mindworms are way too buff

[bvanevery]

For the upcoming 1.52 release of my SMACX AI Growth mod, I've been trying to give the AI a viable defense against my typical mindworm and mag tube rampage.  I'm utterly failing.  Even with "more" Hypnotic Trance units, and going back to the original game condition where a lot of times the ability costs 0, I just crush everything in sight.  The Mission Year is 2275 and I played as Theocratic, my version of Fundamentalist, so my tech research was somewhat slowed down.  The prolific Free Drones dominated a big chunk of the map with the Monsoon Jungle, and they even got Doctrine: Air Power, but it doesn't help them.  Minor atrocities are legalized, but I've only had a few 2x Recon Rovers.  Most of my atrocities have been base obliterations after conquest.

What can be done???

• double the cost of mindworms etc.?
• double the defense value of Hypnotic Trance?
• don't allow breeding in captivity until late game?
• reduce PLANET offense bonus to a measly +5%?

I don't usually think in terms of the drastic Sid Meier's maxim to "double it!" but I've been playtesting the power of mindworms ala the standard game for a very long time.  Over 3.5 years now.  I modded all my conventional armament and defense stuff, but mindworms are completely immune to all of that.  I've said before they're the One True Weapons Platform of the game, and nothing has changed my opinion on the matter.  The ability to ignore the Perimeter Defense is pretty seriously overpowered.  And they just... kill stuff.

I did get my accompanying rails craziness under control.  Think I doubled the cost of mag tube construction.  It definitely slows down rails laying and makes you think more about where to put them.  That said, you're eventually gonna crank out enough Formers to make a whole pile of rails, so it's not like the strategy went away.  It just got delayed.

So, the mindworms ride down the rails, eliminating their main disadvantage, that they're slow.  It's the perfect weapons system.  AI has no clue how to stop a rails assault.  Problem is, if you eliminate rails completely like I think the Will To Power mod did for awhile, then it's godawful tedious to push units around.  Been there done that.

[bvanevery]

Details mindworm outclasses trance

mindworm outclasses trance

Here is the point in my test game where I decided it's time to just double the damn thing.  Sure this mindworm took 90% damage killing this garrison, but that's still victory.  It doesn't stop the mindworms and if you can keep cranking them out, it doesn't matter if you have a whole map full of nearly dead mindworms.  If the enemy is all dead, then they are not successful and you have trampled them.  This has gotta stop.

If it takes 2 mindworms to kill a Hypnotic Trance defender, in a sense that's like doubling the cost of producing a mindworm.

I am also wondering if the AI's overemphasis on 3-Res armor, is a good reason to remove it from the game.  Would it build more units with the more effective Hypnotic Trance ability, if it wasn't being deluded into thinking 3-Res was some big benefit?

[Vidsek]

  There is more than a single category of mind worm:  Wild (Charon 'owned'), captured/tamed, and bred/manufactured come to mind.   Are all of these problematic, or mostly the bred ones?   
Can they each be affected to a different degree or different way by mitigation strategies?  (thinking of ones that don't target bred ones, obviously cost and delay of captive breeding do).

  My personal inclination is to avoid delaying *most* tech, if there is an alternate way to get the tech to work within the gameplay design you envision.  I feel it makes the early game a little too simple and one-track to move too many techs later.   On the other hand, there are definitely a few techs that *should* be relegated to mid or late game, and even a couple I summarily disable in my own games.
  I'm leaning toward keeping breeding roughly where it is and reducing it's advantage in another way.

  If modifying the bred ones also nerfs the wild ones, will that be a plus or minus for gameplay and the overall ambiance of the game?
For some perverse reason, I like a little challenge and obstruction by the wildlife, but then, for various reasons, I've never had a mindworm apocalypse.  That could change my attitude....

  I heartily encourage an attempt to bring the bred wildlife (at least) more into line with the other forms of offense to encourage more variety in the potentially successful strategies.

                                  Carry on!   I'll be interested in what comes out of this.

