View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0005912 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Feb 14, 2012 3:24 pm | Feb 18, 2012 10:19 am | |
| Reporter | Spikey00 | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.024 | ||||
| Summary | 0005912: Tachyon beam emitter/overall AI stealth behavior | ||||
| Description | Compared with the decloaker, tachyon beam emitters are just impossible to use effectively without using a forcefield to protect them. They are essentially one-shot destroyed with their 20k HP and lack of cloaking, and while they can reveal all the cloaked ships in a wave before they are destroyed (unless it is destroyed right before), some cloaked AI ships will possibly (aka probably) slip away to remain on planets. Yes they only cost 250 knowledge to unlock, but referring to what happens above: everyone knows how frustrating it is to have one hostile cloaker on-planet preventing harvesters from being automatically built. The ultimate outcome of this is the need to use the decloaker instead to do sweeps, or unlock the stealth tachyon beam emitter, neither of which is very fun to do and mildly costly knowledge-wise (the latter adds up to 2k knowledge vs decloaker 3k). The stealth tachyon beam emitter essentially makes the tachyon beam emiter redundant, just because it has cloaking and 2x tachyon range. Having to use military command stations for tachyon coverage beyond border planets is just too much. I'd like to see a general tachyon beam emitter buff or complete removal in favour for the stealth tachyon beam emitter, but inevitably AI stealth behavior on human planets needs to be changed because as I mentioned: it's not fun having to do tachyon sweeps for one stealthed ship on every planet inside your borders. EDIT: the decloaker is actually only 1k in knowledge cost. Even though it has a cap of four, that's essentially all you need because they have a range of 20 000, mobile, and relatively cheap to build. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
| related to | 0003371 | assigned | Chris_McElligottPark | ai ships remaining cloaked without a cloaker |
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Situations involving "lying in wait" AI ships definitely needs to be looked at. The lying in wait behavior is smart, and should stay, but there is probably ways to make dealing with it less annoying. Maybe something like harvesters are able to rebuild if the cloaked ships do not attack or get revealed in the last N seconds or something. Or make the AI more eager to attempt an attack or retreat with those lying in wait cloaked units. In any case, how about this unit I propose in 0002260 ? |
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Everyone ignores the poor Tachyon Drone. No knowledge cost, mobile, cloaked, can go through warp points. |
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@Hearteater It's because their detection range is absolute crud. Their really only good for emergencies. |
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It's an effective strategy for the AI, yes, but it requires too much micro from the player in order to counter, which goes against AI War's philosophy IMO. Oh, I certainly make use of the tachyon drone. Unfortunately it has a ship cap of two, and the emission range that makes it only useful at wormholes: useless for scouring your planets for the cloaked ships. It's also not immune to area effects, and is not a turret so it doesn't get automatically rebuit. |
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Maybe the AI could do something like humans do. If they have cloaked units on your planet, it doesn't feel like it is safe to attack or retreat, maybe after waiting N minutes or something, they could scrap those ships, or send them on a "suicide" attack. |
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I don't really feel this is a problem. Tachyon Emitter I are useful, especially on systems with no warp gates adjacent. They prevent random cloakers from sneaking in. On whipping boys, Tachyon Drones hit everything coming through and are rarely lost unless the enemy has MicroFighters or something like Electric Shuttles. So I think characterizing Tachyon Emitter Is as "impossible to use effectively" would not be how I would describe the situation. The single cloaker on a planet problem is also easily solved (although generally you don't even need to bother). Manually building your harvesters will often cause it to reveal itself. Ctrl-click to auto-build all harvesters despite a cloaker in the system. Three Sniper Turrets, two clicks, cloaker is dead. Tachyon Drones can also generally find them if you queue up a path through all your resource nodes and warp points (which is were cloakers most often sit and wait). @TechSY730: The Tachyon Drone is my primary anti-cloaking control on whipping boys. It works so well I don't often unlock Tachyon Emitters, and almost never unlock the Decloaker. My only complaint is ship cap, but when I need to cover that many more places the Tachyon Emitter I fits the bill for a low K-cost. |
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The harvester strategy is not one many will implicitly know and is a cheese way to deal with cloakers overall. Doesn't solve the main issue that it's just a PITA to counter especially when you're spread out over the galaxy and playing simultaneously with minor factions like hybrids and preservation wardens which constantly destroy the closest wormhole defenses. I've not met one person yet who has said they like how cloaking AI ships works--as a fun-factor over mechanics. A lot of newbies and novices simply let cloaked ships stay on their planets once they get there (often out of unawareness or laziness), and the ones who use decloakers often forget where they last left the decloakers (and this is a reactive response which I've seen does not often invoke a clear-cut response of "I need to do something new and additional to stop them from getting there"). I consider them more adversely affected by cloaked ships over veteran players, which is why I'd like a change. |
