To streamline chokepoints

[Histidine]

I think Beachheads aren't too bad, they're just:
- Too powerful on one hand: they completely, utterly shut down any fixed defenses to the point that five Mk I fighters could tear down the whole planet given enough time.
- And too weak on the other: use a handful of mobile ships to pop the Beachhead structure and suddenly the AI is left with a half-strength wave vs. a full-strength chokepoint.

Also, they affect every human planet they land on, not just the chokepoints being complained about (unless the expectation is that non-chokepoint defenses will rely primarily on mobile units).

Sun Tzu told us that.

And I'd say he knows a little more about AI War than you do, pal, because he invented it!

[LaughingThesaurus]

I think the problem is that it's far too easy to actually dictate where the battle is fought. The people who refresh maps over and over until they can get a good chokepoint are honestly somewhat boring players who always stick with the same thing rather than the idea of just playing with what the game gives you (the intended way). On the other hand, even if you aren't playing with Exos, you can still very easily force most waves to attack the same planet just by killing warp gates and it's so easy to actually do that.

[ZaneWolfe]

I think the problem is that it's far too easy to actually dictate where the battle is fought. The people who refresh maps over and over until they can get a good chokepoint are honestly somewhat boring players who always stick with the same thing rather than the idea of just playing with what the game gives you (the intended way). On the other hand, even if you aren't playing with Exos, you can still very easily force most waves to attack the same planet just by killing warp gates and it's so easy to actually do that.

[rant]
Try playing a 8/8 or above game with Spirecraft, Golems, Botnet, and FS active (Minimum of 4/10) at the same time with a single champ and Hybrids 4/10 and Advanced Hybrids at 10/10. WITHOUT A CHOKEPOINT. This is how I enjoy my game. Its not boring. Its a chaotic mess of unholy death smashing (and several times just devouring) the last hope of humanity. And besides, when done right the point is to move your choke FORWARD as you expand your empire. (Even more so when you're using FS and HAVE to expand your empire further out to continue the story)

Even at best when I have a large amount of teritory I can take in a "backwater" behind my choke, its because my chokepoint is my homeworld. Sure its a fortress filled with all sorts of ways to slaughter the AI horde mercilessly, but its also the only system the AI has to actually kill. They only need to get lucky once, and I have to remain lucky all the time. And hope the Z-trader comes around before the really nasty things do. Because 10 Spirecraft Shieldbearers covering a few golems, an H/K or 3, some Dire Guardians, and you don't want to know how many Starships and fleetships show up on your HW and/or your chokepoint and you do NOT have an P-Inhibitor, there are NOT enough static defenses to keep you alive. Even if its not your HW that falls in that rush, you have things like the Shark kicking in and the craziness gets exponential from there.

Rolling over and over again to get a chokepoint that you can start at may seem boring to you, but when you're playing with so many things turned on at 8/8 and above, you are going to NEED that choke. And when you get the Spire involved, you are going to need to expand forward to a new one.
[/rant]

Personally I am all for the per planet cap idea on turrets. Drop the number of allowed turrets on any world to 1/3 or 1/4 of what it is now, and allow Core turrets to be built with normal turrets sounds like a great idea. Combined with something that allows for the current number of turrets to be built on a single world, with that structures cap at say, 2, while NOT allowing Core turrets on any world with said structure sounds perfect to me.

And yes I feel you need to make the cap 2. Any more and it becomes WAY too easy to build turrets everywhere (assuming you can afford them). But making it 1 will mean you can only have 1 major choke, and sometimes you need at least 2, plus it allows that if you DO have a single point of entry you can eventually move that point forward without having to completely give up your current choke, at least until the new one is up and running.

I also agree that the structure needs to be permacloaked, and to have AOE immunity as well, so it doesn't get targeted and doesn't just get blown up by random fire. This way you don't have to give it a ton of HP and have the AI waste shots on it. Or you COULD just give it a ton of HP (like P-Inhibitor levels of HP) while giving it a targeting priority so low that the AI might as well just ignore it.

[nitpik]

/generally agree with Zanewolf

These days I'm playing 8/8 games with Golems, Botnet, Spireships, a champion, and hybrids all at 4/10. Because all those things are fun, and also because exo-waves give you big challenges to defend against. FS is usually on but I won't always bother running many of the shards. And generally on simple map type.

A chokepoint (sometimes you can get away with 2) is pretty required against the 8/8 triple exo-waves. But it's not as though the game is boring because all you do is build a chokepoint and wait for 2 hours.

