and the balancing factors aren't there yet, should have occurred to me before I even asked. 

[keith.lamothe]

After I thought about it yeah, it occurred to me that there'd been a lot of performance complaints (and I've had a few problems in larger battles myself). It's a pity to lose those 4000 ship on 4000 ship battles, they're awesome, but I guess modern PC's just aren't quite up to them.

Well, we still want those, I don't think that Chris's changes will remove those, but they probably will become a bit more rare. 

But yes, 4000v4000 can get pretty tricky, as in theory that means every time a ship needs to get a targeting list it could mean 16 million comparisons (each of which can involve a couplethree dozen primitive operations) to sort the enemies by preference, adding up to 12.8 billion comparisons (16M * 4000 * 2) for every ship to get a target list, and also 64 million comparisons for a total collision-check sweep through everything.  In practice the code is very good about paring down comparison sets to possible targets, only collision checking when it needs to, and on top of all that using fairly intelligent throttling to limit the amount of both (as well as some other common operations) in an effort to not bog down the sim, but in the end it does present a compelling argument that we may not want to go too much further down the "magnitude -> fun" curve

[x4000]

Yeah, for sure.  I think that we'll still have the massive battles, same as we do now, but they will be a LOT more rare.  Right now it's like every other battle is that huge, and that's just a drain for no reason.  Another thing that I really enjoy with this game is when you wind up having something like 4 1000x1000 battles raging at once, and the changes I am working on will emphasize that even more.  Having those battles split up into multiple fronts like that makes the CPU load exponentially lower, since the complexity is squared or worse.

Should be good!  This won't be changing the soul of the game or anything, but it will be creating more variance in type and scope of conflicts, rather than having it all being more monotone in scale, etc.

[Vinraith]

Sounds great! Thanks for the explanation, this kind of forthrightness and clarity from developers is every bit as rare and welcome as the ridiculous amount of support you're giving this game.

[x4000]

Our pleasure!

[superking]

hybrids seem effective at forcing players to split their forces, I am having the best games of AI war to date with these guys piling onto my backwater planets and mixing it up with my attack forces  although a shipcap of MK I & MK II zenith polarisers seem perfectly capable of turning them (or indeed any unit with 1000+ shields) inside out in literally 10 seconds... on 'normal' mode. got these guys functioning as hybrid police nowdays.

I think part of the 'grind' element of attacking is the constant AI reinforcement... if AI players didn't reinforce so rapidly when the player has over x units on a planet, there would be a real incentive to split up forces (and if any AI world with over x units on it then became eligable to receive waves...)

also, encase it was lost, dreadnaughts need damage bonus by hybrids !

[keith.lamothe]

Glad to hear the hybrids are fun, and not just in the DF sense

I'll probably rebalance their shield rating down a bit so that polarizers don't totally eat them, but I'm content to leave it such that polarizers are a good way of dealing with them.  Need to make sure the energy consumption is such that IRE's do ok against them too.

And yes, dreads should get a bonus against the hull, though not necessarily against the forcefield.

[superking]

ah, that might explain it, I've got a shipcap of MK I dreadnaughts working on anti-hives duty but they are getting totally chewed out atm. I'm not certain that they are doing much even with shields down, but then polarisers are so much more effective vs starships it might be throwing off my point of refference. I'm probably not going to get dreadnaughts again, they just seem massively suck (3500 base damage vs 95% of units... there is no way)

also:

I am not seeing much benefit to the different type of Command Stations - military cs has an attack, yes, but it is long recharge and middling damage. Personally the benefits do not, at MK I, outweight the loss of resources that an Econ CS gives you.

I have to say, I agree with this; if you look at the extra resources generated by the economic type, translate it into energy generated at MK II/MKIII generator rates, it works out as A LOT of turrets you could be supporting instead of the military station with its relatively weak attack and defence. the military stations would really need to be a defensive powerhouse (and probably not be missle type and thus useless against the primary bane of the command stations, vampires) to be a legitimate choice. Similar applies to the logistical station- in what situation would I rather have the effect of a zenith time manipulator- which costs less than 120k energy- instead of just building the time manipulator and having lots of resources left over?

[keith.lamothe]

Dreads have their uses, particularly against starships.

I don't think they have an anti-hybrid bonus yet, but they will.

[x4000]

I've been meaning to look at the balance of the military and logistical stations, I just have not yet had a chance.  But, all that extra health, plus the immunity to blades, can make the military ones really really valuable on the right planets.

[superking]

plus the immunity to blades

OMG

HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS 

[x4000]

Yeah, that makes them HUUUUUUGELY valuable in certain circumstances.

[superking]

310 AI 1 Vampires (II) to Murdoc in 00:01

how will the logistic station ever be prefferable to zenith spacetime manipulators? assumably they are supposed to be used on backwater planets to speed transit.. backwater planets that should not be receiving waves, making the wave multiplier of spacetime manipulatirs no issue.

and I still cant see myself building military stations as is, the immunity to blades is cool but in all seriousness I could probably support a full shipcap of flak turrets on the extra resources the economic station brings... to be legit as a simple armour/weapon upgrade it would need to be like a fortress (30k energy... which is easy affordable with the additional resources of eg the MK II econimic station VS the military) now, if it brought an additional benefit like planet wide reclamation, munition boost, attrition, or a weapon causing zombification... 

[Ozymandiaz]

Actually, I find the new logistical station to be rather cool now. (and with Zenith "Von Neumann" ships it makes a pretty decent defense of a light outpost, all the virals zooming around multiplying is fun )
One suggestion would be maybe to make the force field bigger and stronger? That combined with the speed bonus makes imo a great command center for light outposts where you plan to stage attacks from.

The military one may need a little boost to. Maybe a stronger attack?


As for blob vs blob, I recently started using Raid starships to kill off guard posts and thus lower AI unit cap on my future conquests. Works like a charm on my 120 planet map where their ability to raid deep is very appreciated, so its not too bad in that respect. Tho I dread attacking the planet next to the AI home station that has reinforced since game start due to a dyson. 4000 core ships (1700 core bombers also, mad bomber AI type) are nasty