View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0024239 | AI War 2 | Gameplay Idea | Dec 16, 2020 3:42 pm | Dec 22, 2021 8:23 pm | |
| Reporter | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | tom.prince | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Summary | 0024239: Consider: extra ongoing costs to things that give fleet-wide massive bonuses (turbo raiders, cloaked transports, etc). | ||||
| Description | I don't want to create a hard cap where people can only play one certain way, but there needs to be more of a cost. As you add more and more other ships into a single fleet that is paired with the unit type in question (those raiders that make every ship as fast as them, the cloaked transports that let you hide an entire fleet that goes anywhere, etc), you should be having to deal with that in some way. Right now you pay an initial upfront cost, and then you can stack 40 ship lines all in one fleet and get a massive overpowered buff. These mechanics are not bad -- in fact, I love them -- but they are very overpowered right now. I don't have any interest in toning them down, because that defeats the point of them in the first place. And I don't like artificial restrictions like "this fleet can now only have 3 ships lines" or something like that. I don't want to stifle styles of play entirely. So my thought is that these things should come with energy costs. Anything that is metal-based (in terms of extra construction cost or something) will encourage players to move ships out of the fleet during refleeting and then back in while they exist, so that's no good. If there was a metal upkeep cost, then again players are encouraged to juggle ships in and out of fleets. So my thought is instead to make it cost energy. Unless you are having a brownout, you're unlikely to want to juggle based on this sort of thing and enegy. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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An alternative to this would be to make the raiders or whatever instead be in their own fleet. Then instead of it being an ongoing cost in energy, there could be a large cost in metal AND a cost in hacking points to move ship lines into these "boosted fleets." Essentially you would then have standard fleets (where the stats of a ship are what they are) and boosted fleets (where the stats of a ship in that fleet are gaining bonuses from being in that fleet). |
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This may be unpopular, but I'd go the route of reducing fleet sizes, and doing so dynamically. In Galactic Conquest times there were 2 tiers of Flagships with transport functionality: Everything else had 5 slots Antagonists (= Super-Arks) had 8. Naturally this limited how many ships could be boosted and greatly reduced the "effectiveness" of that boost. It also meant that if you wanted to have a higher boost you would need to eat more AIP for a bigger transport vessel with more lines. In current AIW2 I would say maybe limit things a bit, as I don't think there's too much of a problem with ship lines becoming OP through boosts. Maybe like this: Transport Flagships (normal): 20 slots Transport Flagships (cloaked/agile, potentially other types): 15 slots Arks: 30 slots Golems: 40 slots This way strike forces such as cloaked/agile would need to make the best of fewer ship lines, but bigger centerpieces could have a higher "boost effectiveness". Alternatively I could imagine a modifier to consumed power/for building required metal. |
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That would make sense as one option, yes. Although I'd be more inclined to handle the exact ones that get certain numbers to be a bit different. And maybe not let the booster ships go in things that aren't "boost fleets" or somesuch. |
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That would really cramp the how and where of things being usable though if you only let them boost in special fleets. I in the past did put up a post on the forums about how the transports really should have some allowed line differences. In effect transports that are more than just a "transport" lose some storage space to support equipment. And really a Cloaked transport shouldn't have more than 20 lines tops. If you wanted a different way of counter balancing fleet boosts make them eat at fleet max capacity because the support equipment takes extra slots. With the number of extra slots being consumed being somewhat based on the bonuses being provided. The basic +25% to one stat boosts? One extra line of space taken. The +50% super bombers? Something like *five* lines taken in support costs. So you'd want to use a standard transport to get the most out of them (because the bog standard transport would have the most lines) or you really want that bonus on a cloaked you definitely *pay* for it. |
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If the fleet boosts are meant to be "boost to every player ship the player has," then that's kind of one thing. That was never really meant to be the intent, but it is how things have wound up being used. In a lot of ways, getting the special raiders turned into "no ships are slower than mega-fast ever again," which is kind of a bummer. Having a single cloaked transport can be "every ship is able to be moved silently around the map in a cloaked fashion if we want to." I do kind of want to eliminate those situations, as those were byproducts rather than intentional. I had envisioned players coming up with strike forces of specialized cool things that don't have their usual downsides, not using it to change their entire empire, if that makes sense? I guess this comes back to the fleetballing question, of not wanting to give players an incentive to only ever use one fleet (because that one fleet has the amazing booster ship in it). |
