Author Topic: Starships in the sequel  (Read 24386 times)

Offline z99-_

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #45 on: December 04, 2016, 12:59:30 pm »
Ohhh... I so need to sink those ships right now.

Feel free to try; but be warned, I haven't lost a game of Battleship in 10+ years! :D

Whatever the tutorial is, the game start needs to be intuitive enough so the about half of people (INTERNET STATISTICS ARE ALWAYS RIGHT) that don't start games with tutorial don't leave disgusted.

More seriously, look at the achievements stats for AI War classic. 22% of not even playing an hour ? I'll stress that again, this should not happen in the sequel.

So I looked at the achievements for AIWC. First off, I find it interesting you truncated 22.9 down to 22 :P. I think what's important is to look at that number in context with the number of people who got the 'have energy balance of +50,000' which would have been gotten by pretty much anyone who actually starts a campaign. This number is 28.0%. Dividing one by the other shows that about 82% of people who start a campaign play for more than an hour. That seems pretty good to me, considering how much people complain about the complexity, difficulty, UI, graphics, etc. Since AIW2 is *guaranteed* to improve on all of those to some extent, I really don't think we should be dismissing good ideas out of a fear that adding trivial amounts of complexity will drive everyone away. And yes, I know that little bits of complexity everywhere add up, but I don't think that's a situation that we're going to be running into. From everything I've heard so far, this seems to be the *only* change that would increase starting complexity, with all other changes lowering it (as it should be).

The questions that need to be asked are:

To what extent should otherwise fun, gameplay enhancing features be kept out of the game due to a small increase in complexity?

and

How many of the people who bounced off of the original game did so because of the little bits of complexity sprinkled here and there, as opposed to things like complexity intrinsic in the core - er, I mean Mk V - game, and the poor graphics/UI complaints I mentioned earlier?

I posit that most of the 18.2% of people who were unable to get through an hour of campaign aren't going to be much better off as a result of minor changes like keeping out modular ships. They either aren't ever going to find the game fun, or their relatively lower complexity threshold will just be crossed later in the campaign than before, which is actually worse for them - better to find out that a game isn't right for you after 0.5 hours rather than 5 hours, right? I mean, if they are giving up on the game because they didn't play the tutorial and found the beginning complexity too confusing, do you really think they will have the maturity and patience to play a full game if some small complexities are removed?

So, back to the first question. How much are we wiling to dumb down the game for the sake of a small percent of a small percent of players? And yes, I did say 'dumb down'. I don't know how everyone else defines the term, but I would define it as "removing features that enhance gameplay for a majority of players for the sake of lowering the difficulty for a minority of players", which seems to be pretty much what we're talking about. My answer to that would be 'none'.

If people want to give other reasons as to why a popular feature shouldn't be added, I'm fine with that. If people say that a popular feature is unnecessarily complex, and have a proposition to decrease the complexity while still keeping what makes the feature so popular, that's great. My problem is removing a popular feature because some hypothetical large number of potential players can't handle it.

Second point, balance is very difficult and takes a lot of time and tweaking. The more possibilities, the more difficult there is. Given the number of units that are already in the game, and the AI types, and everything, AI War II is already stated to have about the same number of units that a MOBA has heroes. (/sacarsm) And as we all know, MOBAs are all completely balanced, there is no heroes that are basically worthless (/sarcasm). Thing is the more stuff there is in a game, the more combo (squared, or cubed possibilities) there is, and the higher chance of some OP or worthless "combo" being there.

Given the limited ressources that Arcen has to make this game, I'm pretty sure that we can soften some edges, and patch the glaring holes abused by the community - but that's about it. Remember that a company like Blizzard fails at this.

And yet lots of people still play Blizzard games, and Blizzard still makes all teh moniez :). Has anyone ever heard of someone not playing a game because of small balance issues? Maybe those people exist, but I haven't seen them. Glaring balance issues become immediately apparent, and are easily fixed. Smaller balance issues just aren't a big problem. If someone has enough time in the game to realize some unit needs a buff/nerf, they already like the game enough that it won't cause  them to stop.

