View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0009113 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - New Unit Ideas - AI-Specific Units | Aug 3, 2012 1:21 pm | Sep 1, 2012 5:05 pm | |
| Reporter | Hearteater | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Summary | 0009113: Experimental AI Units (Formerly Champions) | ||||
| Description | So after playing a bit too much Binding of Isaac, it occurred to me there is something there that might be interesting in AI Wars. What about a small chance that certain big *AI* units are Experimentals. As their name implies, these are units the AI is experimenting with. There would be several types of Experimentals that modify the unit they are applied to. A simple example might be: Tough, x2 Health. The goal of this is to create situation were the player needs to react in a different manner than normal to deal with the Experimental. Here's a brain dump of my thoughts: * Only Mark II or greater units can be Experimentals, and their Mark designation gets a '+' added (so a Mark IV Experimental would show as IV+) * Units eligible for Experimental promotion: Guardians, Guard Posts, Basic "Player" Starships, Spire Starships, Command Stations, Golems (not player Golems), Hybrids, Fortress, Super Fortress, Carriers, H/Ks, Mothership, Avenger * This is an AI Plot setting like Hybrids, with a 1-10 scale * Some units (Super Fortresses and other big nasties) aren't eligible for Experimental-status unless the plot setting is 7+ * Experimental-status is randomly added to eligible spawned unit at something like Setting*0.2% chance (so 2% at Plot Setting 10); this happens whenever a unit is created (map creation, wave creation, reinforcements, etc) * Not all Experimental types are available for eligible units (no one wants to see a x4 health Super Fortress) * Experimental unit names appear as something like: "Heavy Beam Guardian (Unstoppable Experiment)" * Experimental unit tool tips briefly summarizes Experimental features in text blurb appended to the end of the normal tool tip Generic Experimental Features: * Increased health, depending on the base unit type, applied before any Experimental-specific health modification. Guardians and Starships would all get x2 health, but a Mothership and other big units might only get around +20%. * Immune to Reclamation Possible Experimental types: * Unstoppable: Immune to Gravity Effects, Paralysis, EMP, Black Hole Machine, Engine Damage, Nukes, and Does Not Require Supply (if it did before) * Far Sight: Immune to Radar Dampening, Radar Jamming, and +25% attack range * Tough: +100% health (so x4 health total), +5000 Armor * Hunter: +60 Movement, Max Armor Piercing, Immune to Gravity Effects * Twin: Spawns with a duplicate Twin Experimental and they stick together * Overload: Paralysis for 1 second with attacks, 8 second EMP on death, Immune to Paralysis and EMP * Specialist: Doubles all damage bonuses greater than 1 * Nightmare: Stealth, Radar Dampening 3000, Immune to Force Fields, if part of a wave that wave has half normal warning * Nano-Repair: Self Repair Time of 15 seconds, Immune to Engine Damage (obviously not available on the big units) * Oracle: Full system Tachyon detection, +25% attack range, +50% system-wide attack boost * Achilles: Takes 1% damage from any attack that does not have a damage bonus > 1 * Hammer: +300% damage, Reload increased by 100% (x2 effective DPS overall) * Eternal: When killed, immediately respawns as threat in an AI system, alerted preferred, Core/Homeworld otherwise (Guardians Only) * Alarmist: When it wakes up, it wakes up the entire system, while not dormant, the planet it is on is on alert (Guardians Only) * Awakened: Begins the game awake (as threat), if a Guard Post all reinforcements to it are awake immediately, if an Awakened Experimental is part of a wave, that wave spawns as threat at the Warp Gate instead * Commander: Spawns with a full cap of a random fleet ship available to its AI (include these in the wave if the Experimental is in a wave), and each Reinforcement pulse it gets another fleet ship spawning next to it (same state, dormant/threat, as the Experimental). Ideally the same ship type would be maintained for reinforcements Source thread: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11266.0.html | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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I included feedback from the thread. Among them was integrating the suggestion as an AI Plot straight off. The other was changing the Champion type Nightmare to 1/2 wave warning from no wave warning, since that one piece was pretty much all the feedback was about. Now it matches what the Youngster AI type does. How it would stack with the Youngster AI is unspecified. |
