I know what you're saying and you're right. What I'm asking is
outside of game-play, within the lore. The story goes that the AI rose up against Humanity and took over the (formerly Human controlled) galaxy. Humanity then beats the AI and wins in some way. Is there a main timeline or reality or whatever where Humanity wins by itself with no help whatsoever? Because the minor factions, in whatever lore there is, are pretty powerful.
Sure, the Dark Spire doesn't do anything by itself, but with the addition of Humanity or whoever fighting with another faction on the same planet, things start to get ugly, fast. Plus, the AI has a structure on its home planet just to kill the Dark Spire. If that doesn't say "This faction is really bad and I need to make sure I don't get killed by it", I don't know what does. Adding on to that, the Dark Spire can create more vengeance generators so more Dark Spire can spawn.
The Dyson sphere is literally a star encased in metal. It's huge. It should be spawning ships left and right (in lore) to fight whoever controls the sector of space that it wants nobody to own.
The Devourer goes in a straight line from wormhole to wormhole. In game-play, that makes sense. Does it do that
outside of game-play? Because in AIWC, it went after almost every little ship it could eat. This isn't AIWC of course, but outside of game-play, it should be destroying everything it can to fuel itself. Add in a Dark Spire Vengeance Generator and it's a recipe for disaster.
The Macrophage literally eats ships and the spores are
invisible to the AI (except if they are hit by tachyon post/structures at the wormholes). Lore-wise, the population should be spiraling out of control with all the AI ships to eat.
Zenith Golems: I'll give you that. But even in game-play, they tank hard and hit even harder.
The Nanocaust is the big one i wanted to talk about. They are a zombie faction. They zombify ships and take over the galaxy. Have you seen the Aberrations and Abominations? They hit really hard and tank almost everything. Not even a volley from the Devourer can kill these guys in one shot. And you expect the AI to be able to do something about it? That's just in game play. Now I know hat you had a conversation about the lore and gameplay back on July 26, 2017.
https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-ii/ai-war-2-v0-503-released!-'nanocaust-test-and-revise-pass-2'/msg215709/#msg215709(Start Comments)
You:If you play right now, the Nanocaust will conquer every planet in the galaxy in something like an hour to an hour and a half, and I'm pretty sure it's not beatable by any human. I'm in the process of changing this.
Also at the moment the nanocaust will bump up the AI Progress when it conquers planets, but I believe Keith intends to change the game so that special factions won't increase the progress.
My eventual intent is to have the Nanocaust conquer a slowly expanding portion of the galaxy for itself, but to not really intend to kill the AI (it might decide to kill the humans though). However, I would like to get a hacking mechanic in so that if you hack the nanocaust's starting Constructor then it will assist you in killing the AI as an alternative win condition.
WolfWhiteFire: The lore you gave doesn't really allow for the nanobots to not finish off the AI, maybe you could add some sort of special building (or buildings) on the AI homeworld that kills any nanobots that go onto the homeworld or wherever the controller or whatever is? That would prevent them killing the AI, give a reasonable explanation for that, and you could decide whether to make it invincible or where the humans can destroy it so the AI has to fend off the nanobots. Also possibly make it where the players have to beat the nanocaust to win also if it is active, since even if they beat the AI the nanocaust would be kind of a big threat also.
Page 2 You: Well, the lore exists to serve gameplay, not gameplay the lore. What I originally implemented was the Lore version of the Unstoppable Nanocaust and it didn't make the game fun (I mean, it was fun to watch the AI be crushed like a ripe melon, but it wasn't a game anymore, it was a "watch the AI and humanity die" video). If you try to play with the Nanocaust right now then you'll eventually observe similar behaviour.
I think the Nanocaust should add some interesting strategic depth, but it also shouldn't completely dominate the game (though if we have a Faction Strength Modifier a la AIWC, I'll certainly make it capable of dominating the game). I think it is critical that the human player be able to defeat the default Nanocaust for "Fun Gameplay" purposes, and I think it's more interesting if the nanobots and the AI are "at war, with the outcome undecided" when the humans show up. If all you have to do is turtle until the Nanobots destroy the AI, well, that's boring.
(End comments)
I agree that you should stand a chance against the Nanocaust. But they basically
are nigh-unstoppable. In a straight up fight, you'd have to have an overwhelming force to fight them, and make sure that overwhelming force has high damage and high health. The AI has no hit and run tactic to destroy the Nanocaust. And sending more ships at them only gives them more firepower to fight everybody else.
My argument might have assumptions and stuff in it, but that's because I don't really have anything to go on. My issue is one of those "story and game-play segregation" tropes. Most relevant I could find was this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CCGImportanceDissonance Replace the cards with the gameplay. I understand that if the game-play were made to fit the lore, it would be a mess. Humanity would be overwhelmed in a few hours if minor factions were turned on. I'm just saying, if one were to look at this from a non game-play perspective, the AI conquering the galaxy would make no sense because it would have to contend with all these other factions vying for control as well.
