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Three Serious Needs of SoaSE

dracop

Join Date 02/2007

Three Serious Needs of SoaSE

Ok so I finally found some settings I like and have been pounding away at the game. Currently I am in the late stage of a game and two serious needs ahve arisen:

1.) SOME kind of cap. Its ridiculkous, I have fleets with 300+ ships and so does the AI and we are basically in a a manuf war just churning out ships at each other. I know my empire's economics can barely support this war effort and I have 6/7 of all the planets; the faction of AI I am fighting only has 3 (1 terran, 1 ast belt, 1 ice) planets and they can keep pace with my manuf and trade of 18 planets/asteroids?

We need a ship cap (make it a Toggle Option on game settings, this prevents things from getting silly imo without restricting those who insist of 1000+ ship fleets), eitehr a Hard Ship cap (flat number not to cross) or a Per Planet ship cap (eg, planets act as barracks for ships, each planet can only support 25 ships or some such).

Either that or killoff the AI's bonuses after a point; I lvoe a challenge but 6 vs 1 and they keep pace is too much (ive explored all planets and know the numebrs too be accurate).

2.) UI - WE NEED some way to set fleet priorities. In particular in larger battles, the isolate one ship strategy becomes very inefficient. The computer, however, when left ot its own devices, picks a diff target for every ship! Heck half the time it chooses non-defense targets; its aggravating watching the computer attack a mining module (that is gen 0 resources....) when there is a Gauss cannon next to it firiing away. WHich makes a hash out of my stategies - it splits up my ships and sends ships to the far side of a planet to engage Trade stations and mining colonies when I am fighting tooth and nail at a different arc of the planet.

Some way of setting the computer to focus on different kinds of defenses and targets is an absolute must; when you get past the 100 mark, using the Ctrl command keys for groups breaks down as far as macromanagement.

Eg, Focus On Ships or Stationary Defenses or Orbital Economics. I think this when combined with the local AI Defense posture would make the ships behave how they should.

3.) Some of the ship AIs need to be improved: my support cruises and my carriers LOVE to charge in ahead of everyone else in the fleet. Err, they are support ships and should be staying back. My Battleships on the other hand, love engaging froma distance...
Dreadnoughts btw, LOVE firing on planets auto, even when there is a Shield gen up. Altho this could be fixed with the Strategic Targets request up top.
Hehe
Perhaps switch the two AI routines? lol

My $0.02

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Equality sucks in multiplayer games.

I hope you rephrase this.

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Equality sucks in multiplayer games.

I hope you rephrase this.

When I say equality sucks, I mean I don't want the other two races to play exactly the same as the TEC. The Armistice ability gives them a unique advantage. Taking it away or nerfing it makes them powerless.

I am sure some of the other races abilities are more powerful

ever heard the saying "two wrongs doesnt equal a right"? something shouldn't be shitload powerful just because something else is shitload powerful, the two should just both be diminished in power.

So if people want to use the Akkan to protect their last colony they should have every right. But most of the time when it comes down to your last stand with your last world, you don't have much in the warship category.

are you missing the issue? the reason we don't like armistice is that someone with one homeplanet can make themselves COMPLETELY invincible, that isn't "fair" thats downright ridiculous.

I shouldn't have said more powerful, what I should have said is that the other races have abilities that will be just as powerful.

And why shouldn't a player be able to use the Armistice to his advantage? Who cares if he uses it to survive a few bombardments. You never know, maybe you might use it in the future. And like I said, I have never seen an AI or Myself at the brink of destruction with enough ships to pose such an unfair advantage.

If you look through the folders in the game directory you will find an ability called PsiCommand, its just a guess but it might allow you to take control of enemy ships. Is that unfair?

And their is something to be said about having a handicap and turning it into an advantage. Plus with all the diplomacy and backstabbing in multiplayer I am sure everyone will have a chance at victory.

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The Armistice ability gives them a unique advantage. Taking it away or nerfing it makes them powerless.

...
powerless, as in not-invincible?
I'm fine with that type of powerless.

I shouldn't have said more powerful, what I should have said is that the other races have abilities that will be just as powerful

how can you get "as powerful as" invincible?

I have never seen an AI or Myself at the brink of destruction with enough ships to pose such an unfair advantage.

you don't have 3 ships when you're losing?
maybe thats why...

And why shouldn't a player be able to use the Armistice to his advantage?

thats not an "advantage", thats cheating the system so that you're untouchable.

