5.021 - Hybrid Systems online

[TechSY730]

Am I really unusual in the way I handle fleets? I make all the fleetships and starships that I can make, and just half, third, or quarter the group to use for separate operations. I always have a mixed fleet.

No, I often do the very same. However, I think by doing just that it is hard to tackle any higher difficulty (8+). For "real" attacks, it is usually too much micro for me to split up task and pay attention to distances etc. but for wormhole defense and raiding I select carefully which ships to use...

Yea, basically, if I want to take out the planet and I have enough firepower to do so without major losses, I just toss in a huge mixed fleet and let them rip stuff to shreds. For more focused goals, like taking out a specific target, or when I need to be careful how to take out a planet due to being out "firepowered", then I use the clever focused micro stuff.

Both strategies need to be viable in the scenarios where they would logically work the best.

[Epsilon Plus]

- Antimatter Starship:
4) make it short-ranged, but still longer than Bomber Starship
5) make it faster (say, half Bomber Starship speed)
6) make it more durable (say, 3/4 as durable as Bomber Starships, if it's not already there)
7) let it hit everything that the Bomber Starship can hit
rename it back to the Siege starship

Why not have both? Is it possible to make research decisions that cause lockouts? Players could start being able to unlock the (new) Antimatter Starship or Siege Starship at the start of the game, with the unselected choice given its normal knowledge cost. You get the benefit of starting with a heavy-damage starship unlock without losing the long-range ability of the old Antimatter starship. Plus, if you can make those kinds of decisions work I'm sure there are other things you could do with them (like all the things you could do with modular starships, but haven't done - yet).

On starships/fleetships balance, had an idea that might break out of some of the problems that seem to keep it on a loop where we mostly alternate which side is significantly preferable.  It might be a pretty loony idea, though, so dunno

1) For human ships only: Have each starship provide X "fire control" for allied fleet ships on the planet.  If total allied fire control >= number of allied fleet ships, all those fleet ships get a +50% damage bonus.  Possibly higher, if necessary. 
- The bonus needs to apply to _all_ allied fleet ships on the planet, not be range-based at all due to cpu costs of that many range checks.  But if you had only "partial" fire control it wouldn't be too awful cpu-wise to have it apply only part of the bonus.
- Potentially this could over-incentivize the smaller-cap fleet ship types, and they could be made to require more than 1 fire control each, but that might get a bit confusing.
- Either way, there would need to be some indicator of your fire control amount and requirement, perhaps what percentage you have of what you need.

2) Make fleet starships provide a lot more fire control than the other starship types; and higher marks provide more, etc.

3) The fire control bonus stacks with munitions boosting (and anything else).

4) Maybe remove the munitions boost effect from fleet starships.  Dunno, as boosting turrets to the extent that they can be boosted is a good thing.

Why not drop the munitions boosting on the flagship line along with the fire control number requirement and make the fire control bonus some kind of function that accounts for the number of players? I'm having trouble making one that gives the numbers I want, but I'm imagining that a decent cap of starships (most of the MkI starships, plus some MkII starships?) would give all allied ships in the system +20% or so attack power?

You could add in a dedicated Fire Control starship that would get the munitions boost effect plus a boost to overall system fire control. You could also "keyword" the Fire Control ability to apply it only for certain shiptypes; Fire Control to effect everything, Fire Control: Bombers for Bomber Starships/bombers/etc or Fire Control: Some Unit That Already Uses Attack Multipliers (to standardize everything). Only the highest Fire Control bonus is applied to prevent crazy edge cases of stacking? You could also do something for the AI that dampens/nullifies Fire Control bonuses - this gets into ECM/ECCM stuff, which I always thought was lacking in AI War and I've wanted to write up some ideas for a while but, effort. It's a bit complex but it's not as if AI War is an easy game to start with.

[amcarroll32]

On starships/fleetships balance, had an idea that might break out of some of the problems that seem to keep it on a loop where we mostly alternate which side is significantly preferable.  It might be a pretty loony idea, though, so dunno

1) For human ships only: Have each starship provide X "fire control" for allied fleet ships on the planet.  If total allied fire control >= number of allied fleet ships, all those fleet ships get a +50% damage bonus.  Possibly higher, if necessary. 
- The bonus needs to apply to _all_ allied fleet ships on the planet, not be range-based at all due to cpu costs of that many range checks.  But if you had only "partial" fire control it wouldn't be too awful cpu-wise to have it apply only part of the bonus.
- Potentially this could over-incentivize the smaller-cap fleet ship types, and they could be made to require more than 1 fire control each, but that might get a bit confusing.
- Either way, there would need to be some indicator of your fire control amount and requirement, perhaps what percentage you have of what you need.

