| There's been a lot of crap on this thread. The reality is as I think Mumble pointed out, is that no one can defend against (AI, or player) ships that are moving at 40+. It has nothing to do with CPU usage. At 40+ my strongest 4 or 5 fleets can hit you at a all your weakest points. (especially your resources) |
Sorry about my contribution to the crap on this thread.
Anyway, I think that resources can be effectively defended against blitz attacks by both the AI and the player. There's sufficiently few of them and they are of sufficient importance that I station a top line fleet on each and every one of them. I also have reserve fleets ready to fill in when necessary. I see nothing that precludes the AI from using this strategy, though they do seem to rely on starbase attack and defense which is absolutely useless mid to late game. But you can't do the same with each and every planet, the maintenance costs will kill you.
I think everyone is in agreement that a predictive defense against speed 40 (or 80 or pick a number) is impossible with today's hardware, no matter how current. I've still not heard anyone give me a corresponding reason why the AI can't duplicate this kind of attack, but anyway the AI currently doesn't. I have no idea whether it's possible or not. Can someone give me a reason why this is beyond the AI’s capability?
But assuming it's not feasible in the context of DA for whatever the reason, then doing *something* with speed appears to be the only way out. As Brad mentioned in some thread or other (could be this one for all I know) he has done *something* about speed in DA. Something he's sure will cause some angst, he just didn't mention specifically what.
I can think of many ways of implementing this that I would hate. I can also think of some ways of implementing this that I wouldn't mind so much. For me, I don't really object to attack ships and troop transports being slowed down in the opponents area of influence. What I do object to is all vessels being slowed down in all cases. Constructors are probably the number one concern, with colony ships and scouts not far behind. Also the effect of slow speed on the logistics of re-supply of attack ships and transports to the front line concerns me. I already have close to a thousand ships on auto-pilot at the same time, half of which continually lose their way and need individual attention each and every turn. I *really* don’t need any more of these.
The simple concept that has been suggested that appeals to me the most out of the myriad of distasteful solutions, is to have speed as it currently exists within your area of influence and slowed down outside of it. As I said before somewhere or other this would give a tremendous advantage to defense but I think defense in this game needs an advantage.
The thing is that this whole discussion doesn’t occur in a vacuum. As I said before, the farms have been nerfed, the morale buildings have been nerfed, the economic buildings have been nerfed, the factories have been nerfed, the morale benefit of the stock market has been removed, the support of the initial colony has been increased and the list goes on and on. All of this for the purpose of fairness to the AI. I’m all for fairness, but where’s the fairness to the human player? The AI is free to station it’s fleets by the human’s resources and planets and the human has no recourse but to attack and cause total war. The AI starts a war against the human player because “I know what you’re doing” and there are no fleets or transports anywhere near the AI. Or the best one yet, the AI declares war because of the placement of the human fleets that appear to be close to the AI’s influence area because the Zone of Control hasn’t been recalculated after the load of a save game.
And so to answer your question.
| When can we see a patch for plain GC2 that addresses this ? |
I’d personally like to see the specific solution that’s been implemented in DA before I would ask to be impaled on this in DL.
So anyway, I know this has been a long post. I fully expect to be criticized by those that read every third word or half of every paragraph, so if you’re one of those go back and at least read what I’m saying, and give a moment to think about it before slamming me. Thank you for your cooperation.
