Wave Size and Timing based on Points of Ingress

[Diazo]

My current big 'thing' with the game is that in a serious game pushing your limits, you have to limit the AI's access to your systems to a single ingress point as you simply don't have enough defences to cover more then that effectively.

This results in the situation we have where defending multiple ingress points is magnitudes more difficult then defending a single ingress point.

For the record, I do think that a single ingress point should be easier to defend then multiple ingress points, but only somewhat.

Note that I am talking base game here, I do not have golems, fallen spire or anything else enabled that would help me defend, this is base game me vs. the AI.

I want to push for changes to this, but I want ideas from the community and some sort of consensus on what changes should be made as that is more likely to get implemented then me just commenting about this on my own.

Right now, the wave sizes mechanic is as follows:

With everything else being equal, a certain number of ships will be in the AI waves during a game. The number of ingress points you have will determine how big and how often waves attack. The more ingress points you have, the smaller the waves will be but they will be more frequent. Fewer ingress points will result in bigger waves that attack less frequently.

The result at the end of the game will be that the same total number of ships attacked, just how they attacked will vary.

Now, I have two problems with this scenario:

First, turrets are system specific and I can't be building/scrapping them in response to the different waves. So a multiple system front is reducing my effective turret strength by a massive amount. 2 systems is a 50% reduction, 3 is a 66% reduction and 4 systems is a 75% reduction.

In return, the average AI wave (which comes more frequently remember) is only reduced in size by 25% for 2 systems, 38% for 3 systems and 50% for 4 systems.

However, the maximum wave size regardless of how many ingress points you have does not go down. The maximum wave size is only reduced by 20% if you have multiple ingress points. Even if you have 10 ingress points, the maximum wave size is still only reduced by 20% as compared to a single ingress point.


This leads into my second point of contention with the current system.

Because the relative power of your turrets gets reduced so fast as compared to the incoming waves, you end up covering with your mobile fleet. However, multiple ingress points means you are being attacked by waves more often, so you have to pull your fleet away from attacking the AI and put it on the defensive when the wave attacks. This slows down your own offensive operations and prevents you from taking your fleet away from your own empire for any extended length of time as you need to pull it back to back up your turrets to handle a wave.

I have two suggestions for this at the moment.

First: Reduce the maximum wave size possible for multiple ingress points. You will still be getting the smaller waves more often but you won't get hit by a wave almost as big as a single ingress point wave on a bad roll of the RNG.

Second: Change the actual wave size based on the number of ingress points. This would mean that over the length of the game a player empire with multiple ingress points would face fewer total ships across all waves then a player with a single ingress point.

Now, having said all that, what does the community think?

Do you agree this is an issue or am I barking up the wrong tree?

If you agree it is an issue, what suggestions do you have to tweak it? (Note that messing with turret caps and whatnot has been vetoed by the devs already).

D.

[keith.lamothe]

(Note that messing with turret caps and whatnot has been vetoed by the devs already)

I think I may have misunderstood what you meant before.  To clarify: a unit may have a per-planet cap, and may have an overall cap, but if it has both it has to obey both.  So if MkI MLRS Turrets have a 92 overall cap and a 23 per-planet cap, that means you could build 23 of them on 4 planets and then you can't build any more of them anywhere.  So you couldn't cover 10 planets with 23 of them each, because that would violate the overall cap.

That would be fine from an engine perspective and not hard for me to do.  With that I wouldn't even mind increasing the overall cap so you could cover more than 4 planets (but not infinite, I think that would lead to a lot of cheese particularly on snake maps and the like, though I guess they already get the cheese) that way.  But I suspect many players wouldn't be happy to see that happen, overall, because of the pretty massive nerf that would represent to single-planet defenses.  It's not very different from the "fire control" idea we batted around a few months ago that got pretty widespread negative feedback.

[Diazo]

Yes, changing the caps like that would not work to fix the problem.

One thing I don't think I was clear on is that single-ingress defences are fine as they are and any changes made in response to this need to not change anything in regards to single-ingress defences.

So messing with the turret caps in such a way that you can't build the turrets you currently can in a single system is a no-go.

The turret cap change that got vetoed was the separate system and global caps so you could build 20 MLRS turrets per system, and then have another 80 global MLRS turrets you could build anywhere and a turret would only count towards one of those caps, it does not have to respect both.

That leads me to two more suggestions/thoguhts:

What about adding a "system defence turret" that has no global cap but has a 25 per-system cap?

Or what about leaving the current cap as the per-system cap and boosting the global cap for turrets to 150 or something?

D.

