Special Forces and Core Reserves need a change or two

[Kahuna]

-They respawn way too fast.
-They don't give a shit about ship caps. Every time I encounter Special Forces there's like 50 SSBs, 50 STPs, 100 Snipers or 100 Sentinels. + a couple of hundreds of triangle ships ---> 10*SSBs' cap and 3*Triangles' caps.
-They always more together. They don't patrol anymore. They just camp on 1 planet and move as a 1 big blob. Sometimes they camp next to one of the player's planets.
-Bring back the "Special Forces Highways".
-They're a pain in the ass.
-There's thousands of them. Kill 1k. another 1k respawns in 30 seconds.
-They respawn too fast.
-Diff 8 or 10. Doesn't matter. Still pain in the ass.
-Now I'm forced to unlock MarkIII Riots.

[Mánagarmr]

Haha, you're a worse rageposter than me

But yes, their spawn rate may need to come down somewhat if they're that obnoxious. Then again, they're supposed to be an obstacle, but not an impossible one.

[TechSY730]

SF caps could stand to come down some. Respawn rate was nerfed recently, but I may need to come down a tad more. How about rising cap and/or spawn rate partially to number of alive sf posts, giving you a reason to try to take them out?
The proposal to have SF split into multiple groups, each choosing their own planet to "camp", and to have some of them group move has been brought up before, and I fully support both.
Also, having them change which planet to "camp" on more often may be a good idea.

The core reserves escaped the respawn rate nerf that the SF got; it needs a decent nerf in respawn rate as well.

[chemical_art]

SF caps could stand to come down some. Respawn rate was nerfed recently, but I may need to come down a tad more. How about rising cap and/or spawn rate partially to number of alive sf posts, giving you a reason to try to take them out?

Already done, which is why it has always been my standard response to deal with large spawns (from 5.074):

The spawns are spread out among all special forces posts (and special forces guardians) in the galaxy, except those in non-AI territory. Each post in non-AI territory instead increases the special-forces-population-cap by about 5%. So there's a reason to kill them, in tension with the +1 AIP from killing them.

Misunderstood that text. Yes, they should in part be dependent on total number of SF, not just those in player turf.



The proposal to have SF split into multiple groups, each choosing their own planet to "camp", and to have some of them group move has been brought up before, and I fully support both.
Also, having them change which planet to "camp" on more often may be a good idea.

I would love this since the only time the SF gets bad is when they bunch up then refuse to disperse. It's OK that they bunch up with enough time, but the key is they must disperse reliable after to allow gurellia tactics.

The core reserves escaped the respawn rate nerf that the SF got; it needs a decent nerf in respawn rate as well.

Agreed. You should be able to grind them into dust if you have the econ / fleet comp to keep up an attack every 10 minutes on them. Right now they respawn completely in said time, favoring even more the usual tactic of one huge blobbing attack once a game rather then grinding them down.

[Hearteater]

-They don't give a shit about ship caps. Every time I encounter Special Forces there's like 50 SSBs, 50 STPs, 100 Snipers or 100 Sentinels. + a couple of hundreds of triangle ships ---> 10*SSBs' cap and 3*Triangles' caps.
-Bring back the "Special Forces Highways".

I'm curious if the first issue comes from uneven attrition of low cap ships, or actual spawning bias.  In other words, if you run into a SF blob with 10xSSB cap, did it originally spawn 10xTriangle as well, but you've just killed them off (since they are much squisher) in the random clashes previously. 

And why bring back SF Highways?  They were pointless?  SF might was well not have been in the game for the impact they had.  Instead we have SF staging points, and you can solve a lot (all?) SF issues by controlling where they are (by killing SF Posts) so the SF take too long to respond.

[Minotaar]

I don't yet have an opinion on the balance of reserves/SF, but the SF are rather easily cheeseable. All you need is a beachhead on a CSG planet, and the whole galaxy will apparently rally there. 50-70 long-range turrets are enough to deal with the stream of units (on 10/10 no less).

[Kahuna]

I'm curious if the first issue comes from uneven attrition of low cap ships, or actual spawning bias.

It's not about the uneven attrition.

50 SSBs, 50 STPs, 100 Snipers or 100 Sentinels. + a couple of hundreds of triangle ships ---> 10*SSBs' cap and 3*Triangles' caps.

This was when I met the Special Forces for the first time in that game.

[TechSY730]

Got logs of that buildup?

That would help distinguish between just the AI decided to focus on low caps, but still "paying" for them properly, and a legitimate math problem letting the AI get too many and no sacrificing numbers elsewhere for it.

[Kahuna]

Got logs of that buildup?

No cause loggings were disabled.

[Minotaar]

Got logs of that buildup?

That would help distinguish between just the AI decided to focus on low caps, but still "paying" for them properly, and a legitimate math problem letting the AI get too many and no sacrificing numbers elsewhere for it.

