So, turret balance

[chemical_art]

It only starts showing a large balance problem if most players say that trying to answer those questions is not worth what turrets give you, and the turrets themselves may be at fault (which may be what is happening here)

Part of this is that the solution that is most effective, the chokepoint, also causes the least amount of thought of how to distribute turrets. Even taking chokes to their most extreme effectiveness, of having only one enemy wormhole, makes the issue issue even tactically boring.

[Radiant Phoenix]

Replacing turrets with guardians would be a relative buff to multiple-ingress empires because you can move the blob to different planets.

It would probably result in an absolute nerf to single-ingress empires because they would probably have less HP and/or DPS as a tradeoff for mobility (or maybe just cost more).

[Bognor]

So for example, going from a cap of 96 to a cap of 1 gives you 190 times more total damage output over the course of a fight.

Missing a decimal, 190 --> 1.90, I presume.  But I guess everyone had already figured that out.

[keith.lamothe]

So for example, going from a cap of 96 to a cap of 1 gives you 190 times more total damage output over the course of a fight.

Missing a decimal, 190 --> 1.90, I presume.  But I guess everyone had already figured that out.

I hadn't realized that, actually, hence my indirectly asking how a change in "DPS ablativeness" could possibly account for an increase that high

[Zeyurn]

If having a single chokepoint possibility is too restrictive for how we can balance play around turrets (or in general) you could entertain the possibility of the AIs getting bonuses of some sort based on the amount of warpable planets you have.  I.E. after 5 planets or so only having 1 chokepoint gives the AI lots of bonuses, after 10 or so having 2 or less is bad, etc etc.  Even in our defensive empire games we usually end up with 3-5ish chokepoints to defend for large periods to the whole game unless we're literally taking every planet.

I'd suggest these shouldn't be purely offensive bonuses either, but I don't really have a great system idea in my head just an off the wall starting point.  This is another oddball thought just throwing out randomly.

[TechSY730]

We already have an AI "bonus" for low chokepoint count setups. The fewer "warpable" you have, the more likely the AI will send bigger waves.

EDIT: oh yea, and as the number of in points starts getting really low (around 3 or less), max wave size starts getting bigger too.

[Zeyurn]

We already have an AI "bonus" for low chokepoint count setups. The fewer "warpable" you have, the more likely the AI will send bigger waves.

EDIT: oh yea, and as the number of in points starts getting really low (around 3 or less), max wave size starts getting bigger too.

I'd honestly never noticed that, but it lends credence to my commentary that 'offensive' AI bonuses are not necessarily the way to go in this situation, since really if I chokepoint right I don't care whether you send 3k ships or 8k ships, I'll still kill them (just slower, and that's a huge % increase)

[TechSY730]

We already have an AI "bonus" for low chokepoint count setups. The fewer "warpable" you have, the more likely the AI will send bigger waves.

EDIT: oh yea, and as the number of in points starts getting really low (around 3 or less), max wave size starts getting bigger too.

I'd honestly never noticed that, but it lends credence to my commentary that 'offensive' AI bonuses are not necessarily the way to go in this situation, since really if I chokepoint right I don't care whether you send 3k ships or 8k ships, I'll still kill them (just slower, and that's a huge % increase)

Yea, especially when combined with the low-ish wave sizes on 7ish difficulties, the effect isn't all that huge. It may be worth making it more severe, especially the 1 chokepoint case.

It is also worth noting that the reason I put that "bonus" in quotes is that the AI does not get these increased wave sizes for free. It must wait longer to send a bigger wave than it does to send a smaller one.


Take note though, your defensive "prowness" can only get you so far. There does come a point where wave sizes get so huge, even fully fortified chokepoints will get overwhelmed.
Heck, once wave sizes start getting huge enough, not even martyrs, golems, and warhead cheese on top of everything you can build stacked up will be able to stop them all before they can kill you. Granted, the wave would have to be really, REALLY huge for all that to fall, but it will eventually happen with big enough waves.


As for more "non-traditional" bonuses, hmm, quite some time ago, there was an early attempt at an "anti-chokepoint" measure, where the AI would send something similar to what the groups send against deep-striking, but even intense, if it detected a "chokepoint". The problem was that the chokepoint detection was flawed; it just looked at how much firepower was stacked on a single human planet. It didn't go over very well...


However, I think the idea has merit, even if the chokepoint detection and the response was flawed. Maybe instead, if the number of chokepoints starts getting really small, the AI may opt with a small to moderate chance to sacrifice some numbers in a wave to consolidate some of the "wave points" into "chokepoint breaker" units (Raid starships, bomber starships, raid starships, plasma seige starships, raid guardians, or if the AI is willing to sacrifice HUGE, HUGE numbers of the wave, and you have only 1 chokepoint, a small chance for a hunter/killer).
Or maybe just reinstate those occasional spawns of tougher stuff during a 1 in-point situation, though with the more "modern" chokepoint detection.
Or maybe some combination of both.

[Kahuna]

big objections to Hearteater's proposed turret stats?

