Very Long Term Game

[Shrugging Khan]

So I'm planning for another one of my nigh-infinite (read: dozens and dozens of hours) games. The kind that usually ends due to updates, or because I can't live with my past choices.
But bugger, it's the only kind I can play. I utterly abhor having the game push its pace on me.
But! I'm not entirely in the clear about some minor factions. Here come the questions.

Zenith Traders: Since they sell Warp Gates to the AI, they can potentially cause infinite AIP growth. How big exactly is this problem?
Zenith Miners: Permanently losing a planet is bad. Permanently losing a planet every few hours is game-breaking. Do the miners ever die out?
Human Colony Rebellions: Do they cause AIP reductions? How far away can they spawn? And how often can they spawn during one game?
Neinzul Rocketry Corps: They sound like fun on one hand, and like utter hug on the other. What AIP effects can these little guys have?
Spirecraft (3 - Hard, accept no substitutes): How easily are these lost? Irreplaceable ships are a questionable thing for superlong games, unless they're supertough.
Spire Civilian Leaders: So let me get this right - I capture enough of them, and AIP goes down. Perpetually. I can just wait and watch as the AI withers and dies?

For an interesting twist: How can I balance the SCLs and the Traders (perhaps with AIP/min) to counter one another somehow? I guess I can't.

Furthermore, AI plots.
Advanced Hybrid Hives: These guys can re-colonise planets for the AI. Which, I suppose, is at least another 15 AIP to add to the list. How frequently do they do that?

Thanks for any help.

[Zeyurn]

As a note even if you had infinity AIP reduction there is a AIP floor that you will hit eventually, which I believe is something like 20% of the total AIP increases in the game?

[TechSY730]

Zenith Traders: Since they sell Warp Gates to the AI, they can potentially cause infinite AIP growth. How big exactly is this problem?
Zenith Miners: Permanently losing a planet is bad. Permanently losing a planet every few hours is game-breaking. Do the miners ever die out?
Human Colony Rebellions: Do they cause AIP reductions? How far away can they spawn? And how often can they spawn during one game?
Neinzul Rocketry Corps: They sound like fun on one hand, and like utter hug on the other. What AIP effects can these little guys have?
Spirecraft (3 - Hard, accept no substitutes): How easily are these lost? Irreplaceable ships are a questionable thing for superlong games, unless they're supertough.
Spire Civilian Leaders: So let me get this right - I capture enough of them, and AIP goes down. Perpetually. I can just wait and watch as the AI withers and dies?

Furthermore, AI plots.
Advanced Hybrid Hives: These guys can re-colonise planets for the AI. Which, I suppose, is at least another 15 AIP to add to the list. How frequently do they do that?

Thanks for any help.

Zenith Traders: Right now, I think their sell chance to the AI is 10%, which is WAY too large, especially for the pace you seem to be aiming for, or even the "normal" pace that the game is balanced against. But potentially giving the AI more stuff that it values or is really tough is part of the risk with this faction. In return, you get some really cool stuff.

Zenith Miners: I think they recently got a buff to their spawn behavior to make them more threatening. They may have gone too far though...

Human Colony Rebellions: No idea about spawn rate or spawn caps. No they do not cause any AIP reduction on capture. The only bonus you get from it is a small amount of extra resources and the ability to build human rebellion ships for yourself. If you already have a very powerful fleet, then this minor faction is probably more bad than good.

Neinzul Rocketry Corps: Thankfully, AI and Minor faction versions of warheads do not give any AIP increase.

Spirecraft: Most of them are, thankfully, durable enough to be usable (Especially on easy or hard, where most of them are repairable). The suicide ones (the martyr and the ram) you can of course expect not to live very long, but the other do pretty well. The penetrator even has perma-cloak unless it is reloading its weapon. (There is discussion going on about how to make spirecraft shield bearers not be so useless at low health, due to the fact they can NEVER be repaired. Personally, I like the idea of giving them a minimum shield size >> 1, and only hit that minimum shield size once HP hits 1.) Keep in mind though, like any tough ship, they can die if you don't know when an attack isn't going so well and start retreating early enough to make it back to friendly territory safely.

Spire Civilian Leaders: What Zeyurn posted is right. The AIP floor keeps this from reducing AIP all the way down to 1 for the whole game. And AIP floor will grow when things happen that would normally make AIP go up, even if the amount of "accumulated negative AIP" you is enough to overcome the "accumulated positive AIP". So no free forced low AIP for you . However, keeping the AIP at the floor is still very helpful compared to letting it grow normally.

Advanced Hybrid Hives: Wait, the tool-tip still says they can recapture planets? That is currently wrong. They do not, thank god.

