So, this whole crystal thing

[Wingflier]

I'm not super thrilled about getting per-planet turrets through this mechanic honestly.  It seems tedious.  Dropping 2 Mini-Forts is fast and takes minimal time.  Dealing with placement of 6ish lines of turrets is just extra tedium, especially with a special builder we need to move around.  I'm ok with the mines acting more like energy.

Previously thoughts along these lines:

* Maybe Crystal could be used to active some generically useful ability, like a Starcraft Stim Pack for fleet ships.

* Maybe Crystal Mines could power special units/structures creating a continuous expenditure rather than a one-time up-front cost:
-- Crystal Force Shield: when it takes damage you lose crystal instead.  Advantage over a normal shield is crystal can be gained even while it is under attack.
-- Worm Hole Disrupter: While powered up, consumes crystal every second, but nothing can travel through any nearby worm hole in either direction.
-- Warp Space Burrower: Temporarily becomes a one-way worm hole leading to a target system.  Costs crystal for each of your ships that travels through it and increases the more hops away it is going.  Might require a target unit to warp too, so you can just cheaply shoot scouts everywhere.
-- Crystal Warhead: Stealthed Rams that spend 1 crystal to deal X damage to the target they hit, always spending just enough Crystal to destroy their target if possible.
-- Crystal Turret: A powerful HBC-like turret, possibly with a per-system cap instead of global.  However, every shot costs Crystal.
-- Crystal Supply Depo: Generates supply in a system even if supply can't be normally be generated there.  Costs crystal/second.  Run out of crystal and you lose supply in that system.

I really like these ideas. They're much more interesting than "more turrets", at least encompass the current idea while adding much more flavor.

One huge thing I think AI War lacks is the ability to "teleport" between planets, which is extremely useful (and even necessary) in certain situations. A power like this shouldn't be given lightly, but at times it would streamline the game and make it much more enjoyable and practical to the player.

[Kahuna]

2. Medium - AI gets a bit more annoyed after it destroyed the mine for 1 hour and you can't rebuild the mine.
3. Hard - when mine is lost it's gone. For the thrill seekers around here.

Both of these would mean not capturing a mine that I can't defend with 100% certainty. Majority of the planets can't be defended because of wormhole positioning. You must defend X wormhole in order to prevent the AI from getting deeper into you "empire" and your home world. Add something like a Fabricator or in this case a Crystal Mine and you got a pain in your ass. Fabricators have a bad habit of being spawned in middle of the hostile wormholes or far from the wormhole you need to defend. Also it's possible to effectively defend about 90 degrees. So the hostile wormholes must be inside this 90 degrees or defending will be very hard. About 100 degrees is max. Depends.

[Kahuna]

I don't want a mandatory new set of situationally bonus/penalty structures scattered around the galaxy with no option to turn them off.

This

[Kahuna]

I too like Hearteater's suggestions.

One huge thing I think AI War lacks is the ability to "teleport" between planets, which is extremely useful (and even necessary) in certain situations. A power like this shouldn't be given lightly, but at times it would streamline the game and make it much more enjoyable and practical to the player.

0009082: Warp Gate Command Station
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9082
Read the notes/comments too

[Wingflier]

I too like Hearteater's suggestions.

One huge thing I think AI War lacks is the ability to "teleport" between planets, which is extremely useful (and even necessary) in certain situations. A power like this shouldn't be given lightly, but at times it would streamline the game and make it much more enjoyable and practical to the player.

0009082: Warp Gate Command Station
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9082
Read the notes/comments too

I made the first comment

[Hearteater]

One simple option would be to make each Crystal Mine support a single Matter Converter built anywhere in that system.  The Matter Converter would no longer cost any resources to operate and the Crystal Mine would not be destroyable.  You would not be able to build Matter Converters normally.  Effectively it would mark systems with the property of having a ZPG-like structure built.

[keith.lamothe]

The more I think about it, the more I don't like this proposed change (any of them).

That's actually been my feeling as well, but I think there's room for improvement in the game's current design so I'm trying to find it.