While getting perfect balance requires more resources the more units you have, I would argue that getting *acceptable* balance actually requires *less* resources the more units you have in a game. The more alternatives there are to poorly balanced units, the less likely a poorly balanced unit will end you. If you get a weak unit, it's a bummer, but not the end of the world. If the AI gets a weak unit, no one complains :). If the AI gets a strong unit, once again, it's a bummer, but by having a large variety of units, the number of overly strong units it fields will be less; and by hacking, you can remove the problem completely. If you get a strong unit, once again, no one complains :).

Another thing to think about is, balance time isn't just about how many units you have and how many devs there are. It is influenced by a number of other factors, like the number of testers and the ratio of testers to all players, and those two numbers are very high. Looking at the current KS numbers (or more accurately, the numbers from a few hours ago) there are going to be 486 early access copies out there, and *892* alpha copies out there. Remember, that's halfway through the campaign, without considering add-ons. In fact, there are going to be more alpha copies given out this KS than launch copies. Even if *half* of those pre-launch copies aren't used, that's nearly 700 players that will be commenting on balance pre-release.

So I stand by my comment that balance won't be a major issue.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents. :D

Offline WolfWhiteFire

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #46 on: December 04, 2016, 04:45:41 pm »
Wow I didn't know the posts on these forums could be so long, does anyone know what the length limit is? I feel I agree with pretty much everything z99-_ said in that last post. I would also like to add that while I agree with kasnavada about balance being important, complete balance would ruin a game. Also before explaining why I think that, I would like to say that MOBAs and Blizzard games can be pretty popular. Anyway to explain why I feel complete balance would ruin a game is that if everything is the same overall sort of strength and counters the same number of ships, heroes, etc. as counter it, with nothing better than everything else, there would be no reason to experiment or try other ships. You know this works and you know nothing else will work better, so why try to find a better play style or strategy or battlefield tactic.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #47 on: December 04, 2016, 11:07:40 pm »
I should add that maintaining a reasonable balance is a goal for the sequel. It's not strictly necessary, as many other games have shown, but one of the problems with Classic as a project (rather than as a game) is that there was so much stuff, with little-to-no overarching balance, that it was like a leaning tower of pisa with new floors added every year or so.

That said, it's not a straitjacket either.

I'm working on some models for keeping the balance controllable, may post about them later this week.
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Offline kasnavada

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #48 on: December 05, 2016, 05:05:01 am »
So I looked at the achievements for AIWC. First off, I find it interesting you truncated 22.9 down to 22 .
Hu ? Tells me that you're a nitpicker, that's about it. What it tells about me, I wouldn't know, because it's really not much of a difference.

Quote
I think what's important is to look at that number in context with the number of people who got the 'have energy balance of +50,000' which would have been gotten by pretty much anyone who actually starts a campaign. This number is 28.0%. Dividing one by the other shows that about 82% of people who start a campaign play for more than an hour. That seems pretty good to me, considering how much people complain about the complexity, difficulty, UI, graphics, etc. Since AIW2 is *guaranteed* to improve on all of those to some extent, I really don't think we should be dismissing good ideas out of a fear that adding trivial amounts of complexity will drive everyone away. And yes, I know that little bits of complexity everywhere add up, but I don't think that's a situation that we're going to be running into. From everything I've heard so far, this seems to be the *only* change that would increase starting complexity, with all other changes lowering it (as it should be).

Either that or they just waiting for the steam cards to sell =). Anyway, 82% ain't good, considering this. But Keith has a point there too. The real point is the 10 hour landmark with is currently 5.5%... That's a bad attrition rate.

Quote
To what extent should otherwise fun, gameplay enhancing features be kept out of the game due to a small increase in complexity?

First, it remains to be seen if those features are "fun & gameplay enhancing". Frankly, I'm not the only one that found all modular ships to be a pain in the ass to use. Same with snipers, it was mostly OP ass-pain with balance issues - especially in the AI's hand. Radar dampening ? A band-aid meant to counter the above-mentioned range abuses. Immunities ? Same as above, plus other abuses like cutters & stuff. Scavenging ? This feature that punishes me for losing stuff, meta-games me into defending my homeworld rather than setting protections around it, does not affect lower diff players, and does not accomplish its goal of reducing the refleeting time ? Yeah... that was a useful, fun & gameplay enhancing feature.