EDIT:
In short, yes, some of these have the potential to force you to keep bumping AIP (or at least the AIP floor) up, but that is part of the intended design of the game. The AI will consider you more of a threat as you keep going throughout the game, no matter how well you try to sabotage them. Before you complain about the "one true pace" thing again, the minimum pace of the game if you can manage to keep AIP very low, or maybe even at the floor, is VERY slow. If you are good at keeping AIP low, you can have VERY long games to play around as you wish.

[BobTheJanitor]

Advanced Hybrid Hives: Wait, the tool-tip still says they can recapture planets? That is currently wrong. They do not, thank god.

The wiki actually says "Not implemented yet (as of version 3.176), but some dastardly and inconvenient things like recolonizing neutral planets (by rebuilding the command station and warp gate)." If this is incorrect I can go make that disappear. I have yet to play with hybrids on. Is that a feature that's ever planned to go in or has it been dropped?

[TechSY730]

Advanced Hybrid Hives: Wait, the tool-tip still says they can recapture planets? That is currently wrong. They do not, thank god.

The wiki actually says "Not implemented yet (as of version 3.176), but some dastardly and inconvenient things like recolonizing neutral planets (by rebuilding the command station and warp gate)." If this is incorrect I can go make that disappear. I have yet to play with hybrids on. Is that a feature that's ever planned to go in or has it been dropped?

Until they figure out how to prevent the "AI recolonized, you just lost 20-30 AIP for nothing" problem, no.

(I say make an no AIP on death versions of the AI command stations and AI warp gates. Whenever the AI tries to build a new command station and/or warp gate, they will build these versions, not the normal AIP on death kind. This way, the AI can take advantage of neutral planets too, but not force the player into getting pointless AIP gains)

[Shrugging Khan]

I completely forgot about the floor. Shame on me! So alright, I won't be playing with the civvie leaders.

Anyways, "very slow AIP increase" isn't my thing. I want "No AIP increase without actions or failure to act on my part".

And about the rocketeers: Assuming you capture the planet one of the silos sits on, what happens? No chance of AIP increase whatsoever?

[TechSY730]

I completely forgot about the floor. Shame on me! So alright, I won't be playing with the civvie leaders.

Anyways, "very slow AIP increase" isn't my thing. I want "No AIP increase without actions or failure to act on my part".

And about the rocketeers: Assuming you capture the planet one of the silos sits on, what happens? No chance of AIP increase whatsoever?

I don't think the silo itself has an AIP increase, considering it is a minor faction and all.

And yes, you can set the AIP gain per time to 0. That way, if you don't do anything, they don't get any AIP. They are doing things though. For one, they are reinforcing, which will eventually lead to border aggression, but at 10 AIP, or even 100 AIP, that will take a LONG time to start happening. And of course, they will continue to send waves at you, which if you know when to stop increasing AIP, won't be that much of a threat.

But unless you intend on just sitting there doing nothing but defending, that lack of gain merely because of time isn't very relevant.

[BobTheJanitor]

Until they figure out how to prevent the "AI recolonized, you just lost 20-30 AIP for nothing" problem, no.

(I say make an no AIP on death versions of the AI command stations and AI warp gates. Whenever the AI tries to build a new command station and/or warp gate, they will build these versions, not the normal AIP on death kind. This way, the AI can take advantage of neutral planets too, but not force the player into getting pointless AIP gains)

Well I can at least make the entry say 'as of 5.000' so it doesn't seem so out of date. I agree that no-AIP for death command stations sounds good for recolonizing. Or maybe some kind of AI mobile builder unit or somesuch thing?

[Shrugging Khan]

And yes, you can set the AIP gain per time to 0. That way, if you don't do anything, they don't get any AIP. They are doing things though. For one, they are reinforcing, which will eventually lead to border aggression, but at 10 AIP, or even 100 AIP, that will take a LONG time to start happening. And of course, they will continue to send waves at you, which if you know when to stop increasing AIP, won't be that much of a threat.

But unless you intend on just sitting there doing nothing but defending, that lack of gain merely because of time isn't very relevant.

Actually, I almost always play with zero AIP over time. I much prefer being able to just sit around, watch my defences, see how they fare, redesign them, observe the enemy, plan strategies, make probing strikes here and there, clear up some reinforced positions...

With automatic AIP increase, everything becomes a hassle. quicklytakeoutthesepositionsbeforetheygettoreinforcewecan'taffordtosendmoreshipswecan'taffordanylosseseitherohgodwhatisthisihadnotimetoprepareaaaaaaaaaaaargh

No thanks. I want to kick back, have a cup of tea, go and make dinner, come back to the game an hour later and be able to just play on like I never left.

Alright, some of the outlying systems were lost in the meantime. There's a huge reinforcement blob in a previously cleared place. And my resources are at 999k and unused, but nevermind. It may be inefficient, and you're often re-treading old ground, but I'm a thorough player. Not a hectic one.

