Custom Campaign: Medium-Plus difficulty?

[GrenadeMagnet6]

I was going to start a new campaign and try out the customized settings, to a make a game slightly harder than Medium but not as difficult as Hard.

I was considering a game where the AI is more nimble within a sector but has slightly fewer invasions, and also is more expensive for the AI to reinforce it's own fleets.

Here's the current Medium game settings and my options I am considering

Setting	Original	Proposed	Notes
Assault	04	03	Allows more frequent assaults
Invasion	20	24	Reduce frequency by 20%
Reinforcements	04	05	Make tougher for remote fleet to reinforce
Defense	04	04	Could reduce to 3, but I have seen AI build defenses where normally you cannot
New Fleet:	05	06	More expensive to recruit a new captain
UltPower	40	Off
Repair	04	04	Repair is usually not expensive, could go to 3
Threat Level Mod	0	0
Fleet Capacity	100%	130%
WeaponDamageMod	00%	00%
LeaderShipMod	100%	130%
AI Crew Level	02	03

Also I was going to give all fleets a larger size, by 30% maximum capacity and leadership.

My concerns with customization would be to avoid the following problems:
* Making the Strategic game take longer: I'm hoping increasing the invasion cost will prevent that issue;
* Breaking any of the campaign missions.

I'm not sure about increasing the Enemy Crew attribute to Level 3, since with more ships on the field that will greatly scale up the enemy's effectiveness in the early game, as it takes time for your crews to level up to 3 or 4.

Any thoughts?

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Oh, the developer Ugo posted how the AI accumulates and uses it's Action Points each turn in a different thread (will link soon).

Basically the AI accumulates action points in each individual sector based on it's threat level (i.e threat level 4 means 4 points a turn). It then allocates points to buckets randomly, and then decides to take an action when a bucket fills up. The urgency gauge level can help the AI add more Action Points in each sector each turn.

If the AI is not in a sector but has a threat level then it will only spend points on the Invasion bucket until it accumulates enough points to invade. Once the AI has occupied a sector it will no longer put points in the Invasion bucket for that sector.

Here's the thread where the Tindalos developer Ugo discusses how the AI Action points system works:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/573100/discussions/0/1640915206443877176/

[GrenadeMagnet6]

I tried my new Custom Medium game settings and this is what I've experienced about 5 turns into a new Imperium campaign:

* If you decide to increase the available fleet and leadership size, you should ensure you also add additional resources to start the game to pay for the ship maintenance.

For example, if you start with 130% the regular fleet size, your starting maintenance will be about net -50 per turn. I would start with an extra 300 to 500 resources or you'll have to immediately revoke ships from your fleet.

* With larger fleets you will level up pretty quickly in the early game, due to the increased number of enemy ships giving large renown rewards. I'm only on turn 5 and already hit Level 2 after three battles.

Also, I read there's a confirmed bug that keeps your supporting ships from leveling up past 1. Since I'm fighting Level 3 enemy AI fleets I'm going to halt my campaign until the next bug patch can address.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Another trip report on my Custom Campaign, Imperium:

* In the starting Cadia sector when you start this is one unguarded world that if you liberate will give you 100 credits a turn for seven or eight turns. So that will help with basic fleet maintenance.

* Also with a starting Fleet size 130% bigger than normal you can steamroll through Cadia with ease. I had only one fleet invasion and it was only a 600 point enemy fleet. I'm not sure if the enemy fleet size is scaling along with mine or not. If not then I'll have to start a new game and have the enemy fleet size also set to 130% of the usual size to match.

I thought with increased size the enemy fleets would also scale. But it's possible Cadia starts out as an easy sector concerning the starting enemy fleet population.

[Sneakimus]

I noticed the Invasions increase in size throughout the campaign, from humble 300-600 invasions up to 3000+ invasions.

What determines the size of the invasion? Is it the amount of turns? Or your renown level?

[GrenadeMagnet6]

From my first game I guess the invasion fleet size was based on your individual maximum fleet size up to times 3, and then from one to two fleets of that size. But that does not include the scripted invasion, which for the Tyranids resulted in five or more invasion fleets when they first are introduced.

However in the recent patch notes the developers adjusted the invasion fleet strength. Let me find the notes...

Found this in the patch notes from June 24th:
"* Rework of the Invasions spawn probability and occurrence based on the player’s level"

I assume this means at lower renown levels the invasions are not as strong as pre-patch. But I don't know how weaker invasions are at lower levels. The first invasion I encountered in the custom game I'm documenting here was around 600, which was my maximum single-faction fleet size at the time.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

So far into my custom game I have unlocked the third sector (Agrippina) and have not faced any big challenges. After increasing the invasion cost slightly I've only seen one 600-strength invasion in 40 turns.

Though I reduced the Assault cost for the AI from 4 points to 3 I have not seen an increase in assault frequency.

The bonuses you receive from the new Secondary Objective missions help to slow down the AI point accumulation greatly, since one reward can reduce AI point collection for 2 to 3 turns.

