View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0023034 | AI War 2 | Balance Issue | Mar 15, 2020 4:30 am | Feb 11, 2021 12:39 pm | |
| Reporter | Strategic Sage | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 2.009 Plenty Of Tuning | ||||
| Fixed in Version | Beta 2.732 Recon, Golem Buffs, And Sabotage | ||||
| Summary | 0023034: Too Much Hacking | ||||
| Description | Hacking is simply too plentiful in my opinion. Super-low AIP is the only time when you even have to make meaningful choices. For any other playstyle, you have more than you know what to do with. I think going back to 20 hacking per system would be a good idea - not because it's the Classic amount, but because it's roughly where I think an appropriate balance would be. You'd still be swimming in it if you play high-AIP, but lower amounts of systems would at least require more choices. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
|
|
That depends. If you have a lot you can hack GCA and others stuff without taking them. I play some large-scale games and I can tell you my hacking points go down the drain fast. On higher difficulties you notably have a lot more opportunity to use sabotage hacking, which is both a lot more necessary and more plentiful at diff 7-9 with multiple AIs. Maybe offer some saves where you have that situation? |
|
|
I could put saves up but honestly I don't think it's necessary in this case, it's a ubiquitous issue. Unless you're trying to cleanse large sections of the galaxy of Dark Spire or something it's basically everywhere. I interact on the discord quite a bit and I literally can't remember an example of a screenshot a few hours in where the player didn't have spare hacking in the hundreds. I have that happen in literally every game I play. |
|
|
High hack points is the reward of playing high aip playstyle. you can burn hack points on watching planets if you really want to waste hap, or use it to weaken gps and turrets |
|
|
I never play high AIP and I think it finds quite a nice balance. |
|
|
I suppose part of this issue is what the balance should be. Perhaps people have a different perspective on that. I think there's no point to a resource if you don't have to make regular, meaningful choices in how to use it. When you can get most of the tech vaults/ARS/outguard, end with say 200 or so AIP, get a few capacity extenders and still have plenty of hacking left over after doing a couple of science extractions as well I think that's a problem. |
|
|
I dunno, I always run out of hacking points unless there are a lot of astro trains running around (and even then). I do play with more stuff than normal (using the lobby modifiers) and with multiple AIs (so multiple Spire Archives). Hacking points don't increase no matter how much stuff you can potentially take so it's normal for me to run out. Always rerolls for Vaults and ARS. It can get costly. |
|
|
I totally understand that there are possible settings on which you could run out, but I don't think that's a good way to balance the game. I think it should be balanced around the default settings. It'd be fine for example if the amount of hacking available scaled with the amount of stuff there is to hack or if there were a configurable option for it (one of the few things I support adding a new option to the lobby for). |
|
|
I.e., on the rerolls thing … I think if somebody is regularly doing rerolls then that should mean on default settings they can't do other things. |
|
|
So this kind of thing...I'm reluctant to touch. Unlike Classic, there are a lot more things you can only get through hacking, so a nerf to how much you get can...possibly be a net overall nerf to the player. I think if I was to change anything in this area, it might be specific hack costs. |
|
|
I also find I have too many hacking points by the end of the game. Specifically, the hacks become too hard for me to actually do any more, so the points go largely unspent. I think a slight tweak to the curve might be good here. Maybe offer some more things that don't increase AI response to spend it on (and make it very clear in tooltips that they don't increase response). |
|
|
Having multiple AIs solve the growing response, since they each have a hacking pool point. On that note, the generation of ARS might need some tweaking. It looks like most of them belong to the same AIs, even in a 10 AIs game. |
|
|
After playing a difficulty-8 multiplayer game in two people, the hacking points are definitelly too much there. We ended up with extreme response while floating +300 hacking points. I'm quite comfortable with the amount in single (on high difficulty at least), but multiplayer has ridiculous hacking point inflation. |
|
|
I like to hack Coordinators as it's painful to lose them and often are in places I don't want own the planet |
|
|
The point with wanting to lower hacking points is that you should have to choose in some of those circumstances. I.e. if you always have enough to hack coordinators, hack a number of ARS, etc., fleet extenders, and more left over for doing science extractions then there's a problem because the game isn't requiring you to prioritize. |
|
|
@Strategic Sage Well said. I believe the problem here is a balancing issue between low and high difficulties. On higher difficulties, you need to hack as much as possible prior to increasing the AIP too much, while lower difficulties allow a more natural flow, where you can easily float high amounts of hacking points. Personally, on 8+ the hacking points are too precious to lower, as it would make the game even harder, but on difficulty 5 there are basically near infinite hacking points. Trying to balance the current hacking point system seems like a choice between insane higher difficulties and even easier easy difficulties. |
|
|
