Author Topic: Minor Faction opinions  (Read 7788 times)

Offline BadgerBadger

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Minor Faction opinions
« on: December 06, 2018, 12:26:08 pm »
Hey All,
    Which minor factions to people really like/dislike, and why?

Some minor factions are intended to have big gameplay impact (Nanocaust, Marauders) and some have much smaller impact (Human Resistance Fighters, Risk Analyzers), and having some factions at different power levels inherently is good. But are there any that just seem boring and uninteresting, or not fun to have?

Offline HeartHunter

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #1 on: December 06, 2018, 04:30:04 pm »
hi

Dislike.
Risk Analyzers - ez mode for turtle Human player on x10 speed.
Human Resistance - i dont see their task in the game. Its like poor Marauders.
Macrophages - low, but will see buff in new patch.
Devourer - low. Just low. High Pike towers delete this faction from the game in the middle game, but good dmg. And i m not sure, that wreck(Salvage) from best monster in the game enough good.

Like.
Dark Spire - one of the factions which have chance to stop Human.
Nanocoust - More ez, than Dark Spire, but seldom more hard, if you try attack Hive or win planets with big Nanocoust stacks.

Offline tadrinth

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #2 on: December 06, 2018, 05:17:06 pm »
If Risk Analyzers are a renamed Spire Civ leader with the same mechanics, then I vote for these to be either removed or refactored.  Unlimited AIP reduction encourages turtling.  I never finished my Spire-themed AIWC campaign because the optimal strat was to sit and wait for the Civ Leaders to tick, and my planned expansion was going to involve something like 15 hours of that, after I'd mostly cleared the map.   

I think they would work better as something like a very slow Superterminal hack; you capture them, they reduce AIP while being targeted by exos, and then they transform into a combat ship.  It still encourages turtling while you've got them reducing your AIP, but it doesn't encourage indefinite turtling.  They don't even really need to cause exos, they can just be worth holding for a while and then transform. 

Offline zeusalmighty

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #3 on: December 06, 2018, 05:23:28 pm »
I'll have more to say about factions later, but as for the comments about risk analyzers, what is the justification to penalize people who want to turtle?

That's a legitimate strategy (one I quite enjoy) and since this is *optional* there's no reason to play with it if you don't like the option. Meanwhile, it does auto-increase AIP if left alone, so that mechanic itself encourages players to expand. Since these are spread out it's very unlikely to allow for contiguous empires and so the tradeoff is harder to defend territory.

Offline RocketAssistedPuffin

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #4 on: December 06, 2018, 06:11:28 pm »

With Analyzers, the fact you can capture one and have the increase reduced by 4 (1, because that Analyzer is no longer increasing, and 3 from the decrease) makes it fairly easy to more or less nullify the effect. If you use the starting intensity of 5, capturing just one reduces it by 80%.

It personally feels fairly easy to me to abuse. I don't know what I would do with them though.
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Offline Ovalcircle

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2018, 09:09:07 pm »
Add in an AIP floor so you can't decrease it into the negatives with the Risk Analyzers.
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Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2018, 09:29:52 am »
It seems like Risk Analyzers have encouraged the most discussion so far, so that looks like an obvious candidate for improvement.

I think in the abstract, it's good to have factions that allow for diverse playstyles. It's not a bad thing to allow for people who want to play turtle-style.

The most likely set of options are to put an AIP floor out, to have the AI get bonuses when the Risk Analyzers generate enough AIP (not net AIP, so it would ignore your reductions); this could be exos, more instigator bases, stuff like that.

The AI could also get bonus reconquest waves if you own risk anaylzers, for example. Perhaps they also need to give less AIP reduction. More ideas are welcome, of course.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #7 on: December 07, 2018, 02:12:41 pm »
What about (player owned ones) consuming hacking points when they tick?

Offline zeusalmighty

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #8 on: December 07, 2018, 02:31:14 pm »
TLDR:

Lost Spire Ship: Remove entirely or make lore-friendly
Devourer Golem: Needs more interesting ways to interact with; presently boring.
Human Resistance Fighters: Pathetic support; needs to be more distinct from marauders
Marauders: Great
Broken Golems: Great, bring back widow and hive
Nanocaust: Great
Macrophage: Great
Dyson Sphere: Great, maybe more lore-friendly and possibility for unique win/lose condition
Astro trains: Cool in theory, not as cool in practice—needs more direct impact
Dark Spire: Cool in theory, not a faction I use a lot so no real feedback.
Zenith Trader: Nice, be interesting with a procedurally generated inventory in addition to its normal stock.
Risk Analyzers: Don’t get all the hate against turtles; add back the AIP floor and call it a day.

General Feedback:

Much of player’s feedback has been focused on improving mechanics, but I want to focus on a less discussed topic—lore. One of the reasons I kept playing classic was that it gave me a sense of a procedurally generated story. The champion missions, fallen spire, showdown devices, nomad planets, and the story-based objectives (to name a few) all contributed to this feeling that I was playing a unique campaign driven by an underlying “universe” (in the sci-fi world-building sense). Basically, I don't want this game to feel so much as procedurally generated as it feels like a "choose your own adventure." Rouge-likes, imo, lose replayability when they over-emphasize procedural generation at the expense of plot. To this end, my critique on minor factions will focus on promoting lore-building (and general things to make them more fun)

Minor Factions:

Lost Spire Ship: A whole faction dedicated to a single ship, without any lore, is frankly a waste of a faction. I would ditch this faction altogether, at least until it has a lore-friendly theme. I suggest ditching this because it presently adds nothing unique and by that fact alone makes the Spire just another ingredient haphazardly thrown into the AI War mixing bowl.

