PROPOSAL: In regards to resolving deadlock (Making sieges siege)

[lifehole]

• The race war AI for defending/attacking should be updated to stop them dropping all of their ships on an enemy siege target and leaving all of their own holdings undefended.
• War right now is either an all or nothing procedure, if more depth was added to the AI diplomacy, then we would see more emergent behaviors that were interesting and allowed for interesting player interactions. War reparations, Tithes, releasing planets, etc.
• Add another race-relationship called Quarantine or Blockade. In it, the winning race leaves enough ships to destroy any new ships produced by the looser at the homeworld of the loser. The rest of the ships go back to their daily life. If anyone else shows up to violate the blockade, the winner can act to defend the loser in some way.
• If one race has a ground multiplier of 25,000 and 2 billion soldiers, the second a ground multiplier of 10 and 100 million soldiers, is it really honorable that the second race doesn't bomb the first race into oblivion instead of challenging them in hand to hand combat?

The first point would be ideal but just adding stuff like that would introduce a whole new slew of bugs, balancing, etc. Maybe in an expansion pack, but not right now. Right now should be about fixing and balancing stuff already there, not revamping stuff. The second point seems like maybe something andor specific that would be nice. The fourth one would require adding more AI awareness, which kinda ties into my argument for the first point.

Not trying to be argumentative here, just trying to be short-term realistic.

[Draco18s]

Btw, lifehole, the main problem I found in the save you posted (or one of them, I was only pointed at the one by Chris) was that the besieging force was purely (or very nearly so) Skylaxians and Andors.  Both of those races have the IsHonorable flag, which prevents them from doing any kind of orbital bombardment (the main way planets got whittled down, before the ground-invasion improvement I just mentioned).  Andors, further, won't even invade.  They just stay up there and shoot any defense fleet that the target builds.

Explains so much.

It does leave me wondering how the hell they (Andors, particularly) manage to conquer anyone at all then.

[keith.lamothe]

It does leave me wondering how the hell they (Andors, particularly) manage to conquer anyone at all then.

They don't   Previously there were bugs where they might take over a 1m population planet (by landing the pilots of an armada, basically), and more recently fixed was a bug where races could still surrender to them (if seriously threatened by another attacking race) despite them not actually being able to do anything to them.

But with those fixed, they should be their-own-homeworld-only.

[ptarth]

...replacing massive self-indulgent overrighteous post with less massive self-indulgent overrighteous post...

• I will continue to argue that the underlying systems should be fixed before dealing with the details such as game length.
• Arcen is already adding new mechanisms (e.g., Federation Points), but they aren't working out. Federation Points is a good example. Arcen spent a ton of time on it, and in the end, it was nuked because it didn't work. I believe it is because it failed to address the fundamental issues.
• Current Arcen efforts are focused on slowing the player down. I believe it should be focusing on making the races do more interesting things that the player deals with their power, not destroying the players power. The top complaints voiced on the forum support this.
• The most fun version of The Last Federation, for me, was ~1.004 which was mostly bug fixes. None of the major changes have made the game more fun for me. They have only reduced the power I had as a player to be a System Dominant Giant Mythical Monster Who Does Whatever He Wants.
• Adding new AI behaviors (described in my other posts) would make the game more interesting and allow me to make more interesting impacts.
  
• Mantis has 800 open report tickets for The Last Federation, and more are added in every patch. They should be addressed. Should they be addressed prior to adding more mechanisms? That's a project level question that I'm not qualified to address. However, Arcen is doing what they think is best and adding new mechanisms along with fixing bugs. I think that the most important new mechanisms are the ones addressing the underlying system mechanics, things such as race AI choices and interactions.
• I gave and will give Arcen money for their products. They don't owe me anything. My opinion is just that. They have created something that I can't and spent a ton of time, effort, and of their lives on it. I won't begrudge them that.

[lifehole]

...replacing massive self-indulgent overrighteous post with less massive self-indulgent overrighteous post...

