The early game

[TechSY730]

I guess I'm not sure how 250 mk1 bombers isn't feasible to hold off two hours in?

Are you using laser/missile/lightning turrets?  Fighters?  Mk 2 forcefields?  Riot starships specializing in engine damage?

I actually would kind of support the small wave down for structural ships but weighted for lower difficulties probably.

Well, despite how awkward I think this change is, should a request for a general scaling down of wave multipliers for fleet ships with a bonus against structural hull be put on mantis?

[Zeyurn]

Well, it's not especially awkward to admit certain ships just do tons better in the hands of the AI.  Take Eyebots for example.  Most of these ships seem to be the ships that have structural bonuses or can teleport.  The teleporting ones already have low caps though or are pretty weak.

Edit2:  I'm just worried about too much tweaking because I honestly think the balance is pretty good right now at higher difficulties.  Some ships are scary and demand special attention to counter and I don't want to destroy that part of the game.

[TechSY730]

I actually would kind of support the small wave down for structural ships but weighted for lower difficulties probably.

Well, despite how awkward I think this change is, should a request for a general scaling down of wave multipliers for fleet ships with a bonus against structural hull be put on mantis?

Well, I added it to mantis. (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2785)

Vote up or down as you will.

Also notice that I mentioned this could be used as a "temporary" fix until the rest of the bomber, command station, hull bonuses, and wave size concerns can be reexamined at, which will take quite a bit of time.

EDIT: Shot down right away, like I expected it would.

[Draco18s]

You're probably underestimating how good lightning can actually do against a swarm of ships.  Also I'm almost certain laser had 2.4 bonus versus polycrystal last I checked?  Did that change or am I crazy?

Ah, I was wrong.  They do have a bonus versus polycrystal, but their damage is 3x lower than the Missile Turret.  They do 14,400 damage per 4 seconds, vs. the Missile Turret's 51,840 every 12.

That's 3,600 vs. 4,320 d.p.s.

In any case, I build 10 of those per wormhole anyway (along with 10 basic turrets and 10 MRLS).

[TechSY730]

You're probably underestimating how good lightning can actually do against a swarm of ships.  Also I'm almost certain laser had 2.4 bonus versus polycrystal last I checked?  Did that change or am I crazy?

Ah, I was wrong.  They do have a bonus versus polycrystal, but their damage is 3x lower than the Missile Turret.  They do 14,400 damage per 4 seconds, vs. the Missile Turret's 51,840 every 12.

That's 3,600 vs. 4,320 d.p.s.

In any case, I build 10 of those per wormhole anyway (along with 10 basic turrets and 10 MRLS).

Good luck with that, considering the low ship cap of the lightning turret.

[Zeyurn]

Lightning Turrets are cheap to research up to Mark 3 and get crazy effective.  They're the highest killing unit in almost all of the games I play for all 3 of us.  They're that good all of us research Mark 3.

[Sunshine!]

Draco: try clustering your turrets around your command station and see if you like that method.  I can usually hold out just fine with 30 of each type of mk1 turret (basic, laser, MLRS, missile), plus 15 flak turrets and some amount of snipers, clustered around my command station.  That way, when you get a wave of 250 bombers, you have roughly three times the amount of firepower being thrown at them.  I've found that I generally need to build an additional two (maybe three, depending) mk1 forcefields around my home command station for those early waves though.  If it's a border planet with a mk3 military command, I'll just stick a single forcefield, unless it's a critical post mid-late game.

[Draco18s]

*Sigh*

You know...

It used to be better to keep as much space between your wormholes and your command station, and have all your turrets out there.

Oh, and turrets used to be useful.

[TechSY730]

*Sigh*

You know...

It used to be better to keep as much space between your wormholes and your command station, and have all your turrets out there.

Oh, and turrets used to be useful.

I thought people were happy about the balance of turrets right now. I have a few minor complaints, but overall I'm happy with them.
(Yea, Mk. Is are kind of underwhelming, but then again, as with all Mk. Is, they are supposed to be)

Oh, and why not do both? Put some of the turrets around the wormhole and a few near the commands station to catch any of those who "leak" through. That is what I do. Yes, you do lose some of your firepower concentration, but in return you aren't making a risk by hoping nothing substantial can get through your turret blob around one spot.

EDIT: I guess this is part of that whole "defense in depth" that the devs keep talking about.