So what if metal and crystal are functionally identical?

Having them be separate is a weak mechanic.  It means very, very little to the game.  If it were a minor mechanic that would be fine, but it's not: it's one of the most prominent (visually) mechanics in the game. 

That means there's potential room to replace with a stronger mechanic and thus make the game more fun.  Whether or not it would actually succeed at making it more fun depends on what exactly we should do.

But again: just because there is a problem with A, does not make B better.  Our current "A" is not awful, and having thought for a while I don't think any of the thus-far-proposed "B"'s are clearly superior.   Mostly because they're either too complicated or mess up other existing mechanics or both.

I (like most AI War players) am so used to them as they are that there should be a damn good reason for a change, and the "it might be cool if x" suggestions haven't come close to that threshold.

Of course.  If this were just some optional minor faction we were discussing it'd probably already be in (though it wouldn't be based on a resource inflow/outflow because there's no free slots for that in that case).  But this is a core resource so we have to be very careful what we do.


That said, if we're ever to find something better for crystal, we have to start somewhere to have a discussion, prune unsatisfactory ideas, refine potentially satisfactory ideas, etc.


But I'm certainly not set on doing "something! anything!" with this, let alone on any specific timeframe.

[chemical_art]

As promised, this is how the resource generation I find (in order of scarcity):

Key: "+" is good, "-" is bad. Sometimes both may be good, in the case of something being good, but taking a lot of work, or of it helping some, hurting others

1) The resource is truly finite, like knowledge, and is used to "unlock" units
+++Allows the greatest impact in the game in that it is very tightly related to AIP and very "controlled", prevents netflix syndrome / hoarding
---Takes the greatest amount of work, since the units need a big impact
+-The structure is temporary protected, but not needed after the fact
-Feels like knowledge

2) The resource is finite, each units costs per crystal
++Allows a great impact in the game in that it is very tightly related to AIP and very "controlled",
--Takes a great amount of work, since the units need a big impact
+-The structure is temporary protected, but not needed after the fact
+--Encourages great hoarding of resources / units
-Feels like golems/spirecraft that cannot be disabled



3) The resource is finite, but the mines can generate unlimited resources if alive
++--Structure is very important in protection, which is divisive
+--Hoarding of resources since some players will always consider it finite
-By far the one most vulnerable to exo waves, most dependent on chokepoints
-Units cannot scale in power really, since units, once unlocked if necessary via other means, are avialable in full caps.

4) The resource is infinite in that mines can at best be temporarily lost, but only a per cap of the benefits which scales with the units can be used
+Allows a great impact of units, since the caps will be easier to correlate with AIP
++-=Striddles the line of having to never abandon the structure entirely, but never losing it permanently either, which may either appease both sides or make both mad
+-Careful balancing of mines being lost/reclaimed is necessary and contentious

5) The resource is infite, the mines can be temporarily lost, no cap per benefits
+Fairly easy to implement
-Encourages netflix syndrome of min-maxing units unless another "soft cap" (energy) is used
-Units cannot scale in power really, since units, once unlocked if necessary via other means, are avialable in full caps no matter how early in the game.

[Wingflier]

I'm less concerned about the details of how the new resource will work, than I am on what it will actually be used for.

If I'm going to be punished in some way for losing these new "Crystal extractors", there better be a damn good reason for having them at all. So far, a mobile builder that operates outside of supply just isn't worth it to me.  It isn't cool enough, it isn't that interesting, and most of all it isn't necessary, when the game has operated perfectly fine for 4 years without it.

I think the "military builder" idea is great, I just don't think it completely does justice to an entirely new mechanic. I want something beefier; something more powerful that I can unlock with my volatile, hard-earned Crystal, but I can't think of anything that isn't already in the game, or wouldn't break it.

[keith.lamothe]

I think the "military builder" idea is great, I just don't think it completely does justice to an entirely new mechanic. I want something beefier; something more powerful that I can unlock with my volatile, hard-earned Crystal, but I can't think of anything that isn't already in the game, or wouldn't break it.

