View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0001361 | AI War 1 / Classic | Balance Issue | Nov 14, 2010 5:55 pm | Nov 15, 2010 1:08 pm | |
| Reporter | Dazio | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 4.033 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 4.034 | ||||
| Summary | 0001361: [4.033] Wave sizes need another look | ||||
| Description | From the patch notes: A completely new formula for wave sizes has now been put in place, and it puts a much more linear weight on AI Progress and difficulty when determining wave size. This attempts to go back to some of the earlier 2.0-and-before feel of the AI Progress increases while staying away from extreme early game difficulty with the first waves. I have to disagree about the extreme early game difficulty, at least on the higher levels, it's pretty extreme right now. See my record below for the wave sizes I am talking about. I normally play on diff 8, I'm an experience player and I do want a stiff challenge. However 1000 ships at the 10 minute mark is a little much, I simply don't have time to build enough defenses to take on that many ships. (Not from my test games below, but another one that threw Neinzul at me.) The biggest issue I see is that when another wave part gets added, the size of each wave part does not decrease. This leads to a difficulty curve of straight up when you hit the higher difficulties. Diff 10 is about 1500 ships at the 6 minute mark, and they are Mk II aswell. I'm tempted to call that impossible. Note that in my test games both AI's always threw there waves against me at the same time, however they sometimes don't and that's the only time I've been able to survive so far. From my test games, all were against Entrenched Homeworlder for both AI's, most options off: Diff 5 15:06: 25 AI 2 Fighters (I) in 3:54 25 AI 1 FIghters (I) in 3:54 Diff 6 13:28 61 AI 2 Bombers, 1 Starship (I) in 3:22 61 AI 1 Bombers, 1 Starship (I) in 3:22 Diff 7 11:48: 106 AI 2 Fighters, 1 Starship (i) in 2:52 211 AI I Tigers, 1 Starship (I) in 2:52 Diff 7.3 11:15 109 AI 2 Bombers, 1 Starship (I) in 2:47 109 AI 1 Frigates, 1 Starship (I) in 2:47 Diff 7.6 10:45 113 AI 2 Bombers, 1 Starship (I) in 2:38 113 AI 1 Bombers, 1 Starship (I) in 2:38 Diff 8 10:03 152 AI 2 Fighters, 2 Starships (I) in 2:27 242 AI 2 Parasites, 2 Starships (I) in 2:27 162 AI 1 Spiders, 2 Starships (I) in 2:27 162 AI I Frigates, 2 Starships (I) in 2:27 Diff 9 8:27 163 AI 2 Bombers, 2 Starships (II) in 1:53 163 AI 2 Bombers, 2 Starships (II) in 1:53 163 AI 2 Bombers, 2 Starships (II) in 1:53 163 AI 1 Frigates, 2 Starships (II) in 1:53 163 AI 1 Bombers, 2 Starships (II) in 1:53 163 AI 1 Fighters, 2 Starships (II) in 1:53 Diff 10 6:46 109 AI 2 Electric Bombers, 2 Starships (II) in 1:24 182 AI 2 Fighters, 3 Starships (II) in 1:24 109 AI 2 Electric Shuttles, 2 Starships (II) in 1:24 182 AI 2 Bombers, 3 Starships (II) in 1:24 181 AI 1 Frigates, 2 Starships (II) in 1:24 182 AI 1 Fighters, 3 Starships (II) in 1:24 181 AI 1 Fighters, 2 Starships (II) in 1:24 182 AI 1 Impulse Reaction Emitters, 3 Starships (II) in 1:24 | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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perhaps instead, you should stop looking at waves? I mean to say, playing with no-wave-warnings has really removed a lot of the numerical warnings 'ohnoes a ton of units are going to attack me' into a 'ohshit where did that group of units come from'. I rather feel it enhances the game much when you arent rushing to be in optimal place to deal with waves. Also, if you just kinda lightning warheaded the holes they were coming from, would that solve it? :p |
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I think that the wave size matters, Lance, even if you don't know how many ships there are. There is a limit to how much you can produce in the early game. The test makes sense and is marginally better than my previous experience of 1600 ships on level VIII at 10 min. If the player cannot produce what is necessary in 10 min., then they would need to be fixed. |
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a possible idea: normalize the minimum wave sizes, but on higher difficulties, make higher progress more punishing. This would enable people to work in the early game with the level of skill they possess to achieve their ends. |
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I noticed an extreme jump on my 7.3 diff start with several hundred in each of dual waves every few min after about 8 min. I never played any 2.0 stuff so do not have a reference for size comparison. But this patch has my attention |
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I just got hit with a cross-planet attack after the patch of nearly 4,000 Fleet Ships (granted, I had been playing the game for over 10 hours, and have around 450 AI Progress, but seriously, 4,000 ships?) [by the way difficulty 8] This is not including the "waves", which came at about the same time the attack did, and are now about 1000 ships a piece (2 waves total). Luckily, I am playing against 1 "Turtle" Type AI, so they aren't even sending waves, but if they were, I would be dealing with an attack of about 8,000 enemy ships at once (as if 6,000 isn't bad enough). Sure, I have a large force and defense at that point in the game, but 6,000 ships just seems a little overkill to me regardless. Was this intended? |
