View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0003174 | AI War 1 / Classic | Balance Issue | Apr 3, 2011 11:48 am | Sep 28, 2011 10:48 pm | |
| Reporter | FunnyMan | Assigned To | |||
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.009 | ||||
| Summary | 0003174: The problem with golems (and other large ships/structures) | ||||
| Description | "That's a nice golem you have there. Be a shame if something... happened to it." In the later stages of the game, golems can become ridiculously fragile for the player. The AI's golems seem fine, partly due to the player's ship restrictions and partly due to their throwaway nature. The player usually has to spend a considerable time pounding down a golem, and the AI doesn't care about losing it; it just gets a new one (or chance at one) in the next exogalactic strikeforce. But for the player, there are a couple handfuls of golems in the entire galaxy, and even assuming they can acquire all of them, losing any one is still a steep penalty. Sending a golem into a heavily-defended system alone is almost-instant suicide, and you have to treat them like fragile glass spheres even in moderately-defended systems. This makes sense, to a point, but then a ship type crops up that's especially good against them (etherjet tractors, zenith bombardment ships, etc.) and suddenly they're losing 5% health every second or two... if you're lucky. Case in point, while I was defending a system against a moderate attack, I sent a black widow golem up to dismantle an AI carrier, from maximum range. The carrier dead, 40 mkV zenith bombardment ships popped out and instakilled the golem. There was no time to react; it just went from 80% health to dead in an instant. To some extent, this is a complaint against zenith bombards in specific, as the player must be very careful with them (they're expensive, after all), but the AI can routinely throw 5x the player's cap at him (they seem to use about as many bombards as ordinary fighters!), massively damaging or even obliterating the player's defenses with a single shot and not caring whether they survive to fire again. Even without that specific ship type, though, the problem with golems--and, in general, most large ships and structures--is that while the AI should be able to wear them down during a big attack, what usually happens is that they either hold for the entire battle or get blown up in a few seconds. The player should have time to react and work to save their valuable equipment, without having to pause and micromanage teleporting engineers because it just lost over half its health in the last four seconds. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | |||||
|
|
Two big contributors to this: One, scaling up of damage. While most of the fleet ships and the starships have had their HP rebalanced in light of the vastly increased average damage, many, many of the other ships out there (like golems, capturables, etc) have not. This is making the "should be tough stuff" not as tough as they should be. They should be able to hold their own long enough for players to send a fleet over to try to save them, and in many cases, they are not. (Okay, the armored golem has proper survivability, but the others are sort of fragile for the hype the descriptions for the golem class ships build up) The other large contributor to this issue is that you cannot repair things while they are being damaged. While this is a good mechanic to prevent stalling of battles, it does really hurt the usability of the "big things". In many other RTSs, you are allowed to repair things while they are being damaged for this very sort of reason, balanced of course by the need to put the fragile engineer into the fray as well. I'm not sure how much "hacking" of the engine would be necessary to have a smallish list of units (the large, expensive, "you want to keep alive" ships in question) that are allowed to be repaired while being damaged. Allowing repairs on a unit while that unit is being damaged for all units is a BAD idea (due to the way engineers work in this game); it would allow for both humans and the AI to stall battles too much. However, allowing it for the really big stuff may not be a bad idea. |
|
|
Oh, and do you have an example of a wave where Z elec bombers were not being scaled down as much as they should be? Could you turn on advanced logging (its under the advanced tab in the options screen), and post the relevant files it spits out if the Z bomber spam happens again? The relevant files for normal waves are: AIThreadWaveComputationLog.txt MainThreadWaveComputationLog.txt The relevant file for exo-galactic strikes is: EventAttackCompositionInfoLog.txt |
|
|
