Aitarus wrote:

[...]

4. AI in one match didn't bother deploying any strike craft at all, but may be due to it being started before the preview(?)

Two starts next to Cravers and I didn't noticed this. But can say about other factions (was spending all my time trying to get rid of this cocroaches).

Maybe it is faction related?

Cravers rule my games since last patch for my part, exept one game. They have a decent and coherent war management, and other IAs are really vulnerable to military agression, especially by surprise. It looks like it's because when they don't feel  threatened, they kinda "allin" their energies in economy improvement, and produce new ships only when they are fully commited into a conflict. Most of the time, it's simply too late. 

I tryed to play a craver game in order to stress test the IAs reactions against a warmonger and a rush (and also try religious craver, it was a fail lol). I decided to not use a single weapon that need strategic resources, to play "fair" against IAs because they have true trouble to use it for the moment. 

Cravers fair 3.sav 

Turn 44 : My invasion fleet is slowly going to Horatio empire. It's probably one of my latest timings to rush another empire. I will simply crush him, slowly but without any problem than my fleet mobility and the time needed to siege a system. He will be able to save only one system out of the constellation by finally succefuly use a "force truce". On the second scree shot (i traduce) he is worrying about me because i am stronger than him, and because i have a fleet near of his empire. But I will not face any decent resistance until very late. I hope it proves that he start to make fleet only when i commited him in my attack. Before that, I guess he is still improving his economy and colonizing. Even if he is worrying, it looks like he is not anticipating enough an attack, and not able to defend himself against a late and kinda weak rush.

Cravers fair 4.sav

17 turns later, i have got his home system kinda easily, and my fleet is continuing his destruction path. In fact, he has no chance to recover from such a loss, but my goal is to capture as much system as is can. For the moment, he was not never to answer properly. The other IAs are worry or agressive against me, but i still don't know if they are preparing the war properly against me. I have the suspicion that the vodyani think he is stronger than me because she count her arks as her fleet. Later in the game, she will send me some medium ships, and a ton of leechers.

It's maybe one reason about why cravers IAs are crushing most the IAs games. They are agressive, so build some decent army and use it against very vulnerable IAs. I suspect Vodyanis and unfallen to be the only two IAs able to survive to a craver IA. The vodyanis ark are really hard to conquer, and I am pretty sure the unfallen are the only other IAs naturally building ships in early, for some reasons. 

Aitarus wrote:

Has anyone else noticed that the Cravers are on steroids as of this release?

They just devour anyone nearby uncontested. Not an interesting dynamic.

In my files they usually conquer everyone else and then win an Economic victory through sheer system Dust production by turn 130, no Trade Routes required. They usually do this out of my sight, as the AI gets stingy about Map trades and killing my explorers, while my returning the favor is a guarantee for eternal galactic war. When it comes to playing as the aggressor, the AI is... incompetent to say the least. It doesn't really know how to fight, but it sure knows how to pump out ships, except when it suddenly doesn't.

As SuperMarioWorld points out, the AI go all-in only as a reaction, not proactively. So during war they'll crank out ridiculous numbers of ships... at the cost of their economy bottoming out, so eventually they'll lose to their own collapse. During peace they'll never worry about defense, leaving them as easy pickings for the first bully who so much as sneezes at them.

Shouldn't empires be elimated on holding no territory, or is the grace period intentional?

Intentional I think. Otherwise you could snipe an empire to pieces using bad ships loaded with manpower while they weren't looking, and they would lose despite having a superior navy a couple turns away. It's also tied to the grace period for regaining the last capitol in a Supremacy victory, once again to prevent someone from sniping all of the capitols when they were, by rights, the weakest faction. Supremacy is basically the military victory for backstabbers.

On a design note, I am very worried that Fighters and Bombers are split over so many techs. They would be better served, I think, by an upgrade system like we already use for Manpower, as otherwise the already incredibly crowded tech tree becomes even more crowded and nightmarish to navigate. I can't imagine how the AI could possibly navigate such a minefield of decisions without researching lots of such landmines, like researching Micro-Dust Loans for the Manpower upgrade when they don't know any Friendly factions for the attached improvement.

