The Next Expansion

[x4000]

The danger there is getting into a situation where you're balancing the AI side because of the way humans play it, rather than balancing it so that the AI is most effective and entertaining. One of the major ways that PvP modes can actually harm the single player and co-op game is through driving balance decisions, there's a general tendency to homogenize the sides for example.

That is a REALLY astute observation, actually.

[superking]

PvP for my game of AI War? No thanks!

dont worry, I'm sure PvP would be optional... your single player & cooperative AI war experience would most likely not be affected.

The danger there is getting into a situation where you're balancing the AI side because of the way humans play it, rather than balancing it so that the AI is most effective and entertaining. One of the major ways that PvP modes can actually harm the single player and co-op game is through driving balance decisions, there's a general tendency to homogenize the sides for example.

That is a REALLY astute observation, actually.

If players only have control of freed units and the deployment of waves, I dont see the AI player being especially overwelming- its more likely that playing the AI would be frustrating because so few units are freed at any given time, and your waves would mostly be pinned by tractor beams and shredded before you can control them unless crossplanet waves is enabled (thinking about it, it would work MUCH better with cross planet waves). The experience of playing GM would be of being baited but unable to lash out unless the players really screw up.

Moreover, I think playing with a human GM would be an option more targetted at advanced players (ie, people who regularly play in a group) who are seeking a strategic challenge, since I cant imagine newer players finding it much fun controlling spread out, small groups of slow ships that are systemically hosed by the other players. to make it as entertaining as fighting the AI, I imagine the GM would need control of:

• Wave Compositions
• Where waves are sent (either human or AI planets)
• Gaurdian Compositions
• AI ship unlocks with AIP increase

I imagine straight PVP might work by having each of the players spawned at different points of the galaxy, and each of the players allied to an AI with the AIs at war with eachother, but I have no idea how AIW would handle that 

[Orelius]

I think that the only way to make AI War multiplayer is to significantly change the foundations of the game.
Narrative issues are relatively minor (just place it in the civil war era that is mentioned in game).
Gameplay would be completely overhauled, as players aren't fighting against a vastly superior force, they're fighting against something that is around their level of power.  You would no longer need to conservative or cautious when attacking.  It would also require a complete balance overhaul, which I personally don't think would be worth all the trouble, though nobody likes overpowered ships.
In addition, it would force many slow-paced players to develop faster openings.  Some people here, ahem, take lots of time to even get started, setting up turrets, building ships, etc.  However, others ignore defences completely and are up to go with a full fleet very quickly.  How would capturables work?  How would minor factions work?  It's just too complex and too large an issue to approach directly.

So, yeah, it's probably not worth it.

[Vinraith]

The danger there is getting into a situation where you're balancing the AI side because of the way humans play it, rather than balancing it so that the AI is most effective and entertaining. One of the major ways that PvP modes can actually harm the single player and co-op game is through driving balance decisions, there's a general tendency to homogenize the sides for example.

That is a REALLY astute observation, actually.

It's a product of experience, I've seen this kind of thing happen to games before.

The problem with PvP is that the instant you introduce it, PvP players will start wanting to make balance changes, structural changes, they will (quite understandably) want their side of the game fully supported, and that invariably has a deleterious effect on the PvE game. You can't just introduce PvP and then not balance the game for PvP, and balancing the game for PvP damages the asymmetry, variety, and (I'm)balance of the PvE experience.

It's a door that, once opened, can't be closed.

[x4000]

Yeah, that is very much true.  We're tapped out just supporting PvE, there's no way we could double that load with PvP on top of it.  That pretty well seals the door shut there.

[zebramatt]

It might nonetheless be possible to introduce a form of PvP by bringing in an entirely new minor faction which is player controlled but hostile to both AI and human forces. Although that wouldn't so much be PvP as it would non-cooperative.

Still, a door left slightly ajar, perhaps.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I think that maybe the next expansion should be an amalgamation, a unified gold edition with all the expansions that also adds some new content.  I know people who tried AI war in version 2 or so and didn't like it, nor want to buy a bunch of expansions for all the good stuff...

i do like the idea of a story campaign though, or maybe just riffing on the mission concept - stuff like human colony rebellions and mining golems except worked out more like the spire missions. There's a lot of possibilities from the concept of a wrecked human civilization. Like, I dunno, getting a distress call from a ship of surviving humans that you can use to build an additional Settlement. They only have an hour left on their cloaking device or something.    Or you could find a massive wreckage field from a battle that still has some salvagable starships of random tech. So you could get, say, a siege mk2 out of it, even without the tech. Valuable but irreplaceable. 

