View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0001365 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Game Mechanics | Nov 14, 2010 8:08 pm | Jun 14, 2011 1:35 pm | |
| Reporter | Wingflier | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 4.033 | ||||
| Summary | 0001365: Alternatives for Ion Cannon "Discouragement" | ||||
| Description | Chris has made his position very clear on this topic, which is something we can all respect. However, the community has also made their position clear as well. I was hoping that we could come to a reasonable compromise that would satisfy both parties, and still keep the heavy "discouragement" mechanic that extra AI waves are intended to fulfill. First, let's start with the math: Let's assume you've taken a Mark III Ion Cannon on an outer planet (4x waves). On Hard difficulty, I typically find myself being hit with waves between 400-800 size on one planet (more as the game progresses). This may have changed a bit since the recent patch, but for the sake of argument, this seems like a reasonable number of enemy ships in a wave. Now let's say that the planet which is getting attacked has that MK3 Ion Cannon on it. Suddenly, it's gone from being a 400-800 wave, to a 1600-2400 wave. That's alright though, because my trusty Ion Cannon will save me right? Except that it won't. Even if it insta-kills every ship it hits (which isn't always the case, but let's say it is), it only fires once every 4 seconds. Even if the battle lasts for 120 seconds (and usually waves have been cleared by this point, or have moved on), your Ion Cannon has killed a grand total of 30 ships, woo! How does killing 30 ships merit an increased wave size of over 1000 or more? So, the designers say, "They aren't intended to be on outer planets, this is our discouragement." There are 2 problems with that: 1) If an Ion Cannon is on an "inner planet", why do you even need it? 2) That Ion Cannon is still a very serious threat to your survival, because if you kill a counter-attack post (and let's remember, these things are not limited by your AI Progress), you could get a wave size of such high-level ships (because of the Ion Cannon), that you would automatically lose the game. So, from a gameplay perspective, hopefully that makes it abundantly clear why Ion Cannons simply aren't worth taking if the player wants to win the game. However, I'll even give 5 reasons why from a design perspective, this mechanic is equally bad. 1) The Fun Factor Every player I've met or spoke to about Ion Cannons likes them. Ion Cannons are cool, people should like them! However, with this "wave size" mechanic you are imposing upon players, they can no longer use a weapon that they love. You are essentially waving a tasty bone in front of a dog's face and saying, "MMM this looks good, don't you wish you could have it!", but then never giving it to him. I don't feel like this is a good design principle. 2) False-Choice False-Choice is a faulty game mechanic that pretends to give the player(s) a choice, but in actuality that choice is always wrong, so the player doesn't have a choice, he just thinks he does. It would be like if, in Chess, they suddenly removed the rule where you couldn't put your King in check. Now the player technically has more choices, since he can now move his King into places he couldn't before; however, those choices only serve to hasten his defeat, not improve or deepen the game in any way. The same pretty much applies here. 3) Unintuitive Design Another problem with this mechanic is that it's flat-out unintuitive. Unless the player specifically reads the fine grey print on the Ion Cannon, it could take them several hours, or even games to know why they keep getting seemingly "random" wave sizes that are simply causing them to lose without explanation. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be for new players if they killed a MKIV Counter-Attack Post and happened to receive the wave on a planet with a MKIV Ion Cannon? The game would be freaking over. Now sure, you can make the argument of, "Well good players need to be aware of what's going on and read everything before they play." And to a certain extent, this is true, especially in complicated RTSes like this. However, you have to realize that not all players enjoy going through each unit and reading every last detail about what it does, can do, or the implications of what will happen if you use/capture that unit. Especially when someone is just starting out, most people probably have a lot more on their mind than pausing the game to read every last description of every unit to make sure there's nothing they missed, nor should they be asked to. If the "extra wave" mechanic was absolutely necessary, I guess I could understand why this unintuitive design principle would stay in place, but it's not absolutely necessary. 4) Game Coherency Another problem arises when you ask yourself the simple question: "If the AI can send 10x, 20x, 60x waves to this planet (yes, that has happened to me before), why doesn't it just send that many units to ANY planet?" Now obviously, the AI considers the Ion Cannon to be like this "grave threat" so they will send significantly more units. But 60 TIMES AS MANY?! Surely they don't consider a single Ion Cannon to be a greater threat than the HUMAN RACE. Just send that 60x force to the human homeworld and get it over with lol. 5) Ability to Circumvent The final problem that I see with this design mechanic is that it can be circumvented (for the most part) by just playing "cross-planet-attack" mode. If people want to enjoy the unique and enjoyable Ion Cannons, should they really have to alter the way the game is meant to be played to do so? --- We get it, you want players to be strongly