My concern is less with waves (I'm using cross-planet, schizophrenic waves lately, since the normal ones feel a bit braindead to me), and more with reinforcement/defensive ships, cross-planet waves, and threat. In the save attached to 0003178, for instance, enabling cheats and disabling fog of war shows me that Sackbrother (the AI homeworld in the lower-right branch) has 11 zenith bombardment ship mark Vs, more than twice the ship cap of 5, whereas every other fleet ship is at or below cap. This problem only gets worse later on. After reducing the AI to only Sackbrother and its neighbor, Dwellape, I see 125 zenith bombardment ship mark Vs there, compared to 272, 290, and 302 of the basic mark V ships. Fighters, at 302, are only about 14x ship cap, while the bombards are at 25x. Each given bombard V is, by attack*max_multiplier*health/reload_speed, about 4.5x as powerful as a fighter V (which, by that metric, is the most powerful of the basic three). So those 125 bombards are somewhat more powerful than the 302 fighters. Further, I'd argue that that metric actually *understates* the case, as the bombards' damage is front-loaded, meaning that they only need to survive a fraction of a second to do their entire damage for 30s. And that's before you consider the fact that a bombard only does half damage to a non-optimal type, or that its optimal types are precisely the ones that this bug says are too fragile. Based on those numbers, the ship caps seem to be a reasonable indication of relative strength. 5 zenith bombardment ship mark Vs are roughly as powerful. or perhaps a bit more so, than 22 of any of the mark V basic ships. Thus, the AI is spawning about twice as many as it should. The AI Superterminal also seems to be spawning 50% to >100% as many bombards as any normal ship type, depending on the specific spawn. This doesn't bother me so much, though, because those only spawn when you're specifically shaking the beehive, so you should expect something nastier than usual. And, in any case, I'm guessing it uses the same spawning logic as reinforcements. |
|
|
Meh, golems have extremely high offensive power, that means they remain useful even if you need a meatshield for them. It may be tempting to use the golem as an army of one but really, don't do that. Ultra Heavy hitpoints aren't worth much. Maybe the Zenith Bombard warrants a separate ticket but the golems by themselves are fine. |
|
|
@FunnyMan As KDR_11k suggested, if you have a save where the AI is flagrantly disregarding the per guard post and/or per planet caps the AI has on [i]defending[/i] Z electric bombers, then can you make a new issue and post that save on it? Keep in mind, they have to be defending to count towards the caps. Freed Z elec bombers (which includes those stalking a wormhole) don't count towards these caps. If you have trouble telling the difference, turn on debug mode (F3 by default toggles it), and hover over the units in question. It should say something like "Guarding wormhole post" if it is defending, and lack such phrasing if it is freed. |
|
|
I wonder if the golem's Max HP could be linked to some other factor, for example have the max HP be (base * [AI progress/(50-100, depending on difficulty)] |
|
|
Part of the problem is that before the switch to armor types, no ships had bonuses against golems. Now, plenty of ships have bonus against Ultra Heavy, which golem is. Giving Golems a special armor type of "Golem" may do the trick for increasing their survivability, but that will then make them extremely oppressive to face down in exogalactic waves. |
|
|
1. Zenith Bombardment Ships != Zenith Electric Bombers 2. How am I supposed to even know what the AI's cap *is*? I can read mine easily, but the AI's isn't shown anywhere I know of. 3. The problem isn't that golems aren't unstoppable juggernauts (they shouldn't be), but that they require constant babysitting in any sizable battle. The golem can be fine one moment, and dying very quickly the next, and it's extremely difficult to tell when the situation will change without watching it like a hawk. Either they need to be less fragile, or the game needs to help the player manage them. 4. Forts also suffer from the general issue, but can be rebuilt, so they're less problematic. 5. I've got another possible solution. Lore indicates that the golems have been around for a long, long time, which suggests that they're virtually immortal. When a golem dies, instead of vanishing, it could turn into an invincible "golem cyst" (a la http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_cyst). The cyst represents the golem's core machinery entering a sort of emergency repair mode. After a long recovery period (4 hours sounds reasonable to me), the cyst reverts to being a broken golem, controlled by the planet owner (AI if neutral). I'm not sure how the AI's golems fit into this idea. They come infrequently enough that they *might* be able to use the same system, but it seems more likely that AI-controlled golems would have to not form cysts. Perhaps the AI disables that subsystem to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands? A permanent cost to the resurrection might be a good idea, too. One possibility would be to have the cyst automatically seek out and eat a resource node or two to gather materials for the repair process. |
