View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0002386 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Jan 11, 2011 5:35 pm | Jan 11, 2011 8:49 pm | |
| Reporter | lyravega | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | no change required | ||
| Product Version | 4.065 | ||||
| Summary | 0002386: Spire Maw - Swallow | ||||
| Description | They're currently capable of eating many, many things, including Starships. This should be based on ship size - a Maw eating a Spire Starship or Spire Stealth Battleship is kinda annoying since those are expensive. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | |||||
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This is actually an oddity with transporters in general. Transports have this same abusable quality. |
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That's the nature of maws -- the strategic challenge is to figure out how to deal with that. For instance: you need a sizable fleet so that you can take down the maws and get your stuff back. If you go up against maws with just a few ships, even awesome ships, you'll lose. |
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It's not just that. Any ships that were being swallowed doesn't have any order when the maw is destroyed, and they pop right within the enemy fleet - an instakill for them most of the time, since tractor beams were holding most of them out of range. It's ok for smaller ships, but bigger ships (well, starships) end up next to 100 bombers/etc that are trying to get away from tractor beams, just an example. Or they swallow MRS and etc that are under forcefield. I was wondering where the hell were my MRS.s and apparently they ended up in another system due to maw "abduction". Are raid starships immune to swallow? If not, that'd be another thing if maws reside next to something that needs to be taken down by raiders, another example :P And instead of a sizeable fleet, I prefer hit and run tactics, deep strikes and deep colony acquisations, etc... using cloaker starships most of the time for that matter. Seeing my force being chewed while I'm trying to destroy the eye or guard posts (and slowly, I might add, since FF-bearing ? guard posts have 400m HP aswell), is just annoying :P Also, since snipers aren't able to pick targets inside forcefields, that makes the problem(s) above much worse. |
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Raid starships are indeed immune to being swallowed. Everything else is working more or less intended there. Your desire for a specific type of fleet is irrelevant: you have to adapt to the situation at hand. I don't mean that in a negative way, I just mean that preferences have no real place in determining if something is balanced. When the AI uses something specific, you need to use something in the range of counters against that thing. In the case of maws, it's one of the few that encourages larger fleets when dealing with them, rather than starships. |
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That does sound like it would make any system with an AI Eye and a large number of Maws a rather lose-lose situation, though. Not sure how common of an issue that would be... A "perfect" fix, IMO, would be if starships took up more than one "slot" inside the Maw - this would also be a convenient way of balancing the ease of transporting starships vs. fleet ships. I'm thinking along the lines of Starcraft, where a Dropship can hold 8 marines, but only 2 siege tanks. Not sure how much of a nightmare that would be to code... EDIT: Ya know what I should do? I should make a new ticket for this. xD |
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Good idea imo MaxAstro. Starships taking up 25-30 space, or maybe even more to prevent MKI's from swallowing starships... Sounds nice. It can also be applied to low cap / big ships aswell, introducing a new attribute, ship size, or something like that. Maybe lower mark maws cannot swallow ships bigger than X size, etc... However, AI carriers and barracks might get affected due to that. Fast barracks placement leading to many, many more carriers for example. Although, since they'll be carrying fewer ships, but there'll be more carriers to deal with. |
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I'm not keen on that sort of thing, multiple slots and all. I don't think the current model is really that particularly bad. If you run into maws and an AI eye, then you have to get creative: raiding the guard posts with raid starships (or the maws, for that matter); EMPing the system for a bit and then using your starships against the maws and guard posts; or a host of other things. There are always options! |
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Yes, but always ask yourself this. Do those options put you at a severe resource disadvantage unavoidably, and are those options "fun" (or rather, do those options ruin fun)? |
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I always ask myself if it's fun. I think that varied tactics with sideways solutions are the very epitome of thus. It's not like here are mass innevery game. And it's really not like maws and ai eyes are always together. Difficult does not mean un-fun. |
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Okay, as long as you thought of it. BTW, I was not insinuating it wasn't fun, but those are important questions to ask yourself whenever new tactics become almost mandatory. |
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Yes, I'm familiar with the idea of game design... may have some experience there. ;) |
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Sorry, I just realized I was preaching to the choir. It is just that many games these days either lose sight of the "fun factor", or forget that difficulty does not necessarily lead to lack of fun, and thus dumb things down too much. From what I have seen from you guys, you are at no risk of "dumbing things down" anytime soon. :D |
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It's all good. It's certainly a tough call in a lot of circumstances, and in some ways this one is borderline because there are a limited number of counters, but in the end I decided that didn't mean it was invalid. For one, new counters will develop over time. And for two, variety is really, really good: breaking people from always just using their same pet strategies is a primary goal of mine, as I think that's the path to critical thinking in a strategy game (not always doing the same 'ol standby). That's why I'm really not too fussed about the fact that when the AI has a specific one unit (maws) out of a possible 54 that it might have, that certain strategies are required in certain circumstances. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 11, 2011 5:35 pm | lyravega | New Issue | |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:36 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008273 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008274 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Jan 11, 2011 5:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => no change required |
| Jan 11, 2011 6:07 pm | lyravega | Note Added: 0008286 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 6:09 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008287 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 7:17 pm | MaxAstro | Note Added: 0008294 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 7:20 pm | MaxAstro | Note Edited: 0008294 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 7:24 pm | lyravega | Note Added: 0008296 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 7:25 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008297 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 7:26 pm | lyravega | Note Edited: 0008296 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 7:29 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008299 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 8:02 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008305 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 8:03 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008306 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 8:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008309 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 8:45 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0008313 | |
| Jan 11, 2011 8:49 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0008314 |