Also the ability now to remove mine fields with battle plans helps to crack open a fortified system that would have been difficult prior to the recent patch. This allows your assaults to be implemented faster than before and with less grind.

Starting the game with more ships does make the early game move along quicker, but you will be hurting for income until you open the third sector since more ships means more maintenance costs. But you do appear to get enough bonus credits from missions and liberating systems to keep your forces strong up to when you can obtain more income-producing worlds.

Due to the ease I've experienced so far with these Custom Game settings I'm considering starting a new game but reverting back all the AI action point costs to the original Medium levels, still disabling the ultimate power, and keeping the enemy crew skill level at 3. I may revert the invasion cost to 22 from 24, for just a 10% reduction.

The increase by just one point of the enemy AI costs for New Fleets and Reinforcements had a significant effect on reducing the AI activity, at least in my experience so far. Perhaps that has to do with the fact the AI puts only so many points into each Decision Bucket per turn. So increasing a 4 point cost to 5 could mean an extra 2 to 3 turns before you see the action occur as opposed to using the default settings.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

I restarted my game using custom medium settings:
* Set default enemy crew level to 3 from 2
* increased invasion cost slightly to 22 from 20
* Disabled AI ultimate power
* increased leadership and fleet sizes by 30%

I’m back at the Agrippina sector. So far the AI has not been aggressive. I noticed in Nemesis Tessera that none of the Aeldari are launching assaults from their locked world so far, so I have left the remaining worlds undefended. I’m not sure if unlocking the world will make them try to assault or not.

My concern now with my custom game settings is I’m not sure if the campaign missions are also scaling up enemy fleet strength by 30% or not. The random AI fleets are scaling up properly. But if the campaign mission fleets are not scaling then that would make the early game easier with larger player fleet sizes than an unmodified game.

I could have raise the Enemy AI fleet size by 30% in the custom game, but I did want want the random enemy fleets to be 30% larger than my already larger fleets. And the same problem: I’m not clear if raising the enemy AI fleet size also increases enemy fleet strength for the campaign missions.

Instead of testing further I’ll put in a support ticket to see if developers can answer the question. There is also a player here who has a custom game mod I’ll ask who may know the answers to my questions.

[Ale]

Hello!
Do you play with or without the Urgency Bar?

I'm starting to think about custom setting and I'd like to find a balance around invasion with out the Urgency Bar.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Originally posted by Sparviero:

Hello!
Do you play with or without the Urgency Bar?

I'm starting to think about custom setting and I'd like to find a balance around invasion with out the Urgency Bar.

I play the custom game with the urgency bar on. Without the urgency bar the AI would remain slow to react without an increase in the action points given by the increased urgency.

Also with the latest campaign patch the new secondary objectives from missions can give you additional bonuses to keep the AI actions delayed, such as a reduction in the faction threat level for a few turns, along with bonus battle plans.

If a player doesn’t want to deal managing threat levels they can turn off the Urgency Bar. Doing so will also result in a ton of battle plans later in the game, but that may also allow the player to move thru the random AI forces quickly, so to focus mostly on the campaign missions.

[Ale]

Originally posted by GrenadeMagnet6:

Originally posted by Sparviero:

Hello!
Do you play with or without the Urgency Bar?

I'm starting to think about custom setting and I'd like to find a balance around invasion with out the Urgency Bar.

I play the custom game with the urgency bar on. Without the urgency bar the AI would remain slow to react without an increase in the action points given by the increased urgency.

Also with the latest campaign patch the new secondary objectives from missions can give you additional bonuses to keep the AI actions delayed, such as a reduction in the faction threat level for a few turns, along with bonus battle plans.

If a player doesn’t want to deal managing threat levels they can turn off the Urgency Bar. Doing so will also result in a ton of battle plans later in the game, but that may also allow the player to move thru the random AI forces quickly, so to focus mostly on the campaign missions.

I'd like to disable the urgency bar and find a balance between:

- Threat level modifier ( for example setting this on 4 should be provoke more invasions than with the urgency bar at third stadium in a medium difficulty game )

- All the various cost for enemies action. I'm not sure I understood these options: do enemies have to spend "threat level acumulated points" to perform one of the listed action ? So, if they keeping building fleets they will never reach the points to call a invasion? Something like that?

- Ship upkeep for the player ( I want to rise this )

- Ship repair for the player ( I want to set lower this, but I don't know at the setting value stack with the bonus from admiral skill/Planet trait )

- Ship refound ( I want to rise this )




I want to have a game:

1) Without time limit/increasing preassure
2) More assault from the AI....default cost is 4, minimum value is 1. If I understood the meaning of this value, I'd like to set it to 0...make no sense for me that IA has to pay to "move" his fleets.
3) Invasions maybe like urgency bar at level 1...has to think about this becouse we can influence invasion numbers with both the threat level setting and the invasions cost setting.
4) Less fleets for the player rising upkeep cost...so you will never get a lot of invasions...but also you will still be careful about fleets disposition
5) Lower repair rate to make it counts when your ships get damaga. Right now, in some system you get full repair in a couple of turns. I need to discover how this stack with the various bonus. May be interesting to set it to 0% if the value isn't multiplicate with the various bonus. So, without the admiral relative skill, in a system without shipyard you can't repair your ships. But if the setting value stack as a product with the various bonus, setting it to 0% will make impossible to repair player's ships and I don't want this.
6) Want to increase ship refound becouse want to promove experimentation and also becouse makes sense to me that recycling a ship should earn a lot of reusables components. The problem is if you get the same quantity of resources if the ship is damaged or not.


