View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0023841 | AI War 2 | Gameplay Idea | Sep 30, 2020 7:04 pm | Oct 1, 2020 1:02 pm | |
| Reporter | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | BadgerBadger | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 2.603 Nanocaust And Civvies Strike Back | ||||
| Summary | 0023841: Concept: complete revision to Cross Planet Attacks (CPAs). | ||||
| Description | Current model: ----------------------------------------------------- So, the general concept is that right now when a CPA fires, it has all its units turn into threat, which is scary, but then those units will inevitably wind up being granted to the hunter fleet. In some respects that could be seen as fine, because now the hunter is stronger and a strong hunter is scary. But a key aspect of the hunter is that it waits and it is smart about things. So in pretty much all cases, the CPA feels like it kind of fizzled in some respects ("did anything happen?" some may wonder if they don't pay enough attention to strength values and/or the hunter fleet was already really strong). AI War Classic (Long Ago Versions): ----------------------------------------------------- I think that in Classic, particularly pre-4.0 during my favorite time period for that game (so before 2011ish), one of the best things about CPAs was that they were a galaxy-wide test of your defenses. It tended to release units from a wide variety of planets, including little neutered planets way behind your lines that otherwise would never attack you. The units released from a planet like that were not numerous, but they were coming from an unexpected direction and so made players have to devote some defenses to their hinterland. All of the ships came trickling in and were not coordinated with one another, so a couple of key things happened during a CPA. On the one hand, if I had some really strong bottlenecks, those things would be absolutely just going through this trickle of enemy units like a buzzsaw. And that felt GREAT! But then again, there were some cases where there was just absolutely such an constant volume of ships arriving that shields would fall... and fall... and turrets die... and more ships come... and can we hold out on this?? There was a really inexorable tide of ships coming in, and I absolutely loved that. It tested my defenses in a very brute-force fashion, all over absolutely any planet where I had surface area against the AI. It was frequently thrilling, and even if it was NOT thrilling, there was a secondary thrill in that I just buzzsawed an absolute ton of AI units and so I'm proud of my defenses and also looking forward to certain target AI planets now being easier to attack since their defenders were thinned out. Ultimately I'd like to recreate these kinds of feelings, rather than just buffing the hunter. I have some ideas on ways to make that happen, but nothing is written in stone. New Idea: ----------------------------------------------------- First, these CPA ships can't join the hunter fleet or do anything defensive. They can only attack. They don't need much in the way of sophisticated brains. Second, these CPAs should probably be larger than they are now, but I guess we'll see. I would be tempted to give them twice the budget of what I'm hearing about at the moment. Because so many of these ships are going to get meat-grindered by a prepared player, this should be okay. Third, these ships should have special movement logic and not coordinate with one another. This is the very opposite of a coordinated attack. They trickle into destinations without any regard for what other ships are doing, and that's both what makes them exciting as well as something that can be buzzsawed. So no fireteams, and they don't ever wait before heading to a planet, etc. They just go shortest route to target after target. If they are not on a player planet, their goal is to be on a player planet. Fourth, when on player planets, their goal should be to attack metal harvesters, power generators, things that cause AIP on death, and other irreplaceable units, and the command station. If the command station dies, then this is now a neutral planet, and so their goal now shifts to again being after a player planet. They should shoot at whatever is around them as they pursue these goals, but largely if there is a huge fighting force on the planet, their job is to run past them to whatever the high value targets are. I think in the first game I had something like a 50% chance of them going for the command station, and then the other targets were divided up among the remaining 50%. So ships that came in would spread out in that fashion, but ultimately wind up smashing the command station if left alone for very long. I had some thoughts on "maybe this should be another sub-faction like PG or the hunters or warden," but potentially there's a much simpler way to handle this, Badger was noting. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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I don't have any objections to this or much in the way of useful feedback. Just a couple hours ago I was talking about the Devourer and "hoovering" threat, and I can say that CPAs being changed like this would theoretically kneecap my desire for a baby devourer. I'd be initially cautious of a huge increase in CPA budget pending the known effect of the Hunter and Scourge during this time. It seems initially possible to me that a slower player would straight up die to the sheer forces that come barreling in on the coattails of the first CPA. That's not necessarily a terrible thing since they're already playing with Scourge, but... yeah. Generally though, definitely +1 for this change. Could be a good excuse to make some kind of Infrastructure that messes with CPA unit distribution in an area, as well. Not necessarily less or more overall, but just less or more over "there". |
