BETA AI War 2 v0.868 Released! "Fleet EXP Level-Ups and Starting Battlestations"

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

Maybe something like the Probations in Starward Rogue? Gain a Perk Point you can put into something if you do a random task that pops up now and then? I don't know how the tasks would be decided though. Things like go free the Dyson Sphere in the next hour and you get a bunch of Dyson Defenders to put into a Fleet you choose.

Split them into...I guess Fleet and Battlestation Perk Points, to add some variety to it and also tone down the behaviour of putting everything into Fleets because they're the ones attacking?

If EXP was gained by AIP-Generating...it'd be tricky to level up Battlestations and the like, but it'd work for the mobile Fleets.

EDIT: It'd be impossible to level up Combat Factories and the like with that actually...

[BadgerBadger]

Or levelling a fleet just increases the ship cap for that fleet by a bit, or gives you a random new strikecraft for that fleet.

[x4000]

What if Exp was only gained by killing AIP-generating structures (and Instigator bases)?

I like that idea quite a bit.

Possibly we could also make it so that other things generate EXP if they are not something that is renewable.   That would encourage SOME farming by players (of raid engines themselves or something like that), but I think that's a neat way for players to go about getting EXP.

The only question, then, is how defensive stuff gets EXP.  The most obvious thing is "every time it survives a wave," but I'm not really sure how to define that.  A wave arrives, and that's a distinct event.  The wave being thwarted... that's less of a thing.  Does it count it when the wave is no longer on the planet?  What if it just ran off to the threatfleet?  Shouldn't surviving a big incursion from threatfleet also count?  Defending against a CPA, etc?

We also get into some strange situations where, even on offense, you can then choose who does the killing blow to the few AIP-generating (EXP-granting) structures, and which ones you micro off of the planet.  The one benefit of the EXP coming from the smaller ships and all the minor stuff is that it's something that is... well, constant. If you use three offensive fleets as part of the main offensive against a planet, but then withdraw them at the end, you've still split the bulk of the EXP from them.

So basically anything to do with trying to have EXP penalties for fleetballing is going to be super duper easy to game in a way I'm not thrilled with.

-----

Okay, so rethinking once again, maybe the current EXP setup isn't that bad.

To some extent, perhaps EXP should just be on things that are non-renewable...ish: floods of AI ships as the solution to so many thing that you're having to defend against are dicey, anyway; maybe having fewer ships that are spawned from those sources, and having those be explicitly zero-EXP-granting might be good.

Aka, perhaps the things that a Raid Engine spawns are explicitly of a sub-variant type of usual ships, and they are both stronger than usual (like our Dagger variants and whatnot), and also grant zero EXP.  Same thing with the ships that are spawning out of a superterminal and other things like that.  Then we can use fewer of those ships, but make them extra scary in some way (extra fast from raid engines maybe, extra tanky from the superterminal maybe, etc).

With us being able to directly define EXP on unit types, all the exceptions aren't really going to be that hard.  You just don't get any EXP from dyson stuff, for example, and the tooltip would clearly show EXP granted of 0.  And for the things that are conditional (like certain kinds of waves), it's not something that we make some sort of strange exception to ALL ships, but they just generate new sub-variant ships with 0 EXP and some extra powers, which is easy enough for us to generate in xml and actually is pretty interesting anyhow (having unique ship variants coming out of those things that generate infinite ships based on your actions strikes me as interesting in and of itself, EXP aside).

The impetus for players to go and just farm planets for EXP is something that is unfortunate and I'm not sure what to do about that, but at least the impetus to fleetball would be gone, so there is that.   And perhaps we could make some sort of small AIP cost for every guard post that is aggro'd?  Like 0.1 AIP or something?  That way just going blitzing through planets and not using your transports and efficiently avoiding things is going to cost you some AIP (enough to give you pause) anyhow.

If the game has been too easy, then another source of AIP for the AI, and one that is harder to avoid but also very small, might be good in general.  Another player was talking about the need for passive over-time AIP increases for AIs to return in order to give some sense of time pressure in a good way (aka not having infinite time to just refleet and whatnot, even if the over-time AIP increases are small), and that is another thing that inherently would disincentivize stopping to farm the roses all the time.  And which would help even out the game's difficulty if it's becoming too easy (the over-easiness of EXP granting aside, right now).