If there was some sort of special objective tied with freeing the Spire ship, that would go a long way to making it more interesting (maybe it’s defended by insane spirelings? IDK)

Devourer Golem: I think this faction is somewhat boring because it is predictable, exploitable, and inconvenient. I think this faction needs a way to interact with it—ideally turn this into a win/lose condition unto itself.

Human Resistance Fighter: Currently offers pathetic support; otherwise this faction is AI wars with training wheels (which isn’t a bad thing). Would be ideal to have these units more distinguishable from marauders. 

Marauders: These guys are great, probably need some balance tweaking but otherwise in a healthy, fun state.

Broken Golems: I love golems, but frankly the game is too easy in its current state to really make a point of using them every game. Would like to see the widow and hive golem back in action.

Nanocaust: Great, if somewhat imbalanced. If I ever get serious I would love to create a variant that substitutes the hydra mechanic for zombification. Would like to see more lore associated with the Nanocaust (if only in the form of mission objectives like classic).

Macrophange: Great, this faction is pretty unique. Some balance issues but reserving judgment for when they scale with AIP.
 
Dyson Sphere: Great, I’m glad they have their own unique units and have more ways to interact with them (e.g. hacking). Still haven’t seen Dyson Antagonizers in action (don’t think they are in the game yet), but that sounds like a cool mechanic. Think it’s still worth developing this faction further to build upon its lore and open up a unique win/lose condition (what do they do with all that energy??)

Astro trains: Cool in theory, not as interesting in practice. Too many of the depot effects are indirect and it doesn’t really feel like it’s contributing to gameplay (although it very well may).
There needs to be more of a causal factor (oh, this unexpected wave is because of the train). I would like a “pain train” (that a depot eventually spawns) that targets your hw and releases a ton of drones when it gets to your hw or if it dies in transit)

Moreover, there should be a reward for killing trains (it would be awesome if you killed enough trains you get enough “parts” to build a superweapon, like your own dire guardian).

Also, my last game I rarely encountered a train (on 7), even though I kept stations alive in my territory. There should probably be a penalty associated for keeping stations alive so players can’t just cheese where trains go, although in my game that didn’t really occur—might be buggy)

Dark Spire: I honestly don’t use this faction because it clashes hard with my playstyles, but I do like the concept of it and will give this faction more attention. I hope this faction has unique interactions with the Spire when that becomes a thing.

Zenith Trader: Nice faction to have for the possibility of getting unique and powerful goodies. It would be nice if there was a way to summon it to one of the worlds you want said goodies, perhaps at the expense of making that planet targeted by the AI.

Risk Analyzers: As the game is too easy in its current state, this faction is imbalanced. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. AIP floor would go a long way to prevent endless turtling and perhaps letting non-player risk analyzers generate threat (or something like that) based on how many times it has consecutively gone off (so that it scales into the late game and doesn’t destroy you the first time they all go off)
« Last Edit: December 08, 2018, 03:38:58 pm by zeusalmighty »

Offline Dominus Arbitrationis

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2018, 08:12:29 pm »
TLDR:
Risk Analyzers: Don’t get all the hate against turtles; add back the AIP floor and call it a day.

Minor Factions:
Risk Analyzers: As the game is too easy in its current state, this faction is imbalanced. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. AIP floor would go a long way to prevent endless turtling and perhaps letting non-player risk analyzers generate threat (or something like that) based on how many times it has consecutively gone off (so that it scales into the late game and doesn’t destroy you the first time they all go off)

I fixed the AIP Floor glitch where you could destroy datacenters and the like and benefit even while at the floor. Now, no change in AIP will happen if you do that. I also added back the AIP floor increase from Classic, so the floor is now determined by AIP scale * AIP cost of starting planets (Both moddable in ExternalConstants.xml) OR 0.2 (moddable in ExternalConstants.xml)*Total AIP Gained. It takes whichever value is higher.
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Offline ulu

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #10 on: December 10, 2018, 03:08:22 am »
Human Mauraders are great! Huge improvement compared to AI Wars 1.

Human Resistance Fighters need to be enhanced. They attend at almost every battle but have no impact. In defensive fights they distract some enemies at least.

Offline AnnoyingOrange

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #11 on: December 10, 2018, 07:39:39 am »
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...

About the Risk Analyzers, I think the passive AIP reduction is fine, but I would like to see them offering some active (and riskier) way to reduce AIP faster: for example, you hack them to double the AIP decrease but the AI retaliates until they conquer the planet or you get X points of bonus reduction, or every X minutes the analyzer tells you the location of a backdoor in the AI network and you can go there and hack it for AIP decrease.
Another idea would be to have various types of risk analyzers with different tasks: some passively increase/decrease AIP, some increase/decrease spawn rates for instigator bases, some give a malus/bonus to AIP after an adjacent station is destroyed...
In any case, in my experience instigator bases already discourage turtling effectively.

Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #12 on: December 17, 2018, 11:57:48 am »
Proposed enhancements to Risk Analyzers:

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.

Thoughts?

Offline Draco18s

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #13 on: December 17, 2018, 12:08:06 pm »
What about instead of exos, it triggers reclaim attempts, so the ai attempts to reclaim the analyzers?

Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: Minor Faction opinions
« Reply #14 on: December 17, 2018, 12:10:44 pm »
Given that the player has to explicitly enable reconquest waves, that's not a great solution, since many people will play without turning them on.

 

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