Wave Size and Timing based on Points of Ingress

[Diazo]

Heh, thread moves fast.

Anyways, thinking over Wanderer's post made me realize I've been forgetting about Gate Raiding in this discussion.

So, that raises the question of multiple-ingress defense as compared to gate raiding to setup a whipping boy.

As if there we not enough things to keep track of already.

I'm not sure what my thoughts on gate raiding in this context are yet, I just thought of this.

Gate-Raiding is how you control the number of wave ingress points however, so it does have to be part of this discussion.

D.

[Wanderer]

Why is a whipping boy necessary?

A valid question.  Allow me a counter-response.  Why shouldn't it be?  The AI's not stupid, it already wiped the floor with the humans once.

However, why is it necessary?  Let's take a look at the standard map.  Boot one up, any of them.

Now, here's the balance point.  There are two paths to take once you've taken over your local coreworlds.

1) Remove all warpgates but one and control defensive inbounds.  This boosts the AIP.
2) Do NOT control warpgates and allow free-floating assaults on your worlds.  This keeps AIP lower but does not allow you to control inbounds... and also keeps the waves MUCH smaller, simply due to less AIP.

AIP wave size vs. whipping boy controls are the balance.  Now, is the balance accurate?  That's quite debateable.  Is popping 6 warpgates for 30 AIP worth the difference in the wave sizes?  This is where I think the crux of the discussion should be lying.  When you whipping boy you're in an all or nothing scenario on 1/2 worlds (2/3 is preferable now due to the over-whelming force of the wave timer for chokepoint now).

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

I was able to effectively defend a Crosshatch 9/9 because AIP increase for warpgate takedowns was rediculous, even with a planetary booster really building up one of the assault points.  I don't think that multi-ingress is the only consideration for this.  You have to take into account the AIP balance or it ends up as an 'easy button'.

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.

Now, here we agree thoroughly, but I personally believe we need to approach it significantly differently.  The answer may not lie in making multiple ingress easier, but in making single ingress HARDER.  Up the AIP costs on AI Warp Gates so that the whipping boy results in equivalent pain.

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.

Quite so, and is the balance of not investing in defensive turretry.  I know you've breezed my AARs at some point but I'm not sure if you got into some of the nuts and bolts of why I purposely avoid investing in turretry.  Fleet can be used for both defense and offense, turrets are defensive only, and I don't (didn't) feel the K costs were properly representative of that (I still need to mess more with the new ECM).  If you invest primarily (or in my case, only) in fleet, you must expect to be using them in a defensive nature as well.  K is as much a balance as AIP and strategic control.

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.

Then you've probably either over-expanded or invested in non-optimal choices.  What difficulty?  However, needing to bring your fleet home when you've avoided AIP gains from warp-gates and not investing in turretry is not something I consider bad design or something that needs repair.

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.

In the end one of the reasons chokepoints end up as optimal is overwhelming firepower vs. economy.  The more firepower that lands during first strike on the enemy the less damage it can do overall.  The less damage it does, the less economy it inhales, the more ambitious you can be with your fleet because you can rebuild it (more) easily during feast economy.  It's the same result as fleetball vs. guerilla raids in 5 places.  Fleetball ends up with less losses over time because no one abuse of it requires a rebuild.  You can apply more firepower in one place (say, a FF) and chew through it faster and get at the guardians much quicker when you've got overwhelming firepower.

The same result occurs on defense.  The price of fleetball is that your entire fleet is dedicated to a single operation, and cannot respond to other threats or multi-task.  This can be very expensive depending on circumstances.  I'm not entirely sure, but it may just be single-ingress whipping boy is just not equivalently expensive.

[Hearteater]

If we get Mini-Forts, consider rolling in the +attack boost on X turrets effect.  You'd get a reason to spread out turrets if you want, especially on systems you couldn't normally support with mobile units.  At the same time the Mini-Fort would be formidable enough on its own to make the system at least reasonable defensible.

[keith.lamothe]

Another approach than single-ingress/multi-ingress is having a multi-stage ingress, possibly with the opening stage being multiple planets wide, but to actually hit your core the enemy has to funnel through a single system.