|
|
I like the idea of revivable golems, I think what would be best would be a psuedo-warhead to revive them, rather than a permanent hit to resource income. |
|
|
First of all, I'd close this ticket and open new ones with the specific suggestions/tweaks, instead of sidetracking this that doesnt really state the problem that is actually being experienced. Besides that, I do like the rebuildable golem idea, with a looooong delay. Perhaps it could even be made a slight bit more interesting, make it require some 'activation' ship, that can only be build from a mineral like used for the Spirecraft. That way you have to get the key 'somewhere' before you can unlock the box of goodies. Limit the keys and you can still keep some control over how easilly this feature can be used/abused. Would be a nice way to combine both the golems with the spirecraft :) |
|
|
@FunnyMan 1. Dang it, I keep forgetting that there are two Zenith ships with "bomb" in their name. Z electric bombers are considered low cap ships and have per planet and per guard post caps. Z bombardment ships are considered mid ship cap ships, and as such have no such restrictions. However, (IIRC) they have .5x ship cap, thus the AI [i]on average[/i] will only get half as many of them per wave and per reinforcement. 2. AI per planet and per guard post ship caps is a relatively new mechanic, so it is not documented anywhere in game. I don't even what ships have such caps and what those caps are even in the wiki. Someone needs to add them. However, these caps are the exception, not the rule. 3. Hmm, an interesting question. How does one keep them from being unstoppable juggernauts but still allow them to live a decent amount of time under focused fire? I honestly don't have an answer for that. As for the rest, I don't really have that much of a say in it. |
|
|
The main problem with Golem survivability (the "sustained fire" thing) is not that they're taking a lot of fire, it's that they're taking a lot of the wrong type of fire. If they get near bombers, or anything else with ultra-heavy bonuses, they will die very very quickly. Keep them away from these things and they should live a decently long and happy life so long as you keep them fed. |
|
|
Hmm, it sounds like ultra-heavy bonuses overall may still be a bit too high, or at least the bonus bombers have. IDK about how to measure that balance though. The suggestion to give Golems and other "super ships" a new armor type besides ultra-heavy may be a good idea, but I think normalizing ultra-heavy bonuses a little "tighter" might take care of this without the added complexity of a new armor type. |
|
|
"but that (changing their armor type, or something else that makes bombers less effective against them) will then make them extremely oppressive to face down in exogalactic waves." Ultra-heavy bonuses are fine. They balance fine for everything but golems, and with the exception of Bombards it should not be difficult to keep one's ships away from any AI ships that have ultra-heavy bonuses so long as you send an escort fleet with them (which, face it, you should be doing most of the time. If you don't and you lose the golem, that's your fault, crazy carrier/bombard situation aside). So, fix bombards, keep golem away from short range stuff. Don't go mucking around with the entire balance of ultra-heavy, because that'll get back into the level of rebalancing that 4.0 saw that everyone's rebalancing. |
|
|
Okay, I looked at the Zenith Bombardment Ship's stats, and their attack does seem to be out of line even when you take their reload time and lowered ship cap into consideration. That should probably be a separate issue report though. |
|
|
this is basically the problem with focus fire in most strategy games. you look at Sins, a capital ship can practically get insta popped late game. (so now theyre introducing titans! heh). it happens as battles scale up. the only way to combat is to introduce penalties to focus fire, but that only pushes the problem back; you still usually hit a point of insta pop. however, AI War often relies on focus fire, the player must rapidly focus down severe threats like guardians and starships. Big stuff just dies fast in AI war. Even on Epic you can lose a million resources of ships in seconds. To the extent that there are extended slugfests in AI war it's because ships spread their fire for no major reason. as for Z Bombards, theyre easily one of the most annoying AI ships in the game. I think theyre probably too fast and too long ranged and too good all round especially in view of the significant and constant rebalancing of the dreadnought. |
|
|
Well, Like the raid star-ship, which had to be split between an AI version and a human version, why not golems too? |
|
|
Erm... because they've already been split? Golemite golems have 1/10th the HP of Human golems, and I believe exowave golems have half the HP? |
|
|
