View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0001299 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Interface Ideas - Visual Indicators, Tooltips, and Summaries | Nov 12, 2010 6:09 pm | Jan 3, 2011 11:45 am | |
| Reporter | wyvern83 | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Summary | 0001299: Add a list of how AI difficulty levels will factor into game mechanics to lobby and in-game | ||||
| Description | It would be helpful with the number of new features if a breakdown of each difficulty level could be provided in the lobby and later in-game if you needed to check. Examples: -spawning formulas: ex) guardians, hybrid hives, special structures(ie. what would you encounter if you chose this difficulty setting) -difficulty dependent behaviors that impact game play: ex) Border aggression, barrack/carrier creation thresholds | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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There's really no way we could fit that in the game itself in a tooltip. If I were to write a wiki article about that, it would be multi-page. And in terms of the spawning formulas, they're far too complex to really express in a fashion that anyone could understand without looking at the actual C# code. There are literally at least a hundred decision points based on the AI difficulty, and I'm probably far undershooting it. To some extent this seems a wild hair anyway, because even if you had all that info in hand, you wouldn't be able to predict how that would affect the overall difficulty -- far too many factors. So then, as now, you'd still have to try out the various difficulties and see what feels the best to you. From my perspective, that makes it a pretty intense amount of "busy work" for me, while not really adding anything overly meaningful for players. I can't think of any other game that provides this sort of information, either -- it's usually too abstract to really express ("the difficulty is multiplied by 4.5 and then used as the divisor in the formula 800 over the number of planets over the divisor... and then that's used as the lower bound of a random seed that has an upper bound of the lower bound plus 5 times the difficulty"). There's loads of stuff literally like that, and in fact significantly more complex. |
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Fair enough. Though to be sure I was understood, I was more interested in the short rule of thumb things you occasionally mention in your beta release announcement threads. (I bookmark them when I remember to do so) For example I think you mentioned that at level 5 only one tachyon guardian per post would spawn. You also explained how to calculate what the ceiling for hybrids would be. That's more or less what I had in mind. |
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I gotcha -- yeah, I've mentioned about 30% of the rules that way, over time. I just don't have an aggregate list of that anywhere, and it only includes some of the rules that I thought were interesting for people who would shortly be doing beta testing on the new features. It's just such a challenge with the game being a moving target and so complex to keep that sort of thing documented over the long haul, in addition to my comments above. |
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ah, that would make it difficult to do. Not to mention that it keeps getting bigger. A out-of-game wiki, and that 30%, is much easier in that light. |
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Thanks for understanding. There's just sooo much to that. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 12, 2010 6:09 pm | wyvern83 | New Issue | |
| Nov 12, 2010 6:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0003313 | |
| Nov 12, 2010 6:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Nov 12, 2010 6:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
| Nov 12, 2010 6:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Nov 12, 2010 7:14 pm | wyvern83 | Note Added: 0003318 | |
| Nov 12, 2010 8:58 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0003321 | |
| Nov 12, 2010 9:32 pm | wyvern83 | Note Added: 0003325 | |
| Nov 12, 2010 9:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0003326 | |
| Jan 3, 2011 11:45 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | resolved => closed |