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

What about that idea in the AI Homeworld Assault thread? Where there are other planets with Core structures that strengthen the Homeworld. Kinda like how in Classic ARS and Fabricators were all located on planets with Core Shield Generators, if you take these planets out it weakens the Homeworld AND gives you some Perks/Experience/Whatever to distribute as you please?

Then it's not farmable (since those things will never come back), there's no awkward trying to get a certain Fleet to kill it to level up, etc, and attaches some AIP cost to doing this as well, which also serves that purpose of Core Shields too.

It even works as a Milestone achievement and a sense of...I guess nicking some of the AIs fancy tech and bolting it onto a Fleet. Could extend it to the AI Homeworlds themselves I suppose, so clearing one out can grant you bonuses that are handy when there are multiple AIs in the game, since AIP is going up for each one already.

[AnnoyingOrange]

What if Exp was only gained by killing AIP-generating structures (and Instigator bases)?

That would make EXP unobtainable for all the command station fleets , it would make things really annoying for all the units that can only upgrade via fleet level up (this means engineers and forcefields mostly stuck at MK1, among other things), and it would cause plenty of overlap between EXP and hacking points.

[x4000]

I do like the idea of the "soft blocker" things that you can destroy to weaken the AI, but I feel like in order for those to really serve their purpose that needs to be all they do.  If there's a particular incentive to farm THOSE in order to get to the final AI at your best strength, then the decision of whether or not to kill those before heading in hot to the AI is rendered moot.  They become kind of an ongoing collectible.

In general the whole purpose of EXP is:
1. You get it by doing things you'd be doing anyway.
2. The fleets that get it are fleets that are doing the things.  So older fleets or fleets you use more get the benefits.
3. (More recently) The fleets that get it get less of it if there are too many fleets doing the thing at once.

I'm actually thinking that my anti-farming mechanisms as described in my last post would probably handle all the edge cases, and it's just a matter of us manually defining what gives EXP and what does not, and making sure that nothing that infinitely spawns is an EXP-granter.  Anyone advanced enough to be paying close attention to EXP will note this as they play, and it's not something where some units affect the other units around them, etc.

Anything else we're discussing is interesting, but it's really getting away from the whole purpose of EXP as it was originally intended.  So I guess at this point the question is if we need some completely other mechanism, or if EXP can be made balanced.  Might thought is... yes, it can be made to work?  And it definitely seems that we have a least one or two big fans of EXP, so it seems worth keeping; and people have been asking for this forever, and it was part of my design for fleets from the start, too.  Not that any of that means that we have to do it, but it certainly makes me lean that direction.

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

Might still be a bit iffy, but I suppose it is simpler to do than design up a new mechanism like the Core planets or similar. Can only try it and see how it is after.

[x4000]

I mean, I do still plan to do the core planets as well, but they would just be unrelated to this.

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

Huh, alright then.

[ptarth]

I still think Chris was on the right idea with the metal removal, just with a few tweaks. As it stands, Fleet XP is now Science v2.0 and we are seeing all the balancing problems with science coming back.

[Toranth]

Let me play a bit of Devil's Advocate here:  Is farming necessarily a bad thing?

Raid Engines in AIW Classic could be abused to generate salvage - in one particularly silly game, I once forced a universe to have a Core Raid Engine next to one of my homeworlds.  The start of the game was hard, impossible without Champions, but afterwards I unleashed the universe's mightiest Autobomb Cannon on the unsuspecting AI.  It was a lot of fun.
But it was also risky.  A Raid Engine that got out of hand could be game ending, and it was never trivial.  My CRE game took a bunch of tries before I didn't die 3 minutes into the game.

And in that sort of situation, I think players deserve the reward.  Risk = Reward.

If you are worried about a high-mark group of Fleets killing an infinite spawn of enemies to keep leveling up, I'd suggest instead doing what a lot of RPGs do - adjust the experience granted based on the level of the enemy vs the level of the player.  A high level Fleet killing Mark I AI units could receive less experience than the same Mark I AI units killed by a low level Fleet.

Little Risk = Little Reward.

