So I'm presently playing a game on Impossible. I'm the Sophons, the only enemy left who poses (somewhat) of a threat are the Hissho. I had a bit of a rock start, but I feel I have things in hand now. I've started to slowly but surely start to take worlds away from them, and I wouldn't be able to count how many ships I've cost them.



But I've notice something I find disturbing:



I just saw ~50 command points' worth of ships just materialize in existence on a system literally 2 turns after I cleared it. And I know it didn't come from some hiding place nearby, as I've got ships invading all the surrounding systems. And these aren't just a whole bunch of old models they had in the system hangar: they're top-of-the-line ships, most of them dreadnoughts with crazy weapons and defenses.



So is this what "impossible" means? Just random apparitions of crazy ships?



I don't know... that feels a bit cheap to me. It's not "impossible" as much as it is simply tedious to deal with.



Where's the strategy? I'm blockading most of their worlds, they're lacking resources. I have eyes pretty much their whole empire so I can keep track of their movements. I've got ships around almost all of their planets to easily pick off any stragglers.



But if they can materialize full stacks of top-end dreads wherever they want, that's just cheating.



I hate to complain; I know it's alpha, I know a lot will change, and a lot is being worked on. But this... I don't know... just wow.



And I'm not even complaining because I'm losing: I'm not. The game's over, they've lost. It's just a question of mopping up. But if they keep pulling stuff like this, it's going to take forever, and it's simply not fun.



Sadly, I don't have any specific suggestions. I'm just hoping that by bringing attention to the issue, maybe someone else will.



I understand that "difficulty settings" can be a tricky thing. In an ideal world, difficulty would purely be based on AI actions; higher difficulty = smarter AI. Even under the best of circumstances, though (let alone a game still in alpha), AI can only go so far. On tougher settings, it's understandable (and, I would guess, pretty much expected) that the AI would have all sorts of bonuses that the player doesn't. But this just feels too extreme.

Chances are, as this is what happens from my experience, they have every planet set to produce Dust, max out taxes, and bought out all of those ships. I ran into this issue with the Horatio, because the war lasted long enough that they must have built up an insane amount of Dust. In the long run, it didn't matter, my fleets and Heroes were still stronger. It was just, like you said, a matter of mopping up.

I agree, nothing is worse then a heavily cheating AI.... if i play on a harder setting, i usally hope that the AI plays smarter. Currently it seems this isnt the case, you just get some artificial barriers that make the game harder for the player and likely easier for the AI. One of the things monday will hopefully change. Full Fleets of Dreadnaughts from a losing empire that is mostly blockaded surely sounds more like cheating then normal behavior... but who knows, the AI is soooo borked right now, it's hard to tell.



On a side note, last Game i had 3 different Empires fighting over a single 2-planet system.... each of them had big fleets, but no one was willing to actually use them. So the System switched sides every 4-6 turns. They never used warp to attack their neighbours, nor the full potential of their military. I decided to leave it that way, it kept them busy while i was populating the my 1/3 of the galaxy with horatios on ocean worlds. I guess that was my last game until BETA.... just to boring right now.

Calico wrote:
I agree, nothing is worse then a heavily cheating AI.... if i play on a harder setting, i usally hope that the AI plays smarter. Currently it seems this isnt the case, you just get some artificial barriers that make the game harder for the player and likely easier for the AI. One of the things monday will hopefully change. Full Fleets of Dreadnaughts from a losing empire that is mostly blockaded surely sounds more like cheating then normal behavior... but who knows, the AI is soooo borked right now, it's hard to tell.



On a side note, last Game i had 3 different Empires fighting over a single 2-planet system.... each of them had big fleets, but no one was willing to actually use them. So the System switched sides every 4-6 turns. They never used warp to attack their neighbours, nor the full potential of their military. I decided to leave it that way, it kept them busy while i was populating the my 1/3 of the galaxy with horatios on ocean worlds. I guess that was my last game until BETA.... just to boring right now.

I would love to see a conditional logic AI built around totally picking you apart and even going as far as predicting your next moves successfully and learning from you not only on a game to game basis but as long as you play endless space it keeps picking you apart whenever you go against it.

VulpesWalker wrote:
I would love to see a conditional logic AI built around totally picking you apart and even going as far as predicting your next moves successfully and learning from you not only on a game to game basis but as long as you play endless space it keeps picking you apart whenever you go against it.

BACON-AI?



yeah, would be pretty cool, although i would settle on a game basis instead of all-time. Different races, different starting positions, galaxys..... soo many small factors that contribute to the overall playstyle.

FinalStrigon wrote:
Chances are, as this is what happens from my experience, they have every planet set to produce Dust, max out taxes, and bought out all of those ships. I ran into this issue with the Horatio, because the war lasted long enough that they must have built up an insane amount of Dust. In the long run, it didn't matter, my fleets and Heroes were still stronger. It was just, like you said, a matter of mopping up.

This is almost certainly correct. Its also notable that the AI has a huge % income bonus on impossible, making that fleet-summoning all the easier.



That said, even without that bonus, I was capable of such feats every turn in the last game I won - without committing all my systems to dust either.







Anyway, this sort of absurd content is required to make the AI competitive, but that is why I don't like impossible mode. I feel like at that point I am not even playing the same game as my opponent. The FIDS bonus they get is so huge that I have to sculpt my whole game around it.

Oh my... I hadn't considered that. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than conjuring them out of thin air. Slightly better, I guess... but not by much. Thanks for the input.



Just for the fun of it, I tried to make a roughly equivalent ship (just matching weapon/defense; I have no idea what else might be on them) too see how much it would cost to rush one. The answer was scary: roughly 8k each.



Considering how much they've been doing this, I don't even want to think about the exhorbitant sums I'm making them spend (let alone them actually having access to that money). Actually, no, that's not true, I will consider it. And going with extremely rough estimates (50 command points/turn, 2k dust per CP to rush...), oh my... 100k. That's... just wrong.



And this wasn't an isolated incident, of course. I'd be confused for a while before, wondering where they were getting what seemed an endless supply of stacks. This was the first time I saw it pop out like that, though, knowing I'd cleared the system just recently, and that it was surrounded.



Anyway, I guess we'll see what Beta will bring. Started a new game with Horatio (only faction I hadn't tried yet) on Serious. Hopefully that'll be a bit more civilized.

I believe that the AI also gets a production cost reduction on all their ships aswell as a FIDS boost.



If you were to have all the advantages you get in easy mode, even the worst players would find the game trivial.

The AI also uses (accidentally) known exploits for Infinite dust/sci that and the AI likes to save its dust so if say each ship costs say 4K Dust for a fleet of 20 that is 80K of dust and the AI seems to hanger new ships until it has the advantage or has no option but to attack so a fleet of 20 out of thin air becomes feasible.

Ketobor wrote:
I believe that the AI also gets a production cost reduction on all their ships aswell as a FIDS boost.



If you were to have all the advantages you get in easy mode, even the worst players would find the game trivial.

What advantages do you get in easy mode anyways? I played Impossible and I didn't notice any resource or combat penalties (though the AI clearly had much more FIDS than it did in easier levels).