[Resolved, essentially] Upgrades again

[kasnavada]

1)

In section 7.b Tech Upgrades there are 14 listed, so far.   Pumpkin's "hedge" mentioned some other things that might be good to consider as tech upgrades.  I'm not arguing merits of any of these either way, just making a list:
- deployment time
- teleport
- tachyon
- projected AoE
- beam AoE
- refactoring (tractors)
- paralyzing (tractors)
- self-damage
- self-destruct
- self-replicate
- AoE
- vampirism

My opinion here at the moment is "the more the merrier", using tech costs and Pumpkin's "tech bush per ship type" to keep things organized and prevent/discourage OP combinations.  But if the modders wanna create a self-replicating beam AoE vampiric teleporter I'm all for it.

If you look at the ship list, there is a list of possible upgrades per ship, not everything applies everywhere.

Example: bomber:

Code: [Select]

Bomber   BOMBING CLASS
Basics: lower health and damage, medium speed, vitally important bonuses vs heavy/structural/artillery
This is actually going to be a combination of the following ships from AI War Classic:
Bomber: at core, these are functionally the same.
Space Tank: this can more or less be recreated with Armor tech (kinda, anyway), minus the speed penalty.
Humans:
Available techs (basic): Hardening, Regeneration, Shielding
Available techs (specialized): Armor, Piercing
AI:
The equivalent of hardening and armor built in.
Zenith:
The equivalent of hardening and regeneration built in.
Available techs (specialized): Armor, Piercing
Spire:
The equivalent of 3x hardening built in.
Available techs (specialized): Armor, Piercing

So as I stated earlier... 2-3 techs max, limited tech, no ultra 10000 times upgradable ships.


2) Hence a proposal from last page:

Back on the "upgrade" idea... I think there could be a simplifications in the upgrade path now that there are "only" 4 - 5 ship categories, to keep the categories upgrade more consistant (Ie: bombers can have "upgrade one", but blitzer can't). I think it could alleviate a lot of concerns that are proposed here. Possibly it's impossible though.
Also, if the "affix / suffix" name are to be kept, I think that the number of different affix / suffix can be kept low enough to be remembered.

3) By the way, I think that the "invisible" "Spire", "Zenith", "Human" (last one does nothing but still) and so on should be shown in the ship name: human fighter, spire bomber...
And it would bring much rejoicing from my part if zenith cache or a similar mechanic are still in the game.

[Cinth]

Just remember everything in the design doc is subject to change.  Nuts and bolts about some stuff, like how upgrades are going to work, hasn't been worked out.  It's a balance thing that will probably get finalized in testing.

[skrutsch]

Granted, Cinth, some of these are lower-level design questions, and I am fine with having none of them being satisfactorily answered right now!  Just more food for thought.

I keep falling into the mental trap of seeing these proposed upgrades like they are in series, like knowing how to build Laser Turret Mk1 allows me to spend science points to unlock how to build Laser Turret Mk2 in AIW Classic, then repeat for Mk2-->Mk3.

Section 7b of the design document reads "...thanks to the combinatorial nature of these tech upgrades."  So these tech upgrades aren't in series, but in parallel, right?

First of all, I believe the 14 ship upgrades we have so far are independent of one another; for instance you don't need to get Forcefield Evasion before getting Engine Bore.  (I don't see a big need for all tech upgrades to be mutually (pairwise!) independent, but it might make things easier.)

Whenever I see "combinatorial" I start asking "does order matter"?    Somebody in this thread mentioned the diamonds you might see in a "tech bush" depending on the order you applied two upgrades to a particular ship. (See Pumpkin's transformation from Vorticular Cutlass to Vampire Lord for an example.)   Should order matter in terms of the final result you get?  (My view, probably not, I like diamonds.)

Should order matter regarding the sum of the costs of the individual upgrades?  (I dunno.)

If a ship can get two or three upgrades, should the cost of each successive upgrade remain unchanged or increase depending on the number of upgrades that that ship type has so far?  Should that cost also depend on the number of upgrades that all your ship types together have so far?   (So do we want to encourage upgrades spread around multiple ship types or concentrated in a few?  Both should be possible choices for the player, but I have no idea which should be "better".)

[kasnavada]

If a ship can get two or three upgrades, should the cost of each successive upgrade remain unchanged or increase depending on the number of upgrades that that ship type has so far?  Should that cost also depend on the number of upgrades that all your ship types together have so far?   (So do we want to encourage upgrades spread around multiple ship types or concentrated in a few?  Both should be possible choices for the player, but I have no idea which should be "better".)

