300 hours - Thoughts and hopes for the future

[spinocus]

I've put a fair amount of time into DW2 since launch (~300 hours) so here is my not-adusted-for-inflation $0.02.

Path finding - Not sure if it's the latest beta but 1.87 is exhibiting some seriously silly path finding. Beyond the usual 'why would the AI plot such a ridiculous roundabout path to the intended colony/base/target instead of straight line?' I have examples where private sector vessels are forming a massive conga line between two far flung colonies that leads them through nebulas, etc... and ALL of them are attempting to travel this route after running out of fuel halfway through their journey!!! Yes, they have the necessary ion protection. What's worse is I have with upwards of 10-15 private sector vessels sitting around doing nothing at the colony at one end of that path (a developed, high pop Teekan planet in a nebula). I have a save if the devs want it.

Ship Design - Maybe it's just me but I'm experiencing too many AI empires that use the same weapon loadouts for their ships. I get why torpedoes are great, but must EVERYONE use them?!? It would be nice if the AI empires settled on certain design principles from the start and only altered them as a counter to their most likely and/or dangerous enemies. MAGA! Make Area Weapons Great Again!

Fleet AI - I mainly see Defense and Invasion fleets with the occasional Attack fleet. AI empires should occasionally employ Raiding as a strategy, especially if they're strapped for resources.

Invasion fleets should not travel without an Attack fleet in support, ESPECIALLY if the player or enemy AI has an attack or defense fleet within jumping distance of the intended invasion target. I've received too many easy warscore points by intercepting invasion fleets with my attack fleets and blasting their loaded troop transports into oblivion.

Leaders

There needs to be an empire settings option where the AI suggests firing a given leader instead of making it fully automatic or manual. For instance, I like having the AI manage my spies but will sometimes disagree when one of them is fired.

It's odd to have large fleets or armies without admirals or generals and feels even stranger to have to wait for one to randomly appear based on a percentage. I certainly don't want leader spam but fleets or armies of a considerable size should automatically generate someone to lead it.

Spying - Spying is too easy or prohibitively difficult. I feel perhaps upping the failure rates while not breaking the spies' cover or downgrading the info garnered from a successful mission would make things more challenging while mitigating the frustration of losing too many spies or preventing OP spy spam.

Diplomacy - It desperately needs improvements to both features and AI. It's too easy to purchase or trade for technology and, more importantly, mining/research/resort bases in disputed territories. It's incredibly easy to force the AI to make a bad deal for critical resource bases by dangling lots of $$$ or lower ranking technologies in front of it. Why would a rival AI give up a major Caslon producing base in exchange for cash and/or being able to communicate with several races that are nowhere close to their territories?!? Buying bases is also an effective long term strategy to compromise and sometimes cripple AI economies. An AI empire's likelihood of trading tech and/or bases should correspond to the impact these bases have on their overall economy and local colonies followed by their relationship with the player/rival AI as well as natural racial animosities and other variables.

Treaties - Reparations (i.e. lump sum or monthly payments over x period of time) and border colonies should be factored into treaty negotiations. Bases in disputed territories should also factor more heavily into treaties depending on the warscore. I've yet to see more than one or two bases in disputed territory being offered by an AI who got absolutely mauled during a war (i.e. their warscore was in the negative millions). You want your wealthy, high pop colony back, Gizurean bug people? Give us those formerly independent colonies populated by races that instinctively hate your guts... that also happens to be close to our border.

There should also be a means of purchasing or exchanging colonies with the AI, not just when discussing peace terms, and it should be VERY expensive!

Colonies you conquered during a war that formerly belonged to allies should, by default, be 'liberated' and not automatically switch ownership to your faction. This should hold true especially if they're 'core' colonies (see below). Otherwise it's too damn easy to ninja valuable and/or high pop worlds filled with friendly races for your empire and snowball your growth. Same applies to bases of any kind.

Core colonies. There needs to be the concept of a 'core' colony, especially so the AI can make sensible decisions re: its defense and during negotiations. A core colony should be a capitol or colony founded by the player/AI that contains a majority population of their own race OR a formerly independent/conquered colony has been held for x number of years and accounts for x% of its empire's overall population, taxes and or resources.

Reputation.

Darwinian Politics - Racial animosities should mitigate reputation hits when engaging in unsavory behavior like bombardment, extermination and enslavement. It makes little sense that bombarding, exterminating or enslaving bug empires should incur a large reputation hit with non-bug empires and vice versa unless the recipient of said transgressions had long established diplomatic ties or common gov't types with allies, neighbors or trade partners of different races. I mean, the Gizureans can EAT conquered races and that's ok, but if I nuke the bejeezus out of their planets in a massive life or death struggle to keep my people off their menu that makes me the bad guy?!? It would be great if there was a reputation settings option or if we could mod this into the game.