There's still lots of other stuff that can be done with PVE to mix things up.  Turrets are pretty much unused by the ai atm, for example.  Independent factions with their own territory. Battleships Forever-style multi-part constructs.  New superweapons.  'Weather'.  Different planet types. 

there's also room for art polish like new missile art - it's always bothered me that MLRS and frigate missiles are the same. 

[Wingflier]

Honestly, I vehemently disagree with adding a "gold" edition of the game as an 'expansion', there's so many problems with it.

For one thing, each title of AI War (except for maybe CoN, which is a microexpansion) has so much content that lumping them all together would seriously be selling the game short.  I could keep myself entertained with just the base game for practically an infinite amount of time.  I first tried the game when it was released in 2009, and it's only been this week that I've even been able to try out the Zenith and Light of the Spire expansions (with unexpected and hilarious results), even though I've had them for quite awhile.

If you were to make a "gold edition", which included all the previous games, plus new bonus content, you would have to sell it for at least $30, which is a pretty steep price for an indie game that the majority of people may not even know about.  In addition to that, for the people that have already bought all the AI War titles up until now, they would be paying $30 for some extra bonus content, which seems completely unfair to say the least.

As far as your concern that people tried the game when it first came out and will never return, I wouldn't worry so much about it.  I'll be the first to say that when the game was released I wasn't a big fan of it myself, but I saw how much potential it had.  In the back of my mind I said, "I'll come back in a year or two and see if this has improved at all".  Basically, anybody who tries a just-released game with the size, depth, and magnitude of AI War, and who automatically writes it off forever as a bad game never worth playing again, probably wouldn't have liked it even it was version 5.0 on release; I'm just saying.  I doubt a "gold edition" would bring in a lot of new customers.

Of all the suggestions, I liked Chris' the most of just adding more content to the games we already have.  Chances are if somebody is buying the 4th expansion, they've already bought the first 3, but even if they hadn't, you could add a little bit of content to each game (new ships, enemies, mechanics, etc.), in addition to new music, minor factions, and game modes, that no matter which expansions you owned (if any), it would be worth the $10 or however much AI War expansions go for these days.

Honestly I agree with him that they've barely scratched the surface in terms of the potential for expanding the content they already have.

[zebramatt]

Not to mention the fact that distribution platforms like Steam can do much the equivalent by simply offering the base game and expansions as part of a discounted package!

[chemical_art]

One idea I've daydreamed about was playing another game mode variant in which you play as a faction other then human.

For example, what if you played as the Zenith as they were a powerhouse? You would use mostly Zenith units (you can keep the initial fleet ships triangle to prevent terrible re balancing) and would be able even construct fully functional golems (with caps, of course) powered by a powerful Zenith economy. The drawbacks are that the Zenith kit is still very expensive, and the AIP starts high and will raise much faster then for human progress.

Or what if you started with a single, fully functional MK III nenzul carrier? You would construct new (nenzul only) units using build points, and your nenzul can rest and repair in the carrier like a hive. You would not have colony ships, so you would always be on the move. The goal would be to gather more carriers from other worlds until a suitable force is reached. The AI, rather then using just the current wave mechanics, sends out fleets like the Imperial Spire Fleets as they are concerned with killing units, not taking worlds.

In both these ideas, you can have a story where you are helping these "humans who claimed to have made the AI" or something, just to keep things even more fresh. How the AI humans would help I have no idea, but it would be interesting to see them use their unique units (warheads?) to help out as they are able.



....


Unfortunately, I know both of these ideas involve a lot of work, and I would hate to then see all that work get the amount of attention defender mode currently is receiving. But it helps to at least dream big I think.

[Sunshine!]

I've suggested before that allowing players to pick their initial race would be interesting.  Select a subset of Zenith, Neinzul and Spire ships to be the varying "triangle" ships. Spire could see something like Gravity Rippers as a fighter replacement, Stealth Battleships as the bomber replacement, and Tractor Platforms as the missile frigate replacement.  Or for Neinzul there's already the Commandos to make a decent Fighter replacement, and Tigers to make a decent Bomber replacement; Weasels aren't such a good missile frigate replacement, but if you're looking at bonuses in this case, they'll pick up where the Commandos and Tigers leave off.  The major problem with the Neinzul faction is all of its units use Shell ammo type IIRC.  You'd see much different functionality with people's core fleets if the dynamics were changed;  the basic Human triangle ships will, of course, be the easiest to work with, but the Zenith could offer more versatility (thinking about the Chameleon being an excellent fighter/bomber hybrid; don't know about the fighter and frigate replacements, could be new units?), Spire more firepower but extremely small fleet size (and expensive), and Neinzul will also be more powerful but with the added risk of having difficulty maintaining a standing army or conducting mid-range raids.

