View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0001860 | AI War 1 / Classic | Gameplay Idea | Dec 6, 2010 12:04 pm | Dec 6, 2010 5:37 pm | |
| Reporter | Wingflier | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 4.045 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 4.046 | ||||
| Summary | 0001860: Suggestion: ARS Capture Unlocks MKII Ship Type | ||||
| Description | This was one of the ideas being thrown around in an ARS Discussion thread, and it struck me as particularly brilliant. What if upon capturing an ARS, you not only received new technology, but also MKII of that technology as well. How much more incentive would players have to seek these kinds of unlocks out if this was the case? In addition, instead of having to spend 7,500 Knowledge to be able to afford MKIII and MKIV technology, the player would only have to spend 5,000! I agree with the general consensus that 7,500 Knowledge is too much to spend on a random ship type that you probably won't need to win. Even ignoring the Knowledge costs, the metal and crystal costs, in addition to the Energy upkeep associated with having a large amount of bonus ship types is enough of a drawback alone. I think unlocking MKII after capturing an ARS would be a wonderful incentive to actually go out of your way for this technology. (To be clear, bonus ships chosen by "starting location" on the initial galaxy map would still only unlock MK1 of any given ship). Original idea goes to Lancefighter, please tell us what you think! | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | |||||
| related to | 0001855 | closed | Chris_McElligottPark | Reduce fleet ship tech knowledge cost |
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Sounds pretty nice in my opinion. I almost never build mk1 anything except turrets due to power constraints. Paralyzers, FFBs, Etherjets and Autobombs are pretty much the only exceptions. Not having to spend knowledge for mk 2 at least gives a more useable ship for no knowledge cost, assuming the ship is powerful enough to build anyway, like an MRLS or bulletproof. |
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I like the idea since it would definitely encourage experimentation with the bonus ship types (mk1 of most fleet ships in general just isn't that useful). However, you called the bonus ship types "a random ship type that you probably won't need to win" which (in the general consensus) is more or less correct at this stage but makes me worry about how this will work balance-wise. Perhaps a small AI boost in the midgame is also in order to make these seem more important and give players a bit more incentive to grab them. |
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The AI gets boosted by AIP and the MK scaling midgame already. The fleet ships will (hopefully) eventually all be useful. You still probably won't need them to win, but if they make it overall FASTER to win, that's a net gain whether they are necessary or not. Right now, they mostly have no or a negative effect. You could, theoretically, win by just deepstriking from a single HW and taking exactly 8 other planets just to get the knowledge and blow up the core shields, but it would take forever compared to a more mixed strategy of both deep+narrow and wide+shallow now. |
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By all means rebalance the bonus ships, as some of them really are too weak. However, I think some of the power gamers around here are overlooking more non-traditional ship uses in their quest for an "optimal" solution, and this business of there being "too little power and knowledge" is a direct consequence of low planet, low AIP gaming and has [i]never[/i] been an issue for me. We're getting dangerously close to a point where a very specific subset of the player base is driving the entire direction of the game. Making bonus ship unlocks require a bit less knowledge to encourage experimentation would be fine, but simply giving away Mark II ships is drastically too much. I don't really understand the mentality that doesn't go after ARS's to begin with, but it certainly shouldn't require [i]this[/i] much incentive. |
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If you want to play non-optimally, then making the optimal game more varied in a way that doesn't make the game any harder for you shouldn't hurt you any. You can certainly keep playing the game non-optimally and this particular change won't stop you or break your strategies if you're doing taking most planets or using low-dps siege units and stuff. You'll still be able to unlock everything you want, and you'll still certainly be able to setup sieges all the time. The current state of the game is, however, draining the usefulness of ARS in more optimal gameplay. They may not be quite USELESS anymore with the mk wave changes so mk1 to mk2 isn't so horrible to cross, but they certainly aren't something to get excited about. |
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On the contrary, part of the fun right now is that I can't unlock everything I want. Part of the fun, indeed, is making difficult decisions about what to unlock and what not to unlock, which this would definitely undermine. This contention that ARS unlocks are "nearly useless" is beyond baffling. I'm content to stay out of the way of the rest of the changes being driven by the vocal minority, as they don't meaningfully affect the game as I play it, but a thousand extra knowledge-free mark 2 ships is a dramatic balance shift for the easier. I have a problem with that. |
