So, this whole crystal thing

[Diazo]

Theoretically you will be able to compensate by finding and taking proper planet that has abundance of the resource. In practice I don't see it working - taking any planet is not usually first tactical choice you make. There are so many other considerations about planet capture that trying to force player to find and take planet for resources is not very likely to work. Current trends with buffing harvester upgrades (quite long time ago) shows that taking planets doesn't seem to be a players choice for solving resource problems.

Hello AIP.

Taking more planets is never going to be a preferred option for the player base because that increases AIP.


What I'm taking away from all these current threads (this one, the guard post one, the AIP is restrictive one) is that we need to get some games in.

Over the past month the game has had some massive changes, how many games have been both started and completed on a recent patch? I certainly have not finished one.

Once 6.017 hits I'm going to AAR a game just to see how these changes are playing out and see how in sync my opinion on stuff is with the rest of the community.

D.

[_K_]

Oooh, page 8, so thats where Keith's new suggestion was!

I generally approve. If balanced right, it could be absolutely fantastic. I guess the "special" things like spire toys and golems are going to cost 50/50? I mean, we dont want a minor faction to severely skew the M:C demand ratio, right?
Or we could make some of special units M-heavy, and some C-heavy, though that'd be kinda arbitrary and as result the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.

Considering Mark-based scaling: please, leave the M:C ratio static for each ship regardless of mark. It is more intuitive, and doesnt create an unnecessary difference between early and late game. We want the ratio depend on fleet composition choices, right? Not on how far you are in the game.


And finally, i believe some resource conversion would still be nice. The reason is that unlike Starcraft, you dont really have a convenient sink for each resource. In SC, if you have lots of spare metal, you can spam marines and feel fine, but in AIW, once you hit the cap for your M-heavy units, you have no option but to excess.
Since there is no simple way to sink excess resource into spamming some unit, there should be an option to convert it into the other resource at some rate so insane that one would only do it if they are about to excess. 5:1, maybe even 10:1. Point is: there must be sinks. As an alternative, i could suggest making some mercenary units cost pure metal, and some cost pure crystal. Or, since they are mercs, actually have 2 tabs with same ships but different costs, so you can select which resource to use to hire them.

[keith.lamothe]

Keith thinks it's a good idea. In all the time that Keith has been working here, and throughout all the countless changes he's made, I cannot think of a SINGLE bad change. Not a single one that didn't improve the game in some way.

I can think of several ideas I've had and thought were good ideas, but would have been bad if I'd actually gone ahead with them.  Thankfully, there were objections and said changes didn't happen

There are probably some bad ones that slipped through anyway, but I'm not thinking of them offhand.  CSGs would be the closest, but I was only an accomplice on that one.

[Wingflier]

What? CSGs turned out fine. They caused a huge uproar, but in the end they made the game better. Most people use them even though they're optional.

I think it's the same now. People are afraid that the resource change will affect how they play...and it will...but it will also increase the strategic value of the game like CSGs did, in a good way.

I still haven't heard a good argument against the change. I've heard "it will remove strategy", which is just a blatant misunderstanding of what strategy is. To those people who think strategy is doing the same thing every game, I'm speechless.

I've heard "it will increase the waiting time and bring back the Netflix era" - I think this is just speculation. Well yes, if the player has excess of one resource, but continues to unlock units that are heavy on the one he doesn't have, he'll probably have to wait a lot.  That's where the strategic decision making comes in.

Anything else can be worked out over time and with small tweaks, just like pretty much any mechanic.

What if option A and B don't work?

I choose C.

Yes, that INCREASES strategy.

Removing strategies A and B decreases strategy. For example.. 3 strategies: A B and C. Removing A and B means there's 1 left. 3-2=1. Not 4, not 5, nor 6.

Kahuna, I'm not really sure how to make this clear to you.

You're looking at the entire game of AI War, and all the tens or hundreds of thousands of choices available to you, and distilling them down into Option A), B), or C).

