Atrocities or not in human multiplayer games?

[Kirov]

Except that if he has that many interceptors, and his base is that close (I seem to remember that interceptors have reduced range), you might be able to just march on his base with a force that includes AAA defensive units.  Air units are powerful in economic warfare, but tend to fare poorly in direct conflict (since a AAA defensive unit will generally beat an equivalent-tech air unit at comparable or lesser cost).

Earthmichael said it all on the topic on gaining a foothold - you bring a colony pod, construct an airbase or just plain take over one of his peripheral bases. It's not terribly difficult and you can reach quite far with your 12 movement.

How is that powerful?  It fails if the enemy has AAA defenders, and fails even harder if the base has an aerospace complex (which not only gives a huge bonus against chopper attackers, but prevents air drops in the vicinity.)

Let's assume you play against someone, you grow stronger and stronger and you feel it's the time to test his defence. Now, you could prepare a mixed ground unit assault - sentinels, rovers, what have you. Then you load it all on transports and set sail. Then you attack, get a foothold, probably must defend it and then you can slowly move on. Even if stronger, you can still lose, because it's his turf and his lines of supply are shorter. But even assuming it's going well, it's gonna be slow. And he has time to build up, maybe finish that SP or get fusion power.

Now imagine you get MMI first, quickly grab some choppers and simply beat the living hell of him.

It's similar to what happened to me in one 1v1. I was at D:AP first. I sent the first needlejet down to the enemy. Then another. As he had no D:AP, he surrendered and that was the end of the game. There are several techs and SPs which kinda force you to race to them and severely penalize you if you don't make it in time.

As for drop & chop - we can discuss what you would do or compare rows of mins, but I saw it working and I'm sure it's overkill. Once I was a replacement for a very strong faction (Hive), in the middle of a successful drop & chop run. Sure I was already stronger than the others, but not so strong enough that I would take 3-4 bases per turn with ground assault, and with choppers I could. I remember that my main problem was that my defensive probes couldn't catch up with the front line, so I actually had to put them on drop pods.

Aerocomplex can be circumvented, you just air drop some stronger units as close as possible and attack on foot. This turn you will take only 2 bases, and maybe you lose a chopper. But reinforcements keep coming and your enemy's economy is already devastated.

Funny you mention the house rule. I checked one of my old games and, although Empath Guild was allowed, choppers were banned from attacking base tiles. Just a little idea.

As for Empath Guild - it's not just my fancy, I took the idea from experienced players at Apolyton, who very often regarded it as one of the strongest. Same story here: There is a race, the winner grabs it all and suddenly he gains a significant advantage over other players (especially 4-player games). I can go with the same as with the ban on atrocities - not a PBEM rule, but I want it as a house rule. I prefer to water down several overkills I see in SMAC. Air power is one, infiltration is another. If I will recall another one, I'll definitely mention it. It takes something away if you won just by being first to something.


EDIT: cancelled unnecessary quote.

[Yitzi]

Earthmichael said it all on the topic on gaining a foothold - you bring a colony pod, construct an airbase or just plain take over one of his peripheral bases. It's not terribly difficult

It might not be that difficult to do it on his periphery in the context of a larger attack, but doing it on the periphery would negate most of the benefit, as he can simply avoid having noncombat units on that small area.

and you can reach quite far with your 12 movement.

How do you get 12?  I get 8, 10 with CBA, and if you spend more than half of that then you're not going to get back to base byt the end of the turn and are essentially suiciding your unit.

Let's assume you play against someone, you grow stronger and stronger and you feel it's the time to test his defence. Now, you could prepare a mixed ground unit assault - sentinels, rovers, what have you. Then you load it all on transports and set sail. Then you attack, get a foothold, probably must defend it and then you can slowly move on. Even if stronger, you can still lose, because it's his turf and his lines of supply are shorter. But even assuming it's going well, it's gonna be slow. And he has time to build up, maybe finish that SP or get fusion power.

Now imagine you get MMI first, quickly grab some choppers and simply beat the living hell of him.

