View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0002366 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Jan 11, 2011 2:54 am | Jan 11, 2011 5:57 pm | |
| Reporter | MaxAstro | Assigned To | keith.lamothe | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 4.065 | ||||
| Summary | 0002366: Wormhole-incapable Force Fields make Fallen Spire impossible. | ||||
| Description | Well, nearly so. How in blazes are we expected to defend the Shard now? WITH my entire fleet guarding it, I usually find that 3 Mark III force fields is barely enough to get it through alive for some of the longer runs. Without forcefield coverage, no amount of ships seems to work because the AI go straight for the Shard, ignoring everything else. Are we supposed to be rebuilding the force fields at every wormhole? I understand the intentions of this change as far as preventing some of the more grievous offensive uses of force fields, but a change to make FFs never function on AI controlled planets would achieve the same thing without making it many times harder to do the Fallen Spire campaign. Alternatively, Force Fields could be only able to enter a wormhole that leads to a friendly planet? In addition to the Fallen Spire issues, this makes home system force field management a lot more tedius; instead of being able to move my forcefields to each now border planet as I claim it, I now have to delete the FF on the former planet and rebuild it on the new one, which in the case of higher mark FFs is a decent economic hit for what feels like no good reason. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Fortresses not being able to move through wormholes is one thing, but not being able to move forcefields through wormholes is economically detrimental, and very problematic for coordinating defenses. Maybe add a timer to forcefields, that they aren't able to function for 30 seconds to a minute after going through a forcefield, to prevent the more notable abuses of dumping a giant pile of forcefields through a hostile wormhole? |
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For your information, shards can be cloaked. This is what I do, I send a cloaker starship with survey vessels, then when I get the shard, I move my cloaker starship in range, and when it is boosted, I go back to my home. The hard part to deal is, the "aftershock". Shards being cloak boosted maybe an unintentional thing, but I don't see any other way to counter the ships aside from the combined turret + ship force in one of my planets. |
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I always just delete them anyway for home defense. I usually have huge swaths of time I am running cap resources and just throwing resources away anyway by late midgame. |
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Forcefields used to be immobile, but were given mobility for purposes of letting players correct small things abouttheir placement. Then players thought it was iterating to use then on the go. This was pre-2.0. At the time, I thought it was interesting, too, but the game has hanged enormously since then. Building forcefields on ai planets is ok, because you need to have them for beachheads. Having forceifelds go down every time they shift slightly would lead to rage-inducing accidental losses, I think. And the inability to shift the coverage of a shrinking ff, of course. Going through workflows, though: that leads to all sorts of abuses, as noted. I haven't done much with fallen spire, so Keith I'll leave it to you how to solve this. But forcefield changed in a generalized sense aren't a good idea, I don't think. |
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Is there any of the abuses that would still be a problem is forcefields could only enter wormholes leading to friendly planets? Not sure how code-friendly that is, it's just I have never abused force fields and I feel kind of unjustly punished; suddenly there is a lot more micromanagement and difficulty added to the way I play the game in the name of stopping a strategy I've never used. EDIT: Also, on the use of cloaker starships. That is clever, and I hadn't thought of that, but I dislike the design principle of "you MUST unlock cloaker starships to get through the Fallen Spire campaign". Admittedly that is already true of higher mark Force Fields, but those are something I am likely to use anyway, unlike Cloaker Starships which I use very rarely. |
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It's also a case where cloaker starships are from the Zenith Remnant expansion, so we don't want to require people buy TZR just so that they can play fallen spire, which is a different campaign. So that is a clever solution, but it can't be the only solution. In terms of moving force fields between planets: that was never a goal, really, in the first place. The goal wasn't just to punish kiting forcefields around in military territory, it was to prevent them from being moved around substantially in general: they're meant to be erected, adjusted very slightly if need be, and that's about that. To clarify that usage, I've put in the following change: * The move speed of all the player force fields have dropped to a flat 4 (the amount of the mark I forcefields), and they are now immune to speed boosting, and no longer scale up their speeds with faster combat styles. This reflects that the movement of the forcefields are just for small adjustments, and not any sort of larger tactical engagements, which would be glacially, ridiculously, slow. |
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As an aside, please don't take that change as my kicking you further or something: that's not intended to be the case. It's just a matter of all sorts of unintended and too-powerful strategies cropped up around forcefields, and you reminded me of another. They're really meant to be immobile, but the fact is that if they are COMPLETELY immobile, then players have to tear them down if they need to shift them slightly, which is a real pain. This fixes that, without allowing the other stuff. |
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So it's not that I'm being punished for an unrelated abuse, it's that my uses of force fields were abusive as well. xD Okay, I can take that. After all the crap I gave a friend of mine for dropping the game after the nerf to knowledge raiding because it "made his way of playing the game obsolete", I'd be the all time hypocrite if I started making similar complaints. :) I am interested to see what is done with the Fallen Spire - and hopefully soon; I don't think I'll be able to pull off the next Shard recovery in my current game as things stand. :) |