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Currently, if you don't have high defense border worlds compared to something like the amount of threat divided by the number of exposed planets, you do get a lot of non-hunter threat attacks pretty quickly. I didn't see a lot of non-hunter threat attacks in diff 5-6 because the amount of threat that can be leveraged per location is lower in proportion to defenses, but they'll usually do something within a couple minutes in diff 9-10, especially with low static defense and fleets off elsewhere. If the threat were doubled and it all flowed into a planet at the same time rather than kind of streaming like they do now (assuming your static defenses are like 100-200+) might make difficulty 9 unplayable. CPA threat increases were regularly several times my fleet strength, and certain compositions could just drill through several forcefields in seconds (especially if you aren't paying attention to micromanage engineers). CPA strength might be too low in lower difficulties, but in 8+ threat increase seems fine to already a bit much. |
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We can definitely hold off on budget increases for the CPAs, or even tune those to have increased budgets only on lower difficulties, or something to that effect. We could potentially make a galaxy option multiplier for that, too, if we had to. Though that's not my favorite thing. Anyhow, we can tune by-difficulty-level for sure, as needed. |
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Yeah, while difficulty 7 could use some more CPA budget, I heard that 8 and up they start to get nasty, so maybe it is fine there. As for the OP, personally I like that they join threat fleet. Rather my beef is that there are still too many cases threat fleet or hunter fleet can be baited into bad fights and/or wander into words too strong for them to take on or let themselves spread out too much so they don't stream in fast enough to be a threat. Perhaps some percentage of CPA can join threat fleet, and the remaining percentage can be put into this more brave/foolhardy mode? |
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It's worth noting that Chris proposed CPA mechanism is actually dumber than the current, Threat variant. It would just charge without waiting for the strength to win. So if a player loses to the new style CPA it's because they got unlucky or panicked or something. Or the Threat logic is actually a lot dumber than I think. Speaking of which, for your consideration: Add a new Galaxy Setting, KamikazeCPA. CPA units are ineligible to join Threat or the Hunter. When enabled, the units for a CPA will just charge straight at you. No quarter asked or given. Seeing this in action is really fun. |
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Here's a save taken 2 minutes before a CPA. The scenario includes two difficulty 7 AIs and friendly scourge. |
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I suggest making the kamikazeCPAs stronger than threatfleet ones to compensate for their stupidity. |
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* Renamed "Kamikaze CPA" to "Shock And Awe CPA" because of cultural meanings that are inherent in the other. Also adjusted the description: ** Enabling this changes the Cross Planet Attack logic. Ships released by a CPA now flood into your empires from all over the place in a jumbled and exciting rush, rather than joining the Hunter fleet and waiting for an opening. ** This reckless attack can create surprising openings for the rest of your enemies to exploit, or it can lead to you mopping up a lot of ships that arrive haphazardly. One way or the other, it's going to be an event. ** Additionally, because the CPA is using such a staggered approach that you can defend against piecemeal, it's going to send twice as many ships as usual. This can be really good for you, in terms of greatly weakening the defenses of AI planets, but it comes with inherent dangers. * Also made the shock and awe CPAs send twice the units by making it so that every unit they free costs half as much to free. |
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Okay, these are now "Tsunami CPAs," since "Shock And Awe" was legitimately also problematic! |
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One of the hunter fleet modes is called kamikaze. For the sake of consistency with the name change here, perhaps rename it to reckless? |
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Thanks! I like that term. * The hunter fleet type that was previously Kamikaze has been renamed to Reckless. This avoids some confusion. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 30, 2020 7:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | New Issue | |
| Sep 30, 2020 7:48 pm | ParadoxSong | Note Added: 0058824 | |
| Sep 30, 2020 7:50 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0058826 | |
| Sep 30, 2020 7:52 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058827 | |
| Sep 30, 2020 10:26 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0058829 | |
| Oct 1, 2020 12:28 am | BadgerBadger | Note Added: 0058832 | |
| Oct 1, 2020 12:28 am | BadgerBadger | Assigned To | => BadgerBadger |
| Oct 1, 2020 12:28 am | BadgerBadger | Status | new => requires feedback |
| Oct 1, 2020 1:28 am | trabbo | File Added: Autosave.30000.save | |
| Oct 1, 2020 1:28 am | trabbo | Note Added: 0058833 | |
| Oct 1, 2020 10:02 am | crawlers | Note Added: 0058834 | |
| Oct 1, 2020 10:52 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058836 | |
| Oct 1, 2020 11:39 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058837 | |
| Oct 1, 2020 11:52 am | crawlers | Note Added: 0058838 | |
| Oct 1, 2020 12:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058839 | |
| Oct 1, 2020 1:02 pm | BadgerBadger | Status | requires feedback => resolved |
| Oct 1, 2020 1:02 pm | BadgerBadger | Resolution | open => fixed |