Frankly, a large part what has been added in the first game improves gameplay, but there was another large part that didn't. To me, you sound like the type of guy that base his "this game's good" on "the more, the better" criteria, with little care of if the features added actually add anything. If I'm right, that means continuing this discussion is pointless - you'll just propose to add & add & add until it's a mess - I'll never agree to that.

So yeah, when I see modular ships as proposed in the OP, I don't see "fun & gameplay enhancing". I see 15 ships over 5 marks, 50 of which with an high chance of being useless because Arcen has a high chance to not have the budget / time to make them balanced (one version better than all others), and the remaining possibly being unused because they also compete between themselves (limited research), not being needed due to the AI not having this particular ship, and so on. I then see long threads about balancing them, focussing on those issues, which restart everytime an extension is out (because of new counters & ships), and the "gameplay enhancing" part is out of the window. Because other parts of the game need attention, but a lot of people keep nitpicking about ships stats.

More grave IMO, I spoke up here, because I fear a focus on making other decisions like this one, with lots of choices "because lots of choices is inherently good". Thing is as I stated above, it's not "just this one". If this decision is made to add 10% complexity from start there, then the same decision is going to be taken everywhere else. And there you're not speaking about making the whole game 2% "complexier", but twice or thrice, making the intimidation factor explode.

But, we'll see. Keith & Chris seems to be more on the "remove intimidation factor" and "cut features that didn't add stuff" to me, so even if I'm not always on the same lines as they are on what to cut out, I think I'm going to like what AI War II will be like, because I'm on a somwhat parallel line as they are. Are you ?


Quote
(balance).

The only thing I was countering here was the "it's easy" part, which you still underestimate by a lot. It's fairly obvious that people still play with even minor balance issues, but yes, the number of testers, the number of devs, the money you can throw at it counts a lot. Same, 500 early access = testers in the KS is quite the shortcut. My guess is that most just want the game early, and that most will not even go to the forum to write their opinion back. It also remains to be seen if the guys that do go to forums have advice - and there's another filter for meaningful advice (not the usual "this is great" / "this is shit" with no useful remarks in them). We'd be lucky to have 10% of those to actually comment. Second issue, the guys that actually do subscribe to KS ? They're a highly specialized group of people. Arcen will crave & need people with different opinions and views to test the game - in order for the test to be meaningful. Frankly, I wouldn't rely on KS testers only, but then again, seeing how the previous betas went, I'm not worried.

Finally, there's a limit to what a 2 guys team can do when a lot of variables are in the pipe. Like AI War classic, AI War II will have glaring major balance issues which they'll correct fast once found, if the past in any indication. Can't really ask for more: too much stuff to balance, relatively few testers & devs.

Offline z99-_

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #49 on: December 05, 2016, 12:13:30 pm »
Hu ? Tells me that you're a nitpicker, that's about it. What it tells about me, I wouldn't know, because it's really not much of a difference.

'Twas in jest, good sir. Hence the humorous emoticon, which you left out when you quoted me.

Either that or they just waiting for the steam cards to sell =). Anyway, 82% ain't good, considering this. But Keith has a point there too. The real point is the 10 hour landmark with is currently 5.5%... That's a bad attrition rate.

Hmm . . . yes, that is more troubling. Fair point. Although I maintain my previous points about small complexity changes not really helping to improve this.

First, it remains to be seen if those features are "fun & gameplay enhancing". Frankly, I'm not the only one that found all modular ships to be a pain in the ass to use.

True, you're not the only one who disliked modular ships; there are probably about ten others.

Ok, so that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I can say with confidence that modular ships is one of the things most wanted by players since the original campaign was being planned, perhaps having even more support than the spire (I'm curious, would you disagree with that?). So I disagree, it does not remain to be seen if people find modular ships fun and gameplay enhancing.