[Draco18s]

Do you agree this is an issue or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Sounds about right, to me.

[Hearteater]

As a simple solution, I'm inclined to have wave spacing INCREASE the more ingress points you have.  I'm going to need to defend with my mobile fleet, so giving me more time to breath between is fair considering I don't get to pick the ground we fight on.  I don't see a need to make the wave sizes especially smaller since I'll have my whole mobile fleet and some percentage of my turrets there as well.  The normal longer spacing = bigger waves rule could apply.  I think I might consider having bigger waves = more warning time so I have a chance to get my fleet into position.  It also makes sense that larger waves can be detected earlier.

As for single ingress, I wish the AI had more choke-point-cracking tools.  The carrier kind-of works, and Beachheads are decent but the player needs to turn them on.  Maybe against a single ingress, sometimes carrier should spawn with the wave even when the total wave size isn't too larger, just to spice things up.  Maybe we need some "extras" to seed in a wave, like mini-EMP warheads that give an AOE, 10-second EMP pulse to knock out forward turrets.  Hacking Warheads that explode and "reclaim" player turrets.  Shield Buster Warheads that destroy all Force Fields when they explode.  New Carrier types with other properties, such as a Military Carrier with Translocating attacks, or a Parasite Carrier that is empty and acts like a Maw except it reclaims instantly any ships it eats to fill itself up.  And of course the very evil Teleporting Carrier that thankfully destroys itself when it leaves a player system.

Kind of started to wander a bit at the end there.

[keith.lamothe]

The turret cap change that got vetoed was the separate system and global caps so you could build 20 MLRS turrets per system, and then have another 80 global MLRS turrets you could build anywhere and a turret would only count towards one of those caps, it does not have to respect both.

Yea, that would be pretty crazy in the code.

What about adding a "system defence turret" that has no global cap but has a 25 per-system cap?

Yea, that's one possibility I mentioned elsewhere.  I'm not sure it's such a good idea to add a whole family of new turret types for this, though.

A similar possibility is that idea I mentioned that has no global cap, a 1-per-planet cap, makes turrets on the planet like 5x as strong as usual but stops working entirely if more than X turrets are on the planet.  Of course, that still cuts into your overall turret caps because you have to use them.

Another alternative that came to mind was to make modular fortresses (and perhaps normal fortresses) have a per-planet cap and no global cap at all.  That way you could defend as many planets as you wanted that way in a fairly high-powered but still finite fashion, without buffing single-planet defenses further.

Or what about leaving the current cap as the per-system cap and boosting the global cap for turrets to 150 or something?

That would impact single-planet defenses.  Not that people would complain about more turrets, but the result would be that the game would become even easier to play with a single chokepoint, and either the game overall gets easier (for people who play that way) or it gets rebalanced to account for the increased defenses.  either way we're back where we started with the multiple-ingress strategy getting the short end.

[Draco18s]

A similar possibility is that idea I mentioned that has no global cap, a 1-per-planet cap, makes turrets on the planet like 5x as strong as usual but stops working entirely if more than X turrets are on the planet.  Of course, that still cuts into your overall turret caps because you have to use them.

Better thought-math, same idea.

You know how a lot of AOE shots will hit "up to N targets" and when hitting less than N, it's still the same total damage (that is, each of the not-N ships gets hit harder)?

Do the same thing with the turret buffer.  Instead of  "targets up to N turrets for +500% and when N+1 turrets exist turn off" it becomes "targets up to N turrets for up to +500% and when more than N turrets exist, buff decreases to those N."

Kind of like the aulde...frak, what-ever-unit it was that had the 0.55 multiplier when on a planet with itself.  1 was great (100%), 2 were better (110%), but 3 were worse (90%).

[Hearteater]

Just as a reference, I believe this was the original Fire Control thread.

[Diazo]

As a simple solution, I'm inclined to have wave spacing INCREASE the more ingress points you have.  I'm going to need to defend with my mobile fleet, so giving me more time to breath between is fair considering I don't get to pick the ground we fight on.  I don't see a need to make the wave sizes especially smaller since I'll have my whole mobile fleet and some percentage of my turrets there as well.  The normal longer spacing = bigger waves rule could apply.  I think I might consider having bigger waves = more warning time so I have a chance to get my fleet into position.  It also makes sense that larger waves can be detected earlier.

Ummm, unless we are talking about giving 10 minute wave warnings I'm not sure I follow. If my fleet is 3 systems out and a system on the far side of my empire from it gets a wave alert, my fleet have 5 systems to travel to respond. And any ships I leave behind get mulched so my fleet travels at the slowest ship's speed (I'm looking at you plasma siege) so it takes a long time to travel all the way back. And 3 systems out is not the farthest I regularly take my fleet.

