Thinking about blobbing

[Hearteater]

I just wish Harvesters weren't so mandatory feeling right now.  Has anyone beat 9+ without them?  Heck, 8+?

[chemical_art]

I have done 8 a while ago...before the buff to harvestors.

[Diazo]

I'm trying out a game with no economy unlocks.

It's also a pure starship game at 10/10.

I'm doing okay so far, okay defined as half the map scouted, one system conquered, 3 data centers popped, and game time at the 7 hour mark.

I'm starting to worry the Core Worlds are going to be so heavily reinforced by the time I get to them I won't have a hope but we'll see.


D.

[Martyn van Buren]

The mixed messages are going both ways   I'm still seeing people talk about refleeting times being too long.  But others are saying it's trivial now.  I can guess at the different underlying situations, but such guessing does not generally serve as a good foundation for changes.

Actually, now that you point it out I realize that one big reason I'm finding refleet times to be so good (I'm not hitting the max much, just finding that when I mess up I can spin a new fleet out before I notice the old one is gone) is that I still have the economical habits I developed pre-harvesters --- being hugely protective of starships, waiting to build anything big, using mobile military a lot on defense to save on turrets, etc.  I reckon ChemArt has a point --- if I started throwing everything I can build at the AI I might be able to manage higher-level play.  That said, I'm not sure whether I prefer the game where I can speed-build cap of raid starships when I have three planets or the one where a bad raid tanks my economy for a while.

[Kahuna]

By the way, is it likely there are going to be nerfs to player economy?  The harvester and energy changes have made economic factors pretty trivial recently

The difficulty is that feedback is heavily mixed on whether that is, in fact, true

Not true on 10 Diff.

[kasnavada]

By the way, is it likely there are going to be nerfs to player economy?  The harvester and energy changes have made economic factors pretty trivial recently

The difficulty is that feedback is heavily mixed on whether that is, in fact, true

From what I've read, to try to make the "mixed" signals more explicit, problem is that when playing diff 7 it's more efficient to remove a system, conquer it and get knowledge from it than do knowledge raiding. So you will soon have too much ressources since you will never have enough knowledge (ships & buildings and so on) to spend your ressources.

On high diff... it's the exact opposite. You can't afford to beat up systems for the sake of it, and knowledge raiding puts a strain on your economy because your knowledge increases faster than ressources do.

Basically, the problem comes from (knowledge / (energy & metal & cristals)) ratio. IMO, you get mixed signals because both signals are true. Should the game encourage you to do knowledge raiding on lower diffs too ? Or make knowledge raiding more difficult ?

I'd propose a middle route : making the collected ressources go lower with each conquered system, which does not affect high diff balance but removes unnecessary ressources from low level. By example, by putting a cap on level 2-3 harvesters. Or tie up this discussion with the other one on command stations, make is so level 1 command stations build level 1 harversters, and so on.

[Kahuna]

By the way, is it likely there are going to be nerfs to player economy?  The harvester and energy changes have made economic factors pretty trivial recently

The difficulty is that feedback is heavily mixed on whether that is, in fact, true

From what I've read, to try to make the "mixed" signals more explicit, problem is that when playing diff 7 it's more efficient to remove a system, conquer it and get knowledge from it than do knowledge raiding. So you will soon have too much ressources since you will never have enough knowledge (ships & buildings and so on) to spend your ressources.

On high diff... it's the exact opposite. You can't afford to beat up systems for the sake of it, and knowledge raiding puts a strain on your economy because your knowledge increases faster than ressources do.

Basically, the problem comes from (knowledge / (energy & metal & cristals)) ratio. IMO, you get mixed signals because both signals are true. Should the game encourage you to do knowledge raiding on lower diffs too ? Or make knowledge raiding more difficult ?

I'd propose a middle route : making the collected ressources go lower with each conquered system, which does not affect high diff balance but removes unnecessary ressources from low level. By example, by putting a cap on level 2-3 harvesters. Or tie up this discussion with the other one on command stations, make is so level 1 command stations build level 1 harversters, and so on.