Game Settings

Galaxy Creation - I am not prevented from making a massive galaxy polluted with stars that would run like crap on my system but am unable to make a larger galaxy with 700 or fewer stars?!? Apologies if this has already been explained but I'm left scratching my head.

Galaxy Map display hotkeys - Allow us to configure hotkeys to toggle the display of various ship and base types on the map. I shouldn't have to go into the settings menu to do this.

That's just off the top of my head. I realize hardcore players may have several hundred or thousands of hours of DW2 under their belts but ~300 hours is ALOT for me for any game. I love DW2 as much as its predecessor and only want it to get better.

[sveint]

Nice post.

May I suggest something? AI empires need to play more differently, according to their race or settings.

Also, perhaps as DLC, but the game could really use Scenarios. Imagine starting at war, you have 3 planets are are losing. But nearby is a large neutral empire. Or playing as pirates. Or you play a single ship, a trader, but you can never buy any more, only upgrade. Etc, etc

[MaximKI]

Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions, we'll consider these suggestions for future improvement.

For the pathfinding, we have an update in the works that should hopefully address the increased pathfinding weirdness.

Regarding the fleet and ship design behavior, it would be helpful if you could provide examples of you're saying, such as screenshots and save games. These items you can upload to this post in your reply.

[bjfagan]

I would like to jump in with my 2 cents (unadjusted for inflation as well). I have probably not played this game 300 hours yet, but I am most likely not too far off from that number.

I have been struck by how these bug races (Boskara and Dhayut) are able to spread their empires far and wide with the easiest of efforts. I always play the humans, but find the bug races can be both very advanced technologically and capable of affording their humungous invading armies. It should be one or the other as a focus of effort. The fact that they are bugs who are rapacious in seizing planets for exploitation means they should have a difficult time pacifying the populations of other species thereby requiring large numbers of troops to garrison these captured planets. Also, this kind of warfare and expansion would greatly hinder their science research and tech progress. Their only way of advancement should really be through stealing tech or capturing it with a planet, not with an effective research program. Also, all those troops and ships that they can muster should cost money, but it seems like they can drop 100,000 troops to invade a planet without difficulty and send in a constant stream of large attack fleets. How are they paying for all this? As the human player I have a difficult time keeping the economy humming, maintaining strong research programs and building fleets and garrisons.

I also find that AI empires expand without any limitations such as distance. While as the human player I am limited by the distance restriction selected at game setup, the AI just colonizes everywhere no matter the distance from their closest planet. These AI empires should attempt to build a homogenous empire and not ones with miscellaneous planets strewn about the galaxy like octopus tentacles spreading everywhere. If there are planets near their empire that they covet then that is a reason to go to war and spread out your borders that are closely connected.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like the AI empires always know exactly where to suddenly show up with their invading fleets. My planets where I am the weakest in garrison.

One fix I would love to see and feel strongly that it should be included is the ability to upgrade ground troops in the game. I noticed that as time goes your ground units get stronger when they are built, but there is no mechanism to upgrade the older units. Once built that is it until they are eliminated. Unless I am missing something, ground units should be upgradeable just like the ships and be automatic through a slow process unit by unit. Why wouldn't a player want the most up to date troops strengths?

[scotten_usa]

Great post. Thanks for sharing.

[spinocus]

Quick update and responses to the responses to my original post!

Really liking the latest official patch!

Pathfinding seems improved but still needs work. I see too many ships/fleets taking unnecessary 'scenic' routes through surrounding systems just to enter & leave systems in nebulae & ion storm zones. I can understand why civilian vessels would do this out of concern for safety but it's very frustrating when state ships & fleets do it, forcing you to take manual control and put them on a more direct path.

I'm happy to report that in my long running saved game (which was recently updated to the official 1.2.0.5 patch) that for the first time, when engaging in diplomatic relations with a close ally, I saw their nearby fledgling colony in disputed space as an an option for trading! Very nice! The only downside is the decent quality colony of 30-50M pops only cost me around 50K! Way too cheap considering its long term potential.

Galaxy Map display hotkeys - Allow us to configure hotkeys to toggle the display of various ship and base types on the map. I shouldn't have to go into the settings menu to do this. I really think this is necessary. The late game galaxy map is incredibly busy and it would be extremely helpful to instantly show/hide all or select types of civilian vessels

Great post. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks!

I would like to jump in with my 2 cents (unadjusted for inflation as well). I have probably not played this game 300 hours yet, but I am most likely not too far off from that number.