The fact that you can even DO THAT, is proof that there is something fundamentally flawed in the game's design.

The whole point of a change like this (in my opinion) is to make the strategical options more varied and unique than can just fit into a small category like A), B), or C).

Think thousands of categories, not 2 or 3. That's the kind of impact a change like this could have if done correctly.

[Faulty Logic]

If you think the below would be an econ nerf, please show me why.

You assigned all the resource-heavy stuff to one of the two resources, while removing conversion. I'm pretty sure that's a nerf.

Furthermore, I think superweapons should maintain their balance of m and c costs, because otherwise the system can't be balanced for both base-game and superweapon cases.

Also, could you add a capturable that reallows conversion (perhaps on the E-network) ?
Or increase the ratios rather than remove it entirely?

[Toranth]

You assigned all the resource-heavy stuff to one of the two resources, while removing conversion. I'm pretty sure that's a nerf.

And this may be it.  I think the problem may lie in the distribution of units that will require metal vs those that require crystal.
Instead of trying to make crystal the 'power' resource, why not make it the 'alternative' resource, by splitting up ship types into metal using or crystal using?

Triangle ships would be 50/50, for balance.  But bonus ships?  Infiltrator could be an all metal ship, but the space plane would be all crystal.
Spire starship?  All metal, but the other tough, hard-hitting starship, the Zenith, could be a crystal ship.
This might even work for Golems and Spirecraft.

Try for a rough equivalence in splitting the unit types.  Then, when choosing a planet at the start, or when deciding to hack an ARS, you can factor in the resource type being used.
It should also help avoid the problem of resource importance being based on early vs late game - aka, trivializing or even penalizing the player for necessary decisions made earlier.

[Hearteater]

If you think the below would be an econ nerf, please show me why.

You assigned all the resource-heavy stuff to one of the two resources, while removing conversion. I'm pretty sure that's a nerf.

Not necessarily, since all the resource-heavy stuff is also the durable stuff.  As a result, you replace it a lot less.  How often are you really replacing Golems, or Starships, compared to fleet ships when you compared total resources?

[Wingflier]

If you think the below would be an econ nerf, please show me why.

You assigned all the resource-heavy stuff to one of the two resources, while removing conversion. I'm pretty sure that's a nerf.

Not necessarily, since all the resource-heavy stuff is also the durable stuff.  As a result, you replace it a lot less.  How often are you really replacing Golems, or Starships, compared to fleet ships when you compared total resources?

In addition, if the overall resources are being buffed (because of the lost conversion mechanic), then depending on the player's use of them, it could actually be a significant economy BUFF.

It's only a nerf if you assume that you're going to constantly need a resource you don't have. If you balance your resources well (and you're getting more of both), then it's a buff.

[Faulty Logic]

Not necessarily, since all the resource-heavy stuff is also the durable stuff.  As a result, you replace it a lot less.  How often are you really replacing Golems, or Starships, compared to fleet ships when you compared total resources?

Even if the resources balanced out over the course of the game (which they might, though I still think I spend a lot more on non-fleetships than fleetships), there will be a massive "front-loading" of crystal from the very start. That would add tedium to every game.

This would be greatly magnified if superweapons were rebalanced as crystal-heavy or crystal-only.

[keith.lamothe]

I think there's some significant confusion about what the changes would cause (some are concerned metal will get slammed, others that crystal will get slammed, during the same phase of the game), and perhaps about what the changes themselves would be, but I do see how it could be an actual nerf overall (or at least perceived so without abandoning reason).  Will consider how an alternate plan might avoid that.

[Faulty Logic]

I think there's some significant confusion about what the changes would cause (some are concerned metal will get slammed, others that crystal will get slammed, during the same phase of the game),

That's just playstyle differences. Some like to slam the AI with fleetship hammers from the start, others build everything they possibly can before reluctantly heading out into the cloud of murder that is AI space.

