Arcen Games

General Category => AI War II => AI War II - Gameplay Ideas => : qipoi July 20, 2017, 07:46:58 AM

: Are AIW2 turrets going to be like AIW1 or will they be stronger and fewer?
: qipoi July 20, 2017, 07:46:58 AM
Are turrets and other base defenses going to go the AI war 1  route of having a shitload of weaker turrets, or are they getting the 'fighter squadron' treatment and being made stronger but fewer in number? I personally wouldn't mind  that treatment being given to a certain degree on certain weaker turrets that you usually just build in 5's anyway. I think it might help the player to visualise the strength or threat of the turrets both ways, like when doing the 'incomnig wave' math on how many turrets to build. I can remember that 3 turrets kill 6 bomber squads, but on the fly its more obscure to judge if 36 turrets will kill 6 bomber squads. This only gets harder  to visualize the more ship and turret types get added.

Does anyone know what building defense lines will be like in AIw2?
: Re: Are AIW2 turrets going to be like AIW1 or will they be stronger and fewer?
: x4000 July 20, 2017, 09:50:18 AM
There are some important details on this that I'm not sure of, since they're Keith's domain and he's been iterating on the concepts.  He's out until Monday, though.

I can tell you that there are a variety of sizes of turret, some of which are in groups of 5 or even more, and some of which are only in pairs or just solo.  From a visual standpoint we have overall three sizes of turret: the interplanetary ones, which are larger than anything in AI War Classic; the whole-planet ones like orbital mass drivers and ion cannons; and then the "smaller stuff."

Even in the realm of just the smaller stuff, there's something like a 400% difference in scale from the largest to the smallest.

Perhaps most critical to mention: this stuff is easy to mod in xml, and it's also easy for us and/or you to test various methods of these working simply by adjusting the unit caps and squad member numbers in the xml, etc.  The balance changes aren't something that you or anybody have to do in a purely-theoretical fashion, or make spreadsheets for.  I mean, you CAN, but you can also just change things directly and then see how it feels.  If it feels better, then suggest the changes on the forums or mantis and see how everyone else reacts.

If we find that there are wildly differing ways that people want to use the turrets, then there's nothing stopping us from adding a lobby option for having things like "more individual turrets instead of squads of turrets" or something to that effect.

As to the way things are exactly-this-second, I think Keith has expressed some unhappiness with the current setup on turrets, and hence the iteration I mentioned.  I'm not sure where exactly that will end up, but it's one of the many reasons we're happy to have people giving us feedback pre-1.0.  AI War Classic was a lot more rigid and Keith and I were a huge bottleneck in terms of balance.  That's not the case on AI War 2. :)