This doesn't seem to be very popular but I'm not entirely sure why; it seems like simply introducing more temporal spacing between the elements of a wave (as happens simply from movement, let alone engaging stuff along the way) would make the whipping boy defenses more effective at least in avoiding econ damage.

[Wanderer]

Another approach than single-ingress/multi-ingress is having a multi-stage ingress, possibly with the opening stage being multiple planets wide, but to actually hit your core the enemy has to funnel through a single system.

This doesn't seem to be very popular but I'm not entirely sure why; it seems like simply introducing more temporal spacing between the elements of a wave (as happens simply from movement, let alone engaging stuff along the way) would make the whipping boy defenses more effective at least in avoiding econ damage.

Because this only works for AI controlled worlds when you use an 'attrition runway'.  Otherwise the AI does really strange things, like taking 2/3s of their fleet off into the nether reaches and whacking your islands, end running you to try to go around all your defensive layers, going and sitting as threat elsewhere until critical mass is reached...

Either you stop a wave cold in a single system with no escapees or you deal with so much frickin' threat eventually that you're stagnated.

Edit: Oh, yeah, to boot the wave that hit your outer layer, the ones that want to keep going for the homeworld, will usually stagnate as threat and never hit the next 'layer', making the attempt moot.  All you did was create a neutral system until your fleet can come clean out the problem.

[Fluffiest]

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

Whatever happened to that discussion about redesigning fortresses? Maybe we should revive it. Fortresses certainly want a redesign if we're going to use them as the go-to multi-chokepoint defense option.

[keith.lamothe]

Because this only works for AI controlled worlds when you use an 'attrition runway'.  Otherwise the AI does really strange things, like taking 2/3s of their fleet off into the nether reaches and whacking your islands, end running you to try to go around all your defensive layers, going and sitting as threat elsewhere until critical mass is reached...

Either you stop a wave cold in a single system with no escapees or you deal with so much frickin' threat eventually that you're stagnated.

Edit: Oh, yeah, to boot the wave that hit your outer layer, the ones that want to keep going for the homeworld, will usually stagnate as threat and never hit the next 'layer', making the attempt moot.  All you did was create a neutral system until your fleet can come clean out the problem.

Ah, right, if you make a huge fortress and surround it with lesser defenses, the invaders just pillage outside the walls.  Inconsiderate of them.

[Toranth]

Another approach than single-ingress/multi-ingress is having a multi-stage ingress, possibly with the opening stage being multiple planets wide, but to actually hit your core the enemy has to funnel through a single system.

This doesn't seem to be very popular but I'm not entirely sure why; it seems like simply introducing more temporal spacing between the elements of a wave (as happens simply from movement, let alone engaging stuff along the way) would make the whipping boy defenses more effective at least in avoiding econ damage.

<snip>Edit: Oh, yeah, to boot the wave that hit your outer layer, the ones that want to keep going for the homeworld, will usually stagnate as threat and never hit the next 'layer', making the attempt moot.  All you did was create a neutral system until your fleet can come clean out the problem.

This is the biggest problem with multi-layer defenses.  I sometimes even see parts of Exowaves stall out and sit as threat rather than suicide against strong defenses.  Unless wave units are forced to be suicidal.

<snip>

The AIP effect on wave strength is now (AIP * 0. ^ 1.1.  This basically means a 50 point AIP increase results in a 57 effective AIP increase for wave size.  A 100 point increase in actual AIP gives a wave-effective 123 point increase.
But effective AIP is only one factor in wave strength.  Difficulty is huge (2.25 multiplier at diff 7, 2.5 at diff 9; at diff 10, this is 4.5).  Wave interval is another big factor, since at max interval this is about 2.0 multiplier (can be 2.26 or so with 1 ingress).  Even if you only go with average, the 6+ ingress multiplier still averages about 1.2 - 60% of the 1 ingress average.
There are a lot of other factors in wave strength, so I'm not sure if even these multiplier get drowned out (or enhanced?) by other things... but I'm pretty sure I'm close.

