Are Hybrids Too Weak?

[TechSY730]

I think it is the turret firepower thing. I had to scrap my fortress and retreat my fleet to get them to display suicidal tendancies.

Anyways, here are two saves. The first one (Hybrid Test 4), scrap the fortress on my homeworld, and watch 10 hybrids enter into the system. Hmm, not a bad number, but then I noticed most of them came from Rearpo, only two came from Erasav. So I rolled back, cleared all the hybrids from Rearpo with my cheat boosted fleet, and setup the same scenario (Hybrid Test Rearpo Cleared). Scrap the fortress again, and only two measly hybrids and their dozen or so fleet escorts come in, and promptly get chewed up by the glut of turrets. And no, placing turrets closer to the wormhole or adding grav turrets does nothing to dissuade them from entering.

Even though this is a cheat game, the hybrids are on 4/10, and advanced hybrids are on 1/10, so the normal hybrids should be displaying normal behaviour right? (IIRC, the advanced hybrid option only influences the hybrids once maturity gets pretty high, so its 1/10 should have no impact here)

And finally, I posted a save from 5 minutes before the 1 hour mark (Hybrid test 3), so you can try playing around and seeing if you can reproduce more "stupid" behaviours.

Also of note, I managed to get another save of the "jumpy, slow" escort ship behaviour reported long ago. (I made a mantis post about this long ago, but I can't seem to find it, I'll link it if I find it)

EDIT: Oops, uploaded Hybrid Test 4 twice. Fixed.

[Varone]

i've played with hybrids a few times but found them quite difficult or quite easy depending on the game settings.

With very large maps i tend to find that there are too many hybrids and the game just turns into a grindfest. 36 or more hybrids on the planet i want to take and if i do manage to take it the next planet soon fills up as well. So hybrids acting defensively is quite annoying and i don't find it that enjoyable.

Offensively i quite like hybrids, don't mind them swooping in and trying to take out a command station, usually it happens in small numbers but occasionally it can be quite a large amount that decide to give it a go.

Individually i think they are too weak, therefore easily killed. I think i would prefer them to be much much stronger than they are now but have much less to compensate. Then you could have them attack more often and have the health to run away when their escorts are down and their health is low.

It would be much more fun if there were at most only a couple of defensive hybrids on a planet and they can be scared off quite easily, running away to recharge. Instead you have to go into the planet and have a full on battle, destroying dozens of them and then rebuilding your fleet to attack the same planet again. Destroying a hybrid should be more of an event, should make you go YES, got one! a significant achievement.

So in summary i would like to see:
Spawned amount much lower.
Massively increased in health and longetivity.
More likely to attempt an attack, get damaged and get out. increased health and armor should help with this.
allow more escorts since less hybrids.

Other misc:
Hybrids increase in physical size the higher their maturity.
More health and armor when they mature.
Less speed to compensate.

[TechSY730]

Individually i think they are too weak, therefore easily killed. I think i would prefer them to be much much stronger than they are now but have much less to compensate. Then you could have them attack more often and have the health to run away when their escorts are down and their health is low.

Thank you! That is what I was trying to (and failing to) communicate with this thread.

EDIT: Though the issue of the Hybrids attacking when they will clearly be defeated without doing much damage still needs to be looked into.

So in summary i would like to see:
Spawned amount much lower.
Massively increased in health and longetivity.
More likely to attempt an attack, get damaged and get out. increased health and armor should help with this.
allow more escorts since less hybrids.

This would be great. Making each hybrid stronger, but reducing their spawn rate, thus making the net firepower accumulation the same but making each individual hybrid more significant.

Also, I don't think that their defensive behavior would need that much changing. With a reduced spawn rate, they would be forced to sometimes choose less planets to defend as heavily, especially earlier on in the game. Maybe their defensive behavior in general could be tweaked a bit (like having a chance to defend a planet 2 hops away from a human planet if they feel that all planets 1 hop away from a human planet seems reasonably well defended, especially by other hybrids). But overall, their defensive behavior isn't that bad.

And after all, one of the goals is to take out the spawners so they can't get insane amounts of numbers quickly in the first place. If you let the hybrids build up to the point where you can't take any planet without major losses, then you have basically let them won. (Yea, I know, counterintutive to what the pressure they give seems to push you to do, turtle more, but that is part of their "mind game" )

Other misc:
Hybrids increase in physical size the higher their maturity.
More health and armor when they mature.
Less speed to compensate.