If you look through the folders in the game directory you will find an ability called PsiCommand, its just a guess but it might allow you to take control of enemy ships. Is that unfair?

it far from makes you invincible.

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So the ability for the Vasari to harvest resources from your worlds from space is unfair too right? Might as well nerf that as well. This kind of discussion is pointless until we find out what the other two races have for abilities. My guess is your gonna want Armistice for the TEC. Because if I remember correctly the TEC are far from warriors.

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I agree, but with the TEC I seem to always have mucho money once I get traders and refiners going...

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Remember the TEC are more merchant then warrior. Therefore they are expected to have more resources and creds. The Armistice ability also fits with their backstory, remember they only just started reverting back to their old ways 10 years ago when the Vasari arrived and the Trader Emergency Coalition was formed. Before that it was peace through prosperity, not peace through force.

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Armistice ability? When the heck did that get mentioned? I am so outta the loop....

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Do you know what it is? Or when was it mentioned in their backstory?

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Remember that the conquest of planets isnt always through war, there is the Advent's mind control abilities and also the culture system.

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it has nothing to do with the other races. it's not a balance issue so much as it is a design issue. it's not overly difficult for someone to be completely invincible. it doesnt even have to be your last colony. imagine pinning down the entire enemy fleet while perma-armisticing a Phase Jump Inhibitor, then blowing up all their planets in the meantime.

When looking at things like this, theres always two questions to ask:

"This seems alright by itself. But what if theres like 5 or 10 of them?'

and

"If I were an asshole, how would I use this?"

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Major Stress

Join Date 05/2006

+161

Lets wait for the other 2 races, and the rest of the content to be incorporated in the game before people start screaming "Oh Noes! IMBA!" Right now beta1 is only to test system compatibility, and very basic game mechanics. Looking though the files there is MUCH content that is listed, but is not in the game yet, and this is just for TEC.

I for one don't want to see unit caps. The amount of units you can field should only be limited by your upkeep cost. I am in the middle of a fierce 4 way battle vs 3 AI's in a single 30 planet system. I have 4 groups of about 50 ships a group 2 battleships, a carrier, 2 of each class cruiser, and a Marza in each group. The rest mixed frigate wings for support. 2 groups just barely hold the line between a combined 2 AI strike force's (i guess 2 AI's signed a cease fire accord, and decided to gang up on me). The other 2 groups are currently wiping out 1 of the other 2 AI's and will join the main battle soon. I think right now there are over 500 ships in my game not including the merchants, and refinery ships. The upkeep cost's seem to cap off at 75%, but i own enough territory, and have enough income to fund an even larger war machine. If anything needs changing it is the upkeep cost's. The upkeep costs shouldnt stop at 75%

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you have multi player running i don't

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Its called the Ion Bolt, the natural enemy of the Armistice ability. Atleast for the TEC. But like Major Stress says lets wait for the other races abilities, ships, weapons. And the rest of the TEC stuff before we all go crying about such and such, or how this is just unfair.

And for the record, I did try to protect a planet from attack with perma armistice. Over the course of 5 minutes I was outnumbered 10-to-1 And I had 50 ships. My Akkan's got blasted away by 20 enemy bomber squadrons. Didn't work so great...

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If they could attack you, you didnt quite pull it off.

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Perhaps Armistice should only work on the ships present. So if some jerk wad tries to prevent his death using 3 of those cruisers with Armistice, just keep bringing in the new ships to his system. The new ships will start fighting and armistice will be ended prematurely.

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Yeah balance or even fancy AI, is not there or even a reason to test for. This is "How does it run" with that huge of a fleet obviously it runs pretty dam good or your super patient person.

Would be cool if there was a record feature at release

Would be fun to watch these huge battles without worrying about controls afterwards.

Runs great on my State of the Ark(tm) system I got too

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you have multi player running i don't

No one in the general public has multiplayer Sins yet.

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3 is too few as the micro is extreme, but with 5-6 Akkas the strategy starts to work; you can really choke point with this as the neemy has no choice.

We need something that ignores Armistice similar to how Scouts can jump thru Warp Inhibitors.

By as I stated prior, should wait for full tech trees and seeing what the other races get. If they get a mind control ability that doenst count as damage and breaks armistice this strategy gets anulled.