People have "too much" resources on low difficulties because it's too easy for them. They don't have to repair and rebuild stuff as much as on higher difficulties.

I have never knowledge raided on 10 diff cause it's half impossible. If I first do Knowledge raids and then try to take full advantage of the Super Terminal I'm screwed. Just being able to finish the first Knowledge raid requires all fleet ships, star ships, multiple force fields ~10 - 20 MarkI Engineers (to build the research stations as fast as possible), some turrets and 1 or more golems. Sure you might not NEED all of that but if you don't have all of that you're going to lose a lot of resources rebuilding everything. And if a wave hits while you're rebuilding u're dead.

Making resource income drop every time I capture a new planet would be bad. "putting a cap on level 2-3 harvesters" would make harvesters as useless as they were in the past. That combined with the increased repair costs would destroy the economy. Atm on 10 diff capturing 1 golem will usually temporarily shut down all production and economy. Need 20-30 MarkI Engineers, max resources and maybe Distribution Nodes to repair the golem as fast as possible before a wave hits the planet where you're repairing the golem. Sure you could gate raid all surrounding planets but that would probably be a suicide.

If someone has "too much" resources that person should increase the difficulty. BOOM! Problem solved!

[kasnavada]

Errr.... I think I'm misunderstood. I do not propose a hard coded fix which is never to be removed.

The point I'm trying to make is to get a statu-quo for "small" / medium empires in term of ressources, while reducing the huge income for "low" difficulties. High-diff, from what I've played and seen, does not have 3/4 of the map under control anyway and should not be affected by whatever penalties I was proposing... The point of what I was proposing is to point players to a more cost-effective way of playing and therefore making them better players as the game unfolds.

From what I tried, I found knowledge raiding more effective than what you seem to find, but anyway, if it's not worth it in your opinion against the superterminal, why not argue for the superterminal to be nerfed / K raiding to be boosted so both are equally viable ?

Also, if what I propose does make income lower, I trust arcen games to reduce costs appropriately.

[Diazo]

There's 3 things I see here.

First, Kahuna is right, if you are sitting at maxed resources most of the game then yes, you probably are either still learning the game or playing at a difficulty that is a bit low for you, at least in the early to mid game.

Which takes me to my second point, late game you should not be worrying about your economy. Late game is when you have gotten your empire as big as you are going to and are throwing everything you've got at the enemy homeworlds. So I do not support any sort of restriction on harvesters or income based on number of systems captured.

Lastly, I see everyone saying that they have so many resources that refleeting in trivial, then in other threads I see that unlocking Harvester upgrades is mandatory. Well, yes, if you've spent K to on economic unlocks to give you more resources then yes, you should have plenty of resources to go around, you spent the K for it rather then on a military upgrade of some sort.

I'm always hesitant to use my own games as examples because they are 10/10 games but I'm doing deep strike raids with starships (and so losing a few here and there) and I do not have excessive downtime waiting on the ships to rebuild. There is down time, true, but this is 10/10 so I'm taking it slow anyway. This is with no economic unlocks.

As for blobbing that started this whole thread, the major reason I blob is to provide shields for my bombers, not for the firepower. I'm quite willing to lose that cap of fighters to get half my cap of bombers home safely as opposed to the bombers not necessarily killing their target before dying if I send them in alone.

I'm seeing a lot of talk about tactical choices but with how mixed the AI forces are I don't think that's possible. In the defenders around that guard post, there is going to be an AI ship with attack bonuses against every ship you have so it's not worth my time to analyze the force composition, I'd rather just clear the system faster and have to fight fewer reinforcement waves.

You can make special structures, such as the Eyes, to counter the blob but at the most basic level I don't think you can remove blobbing from the game, there are simply too many units on screen to make it worth the time to command them separately.

D.

