[Chris says: let's discuss!] Ship bays as a means of managing perplanet assets

[Draco18s]

The problem is do we want to have a "weak link" in the power infrastructure that AI can snipe and take advantage of or not?

Especially since we moved from galaxy-wide cap of power to per-planet power cap. So if one planet grid went offline it won't be as deadly of a blow back. But definitely keep the tension feeling around.

If you move the power generation (variable or not) into command station itself as a single unit. I am somewhat concerned that we may be giving command station too many roles (engineer are already becoming part of shipyard/command station in another thread). It may become a something that AI will always 'target' over everything else in an unhealthy obsessive way.

This.

If anything, I'd want to enhance this.  Make me put my power generation near my turrets in some manner.

For anyone who's played Creeper World and the power networks you create, losing a linkage can actually result in a cascading loss of power, firepower, turrets, territory, and the map if you're not careful/attentive/fast.

I don't know what to suggest without making the game "not AI War" though, or at least, not super difficult to defend planets.  It works in Creeper World because the creep isn't very fast, there's just a ton of it slowly filling up the low areas and overflowing ridges.

[kasnavada]

I'm ok with the principle of having to place the energy generator near turrets, but it creates a whole lot of issues. The generator needs to be stronger than the turrents (or at least on the same level), else it's easier to shoot the turrets. Then, there is the issue of stacking... the "safer" way to build would be to have all turrets at the same side. So the AI basically would need something in the like of AOE siege weapons as a counter and incentive to spread out defenses. It's certainly possible with a bit of tuning.

Other (not exclusive) idea:

One possibility would be to rework the metal generators energy giving bonus to achieve brownouts. What if every "safe" (few to no enemies, linked only to allies) planet you have enabled you to remotely power-up one "additional" generator ? The metal cost could stay, to pay for the transfer.

Example: the player has 5 planets, 3 of which are safe, with either command station or command station + "free" energy gen. If you want more energy in your chokepoint, you can build up to 3 "energy booster building" (names don't matter), and you can build 3 energy emitters on your safe worlds (which could be destroyed should the planet become unsafe).

That way, if the energy booster is destroyed => brownout on the defensive planet.
If the safe planet is not safe anymore, then each "energy booster building" alternatively gets down-timed, more or less randomly, on each planet that has them, causing brown-outs there. So if your backside is hurt, your chokepoint falls (which I see as an opportunity for the AI to do something else than just hit the commands station everywhere).

Important last point: to reduce micro (because possibly one would be encouraged to build / destroy the boosters to manage energy by oneself), no links from one "safe planet" to the "energy booster building" is done by the player or anything. Only total quantity counts on both side. Second point to reduce micro, links take 10 minutes to stabilize after a destruction / construction. Which means that if, in the example above, one of the safe world loses its energy emitter, brownouts occur for 10 minutes even if the total energy quantity is reduced.

[Tridus]

The problem is do we want to have a "weak link" in the power infrastructure that AI can snipe and take advantage of or not?

Especially since we moved from galaxy-wide cap of power to per-planet power cap. So if one planet grid went offline it won't be as deadly of a blow back. But definitely keep the tension feeling around.

If you move the power generation (variable or not) into command station itself as a single unit. I am somewhat concerned that we may be giving command station too many roles (engineer are already becoming part of shipyard/command station in another thread). It may become a something that AI will always 'target' over everything else in an unhealthy obsessive way.

This.

If anything, I'd want to enhance this.  Make me put my power generation near my turrets in some manner.

For anyone who's played Creeper World and the power networks you create, losing a linkage can actually result in a cascading loss of power, firepower, turrets, territory, and the map if you're not careful/attentive/fast.

I don't know what to suggest without making the game "not AI War" though, or at least, not super difficult to defend planets.  It works in Creeper World because the creep isn't very fast, there's just a ton of it slowly filling up the low areas and overflowing ridges.

Considering power is per-planet now, it's already closer. Having to put generators near the turrets themselves will lead to lots of annoyances building defenses unless the radius is large, and then who cares? The last thing I want to have to do is build five small generators in various places just to make my turrets work.

Having an actual generator unit doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. If it's going to be targeted, on any planet that needs defending it's going under a FF, because it's too important to leave undefended (like the command station). In fact, it's probably under the same one *as* the command station, so there's little difference between attacking it or the command station in the end anyway.

[Draco18s]

I'm ok with the principle of having to place the energy generator near turrets, but it creates a whole lot of issues.

Agreed.  Hence not actually having a suggestion on how to accomplish it.  Just a general notion.

Point was: making the command center also the power generator doesn't actually lead to brownouts.  Either your system is Fine or it's not yours which is definitely the opposite of the desired effect.

The "problem" with AIWC's method is that if simply converted to per-planet rather than global, the AI will still beeline for the command station.  And either your system is Fine or it's not yours... (on account of the command station being a higher priority target than the power generator: the command station would go down first, even if its more durable, again, not leading to the desired effect).

