Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

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drkosy
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#16 Post by drkosy »

The usual way to spot the system is finding one that is totally disconnected from others.
I just finished my second game, but didn't see anything like you describe. I have omiscanner and view over the whole galaxie. All systems are connected, it's around turn 300 with AI level "aggressive" (v 0.49) so they should be active right now. During galaxy generation I left the experimentors turned on and there are monsters present. They should defintly in the game. Is there any possibility for the generator to "forget" placing the experimentors system?

It's a bit disencouraging because I prepered well for them to pop up with lots of Solar Attackers, Titans and other Warships to kill the krakens but nothing happend :cry:
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Oberlus
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#17 Post by Oberlus »

drkosy wrote: Wed Jul 22, 2020 6:33 pm
The usual way to spot the system is finding one that is totally disconnected from others.
I just finished my second game, but didn't see anything like you describe. I have omiscanner and view over the whole galaxie. All systems are connected, it's around turn 300 with AI level "aggressive" (v 0.49) so they should be active right now. During galaxy generation I left the experimentors turned on and there are monsters present. They should defintly in the game. Is there any possibility for the generator to "forget" placing the experimentors system?

It's a bit disencouraging because I prepered well for them to pop up with lots of Solar Attackers, Titans and other Warships to kill the krakens but nothing happend :cry:
They don't ever spawn. If the universe generation algorithm can't find a system for them that meets the requirements (mostly minimum distance to HWs and certain specials, IIRC), they won't appear. I think that playing more sparse galaxies (more systems per empire) does help with the chances. A way to make you sure is start the game with supertesters enabled, queue them and press turn twice to see the whole galaxy, restart the game with same seed if you see the experimentors systems or try a new seed if you can't.

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LienRag
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#18 Post by LienRag »

Played a quite standard game recently (all settings at random except High Monsters and race = Laenfa) and I got my first bad encounter with Experimentors...
OK, I maybe didn't play that well, and also since I used a copy of the FOCS file I wasn't actually using the last version of the game as I thought so I wasn't ready when they sent Black Krakens in turn 200 rather than 250, but really they're unbalanced.

Black Krakens have :
4k Structure : OK, why not, they're supposed to be tough.
60 damage : OK, why not, they're supposed to be dangerous, even to shielded ships. That means that they could one-shot most of my ships and two-shots the rest of my fleet, but I had the tech to produce more heavily armored ships and it was my mistake to not be ready.
200 vision (iirc) : For the first wave of monsters, is that really necessary ? Stealth only allows ships to survive one more turn, what's the point of reducing to zero all the efforts of an Empire to pursue a stealth strategy ?
200 speed : WTF ? Where's the fun in eliminating all possibilities to outmaneuver them ?
One-shot of planets : For the first wave of monsters, why ? Why remove all ways to counter them except a bigger pile of ships ? What's the fun in that ?

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Oberlus
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#19 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 6:22 amI wasn't ready when they sent Black Krakens in turn 200 rather than 250, but really they're unbalanced.
They are "the final boss" of FreeOrion. They appear in turn 250 if you playing "Maniacal", which is supposed to be the toughest difficulty.
You can beat them before they start spawning psionic monsters in Maniacal (at least when they appear at turn 250). You get 50 more turns for each less level of AI aggressiveness, so there is space for players that want less of a challenge and players that do like them.


Black Krakens have :
4k Structure : OK, why not, they're supposed to be tough.
60 damage : OK, why not, they're supposed to be dangerous, even to shielded ships. That means that they could one-shot most of my ships and two-shots the rest of my fleet, but I had the tech to produce more heavily armored ships and it was my mistake to not be ready.
3x20, to be more exactly. You can have for sure shield-9 or tons of robotic shield ships (up to shield-20) by that time, and big hulls that could withstand much more than 2 shots even without shields.
200 vision (iirc) : For the first wave of monsters, is that really necessary ? Stealth only allows ships to survive one more turn, what's the point of reducing to zero all the efforts of an Empire to pursue a stealth strategy ?
They need long range to be good at chasing planets.
200 speed : WTF ? Where's the fun in eliminating all possibilities to outmaneuver them ?
That might be necessary for monsters to ensure they finish their trip out of Experimentors system before starlane collapses.
One-shot of planets : For the first wave of monsters, why ? Why remove all ways to counter them except a bigger pile of ships ? What's the fun in that ?
If you get some planetary defense techs they can't oneshot a planet. Maximum shield is around 500, 1000 with defense focus, way more than the 60 damage per turn that a kraken does.