I think exponential cost of upgradesper ship, myself (so no unit gets left behind !), but Cinth got a point in the "it's going to be refined when balancing the game" here.

[skrutsch]

So as I stated earlier... 2-3 techs max, limited tech, no ultra 10000 times upgradable ships.

Oh no, I totally agree with all of that, including the different restrictions for different ship types. I'm just seeking completeness, to make sure that teleport, etc. are considered for the master list of all possible upgrades (for appropriate ships and factions, of course).

[kasnavada]

So as I stated earlier... 2-3 techs max, limited tech, no ultra 10000 times upgradable ships.

Oh no, I totally agree with all of that, including the different restrictions for different ship types. I'm just seeking completeness, to make sure that teleport, etc. are considered for the master list of all possible upgrades (for appropriate ships and factions, of course).

Ah, ok, sorry then, I misunderstood =).

[Cinth]

As far as some of the structure for how upgrades are going to look;

You'll have a base set of upgrades that's pretty much good for all the faction ships.  Stuff like Hardening.  Each ship then has "candy tech" that changes how the ship works in different ways.  Those candy techs are likely to be limited to 2 or 3 per ship. 

Overall, I don't see an issue with a ship having 5 upgrades.  In the end, it's going to be something to balance around. 


Don't let the above color the discussion to much as it's subject to change (if something better comes up).

[PokerChen]

That's not a bad proposal, though it does bring up another thing:  The whole system, doing that (or even without that), ends up feeling like a less effective version of ship unlocks in the previous game.  Simply because in that, you just outright get a new ship type to manufacture, no replacements.  The fleet size thus increases as well.  But with this, it'd simply stay the same, since one ship type would entirely vanish to be replaced with a new version, which sounds both less effective and less exciting (since AI War is very big on ship counts and such).  This could of course be done in such a way where the ship cap simply increases upon upgrading, but that kinda sounds a bit arbitrary.

Decoupling total fleet cap from ship design unlocks is a net benefit,  I think. The Classic system nowadays gives only mark-I from an ARS, which is 1/10th the total potential fleet strength, and essentially nothing by mid-game. The full line costs 6,500 knowledge in Classic, which can be split into smaller chunks in the upgrade->transformation system (upgrades being cheaper as they're not adding to total fleet size, with the fleet size increase shunted to a separate mechanic/purchase).

An Upgrade/Transform tree

I imagine that the radical upgrades are rarely compatible with each other, which simplifies the design burden if we're going to assign these new graphics. Also, the order shouldn't matter. So a fighter "bush" might look like (mostly using Classic ship-types as thing on your foot-ins):
Fighter:

• Speed++ -> Raider
  
  • Range++ -> Raptor
  • Tractor++ -> Etherjet 
• Armor++ -> Bulletproof
  
  • Armor Damage -> Acid Sprayer
  • Range++ -> Gunship
• Armor Damage -> Autocannon Minipods
  
  • Armor++ -> Acid Sprayer

• AoE -> Saboteur

= = = =
Well, if we don't end up deciding to design graphics for each radical upgrade, then it's okay to stack them as much as we want. It's a design decision over game mechanics issue to me, one that I prefer would present radical upgrades as justifying radical new ships, rather than being a stat that's not so easy to find.

[x4000]

Good lord guys, you really are complicating this in my opinion.  Nothing here is swaying me in the slightest at the moment, I have to be honest.

1. If it's too complicated, don't use it.

2. Not using something doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.

3. There are a ton of things that will be in this game that _I_ have no intention of ever using, but I can see why other people would.

4. Insofar as the core goal of "make more memorable few numbers of ships goes," we are indeed doing that, so we're on the same page.

5. Insofar as the "invisible options are hard to remember issue and let's add more graphical clutter," there's no way in heck I'm touching that with a ten-foot pole.  That gets so insanely ugly and even harder to understand very fast.  Loads of games have these sorts of mechanics, from Age of Empires to most every 4X game, and so on.

6. I'm not trying to be inflexible on this, but I think that the core of what people-against-this want is already here: the ability to not use it and still be fine, and for the ships themselves to be more memorable without these things.

7. Overall I think we all need to be accepting of the fact that there will be various ancillary options that we don't value but that other people do, and if those things are already in their simplest possible form (seriously this is an industry staple, not some wild hair I made up), then I'd leave it be.

