My personal issues with Fleets

[BadgerBadger]

I think you are really underselling the advantage that fighting on your own planets gives you... If an exo intended to be a reasonable but not excessive challenge can't be beaten with a significant net gain of metal on your part then you're already going to lose.

[ptarth]

The current conversion rate of Salvage to metal is too low. I believe that the salvage generated by any wave (including Exogalactic fleets) should provide 50-100% of the metal cost of what they destroy.

Chris talked about it the idea in his Chess analogy, but effectively, if you are able to fend off the fleet, you should come out of the experience with everything at ~100% and ready to go for the next round.

[Draco18s]

I think you are really underselling the advantage that fighting on your own planets gives you... If an exo intended to be a reasonable but not excessive challenge can't be beaten with a significant net gain of metal on your part then you're already going to lose.

I'm speaking from experience of having this exact scenario happen to me in multiple games in Classic. I would rebuild my entire fleet, only to have an exo a few minutes away (20 being an arbitrary value), too close to want to risk a significant portion of my fleet trying to attack a new planet or whatever. When I finished mopping up that exo, I'd need to rebuild the fleet again. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I would not want to bring the exo to my doorstep early for any amount of metal. The cost exchange is not worth it:
1) By pulling the next exo in early, every subsequent exo is moved up too (high cost) because exos aren't on a timer, but rather a budget. Zero out the line item early and it starts refilling immediately
2) The metal I gain from salvage is metal I would have gained anyway (no benefit)
3) The free metal I get in exchange for clicking this button--assuming it doesn't overflow my storage cap (risk!)--needs to be a significant percentage of my refleet costs (or no benefit)

Refleet costs are massive. Its not a million metal. A million metal is the down payment in classic. You could store 2 million easily enough, but refleeting? You'd burn through those reserves in ten or fifteen minutes....the remaining cost paid over the next two hours.

The current conversion rate of Salvage to metal is too low. I believe that the salvage generated by any wave (including Exogalactic fleets) should provide 50-100% of the metal cost of what they destroy.

Its too low and too slow.

Chris talked about it the idea in his Chess analogy, but effectively, if you are able to fend off the fleet, you should come out of the experience with everything at ~100% and ready to go for the next round.

Should, but you don't. You never have. And the reasoning has always been as a balance counter to various super units. Never mind the fact that you'd get botgolem exowaves before you ever actually OWNED the bugger. There may be a reason I played with AIP-golems.

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

Regarding Salvage:

Home Command: 40% Recovery
Logistics: 20%, added 10% per Mark
Economics: 5%, added 5% per Mark
Military: 4%, added 4% per Mark
Scrapper Combat Factory: 4%, added 4% per Mark

1% of the collected Salvage is turned into Metal per second, far as I know.

Salvage is based on the Strength value of a unit, then multiplied by a big number to get it into a metal amount that's worth something. Currently that number is 100.

It'd be simple to vastly increase the amount you get, and the speed of conversion, if there are suggested number changes.

[ptarth]

I've been using Exogalactic wave too loosely I think. Your concern is very reasonable. So let's remove the refleet button from that Exogalatic Waves and create a similar but independent wave response.

Concept
You hijack supplies from the AI network to rebuild your fleet. Then the AI responds to your theft.

• Push the "Refleet Button" to Gain X Metal/Sec and Y Rebuild/Repair Speed increase at a planet you own. Metal Theft Wave (catchy name, right?) get a wave budget equal to the amount of metal you steal (with limits on duration and size to stop abuse of infinite XP and such).
• Wave arrives at that planet 60 seconds after the Refleet action ends.
• The damage caused by the wave be approximately repaired by the salvage granted by the wave (this means salvage rate and efficiency MUST be increased by a large amount) AND repairs must be completed within ~2 minutes after the wave is destroyed.

Changes to Salvage

• A wave should provide sufficient metal to repair your loses taken to defend.  Either you die or you come out of the experience at full power (or mostly full power).
• Using this logic losses also depend on local stationary defenses and salvage rates should reflect this. So Military stations should have the worst salvage rate (you get turrets) and economic stations the best (because you have little). (Or Logistics ones have the best, because they are logistics.)
• Another option is that the consumption rate and the consumption efficiency vary. So Economy stations might be slow and highly efficient, Military fast and inefficient, and Logistic fast and medium efficiency.
• Salvage should not be too stackable (otherwise we just farm and have a new type of netflix time), but should be a mechanic to recover from waves.

Super units breaking everything[/li]

• I'm currently thinking that baseline balance should be designed without real consideration of super units. And when super units are reintroduced, that the balancing occurs there. A golem that is able to defeat 10M metal worth of AI wave strength isn't something that the baseline system should handle. At that point, something as simple as: "If galaxy wide AI fleet strength drops by 200 Fleet strength in 1 minute, then spawn 200 Fleet strength (in various waves)."

Actual numbers for the rate and efficiency, I don't have yet. I need to play more.