Yea, I think that gets at a core tension here: in order to justify any kind of added penalty for attempting and losing "the crystal game", the benefits of attempting and winning it would have to be at least into the low-end-superweapon range... which doesn't seem at all appropriate to something that's on in every game.

[Wingflier]

I think the "military builder" idea is great, I just don't think it completely does justice to an entirely new mechanic. I want something beefier; something more powerful that I can unlock with my volatile, hard-earned Crystal, but I can't think of anything that isn't already in the game, or wouldn't break it.

Yea, I think that gets at a core tension here: in order to justify any kind of added penalty for attempting and losing "the crystal game", the benefits of attempting and winning it would have to be at least into the low-end-superweapon range... which doesn't seem at all appropriate to something that's on in every game.

I'm not as concerned about whether it's ON in every game to be honest.  It's an optional mechanic.

In all reality, would it matter if Fallen Spire was on in every game? You get instructions at the start for how to activate the campaign, which certainly does punish you severely and give you access to superweapons, but you can also just completely ignore it and play like normal.  Sometimes I forget I have it on.

What I'm more concerned about is what kind superweapon don't we already have? What would be unique or interesting that adds something to the game that isn't just, "WOO, more firepower!"? Also, how to make this superweapon scale with the amount of crystal mined? What if I just want to mine crystal from a couple planets, should I suffer the same penalties as someone who is mining it from 10 planets?

[keith.lamothe]

I'm not as concerned about whether it's ON in every game to be honest.  It's an optional mechanic.

Which is actually another problem with what we've been talking about: if you just ignore it you have a fairly big chunk of your resource bar at the top that just says "0" the whole game.  Not the end of the world, but that doesn't strike me as a good sign for this being an appropriate repurposing of the resource.

In all reality, would it matter if Fallen Spire was on in every game?

Not really, but FS doesn't show up in the resource bar.  There is the alert of the journal entry but that would go away after you read it.

[Wingflier]

Not really, but FS doesn't show up in the resource bar.  There is the alert of the journal entry but that would go away after you read it.

No actually, you get a bright green "Subspace signal on Planet Brogobil" in the top left hand of your screen for the entire game, and there's no way to turn that off.  You just kind of ignore it after awhile.

Which is actually another problem with what we've been talking about: if you just ignore it you have a fairly big chunk of your resource bar at the top that just says "0" the whole game.  Not the end of the world, but that doesn't strike me as a good sign for this being an appropriate repurposing of the resource.

*Shrug*, I guess it doesn't bother me that much. If it replaces the current "Crystal" spot, it takes up about 1/10th of the entire resource bar, which isn't overly tedious. In addition, you could make it grey until you begin mining it, at which point it would turn green like normal.

Mousing over the mineral (in your resource bar) would give you detailed information on what it was used for, and also let you know that it was a volatile resource, optional, and not necessary to win the game. There are already lots of important elements in AI War that aren't necessary to win the game like Fabs, Adv. Factories, Adv. Space Docks, Data Centers of all kinds, and more.

One of the things that makes AI War, at its core, unique and different from most other strategy games is its huge emphasis on risk-management.  AIP accomplishes this design goal pretty well.  I think with the new Crystal mechanic being optional, you're just emphasizing one of AI War's core design principles.

[Faulty Logic]

That's actually been my feeling as well, but I think there's room for improvement in the game's current design so I'm trying to find it.

I am all for improving the game. But why does an improvement have to be an improvement to crystal? It's really two separate things: add new mechanic x, and combine metal and crystal. So why not just add mechanic x?

If you're going to argue about the visuals, then it looks fine, and by the time one has figured out crystal and metal are functionally identical, they will be used to the present state.

[keith.lamothe]

No actually, you get a bright green "Subspace signal on Planet Brogobil" in the top left hand of your screen for the entire game, and there's no way to turn that off.  You just kind of ignore it after awhile.

Oh, right.  That lonely, lonely signal that just sits at coordinate-{100000,100000} for the rest of the game.

"The first ten million years, they were the worst.  The next ten million years, they were the worst too.  After that, I went into a bit of a decline."