Core Shield Generators - Discussion

[superking]

I'm not 'against' the feature in that its function offends me in some way, I just would've preffered the illusion that enemy gate is down strats are still possible (just cripplingly difficult)

[Irxallis]

Hello,

We've pulled a whole day AI War game yesterday with the new mechanics (my wife's first game). Sadly, it was below our difficulty level, but as our strategy would not change anyway I can give you the general outline of our feel of the game with the new mechanics.

Settings:
Diff 6, easy golems, easy spirecraft, 2 random easier AIs, 60 planets, Simple.
Victory, ~270 AIP (5xx after reductions or so - we've downed every Data Center in the galaxy there was but we didn't touch co-processors as one was on an AI Homeworld and one other on a core world). That was the highest AIP I have ever had. It took about 10h of time (but we could do it in 1-2 hours less if we tried to do everything faster, not play with new toys and learn 'what are spirecraft about').

Networks:

B network - we wanted one factory anyway; this one was of no problems.
C network - the seed was kind for us; we didn't have to make any detours to get one. Actually, as we are still in a 'ooo, shiny' phase, we got 3 fabricators we could link directly to the 'main lane'.
D network - this was painful. We would have never interacted with a warp counterattack planet if we really didn't have to, but we managed to get one 2 hops away which was only tier3; it gave us a ~10 minutes detour as we amassed most of our forces waiting for tier3 wave on the Adv Factory world (remembering the waves from the times of a bug). Sufficient to say, we GREATLY overestimated that wave.
E network - was somewhere 'in the way' to one of the AI homeworlds. I guess we even bordered it with one of our starting planets.

The only problem was with the A network.

One of the ARS planets were positioned very... inconveniently (4 hops away). We had to amass a fleet and cut our way through to the planet and then escort a colony ship there. The other was a tier4 planet with a counterattack post, so we skipped that one (especially as it was 3 hops away, so not too close either).

Our next game will be on regular 80 planets with Realistic network (and diff7, at last), we will see how do those ARS planets look like when seeded in 'real world'. We would normally skip both of those ARS, but as we never had any problems with knowledge we benefitted from taking them (we even rolled Zenith Electric Bombers).


Issues with this implementation:

We... kind of like the B-E networks. It is sensible and gives us a choice on which planet to take. A minor issue is a decision paralysis unless you manage to scout most of the galaxy - earlier on it was enough to scout the homeworlds and we knew, in general, which route to take (or we were going towards the greatest cluster of planets). Right now we have to scout:
- All the A worlds to determine where EXACTLY to get a new world (and to see whether all the A nodes were destroyed)
- All the D worlds to see if one of those can be of any use or to find that odd tier1-2 planet (I am NOT popping a warp4 counterattack post... unless I have leech starships, spiders etc).
- Additional C worlds if ones we found were not considered very useful

B worlds are natural for us, E kind of... happens to be on the way to the homeworld, but E worlds are plainly boring (I offered an alternative in the suggestions).

A worlds are what feels kind of forced for us. Not the fact we need to take the ARS worlds; rather the fact there are no alternatives which worlds to take (all except one). This is the only thing we dislike about the new mechanics.

If this was toggleable, we would play with them on. Even with A network annoyances ;-).

There is nothing confusing in the new mechanics for us.

Suggestions:

- You might consider adding one more ARS world and making A network explode when there are x-2, not x-1 taken out. This would help combat a lousy seed with two ARSes very far away from your planets (assuming this is not against the goal or balance).

- Or, if it would be harmful to have more ARS to be taken by the player, seed... 2 more worlds with A generators with no additional bonus and make it not x-1 but x-3. That way players can decide to take either ARS worlds or non-ARS ones not going out of their ways (and players aiming for starships, not fleet ships are not that constrained as well). Maybe let those non-ARS planets have guaranteed nice resources?

- Please, add to objectives 'X nodes of network Y left' if possible. That way I don't have to remember how many A generators are there to be taken out which is important without the full map scouted (did I take 2 or 3? Were there 5 to kill or 4?).

- We prefer this one to 'you need X AI progress to attack AI homeworlds'. Maybe, if possible, add both as options? That way one can hunt for the generators and the other can increase AIP their own way.

