Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 10, 2021, 04:29:01 AM

Title: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 10, 2021, 04:29:01 AM

Base intrinsic bonus seems to be in line with other base defense multiplying facilities. One can think of it as a primitive defense that distincts settlement from the flat field.
It this regards, why it works against psi attack while other defense multiplying facilities do not? Psi attack is supposed to ignore any defense so there is nothing to multiply. How is this rudimentary base intrinsic protection increases chances in psi combat?
I believe it should not as any other base defense multiplier.

We should think about some other way to balance psi attacks against bases. They seem to be much more effective than conventional ones.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: bvanevery on April 10, 2021, 04:48:55 AM

I think the mindworm is unfortunately the one true weapons platform of the game.  Their only real limit is slowness, which when coupled with the one true logistical platform of the game, the magtube, goes away entirely.

Mindworms having fixed cost and always being perfectly good against more advanced units, doesn't basically work as a combat progression.  And on top of that, they ignore base defenses.  Yeah it's a lore choice, but I think it's a very poor game design decision.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: dino on April 10, 2021, 06:04:27 AM

You should think of the intrinsic base defense bonus as a terrain modifier, not as a facility.
It especially makes sense for psi combat, there is no place on an alien planet that feels more safe then a base.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 10, 2021, 03:14:14 PM

dino. Long time no see.

To your surprise, conventional unit defending against mindworms does not get any terrain modifiers. The psi combat mechanics is true to its description: it ignores weapon and armor strength (regardless of how multiplied it is). The only exception is base defense which is technically supposed to be a defense multiplier. When one sees that all other defense multipliers are ignored in combat one may think this is just a design oversight that base defense left in computations for psi combat.

Safety feeling in real life stems from physical protection: house walls, city walls, moats, rivers, mountains - whatever that stops your enemies hurting you. Even living among friends feels safe just because they are ready to fight alongside with you. Living as a captive/slave among hostile people who are beating you up all the time and ready to kill you does not feel safe. That is why people tend to escape captivity.

The idea behind the morale playing role in psi combat is that the morale is not good feelings. It is military training and discipline that overcomes the fear. Sort of muscle memory and mindless obedience that still works when your higher mental activity is paralyzed.
Read all morale passages in the game to understand this. Here is the most pronounced one.

Quote

Only the most disciplined security squads can overcome their fear
long enough to trigger the flame guns which can keep the worms at bay.
Clearly you will have to tend carefully to the morale of the troops.

So the question stays whether we need to remove base defense against psi combat? And the bigger one is how to balance psi with no defensive bonuses against it?

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: bvanevery on April 10, 2021, 04:56:26 PM

I'm not a fan of pushing gameplay in the wrong direction for the sake of lore pedantry.  Gameplay is king.  First it is to be settled if using mindworms is too easy or too hard.  I say it's clearly too easy.  Next question is how many ways can it be made harder.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 10, 2021, 05:39:09 PM

I am not using lore as a judge in decision making. Merely answered dino's thesis about base feeling safe and thus aiding to psi strength. Gameplay is always the king.

As for using mind worms is easy I am not entirely agree on. Psi units are perfect counter to heavy weaponized/armored conventional units. However, there is a counter to this counter as well: cheapest weapon/armor trance and empath units or even just cheapest weapon/armor units if player didn't get to these abilities yet. They present the same exactly benefit against psi units as psi does against heavy conventional ones: economics effectiveness advantage.

Let's review base combat economical effectiveness ignoring other modifiers.

mind worm opponent	mind worm effectiveness
32 cost conventional unit	4 : 1
scout	1 : 8
empath scout attacking or trance scout defending	1 : 6

As you can see, mind worms have a disadvantage against cheapest units from day one. Their advantage against heavy conventional units is building slowly toward end of the game but never exceeds their disadvantage against dedicated anti-psi forces. This is even more pronounced against smart defender who mixes conventional and anti-psi defense units together. Then attacker will be given the worst odds possible (psi against conventional and anti-psi against psi).

Using all psi units against savvy opponents will be a disadvantage. AI, obviously, may not be very savvy and may easily miss the first psi wave. However, I often observed it adding more anti-psi defense into the mix and further advancement with pure psi units becomes pretty difficult. We surely can teach it to prepare against psi even more.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: bvanevery on April 10, 2021, 08:37:50 PM

Quote from: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 10, 2021, 05:39:09 PM

cheapest weapon/armor trance and empath units or even just cheapest weapon/armor units if player didn't get to these abilities yet.

Yes, in multiplayer play, where the humans all have flexible brains for minimaxing.  Stock binary?  Forget it.  So, for WTP, have you altered the AI to spam out cheap units to defeat mindworms?  Like when I'm going to do a terrain raising magtube assault on the AI's home territory, with dozens of mindworms coming down the rail?