Yes, if you're substantially stronger, choppers provide a way to leverage that strength into a fast victory.  But if you're anywhere near equal and he's got aerospace complexes, his defenders will beat the living daylights out of your choppers.  Even without aerospace complexes, you need a substantial advantage, because AAA is pretty good.  Still, I can see how a bit more should be needed just because a chopper assault can happen so quickly; perhaps AAA should be increased to a 150% bonus.

It's similar to what happened to me in one 1v1. I was at D:AP first. I sent the first needlejet down to the enemy. Then another. As he had no D:AP, he surrendered and that was the end of the game.

Why didn't he build (or upgrade to) AAA defenders and just keep his formers and crawlers out of range?

As for drop & chop - we can discuss what you would do or compare rows of mins, but I saw it working and I'm sure it's overkill. Once I was a replacement for a very strong faction (Hive), in the middle of a successful drop & chop run. Sure I was already stronger than the others, but not so strong enough that I would take 3-4 bases per turn with ground assault, and with choppers I could.

Drop&chop (probably with rover drop pods, so that they can use roads to capture from outside drop-pod-negating range) is definitely the way to turn strength into speed, but I wouldn't call that overpowered since you need to have the strength in the first place.

I'll believe choppers are overpowered when you can find a case where someone who wasn't already substantially in the lead managed to use them to get ahead, despite the other guy trying what should have been the natural counters.

Aerocomplex can be circumvented, you just air drop some stronger units as close as possible and attack on foot. This turn you will take only 2 bases, and maybe you lose a chopper. But reinforcements keep coming and your enemy's economy is already devastated.

How do you devastate the enemy's economy with an attack just on his periphery?  And if he has widespread aerospace complexes (quite possible if he's not ICSing), then you've essentially been reduced to "drop and attack", which isn't as fast and is fairly weak due to the drop attack penalty.

Funny you mention the house rule. I checked one of my old games and, although Empath Guild was allowed, choppers were banned from attacking base tiles. Just a little idea.

I'd say the opposite: Choppers attacking base tiles is a suboptimal strategy unless you're far ahead anyway; it's choppers attacking formers and crawlers that's the real threat.

As for Empath Guild - it's not just my fancy, I took the idea from experienced players at Apolyton, who very often regarded it as one of the strongest. Same story here: There is a race, the winner grabs it all and suddenly he gains a significant advantage over other players (especially 4-player games).

Why 4-player games in particular, rather than 2-player or 7-player?
And Empath Guild is pretty nice, but so are a lot of projects.  The weaknesses of Empath Guild are that it doesn't really do anything to strengthen you directly, and that its major effect can be copied, albeit with substantially more effort.

I prefer to water down several overkills I see in SMAC. Air power is one, infiltration is another. If I will recall another one, I'll definitely mention it. It takes something away if you won just by being first to something.

For air power (not choppers in particular, just air power overall), I'd say your best bet is to boost the power of AAA and maybe give it the same pricing as Trance and Comm Jammer (weapon/armor, max 2).  Infiltration is something anyone can get with enough effort; the Empath Guild just makes it much much much easier.

While not of the "first to something" variety, some more overkills I see in SMAC are energy focus, free market, crawlers, and ICS.  Fixing those (except maybe crawlers) will be quite a bit more difficult than mere house rules or alpha.txt mods, though.

Oh, and aliens, though that can be house ruled by banning interspecies cooperative victory (so when they get powerful, the others will gang up on them because they're a threat.)

[Buster's Uncle]

Y, I want to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing - but point out that these guys really know what they're talking about.  Extensive experience against people instead of short-bus AI really matters...

[Earthmichael]

"Why didn't he build (or upgrade to) AAA defenders and just keep his formers and crawlers out of range?"

Sometimes, he does not know that they are in range until it is too late.  I usually rush to D:AP, and so do most other players.  Building AAA is on a different tech path.  So there are quite a few turns where air power just rules, and until an opponent gets the tech to either build his own air units, or to go defensive vs. air, he is toast.

And while needlejets can take out a unit every other turn, choppers can take out multiple units per turn, increasing the pain for every turn until the opponent get the technology to respond.

[Yitzi]

Y, I want to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing - but point out that these guys really know what they're talking about.  Extensive experience against people instead of short-bus AI really matters...