This could be expanded by having entirely different structure components and strengths; Spire could have extra strong forcefields to counteract their extremely small fleet size (Spire Shield Guard Posts, anyone?), Zenith could have more powerful planetary manipulation tools and economy (thinking of Zenith Power Generators and Zenith Space-Time manipulators as inspiration for this).  Instead of fixed defenses, Neinzul could get stationary hives, which store up uncontrollable defensive Neinzul ships over time kind of like how the Neinzul Cluster Bomber works, with different ships at different marks for each type of hive, so you could unlock mk3 Commando hive and mk2 nanoswarm hive for example.  Enemy units wander onto your planet, and the hives trigger, releasing their stored ships on FRD until there's no more enemy presence, and the surviving ships return to their hive to heal.

An extension to diversify the starships might work as well; allocating the flagship line to humans only, zenith starship line to zenith only, and spire starship line to spire only would give even more differentiation; don't know about whether you'd racially differentiate the raid/leech/dreadnought etc. lines, that might be too much work.  Neinzul would have to get their own "flagship" class starship line for this though, because I don't know whether roaming enclaves would really be worth the loss of firepower.  With their popularity as cloaked planetary neinzul spammers, it might work however.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

If you were to make a "gold edition", which included all the previous games, plus new bonus content, you would have to sell it for at least $30, which is a pretty steep price for an indie game that the majority of people may not even know about.  In addition to that, for the people that have already bought all the AI War titles up until now, they would be paying $30 for some extra bonus content, which seems completely unfair to say the least.

it would go for the regular price. the idea is to appeal to people who didn't think AI war made the cut in its previous incarnation, or who dont want to deal with the hassle of buying DLC seperately.  every game with expansions ever does either this or a bundle deal eventually. 

@sunshine i agree with that. I especially favor being able to restrict the AI to particular race ships, so you could - for example - have a spire AI and a neinzul AI vs human players.

[Echo35]

If you were to make a "gold edition", which included all the previous games, plus new bonus content, you would have to sell it for at least $30, which is a pretty steep price for an indie game that the majority of people may not even know about.  In addition to that, for the people that have already bought all the AI War titles up until now, they would be paying $30 for some extra bonus content, which seems completely unfair to say the least.

it would go for the regular price. the idea is to appeal to people who didn't think AI war made the cut in its previous incarnation, or who dont want to deal with the hassle of buying DLC seperately.  every game with expansions ever does either this or a bundle deal eventually. 

@sunshine i agree with that. I especially favor being able to restrict the AI to particular race ships, so you could - for example - have a spire AI and a neinzul AI vs human players.

Actually, when Sword of the Stars released their complete edition (Which is when I bought it, so TheDeadlyShoe's comment is valid for a lot of potential customers) they included some special updates that they gave away to regular customers through a patch that brought all editions of the game up to the "Ultimate Edition". I've known a lot of other games that do this too, and with how integrated the AI War patcher is, there's no reason this game couldn't have something like that either.

[Shrugging Khan]

As far as I can tell, the best way for AIW to venture into PvP territory would indeed be by giving a human GM limited control over the AI (one of the AIs?).

"Limited control", as in
1. Setting Reinforcement Priorities
2. Picking Wave targets & compositions
3. Full coordination of fully free ships, CPAs and the like
4. Commanding local defenders

In a way, the 'AI player' would be like a human commander hijacked by the AI and forced into service; he would have no more active resources than the AI usually slings around, and he would be forbidden from breaking the rules the AI usually sticks to - but he would be in full control of all aspects that the AI is usually just too spaced out to take care of, like micro-managing ships in combat and the like. Story-wise, it'd be a human hired by the AI to use limited resources (so he can't actually rise up against his machine masters) against the humans; but instead of being a fully independent faction, he's just middle management in the AI's service.

[Philo]

No resources devoted to PvP please.
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What I would like to see. A second storyline. This time involving decisions with diplomacy. This imo would really spice the game up. It could be really simple too.