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@Spikey00 Any concrete ideas about how the AI should react differently if it got its ships in this sort of "cloaked, but can't safely retreat or safely attack" situations? And/or, any concrete ideas about new tools/commands for humans to help deal with it? EDIT: And/or any concrete ideas about how the "auto-behaviour" of human stuff should change in these sort of cases? |
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I don't have a problem with changing Cloaking AI ships on player worlds. Currently the effect of cloaked AI ships on player planets in small numbers ranges from pointless to annoying to people who are OCD about clearing their worlds. Changing Tachyon Emitters isn't the way to do it in my opinion. I wonder if an special move action for Tachyon Drones could be made to automatically search their system for Cloaked units when on FRD, much like Reclaimation Drones automatically repair stuff on FRD. I'd say increase their ship cap to 20-40 and remove their cloaking. Maybe have a Mark II with more range and cloaking. The lack of cloaking takes them away from guarding warp points, but a health increase on Tachyon Emitter Is might let them stay up a little longer for wave defense. |
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Yea, a special move command, which automatically sets up a command queue, which will, taking advantage of the easy ingame knowlege of the scan range, scan the entire system, however long it takes. Like, Take a ton of horizontal lines, 1.9Radius(2.0 normally, but get a bit of overlap to be safe) apart, and then connect the ends alternateively. The lines end at the edge of the system, so the ones near the "northern and southern" most end of the map are tiny, but the middle one is largest. That way, It will command the drone to sweep the whole system, without missing a single spot, unless the AI is then improved to evade detection (please, please do not) Ofc, better detection range ships get an advantage then, since they need far less passes to sweep the planet. Oh, and added points for a loop option. |
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Hey; both your ideas already presented could be plausible, so I suppose I could contribute another alternative. I was thinking about the FRD idea like Hearteater, although with a mobile defense that DOESN'T reveal cloaked ships but automatically hunts them down and destroys them by a mildly-powerful single-shot (I would have said insta-kill but AI has access to high-tier cloaking stuff like guardians and warbird starship). Impose a cap limit on every planet but make the cap high (~= engineer cap) and allow these to be automatically built via CTRLs menu. But of course, with that it should be affordable. The 2-cap tachyon drone is removed in favour of this new sentinel-y defense, so now we have 1) the flexible and mobile decloaker[1] with a huge tachyon range but low cap, 2) the stationary tachyon emitter both uncloaked[2] and cloaked with mild range and high cap, and 3) the mobile and largely automated cloak hunter which destroys a few cloaked ships itself but doesn't provide tachyon coverage at all. [1] With the addition of this new anti-cloaking ship, I'd like to see the decloaker being buffed HP-wise since it has a couple 10k-100k HP right now. If necessary, buff up the knowledge cost. I'd like to see a lot more AI cloaked stuff too, but that would come in time. [2] The uncloaked version would have to be buffed, at least in range and some HP, as it would lose its niche role of innerworld decloaking. The cloaker variant is okay, as the 8000 range is enough to avoid AI tachyons and being fried by AoEs. Could even fit this into some sort of canon, like the 'sentinel' is obsolete AI-progenitor technology that humans have resort back to (leading up to implementation of AI-controlled players for next expansion, amirite!?). Anyhow, sorry if it might be hard to comprehend; pretty drowsy here and going to sleep. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 14, 2012 3:24 pm | Spikey00 | New Issue | |
| Feb 14, 2012 4:16 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0019140 | |
| Feb 14, 2012 4:22 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Feb 14, 2012 4:22 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Feb 14, 2012 5:07 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0019144 | |
| Feb 14, 2012 5:31 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0019147 | |
| Feb 14, 2012 5:40 pm | Spikey00 | Note Added: 0019148 | |
| Feb 14, 2012 5:59 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0019140 | |
| Feb 14, 2012 5:59 pm | Spikey00 | Description Updated | |
| Feb 15, 2012 9:28 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0019166 | |
| Feb 15, 2012 9:59 am | Hearteater | Note Added: 0019169 | |
| Feb 15, 2012 2:44 pm | Spikey00 | Note Added: 0019175 | |
| Feb 15, 2012 3:30 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0019177 | |
| Feb 15, 2012 3:40 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0019178 | |
| Feb 15, 2012 3:42 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0019177 | |
| Feb 15, 2012 9:45 pm | Ranakastrasz | Note Added: 0019182 | |
| Feb 17, 2012 12:47 am | Spikey00 | Note Added: 0019280 | |
| Feb 17, 2012 12:48 am | Spikey00 | Note Edited: 0019280 | |
| Feb 18, 2012 10:19 am | motai | Relationship added | related to 0003371 |