My issue is that a multiple-ingress defence spreads your static defences out too much relative to how strong the AI stays. Making the AI waves bigger against a multiple ingress defence would be going in the wrong direction I think.

I want to make it so I don't have to have most of my mobile fleet tied to my empire as a response unit, I want to make it so I can take some of it on attacks and not gamble a wave will hit while I am away.

As for single ingress, I wish the AI had more choke-point-cracking tools.  The carrier kind-of works, and Beachheads are decent but the player needs to turn them on.  Maybe against a single ingress, sometimes carrier should spawn with the wave even when the total wave size isn't too larger, just to spice things up.  Maybe we need some "extras" to seed in a wave, like mini-EMP warheads that give an AOE, 10-second EMP pulse to knock out forward turrets.  Hacking Warheads that explode and "reclaim" player turrets.  Shield Buster Warheads that destroy all Force Fields when they explode.  New Carrier types with other properties, such as a Military Carrier with Translocating attacks, or a Parasite Carrier that is empty and acts like a Maw except it reclaims instantly any ships it eats to fill itself up.  And of course the very evil Teleporting Carrier that thankfully destroys itself when it leaves a player system.

Interesting ideas, but I am specifically trying to not change single-ingress defence in any way at the moment.

What about adding a "system defence turret" that has no global cap but has a 25 per-system cap?

Yea, that's one possibility I mentioned elsewhere.  I'm not sure it's such a good idea to add a whole family of new turret types for this, though.

It was a thought so I tossed it out. Another turret type is probably not the solution, no.

A similar possibility is that idea I mentioned that has no global cap, a 1-per-planet cap, makes turrets on the planet like 5x as strong as usual but stops working entirely if more than X turrets are on the planet.  Of course, that still cuts into your overall turret caps because you have to use them.

That would probably work also and it keeps coming up so it is a definite possibility.

Another alternative that came to mind was to make modular fortresses (and perhaps normal fortresses) have a per-planet cap and no global cap at all.  That way you could defend as many planets as you wanted that way in a fairly high-powered but still finite fashion, without buffing single-planet defenses further.

Or what about leaving the current cap as the per-system cap and boosting the global cap for turrets to 150 or something?

That would impact single-planet defenses.  Not that people would complain about more turrets, but the result would be that the game would become even easier to play with a single chokepoint, and either the game overall gets easier (for people who play that way) or it gets rebalanced to account for the increased defenses.  either way we're back where we started with the multiple-ingress strategy getting the short end.

Not sure I follow. You first talk about increasing the global cap for fortresses and leaving their system cap low, then turn around and say that increasing the global cap for turrets while leaving the system cap as is would make single-ingress easier.

Your method for dealing with fortresses is what I was suggesting for turrets, I think we crossed a wire somewhere.

D.

[Hearteater]

This is probably the cleanest and easiest solution that I like from the original thread.

How about an alternate, and fairly simple, solution to make defending multiple system viable without adversely affecting the current system at all:

1) Make Turrets immune to current attack boosts
2) Make a new Turret Attack Boost structure, which has a system cap of 1, and boost up to 100* turrets' attack damage by 100%*

Since you can only have one per system, to get the most bang out of your turrets, you want to spread them out with 100 per system so they are all double-strength.  You can still put them on a single system, and 100 of them still do +100% damage.  This unit would probably have a fairly small boost range allowing you to control which turrets get boosted better (think Tachyon Drone detection range) and would be at least cloaked, if not perma-cloaked.

* Randomly chosen example numbers, actual balanced numbers to be determined.

Keith mentions in that thread that a multiplier around +400% might better.  I'd comment that the numerical goal would be a single choke point containing all your turrets plus the one allowed Fire Control Booster would have the exact same DPS as at present without the Fire Control Booster.  This would mean a slight reduction in current turret damage to account for boosting 100 (or however many) turrets by 400%.  It may make more sense to allow 5 Fire Control Boosters per system, and have them each boost 1/5th the total turrets to allow players to boost various turret groups that don't happen to be close together.

Again, this would be no DPS decrease for single-system defense.  But this would allow multi-system defense to get a lot more bang-for-turret-cap out of turrets.

[TechSY730]

Can this sort of fancy new thing be in addition to revisiting how the timing of the waves (and thus, their size) varies with in-points? In particular, for a large-ish number of in-points (>=3 or >=4), the maximum interval time (and thus maximum wave size) would go down.

Hmm, where was that thread where this particular aspect was discussed...?