[Zeba]

I like to play the 120 star maps though I rarely ever finish them due to getting owned by the ai or eventually hitting a brick wall expansion wise due to aip and or bad choices be it knowledge or planets taken. If I want a shortish game that probably winnable then I go with a 40~60 star seed as that seems to have the best balance of distance to the core worlds and aip from conquest and planet neuting.  Nowthe funny thing is that the hardest maps are the very smallest ones as you have little room for resource expansion and knowledge gain but lots of nasty worlds that take a large high mark fleet to kill or neuter so you can get your forces through with the minimum of losses to get to the next system.

Matter of fact here is a save from a particulary interesting 10 planet seed on difficulty 8 using all the expansions that has the potential for winning the game but I'l be damned if I have found the right combination of unlocks and tactics to beat it yet. 

[zebramatt]

I can't help but wonder how you cope with the pace of normal life if an AI progress increase of even one point an hour seems hectic to you!
 

[Panopticon]

There is a pause feature. 

[Sunshine!]

I would say turn the Spire Civvy Leaders on.  Get a couple Penetrators, and send them out to nuke all the Civvy Leader worlds.  That's -30 AIP an hour, which adds up over a 60 hour game for the low, low cost of 200-ish AIP.  Which can itself be mitigated by sending out more penetrators to shoot datacenters/coprocessors.

And sure the civvy leaders can only kick the AIP down to the floor, but the floor is 1/5th of what the AIP otherwise would be without reductions, so it's not a bad deal.  Difference between seeing Mk4 (or 5) ships and mk1 or 2 ships in waves.  Also keeps the exogalactic strike forces from building at 5% every cycle instead of 1% every cycle.

[Red Spot]

Zenith Traders: Right now, I think their sell chance to the AI is 10%, which is WAY too large, especially for the pace you seem to be aiming for, or even the "normal" pace that the game is balanced against. But potentially giving the AI more stuff that it values or is really tough is part of the risk with this faction. In return, you get some really cool stuff.

They arent that bad. They go to a planet of the AI, once there have a 10% of making a sale. Than they pay one of your planets, very likelly one very deep in your terf(), and again move to one of the AI, and again only have a 10% of making a sale.
Afaik the sales are always spawned near the AI-CC, and I havent seen all that much being spawned by the trader. I often see a core-planet with 2 gates, but have never seen a gate spawn anywhere else. Ion-cannons, low mark ones, is something the AI seems to like (a mk2 Ion ofcourse really hurts when you attack with mk3+ ships .

I would actually like it if Chris would change the Trader logic back to how we had it for 1 4.0x beta, where it simply would not cross your planets unless it had to to get to an other AI planet. And it could use a buff in what it sells to the AI (extra special posts/raid-engine?!/alarms(they already do iirc, but I never seen them sell one)/etc), possibly even remove the lower mark stuff from the sell-list towards the AI.
(Effectivly making the Trader so it adds pain to your game, as most minor factions do. But allowing some serious gain if you play your cards right.)

[chemical_art]

Zenith Traders: Right now, I think their sell chance to the AI is 10%, which is WAY too large, especially for the pace you seem to be aiming for, or even the "normal" pace that the game is balanced against. But potentially giving the AI more stuff that it values or is really tough is part of the risk with this faction. In return, you get some really cool stuff.

They arent that bad. They go to a planet of the AI, once there have a 10% of making a sale. Than they pay one of your planets, very likelly one very deep in your terf(), and again move to one of the AI, and again only have a 10% of making a sale.
Afaik the sales are always spawned near the AI-CC, and I havent seen all that much being spawned by the trader. I often see a core-planet with 2 gates, but have never seen a gate spawn anywhere else. Ion-cannons, low mark ones, is something the AI seems to like (a mk2 Ion ofcourse really hurts when you attack with mk3+ ships .

I would actually like it if Chris would change the Trader logic back to how we had it for 1 4.0x beta, where it simply would not cross your planets unless it had to to get to an other AI planet. And it could use a buff in what it sells to the AI (extra special posts/raid-engine?!/alarms(they already do iirc, but I never seen them sell one)/etc), possibly even remove the lower mark stuff from the sell-list towards the AI.
(Effectivly making the Trader so it adds pain to your game, as most minor factions do. But allowing some serious gain if you play your cards right.)

Actually, it was that way for one of the 4.x betas. Many (myself included) did not like it at all because it makes it difficult for the player to effectively use any of the goodies. Previously the trader always went from friendly to enemy to friendly, etc... planets. Eventually it was changed for it to truly randomly pick planets, which I enjoy. It allows you to rarely see the trader deep in your own turf, it actually makes the trader run around a lot giving the AI less chances to buy stuff over time, and for myself fits in with what I enjoy the trader to be: A truly neutral entity looking to sell goodies.