I would prefer that kind of balance being done on the hacking response side. Though I should say that there are people like Democracy who play high-AIP on difficulty 9 and have tons of hacking points, hack even late into the game, etc. I've been told by advanced players that a lot of them actually wait a bit to do hacking on higher difficulties, sort of the opposite of your perspective I guess, because they don't have the firepower to deal with the response early on. In a current difficulty 8 game I maxed out the hacking response to Terrifying. |
|
|
Honestly it kind of depends on the type of AI and difficulty. But you absolutely are going to be wanting a bit more hacking points than usual against some of the far more heavily entrenched AIs. High difficulty turtle, peace maker, fortress baron... these are things where you *will* be staring at doing some turret hacks just to not lose entire fleets in a particularly nasty spawn pattern. Also there needs to be some wiggle room to allow for the occasional thing like hacking out a coordinator without having to take the system for the half off hack cost. And since that alone is 120+ hacking cost well... I'd not be too concerned unless people are routinely floating 250+ points because generally some pretty critical hacks can easily eat 100+ pretty quickly under certain circumstances. Plus also not wanting to be triggering a bunch of exo's aimed at your homeworld very early on at higher difficulties until you have enough of a fleet to swat them plus the opportunity seeking hunter strike. |
|
|
Reading the discussion, I think initial hacking response should be stronger, but the increase in AI response from hack should be lower. So we could hack more, as currently even on diff 7-8 you can't go much further than 300 points in. Another alternative would be more items you could hack without increasing the hacking response. Minor factions sort of fulfill that... but they are so time consuming to do and clean up that they don't fix the issue. There is certainly a problem. It isn't particularly dificulty to have 300 hacking points from nodes plus 5-6 planets. The main reason I manage to spend most of those points is because I systematically hack GCA to remove them as targets. Points needs to be lowered, or we need to be able to spend more. |
|
|
Hacking response might be better if it had a setup kinda like AIP where there is a floor it won't go back below, but that assuming you give the AI some time to "cool off" and get distracted by something else you could poke it again without getting the kitchen sink dropped on you. Which would mean that long games where you are going to be paying with time and dealing with additional Instigators, CPAs, and other challenges you eventually would get more overall hacking in over time without getting completely outrageous response fleets dropped in response. Which also leads to an interesting conundrum you could offer the players. Another optional destructible that raises AIP by some amount but reduces hacking response. |
|
|
At least in my current diff. 7 game I don't find the hacking points plentiful at all. GCAs and the like were systematically too expensive to hack without taking the world first. I never had enough hacking points to even consider hacking AI defenses on tough planets or spending some on advance scouting to plan my tech choices better. |
|
|
On the hacking of GCAs and hacking points. A HUGE point about hacking those is that if you take their planet, you don't just get half cost for the hack, you also DON'T increase the hacking point response. So yes, when you hack them you do take their worlds because taking a GCAs and hacking it for 20 AIP but Zero hacking response increase is 100% worth it. (Rerolls also don't increase response when you own the GCA). * I am strongly against the AI getting temporary buffs after a hack. We already have "delay" to hacks from the hacks duration. It would unnecessarily slow down the game. |
|
|
Agreed wholly! Working on that, and it's in progress now. :) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 15, 2020 4:30 am | Strategic Sage | New Issue | |
| Mar 15, 2020 10:24 am | ArnaudB | Note Added: 0056557 | |
| Mar 15, 2020 3:31 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0056559 | |
| Mar 15, 2020 5:52 pm | DEMOCRACY_DEMOCRACY | Note Added: 0056561 | |
| Mar 16, 2020 6:10 am | Ecthelon | Note Added: 0056572 | |
| Mar 16, 2020 4:45 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0056573 | |
| Mar 17, 2020 4:36 am | ArnaudB | Note Added: 0056577 | |
| Mar 17, 2020 4:56 am | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0056578 | |
| Mar 17, 2020 4:57 am | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0056579 | |
| Mar 19, 2020 9:58 pm | RocketAssistedPuffin | Note Added: 0056591 | |
| Mar 29, 2020 12:50 pm | Sharkspeare | Note Added: 0056631 | |
| Mar 30, 2020 10:29 am | ArnaudB | Note Added: 0056635 | |
| Oct 11, 2020 1:45 pm | Arides | Note Added: 0059141 | |
| Oct 11, 2020 2:29 pm | Smidlee | Note Added: 0059143 | |
| Oct 11, 2020 4:22 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0059144 | |
| Oct 12, 2020 5:42 am | Arides | Note Added: 0059157 | |
| Oct 12, 2020 11:28 am | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0059164 | |
| Oct 12, 2020 11:39 am | CRCGamer | Note Added: 0059165 | |
| Oct 12, 2020 11:42 am | ArnaudB | Note Added: 0059166 | |
| Oct 12, 2020 12:06 pm | CRCGamer | Note Added: 0059169 | |
| Oct 13, 2020 8:10 pm | Asteroid | Note Added: 0059213 | |
| Oct 14, 2020 2:49 am | ArnaudB | Note Added: 0059217 | |
| Feb 11, 2021 12:39 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Feb 11, 2021 12:39 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Feb 11, 2021 12:39 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Feb 11, 2021 12:39 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => Beta 2.732 Recon, Golem Buffs, And Sabotage |
| Feb 11, 2021 12:39 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0060505 |