[Wanderer]

I know this discussion is regarding multiple wave assault points, but there's another aspect I mentioned I just wanted to bring over this way... that of properly whipping boy your systems and removing warp gate threats, and still losing systems to very small raider teams because you can't spare the defenses.

While support mechanisms that allow for significant multi-point defenses will also allow for satellite defenses, all I'd like to ask is if some ideas that seem feasible at first glance but don't have the firepower to actually do a wave deflection come to light, please see if they'd better apply as static "anti-drifter" defenses instead, so a solution to that might come from this discussion.

Thanks in advance,
Wanderer.

[Hearteater]

Ummm, unless we are talking about giving 10 minute wave warnings I'm not sure I follow. If my fleet is 3 systems out and a system on the far side of my empire from it gets a wave alert, my fleet have 5 systems to travel to respond. And any ships I leave behind get mulched so my fleet travels at the slowest ship's speed (I'm looking at you plasma siege) so it takes a long time to travel all the way back. And 3 systems out is not the farthest I regularly take my fleet.

My issue is that a multiple-ingress defence spreads your static defences out too much relative to how strong the AI stays. Making the AI waves bigger against a multiple ingress defence would be going in the wrong direction I think.

I want to make it so I don't have to have most of my mobile fleet tied to my empire as a response unit, I want to make it so I can take some of it on attacks and not gamble a wave will hit while I am away.

Transports solve your mobility problem.  I think 10 minutes would be extreme, but at 7/7, 4-5 minutes should be plenty of time to disengage your fleet, pile into transports, and get where you need to be.

Spreading out static defenses would be ok in this model because you are increasing wave spacing allowing the player to respond with their mobile fleet every wave while still having time to use their mobile units to get other things done.  This isn't a CPA so I know exactly which planets are options for a wave.  If I leave 4 planets as options, I can put 25% of my turrets on each.  Combined with my mobile fleet, unless the wave is larger than single-ingress*, it will be no threat.

I think expecting mobile units to not be needed for defense, especially with multiple fronts, is unrealistic.  And in fact having the defensive game different in one-vs-many defensive fronts provides more variety to the game.  My very first win used a mobile fleet on defense and it felt very different from my first choke-point win that basically made waves ignorable.

* Single-ingress tend to end up not requiring any mobile units to defeat waves.

[keith.lamothe]

Another alternative that came to mind was to make modular fortresses (and perhaps normal fortresses) have a per-planet cap and no global cap at all.  That way you could defend as many planets as you wanted that way in a fairly high-powered but still finite fashion, without buffing single-planet defenses further.

Or what about leaving the current cap as the per-system cap and boosting the global cap for turrets to 150 or something?

That would impact single-planet defenses.  Not that people would complain about more turrets, but the result would be that the game would become even easier to play with a single chokepoint, and either the game overall gets easier (for people who play that way) or it gets rebalanced to account for the increased defenses.  either way we're back where we started with the multiple-ingress strategy getting the short end.

Not sure I follow. You first talk about increasing the global cap for fortresses and leaving their system cap low, then turn around and say that increasing the global cap for turrets while leaving the system cap as is would make single-ingress easier.

Your method for dealing with fortresses is what I was suggesting for turrets, I think we crossed a wire somewhere.

Oops, right, sorry.  I thought you meant increase the turret cap in general, so there would be some left for other planets (of course, players would just toss all the new cap on the one planet anyway).  I see that I misread that

If possible, I would like to avoid having both a global cap and a per-planet cap on a single unit type since it would look weird in the interface The interface would show the remaining per-planet cap for that planet or the remaining global cap, which ever was lower at that point, but even if it showed whichever was higher it would be confusing.

But like I said before, it's possible.

I guess I prefer doing it with fortresses because I think making them per-planet-cap only with no global cap would have less of an impact on the rest of the game.

[dotjd]

Per-planet caps seems to me to have the undesirable side effect of reducing (the effect of) player choice and/or homogenizing everything, depending on the method used.  I think a better line of inquiry would be to add incentive for capturing more planets.  That, and there already exists a kludge in the engine to encourage expansionism - energy.

But if you're playing on high difficulties (which I assume you are, from recent AAPs and the comment about pushing your limits), and dealing with recent changes like the data centers only reducing 10 AIP at 10/10 instead of 20, I don't see a shift to expansionism.  I see the opposite.  iirc, people complained that they could take planets without consequence, and a spate of people have been completing it recently (to which the reaction has been to make it harder), so here we are.

Question: is this a problem that you see in moderate-difficulty (let's go with 7-8) games, or just higher difficulty ones?