Wave Size and Timing based on Points of Ingress

[Draco18s]

And that change wouldn't actually make them any better deals in terms of resources and energy, just in terms of knowledge, because the m+c+e is per-unit, however many of the units you have.

Not when my bank account is overflowing and I've already built all four fortresses.

[TechSY730]

Then Fortresses would (probably) be worth the resources, knowledge and energy.

They're already a great deal on knowledge.  And they're really expensive in resources and energy but that hasn't stopped several players from using them as keys to their defenses on high difficulty games

And that change wouldn't actually make them any better deals in terms of resources and energy, just in terms of knowledge, because the m+c+e is per-unit, however many of the units you have.

Mk. Is are a great deal on knowledge. The higher marks are much more questionable.

I understand this is supposed to be a contention for unlocking Mk. III units, the thing is that even Mk. II fortresses seem to add too little for their knowledge cost, even if you need fortresses, which is a Mk. too early for this sort of questionable returns to show up this strong, if I understand the balance goals of knowledge costs to Mk. level balance properly.

[orzelek]

I tried this fight long time ago here:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2222

Response to it was mostly negative then. Even fact that it would be optional didn't help. (I think this was my greatest surprise - why something optional that doesn't change game play for others cause so negative response...)
And that is basically the plan to have overall larger turret cap with current cap being per planet cap.

Idea with doing this with fortresses is also sound. It would require very heavy economy investment to be viable since even now with 2-3 ingres points trying to have fortress at each is painful in terms of resources and energy.

Special turret booster units maybe actually easier to balance than cap modifications due to easily modified things like energy cost and buff amount.

Also we should add that this would allow layered defence with systems on the way being actually able to dent attacking force in other way than sniper turrets. From what I recall layered defence is very useful in FS campaign (at least for me).

If some improvement was made in here I could be actually tempted to try FS and/or playing at higher difficulty. Currently the apparent need to have 1 max 2 ingress points feels like forced (only viable) way which doesn't make it appealing in any way for me.

[Kahuna]

Then Fortresses would (probably) be worth the resources, knowledge and energy.

They're already a great deal on knowledge.  And they're really expensive in resources and energy but that hasn't stopped several players from using them as keys to their defenses on high difficulty games

And that change wouldn't actually make them any better deals in terms of resources and energy, just in terms of knowledge, because the m+c+e is per-unit, however many of the units you have.

I find a cap of MarkII or III Missile Turrets or MarkIII HBCs much more useful.

[Diazo]

Alright, time for more math.

Because throwing out the numbers I saw as per my last post helps, it does not show the range of what could have happened.

So, a table showing mix/max of what could have happened.

Extrapolating from the 1,360 unit strong missile frigate wave on my 3 planet defense, here is what I could possibly have seen.

Ingress#	WaveMin	WaveAvg	WaveMax
1	1353	1566	1780
2	1139	1353	1566
3	926	1246	1566
4	712	1139	1566
5	498	1032	1566
6+	285	926	1566

This table is extrapolating this single wave of missile frigates and shows what the absolute minimum and maximum waves sizes could have been for this wave based on the number of ingress points.

I also included the average wave size for reference.

Now, note how minimum wave size plunges, at 6 ingress points the minimum wave size is only 21% of the single ingress minimum wave size.

However, maximum wave size stays up at 88% the size of a single ingress wave regardless of how many ingress points there are.

While looking at this table, keep in mind smaller waves hit sooner, a minimum 6 ingress wave (285 ships) would hit 5 times when in the same time frame a minimum single ingress wave (1353 ships) would only hit a single time.

Keeping in mind that my preferred solution to this is to still tweak the wave numbers, I'd like to see the maximum wave size modifier get smaller as the ingress points increase and I would be okay with increasing the minimum wave modifier on the higher number of ingress points to compensate.

Looking at the 6 ingress minimum wave of 285 ships, that would be laughable so I would okay with that increasing.