• I will continue to argue that the underlying systems should be fixed before dealing with the details such as game length.
• Arcen is already adding new mechanisms (e.g., Federation Points), but they aren't working out. Federation Points is a good example. Arcen spent a ton of time on it, and in the end, it was nuked because it didn't work. I believe it is because it failed to address the fundamental issues.
• Current Arcen efforts are focused on slowing the player down. I believe it should be focusing on making the races do more interesting things that the player deals with their power, not destroying the players power. The top complaints voiced on the forum support this.
• The most fun version of The Last Federation, for me, was ~1.004 which was mostly bug fixes. None of the major changes have made the game more fun for me. They have only reduced the power I had as a player to be a System Dominant Giant Mythical Monster Who Does Whatever He Wants.
• Adding new AI behaviors (described in my other posts) would make the game more interesting and allow me to make more interesting impacts.
  
• Mantis has 800 open report tickets for The Last Federation, and more are added in every patch. They should be addressed. Should they be addressed prior to adding more mechanisms? That's a project level question that I'm not qualified to address. However, Arcen is doing what they think is best and adding new mechanisms along with fixing bugs. I think that the most important new mechanisms are the ones addressing the underlying system mechanics, things such as race AI choices and interactions.
• I gave and will give Arcen money for their products. They don't owe me anything. My opinion is just that. They have created something that I can't and spent a ton of time, effort, and of their lives on it. I won't begrudge them that.

I think most people agree, and I think that these recent changes are just quick-fixes, but in the end, the massive increase in costs and lengthening of the game WILL mean there will need to be more features, particularly AI behaviors.

But I also recognize that Arcen is doing the most they can in the update timespan schedule they're on, which is, one day at a time. The changes you're asking for are what the players want, I think, but it's the kindof thing that requires a lot of time, effort, and troubleshooting which wouldn't be viable on the one-day-at-a-time time schedule. It certainly would make the game much funner if the races interacted with eachother in more ways than just a flat relations thing that is only used to dictate war prioritization target listing.

There's a lot of interesting things to be added, and the influence modifiers and forced lengthening is just laying the framework, I hope.

[chemical_art]

• The most fun version of The Last Federation, for me, was ~1.004 which was mostly bug fixes. None of the major changes have made the game more fun for me. They have only reduced the power I had as a player to be a System Dominant Giant Mythical Monster Who Does Whatever He Wants.

I will admit that the changes which essentially nerf the player's impact in the short-run have kept me away. The underlying simulation changes so far have pushed me away, not toward. But it is a difficult balancing act, and sometimes for long term health it is necessary to ruin "fun" in the short term.

[Draco18s]

It does leave me wondering how the hell they (Andors, particularly) manage to conquer anyone at all then.

They don't

...Is it even possible, then, to get the "Andors Only" (Pacifism Works!) achievement?

[lifehole]

It does leave me wondering how the hell they (Andors, particularly) manage to conquer anyone at all then.

They don't

...Is it even possible, then, to get the "Andors Only" (Pacifism Works!) achievement?

It'd probably be damn hard. You'd have to like, ignite all other planets.

[keith.lamothe]

It'd probably be damn hard. You'd have to like, ignite all other planets.

Yea, the only method I can think of off hand is to planet-cracker everyone but the Evucks (other races near the Evucks gas giant being ok to leave uncracked) and then drive the Evucks into igniting.  Oh, and the Andors would need to be outside the blast radius.

Pacifism.  Really

[Orelius]

I swear I've seen the andors conquer a planet before.

[keith.lamothe]

I swear I've seen the andors conquer a planet before.

Oh, certainly. That's what I was explaining above with:

It does leave me wondering how the hell they (Andors, particularly) manage to conquer anyone at all then.

They don't   Previously there were bugs where they might take over a 1m population planet (by landing the pilots of an armada, basically), and more recently fixed was a bug where races could still surrender to them (if seriously threatened by another attacking race) despite them not actually being able to do anything to them.

But with those fixed, they should be their-own-homeworld-only.

[Azurian]

Does the game have war weariness?

[Histidine]

If invasions are still getting stalled even with overwhelming attacker advantage, I'd suggest two things:

1) Allow bombardments to take place even when defender armadas are still present, at reduced strength (mantised with details here)

2) Remove the defending armada restriction on ground combat. The invader's ground troops shouldn't need to wait for space supremacy to land; if they think they can win even without the help of the orbital guns then they should Just Do It. This also gives it a more "epic" feel - imagine, say, Saving Private Ryan.