Funny thing is, there seems to be a consensus on "netflix time is bad", but once a solution that actually removes it is there, no one wants it. I'm open to other proposals, however.
respawn automaticaly there a few seconds / minute after, depending on the "size" of the ship
respawn automaticaly there a few seconds / minute after, depending on the "size" of the ship
Take a full fleet wipe and you still have netflix time.
Not to mention that removing metal would mean that the player would never need to take other planets: their fleet rebuild time doesn't change by having fewer worlds, so why take any at all?
Take a full fleet wipe and you still have netflix time.Not if the AI defeats you 30 seconds later!
Not if the AI defeats you 30 seconds later!
If you lose 75%+ of your fleet on planet(s) you don't own**, the AI detects your extreme weakness and sends five sequential H/K waves at your home system, or something equally violent that you are very unlikely to survive. (If you do manage to survive somehow, you can spend that netflix time bragging in the forums.)
Not if the AI defeats you 30 seconds later!
If you lose 75%+ of your fleet on planet(s) you don't own**, the AI detects your extreme weakness and sends five sequential H/K waves at your home system, or something equally violent that you are very unlikely to survive. (If you do manage to survive somehow, you can spend that netflix time bragging in the forums.)
Something something something reprisal.
Funny thing is, there seems to be a consensus on "netflix time is bad", but once a solution that actually removes it is there, no one wants it. I'm open to other proposals, however.
Except you didn't remove anything other than the player's econ. I also don't think you fully understand "netflix" time. Anytime you have to wait more than a few minutes for anything, you'll have someone complaining about netflix time. In a game like this, you can't avoid it completely, only lessen it's effect.
This is why your solution won't work to remove netflix time.respawn automaticaly there a few seconds / minute after, depending on the "size" of the ship
Take a full fleet wipe and you still have netflix time.
Not if the AI defeats you 30 seconds later!
If you lose 75%+ of your fleet on planet(s) you don't own**, the AI detects your extreme weakness and sends five sequential H/K waves at your home system, or something equally violent that you are very unlikely to survive. (If you do manage to survive somehow, you can spend that netflix time bragging in the forums.)
Something something something reprisal.
Quote from: Draco18s on Yesterday at 02:51:53 PM
Not to mention that removing metal would mean that the player would never need to take other planets: their fleet rebuild time doesn't change by having fewer worlds, so why take any at all?
The fuel mechanic would make it necessary, if only to make those hops to the AI homeworld shorter.
I've never seen a reprisal that harsh, ever...Mimic - I had it send multiple Exodian Blades back at me, in one memorable event.
Yes, I propose to remove the metal time gates from the game becasue, I don't see an economy to remove in the first place, with only 2 ressources in it: time (irrelevant once you know how to defend yourself) and metal (dependant on time). There are only a few errors that newbies to the game can commit to burrow themselves into a hole.If you've turned off AIP over Time, then yes, the time resource is meaningless. But at even a medium 1 AIP per 30 minutes, every delay helps the AI get closer to killing you.
If you've already entered the downward spiral, this just speeds up your inevitable doom...
CPAs are the primary killer. If you aren't strong enough, they WILL kill you. If you are strong enough, then there's a good chance you can win the game... if you don't screw up.
Exowaves are the unaimed shot in the dark. Strong, fast, and targeted, if you aren't prepared and aren't lucky, they can come out of nowhere to destroy your home system. But they're weaker than CPAs, and the targeting will send many of them at targets you can afford to lose.
does anyone have a proposal to reduce refleet time ?(Fragmented thoughts)
Model 1: constructors limit max player fleet size, fixed refleeting time.Meaning if a player has progressed to 10 planets and lose 7 in a tough fight, they can rebuild only 3 planets' worth of forces against 10-planets worth of continued AI aggression, until they retake more planets?
Model 2: player fleet size is only dependent on maximum progress (knowledge unlocks). Constructors always build everything in N-time....Then losing everything but your command center is, in fact, no loss at all?
Model 3: player fleet size is only dependent on maximum progress (knowledge unlocks). Constructors build X units per Y time....Doesn't seem to be what you're suggesting. Here, you suffer larger vulnerability windows with more losses. This seems ok, but has the same fragile system applies as the others mentioned. There's a narrow gap between net-flix time, or reproducing so fast that you cannot be defeated.
That means that, yes, if the AI rebuilds, and attacks back a fleet loss is still a bad thing to have: you'll have to rush with the new units to wherever it's counter-attacking, in order not to lose completely, while rebuilding on its side and making your failed attack a failure....With appropriate automation, things turns into Liquid War? I mean, stalemating and victory can become a function of units produced per minute depending on the galaxy layout.