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Thanks for that. :) It's really super hard to please everyone all the time, and so sometimes I have to do something that someone finds really unpopular, just so that there aren't people dropping the game because they found unanticipated ways to make it way too easy. Moving forcefields around much is definitely in that camp, on AI planets or no, as it rewards quickness rather than planning on the one hand, and on the other hand causes huge unstoppable groups of ships, etc. You're right that Fallen Spire needs something done, and hopefully today. I'm waiting for Keith on that, though, as that's his thing and I don't want do step on toes there. I think my inclination at present would be to just give the shard a ton more health, and possibly some regen or something. It seems like one of those football objects that doesn't get destroyed, but just takes a herculean effort to recover. It could even be made invincible to the AI, and then seeded a bit further out, for instance. Keith had originally imagined these getting loaded onto special player ships that could carry them home, but scrapped that because it was unnecessarily complex. But there is something to the general idea, in the sense of not letting the shard move without some other ship towing it along, basically. I don't want to overcomplicate the shard stuff, and I'm not in love with that idea, but it seems to me that the ideal goal for the shard changes would meet the following list: 1. Not making the shard super more likely to die. 2. Not making the shard much easier to get back to player space. 3. Not adding a ton of complexity in the code (and thus bugs). 4. Not adding to tedium for the players. At least, that's my take, but like I noted this is Keith's thing. |
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Yea, I'm honestly not sure what to do about this. I played through a full FS game and never had any problem with the AI nailing the shard because its hp was so high and I was generally able to maintain force superiority in the area. But I think the speed has changed a lot since then and now with the ffs no longer available for this... MaxAstro (and others), is this a problem even for the very first shard recovery and the others before you can get destroyers/cruisers? I'm guessing you've tried covering the shard with the capital ship shield generators and/or riot starship shield generators, but they're too low on hp? Or just too small? And the shard is not intended to be cloakable, but I'll leave that alone until I've figured out what to do about this general issue. |
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Keith, what are your current design goals for the shard? I've not played it to really be able to know -- what mechanic lets players pull that back to their territory? Is there any sort of problem with giving them (say) 600m health or something crazy like that? The goal would obviously be to not make things too easy with a change of that sort, but it seems to me that the challenge in bringing back a shard should be in keeping the escorts alive, not the shard itself. |
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As an aside, Keith, sorry I keep messing with your stuff inadvertently with these other changes. ;) I promise I'm not planning anything else huge like this until after 5.0. :) |
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Oops, I meant that forcefields should shut off briefly (30 seconds to a minute) after passing through a wormhole, not after moving. This would make it so that you CAN use them on AI planets, and can reposition them to different human/neutral worlds, but your forces/whatever you want to protect will be vulnerable for a time on crossing over to the next world. |
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Hm... covering the shard with the spire ship force fields is an idea that did not occur to me either. It's possible that I've been over reliant on force fields, although that is party a side effect of the fact that you need to unlock them for the FS modules. I will admit I haven't tried a later-game Shard run without force fields; I have been scared to since my three Mark III ffs usually get down to about 15% health each by the time the shard is to my homeworld. I do have a vivid memory of losing the shard on the very first recovery I tried, and I had a three-hop recovery not too long ago without FF coverage that resulted in the Shard being down to 25% health. Maybe I just suck at this. :) I think I agree with x4000; losing the Shard isn't fun. If the Shard were made nigh-indestructible but harder to get back to friendly territory I think that would make Fallen Spire more fun. It also is a bit of a break of verisimilitude for me that as long as I actually recover the Shard it's easy to find another one, but if I ever lose a Shard suddenly there aren't any more in the entire galaxy. EDIT: It also occurs to me that it is often a matter of luck how hard the Shard is to keep alive. If all the AI ships spawn in a world right next to it and directly beeline it it can be almost impossible to protect, but if they take a circuitous path or spawn more distantly, I've had entire recoveries happen before any of the spawned AI ships hit my planets. Which is kind of creepy, honestly, because you know they are out there, ~somewhere~, and you don't know why they aren't attacking... yet. xD |
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Chris, the mechanic is that the player just gives the shard a move order to get it back home. The challenge comes via the fact that roughly every minute (varies by which shard) more AI strikeforces spawn to go after the shard and/or the human homeworld. But that stops when the shard reaches the homeworld. Then the player has to deal with the guys still on the chase ;) It's a major pain to try to have the shard be transported instead, as then you've got ships trying to chase an object that's basically in a bag-of-holding ;) We don't have time to work the bugs out of that. In theory I could have survey ships or something like that be able to speed boost shards and have the base shard speed be something ridiculously low. But that wouldn't really solve the original complaint here that it's too hard without mobile ffs, as survey ships are much easier to kill than shards. And I'm sure there'd be umpteen bugs coming out of the special case speed boost. Anyway, having thought for a while, here's what I'd like to do: 1) Make all shards have 300m hp instead of 20/200m. 2) Make sure shards still have the intended slow-but-not-glacial speed. 3) Extend the range of Riot and Spire Capital Ship shield generators. 4) Encourage players to be creative ;D There are _so_ many things you can do to get through the shard recoveries: 1) Worst-case, just glass all the AI planets along the path before uncovering the shard. Optionally, fortify them. Grav turrets, spider turrets (and other engine damage stuff) and Log command stations work wonders in buying time. 2) If you have supply on a path segment, you can use mobile builders to lay down tractors, grav turrets, etc: - Riot Control Starships are also capable of providing mobile tractor support, and engine damage (or even the tazer for paralysis) can help a lot too. - Building a ff on top of a wormhole that the enemies have to go through (on the entrance, not the exit) can also slow them down a lot even if the ff can't actually stay on top of the shard. - For that matter, you can use an ff to temporarily shield the shard while your fleet clears out the enemy strike force, or at least pares it down before you make another run for it. 3) For later recoveries, you should be able to field some capital ships that can physically cover the shard with their shields. Group/Formation move is helpful here. HP-wise I've already been planning to decrease the hull strengths and increase the shield strengths, and that will help somewhat too. |
