View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0026597 | AI War 2 | GUI | Mar 4, 2022 12:03 pm | Mar 13, 2022 7:47 pm | |
| Reporter | Strategic Sage | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Severity | text | ||||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | Beta 3.907 Release Candidate 4 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 4.000 Return From The Endless Beta | ||||
| Summary | 0026597: Proposed Fuel FAQ | ||||
| Description | To be added after we are comfortable with no major issues having headed back to stable. At least a few days for that and for people to have time to respond to this. We can always change it later, but I'd prefer to get it as right as possible now. After any objections to the language is approved, this Fuel FAQ would be added to the How To Play section. Additionally, it would be broken up into 2-3 Tips and added to any games with fuel active. Hopefully this will head off as many questions at the pass as possible, as it were. All suggestions on language, phrasing, etc. are enthusiastically solicited. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Q: What does Fuel do? A: If you choose to play with fuel, a number of capturable fuel stations throughout the galaxy and the player will be given a starting complement of fuel as well. There are three kinds of fuel; Radon for turrets and other fixed defenses, Argon for mobile ships, and Xenon for Outguard, Arks, & Golems. If the player runs low on fuel, all units in that category will have their Effectiveness reduced. This penalty will be applied to hull, shields, and damage. It is advised to deactivate/destroy units if needed to stay within the current amount of fuel reserves you have available. Fuel is mandatory only when playing the Logistician or Deathwish campaign types, but is available to be activated in any of the others as well. Fuel is never used by other factions, who will completely ignore it. Q: Are there any recommended settings for playing with Fuel on? A: Yes! It is advised to play with a relatively minimal amount of other factions active, or even just against the AI(s) by themselves. It is also suggested to play on a 'semi-open' map type with a relative minimum of chokepoints. The wide variety and dynamic potential of the available maps and factions in AI War 2 is one of the game's greatest strengths, but it also poses a tremendous obstacle when it comes to balancing this type of challenge. Fuel works by giving the AI additional targets in the player territory to attack, targets the player has to care about and defend. Chokepoint-heavy maps largely trivialize this by limiting access to a player's empire. The other factions interact in dynamic and unpredictable ways, leading to chaotic maps that can be a great deal of fun to play. However, it is simply not possible to design a mechanic that can account for all of these possiblities and present an appropriate level of challenge, much less do so in an interesting way. Every reasonable effort has been made to accomodate specific factions; for example, an extra Argon station is seeded in Dark Zenith territory, and Shard Refineries are planned for Fallen Spire. But for players who enjoy using large numbers of factions, it is advised to have fuel off for those styles of play since it will not have the desired effect. Q: Why was Fuel added to AI War 2? A: The primary design goal of Fuel is to give the player specific infrastructure to defend, in order to facilitate more of a balance between defense and attack compared to the highly aggression-focused Humanity Ascendant experience. Secondarily, this also results in more interesting strategic decisions at the galactic level. Over time, the majority of players have asked for a variety changes in how AI War 2 plays. These changes have largely resulted in more player choices, more powerful fleet alternatives, and fewer permadeath capturables that result in unpleasant negative consequences for the player if they are destroyed. The current Humanity Ascendant campaign type, the default way to play AI War 2, is the result of these changes. Humanity Ascendant has in general made the game significantly less difficult and the player much more powerful. Another group of players preferred a more strategic and challenging experience. Strategic Sage in particular is primarily responsible for the design of the fuel feature, along with considerable assistance from many others, and earnestly solicits your constructive feedback about fuel on the Discord. This is intended to be in keeping with the tradition of structures such as GCAs and IGCs that existed in early versions of AI War 2, as well as AI War Classic capturable buildings like the Fabricators, Advanced Factories, and so on for those familiar with the original game. After many discussions, the idea came up to create different game modes so that those who enjoy the current way of playing can keep it, but a group of veteran players who felt the game was leaving them behind would also have a reason to continue playing. The current variety of Campaign Types in AI War 2 beyond Humanity Ascendant is a direct result of those discussions. Q: Why are there three kinds of fuel instead of one? A: This was done to keep the fuel mechanic from being too punishing. One developer concern was that players would be stretched thin in protecting their planets and unable to acquire more fuel to do so if it was consolidated into a single resource similar to energy. Partly for that reason, Radon is more plentiful at the start of the game and also in the additional fuel stations scattered throughout the galaxy. This ensures the player can have a solid foundation and invest significantly in turrets and other defenses if they choose to do so, while still allowing somewhat tighter controls for mobile ships via Argon, and Arks/Golems/Outguard via Xenon. It also allows the balance for each of these different areas to be tuned independently without affecting the other resources if needed. Q: Can I change the amount of available fuel in the galaxy? A: There are options to do this in the lobby, under Options -> Extended. In general, it is advised to leave them on the defaults however. Testing determined that there is a pretty narrow range in which fuel is actually effective as a