8. On top of that, if we find problems with having too much clutter of extra stats-only-techs on ships, that's really a during-prototyping sort of issue to deal with.  Right now it's just a theoretical thing on paper, given you haven't even seen the interface, etc.  Let that lie for now, and we'll see how it is.  If it's too cluttered, I won't like that either and will want to cut it down.

9. And lastly, if you wind up diverging in your desires so much from the core thing, then it's not that you-personally need to do a mod, but the group of people who would rather have a different style of tech upgrades can make their own version and use that instead.  And if that seems more popular, heck, perhaps that becomes the new default and my version becomes the mod.  Or both get folded into the main game and are toggle-able via lobby options.  It really doesn't matter.

10. Ultimately you have plenty of time to prove me wrong during the project on this one if you still feel strongly about it once you see it in practice, but I think this one is getting beaten to death with little reason right now.  Unless someone has a wildly new argument, I'm sticking a pin in this one for the design document.  There are much more important issues that need legitimate discussion and revisions, in my opinion (and possibly yours also?).

Cheers.
Chris

[skrutsch]

Darn it, Chris, there goes my doctoral thesis!   

For those like me who just can't get enough of this, I'm going to put my thoughts in the Ideas for Maybe Later subforum here:
https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,19143.0.html

[Mánagarmr]

*reiterates that pure numbers upgrades (ie +Armor or +Health) are pretty useless, unimaginative and boring*

[Pumpkin]

[calm down guys]

Okay.
Indeed, my "hedge" thing can be implemented with that system, the mutually-exclusiveness can be a player-enforced-conduct and peoples out there may want tons of small, numerical upgrades and I don't have the right to deny that.
I'm just afraid about prefixes being unclear/cluttering but => We'll see that later. Fine.

I think this whole affair was a syndrome of "I can't wait". At least on my part. The feeling lead to not seeing that (1) different approaches can all be accepted by the game (henge-style, mutually-exclusive-techs, even accumulative-small-numerical-upgrades can be a matter of player choices or mods) and (2) the prototype isn't available yet and we'll all have the time to test and refine that soon (visual clarity included). Fine.

As I said: "can't wait" syndrome.
Thanks for reminding me (us?) that, Chris.
But, honestly, I can't wait!
 

*reiterates that pure numbers upgrades (ie +Armor or +Health) are pretty useless, unimaginative and boring*

I 100% agree with that, but now I remember that I won't be forced to use them. (And the AI won't use them, so it's fine.)

[x4000]

*reiterates that pure numbers upgrades (ie +Armor or +Health) are pretty useless, unimaginative and boring*

There are a variety of situations where it's a relief to have "super whatevers."  It's not something you'd want to do on all your units, but maybe you've got some killer strategy centering around vampire claws in this game.  Extra health buff on those in that game?  Yes please!

I used to play French in AOE3 and I loved the various numeric upgrades for the economy and the musketeers.  I could just wreck things with the musketeer-spewing powerhouse I would become, and I loved that.  Need unit variety? Pfff.  I'll wreck the whole triangle with those dudes, and hit the later ages first because of it.

In other words, things like that allow for niche playstyles and are opportunities for crazy kinds of player cleverness.  Most of the time you wouldn't want to take those sort of things, which is exactly what a candy tech is.  But when you find that killer combo, it can be sooooo sweet.  For me, part of AI War has always been about providing opportunities for players to express their own cleverness, and these sorts of "boring and mostly ignored" options are one of the key things that allow that.  Similar to how the various glitches and minutiae of mechanics in Mario Maker are what make for the top-level play there.

As I said: "can't wait" syndrome.
Thanks for reminding me (us?) that, Chris.
But, honestly, I can't wait!
 

All good, and makes sense.

It's the best sort of "problem" to have, from my end, haha.

[Draco18s]

*reiterates that pure numbers upgrades (ie +Armor or +Health) are pretty useless, unimaginative and boring*

There are a variety of situations where it's a relief to have "super whatevers."  It's not something you'd want to do on all your units, but maybe you've got some killer strategy centering around vampire claws in this game.  Extra health buff on those in that game?  Yes please!

In other words:
There's nothing wrong with +numbers, but that the options shouldn't be only +numbers.

[Cinth]

n other words:
There's nothing wrong with +numbers, but that the options shouldn't be only +numbers.

Some of those + numbers aren't even relevant.  The one for tractor beams for example.  The number there is just a balance thing, the upgrade is getting the tractor beam.