Having them "go up in Mk" (basically, swapping out ship type to mature) would be cool, and make maturity more obvious and threatening (not to mention solving the issue of a low maturity hybrid being basically a Mk. II starship but still having a Mk. V designation, thus sort of confusing expectations), but these other changes may make this less of a big deal.

[doctorfrog]

After reading this page of posts, and considering my earlier idea, here's something a bit more. Like I said before, I'm still pretty much a novice and may not have the same understanding that other folks in this thread may have.

I remember reading Stranger in a Strange Land, and the idea of the Martians' maturity process has some stuff in common with AI War, and possibly with these hybrids. I read this a while ago, so maybe I'm a bit foggy on a lot of the details.

Younger Martians are nymph-like. They are small, impulsive, move and think and feel very very quickly. IIRC, they also die by the thousands and have a short lifespan.

Those Martians who mature long enough grow to an enormous size, and become slow, thoughtful, and ponderous. They live for thousands of years.

This is already a bit of a parallel here between the Neinzul and the Remnant. Still, I see a use here for Hybrids.

I said before, that I like the idea of Hybrids having the appearance of being impulsive. They seem to "blunder" into my territory on their way to a muster point, or a small group of them might appear to impulsively attack me in blatant ignorance of firepower ratings. Raptors testing the fence, or as the War Nerd would say, "weasels who stand on their hind legs sometimes."

Later on, I've been swamped by much more powerful hybrids who seemed content to wait. In a way, these "patient" models built up much stronger modules, bode their time, and attacked when they were more "mature."

Bugs these might be, but until I read this thread, I saw this as a form of personality, a unique behavior. I wouldn't ever advocate keeping a bug in for flavor, only to spoil gameplay, but I hope this feature of hybrids somehow stays in, in a more deliberate form.

[Hearteater]

I think having immature hybrids rush to action recklessly, but more mature hybrids make better decisions would be nice.  The Advanced Hybrids setting could even control the speed of maturity (with some base rate equal to like 0.5 for when Adv.Hybrids is disabled), while the Hybrids setting controls the spawn rate.

[Wingflier]

i've played with hybrids a few times but found them quite difficult or quite easy depending on the game settings.

With very large maps i tend to find that there are too many hybrids and the game just turns into a grindfest. 36 or more hybrids on the planet i want to take and if i do manage to take it the next planet soon fills up as well. So hybrids acting defensively is quite annoying and i don't find it that enjoyable.

Offensively i quite like hybrids, don't mind them swooping in and trying to take out a command station, usually it happens in small numbers but occasionally it can be quite a large amount that decide to give it a go.

Individually i think they are too weak, therefore easily killed. I think i would prefer them to be much much stronger than they are now but have much less to compensate. Then you could have them attack more often and have the health to run away when their escorts are down and their health is low.

It would be much more fun if there were at most only a couple of defensive hybrids on a planet and they can be scared off quite easily, running away to recharge. Instead you have to go into the planet and have a full on battle, destroying dozens of them and then rebuilding your fleet to attack the same planet again. Destroying a hybrid should be more of an event, should make you go YES, got one! a significant achievement.

So in summary i would like to see:
Spawned amount much lower.
Massively increased in health and longetivity.
More likely to attempt an attack, get damaged and get out. increased health and armor should help with this.
allow more escorts since less hybrids.

Other misc:
Hybrids increase in physical size the higher their maturity.
More health and armor when they mature.
Less speed to compensate.

Agree with this post.  Hybrids are a cool option to have on, but don't seem imposing enough individually to be unique.  It would be cool if they were like a superior battleship unit.

[Mánagarmr]

Yeah, each individual Hybrid is definitely not a threat to basically...anything. It's when they mass up they're threatening. So I'm all in favor of lowering their spawn rate massively and buff each individual hybrid correspondingly.

[TechSY730]

Alright. Due to the support for the idea, the suggestion to make individual hybrids stronger, but to decrease their spawn rate has been post on mantis. 8893: Make Hybrids individually stronger, but decrease their spawn rate. Vote up if you like it. I also gave credit to Varone, as he/she also came up with the idea I was trying to express, but communicated it in far clearer wording.

[Mánagarmr]

Thanks Tech. I'll post my vote.