game mechanic. Too much fuel and the player will have excess at almost all times and be able to easily absorb the loss of multiple stations without harming their military efforts. Too little fuel and it becomes unreasonably difficult to expand. The starting amount of fuel allows the player to claim three additional planets without concerning themselves with additional stations. Beyond that, you are expected to claim some planets with fuel, and some without it. It is *a* factor in expansion strategy, but not the only factor. Q: Unlike other capturables, Fuel does not give the player any additional benefit beyond keeping their units running at optimal effectiveness. Why not? A: There are multiple reasons for this. One is that we didn't want to reinvent the wheel and make a major change in how players acquire ships and turrets. This would have been an even greater shock to the system and required a much larger amount of work to reinvent items like capturable fleets, ARS & TSS that are hackable, and so on. The goal was to change as little as necessary from the way AI War 2 usually works. Another reason is that the balance of power in Humanity Ascendant is significantly tilted in favor the player compared to earlier versions of AI War 2 or AI War 1 (Classic). Fuel seeks to restore that balance, and the only way to do that is to put in place measures that are effectively player nerfs in comparison to Humanity Ascendant. It is often suggested to boost the AI instead of nerfing the player, but there's a practical limit on how much that can be done and still allow the game to run reasonably on PCs that most players use. It also would have skewed the power of the AI compared to the other factions, resulting in a wide range of knock-on affects. Some AI boosting is present for campaign types from Challenger on up in other features such as Dire CPAs, hacking exostrikes, increased Exo War unit budget, etc. Having said that, a major goal was to make the game more strategically interesting, not just more difficult. Player power is the element that was out of balance compared to the goals for Logistician and Deathwish campaigns, so that's where the effort primarily went on Fuel and other features of the new campaign types. |
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Good point from StarKelp about multiplayer was made on the discord, as a single-player person I had forgotten to add a comment about that. The second question for recommended settings should have added at the end: "Fuel is also not recommended for use in multiplayer games". |
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Thanks! These are all now in place, and if you need to make further edits you can literally adjust the xml. That said, I made a few existing adjustments for a few extra line breaks, I credited to you as the writer at the end of each one, I fixed the use of ampersands (& to and), which otherwise break xml formatting, and I made the last entry's title a bit shorter so that it can fit in the in-game text. |
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The text should be proofread before making it final. As far as content goes, this set of Q&A answers all of my own questions. |
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I don't expect this to change. Not asking for this to change. The reason I'm not asking for it to change is because it's completely optional, so it doesn't affect me if I don't want it to. But as someone who was against CSGs with the heat of a thousand suns, I thought I might add my input as to what makes difficulty interesting. Difficulty is interesting when: 1* There's a random element to it or some kind of surprise 2* There's the possibility of getting rewarded with some kind of toy (read as, if it's only a stick with no carrots, I'm likely to look elsewhere) 3* I cringe when it forces me to do something- puts the game on rails Ways of making fuel more interesting is if it powered certain units that you might otherwise not have (point 1). Fuel would be more interesting if it had speed rewards/penalties rather than shields or weapons, which is basically equivalent to cutting down a mark level (point 2). This can make the game unplayable or impossible, forcing you to grab a specific fuel (point 3). Having three separate fuels makes those points even more required, which is what CSGs were. This feels a lot like CSGs, which were also tiered territorial points! Some of the best dials and options in the game to make it harder give me the kind of difficulty I'm looking for as the player. Great examples: nanocaust, warden, architrave, devourer. Nanocaust, when tuned appropriately, can be a lot of fun. If you set it off too early, it's not fun. Fuel is a kind of boring mechanic that focuses more on territorial holdings/penalties rather than engaging with lore, factions, trophies, or new toys. That is my critique and as a player how I like to be challenged. By all means keep it, but I'm not turning it on. |
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I appreciate your thoughts. Fuel isn't for everyone and it's not intended to be, it's fully expected that most players won't want to use it. It's primarily for those who don't find Humanity Ascendant satisfying or are looking for something different, not those who think Humanity Ascendant is great the way it is - for those, I definitely recommend keep playing it, enjoy it, more power to you. I did find your list of points interesting, since from my perspective it doesn't really fit with the positive examples you gave. I.e. Nanocaust is *massively* random based on where it happens to spawn and offers you no toys unless you are so massively powerful that you can hack the hive in which case you can yawn your way through winning the game anyway, and most definitely puts you on rails since you can't play low-AIP against it, you need to invest in specific counters and tactics (help you if you try battling nanocaust with a conventional fleetball) and so on. I don't see what toys you get from the Warden as another example - I'm not just trying to tear down what you said, but I don't think I understand the attraction you see in these aspects of the game given the list you presented. I don't think Fuel is really similar to CSGs, because those didn't require you to *hold* territory, just take it initially and knock them out. They were also a newbie-oriented mechanic with a much different purpose. The primary suggestion seems to be giving Fuel more toys for the player, carrot instead of stick. This was considered at length in the design period and people suggested ways of doing so. Every one of them, without exception, fell flat. I'm open to possible alternatives, even if only theoretical at this point, but the reasons it doesn't really work are: ** Fuel and the associated campaign types need to correct for the considerable power spike players now have in Humanity Ascendant post-Shift - roughly a difficulty level minimum, if not more, compared to the game prior to that. That means it has to be inherently harder, not just harder if specific factions are added. This is always going to inevitable feel like a player nerf, because that's exactly what it is, and intentionally so. ** Such a reward removes player agency that is vital, more on this below but player choice in what you lose is removed. ** The putting the game on rails thing already exists in many ways in AI War 2 that people are just used to by now. Run out of energy, and unless you sacrifice your metal with converters you have to capture planets to get more. Most people generally aren't too successful if they want to play without hacking, or even hacking specific things like TSS. Try winning without capturing any fleets. Etc. Point simply is, there are always aspects of the game that are core requirements that a player must participate in to achieve good results. I understand that Fuel may well feel different here because it is new, but I would argue it isn't *actually* different. ** Any reward given by a fuel station will unavoidably fall into one of two scenarios. One is that the reward is generally worth the price of capturing the fuel station and defending it. If it is, then it isn't adding difficulty at all - it's a player buff and makes the problem of player power creep worse, not better. ** If the reward given by the fuel station is *not* worth the price, then it adds difficulty only if the player captures it. So what will players do? Not capture it of course. In that event the feature serves only to annoy players and except for possible edge cases is going to be a net negative in the game. There are so many other player assets available in the game that a reward system simply can't be stapled on to the existing way of doing things and have any impact in adding challenge/difficulty. The only way for fuel to accomplish the intended goal is that a major penalty is attached, one that impacts a significant part of the player's military. It can't do that *and* have a carrot attached without completely ripping out and re-working how the player acquires military assets. This was floated as an idea during the design phase. There was a lot of re-thinking, a lot of 'let's find a better way to do this' types of discussions. There weren't many specific ideas that actually fit due largely to the above reasons. The main one I floated was the idea of AI Power Nodes - in a nutshell the AI's ships would gain increased stats based on the current AIP & difficulty, same stats as lack of Fuel currently penalizes. The player would then need to capture and hold these AI Power Node structures to reduce the AI forces from this 'elevated' state. The effects would be diminished based on the mark level of the AI planet so that only the homeworld got the full effect and it wasn't overbearing throughout the galaxy and so on, there were other details, but this was basically a way to say 'buff the AI, don't nerf/punish the player'. It would have only one additional 'resource' to track, AI Power Level next to AIP in the resource bar, and the territorial goal of giving the player critical infrastructure to defend would have been satisfied. Nobody liked this. Not a single person said 'absolutely, let's run with it'. Fuel seemed more interesting and also, quite importantly, fuel offers the player *flexibility and agency* compared to the Power Node alternative or any reward-focused system. I.e. if a cool toy is tied to some structure you have to defend, then if you lose the structure you lose the toy. Fuel allows the player to choose what *they* want to lose if they are short of supply on it. So it's actually much better for the player in that way. None of this is meant to convince you to like fuel, but more to just say a lot of thought has gone into these issues, and I/we are still open to concrete specific ideas on how maybe it could be done better (even if only useful for the modding community at this stage), and give an explanation of why the choice was made to implement fuel the way it is. |
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One of the real problems with AIW2 is that the player isn't forced to hold territory very much. I've struggled with this repeatedly when trying to find ways to make the AI smarter. So for me as an AI writer, Fuel is very effective at giving the AI more chances to be intelligent. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 4, 2022 12:03 pm | Strategic Sage | New Issue | |
| Mar 4, 2022 12:04 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0065110 | |
| Mar 4, 2022 12:13 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0065111 | |
| Mar 4, 2022 12:33 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Mar 4, 2022 12:33 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Mar 4, 2022 12:33 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Mar 4, 2022 12:33 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 4.000 Return From The Endless Beta |
| Mar 4, 2022 12:33 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0065113 | |
| Mar 4, 2022 1:41 pm | trabbo | Note Added: 0065115 | |
| Mar 13, 2022 1:00 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0065404 | |
| Mar 13, 2022 6:39 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0065408 | |
| Mar 13, 2022 6:40 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Edited: 0065408 | |
| Mar 13, 2022 6:42 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Edited: 0065408 | |
| Mar 13, 2022 6:46 pm | BadgerBadger | Note Added: 0065409 | |
| Mar 13, 2022 7:47 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Edited: 0065408 |
