How AI responds to other factions

[PokerChen]

We'll just split this off from the other thread reviewing AIP.

The question is: How should the AI's initial plan and progress against factions other than you be treated? Would it be largely immune to player influence, like major seismic events? An AIP-like figure that can be seen and influenced? Or some other model?

Note the following quotes:

Correct on the mixed waves.  On minor factions I'm not sure on that yet.  Could be a cool idea, had not thought of it before you just suggested it, and I'm not sure of the ramifications.

You'd need to set up a modified response curve, but it'd be a unified way to control the rate/order at which AI gobbles up particular factions. Have each faction start with randomised 0~100 AIP + Shark-AB, and give them slightly varying auto-AIP progress. The AI will then attack them in slowly increasing waves, but they should have the starting resources to fend them off for a while.

 Might be interesting to have the AI divide up its reinforcement pool against the various human factions. Gives you a visceral effect on the impending doomsday line, similar to the way funding countries leave X-COM to join the alien overlords. (Harder to balance.)

Er, I might have dramatically misunderstood, but there aren't going to be human factions throughout. They're killed in the first hour and you play the rest of the game against the AI (but with the other minor factions).

The way that I read it was that some of the bonus ships were coming from the other human factions, so you must be able to help some of them? Otherwise you'd never get those.

I'm still trying to figure out some of the specifics on this in terms of what will feel ideal.  But my overall thinking at the moment is that they would start out as nicer civilizations that get obliterated early on, leaving you alone.  And then little pockets of survivors can still use your help and give you stuff (like those ships) in return for it.  Those last survivors probably wouldn't ever die completely out, but they'd be yet another point of back and forth contestation.  If you can help them grow back a little bit, that might be extra good in terms of what you can get out of them.

[chemical_art]

I enjoy the concept but would like it's impact to not be too large. I can already imagine myself rolling new games trying to get my desired faction near me so I can save them. In a way it feels like a more evolved concept that AIW 1 once had where you did not choose your starter ship.  It made the start a grind as I would cycle through two dozen games trying to find what I wanted. I can imagine it happening it here again. *groan*

[Tridus]

I enjoy the concept but would like it's impact to not be too large. I can already imagine myself rolling new games trying to get my desired faction near me so I can save them. In a way it feels like a more evolved concept that AIW 1 once had where you did not choose your starter ship.  It made the start a grind as I would cycle through two dozen games trying to find what I wanted. I can imagine it happening it here again. *groan*

If the ship they give you is constant every time, yeah. Who has the super cool ships? I want those guys on the map.

[Captain Jack]

The solution is that you get ships on a list, like with the Classic nebulas. 1st human faction you bring under your nets you a flagship, the next gets you a specific kind of turret, etc. That way it doesn't matter who you get, only how many.

Mix in the "pay for their rebuilding" schemes Chris mentioned and you can replace "number of factions you save" with "strength of human presence" as the determining factor for the rewards.

[kasnavada]

The solution is that you get ships on a list, like with the Classic nebulas. 1st human faction you bring under your nets you a flagship, the next gets you a specific kind of turret, etc. That way it doesn't matter who you get, only how many.

Mix in the "pay for their rebuilding" schemes Chris mentioned and you can replace "number of factions you save" with "strength of human presence" as the determining factor for the rewards.

This proposal is interesting but makes little sense "thematically". Aka, doesn't sound like AI War 1 to me. The "rewards" from the science stations were initially random. I'd like to be able to keep that.

[Pumpkin]

I would like to see a system keeping randomness but not causing multiple-game-generation-searching-for-a-specific-random-starting-stuff.

I can see something like "choose your first unlocked ship design" and "select random first unlock ship design", with the starting position on the map would be independent (and also "choose or random").