Last chances to point out stuff in the design doc

[tadrinth]

I doubt primary motherships will be very fast, and exogalactic strike forces always go straight for their target. Just make sure motherships are slower than the slowest gravity effects available to the player.

Mercenary versions of ships should be trivial to add in. If Chris doesn't have time to code them, someone can easily add them via a mod.

[jenya]

As I understood from the spec, the primary/secondary Mothership IS the command station. When mothership warps out no other big targets left on the planet so AI may be busy for a while with maybe unpowered defences (Mothership had the power), but ultimately should jump through, and most likely it will jump through the nearest wormhole.

And when AI leave through one wormhole, another Mothership warps in through other wormhole which will automatically start repair cycle (no engineers now).

If AI will not chase (will divide forces equally between all wormholes) this means that in case of a big number of wormholes the AI forces got very diluted.

If Mothership is not unbearably slow, then a few forcefields may provide needed time delays.

[wyvern83]

You will have both in the game actually and while the motherships function in many ways like a command station they don't confer ownership of a planet. Without Ownership by a player the planet won't receive a wave, at least it wouldn't in AI Wars Classic. In classic if there was no available wave target the wave spawned in AI space, traveled to a target and then either attacked or made the switch to threat.

Your idea will work but you'll need a command station to attract a wave first, after it arrives, or perhaps once it is announced as I'm not sure you can prevent it after its been announced, it won't matter if the command station is destroyed or not it should work just as you imagined if you time it right I would think. Naturally you'll need to rebuild the command station in time for the next wave announcement to repeat the process.

[jenya]

yes, on a special planet with a single command station and a lot of wormholes AI forces will be divided equally between wormholes (after destroying command station) and behind each wormhole there will be a lot of turrets waiting, tower-defence style.

[Cinth]

Command Stations are still a thing.

Mercenaries as they are in Classic are cut.

As far as modding goes, I don't know any details that would direct this topic, however, hard coded mechanics aren't likely to be changed or similar behaviors created.  So anything that might act like a script is definitely a no-go right now.

[havikryan]

will the command station be tougher? currently they still die to 2 ships in just a couple of seconds

[Tridus]

will the command station be tougher? currently they still die to 2 ships in just a couple of seconds

I expect so, given how losing it now would also shut down the power and disable all the defenses. If they're easily snipeable, fast raiders are the only way to go.

But, that's effectively a data thing that can be adjusted easily during play testing.