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IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0002596AI War 1 / ClassicSuggestion - New Unit Ideas - GolemsJan 23, 2011 6:21 pm
Reporterhullu Assigned Tokeith.lamothe  
Status resolvedResolutionfixed 
Product Version4.073 
Summary0002596: Minor faction Golems - Hard exostrikeforces rarely(if ever) contain golems
DescriptionPlayed a 20 hour campaign with LotS, Spirecraft - Hard and Golems - Hard enabled. Before the very end the Golem exo strike force never contained a golem, only a lot of starships and spirecraft. Whether it is a bug might be open for discussion, but I'd definitely say it's a borderline working as advertised, since the minor faction text says "Golems and other nasty" something.

At the VERY end I saw Golems though, when devending Tranceiver, but I'm not sure what waves those were, might've been LotS waves too and not even golem waves...

Attached is a save file with a wave just about to spawn, just played it, contained spirecraft only, that's midgame.
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hullu

Jan 22, 2011 1:15 am

reporter  

golemHardWave.sav (479,875 bytes)

keith.lamothe

Jan 22, 2011 9:53 am

administrator   ~0009536

Ok, fixed the descriptions for 4.074. The exogalactic strikeforces actually use the same composition logic (which is highly randomized) for both the golems-hard and the spirecraft-hard minor factions (though having them both on results in two separate sets of strikeforces).

If I forced the golems one to have golems... it would be brutal ;)

But I do hope to refine these in the future, and one aspect is in making the composition more distinct between the three possible sources of provocation. Another is randomizing the rule "spend 1/3rd of the points on a command ship" to potentially go higher than that and have a better chance of picking a golem or whatever.

lyravega

Jan 22, 2011 10:10 am

reporter   ~0009538

But, it has to be brutal!?! I mean, I expect a golem on every exogalactic mumbo jumbo, but I've yet to see an AI golem...

Red Spot

Jan 22, 2011 10:37 am

reporter   ~0009539

Perhaps a setting "Golems - Brutal"? :)

keith.lamothe

Jan 22, 2011 10:50 am

administrator   ~0009540

Well, let's look at the math...

On BrokenGolems-Hard:
- The event-attack-counter increases by AIP*0.8 every minute (the 22nd second of the minute, to be exact).
- The first event-attack is 12,000 points, so if you have an average of 100 AIP up to that point it will take 12,000 / 80 = 150 minutes = 2.5 hours.
- After each event-attack the threshold is multiplied by 1.25, so the second attack is 15,000 points, the third is 18,750, etc. The rate of point accumulation does not increase unless AIP does. The threshold caps out at 100,000 points to avoid situations that are just flatly impossible from an 800,000 point armada or something like that (orzelek suffered many a death in his Fallen-Spire campaign to convince me of the need for such a cap). Of course, if it actually gets that high and your AIP keeps increasing the attacks will just get more frequent.
- When picking a command ship for a battle-group it looks for the biggest thing it can get for 1/3rd of the budget (so 4,000 points for the first one).
- An Armored Golem is classified as a Light Dreadnought, which has a cost of 16384 points.
- Therefore, assuming a single battlegroup for the whole armada, the total budget needs to be at least 49152 points. The earliest that would happen is the 8th attack. At an average AIP of 300 that would be about 12.5 hours into the game; at an average AIP of 400 it would be just shy of 9.5 hours in.

- Generally, though, the actual necessary number is much higher because the armada is split into multiple battlegroups, each of which gets an equal share of the budget. With more than two battlegroups it's basically impossible to get a golem in one of them.
- All this assumes Diff 7; when actually sending an event-attack the total budget is multiplied by the number of human homeworlds (or number of human players if that is higher) and also multiplied by a difficulty factor. On Diff 7 that factor is 1. On 7.3 it's 1.15, on 7.6 it's 1.3, on 8 it's 1.5. At 9 it's 2. At 10 it's 3.

There are a few changes I want to make, but am waiting until post-5.0 because we really, _really_ do not want to introduce new bugs or (more likely in this case) painful-balance-problems just as we're winding up to the official release.
- Have each Broken-Golems-Hard attack have a 50% chance of concentrating everything into a single battlegroup going after a human home command station, instead of spreading out going after multiple command stations.
- Have each Broken-Golems-Hard attack have a 50% chance of spending 1/2 of its budget on the command ship instead of 1/3.

The Spirecraft-Hard faction is the same mathematically, though since Spirecraft have much lower point totals it's natural that the larger-point-value attacks wind up picking Spirecraft for command ships (and possibly even escorts, from low-mark spirecraft).

keith.lamothe

Jan 22, 2011 10:51 am

administrator   ~0009541

And I'm certainly willing to consider a "Broken Golems - AI Breaks Your Face" option ;)

lyravega

Jan 22, 2011 12:23 pm

reporter   ~0009544

hahahah ^_^

Red Spot

Jan 22, 2011 1:03 pm

reporter   ~0009546

Isnt that called defender? :D

Sunshine

Jan 22, 2011 4:36 pm

reporter   ~0009550

"And I'm certainly willing to consider a "Broken Golems - AI Breaks Your Face" option ;) "

This sounds like good fun. I would vote "strong support" for this if there was actually a vote open for this any more.

lyravega

Jan 23, 2011 3:45 am

reporter   ~0009576

lets reopen it! And maybe host a 8 player game someday, against 10/10 techno AIs with "broken golems - in yer face" option! :P

Sunshine

Jan 23, 2011 2:06 pm

reporter   ~0009593

Maybe make it so the "Brutal" difficulty spends build points to construct a golem first, then spends the rest normally unless it has enough build points for a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) golem (of a different type, if at all possible, so that golem attack groups are most likely to be heterogeneous), so there's always guaranteed to be a golem per wave, and the AI will attempt to maximize the number of golems per wave.

lyravega

Jan 23, 2011 6:21 pm

reporter   ~0009601

I cannot imagine all golem waves after XX hours. All kind of golems are present. Heh, that'd be funny... Where's my spirecraft stuff anyway...

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Jan 22, 2011 1:15 am hullu New Issue
Jan 22, 2011 1:15 am hullu File Added: golemHardWave.sav
Jan 22, 2011 9:53 am keith.lamothe Note Added: 0009536
Jan 22, 2011 9:53 am keith.lamothe Status new => resolved
Jan 22, 2011 9:53 am keith.lamothe Resolution open => fixed
Jan 22, 2011 9:53 am keith.lamothe Assigned To => keith.lamothe
Jan 22, 2011 10:10 am lyravega Note Added: 0009538
Jan 22, 2011 10:37 am Red Spot Note Added: 0009539
Jan 22, 2011 10:50 am keith.lamothe Note Added: 0009540
Jan 22, 2011 10:51 am keith.lamothe Note Added: 0009541
Jan 22, 2011 12:23 pm lyravega Note Added: 0009544
Jan 22, 2011 1:03 pm Red Spot Note Added: 0009546
Jan 22, 2011 4:36 pm Sunshine Note Added: 0009550
Jan 23, 2011 3:45 am lyravega Note Added: 0009576
Jan 23, 2011 2:06 pm Sunshine Note Added: 0009593
Jan 23, 2011 6:21 pm lyravega Note Added: 0009601