The question though is change the min/max wave sizes to what though? Let's hear some ideas, even if they are just with 2 seconds of thought, so I can get an idea of where the community stands on this please.

D.

edit: Stupid table formatting.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm fine with having multiple ingress points lower the max-time instead of just avoiding the bonus, but yea, suggested numbers could be helpful in getting towards the desired goal.

[Hearteater]

Ultimately, the maximum wave size is what matters.  If you can't hold that off at every ingress point, you'll die unless the RNG spares you.  Reducing the wave size for multiple ingress points isn't ideal for the current situation.  You'd have to have 2 ingress points have half the max wave size of a single ingress point to make that work.  If 2 ingress points is going to have a higher max wave size than that, then the player will need to use mobile units to support their defense.

Diazo's point on getting those units into place suggests a better solution might be to give us better options for doing that.  A variant of the Transport, maybe called a Warp Transport, could be created that could at any time jump to a Warp Beacon the player constructed in their own space.  This would allow you to instantly recall your fleet provided you supplied them with enough Warp Transports (which would still attrition in enemy space) and kept those Warp Transports safe.

Of course it is also possible that Diazo's apparent "Empire of Islands" strategy isn't something healthy for the game as it allows much lower AIP totals from you cherry picking the exact planets you need with no AIP overhead for either capturing connecting planets or gate raiding.  Actually, the AIP savings when doing an Empire of Islands reduces the wave sizes already.

[Wanderer]

I'm not sure I understand what the concern here is.  Bear with me though.

I like the 'Empire of Islands' analogy, it's quite apropo... and a strategy I also use heavily.  There already are two mechanics built into the base game to deal with waves on islands and still have multi-point ingress to your primary cluster.  Warp gate removal (and Warp Guardian) and Jamming Command Centers.  These, for an additional 5-30 AIP or significant K, will keep all waves from attacking any particular island.

I don't believe that if you're not willing to spend the AIP/K to remove the threat to these islands that you should be able to consider them wave-defensable.  I just don't, that's a main construction of the game.  Either move your whipping boy or deal with the consequences.  If 2/3s of a CPA wants your Fact IV and it's way off in Nowhere, Kansas... well... that's just gonna suck for you.  You've already got your 10 minute warning for those actually.  Time to triage what you really need to defend.

There are only a few places where I personally believe multiple ingress wave defenses should be viable, and the tactics I currently use to help deal with them on NON 10/10... I actually do play those, 10/10 is a special case and that's my usual AAR.  I don't always like playing a game at 80 AIP the entire time, it feels like you're in a straight jacket on occassion.

1) Multiple exposed wave points off the primary cluster.  This is not uncommon unless you're HIGHLY selective in your map selection.  2/3 choke points into the main cluster (and a nerfing of any left behind warp gates) is quite common.  Since you usually have to have reasonable defenses at all chokes anyway to deal with threat, wave defenses here are not an outrageous idea. 

My usual defenses consist of my MK I units on redirection patrol between all the chokes, so they 'eventually' get to the fight to support the turret balls.  I'll usually end up with a static Riot II under glass near the entry (2 if only two chokes) for shutdown, and thus a portion of my fleet is usually involved in defenses.  This is another case of warp gates ending up useless to me for fleet/star ships because of the need to have defenders autobuild but also to be able to construct the fighting fleet as well.

2) Mini-clusters.  Some maps lend themselves towards taking over two or three smaller clusters on galactic edges.  Homeworld as one, Fact IV and some fabs in another (and a nearby choke), and maybe a nice staging area that's easily defended near the AI homeworlds in a third.

Usually one of these areas contains a Dyson or a Rebelling colony for me.  Because of this, I have pre-built fleet defenders.  But these are optional events to the main game and should not be considered core play.  Rebels are the shock troops of my forces and can get roughly anywhere quickly to help defend.  Dysons are just brutal.  In either case though you need a good volume of turreting just to drifter defend as the threatballs go wherever.  Since your turrets are already there, wave defenses are viable ideas for these locations.