discouraged from taking Ion Cannons. Why not do it in a way that is strongly discouraging, but makes more sense from a gameplay and design perspective? If you were to simply give the Ion Cannons a massive energy cost (say 200,000 or more), the player would effectively be forced to choose between having a marginally more effective defense, instead of the added force of units he could have built with all that money going to energy. THIS is an actual choice, it gives the player a tough decision which increases the strategic and critical thinking value of the game. If you wanted to add a small wave multiplier on top of this (something reasonable, like 1.5x or 2x), I guess that would be an okay compromise as well. You could simply make the Ion Cannons be impossible to turn off, so that the player would have to deal with this consequence or sell/destroy them. I would like to hear everybody's opinion on this, thank you for reading. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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As an extreme example see the screen shot ;) |
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About 3) Unintuitive Design, in all fairness the wave multiplier is also shown when you're on the Ion Cannon planet, in the top left corner of the screen, the same little window that shows how many enemy ships are on the planet, below the name of the planet and campaign timer. And players need to read the tooltip of all ships and Structures in the game sooner or later. I agree though that the wave multiplier can be so overwhelming, a warning should be part of the blue description, since it is the global description of the selected ship/structure and the first (and often only thing) new players like me read until they get more into the game. edit: I saw the pic, ouch ^^. Do I see x960 wave multiplier with only 8 Ion Cannons? So two Ion Cannons that give x4 and x4 would result in x16 and not x8? |
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Yeah. And that's not even that huge for one of my games; one of my homeworlds had a 65536x multiplier! |
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To be honest, I didn't read all of the above text (but I will, as soon as I've slept, lol), but after reading some of the forums posts, I support considering alternatives to the Ion Cannon penalties. The current ion cannon simply isn't ever useful past mk2, because of the wave multiplier effectively negating the benefits. Having an ion cannon in front line choke points should at least be marginally a viable choice, but its effectiveness is not worth the wave increase, ever. Having it be useful only on inner planets makes it very limited and boring. Adding an energy cost, or making the wave multipliers smaller (and possibly global) would simply feel like a more reasonable drawback. Something you might occasionally prefer to endure. Overall, I don't like the planet-specific multipliers on anything to begin with. The number of such structures should instead contribute to AI's total aggression everywhere, not just one planet. Why would the AI focus its extra waves towards a planet it knows is defended by an ion cannon or some other special weapon/unit. Wouldn't it be more likely to increase waves to OTHER planets, knowing they're more weakly defended? It's not like the Ion Cannon is going to go through a wormhole and win you the game. It's defense. If anything, it's a sign that humans do not desire offense at the time. Something needs to be done. |
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There's a simple solution here, and that's to simply make high mark ion cannons non-capturable. If you don't want players using them on the front lines for balance reasons (totally understandable) and players don't want to use them in the backfield because of counterattack waves (also understandable) then it's no loss to anyone for them to be permanently AI-controlled structures. That way they remain a viable obstacle, newbies don't make the mistake of capturing one and getting nailed with a massive wave, and all's well. |
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Good point. I'm actually in favor of the AI having unique stuff the players can't have. Although, I'd like the humans be able to build something the AI doesn't use as well. Nothing as significant as what the AI gets, but... y'know, a special freedom fighter ship or a human command ship or something like that. But that's another topic for another time. |
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I'm not sure I agree with the suggestions in that thread, but I wouldn't mind actually having a choice for the ion cannons. |
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I've had similar thoughts about the ion cannon. I've never seen the cannon be anywhere near useful, but I always feel like I should capture one because they look like heavy defense and thus seem very useful at first glance. I'm fine with the increased wave size, but like it was mentioned earlier, the ion cannon only kills about 30-50 ships in a wave of 2000-3000 ships. This seems to remove all usefulness of the cannon for two reasons. First, on the front lines, it doesn't aid at all in killing the waves that cause the multiplier in the first place. I'm not saying it should be able to kill an entire wave of 2000 ships, but it simply doesn't do enough. You could say that other planet defenses wouldn't be needed because the ion cannon itself would deal with border aggression, but with the wave multiplier other defenses would be required. Second, if the ion cannon is not supposed to be on the front lines, then what is it good for? There isn't even any border aggression ships for it to shoot. There is only one possible "front line" use for the ion cannon and that would be if all neighboring planets were neutered of the ability to call waves. While this situation would be the best case because it's on the front line but the AI can't call waves onto the planet directly, that feels like it is still too specific of a situation just for an ion cannon. Besides, if the planets can't call waves, there isn't much need for heavy defense anyway. Overall, the ion cannon just doesn't seem to have any kind of usefulness to outweigh its cost. |