Hmmm... it's difficult in the sense that all AI response times has to be balanced around it. Why not simply make everything tick four times as fast as classic Normal speed? There is a lot of leeway between the existing AI War Classic timing windows of minutes to hours, and the limits of professional gaming (around 10~60-second in Starcraft 2, which we won't want).
unclearS***... I was unclear in my second proposal, and named "engineers" what I should have call "constructors", and mixed & matched. Damned. I'll rewrite that.
Quote
Model 1: constructors limit max player fleet size, fixed refleeting time.
Meaning if a player has progressed to 10 planets and lose 7 in a tough fight, they can rebuild only 3 planets' worth of forces against 10-planets worth of continued AI aggression, until they retake more planets?
If this is what you mean, it's a very-fine balance (to put it lightly). With metal, the players can stockpile reinforcements before they lose the 7 planets, and have an larger effective army than what they have left in terms of planets to make a comeback. Without some form of buffer, snowballing by AI is likely (downward spiral) as you will lose constructors and therefore fleet capacity. (BTW, most RTS/4X games show this phenomenon, since fleet size and upkeep *is* generally a function of empire size. Only one interesting battle per game.)
restNot sure I follow here.
And the game is based around these things all being a part of the core experience, not having one of those as a minigame or whatever. My first thought is to make these crystal things be non-combat ships that work with minor and background factions in various ways. Aka the way that you "secure background factions" and get new ships isn't metal-based, and doesn't involve your fleet. You can focus on that when you're not fighting, and forget it when you are fighting.What about adding some planetary combat in the game? Something that would be handled a bit like TLF does. That would still be a minigame with few connections with the grand game, though. I imagine some sort of "guide troop transport to target planet". Something to do "when you have time" and cost no metal/refleet. Or something more "on the planet" with a dedicated UI and choices...
Then we bounce back and forth between two overall things:
1. Attacking and defending with fleets, during which time crystal and metal accumulate.
2. Doing "stuff with crystal and the things crystal paid for," during which time refleeting happens.
I think that the amount of refleeting time should be irrelevant, but not because it doesn't exist or is shortened. Make it not exist and you change the game too much to be recognizable. Removing metal isn't something we could remotely contemplate because it would alienate a ton of existing players and it is just too fundamental to how many strategy gamers are used to seeing games work. It's too radical for this sequel, though it is an interesting idea. I could definitely see a game based around it, and I understand the design goals behind it.
My counter would be that, while you're refleeting, you shouldn't be completely focused on just that. Aka, one of the interesting things about certain turn-based games is not that individual turns are short or that things take a short number of turns, but rather that you have several things going on at once.
People recognized during the course of AI War Classic that metal and crystal are basically the same thing, and so they were condensed. Fair enough. But that actually gets at the point, I suppose: they are the same thing because there's only the one thing.
People like champions because it gives you a minigame to play while you're waiting for things like refleeting. The fact that we added something like that is another sign that something is up. I don't like that it is a separate minigame and something optional to the game. That makes it too easy to ignore and to instead sit there in netflix time.
A true solution would, in my opinion, center around:
1. Leave metal and refleeting alone. It's familiar and works.
2. Add in a second resource (crystal or whatever we call it) that is a 100% separate economy in every way from metal and the fleets themselves.
3. Add in some other mechanics that rely on crystal that can't at all help your main fleet-based activities, so there's no incentive to get those guys to help your main fleet battles (unlike champions).
Then we bounce back and forth between two overall things:
1. Attacking and defending with fleets, during which time crystal and metal accumulate.
2. Doing "stuff with crystal and the things crystal paid for," during which time refleeting happens.
And the game is based around these things all being a part of the core experience, not having one of those as a minigame or whatever. My first thought is to make these crystal things be non-combat ships that work with minor and background factions in various ways. Aka the way that you "secure background factions" and get new ships isn't metal-based, and doesn't involve your fleet. You can focus on that when you're not fighting, and forget it when you are fighting.
That's just the germ of an idea, but I think it gets at what everyone is after here: familiarity, less boredom, and (in my case) not resulting to in-game minigames to avoid the netflix side of things.
Paying the human remnant factions to do it for you is not a solution because you can pause the game, assign resources there, and watch it autoresolve while your fleet builds up. No reduction in netflix time.
some people definitely like the sense of isolation of AI War*raises hand*
At any rate, I could see crystal being used for things like scouting through the AI network (why send physical scouts? That seems like a horrible idea.), gaining insight into what the AI is planning, and even reprogramming or rerouting waves in extreme cases. Can you imagine an incoming wave being reprogrammed such that it actually comes out the other end as YOURS? Talk about an AI War (*cackles*). The command line interface is what excites me the most as a way to do this, but I'm not sure how others feel about it. It's the most flexible by far.A strange game. The only way to win is not to play. :P
Heck, we actually could probably build in some simply query language type stuff where the programmer-oriented type folks could run some automated checks against various data they have scouted, and plan strategies based on that sort of thing.