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I do not like at all. My objection is that the entire concept of AI War is that you see your doom coming, hence why scouting is so important. This is adding a 'surprise' mechanic to the AI, when's the last time you mouse-overed every unit in a system before attacking? I decide to attack a guard post. It's defended by mostly fighters and a flak guardian so I use my starships which should be a good tactical decision. Expect the Flak Guardian has the Overload upgrade. Because the AoE can hit all my starships they are effectively perma-stunned and I just lost my starships due to the AI surprising me. That is not fun, I made what is the correct tactical decision and the AI went "lol, no". This is simply too much randomness and so added complexity in the things to keep track of and I don't want it. If you want randomness added, how about suggestions for a wider variety of Hybrids? That was one of the original reasons to add them, to give the players a more traditional RTS enemy that tried to surprise the player and did not follow explicit rules like the main AI enemy does. Also, I'm pretty sure the game engine simply can't support random unit stats. You'd be looking at re-writing a significant chunk of the basic game code to do this. (Admittedly a guess but from what I see in the data files a unit has to be explicitly defined.) |
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My one issue with this is in your first sentence. Is there really such a thing as "too much" Binding of Issac? :) |
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An important part, and why the Mark# is displayed differently, is so you can pick them out. The intention isn't to sneak them in. I don't know how scaling works in AI Wars, but scaling their size up 10-20% would help to make them stand-out. The only time they should "sneak up" on you would be as part of a wave. I could see restricting Champions from waves for that reason unless the plot setting was 5+ or something. Also, Overload is a 1 second paralysis. Flak guardians reload is 8 seconds, so it wouldn't be close to a permanent stun. I'll leave it up to Arcen how feasible the technical stuff is. I don't see a reason to nix a suggestion on those grounds, especially because maybe in a year or two it will be possible. @tigersfan: Not yet...still achievements left :) |
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I still see it as adding [# of guardians] * [# of champion upgrades] ship types to the game. There is already a *lot* of ships in the game. I don't see adding this much complexity as being worth it. I would support some of those Upgrades as new guardians and to increase the options and abilities hybrids have before I'd support adding an entire new mechanic such as this to the game. |
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That's a good point, and maybe some of those Champion types would make good Guardians by themselves. But the difference between adding 300 Guardians and this suggestion is their are only 16 Champion types to learn. Once you know the 20 Guardians and 16 Champions, you can judge each combination much faster and easier, regardless of whether you've encountered it before. That isn't true of just adding new Guardians. So this is really a method of getting a lot of variety in without taxing players with as many units to remember. There is also the consideration that maybe each AI would only roll up 2 Champion types for a given game. So within a game you'd never have to worry about facing all 16 types. Very similar to how fleet ships work. This number rolled could vary by plot setting. |
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Just renamed the idea so as not to conflict with the expansions Champions. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 3, 2012 1:21 pm | Hearteater | New Issue | |
| Aug 3, 2012 1:24 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027329 | |
| Aug 3, 2012 1:43 pm | Dazio | Note Added: 0027331 | |
| Aug 3, 2012 1:48 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => New |
| Aug 3, 2012 1:48 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0027335 | |
| Aug 3, 2012 1:48 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | New => Feature Suggestion |
| Aug 3, 2012 1:48 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Aug 3, 2012 2:06 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027337 | |
| Aug 3, 2012 2:21 pm | Dazio | Note Added: 0027339 | |
| Aug 3, 2012 2:36 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0027340 | |
| Sep 1, 2012 5:04 pm | Hearteater | Summary | Champion AI Units => Experimental AI Units (Formerly Champions) |
| Sep 1, 2012 5:04 pm | Hearteater | Description Updated | |
| Sep 1, 2012 5:05 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0028119 |