Same with snipers, it was mostly OP ass-pain with balance issues - especially in the AI's hand. Radar dampening ? A band-aid meant to counter the above-mentioned range abuses. Immunities ? Same as above, plus other abuses like cutters & stuff. Scavenging ? This feature that punishes me for losing stuff, meta-games me into defending my homeworld rather than setting protections around it, does not affect lower diff players, and does not accomplish its goal of reducing the refleeting time ? Yeah... that was a useful, fun & gameplay enhancing feature.

Frankly, a large part what has been added in the first game improves gameplay, but there was another large part that didn't.

It sounds like you're not enjoying playing at your high difficulty level. Maybe you wouldn't have a problem with all that stuff if you lowered it a little.

It seems the main difference between difficulty levels is how tight the variables can be that still allow a winning game. On lower difficulties - which, I remind you are the ones the vast majority of players play at - none of the problems you listed will make a player lose a game they otherwise would have won, so they're not nearly as infuriating. So, to address your miscellaneous gripes as a happy lower difficulty player:

AI Snipers: Ah, I guess I'll have to use a bit of strategy to deal with this planet. What fun!

Radar Dampening: Yeah, I don't really like radar dampening either. But current changes mean it's unnecessary and not coming back, so the point's moot.

Immunities: More need for strategy. Yay! But current changes mean it's unnecessary and not coming back, so the point's moot.

Scavenging: More metal for my Mk V ion cannon. Yay!

As for your final comment, I agree that a large part of what was added to the first game improves gameplay, and I even agree there are a large number of places that aren't. What *seems* to be the points of disagreement between us is that:

1) We disagree on whether some features are fun.
2) We disagree on how difficult it is to make unfun features fun.
Which contributes to:
2) We disagree on what to do about unfun parts. You seem to feel that most of the unfun parts are irredeemable, and the best course of action is to remove them. I feel that most of the unfun parts could become fun, and the best course of action is to try reworking as many of them as we can.


Does that sound about right? Or do you think our disagreements are in different areas?

To me, you sound like the type of guy that base his "this game's good" on "the more, the better" criteria, with little care of if the features added actually add anything. If I'm right, that means continuing this discussion is pointless - you'll just propose to add & add & add until it's a mess - I'll never agree to that.

Well, I hope you didn't spend too much time thinking about whether you would agree to the hypothetical game-ruining proposals you have assigned to me, which you based off of a broad, sweeping generalization of my ideas on game development, which you extrapolated from the 'sound' of a couple of posts. :(

So yeah, when I see modular ships as proposed in the OP, I don't see "fun & gameplay enhancing". I see 15 ships over 5 marks, 50 of which with an high chance of being useless because Arcen has a high chance to not have the budget / time to make them balanced (one version better than all others), and the remaining possibly being unused because they also compete between themselves (limited research), not being needed due to the AI not having this particular ship, and so on. I then see long threads about balancing them, focussing on those issues, which restart everytime an extension is out (because of new counters & ships), and the "gameplay enhancing" part is out of the window. Because other parts of the game need attention, but a lot of people keep nitpicking about ships stats.

As you may have gathered by this point, I don't see it that way :). I think of the modules from AIWC, where I used most of them, and most of the ones I didn't use had mechanics that aren't returning. So, I see lots of good discussion had by the many alpha testers - far more testers than the original - resulting in relatively quick balance fixes, modules being even better than AIWC, and a better game overall. I admit I have less time around these parts than you do, but unless you are going to tell me that the original modules were some horrible nightmare of five years of balancing, with forum members leaving in droves out of frustration and lots of intended features being cut to make time for balancing modules, I don't think you are going to change my mind. Sorry.

More grave IMO, I spoke up here, because I fear a focus on making other decisions like this one, with lots of choices "because lots of choices is inherently good". Thing is as I stated above, it's not "just this one". If this decision is made to add 10% complexity from start there, then the same decision is going to be taken everywhere else. And there you're not speaking about making the whole game 2% "complexier", but twice or thrice, making the intimidation factor explode.

Well, I doubt that will happen, as long as you keep speaking up ;D. From what I have seen, I trust Keith and Chris (or Chreith, for short) to make every design decision based on the individual merits of each idea, and to prompt forum discussions on each topic so everyone has a chance to say their piece before any decisions are finalized; so I don't believe this one, small, specific increase in complexity will lead to AI Dwarf War Fortress II or anything.

