why do player ships move at 2x the speed of AI ships?

[superking]

why do player ships move at 2x the speed of AI ships?

reasons I do not like it:

• it makes speed of player ships fairly irrelevant since even the slow ones can outrun most AI units
• it encourages the 'microed blob' as seen in suzeras videos. this strat is unfortunately optimal.
• it seems like a sop toward making the game easier for the player
• it makes logistic stations fairly irrelevant (hardly need more speedboost unless you are using an especially slow/close ranged ships) and when used, makes player ships 8x faster than AI ships 

[x4000]

Hmm.  I am curious what others think.

[url00]

I think that it should be a option when creating a game.
More choices are never a bad thing. 

(First post btw! Great game, I love it!)

[Red Spot]

I think it is fair the way it is, the AI will always be twice as big/strong as you are, this is you balancing factor. Besides your own adaptive brainpower the only edge you have against the AI.

If it would be changed I fear an imbalance in how waves might be called (how, when and how frequent) and one rebalance makes for an other and an other and ......
However I do not think an option could hurt

[x4000]

The main reasons this change was originally put in was:

1. To counterbalance the AI's greater strength, as people have noted.

2. To make the game feel faster (less waiting for ships to move around), without making the game harder or faster-paced in terms of how you have to react to the AI.

I don't think an option would be a good idea, because this is one of those things that affects balance rather severely.  Whatever the relative speed of ships in the game is, has to be counterbalanced against the rest of the game balance.  Actually, that right there is a really solid reason to not make any changes to this for a while, come to that.  So feel free to discuss, but no changes coming on this anytime soon, now that I think of it that way -- good point Red Spot.

And welcome to the forums, url00!

[TechSY730]

How about this? The AI only moves at half speed when there are no ships that they can target on that planet. If there is mobile military (cloaked or not, it does not matter, they know there is military there), non-military but still auto-targetetible IF they do not have cloaking or if they can cloak and are currently decloaked, or on an enemy planet. This still gives somewhat of an advantage to the player, as it still takes the AI longer to patrol and cross the galaxy, but makes battles more even in terms of mechanics.

[x4000]

Well, that's specifically one of the cases that I didn't want to adjust: the time it takes AI ships to cross a player planet and get their stuff.  That's something that a lot of players would find really unpleasant.

[TechSY730]

Okay, maybe scratch the "not on enemy planets thing" In fact, make it such that the ships must be on a friendly (that is, an AI planet) IN ADDITION to the other two criteria I put forth to be able to move at "player speed". This should keep the balance for defending, but still prevent "cheesing" the AI on the offense by flying around in big circles.

[x4000]

Hmm... that does give me an idea, actually...

Good comments there, techsy, I think I have a solution that will make everyone happy based on your notes there.

[TechSY730]

Hmm... that does give me an idea, actually...

Good comments there, techsy, I think I have a solution that will make everyone happy based on your notes there.

Thanks. Sometimes my tendency to over-think small things can come in handy.

[x4000]

Indeed!