I know, but figuring out why it's stronger than theory would suggest is likely to present a solution that preserves or even enhances the richness of the game.

"Why didn't he build (or upgrade to) AAA defenders and just keep his formers and crawlers out of range?"

Sometimes, he does not know that they are in range until it is too late.

You mean a stealth base/airbase?  That could be an issue, but tends to be risky (since a new base or airbase is fairly easy to attack if it is found) and has limited payoff (since any empire with a decent sensor network should find formers/pods before they can get further than the periphery, which has relatively few formers/crawlers.)

I usually rush to D:AP, and so do most other players.  Building AAA is on a different tech path.  So there are quite a few turns where air power just rules, and until an opponent gets the tech to either build his own air units, or to go defensive vs. air, he is toast.

So it's not that whoever gets D:AP first wins, it's that if one player gets D:AP before the other gets either D:AP or AMA, they win.  If someone chooses to go the risky offensive D:AP path rather than the safer AMA path, then it's not unbalanced just because the risk ended up the wrong way.  (And let's not forget that AMA is on the way to Fusion Power, which is also quite good, so it's not like you're giving up long-term capability to get good stuff.)

And while needlejets can take out a unit every other turn, choppers can take out multiple units per turn, increasing the pain for every turn until the opponent get the technology to respond.

Yes.  So it looks like the primary issue here isn't that choppers are overpowered in general, but rather that choppers are overpowered if both sides beeline for D:AP and one has a substantial tech lead (enough to get MMI before the other gets D:AP).  Which raises the question: If you're behind on tech, why not give up the D:AP race and just go straight for AMA, which is lower-tier, provides a counter, gives you a nice social engineering option for wartime, and gives you a leg up in the race for fusion?

[Earthmichael]

Yes.  So it looks like the primary issue here isn't that choppers are overpowered in general, but rather that choppers are overpowered if both sides beeline for D:AP and one has a substantial tech lead (enough to get MMI before the other gets D:AP).  Which raises the question: If you're behind on tech, why not give up the D:AP race and just go straight for AMA, which is lower-tier, provides a counter, gives you a nice social engineering option for wartime, and gives you a leg up in the race for fusion?

I think you are missing the point here.  ANY unit that can attack multiple times per turn without costing any more is broken.  If we could research a QuikRover, which cost the same as a regular rover, but could attack as many times as movement points, or could attack and then withdraw back to a base, it would be broken too!  It is a HUGE extra capability with no extra cost!

[Yitzi]

Yes.  So it looks like the primary issue here isn't that choppers are overpowered in general, but rather that choppers are overpowered if both sides beeline for D:AP and one has a substantial tech lead (enough to get MMI before the other gets D:AP).  Which raises the question: If you're behind on tech, why not give up the D:AP race and just go straight for AMA, which is lower-tier, provides a counter, gives you a nice social engineering option for wartime, and gives you a leg up in the race for fusion?

I think you are missing the point here.  ANY unit that can attack multiple times per turn without costing any more is broken.  If we could research a QuikRover, which cost the same as a regular rover, but could attack as many times as movement points, or could attack and then withdraw back to a base, it would be broken too!  It is a HUGE extra capability with no extra cost!

Er...I think a rover can attack as many times as it has movement, so long as it doesn't take enough damage in the first attack to reduce its movement.

[Earthmichael]

You may be right here, but that just points out another difference: The rover only has 2 moves, and if it takes 50% or more damange, it is reduced to 1 move.  So unless it is elete, it can at most attack twice.  (Can someone verify whether a rover can attack twice?)  The copter has 12 moves, and can take 90% damage and still have 12 moves.  So it can often easily attack 3 or more times and still get to a base.

A hovertank, to get an extra move, often costs an extra row of minerals.  For example a Fusion Rover or Fusion Chopper with Fusion reactor costs 4 rows of minerals.   An identical Fusion Tank costs 5 rows of minerals, to get one extra move.  Why should a Fusion Tank cost more than a Fusion Chopper???

The chopper has to land, you might say this balances it out.  But it does not.  Often I will move 8 or more moves to attack an enemy base up to 3 times, knowing that I have forces that can take the base once I clear out the defenders, and I can land my choppers in the base the same turn that my choppers attack in and my land forces take it.  So this is not really a problem.

