View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0009803 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Oct 22, 2012 2:49 pm | Oct 22, 2012 8:56 pm | |
| Reporter | 2501 | Assigned To | keith.lamothe | ||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 6.000 | ||||
| Summary | 0009803: Spire Gravity Rippers and AI anti-shard waves targeting homeworld first make otherwise trivial shard recovery impossible | ||||
| Description | I recently started a new campaign using the new Ancient Shadows expansion, excited for its release. My campaign has overall gone pretty well, including several Fallen Spire shard extractions (for which the speed increase has helped significantly). Upon taking the third, however, I have run into several extreme problems that I have not previously encountered, all of which are seen in the save below. 1. AI Exogalactic waves freed to chase the shard instead freely attack the human homeworld in such a manner as to make survival impossible without relocating all of my defensive structures from the bulwark (or "whipping boy") on Slovtooth. While I have played over three campaigns with the Fallen Spire enabled, not once have I experienced the sheer volume of ships coming through that ignore the shard completely and attack my homeworld- As seen in the save the count is over 400 higher-tier ships, which rapidly balloons to 700+ and then a thousand in one test run. Needless to say, I /might/ stand a chance if I relocated the fleet to defend, but then I'd sacrifice the shard and it would all be for naught. That said, here is the second issue: 2. Since 6.000 each Spire Gravity ripper has in essence the same effect of an AI Gravity Guardian or Gravity turret- this should either be reverted to the old version (one shot that causes temporary movement paralysis), or perhaps changed into the style of the old shot but with a higher count (5x, maybe). With the new passive AoE slowing field given to Gravity Rippers, they slow my fleet to a crawl (irrevocably- I cannot individually target 60+ of them embedded in an AI fleet) which ensures it is easily destroyed and is incapable of defending the shard against the hundreds of upper-tier AI ships that pour forth to destroy it. While in other roles they may prove a mere annoyance, even encountering a small handful of these on a shard run proves a death sentence for the player (even on small journeys- the shard I'm retrieving is only two hops away from the homeworld!). I hope to see this reviewed and re-balanced as soon as possible. | ||||
| Tags | AI, balance, Fallen Spire, gravity, Gravity Ripper, home station, move speed, nerf, overpowered, rescue, shard recovery | ||||
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I briefly loaded your save and would like to point out, those are Gravity Drains, an entirely different ship type than Rippers. Rippers still function entirely the same as you describe. |
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Switch is correct: Spire Gravity Drains have that ability (and are what I see in your save) and have since their creation. The Rippers don't. Regarding the defensive challenge: - When we quadrupled the shard speed, we also quadrupled the rate at which the chase-exos spawn to go after it. This results in the same number (give or take a little) of AI ships going after you but in a shorter period of time). Makes for a more interesting time, at least ;) I could cut the spawn-speed down, but then I'd need to cut the shard speed too. - On difficulty 8 you're facing exos 1.5 times as strong as difficulty 7. - The combination of these means that you will probably need to have your homeworld solidly behind your main defenses; if the AI has a way of getting an exo to your homeworld without going through a main defensive planet (depending on the circumstances, you may be able to manage 2 or 3 of those; sometimes only 1), you're probably going to die. There are various forms of cheese you could employ, of course, but other than that you're just going to need to cover your flanks. That said, if there's a general consensus among the community that some of these things would be more fun if balanced differently, I'm certainly happy to do that. So if you'd like to see that happen I suggest starting a discussion thread in the forums. Since the shard-speed/spawn-speed thing has come up multiple times, I will go ahead and start a poll on that myself. |
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@Switch: Totally sorry about my mistake- In all of my previous campaigns I've somehow never encountered them at all... @keith.lamothe: That poll should be helpful, I imagine. Thanks! Overall, the greatly increased spawn speed really just came as a shock. In one previous campaign I've played I successfully retrieved two shards under much weaker defensive / offensive conditions than pictured in the attached save (subject to previous shard mechanics, but still notable). Overall, I've also found any gravity effects to be simply brutal. On occasion in previous campaigns I would see my entire shield-bearing fleet decimated while trying to approach and take down one AI FF-gen III or Spire Shield Guard Post and return with half or fewer ships remaining where otherwise such fleets can easily clear whole MarkIV worlds without too much trouble. |
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@2501 I do feel that gravity effects are brutal as well, probably too brutal. However, I feel that is due to the current "gravity values" of the current gravity inducers, and not the mechanic itself. I have nominated gravity inducing units for the "what needs a nerf" polls several times. But now I am getting off track. ;) |
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@TechSY730: Yeah, agreed in regards to gravity effects overall. A reduction in the magnitude of their slowing effects (perhaps 30 at slowest?) would be nice- it wouldn't prevent full fleets from being effective, but would give the AI (and players) a solid counter to quick raiders striking far points on a single system quickly. Furthermore, AI Gravity Guardians could retain their incredibly high slow values (8, etc.), given that they typically number very few and can be reasonably focused down and destroyed if necessary. Overall, I suppose we can call this particular report and issue somewhat concluded- while this seems to have spurred a discussion on gravity effects which I am very glad to see, this report itself was largely the result of a bit of confusion on my part. |
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@2501 Well, if you want, a new thread can be made for this, or it can wait for nomination in the next "what needs a nerf" poll (whenever that comes around). |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 22, 2012 2:49 pm | 2501 | New Issue | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:49 pm | 2501 | File Added: Broken Gravity Rippers.sav | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:50 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: AI | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:50 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: gravity | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:50 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: home station | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:50 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: balance | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:51 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: move speed | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:51 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: nerf | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:51 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: overpowered | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:51 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: rescue | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:52 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: Gravity Ripper | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:52 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: Fallen Spire | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:52 pm | 2501 | Tag Attached: shard recovery | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:53 pm | 2501 | File Added: Broken Gravity Rippers2.sav | |
| Oct 22, 2012 2:59 pm | Switch | Note Added: 0028773 | |
| Oct 22, 2012 3:16 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0028774 | |
| Oct 22, 2012 3:16 pm | keith.lamothe | Assigned To | => keith.lamothe |
| Oct 22, 2012 3:16 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | new => considering |
| Oct 22, 2012 3:34 pm | 2501 | Note Added: 0028775 | |
| Oct 22, 2012 5:41 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028776 | |
| Oct 22, 2012 8:37 pm | 2501 | Note Added: 0028779 | |
| Oct 22, 2012 8:56 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0028780 |