The OP started this thread claiming that everything outside the chokepoint is an outpost. Well, if it's an outpost that dies if an exo-wave passes through it, but between exowaves you can keep it alive for an hour or two with turrets and by supporting it with your fleet, swinging a botnet golem through when a wave is triggered, etc..., that's part of the fun. I have no problem with losing parts of my empire every so often due to big attacks - or due to waves that I can't defend against because my fleet is somewhere else. And if some of those outposts take long enough to die that they delay a pulse of the exo-wave, that's fine.

Also, some of the "outposts" may be 3 adjacent systems with a fabricator on one and an advanced factory on another, because those things spawned outside your chokepoint, that you keep alive for as long as possible - but if it dies you have to either spend the AIP to get another one or make do without. I guess I also like the playstyle of having a strongly defended core, and also having to take stuff outside that core which is always more vulnerable, and some of which is a permanent loss when it dies.

Part of this is probably playstyle. I think all the superweapon options (and spire civilians...) create a game that is initially harder but easier later, once you have a couple of golems and some spire ships. But there's always that tension between having enough force to take the homeworlds and eventually being crushed by a large enough exo-wave

[Histidine]

Going over this old thread about chokepoints, one of the ideas that came up for letting the AI overcome chokepoints without the use of simple force or by bypassing the choke entirely was the use of "siege" options. This would force the player to come out of the choke and fight the AI on its own turf for a change.

Thus, I propose this idea: Siege AI plot (perhaps as an Advanced Hybrid option).

When the AI finds a chokepoint it can't breach, it begins setting up a siege "platform" on an adjacent world. First, it builds its own defenses (guard posts might work, although I'd go for something more unique), then it starts working on things like:
- Dire Guardian Lairs
- Raid Engines
- Modified NRC silos without the invulnerability but with much greater offensive power (perhaps even nuke capability)
- Cross-planet Beachheads

These nasty things can be prevented by destroying the siege units, but if you don't do anything your chokepoint is going down.

[Zeyi]

It has been mentioned somewhere but realistically if people don't like setting up chokepoints they should either use a map type that doesn't allow for them or enable the beachheads plot, which I'm fairly sure will make them somewhat more vulnerable. Maybe too much so, but if all is needed is a rebalance of the beachheads plot then why not just do that?

I am strongly against ruining a mechanic because it doesn't fit certain players playstyles when there is options available that will counter it anyway. I also can't get my head around artificial chokepoints because me dictating where the AI will launch its attacks at me makes no sense to me whatsoever. If however i fought for  several hours to take all planets behind, and secure a chokepoint then that is perfectly reasonable and as mentioned by others in FS games, almost completely necessary.

[LaughingThesaurus]

The thing is, this AI is supposed to be very intelligent. It's not supposed to mindlessly bash away at an invincible chokepoint with the same waves hoping that it works this time. One of the original hopes of AI War, as far as I've read in the past, was that the AI should never consistently fall to the same strategy. Least of all do we need to make it easier for the AI to keep falling to the exact same strategy with a structure that specifically undermines the AI's AI. So... yes, I do think that chokepoints shouldn't be this perfect thing that draws literally everything into them. The AI should be keeping you on your toes at all times. Some kind of siege plot, or even a little sneaky AI strikeforce that tries to fly by your chokepoint and do serious damage to the squishy worlds past it would honestly be ideal to keep the game actually doing what it's supposed to do. I honestly don't really have a problem setting up a chokepoint that will block exos really (aside from the AI mindlessly sacrificing thousands of ships), but for it to absorb all the damage the AI throws at you? That's just silly.

[Diazo]

Okay.

In my opinion, everything is working as desired here in my opinion. (Or close enough I am not going to push for any changes.)

As I see it, if you don't like chokepoints, play a Realistic map. (Or a Lattice map for a real change of pace.)

With the plethora of options you can set, there are several ways to make the game easier (or harder), map type being one of those.

The number of chokepoints is easily controlled during game start so you can easily set it how you like to play. I don't see the need to give the AI any 'siege' mechanics to break a chokepoint as if something like that went in, the players who like the chokepoint strategy would just tweak the game start options to allow themselves to make effective chokepoints again.


There is also a self-balancing thing in place with how far the AI's HWs are from your own HW.

On an 80 planet realistic map, I usually find the AI's HW in the 6 hops away range. I only have to capture 2 planets to avoid deep-strike and bring the AI HW's into attack range.

On a map with fewer connections, and so more chokepoints, you have to capture more planets simply to bring the AI HW's into range. On an 80 planet snake map (all systems in a single line map), I think the closest AI HW ends up at about 38 hops away. That's 3 planets captured to bring the closest (not both) AI HW's into range without deep-strike threat. (That's the maximum range of hopping over 8 AI controlled systems between each player controlled outpost, not that easy a feat either.)

Does this balance things out so that a snake map and lattice map are the same difficulty? No. But it's easily set by the player and straightforward in how it affects difficulty so I see no incentive to change things here.

D.