Zenith Fleet abuse in multiplayer?

[xeren]

This may have been discussed and/or (ab)used a lot already, but we ran into an interesting event earlier

We decided to show AI War to another friend who'd never played/heard of it, so we started up a 4 player game. He only had the Trial version, so I picked the most 'normal' of the Easy AIs on difficulty 7 (Sledgehammer and Zenith Descendant I think), to avoid playing a match filled with turtles/miners/shielders, and to hopefully have us all die in a hilarious fashion to some mistake he made.

Well, he made a mistake, but not what I was expecting.

He picked up the basics fairly quickly, but during our very first planetary assault, he destroyed a Zenith fleet container. Oops.

He was now -400k or whatever in the red for Energy. Except, he had a giant fleet of Mark IV Zenith ships. And as far as we could tell, while he could no longer build up his empire, he was still perfectly able to rampage with his fleet.

Consequently, we had him simply ravage every world we wanted taken with his massively overpowered fleet, while we built up behind him. No AI world that early in the game could stop the fleet, and at that low of an AI Progress level, the waves sent against us were laughably easy to defeat.

Note that we actually lost this game, but it was mostly due to another newbie mistake he made, I'm pretty sure had that not happened, we would have been knocking on the AI's homeworlds in short order (we had them both scouted, and within a few jumps of our systems, inside about 90 minutes of play!)

You wouldn't be able to get away with this abuse in single player, because you wouldn't be able to build the necessary defenses to protect against AI waves while using the fleet, but in multi, it didn't matter - he killed, we built.

[RCIX]

It would probably help if the ship amounts were smaller (say 50 or so ships of one type), but i didn't provide ship count suggestions or anything when X made it 

[Lancefighter]

I think the problem here is not that there are too many total ships, its that they arent biased per type.

For instance.. 40 z bomber things.. is 400k energy RIGHT THERE.

Why would a zenith cache contain 50 of each type of ship, if they all used radically differeing numbers of resources? I would agree that it could contain 50 beam frigates and 50 shredders and 50 of some other things (cant remember them all), but why 50 z bombers?

[Doddler]

For the current AI progress cost there BETTER be a damn lot of ships in those things!  Even if that zenith fleet was really good, it's 80 AI progress right there for something that doesn't provide a long term benefit (unless you can win with it).  I think most people ignore them unless they become tools of opportunity on an attack, as most of us are trained to avoid unnecessary AI progress. The energy cost is an issue though, I rarely if ever have 40k energy to spare, much less 400k!

[Anticept]

He was now -400k or whatever in the red for Energy.

That right there. Probably means there is no shield on the home base now... and I've learned that is a CRITICAL mistake. If I have my homebase shields down for any length of time the AI rushes it.

You guys must not have been playing on a high enough difficulty..

[Spikey00]

If this is the case, perhaps some scaling needs to be done; have the structure spawn less ships in return for more of the structures--or, split the structure function into two:  one spawning far fewer ships in return for energy independent ships.

I personally never destroyed them myself for fear of the energy cost.

[xeren]

We're talking about multi, not single - no defenses isn't a problem, we defended for him. Remember, it was functionally a 3 player game with a fourth player operating a free, extremely overpowered fleet

We've never made progress that quickly in any game before or since, which is why I'm pointing out the abusive potential early in a multiplayer game. You can't get away with it in single player mode, as you lack the ability to build or defend, but in multi, that's not an issue.

Come to think of it, we didn't try powering down the fleet, that would make it even more abusive, as you could disable it, build up, then activate it to stomp another world for free.

[Lancefighter]

Come to think of it, we didn't try powering down the fleet, that would make it even more abusive, as you could disable it, build up, then activate it to stomp another world for free.

you cant activate anything if it puts you into negative energy.

[xeren]

Ah, that's good at least - prevents you from completely abusing them in single player as well

[keith.lamothe]

Short of having one player's massively negative energy balance start pulling from ally energy reactors, I'm not sure how this could be fixed in the general case.

Well, that or shutting down all ship weapons of a player who crosses a certain negative threshold, but not sure that's a good idea.

[Lancefighter]

Short of having one player's massively negative energy balance start pulling from ally energy reactors, I'm not sure how this could be fixed in the general case.

Well, that or shutting down all ship weapons of a player who crosses a certain negative threshold, but not sure that's a good idea.

I would do something like a forced pause if the players energy goes under -100k or -200k or something, and then force the player to turn off stuff until the player can reach 0.

[triggerman602]

id say just start turning things off until energy is at zero no matter what how negative it goes. it doesnt make a whole lot of sence that units still function perfectly when they dont have enough energy.

or

reduce sheild and/or weapon damage proportional to how much energy your in the hole, on all units.

[HellishFiend]

id say just start turning things off until energy is at zero no matter what how negative it goes. it doesnt make a whole lot of sence that units still function perfectly when they dont have enough energy.

If you think about it, things already "turn off until the energy it at zero". I look at it like, the planetary defenses go offline so that the mobile military can still function. Granted, it may get kind of funky if your total energy output could still not even power the zenith fleet, but usually that is not the case, so it makes enough sense the way it is right now, at least to me.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, I do want to do something about the having a has-a-fleet-with-no-restrictions-but-nothing-else player role in multiplayer.  On the one hand it's kinda fun to have such a distinct role, on the other hand it's just not balanced *at all* right now which is something that needs to be addressed.

[Cydonia]

Well, that or shutting down all ship weapons of a player who crosses a certain negative threshold, but not sure that's a good idea.

A theshold would be a good idea. I think it should be relative to the gross energy production and not an absolute value, so a player with more energy "income" can go deeper into the negative, before the threshold is activated.

And what should be activated?

reduce sheild and/or weapon damage proportional to how much energy your in the hole, on all units.

So if you are totally abusing this and don't even bother trying to restore power, you won't have much benefit because your ultra-killer-z-ships would suck because of penalty.

And if combined with the above mentioned relativity this would be an even greater impact on a weak player so you cannot boost the weakest player up early in the game and let him clear out the galaxy.