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For extra hillarity, try fighting 2 Mad Bombers at Diff 10 AI - Doing this got me ~4k ships (mostly bombers) at the 8 minute mark. In my LoTS test game, I'm playing 2x cross-planet no-warning waves on a 40 planet map with 6/7 AI. The waves are quite survivable and seem to be 500-1000 ships a piece at about 300 AIP - I'm playing an X type map and because of the small size I've taken a full quarter of the map. Of course, the fact that I'm getting hit by the LoTS waves means that I've had to be pretty well set up - when you're prepping to get hit by a few hundred Mk I-V ships at at time, a few hundred mkII ships feels like nothing. However, between those waves and the LoTS waves, I pretty much have all of my fleet ships on defense of one main choke (and use the spire ships as my attack fleet, which works great as long as there aren't any mass drivers around - something I'm thinking is going to change before too long). |
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I just played a game vs. two Diff 8.3 and got a total wave size of about 5,000 around the 10 minute mark. One wave of 2,000 ships by each AI and a second wave of about 500 ships by each AI. As a side note, I've noticed the AI seems to always send a very large wave of parasites as its first wave after the game starts. In my example, the waves of 2000 were all parasites. I got run over pretty quickly, though I didn't think to build a fortress until it was too late. |
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Dazio, I'm assuming this was on normal caps? If so, yea, that Diff 8 test is still pretty close to the 1600 (on high) that machine was getting. Honestly, I think 1000 (on high, 500 on normal) would be fine for diff 8. It needs to tell you up-front what you're in for ;) And diff 9 and 10... those are supposed to be "where angels fear to tread" territory. The fact that they haven't been for a while was due to some bugs in their old wave-size logic. And then there's the issue of the electric bombers apparently getting a size-multiplier of over 0.5, when it should be much lower. But that's probably because when it was where it was supposed to be, people were complaining about "lol a wave of 3 ships" ;) Anyway, I think the real problem with the current situation is the massive jump from 7.6 to 8; if we had a 7.9 that was basically 8 without the 2-times-as-many-waves thing, it might help a lot. |
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I think the difficulty progression can simply be solved by getting rid of the extra waves. I think so much changes between 7 and 8 otherwise that the difficulty will be where we want it without adding that in. |
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in my experience, the jump from 8 to 8.3 is far more massive because of the tech level bonus. My personal view is that the armor system means that mk I ships are much less useful against mk II+ ships than they were under the shields systems and that makes dealing with mk II AI waves more problematic. Itd be nice if there were more of a curve to compensate for mk II's higher strength. I guess you can give them a bighuge resource malus in the game setup screen but thats kinda gimpy.. xD |
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* Previously, there was an extra wave per wave event for difficulty 8, two extra waves for difficulty 9, and three extra waves for difficulty 10. This made the game WAY harder for solo play on those difficulties, but much easier the more players you have (since this didn't scale per the number of players). ** Now it has been changed so that there are no extra waves per wave event on difficulties 8 and 9 (as the more recent changes to wave sizing make this unneeded, anyway), and the number of waves per wave event is simply doubled on difficulty 10 (so that way it scales appropriately with the number of players). Normally there is one wave per home planet of the players per wave event. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 14, 2010 5:55 pm | Dazio | New Issue | |
| Nov 14, 2010 5:57 pm | Dazio | Description Updated | |
| Nov 14, 2010 5:59 pm | Lancefighter | Note Added: 0003473 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 6:02 pm | themachineissentient | Note Added: 0003475 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 6:07 pm | themachineissentient | Note Added: 0003476 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 6:49 pm | Winter Born | Note Added: 0003478 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 7:01 pm | Wingflier | Note Added: 0003480 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 7:02 pm | Wingflier | Note Edited: 0003480 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 7:25 pm | Kemeno | Note Added: 0003484 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 7:26 pm | Kemeno | Note Edited: 0003484 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 2:50 am | Ymihere | Note Added: 0003507 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 10:15 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0003546 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 12:47 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0003589 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 1:03 pm | TheDeadlyShoe | Note Added: 0003594 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 1:08 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0003598 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 1:08 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Nov 15, 2010 1:08 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 4.034 |
| Nov 15, 2010 1:08 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Nov 15, 2010 1:08 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:29 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Gameplay - Balance Issue => Balance Issue |