SuperMarioWorld wrote:

and also try religious craver, it was a fail lol

Religious Cravers is very sad. Their apparent bread-and-butter Quest improvement, Hive Hall, saves you incredibly insignificant amounts of Dust on Hero upkeeps, while at the same time costing as much as a Center of Influence. In order to build it you pretty much have to waste an entire systems depletion points on it, and in return you get maybe 35 Dust per turn? Maybe? Assuming you can justify assigning a Hero to a depleted system, that is, considering you're likely to only get about four per game. Theoretically Religious Cravers should be all about sidestepping the long term losses of their economy using Heroes and such, but as I've pointed out in the idea in my signature, there's no connection between the Influence producing buildings of Religious politics, and gaining new Heroes. If Heroes cost more and you could buy out the New Hero meter on the Academy with Influence, or use Diplomatic Demands as Forced Diplomacy instead of an alternate method of war declaration (the AI never understands when you've got it beaten), then the Influence based Religious strategy might make sense.

Aitarus wrote:

So far the trade routes are clearly not as OP as they were before, but may be a bit too weak. Too early to say as the match I've had has been more contentious than usual. It's not clear yet whether you can physically keep up with an Endless AI's economic modifiers for the victory any more.

I have trade agreements with the other five AI I can access - playing ring map, can you also consider adjusting it so it connects the inner and outer clusters? Anyone who spawns on the inner one is at an automatic disadvantage. After the first warning I received at turn 111 I've started pursuing economic as well as science victory and am now 3rd for eco at turn 134. 

Will edit/reply once one of us gets it. That it's still close when I have such an extensive network is concerning - in a game with more conflict I cannot envision a player getting close cf. other match I referenced.  You'd have to intervene by war and in that case you don't stand a chance if the leading economy is on the other side of the map.

1. Stuck on the new(?) Swarm of Locusts first stage, having taken out 4/8 the location indicator no longer detects any pirates, but it won't progress. Linked to 1.?

This has happened again, I managed to hunt down the same amount and the AI got half split between, but it's not counting their contribution.

IceGremlin wrote:

As SuperMarioWorld points out, the AI go all-in only as a reaction, not proactively. So during war they'll crank out ridiculous numbers of ships... at the cost of their economy bottoming out, so eventually they'll lose to their own collapse. During peace they'll never worry about defense, leaving them as easy pickings for the first bully who so much as sneezes at them.

Yes, when I first started playing and saw an AI close to economic I immediately moved to intervene. This is no good if you are aiming for a pacifistic play and you want to chase one of the non-military victories yourself; it is some solace that you can still 'win' after someone else does, but that's not exactly satisfying. Edit: this no longer appears to be the case.

tl;dr my view on Cravers is that they wildly destabilise the galactic stage in the hands of AI, at least on Endless, as they are currently. I didn't encounter this type of snowballing with them before [except when I played them]. They will always be the leading and an excessively militaristic AI - I just started a match w/o them and it's been far more interesting and balanced.

Shouldn't empires be elimated on holding no territory, or is the grace period intentional?

Intentional I think.

Fair.

Aitarus wrote:

Aitarus wrote:

So far the trade routes are clearly not as OP as they were before, but may be a bit too weak. Too early to say as the match I've had has been more contentious than usual. It's not clear yet whether you can physically keep up with an Endless AI's economic modifiers for the victory any more.

I have trade agreements with the other five AI I can access - playing ring map, can you also consider adjusting it so it connects the inner and outer clusters? anyone who spawns on the inner one is at an automatic disadvantage. After the first warning I received at turn 111 I've started pursuing economic as well as science victory and am now 3rd for eco at turn 134. 

Will edit/reply once one of us gets it. That it's still close when I have such an extensive network is concerning - in a game with more conflict I cannot envision a player getting close cf. other match I referenced.  You'd have to intervene by war and in that case you don't stand a chance if the leading economy is on the other side of the map.

Unfallen Close Economic.sav

Pre-Science Victory.sav

Here are my saves for this match. I got my science victory at the end of turn 142, incidentally this is also when I would have gotten by economic judging by my jump to 1st after that. I only just checked the amount a couple turns after and it has exceeded the threshold without registering - did you change it so you can't win more than once now?

All in all this was a bit tougher than the last similar match, I was in a dominant position all bar economic which was touch and go - on score screen you can see Unfallen were very close having barely touched trade. I'd attribute the relative 'ease' of it more to the fact I was mostly left alone by the AI and able to comfortably coax them into trade agreements with technologies. 

If I'd been at war at any point I doubt I could have kept up. (There is also no chance you could peacefully beat steroid-Cravers to economic.)