Really? and they are still too weak despite having 10x the health? well, Clearly then they need a magick shield that makes their armor increase drastically when attacked, for a few seconds, so they couldn't die in one second no matter how much the AI threw at it, and took aprox. 5 seconds to die instead. I suppose another idea would be to make them convert back to broken golems :p |
|
|
Let's keep in mind that the biggest of the golems, the Armored Golem, *only* has 500 million HP. That sounds like a lot, but remember that a mk4 Spire Shieldpost has around 300 million HP IIRC, and it goes down pretty quickly if you have a full cap of mk1-mk3 bombers attacking it. Given that often, especially in exowaves and other large AI events, there are more than a couple hundred mark 4 and mark 5 bombers along with other units that have bonus against Ultra-Heavy, this becomes an issue. It used to not be an issue because nothing used to get a bonus against golems, so everything would do piddly damage against them and you could just use them to smash things over and over and over without any real danger to the golem. |
|
|
As the AI universe has gotten stronger, faster, more deadly as the version number increases Golems are starting to get feel left behind. With the introduction of spire craft even golems can now go down in seconds. Golems also can run into errors in terms of unit caps...maybe. Does their frequency vary according to caps? For example, are the golem numbers / stats the same regardless of low, normal, or high caps. I find that for high cap games golems become less important and likely not worth another exo wave cost. EDIT: If I add to choose between both the AI and the human golems have a armor weakness vs. no weakness for both I would want a weakness. The ultra-heavy armor type allows me to engage all capital ships with a similar type. I would not enjoy the thought of trying to nickle and dime 50 golems from the AI defense response. |
|
|
I don't believe their frequency will change according to ship caps, and the main difference in functionality between ship caps will have to do with overkill. Armored Golems will already kill most fleet ships in one hit, so they will function much better on low caps because then they need fewer overall shots to kill the entire swarm, given the same HP between the high cap and low cap swarms. Similar for Botnets. Black Widow Golems are uncertain as far as caps go; if you're just going for disabling, they'll again do better on low caps because it'll take fewer overall shots to disable everything given the typical engine overkill, but for actually surviving/destroying a swarm they might do better on high caps; part of the problem is what happens when you tractor 150 bombers. If you tractor 150 bombers on low caps, that's pain, but on high caps it's not so bad. For damage, you've probably got a decent chance of pushing enemy fleetship HP below the 150k or so mark that is the botnet's damage per shot, so you're probably more likely to get more one or two hit kills with less shots needed to finish off ships with less than 30% HP. Then again, if it takes two shots to kill something on high caps, but three to kill it on low caps, you're still better off with the low caps damage-wise. Can't really say about the rest, since they're kind of edge cases: hive golems don't really care so much about "shots fired," and artillery and regen golems don't typically have anything significant to do with fleetships. |
|
|
Woa, major old topic bump! Now that some balance passes of the fleet ships and some of the bug stuff has occurred during the past few months, how is this feeling now? Also, do people still think Z bombards are OP (especially in the hand of the AI)? What do people think of my "allow a small list of big stuff be allowed to be repaired while taking damage" idea I proposed way back when? |
|
|
I haven't played with it lately, but I did read through the patch notes about a week or so ago, and from what I recall, there wasn't really anything that directly addressed this problem. If anything, the situation became worse, because it's no longer possible to effectively shield with just-in-time forcefields. Being able to repair it while taking damage doesn't really solve the problem either, because the problem isn't "Over about a minute, the golem gets worn down to nothing.", it's "The AI just targeted it with a third of their forces in the system and it died in a single volley." The first "problem" is, in fact, more or less what I'd like to see, though the timeframe is probably too long. The classic solution to this problem would be a screening force that is physically between the large ship and the enemy, preventing them from getting a clear shot. The mechanics of AI War, however, don't allow for such a solution, so as long as the golem is in range, enemy forces will tend to pummel it en masse. Forcefields can mitigate the problem, but also suffer it themselves, meaning that you just delay the problem by a couple seconds while the forcefields pop. And, as mentioned, you can't extend it anymore by building new ones as the old ones get blown up. (I don't mind the loss, but it does exacerbate this issue.) Edit: I'd be perfectly happy seeing their firepower cut substantially, as long as they could actually survive a brief raid into a fortified system (or a major attack on your own system). |
