Minor Faction opinions

[Draco18s]

Ah. Was an idea, didn't realize those were optional.

[AnnoyingOrange]

Having risk analyzers on will generate periodic Exogalactic Strikeforces. The more Risk Analyzers you own the more powerful these will be.

In addition, every RA you own will generate small buffs to the AI's reconquest budget.

Both ideas seem great to me, both gameplay-wise and thematically.

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

I personally didn't find the new golems to be as satisfying as the old ones: Artillery are more micro-intensive since they don't seem to prioritize guard posts and since their reload time doubled, Armored seems a lot weaker probably because of low range and new multishot mechanics, Cursed went from planet-wide threat to unimpressive metal sink...

Yeaaah, I'm not a fan either. Multi-shot makes Armored and Cursed fairly...difficult, to work with, being unable to focus fire on a single target, yet grossly overkill vs other things.

I did think of having them reload single shot weapons every 0.1s, but turns out the game doesn't load if you try that! So I'd need to think of some other solution...

Devourer needs some work as well, it also grossly suffers from the multi-shot restriction. I could technically use the AoE type that spreads damage evenly as a way around this? So single target, full damage. If it hits a group it spreads it out, so more or less it will always do the same amount.

Of course, as a player you could just split everything into single units, but I have a feeling you generally won't have the time for that...or be facing a single Golem with no support.

Oh and I'd remove that self damage from the Cursed. Probably fine without it, it's already among the lowest health Golems.

Any spontaneous ideas I'd be interested to hear.

[AnnoyingOrange]

Of course, as a player you could just split everything into single units

But for what purpose? Sending single ships to absorb the alpha strike makes sense vs opponents with long reload times, while most golems have fast reloads so there wouldn't be enough time to get in and out without being hit again.
Vs artillery golems, players would simply swarm with bombers, pike corvettes, and such: losing 4 fleetships per minute to the golem is not a big deal.
I would almost say that sending in all units at the same time would be the best counterplay to evenly spread AoE, as it prevents the damage from being focused on any particular unit, delaying losses and benefitting from repairs as much as possible.

Any spontaneous ideas I'd be interested to hear.

I feel like the whole issue is complicated, and simply copying the AIW way might not be enough.
In the original, multi shot allowed to spread and concentrate firepower as required by the situation and it strongly reduced damage wasted to overkill, while suffering much more than single shot against high armor targets.
Projectile travel time, too, could be a major factor, such as with the cursed golem.
The armored and cursed golem filled different roles, with the former being some great point defense and a good unit to lead an assault if speed boosted, and the latter specializing in planet-wide attrition.

None of that would translate well to AIW2 as of now.
The idea to have armored and cursed weaken enemies in different ways (reload debuff vs paralysis) is certainly promising, even though paralysis is something that might overlap with the black widow's arsenal when that golem is reintroduced.

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

But for what purpose? Sending single ships to absorb the alpha strike makes sense vs opponents with long reload times, while most golems have fast reloads so there wouldn't be enough time to get in and out without being hit again.

Somehow temporarily forgot that reload time, derp.

Indeed on the translation part. Might just have to wait, there's no proper solution that seems available right now. It'd be a while, as things like the lobby are more important than Golems.

[Lord Of Nothing]

I wonder if armoured golems should take a leaf out of the Thanatos and phase two overlord's book and have two (or more) weapon systems- For instance, the armoured could have a multishot attack, and a single target attack with a bonus against larger ships, but each with a bit less DPS than the current multishot alone? I think they're large and important enough to justify similar treatment. I agree that multishot is currently making larger ships very ineffective against each other, but the current functionality also allows for making ships that are a more pure anti-swarm, and it seems a shame to throw that away.

[Draco18s]

What about an OMD style shot? Virtually 0 damage against small things, lots of damage against big things.

[Toranth]

Having risk analyzers on will generate periodic Exogalactic Strikeforces. The more Risk Analyzers you own the more powerful these will be.

Should Exowaves really be the response to everything?  The Spire Civilians were an option that made AIWC games easier, sure - but so were half the other options.  Since they aren't on by default, do they really NEED a counter? 