Fleetship people see themselves running out of metal.
Everything people see themselves running out of crystal.

[keith.lamothe]

@Wingflier, I appreciate your support, but your level of approval of the CSGs change is one example of how we have fundamentally different approaches to the design of this game.  You're willing to sacrifice player choice in order to make the game more strategically rigorous and challenging.  I'm not willing to do much of that unless it's optional, and there's not a sensible way of making these changes optional.  And they would inevitably mess with existing strategies.  I understand that you don't personally have a problem with that, but there it is.

@Hearteater, thanks for supporting the idea, and if the idea were to moderately nerf econ in the process of doing this I'd probably stick it out, but this would inevitably cause more of a mess than I'm intending to make (at this juncture ).

[Wingflier]

@Wingflier, I appreciate your support, but your level of approval of the CSGs change is one example of how we have fundamentally different approaches to the design of this game.  You're willing to sacrifice player choice in order to make the game more strategically rigorous and challenging.  I'm not willing to do much of that unless it's optional, and there's not a sensible way of making these changes optional.  And they would inevitably mess with existing strategies.  I understand that you don't personally have a problem with that, but there it is.

@Hearteater, thanks for supporting the idea, and if the idea were to moderately nerf econ in the process of doing this I'd probably stick it out, but this would inevitably cause more of a mess than I'm intending to make (at this juncture ).

Keith, it was Chris' idea, not mine. It fit his concept of how the game should be played. And frankly, I agree with him.

He made it optional because of the huge uproar, but most people still use it anyway, so overall it was a good change I think. Even if it were not optional, I still think it would be a good change.

And also, there are tons of things we do to remove or limit player choice, and there are good reasons for them. We can't, for example, choose where to place our bonus ship on the starting map, even though that's been requested, STRONGLY for years. We can't choose which bonus ships we want in the game with a bonus ship omission file, even though it would probably make the game experience better for a lot of us. We can't choose which bonus ships the AI starts with, even though that would probably improve the game experience as well.

So in other words, you guys (the devs) make decisions which limit player choice all the time. Finding the balance is what's important. I think we've become too lackadaisical if people can just employ the same strategies every game and win. It's my own opinion, but there it is.

[Diazo]

I still haven't heard a good argument against the change. I've heard "it will remove strategy", which is just a blatant misunderstanding of what strategy is. To those people who think strategy is doing the same thing every game, I'm speechless.

Quoting myself from a previous post:

I see this change as reducing my effective economy by at least 17%, going up to a 37% reduction depending on how you value conversion in the current game.

Note I am referring to the early game here, that first two to three hours before you've really expanded and made your fleet stronger.

By design during this time you are going to need more metal then crystal because you don't have access to the higher powered units which required crystal to build. As conversion is being removed you can't even sacrifice your excess crystal to metal to spend it, crystal is just going to sit at cap until you get access to the more powerful units that need crystal to build.

I still have not seen anything that refutes this, short of making all the units require fewer resources to build.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

And also, there are tons of things we do to remove or limit player choice, and there are good reasons for them. We can't, for example, choose where to place our bonus ship on the starting map, even though that's been requested, STRONGLY for years. We can't choose which bonus ships we want in the game with a bonus ship omission file, even though it would probably make the game experience better for a lot of us. We can't choose which bonus ships the AI starts with, even though that would probably improve the game experience as well.

Those are all examples of us not adding new choice, rather than removing choices that have been part of the game for years.

That's not to say I've never removed choice for the sake of challenge, but my threshold for doing so is very different than yours.  Removing the ability to repair forcefields that were part of an ff "net" that was currently under fire, for example.  That basically removed a couple important tactics from existence, and I was willing to do that because those tactics could completely bypass the challenge of the game if the player diligently (ab)used them.

That's nothing like the m+c situation, though, where just collapsing them both into m and leaving it at that would not have anywhere near that impact on challenge.