I will say this, I think most of you arguing against the soft cap idea are having knee jerk reactions. Its ok, normally I respond the exact same way to cap issues; there are games I wish had much higher caps (TW series notably). EVERY RTS for the last few years have had some kind of cap, usually they do it by saddling you with a building that increases your overall cap by X units. In my opinion, tying it to planets owned would make more sense for this game.

A dev saw the thread. Didnt comment on the issue, can only assume they are either discussing it or they already decided the issue somehow. I really want the Fleet Priorities thing by the way, Im sick of seeing my fleet beat up Trade Stations when there are Gauss and Hangars next to them pounding away at my ships. Altho sometimes, if its a quick strike, I might actually want to go for econ structures. Give me control over this please.

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So the ability for the Vasari to harvest resources from your worlds from space is unfair too right?

If by harvesting resources you mean become immune to damage and shutting down my entire war machine whilst you pound the crap out of me, then yes, I would have to say unfair.

Unless the two other races have an ability that disrupts armistice then the ability would seem to be unfair, I just dominated the AI on hard using this.

My idea is to force the abiltity to do what its meant to, save your fleet. When you click it it works as an uber retreat button making all your ships at that planet immune to dammage for 1 minute and forces them to retreat to the nearest friendly outpost. In that way it cannot be used as an offensive tactic as the enemy will be freed once you jump out. Maybe its use should use most of your anti-matter and have a 6 minute cool down.

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Please understand this, we do not know what the other races have. And we don't know what the TEC are missing. Before we all get into a huge debate about what needs to be fixed, what ships need nerfing. It might be a good idea to wait for the rest of the stuff, and the other two races. You can't balance a race against it self.

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So the ability for the Vasari to harvest resources from your worlds from space is unfair too right?

its far better than invincibility.

Lets wait for the other 2 races, and the rest of the content to be incorporated in the game before people start screaming "Oh Noes! IMBA!"

no, not when there is already a clear design flaw.

By as I stated prior, should wait for full tech trees and seeing what the other races get. If they get a mind control ability that doenst count as damage and breaks armistice this strategy gets anulled.

thats like saying that god is not omnipotent if you can kill him with exactly 28 aztec mummy toes.
just because there is a counter doesnt mean that the things is balanced.

I will say this, I think most of you arguing against the soft cap idea are having knee jerk reactions

it sounds to me like you're the one having the knee-jerk reaction. you haven't found a way to outsmart the AI, so it needs to be changed? I dont think so. I haven't heard this issue from anyone else

Before we all get into a huge debate about what needs to be fixed, what ships need nerfing. It might be a good idea to wait for the rest of the stuff, and the other two races. You can't balance a race against it self.

you dont wait on removing cancer just because its not malignant, and you certainly dont let a rogue element that stops everything and might might have a single counter go.

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So if I get into a multiplayer game as TEC vs TEC they shouldn't be balanced? I should go straight for that strategy in case he uses it first, repeat ad nauseum until his eventual demise? While I might enjoy it (in an evil way) the other player may conclude differently and dimiss a great game.

Obviously the game will change and we dont have all the facts. And currently with no multi-player your only wrecking the game for yourself. Still, its good to find "cheap" tactics like this one potentially is. Sucks for everyone when a tactic like the one proposed makes it to final and ruins the game for new players. Maybe there is something that makes this ability completely balanced. If there is, then we will see in afew months. If its not though, and its something that the develpoers hadn't considered then we (i.e. DeadlyShoe) just put a balancing issue on a list somewhere and that is better for all of us in the long run.

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It has been stated before, BETA 1 is for testing machine capability. Until we have the rest of the TEC, Advent, and Vasari anything we whine about now that is related to balance is moot at best.

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It has been stated before, BETA 1 is for testing machine capability. Until we have the rest of the TEC, Advent, and Vasari anything we whine about now that is related to balance is moot at best.

yes, but not for machine capacity alone. this a huge, blatently open error and it needs to be corrected.

Sucks for everyone when a tactic like the one proposed makes it to final and ruins the game for new players

have you ever considered that it ruins the game for all players, not just the newbies unfortunate enough to run into a game-abusing asshole.

so having a complete lack of skill and winning by cheap tactics is a "great game"...

Obviously the game will change and we dont have all the facts

thats hardly relevent. CoC generals anyone?

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yes, but not for machine capacity alone. this a huge, blatently open error and it needs to be corrected

On what clear cut basis are you making this assumption?

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