Usually I try to keep the star-lanes between these locations as open as possible for my fleet.  All WHGPs removed, All Ions, etc.  Only completely neutered systems on my 'highways' between the defense locations.  You also want to try to keep a small set of transports available to 'high speed' yourself where you need to be, preferably stationed at wherever your fleet rebuilds from.  Yes, they'll probably decay long before you get to the fight, but that's 4 systems they can get your units before everything slows down.  Your turrets here are not defense, they're a delay.  It requires a lot of micro to stay on the ball, and you won't always get there in time unless you don't run at the edge of your fleet's range.

These are the multiple ingress point wave defenses I consider viable strategy.  You can control the waves, control them to your advantage and pay for it.  There's one other but it's an edge case scenario, when you're parking on a coreworld and deflecting homeworld brutal results/defending a local asset, because you literally can't shut that warp gate down until end game.

The Empire of Islands, as Hearteater rightly pointed out, brings its own benefits in terms of lowered AIP and the like.  I'll reiterate my stance here.  I want enough defenses to be able to ignore small threats of drifters for any island so I don't have to fear freeing up 20-50 local threat as I pass through a sector of space and have to stop my fleet at every point to vacuum so it doesn't go haring off for that command center in the corner.  Islands should not be able to survive in the late game against waves/CPAs without help. 

The game is/was balanced around the idea of having a whipping boy or two.  What is the re-balance in the removal of the MASSIVE amounts of AIP you're planning to avoid with this improvement?  Yes, it's a nice to have, but it's also part of the game's challenge.

Your average planet has 3 connections.  At 3 islands, that's 3 Warp Gates * 5 AIP = 45 AIP that would be avoided to not eat waves.  What is the balance?  Taking edge worlds to lower # of connections increases time to defend.  There's balance there (accurate is up for debate) in the AIP vs. time debate.  Keeping a hub safe is exponentially larger (to the point that they're abandonable to me) AIP to maintain wave defenses, particularly since it's hard to keep up wave defenses when 5+ wormholes can spew ships and you can't get your short-range firepower into play as efficiently.

The same argument for balance could be made about me wanting the ability to keep drifters off my lawn a bit easier, I agree.  However, I don't want to avoid the pre-built balancing mechanics for CPAs, Exos, and AIP gain for defenses.  If I never want to go near the target system again with the rest of my fleet, I'll never have drifters after a neutering of the surrounding planets.  I need to see how the new SF plays out but I don't suspect they'd seriously hamper that.  I just want... something... there so 20 fighters and a leech starship doesn't make my energy supply quake in its boots.

[keith.lamothe]

I just want... something... there so 20 fighters and a leech starship doesn't make my energy supply quake in its boots.

Would being able to build a fortress on each outlying planet without it impacting the cap available to the whipping boy deal with the problem?

Or would it not work because:
- be overkill and too expensive (i.e. need less firepower, more granular option)
- not deal with bombers or anything polycrystal (I'm thinking of making mod forts the per-planet-cap thing but that wouldn't help anyone without AS)
- or something else

?

[Wanderer]

I just want... something... there so 20 fighters and a leech starship doesn't make my energy supply quake in its boots.

Would being able to build a fortress on each outlying planet without it impacting the cap available to the whipping boy deal with the problem?

Or would it not work because:
- be overkill and too expensive (i.e. need less firepower, more granular option)
- not deal with bombers or anything polycrystal (I'm thinking of making mod forts the per-planet-cap thing but that wouldn't help anyone without AS)
- or something else

?

Yes and no.  I've tried this tactic with existing Fortresses as they stand.  With 20-30 snipers (per island) it's quite reasonable except in the fact that Fortresses are purposely overpriced in M/C + E for their cheap K.  I'd have to re-evaluate with the new energy requirements, but basically a fortress takes out all the local energy gain, making it a non-gain scenario.  Building the things wrecks an econ for a while too.