[Yitzi]

You may be right here, but that just points out another difference: The rover only has 2 moves, and if it takes 50% or more damange, it is reduced to 1 move.  So unless it is elete, it can at most attack twice.  (Can someone verify whether a rover can attack twice?)  The copter has 12 moves, and can take 90% damage and still have 12 moves.

I still don't see how you get 12 moves.  It has 8, or 10 with CBA.  You can get 12 or even more with antigrav struts, but that's late-game.

And yes, choppers are by far the best for attacking unstacked* low-defense targets near a base/airbase.

*Because I don't think air units do collateral damage, though I'm not sure.  I do know that they don't kill an entire stack of native units the way that land or sea units do.

A hovertank, to get an extra move, often costs an extra row of minerals.  For example a Fusion Rover or Fusion Chopper with Fusion reactor costs 4 rows of minerals.   An identical Fusion Tank costs 5 rows of minerals, to get one extra move.  Why should a Fusion Tank cost more than a Fusion Chopper???

Air units have a cost reduction due to their two notable disadvantages:
-They have to stay near your bases/airbases (except gravships, which are high-tech and can't attack multiple times).  This is especially true of choppers, since they only have 1 turn's worth of fuel so they have to get there and back in one turn (or spend time recuperating, and possibly die if they took on a tough target.)
-They have a lot of trouble with AAA units.

That said, I do see the point that not being restricted to land or to water would substantially compensate for those, and so a mod that doubles the chassis cost of air chasses might not be such a bad idea.  I'm not sure that it's necessary to avoid being overpowered against a player who has access to AAA units, but it's certainly an option.

Looking it over, I think the real problem is that while AMA is lower-tier than D:AP, it's actually more difficult to get (in SMAX; in SMAC it's equal) once you have gene splicing (which is the hard part).  So the answer is to move AMA lower on the tech tree; Optical Computers seems useful for tracking, and is one of the few techs that gives absolutely nothing.

So I'd say that, moving AAA down to Optical Computers, pricing it at -1 (weapon/armor, so 0 for most defensive units), and increasing the bonus to 150%, should end the threat of choppers as a base-taking method against any but a completely unprepared (read: beelining like crazy, which means it's his own fault) enemy.

The chopper has to land, you might say this balances it out.  But it does not.  Often I will move 8 or more moves to attack an enemy base up to 3 times, knowing that I have forces that can take the base once I clear out the defenders, and I can land my choppers in the base the same turn that my choppers attack in and my land forces take it.  So this is not really a problem.

That assumes that you know you can take it, which is not a reliable assumption if he has AAA.

The more this discussion continues, the more convinced I am that the only reasons choppers are so powerful is that AAA comes too late.  Move it up to Optical Computers and strengthen it a bit, and choppers will become a niche unit (either for economic warfare, or for turning a large power advantage into a speed advantage.)

[Green1]

I will say at least from a SP standpoint, choppers are a bit OP. And, needlejets can be a bit too much micro at times. The Civ 4 way of airpower really would help AC.

[Kirov]

Y, I want to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing - but point out that these guys really know what they're talking about.  Extensive experience against people instead of short-bus AI really matters...

Well, I don’t consider myself that experienced at MP. I have less than 10 4-player games and maybe more than 20 HtH games under my belt. When I joined Apolyton, I was simply too intimated, judging from the level of strategy discussions I found there. Those were the people who developed the actual eco-damage formula, who found most of the bugs we now know, who heavily tested any reasonable and unreasonable strategies you can think of. I lurked for months, just reading stuff and testing it in various SP settings, copying more interesting posts to my notepad. Then I started to join discussions, picking the brains of expert players on issues unclear to me. I heavily participated in the first Democracy Game (one person plays an SP game and posts results, everyone discuss it and give input on what to do next). Only after a long time I decided to try my chances in MP and it turned out I could handle myself quite well. Still, I was more focused on learning new things than fighting other players. We could spend months trying to develop a decent Cha Dawn opening strategy or trying to find out when Power or Fundamentalism may be useful. I miss debates like that and I’m very happy to discuss strategy stuff with you guys, although my memory is still hazy (Yitzi is right, your vanilla air power units have 10 mp or 8 if SAM).