|
|
Hmm, I think there is a deeper seeded balance issue here. There may be too many things that get bonuses against structural and ultra heavy armor, which most big things have. If not that, among those things with those bonuses, the bonuses may be too big on average. Of course, someone will need to run the numbers to know for sure. I guess golems could get command-grade armor, but that would probably make it too durable, like game breakingly durable. @FunnyMan So you are proposing an HP and armor buff but with a attack nerf to offset it? Yea, that could work. But it would have to be a fairly substantial buff, as late game threats (where you would want to use golems) are really strong. |
|
|
I think the problem comes down to Armored Golems and Black Widow Golems primarily. Late game they turn out to be pretty ineffective in a lot of situations you'd want to use them in. Armored Golems can't deal with late-game swarms (can't kill fast enough) black widow golems can't without micromanagement (trap lots of powerful ships in tractors, gets wasted) My suggestion is pretty radical, but I'd like to hear some feedback. Make a change to Black Widow and Armored golems *only* (as the two "primary combat" golems) so that they have invulnerability *only on your planets* *only while your command station is still alive*. As soon as they leave your planets they are vulnerable and it's up to you to keep them safe, but that should give them more utility on defense and lower micromanagement problems on your own planets while still allowing them to be overwhelmed (in this case, sufficiently many/powerful ships to break past a golem cordon and destroy the command station; note that the golems will still suffer attrition.) |
|
|
@Sunshine Yea, that does seem a little too radical for my tastes, though admittidly it is a clever idea. IMO, just a simple health and armor buff should help take care of it, in addition to revisiting the balance of ships that counter ultra-heavy armor and "hard-hitting" fleet stuff (like Z bombers). |
|
|
Another interesting option would be to make golems redirect a large portion of incoming damage and/or shots to nearby fleet ships. That goes back to the classic screening idea, and presents a direct tradeoff: A screening force protects the golem, but takes massive casualties in the process. It's also a tunable mechanic that could be applied to other "large" targets. Starships dying too fast? Give them a bit of screening. Maybe even give home command stations 100% screening, making it impossible to lose the war until you've lost the battle. Also worth considering: Should the screening factor be a flat percentage for each screened ship/structure type, or should larger masses of fleet ships provide better screening? Edit: I disagree with the idea that it's only black widows and armored golems with the problem. I've run into it with botnet golems, too, and I suspect it applies to anything but regen golems (and only those because they're not directly part of combat). |
|
|
While Botnet Golems have the lowest hitpoints of any golem at 36 million, they also flat-out kill enemy ships the fastest, whenever you want them to (unlike the hive golem) and provide a sort of defensive armada while they're at it. Cursed golems have effectively infinite range and are quite fast, so they can avoid combat all they like. Hive Golems can simply pop onto a planet, dump their payload, and leave. Regen golems have something around 25000 range (and decent attack to boot at 2 million damage a shot), so they can avoid combat and will have a constantly spawning (though health draining) defensive force around them given the right circumstances. In my mind that just leaves Armored Golems, and especially Black Widow golems, as a problem. Of all the golems I can possibly rebuild, Black Widows are pretty much my last choice, always, even after their 15% boost to damage because they need to be microed otherwise they tractor up 100 enemies that will do nothing but shoot at your Black Widow golem until they, or it, dies. If those are bombers, kiss your BW golem goodbye. I realize we're talking about survivability here, but Hive, Cursed and Regen are the three it doesn't really apply to (for reasons detailed above), and Botnets are nightmare machines as-is who are often able to wipeout the entire incoming bomber horde before they're in range. I think the Black Widow might end up having more survivability if the tractor beams were removed (or preferably replaced with more shots), leaving bombards to be the only real threat to it. That leaves just the armored golem as being an ineffective (and extremely expensive to repair) damage-sponge. |
|
|