I think that some sort of 'fire control' value, similar to armor bonuses / inhibitors  would be an excellent addition to the game.   

This would probably be easiest to implement as two flat planet-wide multipliers, one affecting player firepower, one affecting CPU firepower.  Different ships and structures can push these values in different directions, and different ship types will be more or less vulnerable to these multipliers. 

For example, missile frigates would have large bonuses / penalties from this 'fire control' modifier, while fusion cutter class ships would be virtually immune.  This will help to distinguish the bonus ship classes depending on the type of opponent and the fire control values of the system.

Make it so different structures and ships can increase, decrease, or normalize one / both of these values.  This will add a bit of tactical depth when attacking (destroy the guard post boosting attack, or the guard posts shooting me?  send in raiders first to clear out boosters?)  Clearly, there would need to be some sort of cap on the modifier to keep it from being exploited, but it wouldn't be overly difficult to limit.

I also see a few changes to available starships.  One change would be the addition of either / both an 'Electronic Warfare' or 'AWACS' starship.  The 'Electronic Warfare' starship can provide ECM / jamming -negatively impact the CPU 'fire control' modifier as well as normalize any CPU modifiers on player 'fire control'.  To further distinguish this ship class, it can be given flares, mass radar dampening (is that possible?), and possibly some kind of paralyzer weapon.

The other starship change I would suggest would be changing the 'Scout' starship.  I never find myself using this starship, it just doesn't do anything particularly well.  I would change this ship to the 'AWACS' starship, keep the 'scout' and tachyon ability (possibly boost the tachyon range) and give a bonus to 'fire control'.  I am up in the air if it would keep cloaking.

I think this would be a large, positive change for the game in the spirit of Keith's suggestion.

[SNAFU]

Just dropping in to give my 2 cents.

Concerning Antimatter Starships, I haven't used them much in recent memory. Not since their range was reduced, the introduction of radar dampening and keith nerfed their awesome name at least. 

I think allowing them to ignore radar dampening would boost their effectiveness IMMENSELY though.

Right now they can only shoot at guard posts (that aren't under a forcefield or are themselves an FF), other starships (which might have radar dampening), turrets (human only). And then of those potential targets, Light Starships/Flagships and just about all the guard posts have radar dampening that precludes the Antimatter Starship from using its range to the fullest.

Not sure if this would be a valid choice though; its my impression Antimatter Starship's attack range was nerfed in the first place to prevent 'sniping' guard posts so 19,000 units might still be too much but ay, there's the rub. We have a ship that is designed to fire from long range but has next to nothing it can fire on at long range!

I am settling into the idea of triangle ships not being able to be your main fleet (you really can't live without starships, which is probably intended, but the reverse doesn't seem to be true).

I don't wanna knock on this 'til I try it myself, but I will say that the games I've been playing lately has seen zero to minimal starship usage (i.e. maybe one or two raid starships for a deep strike on something soft) and been all about my fleet ships, especially the triangle ships! I hardly even missed having starships, so color me surprised someone feels the opposite way.

Could you please elaborate on your strategy, Cyborg? Excluding doing the Fallen Spire campaign for those kick butt spireships, I just don't see how starships are more important than fleet ships.

On starships/fleetships balance, had an idea that might break out of some of the problems that seem to keep it on a loop where we mostly alternate which side is significantly preferable.  It might be a pretty loony idea, though, so dunno

Kind of on the fence about this one, keith. It sounds a little complicated having an attack power boost and THEN another system-wide damage boost added on top of that. How do you differentiate them? It also sounds like this 'fire control' could easily wind up as a rather obscure value to track in the same way 'firepower' was. As is, I can't even remember off the top of my head how many ships CAN be munitions boosted by one starship of each type in the Light Starship line ( I counted one time )! Pretty sure it depends on the ship cap setting too...