View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0009078 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Campaign Management And Setup - Map Styles And Generation | Jul 31, 2012 11:14 am | Sep 12, 2013 2:58 am | |
| Reporter | TechSY730 | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.050 | ||||
| Summary | 0009078: Reduce initial game seeding rate of tachyon guardians | ||||
| Description | Right now, using cloaked is much more much fiddly than it needs to be (and in many cases, more than it is worth) for one huge reason. AI wormholes, except for player core planets, have a 100% initial seed rate of tachyon guardians. Though smart play by the AI, it also feels really cheap in a bad way, especially because we humans do not get anywhere near enough stationary tachyon units to cover all of our wormholes. As such, I propose that tachyon guardians get a less than 100% spawn rate at game generation. To keep cloaking and scouting from getting too easy to abuse, the tachyon guardians can receive some buffs, even if it is something as simple as a slight buff in detection range, or a slightly increased post game-generation seed rate during reinforcements. Jointly inspired by Draco18s. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
| related to | 0009184 | considering | AI gets mobile planetary tachyon emitters |
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Also, I wouldn't mind homeworlds having a 100% spawn rate of those tachyon guardians. After all, I would always make sure to have a decloaker on my entry points on my homeworld. I'm fine with the AI stacking counters to mechanics on their homeworld. It just seems cheap that the AI can do so for all of their other planets. |
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Wormholes to player space should always be 100% seed. It's all the rest of the wormholes that bother me. [i]Generally speaking[/i] those don't bother me. It's the 100% seeding (to the point of every wormhole has TWO tachyon guardians: one on each side) that bothers me. |
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Hmm, if the initial seed rate took a chunky nerf, but the chance that AIs can get tachyon guardians in reinforcement cycles goes up some, then that would generally make it such that the AI tends to prioritize placing tachyon guardians on "border" planets dynamically (just like normal reinforcements), as which planets are the border planets will vary throughout the game. This would also reduce (but not eliminate) the chance of having a tachyon guardian on both sides of a wormhole in deep AI space. Some sort of per-guard post max will need to be placed onto tachyon guardians though, to prevent things like 20 tachyon guardians on one wormhole. |
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That would actually be really good. I know that it matches (or at least comes close) to what I'd do as a player: border worlds and important systems. |
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I do like the idea of having tachyon guardians not parked at every wormhole. Perhaps a simple solution could be that a planet has a (15+AIDiff) * Mk lvl of planet percent chance of having the planet to spawn a tachyon guardian at each wormhole. Higher level planets will obviously be better defended and they increase in odds as the difficulty goes up. |
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I don't think it should be related to AI difficulty at all. More tachyons is not [i]harder[/i], just grindier. Edit: How did scouts work originally, before tachyon guardians. Were they just non-cloaked? It's been too long for me to remember that far back. |
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Please keep a couple things in mind: 1) Any changes to tachyon guardians affect scouting balance 2) The cloaker starship is a unit with an off-the-charts potential for abuse that the player has access to in every game, for no K cost. I do agree that it is grindy, but I feel that it is necessary. |
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@Minotaar That's why I suggested that tachyon guardians get a buff of some kind, so when they do appear, they can have more of an impact. I would agree that the scouts and especially the cloaker starships will need some adjusments if this change is made. |
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Minotaar: I realize that, and I'm trying to come up with some considerations on how to address it. Same with the cloaker starship. It's always had "potential for abuse" (I am one of the people responsible for the various command-station-death changes, due to having a cloaker starhip cloaking a transfport FULL of colony ships in order to re-colonize an undefended planet with a rebel outpost every 2 hours). The two ideas I considered are: 1) scouts have a short loss-of-cloak on-wormhole-travel. This would result in similar scouting behavior as current, as the scouts would be revealed with or without a tachyon guardian (the guardian would merely prolong that duration) 2) add tachyon beams to [i]some[/i] guard posts. This would cause scouts-as-currently-used to be roughly as effective as they are now (as traveling in a strait line they'd pass by a tachyon-enabled guard post once in a while). The issues are: 1) Using not-scout cloaking units as half-scouts (and manually observing a system). 2) Micro'ing scouts around these guard posts in order to achieve greater range. I'm not sure which is the lesser evil. |
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Ok less grind... Scrap Tachyon guardians all together and have an "Interplanetary Tachyon emitter" seeded on planets throughout the game so that every system is covered by at least one emitter. If you want to use cloaking then you need to raid the emitter first. |
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@Varone: That doesn't solve the problem. It requires the same amount of work: raiding one planet after another for a specific target just to move a cloaked fleet into the end-system in order to attack a specific target. You might as well just use the original force! If anything, it hurts player-cloaked units MORE. |
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May not make a difference, but i actually meant it to be similar to the "Interplanetary munitions booster" the AI has. If there was one on a planet with 5 wormholes then those 5 planets would be covered by ONE emitter. Raiding 2 or 3 emitters could allow you to have a large amount of planets that are no longer covered by tachyon emissions whatsover. Surely favourable over raiding 10+ tachyon guardians everytime you want to allow free cloaking access to a few planets. Or still not what you were thinking of? |
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Ah, I was seeing it a little differently. Still, that method nerfs scouting, as right now scouts are invisible at least [i]some[/i] of the time. |