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Also, the Ion Cannon is supposed to be the AIs weapons, that you by chance can capture. Not intended to be a main weapon system for the players. That said... With recent wave changes the wave penalty is kind of steep. I used to fire every 1 second, perhaps the 4 seconds now is too long and should be 2 or 3 seconds (afaik, its still 1 second with unit caps high)? While I would very much like to have MK III, IV and V cannons here and there, I am not sure it is a good idea. |
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You already pay with additional losses if you want to take an ion cannon in one piece. The easy route is blasting the IC to bits before you even bother with real attacks. If they should have wave multipliers something like 1.5-2 is more in line with their value, a freaking golem doesn't cause 4x and that's a mobile genocide machine! Honestly I think the player will likely lose more units to the IC when capping the planet than the AI would when waving the planet. It's not that powerful a weapon and with wave sizes being what they are the IC's impact is negligible. |
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You guys can all blame me for them being capturable. :D I didn't like the fact that Mk1s and Mk2s were capturable and ignored a Mk5 when taking a system because "It'll be mine in a moment, then it can't kill my ships" which turned out to be untrue. That said, I think of Ion Cannons, not as a structure, but as piñatas. Piñatas full of candy the game calls "metal" and "crystal" and the only way to have the "candy" is to break the pretty piñatas. |
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I think Dracos has a point, but then that wouldn't explain why Ion cannons could be made from the Z Trader... In either case, I think the point of the Ion cannons was to be balanced around killing player ships and not AI ships. I guess I wouldn't want it to be made more useful since it'd then be more useful for the AI, but then how is it useful when bought from a Z Trader? |
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They made them available from the Z-trader because they can be captured. |
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Just as an FYI, this is something I'll look at next week or after, when we're in our balance/bugfix phase. I'm willing to consider this sort of thing, but I don't even have time to read it until next week. If you guys come to some sort of consensus about what you'd prefer in the meantime, that will make things even easier next week, but we'll see. |
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How much power do ion cannons use? Would it be feasible to bump it up 5 or 10 times? (Instead of a wave multiplier) That would disincentive having too many of them without crippling the player FOR having them. |
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They take like 100E, it's ridiculously low. |
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I think giving them a very high energy usage (40k - 80k) would be a great way of balancing them. |
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I forgot that they were only 100E. 40k to 80k would be perfect, I think. |
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personally, I think shaving those multipliers would be fine- even a 2x is horrible, 6x is never needed. just making the multipliers 1.5x MK III 2x MK IV 2.5x MK V would still be enough to completely negate any benefit of having them from a defensive point of view, while still making them useful in certain, rare situations. also, making them universally cheaper so scrapping them is less of a case of +9999999 + 9999999 resources. |
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If they give that many resources it should be toned way down. 30-40k Energy usage for Mk1 and increase per MK level. Maybe 80k-100k for mk5 (does that even exist?? If not then Mk4) Personally I'm against any kind of wave modifier. Wave modifiers should be used for places that would cripple the player's economy (as is the case with the Zenith power plant) By raising the energy usage of the ion cannons to a very high amount you don't feel like it's "stupid" to take them. Ion cannons are suppose to increase your defensive ability's not lower them 0_o (as a poser above me said it like an illusion of choice which is pretty terrible). With high energy usage it becomes a strategic choice.. Which is exactly what the game should be about. At least thats the way I see it ^^ |
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In all fairness, they only give 999.999 resources if it's a Mk. IV. From my memory (which might be faulty), Mk. I gives 80k, Mk. II gives 160k and Mk. III gives 640k (which should be enough for anyone, right?). |
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Toll: you'd be right if you were playing....30 versions ago. Was 3.906 that Z-Trader item costs jumped by about 5x. Mk3 Ions now give 1,280k (IIRC). Edit: I think we're both off on our numbers and are think of Mk5, not Mk3. |