[bvanevery]

I just playtested captive breeding only in late game.  I never got the tech, before I abandoned my game.  And I had plenty of mindworms, from Cha Dawn's +3 PLANET with Green.  In the earlier game they weren't focused, and as I expected, would get trashed when facing off against a real army.  But as soon as my Isles had cleaned the map of supply pods, they went after distant Caretaker sea bases and wiped the few of those out.  Then they camped in the Caretaker home waters, parked in sea fungus.  Caretakers kept sending ships one at a time to try to fight them, and they'd just die.  I'd put a fresh one in the sea fungus square to protect the one that's healing up.  I totally stopped Caretaker naval expansion this way.

Drove a rail to them using earlyish land raising ala the Weather Paradigm.  Got a pretty reasonable front established with them.  They sent lots of spam my way.  I killed lots of it with a modest complement of mindworms.  Started cranking out X Impact Speeders and was getting near to beginning the big Death Push when I called off the game.

Upping Hypnotic Trance to 100% was very effective when the AI actually produced the Trance units.  That change is happening.  Problem is, AI still doesn't produce enough Trance units.  First problem is it gets distracted by the desire for spam offense.  Although that's effective against 'bush' mindworms that have no conventional backing, it's suicide against a combined force, like was coming on my rail tip.

Second problem is the AI just doesn't produce the Trance Plasma Garrison.  The AI would rush a plain Plasma Garrison when a base was about to die, even though Trance doesn't cost any extra in that case.  I'm starting a new test game with an explicitly defined Trance Plasma Garrison unit.  The Clean Trance Plasma / Synth Garrison units, I've removed.  Although the AI did produce some of them, it doesn't produce enough, and seems to beg off when combat really gets underway.

My early game sweep of all the supply pods, put me ahead both on tech and Secret Projects.  I quit at Centauri Psi.  I suspect that once mindworms are available at Will To Power, everyone's gonna get trashed same as usual.  I wonder if the ability to breed mindworms should be taken out of the game entirely.  The main loss in that regard would be Locusts and Sealurks.  They don't tend to occur frequently enough to capture them much.

[Nexii]

Part of it is that the AI isn't smart enough to ZOC the mindworms with air units or bomb / lower elevation the mag tubes.

Part of it is also that WP early is just too good. Raise/lower and mag tubes shouldn't come till the middle game IMO. What then is the point of any chassis beyond infantry?

MWs ignore perimeter and tachyon defenses, but not intrinsic base defense or sensors. Boosting instrinsic and/or sensors seems to be the best fix since the AI isn't smart enough to produce enough Empath / Trance units. I also give mind worms move 2 to compensate. So they are more powerful at sniping units in the field but less threatening against cities.

It's not perfect and has some side effects to native life vs player combat, as well as skewing things a bit more defensive overall

[bvanevery]

Even shelling mindworms with artillery is extremely effective, but not something I recall the stock AI doing.

I've made mag tubes more of a midgame thing in my mod, by doubling the time it takes to lay the tubes.  It works, you do have to put more effort into it.  But it's still inevitable.   Kinda like mindworms.  Eventually you're gonna get 'em, and then you're gonna trash everything with 'em.

At least in my mod you're not guaranteed to get all the SPs.  You can probably get any SP you're really trying to get.  But if you don't explicitly try, the AIs are likely to complete things you didn't go for.  You're also unlikely to get all the SPs, to run the table with them, unless you're really on the ball.  Of course with long experience with my mod, lately I'm really on the ball.     Still, I guess Zhakarov got the Universal Translator, and I think I just let the Maritime Control Center go.  I'd burned through all the world's supply pods, so there wasn't a cash surplus anymore to just "have" SPs with.

The problem with boosting base defense is it throws off the game balance for the conventional troops.

I did boost Sensor Array to +50%.  It's a stiff fortification, against everything not just mindworms.  Makes the player slow down and work.

[Nexii]

Cost is probably the best way to balance mindworms otherwise. It's like air units. You can increase the power of AAA if you want more of a rock-paper-scissors paradigm. But yea the stock AI won't play as well with harder unit counters.