Basically, going from 50 AIP to 100 AIP by gate raiding 10 warp gates gives about a 115% increase is wave strength due to AIP, plus a 50% increase due to going from 6+ ingress to 1 ingress.  Multiplicitave, not additive, gives an increase in strength of +175% or so.  Aka, almost triple what the average wave would have been against one of 6+ ingress points.

However, 6 ingress points gives your fixed defenses a mere 16.67% strength per system.  Concentrating that gives a 500% increase - Aka, it's a better improvement than the increase in AI wave strength.  When you do the math based on MAX wave size, not average, the ratio gets even more in favor of the whipping boy.


Finally, in regards to turrets vs fleetships.
Mk II basic turrets have 300,000 cap-DPS and 30,000,000 cap health (or so).
Mk II fighters have 200,000 cap-DPS and 32,000,000 cap health.
Mk II Missile Frigates are 170,000 cap-DPS, 30,000,000 cap HP.
Mk II bombers: 140,000 cap-DPS, 30,000,000 cap HP.

The other turrets have even better stats (HBCs, for example).  Sure, they can't go on the attack - but for the price of a single Mk III fleetship unlock, you can unlock 2-3 Mk II turrets.
So, unlocking a few turrets until your whipping boy can stand alone is Knowledge efficient.

When surviving is your primary concern, turrets are better.  Period.
In the situation where you can:
1) control threat, and
2) survive,
then you have a chance of eventually
3) using your fleet to wear down the AI and win.

[orzelek]

Because this only works for AI controlled worlds when you use an 'attrition runway'.  Otherwise the AI does really strange things, like taking 2/3s of their fleet off into the nether reaches and whacking your islands, end running you to try to go around all your defensive layers, going and sitting as threat elsewhere until critical mass is reached...

Either you stop a wave cold in a single system with no escapees or you deal with so much frickin' threat eventually that you're stagnated.

Edit: Oh, yeah, to boot the wave that hit your outer layer, the ones that want to keep going for the homeworld, will usually stagnate as threat and never hit the next 'layer', making the attempt moot.  All you did was create a neutral system until your fleet can come clean out the problem.

Ah, right, if you make a huge fortress and surround it with lesser defenses, the invaders just pillage outside the walls.  Inconsiderate of them.

Then why whipping boy works.... ?
It's really very inconsiderate of them to even attempt an attack at fortress so powerful that it contains full caps of turrets, potentially multiple fortresses and tons of forcefields. Optimal behavior would be to group up significantly and then attempt a frontal assault.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, right, if you make a huge fortress and surround it with lesser defenses, the invaders just pillage outside the walls.  Inconsiderate of them.

Then why whipping boy works.... ?

Because waves start inside the fortress walls.

It's really very inconsiderate of them to even attempt an attack at fortress so powerful that it contains full caps of turrets, potentially multiple fortresses and tons of forcefields. Optimal behavior would be to group up significantly and then attempt a frontal assault.

Yea, but people are already not very happy about the amount of mass threatball formation that happens; if it just dumped every wave on your (outer)doorstep it wouldn't be likely to win popularity contests.

Though it might win some games.

[TechSY730]

<snip>Edit: Oh, yeah, to boot the wave that hit your outer layer, the ones that want to keep going for the homeworld, will usually stagnate as threat and never hit the next 'layer', making the attempt moot.  All you did was create a neutral system until your fleet can come clean out the problem.

This is the biggest problem with multi-layer defenses.  I sometimes even see parts of Exowaves stall out and sit as threat rather than suicide against strong defenses.  Unless wave units are forced to be suicidal.

Already noted:
2577: AI wave ships attacked and now they won't move (though this also applies to Exo waves as well)
Disturbingly, this first report (there are two other related reports) was posted back in Jan 20, 2011, in version 4.072!
I nominated it in the "what to do for 6.0" poll, but it only seemed to make a little less than the 50% percentile in votes counts. 


BTW, I still feel like the wave growth function for the higher difficulties could use an exponent nerf. Like take the exponent from 1.1 to 1.05 (adjusting coefficients as needed to preserve early game difficulty). Despite how small it is, 1.1 has proven to be quite a huge impact, possibly a bit too much so.

Not sure how I feel about the lower difficulty wave formula (which is linear). It seems maybe a tad high, but not by much.