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Not sure if it differs with caps or something (kinda doubt it though), but these are the build costs I've got for my current game (normal cap): Mk. I: 800k Mk. II: 1600k Mk. III: 6400k Mk. IV: 11200k Mk. V: 16000k These are for both metal and crystal (so Mk. I costs 800k metal and 800k crystal). You get back 10% of this when you scrap it. |
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Right, so, scrap value: Mk. I: 80k Mk. II: 160k Mk. III: 640k Mk. IV: 1,120k Mk. V: 1,600k Two of those (Mk4 and Mk5) will auto-peak a player's economy. A Mk3 will nearly peak their economy (they'd have to spend down below 360k to not peak). So mr_lolz is correct: those three Ions will peak a user's economy, as he said (he mentioned the +999,999 resources talking about Mk3 and up). He's only partly correct about the Mk3 doing it, but 640,000 resources is more than the old cap, so still tends to peak most players out. |
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Ugh I think it would be ok if they gave some resources (another strategic on the players half) but that seems like to much to me :P I guess I'm not experienced enough with late game though to really comment on it |
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Here is an interesting recent quote dredged from the forum. [quote author=x4000 link=topic=6631.msg51311#msg51311 date=1281630860] Glad you like it! Bear in mind that the wave size increases are localized-only. It only increases the wave sizes for waves coming in to the planet that the ion cannon is on. So, as long as you gate-raid the adjacent planets, there is no wave size effect at all. It's just a [i]severe [/i]penalty if you don't gate raid, basically. [/quote] My take on this is that the new CounterAttack Guard Post should just ignore the ion cannon for wave size multiplier. |
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Eg. it only hurts you when it would be potentially useful. |
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@Winter Born Given what you just quoted, your proposition may be the more simple, elegant and short term change to adjust Ion Cannons, the multiplier ignoring any non classic border waves. (still think scrapping them, MkIII and up, gives too much resources :) ) |
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@Draco There are many, MANY sources of attack that are not gate-produced waves. CPA's, border aggression, quite a few of the minor factions, etc. The claim that they aren't useful if they aren't on the front line also strikes me as strange, I have the AI slip into my backfield from time to time during particularly severe attacks, an automated defense to handle such things (so I don't have to tie up valuable ships on worlds that aren't usually at risk) is definitely worthwhile. Failing that, I'd agree with Winter Born's "leave them as they are, but don't have them impact counterattack waves" suggestion is very reasonable. I'm really not sure energy cost is sufficient penalty, and it certainly doesn't accomplish the stated goal of penalizing their use on the front line. I still think the whole problem is solved if the high mark ion cannons are simply rendered an AI-only weapon. |
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The thing is that alot of us dont want their use penalized on the front lines.. thats the whole point. Penalize is fine.. They shouldn't be free. But the player should be able to decide where he/she uses them. I significant energy cost can be a sufficient penalty (although how much energy they should cost is open for debate) but I'm not saying this is the only method of doing things. I just really really don't think they should be made useless on the front lines. Again its a matter of letting the player make decisions. Thats where the fun comes from. But currently there is no real decision here |
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@DakaSha I don't think you're going to convince Chris to give you something that'll help you turtle up at choke points, in general the design has always moved to prevent that kind of thing (and rightly so, IMO). It's another path to stalemate, and those are no fun for anyone. |
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Then why can you build fortresses/super fortresses? Because there is a cost associated with them (and cap) that makes it impossible to just build them as you please... And thats exactly what im proposing for the ION cannons (edit: not to mention that they arnt as effective as one would think as stated above) |
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The primary difference is that those other defensive structures are rather sharply capped, whereas ion cannons are heavily seeded all over the map. Admittedly, with the new fire rate they're not all that effective anyway, but the potential to have a LOT of them is certainly very real if there's not a significant disincentive. I just don't think a "high" energy cost (80k is the output of one mark 3 reactor or two mark 2's, not all that substantial by the mid-game) is likely to be effective. Furthermore I think balancing them to be in the hands of the players has made them far less threatening in the hands of the AI, and rendered them a much less interesting obstacle on the map as a consequence. |
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I'll agree with the last point. I do think they would be much more interesting if they actually mattered either way. So make them stronger and have less on the map.. I think they should be a "special" structure. Something you run into very seldom.. It makes it more interesting. How to balance them can be argued about but I will def stick to my opinion of being able to decide whether to use them on the front lines though :P |