But, we'll see. Keith & Chris seems to be more on the "remove intimidation factor" and "cut features that didn't add stuff" to me, so even if I'm not always on the same lines as they are on what to cut out, I think I'm going to like what AI War II will be like, because I'm on a somwhat parallel line as they are. Are you ?

Cutting features that don't add stuff is great. I support that fully. The point of contention is what features actually fit that definition. I argue modular ships do not.

The only thing I was countering here was the "it's easy" part, which you still underestimate by a lot. It's fairly obvious that people still play with even minor balance issues, but yes, the number of testers, the number of devs, the money you can throw at it counts a lot. Same, 500 early access = testers in the KS is quite the shortcut. My guess is that most just want the game early, and that most will not even go to the forum to write their opinion back. It also remains to be seen if the guys that do go to forums have advice - and there's another filter for meaningful advice (not the usual "this is great" / "this is shit" with no useful remarks in them). We'd be lucky to have 10% of those to actually comment. Second issue, the guys that actually do subscribe to KS ? They're a highly specialized group of people. Arcen will crave & need people with different opinions and views to test the game - in order for the test to be meaningful. Frankly, I wouldn't rely on KS testers only, but then again, seeing how the previous betas went, I'm not worried.

The tester number I used was about 700, as there were 1378 total early release copies, and I was assuming half of them wouldn't have offered any help. That may have been a bit optimistic of me, but I also think only 10% is a bit pessimistic. Even then, that's ~140 testers from the KS, with more likely to come from other sources as you noted about previous betas. And I don't think having a disproportionate number of KS testers is something that should be worried about. The only way I can even think of balancing that without finding other testers is by counting the comments of KS testers with proportionally less weight, which seems like a really really bad idea; and why would you need to? Balance is balance. If someone finds a big balance issue, it won't matter who it comes from.

Finally, there's a limit to what a 2 guys team can do when a lot of variables are in the pipe. Like AI War classic, AI War II will have glaring major balance issues which they'll correct fast once found, if the past in any indication. Can't really ask for more: too much stuff to balance, relatively few testers & devs.

That's all I'm asking for. :D

I guess what we need at this point is that balance post from Keith, so we know which of us is mistaken :). In the mean time, I'll end on a note of unity: can we all agree that there's almost no way people are going to be able to create 50+ unique AI personalities from the current mechanics? :D

Offline Atepa

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #50 on: December 05, 2016, 01:14:34 pm »
(taking the Siege as an example, with no modular stuff)
- You start with the MkI (whatever we call it), and it only has the short-range plasma cannon.
- After unlocking MkII you can also unlock "Torpedo Generator"
- When that's unlocked, you can toggle any Siege (including the frigate) into or out of "alternate fire mode"; that causes the Siege to:
-- have to reload before firing
-- no longer be mobile
-- not fire its normal weapon
-- instead fire the long-range torpedos

Which might be too much micro, but it sounds interesting.

I agree that might be a little too much micro, to ease the micro it could be based on a timer before they can enter 'torpedo mode'. E.g. they have to be stationary for 5 seconds or something before they switch. Although, it pretty much guarantees you'd have your siege ships in a separate group from everything else.


Additionally if guardians are going to be the main defense of planets I am guessing they get reinforcements directly like the guard posts in AIWC.  If they are turned into threat fleet do they still get reinforced during the reinforcement cycle?
If a guardian is on guard duty, the reinforcement logic can put stuff inside them, yes. If the guardian leaves guard duty (for threat duty) it retains its subordinates but the reinforcement logic can no longer give it new ones.

Would that open things up to going into a system for the sole purpose of swapping the guardians into threat mode (thus preventing them from growing bigger) and just leaving them in the system (until enough threat gathers to push your defense)? I guess the question is will Guardians switch out of threat mode ever?

Second point, balance is very difficult and takes a lot of time and tweaking. The more possibilities, the more difficult there is. Given the number of units that are already in the game, and the AI types, and everything, AI War II is already stated to have about the same number of units that a MOBA has heroes. (/sacarsm) And as we all know, MOBAs are all completely balanced, there is no heroes that are basically worthless (/sarcasm). Thing is the more stuff there is in a game, the more combo (squared, or cubed possibilities) there is, and the higher chance of some OP or worthless "combo" being there.

