View Issue Details

IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0024165AI War 2Gameplay IdeaNov 24, 2020 5:33 pm
ReporterTechSY730 Assigned To 
Severityminor 
Status newResolutionopen 
Product Version2.637 Threatfleet Conversion, Chat, And Clickable Planets 
Summary0024165: Ideas to make AI eyes a bit less annoying
DescriptionAI eyes are certainly in a much better spot then they were, but I think there could be some tweaks to keep them from being annoying in a bad way while still being annoying in a good way (as in, still make you change your playstyle for that planet).

Inspired by conversations on discord (in particular tadrinth)

1. A warm up time before coming active. It doesn't have to be long, maybe like 5-10 seconds or so. But just for a way to give you time to correct before a plasma Eye wipes out half your fleet in a single blow. (Remember, they get invincibility from guard posts, so you can't use this time to cheese them unless the guard posts are already dead)
2. The AI (at the very least the sentinels) should wait longer before running if there is an AI eye on the planet. So defenderd being chased off don't like suddenly put you over the edge when they could have waited and joined up with the eye as more pours in and probably defended.
3. Maybe reduce the chance of the AI buying them from a zenith trader.

Maybe ideas:
- A minimum allied strength on the planet for it to activate. So if you have basically cleared out the planet (or they all ran) you don't have to worry about having only a similarly token force to kill off guard posts.

Probably tricky to implement:
- Instead of always looking at the current allied strength : enemy strength ratio, look at max(allied strength over the past N seconds) : enemy strength ratio (For some yet to be determined N and polling frequency). So killing off stuff takes a little bit of time before the AI eye readjusts so you have a buffer before you have to start splitting your fleet.
There should still be a warm up time if this suggestion is taken as now it can take you even more by surprise.
TagsNo tags attached.

Activities

tadrinth

Nov 24, 2020 5:33 pm

reporter   ~0059778

The main pain points for me are 1) reorganizing ship lines between transports and 2) eyes activating because you either killed all the guards or they ran away.

I've been putting all my ships into one ship line (because the FRS ships like Inciting Parasites work best if you do this) but then I either have to only bring in part of my fleet (which means I can't use the select-fleet hotkeys, or load into transports to move around, or build reinforcements while I'm fighting), or reorganize my ship lines into two or more fleets, which is way easier than it used to be but still somewhat of a pain. I think a certain amount of rearranging is healthy; having a 'move ship line to fleet' button instead of the swap button would help here. Unfortunately you still want to move them all back into a single fleet once you get some FRS ships; not sure how to solve that.

I'd definitely like if planets were more clear about what will wake up the guards and/or activate Eyes, and also if that threshold was less responsive to you killing guards. If I figure out exactly what fleet I need to clear the planet without waking the guards, I want to be rewarded by getting to clear the planet without guards waking up. Right now, that may not work because as I kill guards, the strength at the planet drops and eventually they'll all wake and then probably run.

And once the guards flee a planet, you might have a lot of trouble clearing the planet, as you can only bring in a token force which might then struggle with, say, an AI fortress. Though this isn't a huge concern, mostly my problem is Plasma Eyes wiping out my fleet once I trigger them.

From the discord, most people just trigger eyes or sabotage hack them, I think only StrategicSage responded that he generally avoided triggering them.

I think I like the proposal to make guard awakening and Eye triggering based on the highest AI strength of the past few minutes. That way you can put together a fleet that can kill the planet by sneaking around, and as long as you're reasonably quick, you don't have to worry about the threshold changing because you killed some guards.

Or, I need to get good and bring few enough forces that the guards won't run even when there's only 2 guard posts left (at which point I can kill the Eye). But it's hard to tell how small a fleet to bring to achieve that.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Nov 24, 2020 5:00 pm TechSY730 New Issue
Nov 24, 2020 5:00 pm TechSY730 Summary Ideas to make AI eyes less annoying => Ideas to make AI eyes a bit less annoying
Nov 24, 2020 5:01 pm TechSY730 Description Updated
Nov 24, 2020 5:02 pm TechSY730 Description Updated
Nov 24, 2020 5:09 pm TechSY730 Description Updated
Nov 24, 2020 5:28 pm TechSY730 Description Updated
Nov 24, 2020 5:33 pm tadrinth Note Added: 0059778