[Draco18s]

You know, this is why I liked old AI War more.

The more changes keep coming the less and less viable certain tactics were and the more and more there becomes only One True Tactic.

I do not like sandbox games with One True Way.

[keith.lamothe]

You know, this is why I liked old AI War more.

The more changes keep coming the less and less viable certain tactics were and the more and more there becomes only One True Tactic.

I do not like sandbox games with One True Way.

Nor do I.  And in my recent experience both turrets-at-wormholes and turrets-at-command-station have worked well.  Some changes do destabilize old choices (particularly at higher difficulties), and (unless it was some exploitative thing we were intending to kill) we look to reverse that when we can.

[TechSY730]

You know, this is why I liked old AI War more.

The more changes keep coming the less and less viable certain tactics were and the more and more there becomes only One True Tactic.

I do not like sandbox games with One True Way.

Well, harder games tend to be less "sandboxy", as harder games tend to reduce the effectiveness of most strategies.
One goal of 5.0 was intended to help "correct" some of the unintentional easiness of 3.0. They said that the 3.0 was a low point in difficulty, and that was not intentional.
Sadly, this means many people who grew to love some of the suboptimal but still very fun tactics that you could do in 3.0 all of a sudden are finding this not working very well at all in 5.0. In other words, lots of people (including you apparently) were spoiled by that.

I disagree with your implication that there are very few viable tactics now; there are still plenty of ways to win the game. But I will admit that many tactics that worked decently in 3.0 no longer work very well in 5.0

If those types of tactics and strategies that worked in the 3.0 world is what you got you to love the game, then that's fine. No one is stopping you from playing that version. No (reasonable) person would look down upon you for doing so as well. Just keep in mind that despite how long the 3.0 era lasted, it was the exception, not the rule, in terms of pacing and difficulty.

If you want, you can try 6.0 difficulty, and maybe you will get a similar experience that you had before. Difficulty 6.0 now is more like what difficulty 7.0 was in the 3.0 versions, due to many factors (especially the AI getting smarter and the removal of many of the caps they used to have)

EDIT: Ninja'd by Keith, who managed to make some of my points much more understandably than I did.

[BobTheJanitor]

This is a digression, but so is the whole thread, so I'll go ahead and ask. Can someone explain to me how turrets on the command station could be better than turrets on the wormhole? Every time I've tried it it seems worse. Yes, you can concentrate all your force at one spot, but you have to let the enemy get into killing range before you can do anything with it. And where does one put the tractor beams? Do you presume certain paths and just clump them up there? What if you have a mil-comm station and it's teleporting things all over the system and they're coming back from every angle? I may overdo it on my wormholes sometimes, but I like to have so much tractor coverage that waves don't move at all, they just get stuck there and chopped up before they can do much more than dent a few MkI tractors, which are mostly there to draw fire anyway. But then, I get twitchy if I lose a command station at all, even though replacing them is quick and easy.

[chemical_art]

How does "central defense work?"

Here is a reference picture of one variant of this, the "home defense" version



The biggest reason for the central defense is that the enemy ships usually converge on one point, usually the command station. Rather then spread a planet's worth of defenses over three or four wormholes, you set up the defenses so they usually hit several "lanes" between the wormhole and command station. In this way, you clump your defenses together enabling them to be more effective. You don't put the defenses too close. At most, you put them so that their range just barely overlaps with the station so they can shoot at any potential raiders. It works best when a world has too many wormholes to defend each effectively, or if you want your fleet to have time to soften up the enemy before they bash your defenses. Shields over the station are a must for it to work.

EDIT: There are plenty of other benefits as well. It gives your missile launchers, snipers, and forts more time to pump shots before the enemy fires their first shots. It allows you to "layer" defenses so that it distracts the enemies longer. Enemy ships of different speeds spread out a bit before they hit the defenses. This defense type really meshes well with the military stations' warping shots.

There is another variant I can load up that involves military stations. The gist is that you put maybe a dozen long range turrets total around the station. The station itself "punts" the enemy away, and the defenses whittle them down as they get warped around. This defense is meant as a effective bare-bones defense against border aggression and assumes the planet is disposable should it be hit by a wave.

[Zeyurn]

Given how much people post that makes me boggle as to how the strategy works, I'm pretty confident in saying AI War 5.0 does not have 'The One True Way'.

I'm pretty sure what I say works for me/us makes a lot of people confused too!