@FunnyMan Hmm, sort of a diffused inverse of the decoy drone. I really like that idea. But one problem. I can't think of a way to implement it without involving randomness, requiring fiddly micro to make sure the stuff you want to stay alive from taking too much damage, or CPU intensity as there can be easily be hundreds of shot coming towards the golem, or whatever has it. Take this one way to implement it. There are three values for this diffusion, a percentage, p, amount of incoming damage is to be diffused evenly (or as evenly as possible) to up to the n closest ships within range r. It has two of the desired attributes: it is deterministic and the damage will be spread thin enough such that micro what is closest shouldn't be a big deal (if n is chosen right). But that is quite CPU intensive. So, there would have to be a clever way to implement it to satisfy all three conditions, and I can't think of a way to do it. @Sunshine Hmm, how about the simple approach? Something like, buffing the health and armor of the armored golem enough to live up to its name, maybe reducing its firepower some to keep it from being overpowered. Also, buffing the black widow golem's firepower enough such that it can on average kill things about as fast as it can tractor them. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 3, 2011 11:48 am | FunnyMan | New Issue | |
| Apr 3, 2011 4:08 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011647 | |
| Apr 3, 2011 4:16 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011649 | |
| Apr 4, 2011 12:55 pm | FunnyMan | Note Added: 0011658 | |
| Apr 4, 2011 4:07 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0011664 | |
| Apr 4, 2011 4:09 pm | KDR_11k | Note Edited: 0011664 | |
| Apr 4, 2011 6:20 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011665 | |
| Apr 4, 2011 6:20 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0011665 | |
| Apr 4, 2011 6:21 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0011665 | |
| Apr 4, 2011 7:51 pm | Prezombie | Note Added: 0011666 | |
| Apr 4, 2011 11:02 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0011673 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 2:12 pm | FunnyMan | Note Added: 0011680 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 2:44 pm | Prezombie | Note Added: 0011681 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 4:43 pm | Red Spot | Note Added: 0011683 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 7:02 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011685 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 8:52 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0011688 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 8:55 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011689 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 8:56 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0011689 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 10:53 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0011692 | |
| Apr 5, 2011 11:09 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0011693 | |
| May 5, 2011 5:30 am | TheDeadlyShoe | Note Added: 0012095 | |
| Jun 6, 2011 5:49 pm | Ranakastrasz | Note Added: 0012349 | |
| Jun 7, 2011 1:16 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0012350 | |
| Jun 7, 2011 10:49 am | Ranakastrasz | Note Added: 0012351 | |
| Jun 7, 2011 7:37 pm | Ranakastrasz | Note Edited: 0012351 | |
| Jun 7, 2011 11:03 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0012353 | |
| Jun 8, 2011 4:24 pm | chemical_art | Note Added: 0012358 | |
| Jun 8, 2011 4:30 pm | chemical_art | Note Edited: 0012358 | |
| Jun 8, 2011 10:07 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0012361 | |
| Sep 27, 2011 11:56 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0013872 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 6:19 am | FunnyMan | Note Added: 0014203 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 6:21 am | FunnyMan | Note Edited: 0014203 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 9:14 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0014249 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 9:18 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0014249 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 11:45 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0014312 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 12:36 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0014333 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 6:58 pm | FunnyMan | Note Added: 0014482 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 6:59 pm | FunnyMan | Note Edited: 0014482 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 8:01 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0014501 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 10:48 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0014548 | |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:29 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Gameplay - Balance Issue => Balance Issue |
