instead of doing a move of 100 ps why not make it that the ship moves automatically out of said empires territory. like when your ships end up out of life support for what ever reasons.

Because you could change those destinations and you wouldn't be able to attack anything ever if I added in code to prevent that.

So you say it's completely impossible to have any degree of controlled space without micromanagement. I disagree--unless, perhaps, you are talking about processing micromanagement, but I think you meant on the part of the player. Regardless, no point arguing over it; I'm no programmer and it's more than possible that what I see as doable isn't possible.

Still, there are other ways. The key one which I haven't seen responded to and fully support is "One can choose whether or not to accept this "speed limit" and their relations are affected accordingly."

I like Right of Passage treaties, but you need to rework them. An idea is to greatly increase the negative influence related to having ships in another's territory (now without permission). Perhaps even have one who amasses ships in a territory to get negative relations with all allied/like-alignment/or even all nations. As an example, if the US is not allied with nor in a war against Iran, yet they station troops near Tehran, they send tanks through Iran to back up Afghanistan, or even if they bring ships to cut off their trade, the whole world is going dislike the Americans a bit more (than they already do). Perhaps not so much with Iran as with, say, Morocco, hence the reason it may be like-alignment nations. Thereby, if the Humans station ships in Drengin territory, the Arceans may not care, but the Korx may well. If you implement both (increased negative influence and negative influence with those of like alignment for not honoring the lack of a Right of Passage treaty), you may well cause someone trying to sneak attack to end up in a two front war, which, if I remember right, is a big no-no in Suicidal games.

ok

That's one of the best things I've seen on this thread yet. I am definitely in favor of anything that helps to create a sliding difficulty scale where players have to work harder in multiple areas as they increase their difficulty level, yet doesn't punish new players for the successes of grizzled veterans.

It seems to me that one of the biggest weapons in a player's arsenal is information. We get tons of free information from turn one about enemy planet conditions and starship capabilities.

If this information were harder to get - say through espionage - or even impossible to get, it would change a few things about my game.

Imagine you stumble onto an AI fleet. Up to Masochistic level, you can see everything about it at a glance, as you do now. At Masochistic, you can see that there are two dreadnoughts and three frigates, and you know the fleet military values, but not the individual values. At Obscene, you see that there are two dreadnoughts and three frigates, but you don't see the military values. At Suicidal, you can tell that there are five ships.

Planets and other stats could be handled similarly, with espionage levels revealing some or all of the data as you progress through the espionage levels. If you go into battle, there could be a screen that tells you what the enemy ships' capabilities are before you start or after the battle has ended. Just so you know why you got stomped so badly...

I do sometimes see advice for winning on Suicidal offered up on the forums by players with no track record of Suicidal wins that I find doubtful, misleading, or less than complete...So, I think it is important to reality check what people are really doing. It's really easy to say people are winning because they are doing X, but its been my experience that the reality is closer to they are doing A,B,C and D, not doing M,N,O, or P, letting them now do X,Y, or Z. Which, makes easy solutions not easy! I do not envy you this task.

I would highly encourage looking at what the players are actually doing to win on Suicidal, by checking with the players who have the appropriate track records. There is a fairly decent sized list of players whom have demonstrated this capacity over time. I suspect most, if not all, would be willing to share with the Stardock what they are doing if asked (although some might want PMs or e-mails). A few have offered up consistently good advice on the forums over time that tend to give it out in digestible chunks. Getting this information doesn't necessarily offer up a solution (and I doubt there is a complete solution), but at least there would be a clear understanding of the methods and means. This might point out some design changes to toughen up the system.

In the Suicidal game AAR, I included saved game files for this very reason. Some of things I'm doing I don't even notice anymore. Many of the things I'm doing have to be taken in context, and are not necessarily easy to explain or implement without something solid to grasp on to. Of course, I may be helping to increase the pool of Suicidal players, making your jobs even harder!

Insightful. I agree and think this is a pretty good way of toughening things up.

Cari may i make a small suggestion to help counter sneak attacks! My idea is to bring in a new class or 'bolt-on' for a ship that would allow a planet to produce mine fields. These mine fields would act like a barrier around a planet and stop, or at least reduce, sneak attacks from being made.
Another option would be to add a new class of ship that would 'orbit' its production planet and act like a defence platform. These platforms could contain offensive and defensive modules but no engines etc and not take up any space in the production queue for the planet. You could over a period of time build many of these and make it a lot harder to penetrate a planet for invasion.

Just a couple of thoughts for you to ponder over

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About the engine nerf : I'm mostly playing on large and smaller maps, but it seems the only one one who complains about the engines are those playing on larger maps. I find the actual values correct, as they make for a strategic decision. We need to chose between more weapons or engines, while in DL putting a lot of engines was a no-brainer.

My suggestion : Do exactly like for range, and make the engines scale with the map size. This way those who play gigantic (or the even larger planned for TA) maps can have their ships zooming around at speed > 20, while those playing on small maps will not see speed > 10 ships going from one corner of the galaxy to the other in few turns.

Then everyone will be happy! Yay!

So that's what this is all about? The answer, then, has to be to improve the AI's ability to deal with the possibility of sneak attacks, instead of building up a baroque set of artificial game mechanics to compensate for that lack.



So the devs have just given up on being able to improve the AI's ability to deal with sneak attacks?! Ack!

Well, ultimately it was about making it harder for people to win suicidal games, because I gather that people had been complaining that it was too easy, and Brad was under the impression that this was because they were using sneak attacks, which is a weakness of the AI. 

Well, I actually meant that I think that we're not going to be trying to prevent sneak attacks by imposing limitations on the player. 

 

Actually I previously left the implied part of this question unanswered because I have one very germane question of my own.

Who are these people who are complaining that it's too easy to beat the AI on Suicidal about which you speak? Frankly I haven't heard any such complaints since The game is too easy thread from about 15 months ago.

Personally I find Suicidal plenty challenging enough thank you very much. If you're really insistent on having an absolutely unbeatable level then the answer is very simple. Create a new level where the AI get's a 300% bonus to *everything*, you could call it genocidal. If there's still some complaints then you can go to the 400% bonus level, perhaps you could call this omniscient. Still more difficulty desired? How about 500%. Last I heard we really aren't in any danger of running out of numbers.


Again, Why?

By the same analogy that you've stated why penalize players that are perfectly happy with suicidal as currently implemented. Let those that have become bored or otherwise find suicidal beneath them play at a higher level but there are many that find suicidal plently challenging enough.

I definitly agree with sliding scale. Also PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE (I'm on my knee's begging) keep the Right of Passage Treaty. I think Espionage needs to be improved, because current espionage isn't as potent as let's ay having the ability to cause a planetary revolt or foment unhappines. Uhm not to pick at the game. I'm all for having less knowledge and mine fields about the other races. Most importantly I think sneak attacks should be allowed simply because the more open and nonlinear the enviroment the better. Maybe allow the computer on Suicidal levels do Sneak Attacks. So people will be less willing to move their armies.

I'm extremely against making ships move only once per turn.  I play on Medium galaxies and I still find it tedious waiting for my ships to reach their targets, and I managed to talk Brad out of it today.  So no.

 

I made this same suggestion about a year ago. It received complaint, although as far as I could tell, most complaint was from players of medium galaxies and below. The gist of the complaint was that if you desire to play on a grand scale then you *should* crawl across the galaxy. My response that although I wish to play on a grand scale I do not wish to maximize the tedium of the game that is already in copious supply basically fell on deaf ears.