Firstly, I don't think your sarcasm adds anything to the discussion...
Secondly, as you pointed out the more you have, the harder it is to balance, and the higher chance of something being OP or worthless. My question is, So? Why is that a bad thing? There isn't a game out there today that is 100% perfectly balanced, and there shouldn't be. Having unbalanced units is how you keep variety and strategy in a game, it is just a matter of things being TOO unbalanced that need addressing. Even Chess and Checkers aren't balanced perfectly.

Yes, 'A' might be overly powerful against 'X' and 'Y', but gets countered by 'Z'. Z might only be good for countering A, otherwise it is useless. However, it gives you a strategy. You see the AI massing a lot of A in a system, you bring 'Z' in to counter them and continue on. The nice thing about the AI, is that if you had to counter 'A' once, you'll most likely have to again in the future, unlike people the AI doesn't suddenly switch tactics mid-game. (I think that would be an awesome addition though Keith, to allow the AI to 're-adjust' as the game goes on) You don't see any significant investment in 'A' by the AI, then you don't bother with 'Z'.


The alternative is somehow making it so the tutorial is always part of their first play experience. That's possible in some games but I dunno how it would work here without being obscenely obnoxious, especially when trying to cover advanced topics.

I'd be leery of forcing the Tutorial since anytime you re-install you'd have to redo the tutorial. I actually like the way you guys have it setup in AIWC in that it says "Hey it looks like you haven't played before, do you want to run through the tutorials" but lets you skip them if you prefer.


Offline kasnavada

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #51 on: December 05, 2016, 05:53:30 pm »
Quote
Ok, so that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I can say with confidence that modular ships is one of the things most wanted by players since the original campaign was being planned, perhaps having even more support than the spire (I'm curious, would you disagree with that?). So I disagree, it does not remain to be seen if people find modular ships fun and gameplay enhancing.

Hu, what I've seen is the playing crying rivers of salt for their insanely OP ships, like the protector ship, the champion, and some other stuff, which ain't coming back. Champion cause cheap, and the protector because it nullifies completely guard posts. What I've seen they wan't ain't modularity, it's their OP ship - and funnily it mostly ain't coming back.


2) We disagree on what to do about unfun parts. You seem to feel that most of the unfun parts are irredeemable, and the best course of action is to remove them. I feel that most of the unfun parts could become fun, and the best course of action is to try reworking as many of them as we can.
Does that sound about right? Or do you think our disagreements are in different areas?

Yeah, about that, seem irredeemable though... and I do stand in the "you want a lot of possible stuff 'cause it's better" because you state that bolded part.

My main reasons... as follow :
- My opinion is that a large number of mechanics is, by itself, unfun. More so for newbies & game start, and can be good in "end-game level" of play. But that it's not necessary to be complex to be good. I'd rather have a game with simple rules enabling complex gameplay, that a game with complex rules, that no one understands, basically requiring complex play to play the game at what is finally a simple level.
- Very limited ressources from Arcen - basically not worth reworking the un-fun parts in the short term.
- To be blunt, I've seen then fail at this with SBR, so it's not like I haven't seen that again. Yeah, I've been there then. The endless rework of stuff, finally didn't work out.

Finally, maybe the biggest reason, but I want Arcen to be around with this game for years. That does not come with the game being one again complex, ugly, and overly mathematical which points people to not play it. Arcen made the mistake with some of their previous games before. Real time 25 hours long space strategy game is enough of a niche - it does not need enough rules to make the entry point "Mensa-level intellect required" and days of freetime to do so too.

