View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0009149 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Aug 6, 2012 1:19 pm | Aug 9, 2012 6:22 pm | |
| Reporter | martyn_van_buren | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.051 | ||||
| Summary | 0009149: Put more fighters on AI worlds | ||||
| Description | Following on the recent complaints that bombers feel overpowered and that taking AI worlds can be too easy, I think it might help if the AI simply put more fighters on its worlds. It is true (and seems reasonable that) in nearly all games bombers are the main ship you want to use for hitting the big defensive structures on AI worlds, and it seems like it would be reasonable for the AI to be prepared for that. Players usually recognize that bombers are one of the most threatening ships you can get in a wave and design their defenses accordingly. I think that this change might be a pretty easy way of complicating the process of taking worlds without making big changes. If most AI worlds had a substantial fighter presence, it would hardly cripple the bomber, but it would sometimes make it necessary to find alternatives or ways of getting them around the planet safely to get their work done. It might also be worth letting AI fighters have a lower threashold for leaving their posts or seeding some of them on local FRD; they're meant to be rapid-response units and it seems reasonable to let them do some rapid responding. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
| related to | 0009180 | considering | Another suggestion on how to tweak Fighters |
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Again, I would like to suggest my "UsefulnessInAIDefense" multiplier/chance modifier, which would be similar to the "UsefulnessInAIWaves" multiplier, but for reinforcements. Then give fighters a >1 adjustment, which would on average increase their numbers. The nice thing about implementing the logic this way is that it would generalize. It could apply to any fleet ship that may need special consideration for how the AI uses it on defense. |
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That sounds very reasonable to me. |
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There have been some previous issues with reinforcements possibly being too light, so while TechSY730's idea is good, I'd actually like to see bonus fighters flat out spawned in addition to normal reinforcements. |
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Well, fighters are explicitly treated specially in AI waves (the three "distraction" fighters the AI sends in before the main wave comes in), I wouldn't mind too much with fighters getting some kind of special logic in reinforcements. However, I don't want to see a situation where, say, every AI world has like 40% of its defenders being fighters, regardless of how many ship types the AI has unlocked, because of the special spawn logic. The special spawn logic for fighters shouldn't dominate the normal reinforcement numeric rules. |
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Yeah, I think I'd like an approach in which an average world would have a biggish pile of fighters on it but you'd also regularly encounter other sorts of defense. I'm not sure whether we'd want the AI to be able to replace them with fighter-type bonus ships if it has them; it might make sense, but it would also be interesting if the result of a bulletproof fighter unlock was that some worlds just have a freightload of fighter-types. |
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I think I'd like to each Reinforcement cycle add randomly between 1 to Difficulty/2 Fighters randomly to a Guard Post or the Command Station. The GP or CS chosen would be random each cycle, so all the Fighters wouldn't clump in one spot. At Difficulty 7, cycles are about 4.2 minutes apart, so the total additional ships would be around one extra Fighter per two minutes to each planet reinforced. I would do that separate from the UsefullnessInAIDefense modifier. |
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@Hearteater Would you be willing to generalize this into any ship with a polycrystal bonus > some yet to be determined N that is at least as fast as bombers or has an infinite range? This way, standard fighters are always assured to be an eligible pick for this logic, but other fast-ish anti bomber units (or anti-bomber units with infinite range, like snipers) could also be spawned for this "anti-bomber" logic if the AI has unlocked them. |
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Are we sure that's a good idea? I certainly see the point about not wanting to have mechanics that only apply to one ship, but fighters are such a basic ship that maybe it makes sense for them have a special role as the cheap, ubiqutious mob ship that's always there on defense. Snipers, bulletproofs, or whatever else could provide support to this role but I feel like they might not want to appear in really large numbers all that frequently --- they are bonus ships, and maybe that wants to be different from the basics. And I feel like a game where a quarter of the AI's worlds were mostly defended by snipers might get old quite fast. On the other hand, so might all-fighters-all-the-time. I really don't know; I could see that wanting to go either way. |
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@TechSY730 I'd say Fighters only, although I certainly could see certain AI Types that did this with something other than Fighters. Heck, a Fighter AI Type that used Bulletproofs instead would actually be really nasty. |
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By the way, is the "UsefulnessInWaves" stat currently used to pick wave ships? I hadn't heard of it. |
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No, it is a separate suggestion TechSY730 has proposed elsewhere. |
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Actually, "UsefullnessInAIWaves" is already in the game. You can see it if you turn on AI wave logging. It is just a straight multiplier though. It does not influence the chance of the AI choosing one ship in a wave over another. Though strangely, it is used to NERF AI waves in terms of triangle units (bombers get a <1 multiplier, decreasing their numbers, and standard fighters and frigates get a >1 multiplier) This becomes even stranger when compared to the younglings, which have a 1.5x multiplier, buffing thier numbers and buffing AI waves. So in some cases, UsefullnessInAIWaves is used to nerf AI waves, and in others, buff them. I hope that if the "UsefullnessInAIDefense" is implemented, its design goal will be a bit more focused (in this case, serve as a way to buff AI defenses). |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 6, 2012 1:19 pm | martyn_van_buren | New Issue | |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:25 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0027411 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:26 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0027411 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:26 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0027411 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:28 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:28 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:29 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0027412 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:39 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0027411 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:47 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027413 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:55 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0027414 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 1:55 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0027414 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 2:26 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0027415 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 2:27 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027416 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 3:18 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0027421 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 3:27 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0027422 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 3:29 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Edited: 0027422 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 3:37 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027423 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 7:44 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0027425 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 9:33 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027427 | |
| Aug 6, 2012 9:38 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0027428 | |
| Aug 9, 2012 6:22 pm | Dazio | Relationship added | related to 0009180 |