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And there's a lot of other stuff. I remember one tester saying that he found his first real need to use a nuke during a shard run ;) That was before I made it easier, though. You shouldn't be needing to drop nukes (except maybe in the last stages of the progression), but don't shy from an EMP if you _really_ need a particular strikeforce to chill out for a while. |
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That sounds great to me -- I agree, doing transports is right out. |
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The most problem I've encountered in shard runs is the difficulty scaling. The first shard's mark V assailants are the problem mostly. They're kind of a pain unless you've cleaned a lot of stuff out and baited the AI into reinforcing somewhere else. The second shard and the rest are easier (easier than the first shard, but still hard and fun) because now the player has a small base and enough force to project around. Riots (tazer esp) is kind of unfeasible for the first shard unless you've cleared around a lot and hogged the knowledge just for the riots. Entrance blocking FF's are quite good, placing paralyzers/maws/engine damagers behind the FF is even better. But laying down turrets while you also need them on the home planet to survive the aftermath is bleh. Maybe making the shard stop when there's no escorts around in a big enough range and buffing the hp (up the wazoo if need be) would work? AI's reinforcements on a hostile planet would endanger the escort, while the core spawns still bash the spire. Or, making the first shard response team into markIII's and IV's instead of core stuff would work. I lost my first shard not because I was ill-prepared, but because I expected spawns 1-2 mark levels over the AIP, not cores and IV's. |
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Yea, the chase-spawns and other event-attacks can pick mkV fleet ships if they have the points (and, generally, they do). It's best to not try to make a special case out of that one particular set of event attacks; on the contrary, it's fair warning that if you keep pursuing the FS progression you'll be seeing a lot of those core ships ;) You shouldn't need the tazer or anything like that for the first recovery, it's only two hops away from your territory and it refuses to send you through a mkIV planet (even if it means spawning the shard right on your homeworld). Those mkV ships are a pain, yea, but that's the point, and it should be doable. But incidentally the hp for that first shard has been boosted like 15x for this next version, so that will make it very unlikely that you'll actually lose it. You might lose your home planet if it takes too long and too many chase-groups are spawned, but that's not very likely with how far away it spawns. |
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Didn't know that Cloaker Starships were added with Zenith Remnant. They are pretty damn good however, I send some Neinzul Enclaves to some AI planets just to stir the beehive a little bit. Or I take out any Tachyon emitters I see, and send ninja attacks on AI planets, taking colonies in deep enemy territory, bring back the golems to safety, etc... It gives me a lot of new ways to come up with an unique tactic :) Back to the subject, AI response to shard "theft" should be within the progress limits for the first two shards, the rest should scale accordingly - making it harder as you'd be having some Spire monsters by that time. |
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The changes in for 4.066 should more than compensate for the lack of being able to use the normal ff gens for protecting the shard :) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 11, 2011 2:54 am | MaxAstro | New Issue | |
| Jan 11, 2011 2:55 am | MaxAstro | Description Updated | |
| Jan 11, 2011 2:57 am | MaxAstro | Description Updated | |
| Jan 11, 2011 10:32 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0008212 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 10:44 am | lyravega | Note Added: 0008216 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 10:45 am | Suzera | Note Added: 0008217 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 10:45 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008218 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 10:45 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => keith.lamothe |
| Jan 11, 2011 10:45 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => acknowledged |
| Jan 11, 2011 11:43 am | MaxAstro | Note Added: 0008227 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 11:49 am | MaxAstro | Note Edited: 0008227 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 12:15 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008232 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 12:17 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008233 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 12:24 pm | MaxAstro | Note Added: 0008234 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 12:35 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008238 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 12:39 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008239 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 12:44 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008240 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 12:44 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Edited: 0008240 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 12:45 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008241 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 1:04 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0008242 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 1:12 pm | MaxAstro | Note Added: 0008245 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 1:15 pm | MaxAstro | Note Edited: 0008245 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 1:45 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008250 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 1:47 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008252 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 1:52 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008255 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:40 pm | Kordy | Note Added: 0008276 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:49 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008280 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:54 pm | lyravega | Note Added: 0008282 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:57 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0008284 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:57 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | acknowledged => resolved |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:57 pm | keith.lamothe | Resolution | open => fixed |