- As someone said earlier, please let us destroy the generator when the AI world turns neutral (after destruction of a command station). Getting to the D network world with the colony ship to be able to down the generator slowed down my attack on the core guard posts (to neuter them) and due to miscommunications I attacked the homeworld BEFORE the colony ship arrived. I had to flee like a cowardly dog because of that ;-).

- You might consider replacing E network (as this one is the only boring one) with something of an anti-data center. For example: 'you need to destroy one of those to be able to attack the AI homeworld, but destroying an anti-data center increases AIP by 20'. The good thing is you can raid it without taking the planet. Or you can keep it and let the anti-DC work for you with, say, improvements in max knowledge on this planet (not 3k but 6k). That way you have a choice - get the planet, suck it dry from 6k knowledge and destroy the anti-DC later (20 AIP + 20 AIP) or just raid it (20 AIP), not having to take a 'boring' planet (which in our case was a 1/0 resources no gains planet I would usually neuter and destroy the warp gate instead of taking). This would improve net AIP by 20 in general but would be more fun and different to 'take world X, take world Y' - might require raiding abilities. And, additionally, it gives another choice: 'do I take more worlds with anti-DC to get more knowledge from lesser number of planets even if those are somewhere far in the galaxy and those have less resources than 2 worlds?'. Every taken anti-DC planet which does not have to be destroyed would be a net +3k knowledge gain. Even with bad seed this can be raided, so it is not that much of an issue (and some players said there is too little knowledge).

- If E network is to stay, please consider giving those planets nicer resources, to 'reward' players for taking them. That way some would just go out of their way simply to get them (I would, I am always starved after a failed attack of mine).

- Please, consider adding a new minor tutorial explaining those after the beta is over. I tend to read the forums, but some people just 'hop in' and are surprised with the results.


And... what are FFBs, if I may ask?

[Dyers_Eve]

I like the new mechanic (I am actually playing the game with the latest beta too!) In the mid-game there is nothing really to do so you take some planets for knowledge/resources but there are no real objectives. Sure you go for a factory or a good fab but they die pretty easily so it's no big deal. Mid-game is a grind, I usually like to keep just barely below mark II waves and try to do as much as possible with ~200 AIP and then go for the home planets. But with the new mechanic I have to plan where I want to go in the mid game in order to hit core shields so it is interesting.

As for ARS, people don't value them very highly because the many units in this game are not balanced so it is a crap shoot on what you will receive. Will you get 8 damage autocannons or shield bearers or recently buffed sniper drones. If you could pick your bonus ship from an ARS like you do in the start of the game then it would be a lot better. If I want to play a game utilize cloaky ships then I'll pick them, if not then a lot of the cloaker ships are fairly useless to me.

I think the mechanic is good but could use some more work. Cut it down from 5 core shields to 3-4 and make them more of an event instead of something that was added on later. Kill an "A" shield and the other "A" shields are replaced by raid engines, or maybe when you kill a core shield you get a free warhead, I dunno just something in addition to the current mechanic to make it more part of the game.

[superking]

As for ARS, people don't value them very highly because the many units in this game are not balanced so it is a crap shoot on what you will receive. Will you get 8 damage autocannons or shield bearers or recently buffed sniper drones. If you could pick your bonus ship from an ARS like you do in the start of the game then it would be a lot better. If I want to play a game utilize cloaky ships then I'll pick them, if not then a lot of the cloaker ships are fairly useless to me.

this is enormously true at the moment, so many bonus ships are underpowered or near-useless in the hands of the player that ARS are far less important than just getting your starships, triangle ships and chosen bonus ship to MK III

[orzelek]

I didn't try new game with this system yet.

So I would like something to the ARS part of discussion only - it seems that quite few of us here also agree that they are not so useful.

Main reasons I could point out:

1. "Free" ships... right.. but you need to build them and maintain them and the knowledge free apart is not so true since Mk I ships are at best cannon fodder later - so back to building them and ongoing maintenance.

2. Randomness of ARS. Thats the main pain in the back. Dyers_Eve got one of reasons for it very well - you can get so unbalanced ship that it's simply not worth your resources. But you can also get useful ship that is useless for you  in that current context. Actually most things I ever got from ARS would match that category. Cloaky ships when you don't cloak.. swarm ships that die as soon enemy sneezes at them and guardians eat them like popcorn...