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What would happen if tachyon guardians could "see" cloaked units at a very large distance but couldn't decloak them until they got within range? You'd need to have a lot less of them but you'd get them chasing scouts/cloakers around the map instead of the current 8 second damage-window. Is there any chance that would make cloaking a more interesting thing to deal with? I actually have no idea how that would play out but it seems like kind of an interesting idea to me. On the other hand, I don't know if I really object to things as they are; cloaking is a pretty powerful tool and it seems like something you should only get to use after a lot of planning. |
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Martyn: I don't know how well your idea would work, or even if its possible. As to your other comment: cloaking is not as powerful as you think it is. One of the reasons it [i]seems[/i] powerful is when the AI gets cloaking units, but that's not because cloaking is powerful, but because the player has VERY limited anti-cloaking. |
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I don't find clearing Tachyons particularly grindy or annoying. In my 5.051 game right now, I'm youngling bombing them. One Transport+full cap of Mark I Weasels kills a Mark III or less Tachyon Guardian, and almost kills a Mark IV (depending on what else might be nearby). Add in Mark II and that's it. But I've cleared them before with a variety of other methods, none of which take much effort or time. |
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Making cloaker highways by clearing out tachyon guardians feels like the right amount of effort as is. |
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Here's an idea on reducing the "two guardians per wormhole" problem: each pair of guardians on a wormhole is linked so that destroying one of them also destroys the one on the other side. You would still need to clear paths for scouts and cloakers, but there would be less risk of releasing an entire system's guards when you only want to put a scout there. |
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Two Tachyon Guardians at one wormhole should only be for certain AI types (the heavily defensive ones), and I believe the AI Homeworld and possibly Core Worlds. But the normal is no Tachyon Guardians on the systems adjacent to the player home world, and one on every other wormhole (except again, the AI Homeworld and possible Core). |
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I'm not sure on this one. I think I'm going to have to come down on the no changes side. My reasoning is that without the current density of Tachyon Gaurdians, Space Planes and Raptors would become overpowered and scouting too easy. Scouting more then two systems out is supposed to take work, right now we have that balance (roughly anyway, stupid gravity effects). And cloaked units in the players hands are powerful already, reducing the Tachyon Guardians would probably take them into the overpowered territory. Space Planes are one of my favorite bonus ship types at the moment already, they don't need any buffs. |
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Side thought: what if tachyon guardians were in a semi-weak network, the way core shields are? Pop three yellow tachyon guardians, and all linked yellow TG's go down (approx. one sixth of total TG's). You still have blue, green, orange, pink, brown, and white to deal with. (Replace colors with better markers obviously.) That way, an assortment of TG's still stay up in a more or less unpredictable fashion, but you're still forced to carve your way through them. If that's too much of a nerf, consider the idea that each time you destroy a network of linked TG's, the others gain a buff in response. Maybe their detection radius increases. Maybe they get teeth against cloaked units, draining speed or health. Maybe they simply become harder to kill. |
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Just for reference, using just a full cap of Mark I & II Youngling Weasels, I cleared 4 planets of Tachyon Guardians in roughly 2 minutes. I was then able to scout 6 hops using only Scout IIs. I picked up less than 100 threat doing it. |
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I honestly think the current situation is fine. As it is, I love it when I get cloaked units, since I start to wreak complete havoc with them (that is, unless the AI get decloaker units). With full caps of planes and raptors (I think it was), I cleared the AI worlds of tachyon guardians on about ten or so planets. At that point, I could pick off guard posts at will, more or less. Heck, I whittled down the two AI homeworlds with them, since the AO could do absolutely nothing against them until I actually hit them. And for reference, before the tachyon guardians the AI had turrets, which included tachyon emitters if I remember correctly. |
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How about reducing tachyon guardian spawn rates, but either giving some guard posts their own tachyon capability or introducing versions of guard posts that have tachyon capability. |
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@Pheonix: Certainly an idea. I wouldn't mind several guard posts having tachyon beams. It would make them less susceptible to stealth attacks. (Also, your name is misspelled ^..~ p-h-o-e-n-i-x) |
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@Draco, I know about the misspelling. I've been using the handle for ages and I didn't realize it initially. I didn't seem worth changing and it's a very convenient way to make sure that the handle isn't already taken. With regard to the posts, I think that if possible, all core posts should have an ability that breaks cloaking, but only on a limited number of targets at a time. So if a post has Tachyon Beams (limit 15) and you bring say 150 cloaked ships by, the first 15 are decloaked, but as long as they are in range and alive the others are safe. Obviously it wouldn't target perma-cloaked or boosted ships. There is at least part of the architecture for multiple levels of cloaking already in place. We have two levels, cloaked and cloaking boosted, plus permacloak. It should be possible to make a effect that ignores cloaking boosts or disables the ability in an area. Permacloaks would get by just fine, because they can't be decloaked period. As for the cloaker starship thing, do superboosted ships count as cloaked for counterspy attacks? Because if they do, that could have interesting uses. For instance, some sort of unit with a similar but less lethal ability to engage cloaked ships regardless of detecting them. Possibly without the nigh infinite range, but more common and mobile. Might be able to engage units without cloaking at greatly reduced damage, so that not using cloaks doesn't hard counter it. |