[ptarth]

As requested, I present the:

Team Metal-less Position Summary

• Current Notes Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1adspy3rj7QPRI2hpGoF6QQrtdZB5KLRTe59rAHzyd7g
• Metal Economy is a funky sort-of-a-unit-cap-but-not-fully thing
• Using Metal flow/consumption is pure unit cap
• Maintaining a global unit cap is conceptually understandable and more people have thought more about it.
• The new fleet core method may have larger issues such as AI snow-balling once you start losing fleet cores.
• Removing/changing metal alone is not sufficient. Because it interacts with other mechanics, those mechanics would also need to be adjusted.
• This includes
• AI should respond to all aggressive hostile player actions at a 1:1 rate. So if a player fleet shows up on an AI planet, the AI should send a fleet of equal size to deal with it. If a player fleet passes through an occupied planet, then the AI should send a smaller fleet to that location to boost defenses and force engagement “next time”. There needs to be a delay with these reprisal actions otherwise the player cannot make any ground. This might be the Hunter fleet, Reprisal waves, or a new/different mechanic. The AI must be forced to attack with the fleet (use it or lose it style), otherwise there is either no impact or the AI fleet becomes too powerful to handle very quickly.
• Current limited metal generation (metabolic, salvage, etc) mechanics will need to be changed.
• Salvage rates for both player and AI need to be boosted by a large amount. I’d estimate that salvage should generate reprisal at a 1:1 strength rate.
• Energy would need a new purposes as metal replaces it as the global cap. There are lots of potential neat things here.
• The Solution(s)
• This is a huge and fundamental shift in gameplay. I think it would be better, but I accept it is out of scope.
• That being the case, what can be done within the current framework to address the concern of metal
• Lack of Attrition as a loss condition - Increased gains from Salvage for both AI & player (some discussion)
• Refleeting is boring and slow - Refleeting button discussed in other threads (You get metal, but then you have to survive the counter attack. If you do, you get full fleets and metal back). (see thread)
• Fleetball is too viable - New reprisal mechanic. The greater the total fleet strength used to attack, the greater the AI response. (No real discussion yet)
• Quantity Necessity for Attacking- Reduce global generalist AI planetary defenses (already in progress)

[BadgerBadger]

I'm quite skeptical of a lot of these suggestions. I think giving the AI 1:1 responses is a bad idea. I'd much rather give the AI stronger responses, but let the player bait them out and strike elsewhere.

I think salvage rates should be increased to make them meaningful, but the sort of buffs you are suggestion I don't like.

I think Attrition absolutely should be a loss condition for the player.

You say "The AI might snowball and kill you if you start losing fleet cores" like it's a bad thing. I think that's desirable, isn't it? The AI needs to be able to win, after all.

[ptarth]

After some fairly intense and feisty discussion, we have some numbers!

First, Draco has overwhelming agreed with my proposal for the rough form of the refleet. He states, I quote, "...I'm happy to explore ideas, but I can't conclusively say "this would solve my issue"".

The Proposal

• Push the "Refleet Button" to Gain X Metal/Sec and Y Rebuild/Repair Speed increase at a planet you own. Metal Theft Wave (catchy name, right?) get a wave budget equal to the amount of metal you steal (with limits on duration and size to stop abuse of infinite XP and such).
• Wave arrives at that planet 60 seconds after the Refleet action ends.
• The damage caused by the wave be approximately repaired by the salvage granted by the wave (this means salvage rate and efficiency MUST be increased by a large amount) AND repairs must be completed within ~2 minutes after the wave is destroyed.

Alternatively, set it up as a Hack on a friendly planet.

For Salvage, we have the following:

Current Rough Salvage Translation

• Player: 1 Fleet Strength (or 1000 depending on internal or external reporting) = 100k metal
• AI: Level 5 AI converts killed Force Strength to Reprisal Wave Strength at ~ 90%

For the AI
After running the numbers, I actually feel okay about straight up AI Salvage rates.


For the Player

Current

• Home Command: 40% Recovery, 1% per sec
• Logistics: 20%, added 10% per Mark, 1% per sec
• Economics: 5%, added 5% per Mark, 1% per sec
• Military: 4%, added 4% per Mark, 1% per sec
• Scrapper Combat Factory: 4%, added 4% per Mark, 1% per sec

Proposed

• Home Command: 50% Recovery, 10% per Mark, 1% per sec
• Logistics: 30%, added 10% per Mark, 5% per sec
• Economics: 20%, added 15% per Mark, 1% per sec
• Military: 10%, added 5% per Mark, 20% per sec
• Scrapper Combat Factory: 5%, added 5% per Mark, 1% per sec

Notes

• Economics Station generate the most salvage recover, complete conversion in 100 secs, and at max Marks generates 110% efficiency. Terrible defenses. If you have fleets defend then this make sense for border worlds. Base Economic station metal production already dwarves other station production, so that's no real change.
• Military Stations are able to convert salvage very quickly (5 seconds), allowing you put pump it out as repairs if desired. It isn't efficient, but combined with Station Defense Abilities, is the strongest.
• Logistics Stations are initially better in speed (20 seconds) and efficiency than the other stations, but is eventually out performed by the other stations. The offer more shields and more engineers than other stations. Possibly double down and add more factories too? (And take away factories from Economic Stations to really cement roles).

Overwhelmlingly Positive Endorsements

• RocketAssistedPuffin: "Those salvage rates are curious. They seem oddly high though with the small bit of testing I did earlier it seems to be more in the...right area. Suppose I'll try those salvage rates tomorrow, plus Harvester nerf, see how it is, though I suspect I'm not a good judge."