There is a further problem of countering the AI's counter.  The AI is pretty good at making AAA units if you make a lot of planes.  The AI is pretty good at making ECM units if you make a lot of speeders.  However you can fool the AI by attacking with the opposite of what they're fixating on in this regard.  Get 'em worried about speeders, then hit with air force.  Production-wise the AI is not really smart enough to handle this.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 11, 2021, 03:47:21 AM

It is smart but slow. It does not anticipate attack type until it happens. At least I got that impression. Of course, uncovering vanilla algorithm may answer this question exactly but nobody wants to get into that complicated logic.
Theoretically, there is nothing difficult in anticipation as AI can see into list of all units opponent has.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2021, 08:06:56 AM

So then I just globally build a lot of planes, to stress the AI into building AAA units.  Then locally I attack with speeders.  That's the problem with a lot of this blunt instrument / grand strategy thinking.  It doesn't work on the local scale.  Your earlier claim about mindworm cost differential doesn't work either.  All I need is a large enough set of mindworms to overwhelm a local problem, like a base.  I take the base, the AI is too dumb to retake it effectively.  Wet, lather, rinse, repeat, particularly if I have rails and Monoliths.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 11, 2021, 01:52:39 PM

I don't see problem here. You don't even need a deception if you are capable to waste 80% of your resources for a deception purpose only.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 11, 2021, 03:59:47 PM

Never mind. I think base intrinsic defense is there for reason to protect them from native attacks early on. Let's keep it.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2021, 06:14:58 PM

Quote from: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 11, 2021, 01:52:39 PM

I don't see problem here. You don't even need a deception if you are capable to waste 80% of your resources for a deception purpose only.

It's not 80% resources, it's whatever number of units triggers the AI to overcommit.  The threshold is rather low in the stock binary.  I'm surprised you haven't noticed this tactic before and didn't automatically know what I was talking about?

"Gaming the AI."

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: dino on April 12, 2021, 11:17:42 AM

Quote from: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 11, 2021, 03:59:47 PM

Never mind. I think base intrinsic defense is there for reason to protect them from native attacks early on. Let's keep it.

I've never really used PSI, or natives, so somehow I've never noticed that terrain bonuses don't apply to psi combat, but it makes sense really.

And actually, given you've removed 3:2 attack ratio from PSI combat, while increasing base defense at the same time, an option to disable intrinsic defense could be useful for balance.

Have you already removed native stack wipeout after loosing a single unit btw ?

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 12, 2021, 03:10:08 PM

Quote from: dino on April 12, 2021, 11:17:42 AM

And actually, given you've removed 3:2 attack ratio from PSI combat, while increasing base defense at the same time, an option to disable intrinsic defense could be useful for balance.

You are right. I may need to think about it little more.

Quote from: dino on April 12, 2021, 11:17:42 AM

Have you already removed native stack wipeout after loosing a single unit btw ?

Nope. Do you think it is worth doing? It'll certainly add challenge but would it be too much? Especially for these late fungal pops spawning like 20 natives? It would devastate faction in no time. And AI disregard ecodamage big time so they will be hurt the most.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: dino on April 12, 2021, 04:46:47 PM

It's inconsistency with no collateral damage for regular combat now and would make eco damage an interesting thing to manage.

But, you may be right, without teaching AI to manage it, it could break the game and at that point you can probably find goals more worthy of such serious effort.

It would be interesting to see how the AI in the current state would deal with it, though ;)

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 12, 2021, 06:56:43 PM

The biggest problem with popped units is not that it is difficult to fight them and not even that they kill units in bases but that they destroy improvements at incredible rate (along with fungus covering everything). That alone turns land into an unusable desert which has an enormous impact at end game. That alone is a major AI weakness already as many pointed out. It just stops developing and die by itself if human player survives until then.

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Nexii on September 27, 2021, 10:28:46 AM

I think it's fine to have intrinsic base defense vs PSI. The boost for bases never seemed like too much of a stretch given the Children's Creche lore.

I have been trying out Rover speed worms with 50% base defense. They are less of a threat to bases but a lot more scary out in the field.

As for late-game fungal pop mechanics, you could try boosting up the production on fungus tiles. Fungus isn't much of a consideration in the stock game as a terrain improvement. It's something I've been working on, tricky to balance as you don't want to obsolete all terraforming either

Title: Re: Psi balance for base defense
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 27, 2021, 03:14:41 PM

Fungus already had decent nutrient and energy output. I guess with that bases will at least be able to feed population and maintain facilities. Units can be impacted, though. But there should be trade-off somewhere.