3. Randomness of map. You know well that you can get ARS-es on planets that are wither heavily out of your way or simply have very nasty combination of defenses. Forcing player to take those is adding an additional grind and nothing more. That 3k of knowledge from that planet is only consolation price for AIP and ton of effort required for taking it ( I know that knwoledge is nice but there are usually much easier ways to get some of it around than some backwater planet with tons of defenses and other "fun" toys).

[HitmanN]

Firstly, I still haven't played with this mechanic. I don't want it in my on-going game.

Question for anyone who doesn't like this feature
Anyway, the question is this: during your play of AI War, how will this feature affect your game in a way you feel is negative?

In other words, what about your experience is going to be different (and apparently worse)?

1. Having the CSG nodes dictate what directions I should expand to, whether I'd want to go there or not. Maybe I'd ideally like to expand to east, but majority of the nodes I need are to the west. Thus I'm forced to go west at some point. If both routes lead to the ultimate goal, it's no longer a useful choice to take the east route. The CSG node seeding dictated majority of my direction of expansion, and does not allow me to win without taking the route I less desire.

In Short: Reduced freedom with where and how to expand.

2. Being forced to take ARS's. No matter how highly these should ideally be regarded as, the ships you get from them are still sometimes fairly useless as nothing but cannon fodder. And like implied by some others, the ships are rarely worth upgrading beyond Mk1. And Mk1 ships have next to no use in endgame. Well, aside from being cannon fodder... for a few seconds. If I want to try my luck with what the ARS spawns, I'll go there. If I don't, I want to ignore it.

In Short: ARS's aren't incentive enough for this mechanic. They're not always useful.

3. Being forced to take Adv Factories (assuming one compulsory node is on such planet). Now someone is probably going to go "WTF, you don't want and Adv Factory?", but the thing is, sometimes the Adv Factories just spawn in places you do not want to go to, because it's not worth the trouble. I posted an example somewhere here earlier, of a game (without this mechanic) where the closest Adv Factory I could find was far beyond the AI home worlds. Basically, the map forked into roughly three clusters from my own starting cluster, two of the clusters had an AI Home, the third cluster had an Adv Factory. The thing is, the route to that cluster actually snaked around the AI Home clusters. I had no reason, no desire and no incentive to go there, and being forced to do that would've definitely not been any more interesting or fun. Honestly, I would've just started a new game. I did finish that game without Mk4's though. Or rather, I got nearly full caps of Mk4's already by reclaiming AI stuff. I wouldn't have needed to build much anything from an Adv Factory at the time. (on a related note, while reclaiming ships is fun, it's also currently pretty much broken system, because with MRS/Engineers tagged along, you can pretty much build your army using the AI as a factory. But that's a somewhat different, although related issue.)

In Short: Adv Factories aren't always a necessary capture, thanks to other ways of procuring Mk4 ships.

2B&3B. Well, basically having to take any specific planet is an issue.

4. Five new things to keep track of. Even if there would be notes in the Objectives section or not, so far I've rarely had a reason to look at the Objectives screen. Keeping track of things has been simple enough that I haven't needed to. Remembering five different networks and what their status is is not easy or simple, and work like that is not why I play AI War.

In Short: Additional tracking of what's been done and what's not. Annoying chore.

5. Five new filters to browse through on the galaxy map. A chore. Clickety-click. No other mechanic requires shifting through multiple pages of things to check what's where.

In Short: Cumbersome and time-consuming.

6. Almost everything involved with this mechanic forces you to do things, instead of encouraging you to do them as a powerful or useful, but not necessary maneuver.

Is there anything that's going to be better from it?  Are there aspects you like?

Having necessary objectives to complete along the way to the main goal is a desirable idea.

The primary network is a decent idea, it's a simple, easy to follow, single objective with small steps. One type of unit to keep track of only. There's very little work involved in keeping a track of one such objective as a whole. If it was the only network, I don't need to keep a track of Objectives most of the time, as I can simply check the AI Home to see if it's protected, and if it is, I know that I need to destroy more A nodes, instead of having to check what node I'm missing. (I still think there should be more A nodes and they shouldn't be on ARS planets only, to give the player a chance to have alternative desirable directions of expansion.)