Yes

[Mánagarmr]

We already have an AI "bonus" for low chokepoint count setups. The fewer "warpable" you have, the more likely the AI will send bigger waves.

EDIT: oh yea, and as the number of in points starts getting really low (around 3 or less), max wave size starts getting bigger too.

Question: Does this apply to the "Cross-Planet Wave" setting as well? Because at that point, warp gates become rather irrelevant, and thus chokepoints too, unless they are actually physical chokepoints.

[keith.lamothe]

Question: Does this apply to the "Cross-Planet Wave" setting as well? Because at that point, warp gates become rather irrelevant, and thus chokepoints too, unless they are actually physical chokepoints.

I believe it does apply there, yes.  Doesn't make a lot of sense to go off warp gates there but probably in that case you aren't gate-raiding so the logic's check isn't far off from detecting the physical chokepoint that does make sense here.

[zoutzakje]

I'm still thinking if it isn't a good idea to decrease knowledge cost of turrets, and add mk IV and/or mk V turrets to the game. People will get more tempted to unlock to at least mk III with some turrets (something I've never done besides HBC and grav) and the high dif scenario's will have a better shot at defending themselves with high mk turrets. This might make defending somewhat easier, but let's face it, turrets alone won't win you the game. People will still have to decide between offense or defense whenever making an unlock.

[Zeyurn]

We already have an AI "bonus" for low chokepoint count setups. The fewer "warpable" you have, the more likely the AI will send bigger waves.

EDIT: oh yea, and as the number of in points starts getting really low (around 3 or less), max wave size starts getting bigger too.

I'd honestly never noticed that, but it lends credence to my commentary that 'offensive' AI bonuses are not necessarily the way to go in this situation, since really if I chokepoint right I don't care whether you send 3k ships or 8k ships, I'll still kill them (just slower, and that's a huge % increase)

Yea, especially when combined with the low-ish wave sizes on 7ish difficulties, the effect isn't all that huge. It may be worth making it more severe, especially the 1 chokepoint case.

It is also worth noting that the reason I put that "bonus" in quotes is that the AI does not get these increased wave sizes for free. It must wait longer to send a bigger wave than it does to send a smaller one.


Take note though, your defensive "prowness" can only get you so far. There does come a point where wave sizes get so huge, even fully fortified chokepoints will get overwhelmed.
Heck, once wave sizes start getting huge enough, not even martyrs, golems, and warhead cheese on top of everything you can build stacked up will be able to stop them all before they can kill you. Granted, the wave would have to be really, REALLY huge for all that to fall, but it will eventually happen with big enough waves.


As for more "non-traditional" bonuses, hmm, quite some time ago, there was an early attempt at an "anti-chokepoint" measure, where the AI would send something similar to what the groups send against deep-striking, but even intense, if it detected a "chokepoint". The problem was that the chokepoint detection was flawed; it just looked at how much firepower was stacked on a single human planet. It didn't go over very well...


However, I think the idea has merit, even if the chokepoint detection and the response was flawed. Maybe instead, if the number of chokepoints starts getting really small, the AI may opt with a small to moderate chance to sacrifice some numbers in a wave to consolidate some of the "wave points" into "chokepoint breaker" units (Raid starships, bomber starships, raid starships, plasma seige starships, raid guardians, or if the AI is willing to sacrifice HUGE, HUGE numbers of the wave, and you have only 1 chokepoint, a small chance for a hunter/killer).
Or maybe just reinstate those occasional spawns of tougher stuff during a 1 in-point situation, though with the more "modern" chokepoint detection.
Or maybe some combination of both.

I'd honestly rather see the AI 'turtle' up more like the human does in this scenario to cause the human player to have to lose its fleet attacking, then send waves at you.

I'm skeptical about bigger waves because I don't think they work that well (On a multiplayer 10/10 you can be fighting 30k waves quite regularly and IMO when the wave is just 'more carriers!!' it's kind of annoying although I have no good non-CPU destroying alternative) and I'm skeptical about just using Hunter Killers / world's largest force of Raids because that's just a screw you to a legitimate strategy.

Defensive chokepointing should be legit but I feel like the AI should adapt to it and make your life miserable in other ways, like building superfortresses and eyes on its planets / rebuilding more counterattack guard posts / something.

Anyway I guess I'm kind of off topic for turrets except for the problem that making turrets as useful as they probably ought to be only exacerbates the single/double chokepoint problem.

[keith.lamothe]

On the AI turtling up if you turtle up, it does do that to some extent depending on alert pattern, and with Hybrids it does it a lot more.  One of these days I need to bring back the "hybrids build turrets" behavior; the bug reports of running into a planet with hundreds of hybrid-built forcefield generators were quite entertaining

[keith.lamothe]

Sorry, reminiscing about those ff-piles distracted me from my main point: some players like it when the AI responds to their turtling with its own turtling such that they just dash fleets against the wall and are thus open to AI counterattack.

But a lot of players have made clear over the years that they really do not like that.  Tends to provoke words like "stalemate", "grindy", etc.

My response is that it's just the AI playing well, but they aren't impressed