Hmm. Where did I put my suggestions list?
Rummages... Aha!
I wrote these for the base game, and that's roughly what the numbers are balanced for, but:
AI Wormhole Feedback Generator: (Think through more first! Pros? Cons?)
New anti-blobbing mechanism-
Basically, every ship that passes through a wormhole leading to or from the planet this is on increases a counter by one, and receives damage related to the current counter value- so the more recent transits, the more damage is taken. It should be minor for the first three or four hundred ships, but be doing 50%+ damage for normal fleet ships after seven hundred or so. The counter reduces by 10-20 every ~5 seconds. Larger ships increase the counter by more (Starships by 4 or 5, transports by 40 + (Loaded/20) (But the stuff in them takes no damage), fallen spire vessels by 5, 10, 20, 40, 100 for frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, dreadnaughts respectively. Golems by 50-100. Note that as damage is absolute, these larger vessels will be largely unaffected – it’s stuff coming through with them that needs to watch out. Counter should probably cap at 1000-1500.
AI ships have been modified not to trigger the device or take damage from it (To prevent special forces interacting with it in undesirable ways), but it’s presence disrupts the AI’s warp grid, leading to reduced reinforcements at this planet.
Problem: current suggested mechanics implementation scales badly with player having a lot of high cap ships, or a lot of low cap ships. Could make it impossible to pass some very heavily defended wormholes.
AI Local Threat Assessment Ship
1 per game, -20AIP on death.
Has two fixed-size shields, one large with 10,000*Mk Hp, one smaller (Slightly) with 150,000,*Mk Hp. Hull 200,000*Mk Hp. 2000*Mk armor. Attack is equivalent to a half of a Hunter Killer of that Mk.
The ship will periodically (Every 1-2 hours) attack one of your planets.
If the first shield is destroyed, the ship will retreat. If the second is destroyed, the ship stops retreating and resumes it's attack until destroyed- but also releases 4 message drones, each of which raise AIP by 6 if they reach an AI homeworld. The drones should be quite fast, and fairly tough. (10,000*Mk Hp, 40-60 speed, immune to tractor and grav?)
So there is some gain to be had by destroying one of these, as it will stop the attacks, but it's intentionally hard, and if you muck it up, net AIP is gained.
If Hybrids are on, hybrids will escort the ship in proportional strength to hybrid strength setting.
The Mk of the ship is difficulty dependant: 1<=D<=3 = Mk1, 3<D<=5 = Mk2, 5<D<7 = Mk3, 7<D<=9 = Mk4, 9<D<=10 = Core.
More AIP reduction as the temptation, but a continual threat until it's dealt with,and must be trated with respect.
AI Local Server
1 per game, -40AIP on death (35/25/15 on 8/9/10 dif, respectively.)
Very powerful and well-defended, somewhere between a modular fortress and a superfortress. When killed, it triggers a very strong exogalactic strikeforce.
I sorta feel that in the base game, AIP reduction is almost always a matter of "if you can reach the planet, even with a small force, you can have it." This is more of a lategame AIP reducer.
AI Research Coordination centre
1 per game, +10-20 AIP on use, captured on planet ownership change. Like a hacked ARS, but with a larger choice of ship types (4-7?).
Making the AI scarier:
Exo-Galactic strikeforces at big (Effective) AIP thresholds (Multiples of 400? 500?)
Mass movement convoys: Every 5-10 of hours, A LARGE AI force transits through our galaxy from one AI homeworld exo wormhole to the other. This convoy couldn’t care less about humans- although it will still fire on any that enter range- it’s using our galaxy as an easy transit route, on it’s way to one of the AI’s ‘greater affairs’. This behaviour will not occur if all routes from one AI homeworld to another are blocked by human worlds- it’s intended as something that stays in AI territory, not something that casually bulldozes you fortress world on its way through. (And it would, I’m thinking high mark hunter killers, escorted by large numbers of golems and spirecraft- on higher difficulties, we’re talking a few dozen plus motherships, etc.) It’s intended to remind you just how powerful the AI is off screen, as well as to provide an obstacle to homeworld attacks and beachheads in AI territory that don’t take the planet- because in my opinion, there’s no non-cheese reason to have a beachhead on an AI planet for more than an hour, at most. Transits would be warned, by about 5 minutes before arrival.
What I'm less sure about is what the carrot for the player could be. 5-10% less AI strength globally, as the AI really isn't that bothered about what's going on round here and is preoccupied?
New Advanced hybrid nastiness: (Cheaper than dyson antagoniser for them to start.)
AI Wormhole generator. This structure creates an artificial wormhole from the generator straight to another system- which can be any player system. (Not homeworlds if plot intensity below 4). The generator takes an hour to construct, and the player will get notice as with the antagoniser, being told which system is being targeted with 10 minutes to go. The generator has 50,000,000 health, but few weapons. It doe s however have a defence fleet, which is spawned at the nearest AI warp gate when there are five minutes until completion. This fleet is scaled with AIP. When the wormhole activates, the AI will send a wave through, 10 seconds after opening. After this, it acts as a normal wormhole, letting the AI send waves- or threatfleet/CPA/Exo incrusions- as it pleases. The Super Hybrid leaves. It is possible to have more than one of these active at the same time! The location logic for these is the same as that for an antagoniser.
Might overlap somewhat with warp relays.
New core Brutal guard post:
Core Bombardment Array: Rapid Fire artillery golem. Rapid. 200,000,000 health, reload time 1-2 seconds. This thing is designed to pound large ships into dust- best countered by the humble fleetship. It bothers me that currently, fleetships do so little that large ships don’t do better. It might require imperial spire getting artillery immunity, though.