It does make me expand more and take planets farther away, which is good. But to do so should be encouraged, and it should have rewards attached, but it should not be required. At least not most of the time.

Making some tactics harder is an understandable and justifiable change. But blocking them completely reduces overall options and does not contribute towards making the game more varied in experience. Ideally all tactics should be useful sometimes, but no tactic should be completely invalid.


Closing words:
Encourage players to change tactics with more incentives and slight penalties. Don't force them.

[BINXTHAMINX]

Hi all, thought i'd take the opportunity to add my two cents,

For me it boils down to this ...

The benefit inherent in taking ARS's has always been negligable IMO (reasons why this is so have been discussed earlier throughout this thread) Furthermore i have to say i concur with HitmanN in that, 'ARS's aren't incentive enough for this mechanic.'  Basically however important ARS's are perceived to be, the lowest common denominator for me is always one of choice, i wont go out of my way to take something unless i absolutely have to - if i dont need it i wont take it - and i'm by no means any proponent of quick wins, i prefer an epic struggle.  Making certain CSG's compulsory destroys, forces my hand and removes a crucial element of choice in my games ... I've played a few with the new mechanic.

That said, I'm now going to go and destroy the galaxy with a Doomsday weapon because the AI killed my pet monkey who happened to be captaining a Zenith Starship this morning ... They shouldn't have killed Mr Tiddles

[x4000]

A couple of final notes before I close this thread: another will be opening up shortly, on a slightly different topic, as this one is pretty much exhausted now (thanks to all for writing in with your thoughts!).

Carrot VS Stick Comments
There have been a number of comments about how these changes are punitive only, and not giving any bonuses.  This is true in a very narrow and literal sense, but that's wildly misleading in my opinion.  A big part of the reason why this problem even exists (though I know Suzera disagrees, she's a special case of having just a really effective long-term strategy we never knew about), is because of the stuff that the players gained access to in 4.0.  Players have all these new goodies, and more powerful starships, and more unlocked from the start, etc, etc.  That then causes an imbalance. 

That was the carrot that implicitly balances this out, in my opinion.  When I've already given a carrot, and then discover a bit of stick is needed to balance that out, giving yet another carrot with the new stick doesn't really work.  The carrot/stick analogy only works so well, anyway: this is a wargame.  Either you're getting stuff to hurt your opponent, or your opponent is getting stuff to hurt you, or the effectiveness of the stuff either of you have is being reduced or inflated.  Speaking as broadly as possible, that's the only way to balance things.  To me, the real "stick" would be to reduce the effectiveness of your shiny new starships -- instead, I put in a counterbalance.

AI Effectiveness Against Deep Raids
Interesting points were raised here, and this isn't something I'd been on planning ignoring.  But, having something like the Core Shield Generators are sort of a "failsafe" is a good starting point.  My goal was to just put in a quick feature that would impact few, and which would correct the worst excesses of the problem.  Then to revisit further when there was more time, since right now there is comparably little time.  Obviously, the goal of saving time was a massive, enormous, colossal failure.

ARS Usefulness Commentary
I stick by what I said.  But, as to some ships being "near useless" at the moment: ehem, it's the middle of a beta.  We haven't even made much of an effort to balance some of the new ships yet.  This is one of those chief things that we should be doing with our time instead of arguing about this.  But alas.

And, despite the fact that some folks feel that there "are only X number of ships that are any good," where X is something like 4-8 ships usually, that just goes to prove my point.  Everyone picks different ships that they count in that X.  Sure, there are a few ships that no-one picks, and those need some help. 

It also strikes at part of the core reason why I'd really like people to get ARSes: the balance shifts all the time.  Once somebody decides that unit X is useless, they file that away and often never come back to it unless they happen to come across them.  That's a generalization, but still.

Advanced Factory Usefulness Commentary
It's perfectly valid not to want these if you're relying more on starships, or you're just unlocking widely-but-not-deeply.  However, not needing them because the parasites are an easier way to get mark IV units... that's trouble.  New topic on that specifically here: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7801.0.html


New thread coming shortly.

[x4000]

It's up: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7803.0.html