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I'm actually really intrigued by this suggested change. Keith and I were talking about reducing the Knowledge cost for the bonus ship types (not the core triangle), but I think I like this better. Vinraith -- your comments mirror my own reservations, of course. I'm always keen to consider when there's a vocal minority, for sure. The reason that this sort of thing appeals to me, though, is something I've been trying to do for a while: reduce the barriers for experimentation. Let's face it, mark I ships aren't as exciting in the late game as they are at the start, and so when you are 12 hours in and get some mark I vampires, it's like "yay, what do I do with this now?" You can't really test them out to see if they're awesome or not, because you're fighting other much-higher-level enemy ships. You can opt to unlock them and hope the higher-mark versions will be useful for you, but that comes at a great opportunity cost in terms of spending knowledge there versus other places. And given human nature, etc, I think people are a lot less likely to try new stuff that way. Regardless of why the vocal minority wants this feature (like you, I agree that ARSes are useful and the statements that they are not is beyond baffling), I think that there is an undercurrent of fear from trying to unlock the higher-level fleet bonus ships if you're not familiar with them already and you get them late in the game. I know I tend to do that some when it's not one of my pet types, for example -- I just have more pet types than most players, since I've got such familiarity with all of them. It's always a give-and-take. My goal is in no way to make the game easier, which I read as your primary concern. This would basically be 12,500 free knowledge if you unlock all 5 ARSes, and that doesn't strike me as too unbalancing -- that's basically four planets worth of knowledge. If it turns out that things just seem too easy after that, the AI can always be made harder. My main goal is to maintain the level of difficulty while encouraging player experimentation and growth, rather than having players fearfully fall back on the same tactics again and again. Regarding the difficult decisions comment: I agree that is hugely valuable. In that regard, I might just want to make the mark III of ALL the fleet ships cost a bit more knowledge. That would impact both the base ship types and the bonus ship types, which could be really good. That, in turn, would make the bonus ships even more valuable, and would offset any bonus in overall knowledge from this change. Perhaps adding 1000 to the unlock cost of all mark III ships. Given that you get III AND IV ships from unlocking just III, having a more extreme cost for unlocking the IIIs seems only sensible. But in truth, even with this change, you'd still only be able to unlock less than 25% of the total technologies available to you in any given game, even if you took an overlarge number of planets. Thoughts welcome. |
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[i]Regarding the difficult decisions comment: I agree that is hugely valuable. In that regard, I might just want to make the mark III of ALL the fleet ships cost a bit more knowledge. That would impact both the base ship types and the bonus ship types, which could be really good. That, in turn, would make the bonus ships even more valuable, and would offset any bonus in overall knowledge from this change. Perhaps adding 1000 to the unlock cost of all mark III ships. Given that you get III AND IV ships from unlocking just III, having a more extreme cost for unlocking the IIIs seems only sensible.[/i] That would probably be sufficient counterbalance, and makes a measure of sense considering the mark IV factor (though it's going to be one more reason to fix leech/parasite balance!), and I can appreciate the value of encouraging experimentation. It's certainly undeniable that it's difficult to evaluate the value of an unlock in mid and late game from its mark 1 incarnation, as well. Alright, I'm sold with some trepidation. Which brings up a minor Mantis issue, actually. I don't know if you can do anything about this, but it'd be awfully nice if one could "neutralize" ones vote. I wouldn't say I support this, but I'm no longer against it either. |
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I was against this, but seeing Chris's comments I think this would have a more positive "fun" impact than simply reducing the mkII/mkIII costs of bonus types, and wouldn't have any really serious drawbacks. |
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Upping the Mk3 cost by 1000 along with this change does sound pretty good, and may even occasionally make you consider choosing mk2 of ship A instead of Mk3 of ship B. The balance would need to be investigated thoroughly though. Considering that a lot of people prefer unlocking starships instead of fleet ships as it is, the fleet ship cost increase could end up promoting the starships even more. |
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HitmanN raises a valid point about the starship balance concern, though frankly I think this entire [i]discussion[/i] is partly a product of that balance being off. If fleet ships are less attractive than starships, then of course ARS's are less attractive as one is never going to be unlocking higher marks of those ships anyway. Clearly something's going to have to be done to make starships the less overwhelmingly appealing option if this is going to be resolved. |
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Starships are kind of looming over this, yes, but I think it would be better to wait until we've given fleet ships a solid intra-consistency pass before comparing them to starships and turrets. |
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Yeah, that's also true. I think that starships are in for a knowledge-cost increase, too. Given their survivability, etc, those really should cost more. And if you want to support a massive bunch of starships (more than what you get unlocked for free at the start), you really need to pony up the knowledge from a variety of planets. Like all things in AI War, this is crazy complex and interrelated. But I'm glad that making it easier for players to experiment with the mark II fleet ships is something people find sensible, as well. For the record, my initial knee-jerk reaction to Wingflier's suggestion was also negative, but then I thought about it a bit more and realized there were some solid reasons to do it. One challenge I always face, with any sort of balance discussion: both perception AND reality matter. If players as a group perceive something to be useless, whether or not it is, it won't be used and it becomes useless by their not using it. Trying to guide player perceptions to match reality as much as possible is one of my hardest jobs, no joke. :) |
