Mechanic Questions

[Ranakastrasz]

Parasite, Metabolizing, Nanocaust. - Answered. Also changed ingame.
-Tooltip suggests you need 10k special damage. However, the vast majority of this damage is at least an order of magnitude higher, and no information on how it might splash exists. Is there a reason for this overkill, and how does the mechanic ACTUALLY work. Also, it seems kinda dominating right now.

Zombie Decay. - Answered
-Apparently they decay over time, or maybe only on your planets? No tooltip data given. Zombies should have a condition tooltip.

Drone Decay/Mechanics. - Answered
-Drones seem to act like zombies who don't wander. They also seem to have a condition that says they die 3 seconds after their factory ship leaves the planet. Do they rebuild before dying, do they even return to the ship, and if not, why? Again, Tooltip condition should be more specific.

Experience. - Answered. And still weird.
-Several questions here, especially how it interacts with multiple fleets.
First of all, tooltip is inconsistant. With 8 fleets, it says experience is reduced by 10%, but the final number, along with "Reduced by 60% because of Tier difference" ends up dropping it to 6%. This implies it was backwards, or completely wrong. should be reduced by 90% and 40%, or else reduced TO 10% and 60%.
-Secondly, given you are expected to spread your ships over more fleets for better control, the fact that adding another fleet, with just one ship line has the full penalty seems wrong. Should probably have it look at number of ship lines (And their Tiers) instead. Also, it might be better to have it be based on how outnumbered or how much you outnumber, by fleetpower, rather that raw numbers or tier. Essentially how hard the fight is.

Bubble Shield Piercing. - Answered
-Is this entirely removed? Or is it just uncommon? Is there anything like a Raid starship or Plasma starship anymore? Or is it all brute forcing down shields?

Fleet Bubble Shield - Answered
-Is there going to be any bubble shields without a damage penalty, or is that going to be universal now?

Ship Type Count - Answered
-Is it intended that you have many more lines of ships than AIWar I? As in, you always had 3 base ships, plus 1 bonus ship, and maybe 5 more types by the end of the game, and also a bunch of starship types. Here, it seems like there are more random, and less concrete of everything. The enemy seems to as well.
That said, I might be wrong here, and it only seems that way since I have yet to get used to all the new ship types.

Identical plus ability ships. - Unanswered
-Is it intended to have ship types which are identical in all ways, except they have a bonus ability? As in, equal metal, power, health, shield, all traits, damage, cooldown, range. And then it has a new ability, or cloaking, but otherwise is identical? Why a pure buff, why not a tradeoff?

Transport Blitz. - Answered, and Changed ingame.
-I now entirely see why transports got so heavily nerfed back in AIWar 1. Being able to pick up your whole fleet, run into an enemy planet, send one transport to each guard post, unload everything, target each guard post, and obliterate an otherwise terrifying Eye is kinda rediculous.
I am unsure whether this is a problem or not however. Given you are expected to have that transport as the core of your fleet, it seems right. On the otherhand, its micromanagement heavy and seems cheaty. Also later in the game it is more likely to be crippled, but that isn't a large penalty. Past that, unloading a wing of bombers and vaporizing  a guard post is kinda amusing.

One Line of a type per ship - Answered, and Changed ingame.
-Why is this the case? If I get two groups of bombers, why can't they go in the same fleet? I mean, if I get bombers and Heavy Bombers, that is allowed, and if I get a fusion bomb frigate, and a parasite fusion bomb frigate, they also coexist, so why this restriction?


Wormhole Dancing. - Answered
-The ships with wormhole overcharge abilities, is it intended for you to be able to have them move in and out of wormholes constantly for enhanced performance? Not really sure I would bother without a lot of them, but seems wrong.

Brutal Brownouts. - Answered.
-In AI war 1, brownouts were extremely dangerous, but you could power down, scrap, or add more power generation. This was scary, but handle-able. Here, the 60 second shutdown is extremely brutal. More importantly, you still can't have autotoggling metal-to-energy converters, meaning you have to either run an expensive surplus, or watch very carefully, and scrap a ton of stuff if you think you are going to lose a planet.
-That remains currently cost power, even before being rebuilt doesn't help, but I am pretty sure that is a bug.

AntiBubble Modifier overcomplicated? - Added to Mantis
-The ships with anti shield bubble modifiers appear to be overcomplicated.
-If target has 10k+ Bubble Shield health, gain modifier of X damage vs Shields or Shield Bubbles.
-However, there are several isssues.
-Why 10k+. Why not just "Has shield Bubble"
-Second, Why Vs Shield or Shield Bubbles? You can't have both, and it can't trigger otherwise.
-Obviously, there is an Antishield damage modifier, but I think there should be an AntiShield, AntiBubble, and AntiShieldAndBubble modifier. If only for simplifying tooltips.