[Tridus]

Point was: making the command center also the power generator doesn't actually lead to brownouts.  Either your system is Fine or it's not yours which is definitely the opposite of the desired effect.

With power being per-planet, brownouts are largely a thing of the past anyway. Either the defenses are fully powered, or something hits your power generator and you're effectively in *blackout* conditions where everything shuts down. Unless we're building multiple generators again, brownouts just don't happen in this system.

Brownouts could happen when power was global because you had lots of things using it and lots of places generating it, and hitting one of those generators could bring down some stuff elsewhere but wouldn't cripple absolutely everything. Now? Hit the generator and the planet is basically defenseless.

(That was one of the reasons I pitched power being solar system wide in another thread. That makes brownouts a thing that can happen if you lose some of the systems.)

[kasnavada]

Power is still global, well sort of. Fuel is limited by planet. The more planet you lose, the less ships you have. Could be a death spiral here.

[Tridus]

Power is still global, well sort of. Fuel is limited by planet. The more planet you lose, the less ships you have. Could be a death spiral here.

... what? Power is in no way global.

Make power generation and consumption happen per-planet rather than game-wide.

It doesn't actually say what happens when you run out of fuel, but I assume you can't build more ships. Having ships explode mid fight because you lost a fuel depot would be odd.

[kasnavada]

I don't believe I am the only that assumes that if you starting losing planets, you've probably sent your fleet to whatever threat there is... And that it got wrecked in the process. And that since your fuel supplies are reduced, your fleet can't be built to full size again.

I didn't assume the ships exploded own their own. But I admit you've got a cool idea there. Some kind of penalty for not having enough fuel, reducing overall fleet efficiency would be cool =). Or having some ships dissassemble themselves over a short amount of time, like 2 or 3 minutes. Or just having some of them randomly shutting down because, no fuel. I think it's a separate idea though.

[Cinth]

Are you guys forgetting that fuel only matters for ships that aren't in your area of control?

[Tridus]

Are you guys forgetting that fuel only matters for ships that aren't in your area of control?

That's not what the design document says anymore. It says roughly "fuel is power, only for ships". That is, you have fuel, and making ships uses it.

[Cinth]

Are you guys forgetting that fuel only matters for ships that aren't in your area of control?

That's not what the design document says anymore. It says roughly "fuel is power, only for ships". That is, you have fuel, and making ships uses it.

Wha...? ~goes off to reread~

Well :/

Though, it's not like power was a huge limiting factor on your fleet to begin with.  I usually had enough for the fleet and some defenses (in standard play).

[TechSY730]

My gut reaction to this is "Muh Engineers! Don't touch my precious engineers!  "

That said, I wouldn't mind more convenient, more automated ways of managing per planet assets. Nor would I mind a reduction in base build time in return for less "boosting power" of engineers (the base build times did get a bit absurd for end-tech in AIWC). Hell, I wouldn't even mind some unification of "utility ship" roles (like engineers and remains rebuilders being unified, I would be OK with that). But I don't see why you need to toss the whole idea of engineers out. I like the flexibility that discrete engineers give to the table, even if most of the time it is as simple as "FRD" or "perma-boost shipyard", those times where you would like to redistribute income to other sources flexibly was nice to have.

Perhaps this is just me being stubborn to change; hard to tell.

[kasnavada]

Though, it's not like power was a huge limiting factor on your fleet to begin with.  I usually had enough for the fleet and some defenses (in standard play).

Yes, let's hope it changes and that you have to capture planets to get a bigger fleet =).

[Pumpkin]

Wha...? ~goes off to reread~

Well :/

Same reaction. Chris silently changed that.

So now Fuel is more like Power than like Metal. Okay. So as these two resources are directly tied to the control of a planet, I affirm my proposal: the OCStation must have zero nearby device (power generator, fuel generator, knowledge gatherer, etc). These devices would be piled up nearby the station and under the same force field, and destroyed at the same time of the station anyway.

I would go even further: instant collection of Knowledge on planet capture. Why would I wait or build ten science lab and scrap them minutes later? This is micro to be removed. However, gathering Knowledge on a dangerous neutral planet not easily capturable (war between the AI and a background faction?) would require a stealthy, hacker-like "extreme" science lab.

For anyone who's played Creeper World and the power networks you create, losing a linkage can actually result in a cascading loss of power, firepower, turrets, territory, and the map if you're not careful/attentive/fast.

I don't know what to suggest without making the game "not AI War" though, or at least, not super difficult to defend planets.  It works in Creeper World because the creep isn't very fast, there's just a ton of it slowly filling up the low areas and overflowing ridges.

While I like Creeper World, it's not the same game as AI War. As you said: "not without making the game not AI War"... The same was true for the platform-puzzle-game. AI War is already a mix of many game genres. Expanding that with a SBR/SimCity-like management layer would be... bad.

[tadrinth]

I think combining regular science labs into command stations would be reasonable.  Then you can keep the advanced science labs (which are cloaked) for gathering from systems you've freed but don't want to actually capture.