It also significantly dilutes my sniper pool since those are the one thing I can be relatively sure of keeping the fortress alive and not being popped before the fortress can 'tank' for them.  Teleporters (and sometimes cloakers, eyebots in particular) also hose that tactic up pretty significantly, as they get all up in your face long before the long range attrition really deals with the issue.

It's a situational thing that can sometimes work, but the expense alone can be withering.  There's also one other problem with fortresses... things threatball against them in ways they don't against turrets.  Forting a system basically means you're holding off drifter kills until that threatball hits critical mass.  In a way, this is good, I'm able to get a fleet nearby to cleanup before they raid the system, though it does defeat the purpose of the automated defenses doing the work.

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, ok, so some kind of new "minifort" type that's per-planet-capped and not global-capped (and has the turret firepower modifier, or something like it, to reduce the fort-threatball phenomenon) might be a better tree to bark up?

[TechSY730]

Hmm, ok, so some kind of new "minifort" type that's per-planet-capped and not global-capped (and has the turret firepower modifier, or something like it, to reduce the fort-threatball phenomenon) might be a better tree to bark up?

Isn't that just basically a new turret type, except classified as a different structure (and higher individual strength)? Wasn't this an approach we wanted to avoid?

[Diazo]

<SNIP>

Okay.

I agree that your post has generally valid points for how you play, the way I play invalidates some of it.

However, I'm trying keep this as simple as possible so rather then get into a discussion about playstyle differences I'm going to boil what I'm trying to do down to a simple question:

Why is a whipping boy necessary?

I want to be able to play without a whipping boy and be able to effectively defend my empire.

Now, a whipping boy (a single-ingress defense) should always be the optimal defensive strategy, that's a function of how combat works and I don't disagree with that.

My contention is that going to a multiple ingress defense instead of a single ingress defense is spiking the difficulty significantly more then it should.

My definition of difficulty in this specific case coming from the fact that multiple ingress defense spreads your turrets out and so requires more of your mobile fleet to cover, reducing the amount of your fleet that is free to conduct offensive operations.

In my current game, I do not have any free fleet, when a wave attack pops up my entire fleet moves to cover, spreading the turrets over 3 systems has thinned them out so much that they don't have a hope against a wave on their own.

Now, I am not going to argue I have the most perfect defence setup in my systems and I probably could increase how effective my turrets are, but when my turrets have only killed 25% of the wave and my command station is dead, tweaking my turret placement isn't going to change the outcome.

I'm going to sit down tonight and run some experiments to get some hard numbers on this with regards to exactly what turrets I have and how much of my fleet is actually required to back my turrets up.

I'll also post my suggested numbers for the wave size multipler then once I have some actual number in my hand to base them off of.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, ok, so some kind of new "minifort" type that's per-planet-capped and not global-capped (and has the turret firepower modifier, or something like it, to reduce the fort-threatball phenomenon) might be a better tree to bark up?

Isn't that just basically a new turret type, except classified as a different structure (and higher individual strength)? Wasn't this an approach we wanted to avoid?

Not exactly: what I wanted to avoid was a new family of turrets.  A single new unit type wouldn't be too bad.  But if there were an existing unit type (like the fortress) that would handle it, that'd be preferable.  Partly because then it doesn't get added into the existing single-world chokepoints.

Edit: I suppose one approach would be to make the military command stations into miniforts.  Kinda monstrous, y'know   Not sure if it's a good idea.

[Wanderer]

Hmm, ok, so some kind of new "minifort" type that's per-planet-capped and not global-capped (and has the turret firepower modifier, or something like it, to reduce the fort-threatball phenomenon) might be a better tree to bark up?

Personally, yes.  I see where you're trying to take this and yes, something like a 'local defense station' would be rather sweet to be able to build (heck, and research if necessary) that could have the firepower to deal with reasonable drifter traffic (I'm thinking up to about the AIP 10/20 starter waves) that wouldn't dilute my main defenses would be perfect.  A full stack of new turrets would be overkill, I agree.