New Storyline settings:

1. A Human faction located in another galaxy.

The human faction could be located in another galaxy and they only send messages to you. It would start with no requests maybe but move on to what minerals they need, maybe reinforcing ships you have to gift them or planets that you have to take or that you have to get a scout on some planet to feed them intel.

For completing this tasks their trust in you would rise. And it would show up as their fleet coming really in for the rescue when it's needed. Now I'm talking about a huge save, like a 1000 ships against for example a cross planet attack or exogalactic wave.

2. Human faction located on a planet.

This could be pretty straightforward, but also pretty plain since it resembles the rebel factions and stuff that we already have on this game. Don't really liket this scenario tbh. Though to be fair a crazy big technological space ship building center would be awesome. And them just being more advanced in every way compared to you.

3. Two human factions on another galaxy.

This might be the best as storywise planning goes. Since you could have forced choices. Like for example both of the factions fleets will get hit by the AI while passing through your galaxy and you need to send help. But the waves are big enough so you can't really help them both. Or you can if you really have a large fleet. Or you can make it even so if you help the other the other one just perishes no matter what you do. It's up to the devs.

There might be something if you help the other faction more the other will get pissed off at you but the one you helped will give you more rewards. Also the factions might start off friendly to each other but at a turning point you're forced to help the other destroy the other or having to just sit by as they fight it off.

One of the factions might be concentrated on having more defensive and economic things they can provide you with while the other has offensive things. This would give you incentive on which to help.
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As far as diplomacy goes in this game. Those were just the top of the iceberg. I think if the factions help you with defending against large waves randomly this should be just something of a bonus, not the end all of the diplomatic relationship. The storyline with them would be separate. They might need "special minerals" to be dug from some planet with a special probe and so on to advance the story. Something from the players end should always happen. But on the other hand. They might be just time triggered stuff so the player doesn't feel like he controls the tempo of the story. They might get in big trouble and they need something done NOW! If you fail to deliver the story loops another way with you having to compensate somehow for that shortcoming. Or maybe the AI gets something, unlocks new Ion Cannons to many of their planets or whatever.
And what I would like is a bit of a random element to completing quests too. Like say, there's a 10% chance they will actually survive the onslaught without you intervening at all.
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Ok enough of that, what I find the hardest part about this is not having the player do the same things for the storyline he already does in the main game. So, some mission types I've come up with for storyline games.

Mission Types For Storyline

1. Special Minerals Mining : Build a special mining building on a predifned planet. The AI will most likely be interested in destroying this too for whatever reason specified in the storyline. If it gets destroyed start over but you still have the cache you collected of the special minerals. This would be classed as a rather easy mission type.

2. Escort mission : Already have these in the Spire campaign, and pretty straightforward anyway.

3. Placing special beacons on predifend planets : Basically just putting up some special buildings on many, say 5 planets that feed intel or act as a network for something or other, or for a little while disrupt the AI's defensive capabilities (for example, having all their anti-cloaking stuff not work for a while so your special cloaked intel units that will be provided to you can get to the AI Home Planet). Or that the AI will pull of their forces from the frontline because you fed them wrong intel. Whatever the storyline wants it to be.
The AI will place no interest on the beacons since this would be just too hard.

4. Recolonization/water purification/electrical maintenance/harvester maintenance of planets : This would be a very easy mission. Basically a special AI controlled colony ship would just go around your planets doing whatever it's said to be doing. The AI would have no special interest in this, but if it came to be that a cross planet attack just happened to hit you at the same time or a wave at a planet the colony ship is going through, tough luck. And if it so happened the colony ship got destroyed while "fixing electricity problems" all of your galaxy would suffer a breakdown in electricity for a short amount of time. 3 minutes maybe? Or minerals would come at a slower rate for some time if that was the case, or your docks would stop working for a time.

5. Massive Attack missions : The faction would tell you where they will hit and need you to assist. The faction will bring in very heavy firepower. The AI will amass huge armies there too. Hard mission type.

6. Massive building project : This is basically just something that will cost you a lot. In the line of 1 million to more. Build it anywhere you want.

7. Sudden rescue missions : The faction has men pinned down and needs help! You have to get there fast. Chance of 10-20% of the faction overcoming this without your help.

8. Guard Mission : Help the faction make a permanent home in one predifned planet. You'll have to guard them as it is being built and the AI will certainly be interested. After building you get use to their unique ships.