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drkosy
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#20 Post by drkosy »

I do not have any experience with the experimentors as I mantioned in my post yesterday but I watched their krakens in the ship design window. I think the critical stuff is not the 3x20 damage. The chaos waves kills your population. To learn how they work I played around with them. As far as I see, they only kill population if the shield is down. For version 0.49 I read there will be 3 krakens per batch witch means with 3 combat rounds: 540 damage ( 3x 3x 60). That leaves you with 1 shield in the very end of the game (with all boosters for planetary shields). That really cut down your chance to counter them.
Even a few ships with low armor would bring your some time till the planetary shields are down. Maybe it would be a good idea to just build some cheap ships to slow the krakens down.
For version 0.410 there should only be 2 krakens per batch (as I read here) so they do only 360 points of damage. With planetary shield 5 you have 491 points which gives you two turns as well.
Maybe an idea could be to build cheap ships to slow down their destruction of your planetary defense.
The only thing is the big surprise the first time they appear. Maybe it should be more like the Antarans in MOO2. The first time they appear it should be more easy to handle. Let's say some big snowflakes at turn 150. The first kraken at turn 200 and the batches full of krakens at turn 250. That would be more player-friendly I guess :wink:
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LienRag
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#21 Post by LienRag »

Oberlus wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 7:33 am
LienRag wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 6:22 amOne-shot of planets : For the first wave of monsters, why ? Why remove all ways to counter them except a bigger pile of ships ? What's the fun in that ?
If you get some planetary defense techs they can't oneshot a planet. Maximum shield is around 500, 1000 with defense focus, way more than the 60 damage per turn that a kraken does.
Actually what happened was that I got three Black Krakens on a recently colonized Planet and I didn't see the sitrep explaining that each of them killed 2 populations, only that my Planet was now reduced to an outpost.
That's why I thought that, since all of their stats was quite deadly, they had the ability to kill all the population of a planet in one shot.
Now that I know that it's not the case, I'm feeling less hapless and disarrayed by their design.

Oberlus wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 7:33 am
200 vision (iirc) : For the first wave of monsters, is that really necessary ? Stealth only allows ships to survive one more turn, what's the point of reducing to zero all the efforts of an Empire to pursue a stealth strategy ?
They need long range to be good at chasing planets.
Well, do they really need to be that good at chasing planets from turn one ? Why not wait for the Psionic Snowflakes to hatch and leave the Black Krakens have a little more random behavior at first if they can't spot a planet ?

Oberlus wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 7:33 am
LienRag wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 6:22 am 200 speed : WTF ? Where's the fun in eliminating all possibilities to outmaneuver them ?
That might be necessary for monsters to ensure they finish their trip out of Experimentors system before starlane collapses.
That's awful design.
And that could be avoided by giving the Experimentors Outpost a super-Lighthouse that give 100 speed bonus to any ship that start its turn on the outpost.

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Oberlus
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#22 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Sat Sep 12, 2020 2:11 am Actually what happened was that I got three Black Krakens on a recently colonized Planet and I didn't see the sitrep explaining that each of them killed 2 populations
Yes, I know you tend to talk about stuff you don't know, don't worry. That's why we are here, to help the helpless.

Well, do they really need to be that good at chasing planets from turn one ?
To be really annoying, yes, they need to.
Why not wait for the Psionic Snowflakes to hatch and leave the Black Krakens have a little more random behavior at first if they can't spot a planet ?
Because there's no need for that. Krakens are perfectly manageable if you play a bit and pay some attention.
Oberlus wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 7:33 am That's awful design.
It's awful that you think it's awful.
Apologies for my first answer, about necessary speed to get out of the starlanes. It was probably wrong. What I should have said is "200 speed monsters are perfectly outmanoeuvreable, once you know they only travel one starlane per turn, even a little child will figure out how to block their pass. I'm sure you can learn to play too."
There, better now.

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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#23 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Sat Sep 12, 2020 11:02 am better now.
Not really. Could you stop this? I just wasted a part of my life to read your rant.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

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Oberlus
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#24 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2020 6:04 pm Could you stop this?
Yes, I'll do.

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drkosy
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#25 Post by drkosy »

I figured out some not explained strategy for the krakens :)
Just build a star gate in every colonized planet the experimentors could open a starlane. You have at least two turns (krakens appear at outpost and starlane is opened than they travel) that is enough time to send in some nano-robotic-hull heavy armed ships to kill the krakens. They could do that in 2-3 turns without loosing pop on the planet. You only need several fleets to counter the next batch of monsters if your fleet can't manage that in one turn.

There is only one really annoying thing. Till now I don't know why the experimentors use mutated space monsters to do experiments. If they are that high-tech they should be, I would expect some strange n-dimensonal subspace rifts producing tons of space bubbles that terraforms planets randomly :wink:
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defaultuser
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Re: Experimentors monsters challenging after nerf to resources?

#26 Post by defaultuser »

I generally like to have Titanic hulls when it's time for that. Sometimes I have to use Self-Grav.

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