But truly, nothing beats good MP experience. Or learning from guys with such.

[Kirov]

How do you get 12?  I get 8, 10 with CBA, and if you spend more than half of that then you're not going to get back to base byt the end of the turn and are essentially suiciding your unit.

You’re right, I think I recalled fusion units.

I'll believe choppers are overpowered when you can find a case where someone who wasn't already substantially in the lead managed to use them to get ahead, despite the other guy trying what should have been the natural counters.

I consider a strategy overpowered if in 90% situations it’s your most obvious choice and the counter is either very difficult or involves using the same strategy. Of course my chopper attack may fail, but only if the enemy responds with more SAM units. AAA just won’t do, so it’s still about air.

You can try it in SP. Start a game with your standard settings, build a decent empire, maybe up to the point of EnvEcon, boreholes and tree forests. Then save. In the first option, grab D:AP/MMI and start pancaking the AIs. In the second option, go whatever other strategy you feel like. You’ll quickly see the difference.

Why didn't he build (or upgrade to) AAA defenders and just keep his formers and crawlers out of range?

How do you devastate the enemy's economy with an attack just on his periphery?

By periphery I don’t mean one distant base in the middle of nowhere. When you do the trick Earthmichael mentioned, you try to get access to several bases at once. And that is why there are several problems with AAA units:

1) What Earthmichael said about teching is very important. Going AMA before MMI is a huge no-no. Not only you give away CBA and CF, you also at that moment don’t have decent weapons. Seriously, that path is simply no good before you get MMI and EnvEcon.

2) Another important factor is initiative. With chopper v. AAA, the chopper guy decides if and where to attack, and you can do nothing about it. You scatter your AAA units between several places where they are needed most, but the enemy may simply attack the weakest one, or surround a base with needlejets’ ZOC and take down the defence.

Neither Earthmichael or me claim that 6-1-10 Chopper beats 1-4-1 AAA unit. It doesn’t. However, in a situation like that the chopper guy either forces the defender to turtle up, driving formers to bases and bombing improvements (which is what would have happened in the game I described, giving me victory by attrition), or wastes some choppers to conquer a weaker base, or simply comes back with nerve gas. He decides what will happen and where and you can just watch him flying over your head. This advantage cannot be translated into rows of minerals. The only serious counter is SAM.

This is not a matter of theory, this is simply how the practice looks like. In theory, you could also defend with NL units (the odds are always 1:1 and mind worms ignore the attacker’s nerve gas and reactor). However in practice you could never pull it off against a reasonably good opponent (although it’s actually not a bad idea to bring a mind worm to a stack vulnerable to air attacks).

Why 4-player games in particular, rather than 2-player or 7-player?
And Empath Guild is pretty nice, but so are a lot of projects.  The weaknesses of Empath Guild are that it doesn't really do anything to strengthen you directly, and that its major effect can be copied, albeit with substantially more effort.

2-player game goes by its own rules, and the standard for many players is 4 human slots – any bigger game will likely fall apart.

Infiltration of a good player may be very costly and is fraught with risks you can’t do much about (NL is just a first part). And there are players you will never infiltrate by probe in the peacetime.

While not of the "first to something" variety, some more overkills I see in SMAC are energy focus, free market, crawlers, and ICS.

You’re perfectly right, which is why I don’t ICS even in MP (well, not to the extent Hive or Domai does). As for FM and crawlers – if you don’t use them, I don’t see a bright future for you. Well, in MP you can always choose Deirdre. But FM takes some expertise to master and wage wars while under it, so I don’t consider it such an issue. I would gladly take crawlers out of the game.

[Kirov]

Also Yitzi, you're welcome to join us in the game below and just put to the test the things we're talking about. Seriously, we're looking for players.

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2562.0

[Kirov]

One more thing: rovers (and elite infantry, for that matter) may attack twice per turn, although this is affected by the damage taken (and your standard road movement).

[Yitzi]

You’re right, I think I recalled fusion units.

Even with fusion, I don't think it affects movement unless you have antigrav struts.

AAA just won’t do

Why not?  Once we fix that, choppers will be depowered naturally.