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This really made me think, so here's my ideas on it. Let's preface by saying that the game is plenty fun as is, there is no need to rush a rework or anything like that. Let's look at how similar things worked in Classic: >two kinds of normal transports: a basic one you get from the start, and a better one (with cloaking, among other things) being unlockable via science. >many ships that buff their allies, complex system including limits to the magnitude of the buffs certain ships can receive and limits to how many buffs certain ships can hand out: in short, you can't turn your snipers into artillery golems by giving them a massive escort of attack boosting ships, and you can't cloak a giant fleetball with a single cloaker starship. >you can get mk3 (halfway to the max) with 1 planet plus 1/3rd of science, after that you can get mk4 with an advanced factory, and the maximum mk5 requires finding a constructor but has no other requirement. >with the exception of the advanced factory, getting access to higher marks for one ship does not give you access to higher marks of other ships >you can't get multiple copies of the same ship line >you want a fairly varied fleet to cover hull types and immunities >if you put all your stuff together, all it takes is one hunter killer/dire guardian/astro train to wipe most of your power, lose you multiple hours of metal income, and likely cause a game ending reprisal wave. And now AIW2: >three kinds of normal transport: basic, agile, and cloaked, with the latter two being almost straight upgrades and being randomly found across the galaxy (or potentially chosen together with a starting fleet). >few ships that buff their allies, mostly locked behind the FRS hack and its massive AIP costs , no limit to the magnitude of the buff (even the slowest ship will get to raider speed), no practical limit to how many ships can be buffed by them (40 lines of useful ships is something I've never approached even on high AIP) >the cheapest way of getting mk4 (halfway to the max) without hacks requires more than 4 planets worth of science, reaching the max of mk7 without hacks requires more than 15 planets worth of science IIRC, even with two matching tech vaults you need more than 10 planets of science for mk7. >getting higher marks for one ship almost always means getting higher marks for other ships and turrets you own, if not that it makes some capturables far more attractive >you can get multiple copies of the same ship line, and most of the time that's the best choice >getting higher mark ship trumps getting ships better at countering what you're going against, most of the time: at mk1 a line of bombers is 6x faster than a line of vwings at taking down a guardpost, but mk5 vwings are twice as fast as mk1 bombers, and mk3 bombers are only 1.4x faster than mk5 vwings >if you put all your stuff together in one fleet, you get more value out of those sweet ultima bombers, and you can always swap lines if you really need to move them around quickly So, collecting high mark ships all in a single fleet and buffing them with an FRS line is simply the easiest path to victory at the moment. How to change that without too much work? Here's a few simple ideas: >lower ship line cap on transports, 40 is basically no limit at all for most games >lower than usual ship line cap on special transports, for example 10 lines on the normal transport and 5 on the cloaked one. >add some sort of cooldow/spin up time to ship line swapping, that way you can't just panic swap them around for defense >transport variants as modules, like champion upgrades in Classic: you can give any transport cloak or super speed or whatever, but it will cost you energy and metal and time you could have invested elsewhere. >transport variants might be locked behind some capturable/hackable >transport variants might be unlocked directly through science >give fleet buffs to arks instead of FRS ship lines: that could work thematically, and you could tweak each ark for balance >make FRS ships just strong/unusual variants of normal ships like in the Extended Ship Variants mod, that way you get them because they help you directly and not because they help by making your fleetball stronger. Here's a few less simple ideas, to take with a grain of salt: >change mark scaling to strengthen special effects but have less of an impact on raw numbers, to enourage special purpose fleets over fleetballs and varied fleet composition over high mark ship stacking >change fleet lines in a way that prevents or discourages having multiple of the same >change fleet lines in a way that discourages stacking as many of them as possible in a single fleet >change metal economy/build speeds to make fast rebuilding of whole fleets less easy, possibly reintroduce increasing metal costs with mark: it's easy to have more metal income than one can possibly spend by the late game >make hull techs unobtainable through straight science, and instead have them require holding/hacking a special building much like the advanced factory To finish, specialized fleets are already viable and fun, at least at diff7: I'm currently having a great campaign in which I exclusively use infinite range ships in my main assault fleet, and exclusively melee ships in my main defensive fleet, and it's working out well despite the Dark Spire trying its hardest to prove me wrong and despite the sniper auto-targeting doing its best to let threat escape. |