9. The faction is crossing the galaxy and needs to refuel their mothership at your base : This would be something like Battlestar - Galactica style. The faction would teleport a special mothership to your base but "slightly miscalculate" so they're now dropped at your outmost forward line planet, or just a random planet, makes no difference. You'd need to refuel it by building a special refueling ship. Just as the refueling ship reaches the mothership two special AI Motherships jump in. Both the AI Motherships and the faction Mothership launch special fighters You need to shoot down as many AI MS fighters as you can to buy time for the faction MS to refuel. As soon as it's refueled it jumps out with the AI Motherships jumping out too.
This will be hard to balance since you aren't expected to destroy any of the motherships but you are expected to shoot down lots of the fighters though.

10. You need to capture a space pirate : Some known criminal from another galaxy is running rampart in your galaxy now. Shoot him down to capture him, or to kill him, however the mission is described.

11. Other special missions... Random stuff : You have captured a radio signal from someplace called Earth. Build a radio transmit analyzer and wait for it to solve the the message. Completed : The transmission appears to be a show called Wheel of Fortune.
You could show a small clip of the wheel of fortune or similar stuff in other random quests. I dunno what rewards the player would reap from these or what use they would have. Dunno if these could ever be used, just a thought. These would just be something to lighten up the game.
Kinda like what Fallout games do.

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How the AI Wars system would incorporate these missions :

The Easy Way - Basic Storyline structure:

These events occur randomly with just being request from the factions that you fulfill or not. If you fulfill them your respect rate goes up (it can be shown or not be shown to the player how much respect he has among a faction) and once you reach a certain say 50 respect a bigger better scripted and multiple objective part storyline commences. Then it's back to the random occurences for a while again until you hit that 50 respect points.

The Other Way - Immersive Storyline Structure

Basically this is just a new storyline with diplomacy being used only for how the storyline tree progresses. Every mission is heavily scripted out and the 10 mission types are just used as a basis for making out the missions. The strong point here should be that no mission is useless as far as the story goes. The storyline tree will always branch off which means that you will usually get a unique experience out of every game with this.
Involves lots of writing and scripting work though. The overall Storyline for one line of the tree doesn't have to be very long.

Example of how the storyline tree works:

You start off with a say subspace signal, ok you investigate it. You find the other 2 factions.

Now you have a choice of choosing among 2 missions. Ok the other faction gets a little pissed off you didn't do their mission and this is also heavily scripted out how they react and respond to you but at this point it might only be words, the storyline tree doesn't branch off. Now you choose the next quest they throw at you. They might have 3 quests that you can choose from. Don't matter which you pick since the real stuff happens only after the mission is complete. So, Mission completed but suddenly both of them need help in your galaxy as they're taking fire. Whom do you help or maybe both? Or maybe you can't help either as you're already fighting against waves.
Here the Storyline tree separates into three branches. Did you help and whom? Three different stories.
After each choice the storyline tree will branch toward a slightly different setting or ending. Did you do an economic,military or an intel mission for a given faction? Did you help one faction destroy another? All of these choices don't even have to be missions, they can just be dialogue where they ask you for your advice.

You might end up with the other faction destroying the other and then even coming after you, or you might end up with both factions well alive and both helping you out or just one of the factions being barely able to sustain itself and sending you only few troops.

You will need very good writers for this one to work though.


The Way Chuck Norris would design the game - Real Diplomacy:

Tbh, I have no idea right now. I know it can be done but from a game design point there's so many factors to involve. If you want to bring in real diplomacy it really has to work you know? You need to get involved and feel some unity to the other factions. With this you probably have to have at least one of the factions establish their own base somewhere in your galaxy in some point of the Storyline to feel a sense of them actually being in the game. With trader ships going about and whatnot.

One of the things that's pretty hard in involving diplomacy is that it really needs to have some game impact. You can easily make up dialogue trees with the factions but how do they actually influence the game? Some kind of respect system has to be in place ofc cause all games are essentially based on math. "You do this, you get 10 respect among this faction" .

The bad thing is. No game has actually succeeded in bringing good diplomacy to a game. It's always just "Gimme this" "Do that" . Maybe you guys can be the first 
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All of the above ways can still benefit from the fact that you get new buildings from the factions within the missions giving you new units etc. And the factions can save your ass from attacks randomly if you have gained enough respect points.
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There's already so much to do and stuff to keep up with in AI Wars. I'd really love that diplomacy stuff and having a more mission based game at the same time. There wouldn't be a second wasted in the game then as you'd have to keep up with your army, intel, diplomacy, economy, defense, power maintenance. Would be just awesome.

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To the Developers : Feel free to use any of the above ideas or inspired ideas for your next expansion.