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People actually pay that insane cost for starships? I rarely ever unlock them, using only the fleet starships at higher marks and even that has ended now that the cost is exponential and way too high. |
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I agree, the most useful starships are really the flagship line for the damage boost. That alone is about 16k knowledge though (if I remember right off the top of my head), or 9k to Zenith. I usually stop at flagships though unless I end up with a lot of "excess" knowledge after necessities somehow and an already large section of fleet not being damage boosted. The leech starships are kind of useless past mk 1, the bomber starships don't scale well (but are awesome for blowing up AI Eyes, so sometimes mk2 will open), the scout starship isn't all that great and raid starships are troublesome for humans to use, so really it's mostly just the triangles, fleet starships, a line of bases and necessary turrets that suck lots of knowledge away from bonus fleet ships(that isn't helped by the bonus fleet ships being relatively weak overall right now either). There are a lot of turrets and that is a lot of knowledge. Edit: Left off Siege Starships. They may be fun, but they're still not worth the cost for power in my opinion except as kind of a "only thing left to build" deal. That applies to the knowledge cost too (more or less). |
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* Now when an Advanced Research Station is captured, it unlocks not only a new bonus ship type, but also the mark II technology of that ship type. ** This helps to allow players to experiment with more bonus ship types without fear, since normally if you are getting a mark I bonus ship type late in the game, that's not very useful and it's hard to tell if the higher-mark ships would be useful. Those extra ships wind up just being put on guard duty. This way, players also get mark II ships that are a lot more useful later in the game, and they can make a better decision about whether or not they want mark III/IV variants. ** Of course, it also sweetens the deal for capturing Advanced Research Stations. * The cost of mark III fleet ships has been raised from 5000 to 6000. This is partly to counterbalance the change above, but also to better account for the fact that you get mark III AND IV ships out of the deal of just unlocking III (assuming you have and hold an advanced factory). |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 6, 2010 12:04 pm | Wingflier | New Issue | |
| Dec 6, 2010 12:12 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0005366 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 12:51 pm | Kemeno | Note Added: 0005370 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 1:01 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0005371 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 1:02 pm | Suzera | Note Edited: 0005371 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 1:03 pm | Vinraith | Note Added: 0005372 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 1:09 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0005374 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 1:21 pm | Vinraith | Note Added: 0005376 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 1:21 pm | Vinraith | Note Edited: 0005376 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 1:27 pm | Vinraith | Note Edited: 0005376 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 1:28 pm | Vinraith | Note Edited: 0005376 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:00 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0005388 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:00 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:00 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => feedback |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:05 pm | Vinraith | Note Added: 0005390 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:06 pm | Vinraith | Note Edited: 0005390 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:08 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0005391 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:17 pm | HitmanN | Note Added: 0005392 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:22 pm | Vinraith | Note Added: 0005393 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:30 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0005394 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 2:31 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0005395 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 4:09 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0005423 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 4:44 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Relationship added | related to 0001855 |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:22 pm | Suzera | Note Added: 0005441 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:23 pm | Suzera | Note Edited: 0005441 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:25 pm | Suzera | Note Edited: 0005441 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:26 pm | Suzera | Note Edited: 0005441 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:26 pm | Suzera | Note Edited: 0005441 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:37 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0005444 | |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:37 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | feedback => resolved |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:37 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 4.046 |
| Dec 6, 2010 5:37 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:30 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Suggestion - Gameplay => Gameplay Idea |