That said, I don't care how complex the end-game and highest diff levels are. My main beef is the "normal" diff level + entry point. I do trust arcen to make a game "large" enough so everyone finds their fun if they limit themselves a bit (lot) on the required entry point.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2016, 05:55:12 pm by kasnavada »

Offline WolfWhiteFire

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #52 on: December 05, 2016, 06:46:27 pm »
What exactly makes you think they won't have the resources to balance the game? They do have a smaller budget, but they removed stuff to fit it and the original goal was as they stated for pretty much AI War Classic + all the expansions +the new stuff at the start instead of over time. Also I don't feel this and SBR can be compared very well, they are two completely different types of games and they have a ton of experience with AI War while SBR was trying new things they didn't have much experience with.
Finally, maybe the biggest reason, but I want Arcen to be around with this game for years. That does not come with the game being one again complex, ugly, and overly mathematical which points people to not play it.
Well AI War Classic was the title they gained the most money from to my knowledge, it was also the very first game they madeand they have made many since then and gained experience they will use with the new AI War.

Offline Cyborg

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #53 on: December 05, 2016, 06:50:34 pm »
In regards to OP ships, I'm not that worried about it. As long as the ship exists, because modding is enabled, I'm more than willing to make it as OP or not as I prefer. It just needs to *be* in the game.
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Offline tadrinth

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #54 on: December 05, 2016, 09:32:17 pm »
Is there any reason that modular ships can't spawn with reasonable default modules already set? Then new players can just build the ship and use it without worrying about what modules it has, and a more advanced player can customize the modules as needed.

I also did like the 'ship variant' idea that came up a while back, where rather than being able to fully customize modules, you could pick from a couple of different versions of a ship that shared a ship cap.  So you might have an engine-damage variant of a riot control, and then a tractor-oriented variant.  Doesn't give you full customization, but it's way easier for a new player to get: they just build whichever version of a riot control starship they want.  That might be a good fit for SOME of the ships, to keep complexity lower.  Protector starships are potentially a good fit for this; rather than building modules on a protector, you build a counter-energy protector starship. Ideally you'd have an easy way to switch to a different version of it.   

Offline kasnavada

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #55 on: December 06, 2016, 01:54:42 am »
What exactly makes you think they won't have the resources to balance the game? They do have a smaller budget

Hu, this ?

Also, we might have a different way of seeing balance. The sniper & immunities points I mentionned before gives me an example.

Quote
AI Snipers: Ah, I guess I'll have to use a bit of strategy to deal with this planet. What fun!
Quote
Immunities: More need for strategy. Yay! But current changes mean it's unnecessary and not coming back, so the point's moot.
When the AI has Snipers, it has snipers on EVERY planet. There's no strategy in bringing an anti-sniper ship on every fleet so it immunise the entire fleet to their attack. It's just a "learn a simple counter" once, apply forever again. It does not make the planet you're taking unique. IMO, it does not make the game more interesting. What it does is add to the entry ticket - noobs will take heavy attrition to those, because they basically don't know about the anti-snipe units. And be totally powerless when the AI spawns their first snipe wave / retaliate with threat with a lot of snipers units in it. And once the trick is known, any difficulty from this unit type is gone forever.

What IS fun however is just having one / two snipe guardian or one snipe guardpost. This requires a specific strategy to get around. This makes a assault unique. And, not having the trick of making your fleet immune to it - having to use cloakers or fast ships to crush long range ones.


In first game, in the player hands, having a "sniper" ship or basically a long range ship, basically meant that you could take with impunity everything as long as you stood out of its range and where a bit careful about what threat to wake up. So radar dampening, sniper immunities, and possibly also the limitations to the gravity well size where brought in. They're still good, mind - which bothers me because with so much stuff immune to them, it kinds of worries me at how OP they were before. But, no, I don't think that was the right solution to the problem. It should have been more responsiveness and movement, cloaking or something else (lowering their range to make them more dangerous to use). Since all guard posts I can remember now have radar dampening lower than their range, it's now impossible to outrange them.

Once again, "balance" screwed basic game comprehension for noobs, and noobs would take those just to outrange stuff and find out the hard way that half the galaxy's immune to it. Ouch.


Related to that, something that could be great is if the AI unlocked stuff to counter what you currently have, like it does in infested planets. I think it already somewhat does, but not sure.


