Fog of war... too foggy ?

[Asteroid]

Logistics stations on the front line?

They're usually better for the Frontline than militarily stations, you can't afford having more than one or two of the latter because they give so little energy.

But I agree it seems strange that military stations that are always on the frontline should be "blind". And at that point why not give it to economic stations too, they'll very rarely be adjacent to enemy planets anyways.

[BadgerBadger]

Well, the ability should go on whichever of Logistical or Military that the player is least apt to build, since this is a nice buff to that command station. For me that's Logistical. If Logistical Stations as a result are so much better than Military that noone builds Military then we can nerf Logistical or Buff Military as apporpriate.

[I-KP]

Of all the stations I build the least amount of it's the Military ones - by far. They're so expensive to run, as Asteroid says, that the player can only afford to place a few of them so they're likely to be positioned only at the very front line, locations likely to face the greatest threat.

I find it a bit odd that where vision is of the greatest value, i.e., in the direction you're likely to see the strongest attacks, you need to build a station that's not the best defensive option.

If Military stations had vision then maybe that would be a better fit, after all. Neighbouring vision is very powerful so you kinda do want to keep a lid on it and with Military stations being so expensive you'll never see many of them in use.

[Pat]

Military / Logistical stations could also the ability at a different mark level, if you need to balance things. I think giving it to Military only would have a (too) low impact, unless you play on a map where you can build enough economic stations to sustain Militaries on fronts.

The vision range could scale with the station mark level (Ex: Logistical Mk2 see 2 hops away), while being blocked by enemy stations of a higher level. Might be too OP though ...

[kasnavada]

Well, the ability should go on whichever of Logistical or Military that the player is least apt to build, since this is a nice buff to that command station. For me that's Logistical. If Logistical Stations as a result are so much better than Military that noone builds Military then we can nerf Logistical or Buff Military as apporpriate.

It should go on both because both are supposed to be at the front.

Whichever you don't give vision ability will not be used on the frontlines, compared to the other. The very concept of a military station not at the front...


While vision on neighboring planet's ain't OP, but not having vision makes the game unfun. With the current FoW, going out of your planet is gambling that your fleet meets its doom. That is no fun and too much of a risk in a game where losing a fleet can mean 2-5 minutes of netflix time, if not more, (if you were sending your fleet to defend somewhere and now can't because you lost your fleet). While you CAN actually do stuff to remedy this, they're way too expensive or way to grindy.


Also, there seems to be somewhat of an misunderstanding in the current situation too. The player was recently violently nerfed, as the implementation of FoW removed vision everywhere. That's barely making the player a bit stronger, but still way weaker than before. You can't look at "boosting" a station like it's alone in a vacuum.

Also, vision has value only where it actually sees. That means that you could add it to economical stations and it would have 0 value. Not adding it to economical station is a good idea, not because vision is "OP" (it ain't), but because it tells the player that it's not supposed to be at the front. Same idea, adding it at military and logistical station tells the player that it's supposed to be at the front.

Adding it to logistical station and not military gives the player conflicting information. It's bad design.

[BadgerBadger]

Putting vision on only the Logistical command station was a deliberate design choice to force the player to choose between Stronger Defenses and Vision on the front lines.

[kasnavada]

What ?!?

Whether it's a deliberate or not doesn't change the point that it's a bad design choice, for the sake of... what exactly I don't know. I've yet to see a single argument that would point toward giving logistical stations vision, and military station blindness a good idea. Point is, while I argumented and experimented in my games multiple unwanted situations in which new and returning players will find themselves, the only "argument" I've seen is "we're making them different", and no one actually addressed alternative ways to solve the issues I presented for players or new players.

But, there is only a few players here, even fewer "new" players to get information from. So it's going to take weeks to find out if players are using military stations or not, which brings us at launch day.

That said, here is my feedback about stations. I used military stations at first because it's written on them at you should use them at the frontline. After a few games and advice from the forum, I found out that it's actually SUICIDAL because it gives you so little energy they can't even power their own turrets, leaving you in nearly constant energy shortage. And that logistical stations should be used (which is unintuitive). At this point in time, I switched to nearly never using military stations. Since then, they've been nerfed twice (shield nerf, halved their attack, and vision). The few more turrets they give could be nice, but in practice, I find myself most often netflix-waiting their rebuilding after waves. Which, ain't great.

The update in the station tooltips are making the things better, and I'm among the ones that stayed on went on the forums for more information, but, frankly, I could have just labelled the game badly then and left. With vision also taken out of what military stations do, what will be the first impression of stations of the game by new players, if and when they find themselves in the situations I described ?

I'm not betting on "good".

[BadgerBadger]

Okay, slight change of subject. After playing today I think there's still not enough player vision.

In AIWC, I would send my fleet out, neuter a bunch of planets, then blanket the area with scout drones. In AIW2 I can neuter planets, but I really don't want to invest (say) 70 hacking points keeping vision of one of my flanks. So here's my proposed solution: Lets make Watch hack much cheaper IF there are no hostile mobile units at the planet and I have a local flagship.

This makes sense flavour-wise; I don't need to do any crazy hacking to get access to a planet where my Hacking unit is and I've broken the AI's defenses. It's only remote hacks of (potentially) heavily defended AI sites that cost so much.

To give the AI some counterplay, planets Watched in this way will lose their Watched status if the AI reconquers the planet

[kasnavada]

I'm 100% fine with the 1 node distance vision. I'm also fine with better vision.

In case 2, I don't think that "cheaper" is the right answer here - I already said why in the post and the same arguments apply there. Let's be honest, there is no way that I'm spending precious hacking points to mere watch. And if I don't feel that, I bet a large number of players won't either. Also, I'm not fine at all repaying for watched status.

My first proposal would be to have watch on any planer bordering military & logistic stations AND any planet without guard post.
My second proposal would be to create "a watch hack point pool", but it's a load of complexity for little gain, honestly.


About the "losing watched status part"... did you code this ? How it seems to currently work is that it permanently give "free watch", like in the hack menu, to the planet where the logistics station is, and the neighboring planet, when building a logistics stations. That means that destroying the station doesn't remove vision, neither on the planet, nor on the sides. Which means that you can have vision on ANY planet regardless of the station type as you just have to build a logistics station and then change it to whatever you need.

What I thought would be coded is: if there is a functional logistics (or a military station) less than 1 jump away, the planet is watched. That way you can watch planet manually (with hack points), and the AI destroying the station removes vision (which makes sense). That way, if you wasted points into watch for said planet, removing the station doesn't change vision. Whoever codes this would have to be careful not to have this check by frame though, so it's not as simple as it looks.

Waiting for the AI to reconquer the planet is way too late to remove vision and makes little sense to me. If the station gives vision, destroying the station has to remove vision.

[I-KP]

Vision mechanics were very simple before, but too expensive.

Vision mechanics are very simple now, but a bit odd in terms of authenticity, i.e., blind Military stations.

This doesn't need to be any more complicated than one single player interaction to complete the _entire_ vision mechanic, e.g., select a planet and click Watch -or- build a station.

Personally, I still think that the most elegant solution was to tackle the high cost in lifting the fog via scaling that cost based on distance (with neighbouring being by far the cheapest) and leaving everything else as it was but we now seem to be staring down the barrel of an odd station-limited vision solution that's insufficient and leading thoughts in the direction of extra vision mechanics with nuanced conditions.

Whatever you choose to do, please keep it simple.