I have some logs from my last game. There's definitely something weird going on here. Have a look at this one: (it's a vanilla 7/7 game)

12/15/2012 11:38:40 AM (6.009)
-----------------------------------
Doing Special Forces Spawn; Game Time: 3:52:03
baseSizeFactor = 30
specialDifficultyFactor = Game.Instance.Options.TotalSpecialDifficultyModifier (based on difficulty, homeworld count, handicap) = 1
effectiveAIP = 31
aiTypeMultiplier = (1 + 2 per Special Forces Captain AI) = 1
specialForcesPostsInNonAITerritoryMultiplier = Mat.One + ( FInt.FromParts( 0, 050 ) * numberOfSpecialForcesPostsInNonAITerritory ) = 1
specialForcesStrengthCap = baseSizeFactor * difficultyFactor * effectiveAIP * aiTypeMultiplier * specialForcesPostsInNonAITerritoryMultiplier = 930
strengthMissing = specialForcesStrengthCap - totalExistingSpecialForcesStrength = 470.89
percentMissing = strengthMissing / specialForcesStrengthCap = 0.51
maxNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength = ( ( 196 * 300 ) / specialForcesStrengthCap ) * 60 = 3793.54
actualNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength = maxNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength - ( ( maxNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength / 2 ) * percentMissing ) = 2833.57
strengthToSpawn = (FInt)( secondsPerSpawnCheck * 196 ) / actualNumberOfSecondsToSpawn196Strength = 4.36
strengthToSpawn = Min(strengthToSpawn,strengthMissing) = 4.36
allocating 0.25 out of 1 (1.09 strength) for role: None , eligible types:MissileShip, Raider
allocating 0.53 out of 1 (2.3 strength) for role: AntiBomber , eligible types:Fighter, ZenithReprocessor
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: LongRange , eligible types:
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: CopperPlatedBastard , eligible types:
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: Tractor , eligible types:
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: Gravity , eligible types:
allocating 0.11 out of 1 (0.48 strength) for role: Reclamator , eligible types:SpireTeleportingLeech
allocating 0.11 out of 1 (0.48 strength) for role: DefenseCracker , eligible types:Bomber, ZenithElectricBomber
actually bought:
1 MissileShip @ 2 each, so total for line = 2
1 ZenithReprocessor @ 24 each, so total for line = 24
1 SpireTeleportingLeech @ 4 each, so total for line = 4
1 ZenithElectricBomber @ 10.11 each, so total for line = 10.11
Grand total: 4 ships, 40.11 strength

So basically, if it decided it wants ship X for a role, it's going to buy at least one, nevermind that it costs 6x more than its whole budget. Seems like it's the same kind of problem that was happening with reinforcements before. When it picks fighters and not reprocessors, it also only buys one, so there's almost equal numbers of both even though reprocessors are 8-cap and fighters are 98. This also indirectly makes the forces respawn faster than intended, as every spawn I looked at exceeded its strength budget, even if not in such an extreme fashion (here we have 4.36 budget, 40.11 actual)

[Hearteater]

Special Forces To Do List:
* Add Lay Away option for large purchases

[KDR_11k]

I don't mind the SF that much since they take a while to arrive on the scene and then you just need to retreat but the core reserves are more of a problem because you must fight them (unless you have the option to simply cheese the AI HW) and they're the toughest ships the AI has, they outnumber you and you have to fight them on the hardest possible terrain (on a planet with all kinds of nasty core guard posts and Eye coverage, the latter amplifying the difficulty of facing MkVs because they have the most strength per unit and until the core reserves are fully deployed the Eye will only see a fraction of the AI's strength). Quite a difficulty spike compared to everything you faced before.

[Eternaly_Lost]

I agree that Special forces needs work, as they love to blob. I have sent almost 126 or so million resources of Fallen Spire Fleet ships (We talking all of the ships in extremely large numbers), against a Special forces army on one planet. There was 53 Carriers with 1000 ships each, and I was expecting my fleet to win as most of those would be rather weak ships.

Turns out 53,000 Guardians has little issues going thought that much firepower, more so when every single one of them is a MKV guardian. That was the game that had me posting a request to buff the Fallen Spire endgame army, as they could not get through that either.

I would love to see destroying SF guardposts to reduce the cap for the Special forces, and also for them to spread out (1 planet out of the 70 that the AI had at the time had every single ship in the SF.) I would also like to see them not fly around in Carriers so much. Or allow the Cookie Monster to attack Carriers. The AI should not just be able to not worry about it because every ship is in a Carrier like it does right now. I can allow some ships in them, but it seems like the AI realizes that Cookie monster is around and moves every single ship that Cookie monster could hurt into a Carrer and then just follows it around to be even more annoying.

[TechSY730]

@chemical_art
What you pointed out is how special forces guard posts interact with cap when not on AI owned planets.

However, AFIAK, the AI losing special forces guard posts on AI owned planets has no bearing on SF caps and only a slight influence on rate (due to losing a point where the standard reinforcements can deploy to it). I would like to see that change. It seems fair, given the SFGPs costs AIP to take out.
If that makes SF too easy, then their cap when the AI still has all of its SF posts could go up some in return.

@Eternally_lost
Good point about the carriers. They should "consildate" into carriers much less aggressively.

[Kahuna]

Special Forces shouldn't use carriers. Carrier=1 big ass blob.