[I-KP]

The XP system is all kinds of confusing, not the least cause of which being tooltips.

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

Parasite, Metabolizing, Nanocaust.
-Tooltip suggests you need 10k special damage. However, the vast majority of this damage is at least an order of magnitude higher, and no information on how it might splash exists. Is there a reason for this overkill, and how does the mechanic ACTUALLY work. Also, it seems kinda dominating right now.

No reason for the overkill. It works fairly simply - shot deals that much effect damage, if more than 10k, apply the effect when the unit dies. I think the effect damage is based on the units strength, and might just be really old...it works in general though. I would like to have it changed myself, to something not based on the strength of the unit, but I am not a programmer.

Zombie Decay.
-Apparently they decay over time, or maybe only on your planets? No tooltip data given. Zombies should have a condition tooltip.

They always decay, both yours and AI. If you enable Defensive Zombies in the Galaxy Wide settings, they'll decay much faster to avoid planets becoming invincible - normal ones will eventually drift off.

Drone Decay/Mechanics.
-Drones seem to act like zombies who don't wander. They also seem to have a condition that says they die 3 seconds after their factory ship leaves the planet. Do they rebuild before dying, do they even return to the ship, and if not, why? Again, Tooltip condition should be more specific.

They do not rebuild before dying, and they do not return to the ship. I do not know the reason why they were never made to re-enter their creator ship, but I think outside of the Hive Golem there's not much need.

Experience.
-Several questions here, especially how it interacts with multiple fleets.
First of all, tooltip is inconsistant. With 8 fleets, it says experience is reduced by 10%, but the final number, along with "Reduced by 60% because of Tier difference" ends up dropping it to 6%. This implies it was backwards, or completely wrong. should be reduced by 90% and 40%, or else reduced TO 10% and 60%.
-Secondly, given you are expected to spread your ships over more fleets for better control, the fact that adding another fleet, with just one ship line has the full penalty seems wrong. Should probably have it look at number of ship lines (And their Tiers) instead. Also, it might be better to have it be based on how outnumbered or how much you outnumber, by fleetpower, rather that raw numbers or tier. Essentially how hard the fight is.

Yeah that's probably a tooltip logic error.

Experience is...a strange thing. There was a big discussion on it in Discord yesterday, and it doesn't seem to be too favoured. Lot of little issues. I don't have much of an opinion myself. Chris'd need to weigh in there.

Bubble Shield Piercing.
-Is this entirely removed? Or is it just uncommon? Is there anything like a Raid starship or Plasma starship anymore? Or is it all brute forcing down shields?

Raid and Siege Frigates are a thing, but there's no forcefield bypass or the explosion effect of the Siege. I'd like both, but Chris tried the forcefield bypass in this long ago and it didn't work out. Siege was never attempted in my memory, so right now that Frigate is kinda just a long range damage dealer in general.

Fleet Bubble Shield
-Is there going to be any bubble shields without a damage penalty, or is that going to be universal now?

I recall Chris added that in as a kind of experiment for another problem. Maybe? It hasn't really came up much since. I can think of a few places for it (Rorqual Hegira, Custodian) to have no damage penalty.

Ship Type Count
-Is it intended that you have many more lines of ships than AIWar I? As in, you always had 3 base ships, plus 1 bonus ship, and maybe 5 more types by the end of the game, and also a bunch of starship types. Here, it seems like there are more random, and less concrete of everything. The enemy seems to as well.
That said, I might be wrong here, and it only seems that way since I have yet to get used to all the new ship types.

Pretty much, yeah. As for the AI, it starts with everything, there's no concept of it unlocking units over time. But, it's pretty themed around the galaxy.

I'd go here for a decent explanation from me in the past on it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/573410/discussions/2/2733047810442699801/

Identical plus ability ships.
-Is it intended to have ship types which are identical in all ways, except they have a bonus ability? As in, equal metal, power, health, shield, all traits, damage, cooldown, range. And then it has a new ability, or cloaking, but otherwise is identical? Why a pure buff, why not a tradeoff?

Just some additional simple variety really. Most are in fact different. A Concussion Corvette and a Kite have tradeoffs between each other, an Assault Frigate and a Brawler are vastly different, so on.

