So, AIW Classic contains a few examples of one of my personal pet peeves: AI Magic Moves.
This is when the AI gets to relocate or create units at arbitrary locations with no plausible in-world explanation. The AI's production facilities are supposed to be in another galaxy, after all, so its ships should logically have to then travel through the exo-wormhole to get here. I dislike Magic Moving not only because it breaks the verisimilitude of the game, but also because I'm trying to fight a guerrilla war, and Magic Moving denies me fun opportunities to interfere with the AI's logistics.
Egregious examples of Magic Moving include:
- CPA ships being instantly recalled.
- Hacking responses.
- Shard responses.
- Strategic Reserve deployment.
Lesser but still bothersome examples include the way the AI sends reinforcements and waves without ever actually appearing to use a warp gate.
So, I would propose the following changes:
- All new AI units should initially appear flying out of the exo-wormhole, and then, if they want to go elsewhere, they should fly into the home system's warp gate. That home gate should be made much stronger (and probably be covered by the AI's Core Shields).
- Get rid of "Reinforcement Gates". Have Reinforcements emerge from and rally at the system's warp gate and then fly to their station. If the system Warp Gate is destroyed, Reinforcements should stop. If that makes Gate Raiding too attractive, shift more of the AIP cost of the system from the CS to the Warp Gate.
- Instead of wave ships emerging directly into the destination system, they should instead emerge from the adjacent system's warp gate, rally at the warp to the target system, and then go through.
- CPA ships should need to rally by flying to an AI warp gate, and emerging from the warp gate at the CPA rally system.
- Hacking should use a (hopefully) more interesting reprisal method.
- The strategic reserve should fly out of the exo-wormhole when it's activated, and take a warp gate from there
- Shard responses should have to use warp gates in a similar fashion to the above.
TL;DR: Make the AI move its units like they're actually objects in the game world.
With these changes, the game will feel a little bit more like I'm fighting a real strategic duel, instead of playing a game about fighting a strategic duel.