If people really want both the AIP reduction AND an AI enhancement to make up for it, maybe make RA - Easy and RA - Hard factions?  Maybe running the RAs takes Metal and Energy.  Think of Golems - Medium, which was often considered harder than Golems - Hard and its Exowaves.

Mostly, I'd just really like another option - ANY other option - than just more Exowaves.

[BadgerBadger]

More exowaves? The only way to get an exo wave is to ask for it from the Golems. I want there to be more things that use the mechanic because it's a good one. People were complaining a lot about risk analyzers not having a counter and being too simple....

[zeusalmighty]

Exo-waves are pretty non-existent at the moment, so not sure what you are really referring too.

I really want to see more exo-waves actually, but I hope to see them distinguishable from each other by having special exo-leaders specific to the faction that generates them

[Toranth]

I'm thinking more of the AIWC development history, where as time went by, Exowaves were used for all sorts things that 'needed a counter'.

Still, I'll say it again - Spire Civilians didn't have a counter, and didn't ruin AIWC.  Do Risk Analyzers need to come with a built-in punishment, even though it's an optional setting?
If people feel it MUST come with a built in negative, does it need to be an Exowave?  There are all sorts of other, more interesting, ways to make them have a drawback.

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

I'm thinking more of the AIWC development history, where as time went by, Exowaves were used for all sorts things that 'needed a counter'.

Still, I'll say it again - Spire Civilians didn't have a counter, and didn't ruin AIWC.  Do Risk Analyzers need to come with a built-in punishment, even though it's an optional setting?
If people feel it MUST come with a built in negative, does it need to be an Exowave?  There are all sorts of other, more interesting, ways to make them have a drawback.

What other interesting drawbacks do you have in mind?

[BadgerBadger]

I could require the Risk Analyzer Exos to go after planets with player-owned Risk Analyzers, and to bring Usurpers along for recapturing them?

[Draco18s]

I could require the Risk Analyzer Exos to go after planets with player-owned Risk Analyzers, and to bring Usurpers along for recapturing them?

Hey! That was my idea.

What about instead of exos, it triggers reclaim attempts, so the ai attempts to reclaim the analyzers?

[Toranth]

I'm thinking more of the AIWC development history, where as time went by, Exowaves were used for all sorts things that 'needed a counter'.

Still, I'll say it again - Spire Civilians didn't have a counter, and didn't ruin AIWC.  Do Risk Analyzers need to come with a built-in punishment, even though it's an optional setting?
If people feel it MUST come with a built in negative, does it need to be an Exowave?  There are all sorts of other, more interesting, ways to make them have a drawback.

What other interesting drawbacks do you have in mind?

The simplest and easiest is to give them a significant Energy and/or Metal cost.  Is the player willing to sacrifice 100,000 energy and 1000 metal/sec from their economy for an hour to reduce the AIP?  Tradeoff!

More complicated schemes can be used: 
- Imagine that you need to kill a certain number of AI units before each RA can start counting - after all, you need data to analyze, right?  So until you kill you first 100 AI ships, the RA has nothing to do.  Reset after each reduction to make the player go on hourly AI hunts.  You can even put an effective cap on the AIP reduced by causing this to increase over time.
--- As an especially amusing variant, you could require that the ships be killed on the same planet as the RA. 
- There could be a limit on the minimum AIP each RA would reduce to - such as the current AIP when it was captured.  Or a fixed value, which could be different for each RA.
- The AIP reduced could be random, possibly including increasing AIP.  Say, it changes AIP by a random number between +1 and -5.  We'd probably want to do a little something to prevent last-second save scumming, but as long as the average is still a decent negative number, it should work fine.
- Require the RAs use up hacking points (may require increasing the AIP reduction).

At the same time, I don't think Dracos's and Badger's ideas about the AI prioritizing the recapture or kill of the RAs is a bad idea.  I just think that the AI getting special forces created expressly for that purpose is not good.  At the least, make it come out of the wave or reinforcement budget.
If people really do want Exowaves or special recapture waves, then I suggest we do a "Easy, Medium, Hard" selection, like Broken Golems had (and has).