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That's a lot of good stuff up there. Here's what I would suggest, in raw numbers: -> Transport capacity limited: --> Normal/Custom Transports: 10 --> Cloaked Transports: 5 (I do think these are better than agile, by a LOT!) --> Agile Transports: 8 --> Arks: Depending on type between 10 and 15, some "deep-strike-y" variants like Belle Prime maybe just 8-ish --> Golems: Depending on type between 20 and 30 as a "mass transport with weapons", these are supposed to be BIG --> FCE Boosting a fleet line also makes it consume 2 slots -> FRS boost balance: --> For every FRS ship line slotted in the energy cost of the entire fleet (excluding the flagship because it's not getting boosted as far as I know!) increases energy or metal in relation to the boost ---> Every 1% damage boost costs 1% more energy ---> Every 1% shield health costs 1% more metal ---> Every 1% hull health costs 1% more metal ---> Every 1% boosted speed of a ship line (if Turbo raiders boost the speed of a ship from 400 to 1600 that's 300% boosted speed) increases the energy cost of THAT ship line by 0.25% (so in this example by 75%). This is calculated per-ship-line-boosted. Ship lines already at or above the speed limit cost no further energy ofc! --> This way powering up the fleet costs more to produce them, and upkeep increases as well -> Tech is fine I think. It's just how AIW2 works. --> Fabricators in AIWC needed protection, in AIW2 the closest one could get was capturing/hacking a pseudo-flagship with one mark 7 ship line that they could slot anywhere they want, thus the need to protect would simply disappear --> Special Constructors would also be difficult, but doable. A "hidden" tech that upgrades ALL ships of a type (Strike Craft/Frigates) so long as it's owned and intact, and revokes its tech upgrade status if destroyed would be possible. --> However: AIW2 has its fair share of capturables, not sure if we need even more of them. There's probably pros and cons in there, glad it's not my call :D |
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I don't like the limitations in number of shiplines because that'll just encourage mono-teching even harder. Use fewer shiplines just try to get them as high as possible with low AIP cost. I do think FRS needs some alternate cost that doesn't involve AIP, and possibly the same for Officer/Lone. They could have a little AIP cost or none, but having something else than AIP would immensely helps. Currently even if you use a Lone/Officer/FRS it's bad to use more than one unless "you're skilled/difficulty isn't high enough" that it doesn't matter. This tendency will be worse now that AIP reducers got a nerf, particularly for big games. One way I could see 5-8 shiplines per transport would be if the transports themselves gave a huge bonus or even an assortment, like the abandoned perk system idea. I'd also like if players had more incentive to use more shiplines, as currently the meta is to give up third or even second tech after the first and instead use ARS-To-Science to Mark out at lower AIP. |
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Huh? Why wouldn't you just take more transports? That's what people did back in the day when every transport had only 5 lines of ships. |
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Has this been resolved by making FRS bonus only apply when there are few enough shiplines in a fleet? |
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This wound up being fuel in expert mode. Thanks to tom for implementing that! |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 16, 2020 3:42 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | New Issue | |
| Dec 16, 2020 3:42 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => assigned |
| Dec 16, 2020 3:42 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Dec 16, 2020 3:44 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0060011 | |
| Dec 16, 2020 4:04 pm | NRSirLimbo | Note Added: 0060012 | |
| Dec 16, 2020 4:21 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0060013 | |
| Dec 16, 2020 6:12 pm | CRCGamer | Note Added: 0060016 | |
| Dec 17, 2020 5:40 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0060056 | |
| Dec 21, 2020 5:15 pm | AnnoyingOrange | Note Added: 0060126 | |
| Dec 21, 2020 7:01 pm | NRSirLimbo | Note Added: 0060128 | |
| Dec 22, 2020 8:27 am | ArnaudB | Note Added: 0060130 | |
| Dec 22, 2020 4:32 pm | NRSirLimbo | Note Added: 0060131 | |
| Oct 23, 2021 5:36 am | tom.prince | Note Added: 0062986 | |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark => tom.prince |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | assigned => resolved |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:23 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0063565 |