NB: I also replaced the Vodyani/Craver AI with my other custom faction to effect a more stable match, this seems to have worked. The AI is typically poor at playing Ship Bound and only catches up much later on if they don't get targeted; my Craver comments are above.

For comparison I just realised I have a play with the same custom faction where they got an economic victory at turn 138, now attached.

Post-Economic Victory.sav (previous build)

This was a comment to some critical points made by a player.  

Well, I disagree with most of your suggestions, however, I do agree with the complaints.  On a few playthroughs with strikecraft (which are great BTW)
As those craft give us white alternatives to resource based weapons that actually stand a chance. I however do not think bombers in the slightest are overpowered.

The problem comes from ship defenses.  Currently, shields vs armor, armor wins every time, you can get up to 80% damage reduction on kinetics relatively early in the game, and sheilds offer absorption, but not at near the consistency.  Even with a reshielder, in my tests, doesn't function as intended.  The strike craft being bound to kinetic damage puts them in a damaging place, A thought that crossed my mind would be to have the different races use different weapons on there strike craft (You could not change them as a player, it would be racial)  Something like Bombers for Cravers use torpedos, Fighters for cravers use kinetics.  Fighters for sophons use SR beams, bombers use LR beams.  

Currently, the defenses you can put on a ship are far too strong.  And the modules that help a flotilla *(ie flotilla shielding) can only add up toa  mere 2k shield in mid game, where at this point you can have armor reduction damage beyond 80%.  My point being is that ship armor with heros gets insane reduction to projectile damage, where you can never reach that kind of protection with shield reduction in damage.  

Balancing defenses that are this high will always make it next to impossible to balance weapons because the damage curve will be exponential, again based on the defense function of the items on the ships.  It will take drastic changes in weapon firepower to balance them with the ship defenses the way they are, so again the idea would be to increase the HP of all ships, and decrease the defense capability of the defensive slots.  Doing this would potentially level the playing feel between kinetics and beams and LR beams torpedos ect, and also make them quite a bit easier to balance down the run.  

I would be happy to see a base HP increase accross the board, on all ships, and then nerf all the defense modules.  In this case you could still design based on what your enemy is using to try to counter, but balancing the weapons would become much simpler.


In the games I've played thusfar, fighters, since they defend against bombers and do ship damage, are the more logical choice.  A bomber's usefulness increases against the AI because again, they aren't humans and aren't experts at ship design yet, however against a player, bombers usefulness drops dramatically.  

If you have fighters loaded in all your bays possible, your doing damage to your opponents ships and fighters, which is great!  Why would you ever use bombers?  And the other issue is is that tier 2 fighters, which are much stronger of course than the basic fighter, are locked in with a key technology that most folks race to get in MP, and even in single player.  Tier 2 bombers, are e tied to a  tech 5 tech, that will almost never see action because the games never last that long, and its tied to a tech that not many use or are interested in.  Granted I'm sure that interest has increased since it now contains bombers, but a great solution would be to put tier 2 bombers maybe in the same tech range as tier 2 fighters to increase there usefulness.  I would love to see advanced bombers tied to something in the same area as the tier 2 fighters, just on a different choice.

Also, since the different races have different ships with different capabilties, there are ramifications as to how many fighters/bombers each race gets access too and when, which also again is a balance change.  Currently, ship defenses are way out of line, IE a ship equiped with white armor, and white beams, can destroy a ship equiped with yellow shields, and blue kinetics, at the appropraite tech level.  Something doesn't feel right about that, and again it has to do with balancing defenses on ships.  In my mind if ship defense isn't toned down, weapons will never be balanced.   

Also fighters and bombers add complexity to the balancing act because again, different races get different options (weapons loadouts) on there ships that can carry strike craft.

I am thrilled to see them on gaurdian (coordinator) the bigger protector ship.  It increase's there usefulness ten fold, now I need a fleet with hunters/coordinators and the works, even still using them with carriars now, which to me is a great plus.  Its something I wanted to see long ago, usefulness for all ships at all points in the game.  Tier 2 attack ships (the small attackers) take 50% damage from fighters and bombers, so if you want a low hp nuke fleet, they are the way to go, if you want a tank, throw a gaurdian in the mix.  

In my mind, the game is truly getting there, I just want to see tech 2 bombers fall in line with tech 2 fighters, and find a way to increase the bomber usefulness.