[Wanderer]

However, 6 ingress points gives your fixed defenses a mere 16.67% strength per system.  Concentrating that gives a 500% increase - Aka, it's a better improvement than the increase in AI wave strength.

Agreed, but you're not looking at the holistic result of increased AIP beyond waves.

Higher AIP means more reinforcements, faster Exos, larger raid engine effects, bigger CPAs, heavier deep strike responses...  and some I'm sure I missed.  There's also the fact that late game AIP does not have the same impact as early game AIP, which is when raid sizes are small enough to really handle without gate raiding.

However, this does somewhat bring me back to my point.  I don't believe multiple ingress is too difficult to defend.  I'm wondering if the price of creating the whipping boy is simply too small.

Finally, in regards to turrets vs fleetships.
Mk II basic turrets have 300,000 cap-DPS and 30,000,000 cap health (or so).
Mk II fighters have 200,000 cap-DPS and 32,000,000 cap health.
Mk II Missile Frigates are 170,000 cap-DPS, 30,000,000 cap HP.
Mk II bombers: 140,000 cap-DPS, 30,000,000 cap HP.

Oh, I agree with you in math.  I just disagree with you during play.  And MK II Basics are the exception, not the rule, for K Costs.  They and HBC Is are cheap compared to the rest and I usually open them simply because of that.  If you're going to compare turrets to fleet, you need to compare dual caps of III/IVs to 6000k of say, snipers and LRMs IIs.  Between the price tag and the fact that I'm not defending anywhere near as often as I'm attacking, the time in use to effectiveness difference balances them off, at least to my reckoning so far.  I don't disagree they're mathmatically equivalent either, Keith and Chris have spent a lot of time on that.  I just get more use doing 'double duty' for the same K under most circumstances.

Unless it's a max-time wave, those extra turrets are overkill anyway in most circumstances.  Since I get warned about wave sizes and the existing turretball can usually at least slow down the assault, I can, under many circumstances, buy time to get the fleet home.

Now, is it always effective?  Well, errr... no.

[Wanderer]

BTW, I still feel like the wave growth function for the higher difficulties could use an exponent nerf. Like take the exponent from 1.1 to 1.05 (adjusting coefficients as needed to preserve early game difficulty). Despite how small it is, 1.1 has proven to be quite a huge impact, possibly a bit too much so.

The primary purpose of that was to make 20 AIP in the late game as important as 20 AIP in the early game.  I personally feel the coefficient should have been higher and the early game dropped a bit down.  Do you have some alternatives to that idea?  It was the best idea I had at the time to present to Keith.

[keith.lamothe]

I personally feel the coefficient should have been higher and the early game dropped a bit down.

I didn't really want to drop the early game because it seemed like the opening 10/10 waves already felt really small.  In my champion testing it's usually a new 10/10 game where I set up some halfhearted defenses and send my champ into the nebula.  The waves usually don't even require my attention, and I'm certainly not straining myself setting up the defense.

Or do you mean 30/50 AIP instead of just 10?

[Wanderer]

Ah, right, if you make a huge fortress and surround it with lesser defenses, the invaders just pillage outside the walls.  Inconsiderate of them.

Then why whipping boy works.... ?

Because waves start inside the fortress walls.

Right.  Basically you've baited the enemy into the castle bailey, and then try to lock the doors behind them while you fill it with boiling oil while your archers rain in arrows.

There's an option to have waves spawn at actual warp gates and 'approach' your worlds.  Try this sometime and you'll see exactly why the whipping boy works.  It's the alpha strike and engagement choice queues.  Basically, on entry (prior to some very recent adjustments) most of a wave when outnumbered would immediately make a run for it.  Your alpha strike was the primary removal of a lot of that now free floating threat.  This standard tactic of the AI was a reason many of us took to heavily forcefielding the inbound wormhole, so they couldn't escape (sans a BHG from the traders or luck).  Now they have a 30 second 'fight time' forced on them, where they won't immediately make a break for it.

This is why the whipping boy tends to work.  You lock them in and cage fight them, rather than let them get out and cause a ton of mischief.