You can try it in SP. Start a game with your standard settings, build a decent empire, maybe up to the point of EnvEcon, boreholes and tree forests. Then save. In the first option, grab D:AP/MMI and start pancaking the AIs.

I actually did encounter it in SP quite a while back; I was playing Caretakers, Usurpers got D:AP first.  I managed to defend, and then counterattacked, but I had a lot of trouble counterattacking when I tried using only air units.

By periphery I don’t mean one distant base in the middle of nowhere. When you do the trick Earthmichael mentioned, you try to get access to several bases at once.

That's still going to be difficult, and a 4-space radius from several peripheral bases is still going to be a small portion of any decent empire.

1) What Earthmichael said about teching is very important. Going AMA before MMI is a huge no-no. Not only you give away CBA and CF, you also at that moment don’t have decent weapons.

You could grab Gatling Laser along the way, putting you in a good position to grab Fusion.

But moving AAA down to Optical Computers does seem a better idea.

2) Another important factor is initiative. With chopper v. AAA, the chopper guy decides if and where to attack, and you can do nothing about it. You scatter your AAA units between several places where they are needed most, but the enemy may simply attack the weakest one, or surround a base with needlejets’ ZOC and take down the defence.

Concentration/maneuverability of forces is an important advantage, but he can still only be effective within a relatively small range of his base/airbase (which is immobile), so if he's that close you can just march on his base/airbase.  Boost the effectiveness of AAA a huge amount (say +300%), and make it easier to get, and he'll need plenty of non-air units to stop your attack force, or a huge attack force to take a base (which you can then take back, because air units suck at passive defense and your AAA units will stop any active defense).  Concentrating forces to attack a base could still work, but it would be a major investment and highly risky.  There's still the attrition issue, which I'll deal with below.

Neither Earthmichael or me claim that 6-1-10 Chopper beats 1-4-1 AAA unit. It doesn’t. However, in a situation like that the chopper guy either forces the defender to turtle up, driving formers to bases and bombing improvements (which is what would have happened in the game I described, giving me victory by attrition)

Can choppers even bomb improvements?

or wastes some choppers to conquer a weaker base

"Waste" is right if he can't hold it.

or simply comes back with nerve gas

That's got the same problems as land units using nerve gas: You lose commerce, too much and everybody declares vendetta, and it's still only a 50% bonus.

He decides what will happen and where and you can just watch him flying over your head.

Why can't you just march on his base?  It has to be close for air power to work, so a rover force should be able to make it in a few turns (and with AAA units in the stack, he can't use his choppers to defend at anything near cost-effectiveness).

However in practice you could never pull it off against a reasonably good opponent

Why not?

Infiltration of a good player may be very costly and is fraught with risks you can’t do much about (NL is just a first part). And there are players you will never infiltrate by probe in the peacetime.

What's NL?

And yes infiltration is difficult (though just throwing probe teams at a base should work), so the EG is definitely useful, but so are all projects.

While not of the "first to something" variety, some more overkills I see in SMAC are energy focus, free market, crawlers, and ICS.

You’re perfectly right, which is why I don’t ICS even in MP (well, not to the extent Hive or Domai does). As for FM and crawlers – if you don’t use them, I don’t see a bright future for you. Well, in MP you can always choose Deirdre. But FM takes some expertise to master and wage wars while under it, so I don’t consider it such an issue. I would gladly take crawlers out of the game.
[/quote]

Removing crawlers from the game, or depowering them heavily, seems a given for balancing.  As for FM, most of the problem there is the power of energy focus (easily fixed by giving everyone a 150% hurry modifier, though if using the "Democracy is only +1 Growth" mod then Morgan probably deserves an exemption), and the fact that the ecodamage formula punishes mineral focus far worse than it punishes FM (that will take some work to fix.)

Also Yitzi, you're welcome to join us in the game below and just put to the test the things we're talking about. Seriously, we're looking for players.

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2562.0

Thanks, but firstly I'm not going to have my CD for another week, and secondly there are other issues that mean I'm not really interested in joining a game, but when I get home and can get my CD, I figure I can make a scenario to test an idea I have for a mod to boost AAA enough to solve the problem.