[Draco18s]

You can make special structures, such as the Eyes, to counter the blob but at the most basic level I don't think you can remove blobbing from the game, there are simply too many units on screen to make it worth the time to command them separately.

It's an area where the computer has a decided advantage on the player.

Also, it's worth reading this article to understand how the AI can use the same units a player does, and be able to control them so well as to counter their counter-unit (the AI in question only builds mutalisks, and the AI can control them so well as to beat high templars; HT's are aoe anti-air, and mutalisks are air units that take extra damage from AOE).

Essentially, the weakness that's being exploited is blobbing (which is why high templars are good, because they hit a lot of units), but that's only a weakness in a human player.  By giving commands to individual units much more rapidly than a human ever could, the AI can negate that weakness.

Essentially, there's nothing the game can do to discourage blobbing that doesn't either result in "using a smaller blob" (i.e. starship raiding the problem away) or frustrating the player (making the game unplayable).

[keith.lamothe]

Essentially, there's nothing the game can do to discourage blobbing that doesn't either result in "using a smaller blob" (i.e. starship raiding the problem away) or frustrating the player (making the game unplayable).

Not nothing.  There are ways the player could be given strong incentive to use two separate blobs on a specific planet, or three, or whatever.  Moving two or three "pieces" on the board instead of one is not gamebreakingly annoying.  But it's primarily a strategy game, and only secondarily a tactical one, and strategic blobbing is already non-trivial to achieve, so making tactical blobbing more nuanced isn't a priority.

[Draco18s]

Essentially, there's nothing the game can do to discourage blobbing that doesn't either result in "using a smaller blob" (i.e. starship raiding the problem away) or frustrating the player (making the game unplayable).

Not nothing.  There are ways the player could be given strong incentive to use two separate blobs on a specific planet, or three, or whatever.  Moving two or three "pieces" on the board instead of one is not gamebreakingly annoying.  But it's primarily a strategy game, and only secondarily a tactical one, and strategic blobbing is already non-trivial to achieve, so making tactical blobbing more nuanced isn't a priority.

Ok, yes.  Splitting the blob into two or three is reasonable.  But I still wouldn't really consider that anti-blob if they're all on one planet.  Battlefields within battlefields aside (as the game still doesn't come off that way, as it's still very easy and apparently arbitrary when a player-fleet will free ALL the AI defending ships*).

*I had it happen with a transport containing a handfull of starships in my last game.  Which seems highly arbitrary when those starships by themselves wouldn't have done it, nor an empty transport.

[TechSY730]

Ok, yes.  Splitting the blob into two or three is reasonable.  But I still wouldn't really consider that anti-blob if they're all on one planet.  Battlefields within battlefields aside (as the game still doesn't come off that way, as it's still very easy and apparently arbitrary when a player-fleet will free ALL the AI defending ships*).

*I had it happen with a transport containing a handfull of starships in my last game.  Which seems highly arbitrary when those starships by themselves wouldn't have done it, nor an empty transport.

The "free everything" thing happens when the AI is out firepowered on that planet by at least 2:1. The problem is that most AI planets are so weakly defended, it is very easy to trip this cap. Plus, there is currently no way to get the firepower rating of one ship or of your currently selected ships. I really should put that onto mantis...


As for transports, how transports interact with freed logic is quite buggy right now. There are several bugs about how strange the AI behavior is when encountering transports already filed.

[Kahuna]

there is currently no way to get the firepower rating of one ship or of your currently selected ships.

You can with the galaxy map. Getting the firepower of 1 map is painful though.

This could be handy: (screenshot)
Or maybe the "Firepower" should be under the "Selected:x".

[TechSY730]

there is currently no way to get the firepower rating of one ship or of your currently selected ships.

You can with the galaxy map. Getting the firepower of 1 map is painful though.

This could be handy: (screenshot)
Or maybe the "Firepower" should be under the "Selected:x".

Yea, something like that is what I had in mind.
I'd vote that up.