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I agree with Vinraith & DakaSha. I don't see Ion Cannons as the threat they were pre-v4. I ignore them while wiping the system & simply capture them to add a bit to my defence. They're just not as formidable any more that you need to worry about them even the mark III or IV. I think this may be somewhat an artifact of the removal of almost all other static defences from the AI as previously having half your fleet tractored/engine killed & one shotted by the Ion Cannon was something to worry about. Reducing the reload time should address this. |
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Out of scope for now, but possible for later. Possibly good for the community dlc poll suggestions. |
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Just a quick comment. quicker ROF on the Ion cannons would make them more a threat again. :) Possibly more health as they die quickly now. |
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As of 5.0 and the removal of the Wave Multiplier, this should probably get a status update to "resolved". |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 14, 2010 8:08 pm | Wingflier | New Issue | |
| Nov 14, 2010 8:10 pm | Wingflier | Description Updated | |
| Nov 14, 2010 8:56 pm | Wingflier | Description Updated | |
| Nov 14, 2010 8:59 pm | Winter Born | File Added: Screenshot_2010_11_14_18_46_56.png | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:00 pm | Winter Born | Note Added: 0003488 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:06 pm | Heavens | Note Added: 0003489 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:10 pm | Heavens | Note Edited: 0003489 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:11 pm | Heavens | Note Edited: 0003489 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:12 pm | Heavens | Note Edited: 0003489 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:15 pm | Toll | Note Added: 0003490 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:29 pm | HitmanN | Note Added: 0003492 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:34 pm | HitmanN | Note Edited: 0003492 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 9:48 pm | Vinraith | Note Added: 0003494 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 10:02 pm | HitmanN | Note Added: 0003496 | |
| Nov 14, 2010 11:01 pm | themachineissentient | Note Added: 0003502 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 2:35 am | Ymihere | Note Added: 0003506 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 2:57 am | Ozymandiaz | Note Added: 0003508 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 11:33 am | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0003563 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 12:14 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0003568 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 12:29 pm | Ymihere | Note Added: 0003575 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 12:48 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0003590 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 12:51 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0003591 | |
| Nov 15, 2010 1:48 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0003604 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 1:16 am | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0003693 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 2:13 am | DakaSha | Note Added: 0003694 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 10:28 am | Draco18s | Note Added: 0003709 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 10:43 am | mr_lolz | Note Added: 0003714 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 7:56 pm | DakaSha | Note Added: 0003758 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 8:00 pm | Toll | Note Added: 0003759 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 8:12 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0003761 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 8:13 pm | Draco18s | Note Edited: 0003761 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 8:14 pm | Draco18s | Note Edited: 0003761 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 8:18 pm | Toll | Note Added: 0003762 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 8:28 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0003763 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 8:34 pm | DakaSha | Note Added: 0003764 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 9:44 pm | Winter Born | Note Added: 0003774 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 9:47 pm | Draco18s | Note Added: 0003775 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 10:23 pm | Heavens | Note Added: 0003778 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 10:55 pm | Vinraith | Note Added: 0003779 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 11:08 pm | DakaSha | Note Added: 0003780 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 11:14 pm | Vinraith | Note Edited: 0003779 | |
| Nov 16, 2010 11:18 pm | Vinraith | Note Added: 0003781 | |
| Nov 17, 2010 12:49 am | DakaSha | Note Added: 0003785 | |
| Nov 17, 2010 12:51 am | DakaSha | Note Edited: 0003785 | |
| Nov 17, 2010 1:04 am | Vinraith | Note Added: 0003787 | |
| Nov 17, 2010 1:05 am | Vinraith | Note Edited: 0003787 | |
| Nov 17, 2010 4:00 am | DakaSha | Note Added: 0003794 | |
| Nov 17, 2010 7:00 am | Malibu Stacey | Note Added: 0003799 | |
| Nov 23, 2010 8:39 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => confirmed |
| Nov 23, 2010 8:39 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0004337 | |
| Nov 23, 2010 8:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | confirmed => considering |
| Nov 24, 2010 3:51 am | Ozymandiaz | Note Added: 0004372 | |
| Jun 14, 2011 1:35 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0012439 |