All in all it is a beautiful addition that is making more strategical decision making in fleet design that much more important.  Because now you need a escort, a beamer, a carriar of sorts, a tank, a troop ship, and some heavy weapons ships.  which all in all is great great great.

Balance is currently pretty broken, hopefully kinetic defences will be nerfed, and shields nerfed less, with some added HP, to help ease the balancing issues faced accross the plethora of weapons at our disposal.  Again, just food for thought.

Love the fighters and bombers, can't wait till they go live and I can sophon fighter rush somebody, just don't let them go on ARKS and I will remain happy :-D

Plutar

This is the question posed to me by a devoloper, Kynrael.

"Hi ! Thanks everyone for your feedback.

About the go-to fighter issue: would extremely reducing its efficiency against Ships (non strike craft) help? Currently it has very low Shield / Armor penetration, but that does mean shields get picked apart by Fighter fire, and a no defense ship will still suffer from high Fighter damage (which is necessary to bring down Bombers quickly). We could add a modifier stating that Fighters do 10% of Damage against Ships, for example.

Plutar, how would you go about increasing bomber usefulness? Do you feel having Bombers 2 in Era 5 is really a big problem, that it puts the emphasis on Fighters too much?

Cheers," 

So in response to Kynrael, 

Ok so I posted this to a response to a comment in general.  In reality it belongs here.  This was in comment to where they are, and how to make bombers more useful.  In there current stage, fighters are more useful, and it all stems from the way damage works and where the tech is placed. 

For fighters and bombers in tech, I would put them as  a package deal.  Advanced fighters and bombers either BOTH in tech 5 or both in tech 4.  You just picked one of the most important research targets in the entire military tree to slap advanced fighters onto which decreases the use of bombers.   Advanced fighters now sit in one, probably the most important point in the technology tree on the military side.  

Bombers are simply not useful for a different reason.  Your not going to like it, but its the truth. 

1) armor is too strong and shields are too weak. 

To increase there usefulness would require a defensive rework on the ships, or add penetration power to bombers.  Also I would highly recommend putting advanced fighters and bombers in the tech 4 military tree, just don't have EITHER TECH for fighters and bombers accompanied by a CC fleet's boost. 

I would focus on fixing the defenses of the ships then the fighters and bombers will come around naturally. 

Because I imagine generally we want the same thing.  Bombers to be a "OGM THAT FLEET HAS BOMBERS DFDSFJSHDKFHDS WE CAN"T ATTACK UNLESS WE HAVE FIGHTERs" kinda thing.  I don't think a nerf is in order for the fighters for the ship damage they do (its in a good position in-line with other things at the stage of the game) I would look strongly into a defensive rework to help balance the weapons.  Balance the weapons from the other side of the equation, beams too strong now, were too weak, ect.  Maybe looking at it from the armor/shield side might help a bit?

So to make bombers more useful, I would make them more scary to a fleet without fighters.  How you do that, is your job, my suggestion invovled balancing the equation from the otherside.  The easy way out is to give bombers penetration of some type.  (not sure if its possible)  

Also suggestion number 2, put advanced fighters and bombers in different techs in tier 4.   Neither tied to a CC boost.  That way a player can chose there focus.  

Second suggestion, give us fighters and bombers  (THe first set) on one tech, you have them split on the same tree in the beginning.  Now I would give them both on the Improved fleet management as a intro to fighters and bombers.  This tech was relatively unimportant.  Now it is.  Great news. (for MP)  And yes OP-Ex gear is important. Or keep them split. one on the bomber on the CC fighter on the opex gear.  But it makes more sense to give them both on a tech without CC (ie Improved fleet management) then you can chose your focus as you play.

BTW The second suggestion, is NOT AS IMPORTANT as the first, btw.  And a bombers usefullness is equated to "Can I ignore it? just blow the ship up" or my kinetics/armor will eventually take care of it I don't need to worry.  

Bombers should be scary for those big cap ships, your very much on the right track by increasing damage with bombers on the different ship sizes (IE small 50% damage, 100% med, 200% large)  The problem is not in the way they are set up now, the problem is in a  ships armor.  T

he most importan issues I guess I have, get advanced bombers on the same tier as advanced fighters, and get them both OFF of a tech that is tied to CC.  Pick any tech, just not that one.

Thanks for listening, btw who peaked in my steam profile to see how many hours I've logged... embarassed :-D  

Cheers, Plutar 

Sorry for the conversation move blast, just feel it belongs over here where people can better comprehend/understand for those of us who are playing target locked.