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Hehe. Point. I know how that is, *my* nym is never taken either; no one (and I mean NO ONE) puts letters AFTER the number. XD |
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The prevalence of TGs is pretty annoying but the lack of other tachyon options for the AI is also pretty bad (I don't think TGs work on anything except scouts, any armed cloaker force will blast the TG dead when entering the system anyway). However mobile tachyons also complicate scouting (especially the astro trains which move along the same paths that scouts do) so we need to be careful with them. |
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It's possible to make mobile tachyon sources for the AI not mess with scouting (too) much. Afterall, my idea was that they'd just patrol structures, not the entire system, so there would be a safe place for scouts to sit passively. I was also figuring that the mobile source wouldn't actively seek out cloaking unit that just re-clocked unless there were a certain number in system (similar to how I, as a player, won't send a decloaker around the system for [b]one[/i] space plane). |
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Speaking from the viewpoint of the fighter rebalance, it is entirely possible to clear tachyon guardians quickly, cheaply, and without alerting an entire planet. |
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It would be good to note that if this is done, teaching the AI how to use mobile decloakers (if it has any on hand, and prioritizing getting some if it doesn't) when it knows there is military cloaked around would be smart, though tricky. |
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I myself use fleet scouts only on homeworld-adjacent planets. The permacloaked and fast Scout Starship Mark IV is a cornerstone of my strategy. It is the first thing I build. In about first 5-10 minutes I know all the map (70 planets in my current game) AND it also serves as a mobile counter-missile. Thanks to this ship (and the second one which I build when resources allow) any missile/MLRS guard post is a no brainer to me, same about AI missile frigates. This ship sounds almost like cheating, especially due to recent addition of initial 200k resources. |
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Just for a final clarification, the idea would be to make tachyon guardians (or sentinels now) not always seed on every wormhole of every non-HW AI planet, but increase the chance the AI will spawn new ones (especially on wormholes that currently don't have one). (see 0009078:0027222) Also, critically, to prevent cloaking from becoming too OP in player hands, buff the tachyon sentinels in some way, and/or teach the AI how to use mobile tachyon emitters (preferably the second one, though the first one can be done as well if the second one doesn't quite cover enough overly abusive scenarios). |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 31, 2012 11:14 am | TechSY730 | New Issue | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:14 am | TechSY730 | Description Updated | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:14 am | TechSY730 | Description Updated | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:16 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0027216 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:35 am | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027220 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:43 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0027222 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:43 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0027222 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:45 am | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027223 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:49 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0027222 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 11:50 am | Varone | Note Added: 0027225 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 12:02 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027226 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 12:06 pm | Draco18s | Note Edited: 0027226 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 12:06 pm | Minotaar | Note Added: 0027227 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 12:10 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0027229 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 12:15 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027230 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 1:40 pm | Varone | Note Added: 0027232 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 1:47 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027233 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 1:54 pm | Varone | Note Added: 0027234 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 1:56 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027235 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 3:09 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0027236 | |
| Jul 31, 2012 3:22 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027237 | |
| Aug 1, 2012 12:02 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Aug 1, 2012 12:02 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Aug 1, 2012 9:50 am | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027251 | |
| Aug 1, 2012 10:01 am | Faulty Logic | Note Added: 0027252 | |
| Aug 3, 2012 2:18 am | Bossman | Note Added: 0027317 | |
| Aug 3, 2012 9:40 am | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027320 | |
| Aug 3, 2012 11:33 am | Dazio | Note Added: 0027321 | |
| Aug 10, 2012 2:41 am | doctorfrog | Note Added: 0027506 | |
| Aug 10, 2012 9:21 am | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027510 | |
| Aug 10, 2012 9:31 am | TechSY730 | Relationship added | related to 0009184 |
| Aug 10, 2012 1:31 pm | Toll | Note Added: 0027515 | |
| Aug 11, 2012 11:53 am | pheonix89 | Note Added: 0027530 | |
| Aug 11, 2012 12:21 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027531 | |
| Aug 11, 2012 1:27 pm | pheonix89 | Note Added: 0027532 | |
| Aug 11, 2012 1:31 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027533 | |
| Aug 11, 2012 1:32 pm | Draco18s | Note Edited: 0027533 | |
| Aug 11, 2012 1:39 pm | pheonix89 | Note Edited: 0027532 | |
| Aug 11, 2012 5:16 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0027536 | |
| Aug 11, 2012 5:24 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0027538 | |
| Sep 16, 2012 11:35 pm | LordSloth | Note Added: 0028425 | |
| Apr 3, 2013 3:51 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0031449 | |
| Apr 3, 2013 5:04 pm | jenya | Note Added: 0031450 | |
| Sep 12, 2013 2:58 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0033514 | |
| Sep 12, 2013 2:59 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0033514 |