I think you should always receive a minimal amount of experience.  If a player wants to spend 20 hours farming easy kills, why not?  Is that really worse than spending 40 farming normal reinforcements?
As long as farming does not feel required to succeed, I think it'll be fine.  I'm currently playing The Division 2, and farming IS required there... and it isn't fun farming, either.  That is certainly something I'd like to avoid.

[x4000]

Hmm, and you're quite an advanced AIWC player, IIRC.  Difficulty 9 or more, right?  Your type would be the most likely to fall victim to farming in order to optimize things, so that does carry quite a bit of weight there.

And ptarth, I think you're the only one who thought I was anything other than crazy with removing metal.  Part of me still would like that, kinda-sorta, but I think that ultimately people would not be all that happy with how divergent that would end up feeling.

And as to this becoming Science 2.0, the EXP stuff was always meant to be a secondary way to have SOME of your fleets at differing mark levels than others.  I've been describing that since day 1 of the fleets concept.  I would think of it more as "Science: The Second Half."  The first type of science is more of your baseline, the second is more performance-based oriented around the fleets doing the work.

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

I tried earlier a game vs 3 Royal AIs and one of every faction Hostile to me alone, all at max settings. It seemed the only reason I couldn't handle it was because of running out of metal and energy, even though I didn't spend a single bit of science.

Of course that's with the tremendous rate at which Fleets rank up currently, but I figure I'd note it since metal came up.

I admit after thinking about it a bit more, I could kinda see the removing metal thing...since I've not really died to attrition before, but...it is kinda just such a big change that'd mean so much more has to be altered to fit it...

I guess if you had Reprisals be fairly scary again and stuff like that? Just something else to keep it in check.

I dunno, I change my mind very often and quickly on almost everything. If I sound contradicting that's...possibly why.

Regarding Experience itself...it kinda occurred to me that I'm not all that sure how much it does for me right now with upgrading a Fleets Mark. It's something that just kinda...happens? If/When there's a system of Perks I imagine there'll be more interest in the result of it, since there is a choice, but currently it's just a free boost for doing normal stuff. It's alright if that's all it is to be I suppose, if a little peculiar.

[ptarth]

I going to remain steadfast in my disliking of metal being a modifier of refleeting speed. I'm going to take RocketAssistedPuffin's hesitation as a sign that I'm right.  I acknowledge that it is a rather drastic change, but I don't think it corrupts the spirit of the game. I think it would actually make the game truer to itself in the sense of making interesting decisions and applying your decisions in interesting ways. Instead of waiting 15-30 minutes between waves to rebuild.

Assuming, I'm not going to see much ground on this, then I do have some suggestions for fleet experience.


• Instead of allowing fleet experience to directly increase the power (e.g., ship tier) of a fleet, set it as a mechanism to change fleet composition (swap fighters for bombers). By doing so, you give the player flexibility to design fleets as they want. If you grind experience on a fleet, you'll have a fleet that you can quickly customize is a large number of ways, but since you don't really make the fleet more powerful in a specific case, you don't have infinite escalating power.
• This will increase the chance of players making just duplicating a single optimal uniform fleet, but that's not too terrible and would take a larger portion of time.
• Another option is to set fleets to gain ship slots as it ranks up (to some relatively low level cap). So beginning fleets might just have a flagship and a single type of escort, and as you collect experience, you unlock a total of 5 slots of ships. The ships available to fill the slots being either completely predetermined, or being selected from a smaller set.
• Example
• Carrier Level 1: 10 Fighthers
• Carrier Level 2: 10 Fighters & 10 Bombers or 10 (more) Fighters
• Carrier Level 3: 10 Fighters & 10 Bombers OR 10 Fighters & 3 Assault Frigates or 3 Seige Frigates
• etc
• Additional fleet experience would be use for ship refitting into different types.
• Ship Tiers would still only come from science.

Example:

[Draco18s]

I going to remain steadfast in my disliking of metal being a modifier of refleeting speed.

Oh, you're not wrong.

I just think that the proposed solutions don't actually fix it. Or at least, not in the way that would actually be fun. Even if you make metal income a "n per sec" value and each ship has a "y per sec" upkeep cost such that your actual metal flows are what matters, all you do is recreate the fuel or energy mechanic that ended up being worse than the metal system we've been using for over a decade.