At any rate, I could see crystal being used for things like scouting through the AI network (why send physical scouts? That seems like a horrible idea.), gaining insight into what the AI is planning, and even reprogramming or rerouting waves in extreme cases. Can you imagine an incoming wave being reprogrammed such that it actually comes out the other end as YOURS? Talk about an AI War (*cackles*). The command line interface is what excites me the most as a way to do this, but I'm not sure how others feel about it. It's the most flexible by far.This was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I'll throw up a dedicated topic or wait for our email, but basically a lot of the changes to the AI that have been suggested like turning off the AI's omniscience could be managed in-game. You hack into the AI and turn that off, and the AI has an initial freak out, then starts doing things differently. Taken even further we can build a hacking based victory condition where you seize control of the AI.
I think what I'd like to do is actually include a secondary battle layer to the AI where you can actually see kind of a holographic view of the AI's systems and then mess with them. I'm actually even MORE tempted to make it a command-line interface because that makes it feel waaaay more hacker-y. But also possibly a lot less accessible.Omagadiwantit!
I think what I'd like to do is actually include a secondary battle layer to the AI where you can actually see kind of a holographic view of the AI's systems and then mess with them. I'm actually even MORE tempted to make it a command-line interface because that makes it feel waaaay more hacker-y. But also possibly a lot less accessible.Omagadiwantit!
Ahem. I think this is a brilliant idea. I would point Dusker (http://store.steampowered.com/app/254320/) for a very interesting kind of indirect control and information gathering.
And yes, a command line would be awesome... and utterly baffling to people who have never used one. :) Some of UI is preferable for that reason.
one of the issues with nebulas was that you had to look away from the main screen for 30 minutes. Command lines would do just that.
Current hacking mechanics, while perfectible, leaves you staring at the main game screen with your fleet on it. Or a beachhead. Still, it's a mini-game, "in the game". Not sure I'm being clear here.
Crystal simply paying for "AI hacking actions" has the issues that Captain Jack speaks of above. Pause, pay, unpause, and watch. It's possibly a nice system but it won't fill netflix time. And, it seems like a lot of actions would be needed when you need to use your fleets.
@about Dusker... it kinds of sums up why it's a bad idea. Caters to a very specific crowd.
Then we bounce back and forth between two overall things:
1. Attacking and defending with fleets, during which time crystal and metal accumulate.
2. Doing "stuff with crystal and the things crystal paid for," during which time refleeting happens.
Refleeting is an indication of player strategic failure. Don't make refleeting easier, make it fatal!Big neon YES!
I envision a balance where metal is like hp with regen: if you have tons of it, you can be reckless, throw your fleet in big battle and push forward; if you're low you need to be cautious and not loose your fleet (even less throwing it in a big fight). If you're out of metal, then it's like being 1hp and the AI should finish you off mercilessly.
25k customers according to SteamSpy, so that's not too shabby at all. AI War has more than 12x that, but it's been out 7 years.
Yeah, understood on that. I think the idea of a hologram hacking fleet that makes this visual AND on the main map, but not even possible to involve the main fleets at all, would work well. The AI has its hologram ships, you have yours, and they do their thing in the "network space," so to speak, and use different resources on your part (crystal, and no energy or fuel probably), and otherwise work like any other ships.
Programming for real in a video game... pretty sure it's not going to be very popular. If it was in the first game, maybe... but it's not.
I want to be super clear on something, which I'm not always: basically in these sorts of threads I am following wild hairs and brainstorming like crazy. So I pop out ideas and abandon them quickly, but it tends to lead somewhere (possibly an affirmation of the status quo). At any rate, getting a reality check on certain things is certainly something I appreciate, and is needed. Past a certain point you don't need to push me on it, though, because I'll fold pretty quickly.
Honestly I should have folded at the "this restricts the playerbase a lot" comment, and I kind of did, but I also felt a quasi-petty need to stick up for Duskers. We won't really need 25k backers I would not think, but the point it still taken. If the average backer is $20, we'd need about 10k backers, more or less, I think.
See, I'm arguing again, but not actually with your core thesis that it's a bad idea. At this point you guys sold me on that quite a bit ago.
In terms of making the refleeting period fatal, that could be done, and I like the idea on the surface, but how do we determine what the criteria are for the AI to pounce and kill you, and how is that communicated to the player?I imagined something like nearby shipyards would be allowed to slowly bleed into threat while the players' "total required metal for full refleet" is below it's current metal storage. Also, the threat would be more cocky, not only doing backstab when there is nobody home, but more willing to engage player's incomplete fleet. Within minutes, all frontiers would fall, the fleet can't rebuild fast enough to contain the lurking/probing threat, and the player(s) loose by invasion.