Wormhole Dancing.
-The ships with wormhole overcharge abilities, is it intended for you to be able to have them move in and out of wormholes constantly for enhanced performance? Not really sure I would bother without a lot of them, but seems wrong.

Not really, I never intended for that when they were made. I think the only one that's kind of ow with that are Pulsar Tanks. It was suggested for it to be a bonus for when they're near a wormhole in general, but...I don't imagine that's all that nice in the code.

One Line of a type per ship
-Why is this the case? If I get two groups of bombers, why can't they go in the same fleet? I mean, if I get bombers and Heavy Bombers, that is allowed, and if I get a fusion bomb frigate, and a parasite fusion bomb frigate, they also coexist, so why this restriction?

Chris question that. I think it just really doesn't play well in the architecture or something for two identical ship lines to be together.

Transport Blitz.
-I now entirely see why transports got so heavily nerfed back in AIWar 1. Being able to pick up your whole fleet, run into an enemy planet, send one transport to each guard post, unload everything, target each guard post, and obliterate an otherwise terrifying Eye is kinda rediculous.
I am unsure whether this is a problem or not however. Given you are expected to have that transport as the core of your fleet, it seems right. On the otherhand, its micromanagement heavy and seems cheaty. Also later in the game it is more likely to be crippled, but that isn't a large penalty. Past that, unloading a wing of bombers and vaporizing  a guard post is kinda amusing.

It's came up before the concept of the reload penalty upon unloading. For Eyes, the idea of it looking at Fleets more rather than sheer unit count also came up and is...a maybe.

Brutal Brownouts.
-In AI war 1, brownouts were extremely dangerous, but you could power down, scrap, or add more power generation. This was scary, but handle-able. Here, the 60 second shutdown is extremely brutal. More importantly, you still can't have autotoggling metal-to-energy converters, meaning you have to either run an expensive surplus, or watch very carefully, and scrap a ton of stuff if you think you are going to lose a planet.
-That remains currently cost power, even before being rebuilt doesn't help, but I am pretty sure that is a bug.

If I remember right...it's because it just caused people to pause and do micro to get the forcefields back on immediately. Notes from the release it was added in:

"When brownouts happen, they now last for a minimum of 60 seconds. You can no longer just scrap a bunch of stuff to get the power back on to your bubble forcefields.
In the tooltips it now says how long you have left in the brownout before your forcefields are restored, to help you know not to engage in that pause-and-scrap behavior (and to anticipate when power will be back).
This was a good example of behavior that was "optimal, but cheesy" with pausing and scrapping, and which bypassed the point of brownouts in general. Now there's substantially more risk there, and the AI actually has a chance to exploit that weakness.
Additionally, since this is a 60 second timer AFTER you get your energy balance back positive, it's encouraging rapid-building of new generators (although... you may still wind up needing to pause and scrap, that won't negate the brownout and that's no longer so super-optimal)."

[Ranakastrasz]

Raid and Siege Frigates are a thing, but there's no forcefield bypass or the explosion effect of the Siege. I'd like both, but Chris tried the forcefield bypass in this long ago and it didn't work out. Siege was never attempted in my memory, so right now that Frigate is kinda just a long range damage dealer in general.

I recall Chris added that in as a kind of experiment for another problem. Maybe? It hasn't really came up much since. I can think of a few places for it (Rorqual Hegira, Custodian) to have no damage penalty.

Alright. I mean, there isn't anything wrong with lacking bypass options. Forcefield structures seem way less common, so you can still usually raid effectively without using your whole fleet.

Identical plus ability ships.
-Is it intended to have ship types which are identical in all ways, except they have a bonus ability? As in, equal metal, power, health, shield, all traits, damage, cooldown, range. And then it has a new ability, or cloaking, but otherwise is identical? Why a pure buff, why not a tradeoff?

Just some additional simple variety really. Most are in fact different. A Concussion Corvette and a Kite have tradeoffs between each other, an Assault Frigate and a Brawler are vastly different, so on.

Oh, I know a lot of ships are very different. I was talking about ships that have the exact same stats, except for one having cloaking, or one having parasite damage. (By Which I mean, one has cloaking, the other doesn't. And in an entirely different case, one has parasite damage, the other doesn't)

Brutal Brownouts.
-In AI war 1, brownouts were extremely dangerous, but you could power down, scrap, or add more power generation. This was scary, but handle-able. Here, the 60 second shutdown is extremely brutal. More importantly, you still can't have autotoggling metal-to-energy converters, meaning you have to either run an expensive surplus, or watch very carefully, and scrap a ton of stuff if you think you are going to lose a planet.
-That remains currently cost power, even before being rebuilt doesn't help, but I am pretty sure that is a bug.