I have been struck by how these bug races (Boskara and Dhayut) are able to spread their empires far and wide with the easiest of efforts. I always play the humans, but find the bug races can be both very advanced technologically and capable of affording their humongous invading armies. It should be one or the other as a focus of effort. The fact that they are bugs who are rapacious in seizing planets for exploitation means they should have a difficult time pacifying the populations of other species thereby requiring large numbers of troops to garrison these captured planets. Also, this kind of warfare and expansion would greatly hinder their science research and tech progress. Their only way of advancement should really be through stealing tech or capturing it with a planet, not with an effective research program. Also, all those troops and ships that they can muster should cost money, but it seems like they can drop 100,000 troops to invade a planet without difficulty and send in a constant stream of large attack fleets. How are they paying for all this? As the human player I have a difficult time keeping the economy humming, maintaining strong research programs and building fleets and garrisons.

I also find that AI empires expand without any limitations such as distance. While as the human player I am limited by the distance restriction selected at game setup, the AI just colonizes everywhere no matter the distance from their closest planet. These AI empires should attempt to build a homogenous empire and not ones with miscellaneous planets strewn about the galaxy like octopus tentacles spreading everywhere. If there are planets near their empire that they covet then that is a reason to go to war and spread out your borders that are closely connected.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like the AI empires always know exactly where to suddenly show up with their invading fleets. My planets where I am the weakest in garrison.

One fix I would love to see and feel strongly that it should be included is the ability to upgrade ground troops in the game. I noticed that as time goes your ground units get stronger when they are built, but there is no mechanism to upgrade the older units. Once built that is it until they are eliminated. Unless I am missing something, ground units should be upgradeable just like the ships and be automatic through a slow process unit by unit. Why wouldn't a player want the most up to date troops strengths?

Yes, the bugs do expand rather quickly, eh? I agree that the Boskaran and Gizurean should emphasize 'quantity over quality'. I've seen the same re: the Dhayut in my games. I think their expansion and pop growth is out of sync with their naturally lower growth rates. I'm not against another bug race reproducing like err... bugs, but they were definitely pitched as an quality oriented alternative to the Boskaran and Gizureans. Hopefully the developers will address this and/or the community will eventually be able to overhaul or fine tune it via mods.

I think you're seeing may be what developers typically refer to as necessary buffs for the AI to compensate for their lack of know-how. It can be egregious and frustrating to see the AI spam ships and troops it cannot afford or support but I'm fine with it so long as its not completely insane and out of whack with reality. On the other hand, I believe the developers have stated that AI only gets one cheat on Normal difficulty and that may be to research. Not sure if that still holds true. I've been in prolonged wars with AI and noticed if I steal or destroy most of their mines and means of production then eventually their fleets become small, anemic and ineffective. Yes, they also continue to spam 100K+ armies and recklessly send them to their doom in small invasion fleets but it seems they're starved for resources but not cash. I can live with that if they're bugs or high growth races like the Teekan.

Yes, that's likely more AI buffs in action. I would prefer a more 'honest' AI opponent but don't mind it too much. The one thing I would change is the AI's recklessness and it's propensity for 'losing sight of the prize' and devoting large numbers of ships and troops to attacking these weakened targets far off the beaten path. It works well initially, but leaves them horribly exposed to a focused counter-attack. It's like a replay of Alcibiades' infamous Sicilian expedition over and over again.

And agreed re: troop upgrades. It should definitely be predicated on an upgrade cost to reflect their new training & equipment.

Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions, we'll consider these suggestions for future improvement.

For the pathfinding, we have an update in the works that should hopefully address the increased pathfinding weirdness.

Regarding the fleet and ship design behavior, it would be helpful if you could provide examples of you're saying, such as screenshots and save games. These items you can upload to this post in your reply.

Thank you. The ship design behavior is arguably the weakest and least 'scientific' of my arguments and is based on a random sampling of my experiences with various versions of DW2. I will try to upload a save file, but I am pleased with the latest patches.

Nice post.

May I suggest something? AI empires need to play more differently, according to their race or settings.

Also, perhaps as DLC, but the game could really use Scenarios. Imagine starting at war, you have 3 planets are are losing. But nearby is a large neutral empire. Or playing as pirates. Or you play a single ship, a trader, but you can never buy any more, only upgrade. Etc, etc

Thanks!

Agreed, I'd love to see each of the various factions play more distinctly than they currently do and have preset scenarios to choose from. However, I would not want these factional changes at the expense of the AI's competency and ability to be competitive.

[rustyj]

I've noticed quite recently that the AI empires are not spamming troops as much especially when they are depleted in resources. They are still spitting out troop ships, probably because they are cheaper to build at that stage. AI planets still have far too many troops as far as I am concerned, even 12-15K on every planet of a 60+ empire seems a bit absurd considering the cost. But previously it was common to see double that number on numerous planets.