In anycase, I have to study the map and see exactly how many resources are in there and how many planets rise threat level ( becouse with less fleets, the player will not be able to guard the same numbers of systems to prevent threat level increase...and this can be awsome becouse if I can balance all the settings....the player may end to have a bigger control about invasions location. Probably it will be really useful modding the planets to have some sectors with a LOT of enemies activity ).

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Edited down the quote:

Originally posted by Sparviero:

I'd like to disable the urgency bar and find a balance between:

- Threat level modifier
- All the various cost for enemies action.
- Ship upkeep for the player ( I want to rise this )
- Ship repair for the player
- Ship refound ( I want to rise this )

I want to have a game:

1) Without time limit/increasing preassure
2) More assault from the AI...
3) Invasions maybe like urgency bar at level 1...has to think about this
4) Less fleets for the player rising upkeep cost..
5) Lower repair rate to make it counts when your ships get damaga.
6) Want to increase ship refound

Those are interesting changes. It sounds like you want to have a game variation that removes the mechanic from artificially increasing pressure from the AI, which is fair. But you also want the AI to be more active with the fleets they have in the sectors. You also want the player to have to manage their ship resources better since there would be increased cost to repair ships.

One effect of your game variation would be that once you can clear out an enemy from a sector, it may be a long time before that enemy faction can show up again via invasion. If that's what you prefer as an outcome that is fine.

For AI action points the developer named Ugo explained how the AI action points mechanic works in a thread a few weeks back. (search for UGO and Action).

I won't explain the who action point mechanic here, but for Invasions, the AI only puts points to invasions if they do not have any active fleets in the sector. If they have invaded then they put points towards other action costs.

For your game variation you would increase the cost of invasions, and reduce the other action points for enemy actions, reinforcements, movements. and new fleets.

For the Ultimate-Power AI action that may only work in sectors where they have ships. But if you want a less pressure game then you should disable that enemy AI option.

You may want to cut enemy AI reinforcement and new fleet costs by 1 point each, and increase invasion costs by 10% to 15%. In my experiment I found increasing those costs made the AI very inactive, so doing the opposite perhaps will increase their activity significantly.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Back to my custom game:

So far I'm liking the custom setting on Medium to set Enemy Crew skill to level 3 from level 2. So far all the battles have been challenging, with the enemy fleets getting a fair share of criticals on my ships, more frequently than from Enemy Crew Skill 2.

With the bonuses from the Secondary Objectives I'm stomping through the Agrippina sector at a rapid pace. The Enemy AI is not that aggressive, and so far the invasions have been light. I managed to get several Blockade-objective missions in a row which cut in half the cost of all evolution upgrades for the main Agrippina system, so I was able to level up all the credit-producing worlds very quickly.

I just got a second invasion back in Nemesis Tessera and it's only a 700-sized Chaos fleet, while my Level 5 Admiral fleet can support a 779-sized fleet. Perhaps this is a result of the new invasion-balancing based on player skill level that Tindalos introduced in the last quality-of-life campaign patch.

Part of the reason I may perceive low aggression from the AI is due to how quickly I'm able to sweep through the systems with my larger-sized fleets, so I'm able to keep the threat levels low shortly after entering the new sectors.

Once the Tyranids appear I'll have a better idea if these game settings work well for me or not.

[JTW]

Have you heard back on your support ticket?

Like you, i've experienced the enemy scaling on the campaign map, but not in the actual missions. I'm looking to just increase the amount of ships in use by both myself and the enemy, and i just can't make that work across the board.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Originally posted by JTW:

Have you heard back on your support ticket?

Like you, i've experienced the enemy scaling on the campaign map, but not in the actual missions. I'm looking to just increase the amount of ships in use by both myself and the enemy, and i just can't make that work across the board.

No, not yet. I'll give it a few more days then post the question with examples in the main forum, attn to the Devs and see if they can respond.

Skalgrim (who posts his custom modded game here) indicated he thought the enemy ships do scale up with the player's fleet capacity in the Campaign Missions. But would also be good if the developers could clarify the answer.

Also, I'm confused if increasing the Enemy AI fleet leadership and capacity is depending on the player's fleet size settings or not. Like, if I set my fleet capacity to 130%, and then set the enemy AI capacity to 120%, then does the Enemy fleet size work from a 100% size, or my modified 130% capacity size?

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Another comment on larger sized fleets: it makes the flagship-only skills not that desirable, since with more ships it's better to take skills or upgrades that improve all of your ships rather than just one ship. Obvious effect to some, but wanted to point out how the custom settings for increasing fleet capacity can impact the skill selection.