If I remember right...it's because it just caused people to pause and do micro to get the forcefields back on immediately. Notes from the release it was added in:

"When brownouts happen, they now last for a minimum of 60 seconds. You can no longer just scrap a bunch of stuff to get the power back on to your bubble forcefields.
In the tooltips it now says how long you have left in the brownout before your forcefields are restored, to help you know not to engage in that pause-and-scrap behavior (and to anticipate when power will be back).
This was a good example of behavior that was "optimal, but cheesy" with pausing and scrapping, and which bypassed the point of brownouts in general. Now there's substantially more risk there, and the AI actually has a chance to exploit that weakness.
Additionally, since this is a 60 second timer AFTER you get your energy balance back positive, it's encouraging rapid-building of new generators (although... you may still wind up needing to pause and scrap, that won't negate the brownout and that's no longer so super-optimal)."

Makes sense.  And yes, that is exactly what I always did, and yes, it defeats the purpose of brownouts.
I suppose it is more reasonable as long as remains stop consuming power, because losing a planet in AI wars 1 also cut your power consumption massively because of all the dead everything. Here, not so much.
I guess I need that power buffer option, so I can insist on keeping 200k+ power surplus, or w.e. So you can decide whether to risk it or not, and have plenty of time to react after losing a single command center.

[Ranakastrasz]

New Questions. Also some still not Answered.

Why do Ship Caps vary at same tier?
-I have 3 seperate Bomber lines. all three are the same tier, and have different caps. Not slightly different, one of them is over twice that of the other two.
-I read something about fleet lines combining, but I have no idea if that is related, and shouldn't have caused it.

Why do Cloaked ships not regenerate while cloaked?
-I read that cloaked ships don't regain cloaking points while they are cloaked. If this is still the case, why?
-I understand preventing regenerating in a tachyon field, or while firing, but why out of combat? You could end up with a bunch of ships with 10% cloak power, run them to your planet, and let them sit for an hour, and unless you use an enemy tachyon generator, they would never recover. Why?

Why is construction not synced with health anymore, and why does shield regen while under construction?
-In AIW:FC, Construction outside factories involved a 1hp unit being "Repaired" by engineers until it hit 100%. Here, it appears that it is almost entirely uncoupled. In addition to shields regenerating to 100% even if you just start a project (So shield emitters and the reactor to run them are just included to start with) and some structures end up with 100% health and Shield, and 0% construciton progress in the tooltip.
-Although that might be a bug.

[BadgerBadger]

Re: the different numbers of ships in ship lines, see Chris' response to that question here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/573410/discussions/0/1637549649102395105/

[I-KP]

Why do Cloaked ships not regenerate while cloaked?
-I read that cloaked ships don't regain cloaking points while they are cloaked. If this is still the case, why?
-I understand preventing regenerating in a tachyon field, or while firing, but why out of combat? You could end up with a bunch of ships with 10% cloak power, run them to your planet, and let them sit for an hour, and unless you use an enemy tachyon generator, they would never recover. Why?

I've observed similar and posted about it here: https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-ii/stealth-fleets-general-operations-oddities/

[Ranakastrasz]

Re: the different numbers of ships in ship lines, see Chris' response to that question here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/573410/discussions/0/1637549649102395105/

Ah. Would be nice to have proper UI and Tooltip support. At minimum, display the base cap, with the bonus amount next to it.
Also, what exactly is fleet merging? My guess is having a fleet hack an ARS and get the same ship type they already have, in which case it should probably just be removed.

Explains why ship caps are so much less.... Multiples (or almost) or similar numbers. 24, 48, 96, and 192 (Or something like that)
Knowing the base amount, and seeing the... Quality of unlocks would be nice. Even if it only showed up in the C-Menu

I've observed similar and posted about it here: https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-ii/stealth-fleets-general-operations-oddities/

Good to know the problem is known about at least.

[Astilious]

Knowing the base amount, and seeing the... Quality of unlocks would be nice. Even if it only showed up in the C-Menu

That would be really nice. I suppose we could calculate strength*cap (cap strength) now and compare it to our other units to get an impression of how good an unlock is, but having something like "Min: 40, Max 100" available in the UI so we can just see how good each of our unlock rolls is would be ideal. The UI could also show cap strength, but I don't like that measure as much as it makes unlocks of different mark levels harder to compare, which would make it harder to determine what techs to grab down the line (i.e. "there are a lot of high technologist ship cap rolls around, maybe I should tech that way").