I also did like the 'ship variant' idea that came up a while back, where rather than being able to fully customize modules, you could pick from a couple of different versions of a ship that shared a ship cap.  So you might have an engine-damage variant of a riot control, and then a tractor-oriented variant.  Doesn't give you full customization, but it's way easier for a new player to get: they just build whichever version of a riot control starship they want.  That might be a good fit for SOME of the ships, to keep complexity lower.  Protector starships are potentially a good fit for this; rather than building modules on a protector, you build a counter-energy protector starship. Ideally you'd have an easy way to switch to a different version of it.   

+1 to the variant.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2016, 05:30:48 am by kasnavada »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #56 on: December 06, 2016, 09:39:32 am »
Scavenging ? This feature that punishes me for losing stuff, meta-games me into defending my homeworld rather than setting protections around it, does not affect lower diff players, and does not accomplish its goal of reducing the refleeting time ? Yeah... that was a useful, fun & gameplay enhancing feature.
I have mental files for many of you, and I use them to filter your words in order to sift the useful feedback out from other stuff (venting frustrations, unconditional optimism, personal grudges against particular units, personal fondness of particular units, compulsive sarcasm, reluctance to put stress on developers, habitual exaggeration, etc). This is fine and it's part of the job, but our common effort to improve the game is more efficient when the necessary filtering is low.

So I wanted to say that when you encourage heavier filtering when you make statements like that salvage "meta-games me into defending my homeworld rather than setting protections around it" and (earlier this year) "forced me to defend everything on my homeworld". I don't dispute that it motivates a frontline HW. I do dispute that it forces or otherwise coerces you into doing that. How many victorious high-diff AARs from the salvage era used a frontline HW? Some, iirc, but certainly not all or even most. It makes frontline HWs sometimes make sense, whereas before they almost never made sense. That is (in that specific balance impact) an increase in strategic variation, not a decrease.

That said, I agree that Salvage/Reprisal is a flawed attempt to compensate for an underlying balance problem. In the sequel I hope to do better, but that's for a different thread, a different day.
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Offline kasnavada

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #57 on: December 06, 2016, 01:39:52 pm »
I have mental files for many of you, and I use them to filter your words in order to sift the useful feedback out from other stuff (venting frustrations, unconditional optimism, personal grudges against particular units, personal fondness of particular units, compulsive sarcasm, reluctance to put stress on developers, habitual exaggeration, etc). This is fine and it's part of the job, but our common effort to improve the game is more efficient when the necessary filtering is low.

So I wanted to say that when you encourage heavier filtering when you make statements like that salvage "meta-games me into defending my homeworld rather than setting protections around it" and (earlier this year) "forced me to defend everything on my homeworld". I don't dispute that it motivates a frontline HW. I do dispute that it forces or otherwise coerces you into doing that. How many victorious high-diff AARs from the salvage era used a frontline HW? Some, iirc, but certainly not all or even most. It makes frontline HWs sometimes make sense, whereas before they almost never made sense. That is (in that specific balance impact) an increase in strategic variation, not a decrease.

Thanks for the warning.
I'm trying that, but as much as I try to, I really don't find nicer things to say about that mechanic. Also bad days happen  - sorry for those.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #58 on: December 06, 2016, 01:48:32 pm »
I'm trying that, but as much as I try to, I really don't find nicer things to say about that mechanic. Also bad days happen  - sorry for those.
I appreciate the effort. And I hear you on the bad days.

No need to be nice about things you don't like; plain-speaking is an asset here as long as it isn't bitter. I'm grateful for the opposition on putting modularity in the default path of 1st-hour newbies.
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Offline kasnavada

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Re: Starships in the sequel
« Reply #59 on: December 06, 2016, 01:53:04 pm »
I'm trying that, but as much as I try to, I really don't find nicer things to say about that mechanic. Also bad days happen  - sorry for those.
I appreciate the effort. And I hear you on the bad days.

No need to be nice about things you don't like; plain-speaking is an asset here as long as it isn't bitter. I'm grateful for the opposition on putting modularity in the default path of 1st-hour newbies.

Thanks =). And, quite sorry, but you're the kind of people that actually can dig useful info from even worse posts than the ones I made. I'm pulling a tad bit less punch that I usually do. Not that it's ok, though.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2016, 01:54:46 pm by kasnavada »