Hacking - warpgate sabotage

[Pumpkin]

Once again, I'll refrain myself to jump on mantis and post my "new totally awesome idea", but first submit it to the community.

So sabotage hacking can destroy AIP inducing structures without raising AIP, but not warpgates.
Why not including warpgates in eligible targets for sabotage? (If Chris and Keith didn't, it's for a reason; I really ask a question.) It could provide an alternate gateraid way. It's because saving 5 AIP per planet is too much? But sabotage cost more and more HaP, and HaP is gained by AIP increases... Sounds balance to me, but then why not making a separate "warp hacker" that is maybe more expansive or don't prevent AIP.


Oh, imagine an alternate way of the gateraids that could be both fun and new.
The Warp Perturbator hacker's device can be deployed on a human controlled planet. It creates a phase modulation in the warp grid of the AI that increases in strength with time until it reaches the point where all warpgates on adjacent planets are destroyed. The AI will notice the obvious perturbation and send all it can against the hacker through the soon-to-be-destroyed gates. As this hack can be executed from a defended human planet, the response shall be consequent. Maybe each concerned warpgate would send a full response, so the raw strength of the response is multiplied by the quantity of warpgates. (Note that hacks that are not deepstrikes-like can benefit from neutering and beachheading.)

As gateraids are often done for all gates adjacent to a particular human world, this hack would be a all-in-one bundle. But often gateraids are not difficult, just micro. So as the macro way must be balanced, we can tweak the cost of this hack. Maybe make it has a big-big HaP cost (multiplied by the number of targeted gates) and prevent AIP (it's not free, it just costs HaP instead of AIP, like the regular sabotages, the fabhack or the covert-K-extractor). Or the HaP could be dead cheap but cost AIP like a regular gateraid set, just macro instead of micro.
(I personally prefer the first high-HaP/no-AIP solution, 'cause it's very different from regular gateraid.)

So, what da ya think of it?

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

Personally, I think this would be very fun to play around with. Although having a full wave from each warpgate might be a little too much. Especially depending on your difficulty and what kind of map you play on. Imagine having five warpgates attack at once! It would take some tuning to get it to work, but sounds like something I would in my games.

[topper]

The idea sounds pretty interesting! The first part is probably another nice tool for the player that could be balanced pretty easily.

On the second idea, if you have a planet that is adjacent to 5 enemy warp gates and is fortified enough to handle 5 waves at once, then you probably want waves to continue going to that planet. 

[Pumpkin]

On the second idea, if you have a planet that is adjacent to 5 enemy warp gates and is fortified enough to handle 5 waves at once, then you probably want waves to continue going to that planet. 

Haha! Right... But I imagined hacking response crossing wormholes, not waves. The distinction is subtle but important indeed. I thought about it because in the way I play, my mobile fleet do the jobs like neutering and hacking while my stationary defenses handle waves (and minor factions like neinzul, dark spire, etc). So I would take a planet with my mobile fleet, warp-hack the surrounding, handle the response with my mobile fleet then go and never think about defending this planet again.

But you're totally right: on another style of play, defending a planet to handle the hacking that will spare defending it is... strange. Maybe the hacking response ships would stay on their planets as threatfleet (and maybe they already do; I think they are threatfleet when they spawn; I made some lone sabotages and I think they were threat). Well, this way could be interesting: the player need to clean the threat after the hack, and if he "sign a check he can't pay", he get crushed by the overflowing threatfleet. So handling this hack is done by mobile fleet and spare stationary defenses. Is it better this way?

[RabidDonkey]

Hey, that's a neat idea. I'd definitely support that!

I was playing against warp jumper and thought how neat it would be if I only gained 15 AIP instead of 20 to take a world. Needless to say, the warp jumper AI is NOT neat and completely messed me up from my normal turret happy ways, but the idea is nice.

[Pumpkin]

Posted on Mantis. Thank you Topper and Dominus Arbitrationis for pointing out the uselessness of triggering an attack on a planet that the player doesn't want to defend.