Game imbalance: overpowered shields

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Constantin
Space Krill
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2019 7:23 pm

Game imbalance: overpowered shields

#1 Post by Constantin »

The "Robotic Interface: Shields" is far too powerful.
In the past I didn't know how it worked as wasn't using it, but recently I started using it, against the AI, and it's an "I win" button. Once you have enough ships, you're almost invulnerable.
Also some of the random finds can be too powerful, mostly the +10 shield.

I have a strategy against the AI, of rushing the Exobots and Robotic Hull, and then building several Robotic ships with Exobots. You can get those techs quite fast, and you won the game.

I think the "Robotic Interface: Shields" should be nerfed.

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The Silent One
Graphics
Posts: 1129
Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2003 8:27 pm

Re: Game imbalance: overpowered shields

#2 Post by The Silent One »

The robotic interface strategy may work against AI, but if you play against another human player it can be easily countered with carrier ships/fighters (they are shield piercing). Although I could imagine to move the robotic shield interface maybe a little deeper into the tech tree.
If I provided any images, code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0.

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alleryn
Space Dragon
Posts: 259
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2017 6:32 pm

Re: Game imbalance: overpowered shields

#3 Post by alleryn »

In addition to the counter suggested by TSO, the other issue is that the robotic shield is extremely expensive. Sure, you can freely build up ships against the AI, which plays extremely passively. But then again, pretty much any strategy works.

Even if you somehow manage to build a massive fleet of seven expensive ships (which i think is probably around the point at which the robo shield becomes cost effective vs lasers and also the point at which it starts to lose marginal shield value), you also have to maintain that fleet size or risk your shields losing power.

I'm not saying it isn't an issue that this is one of many strategies that work against the AI, but i'd argue that in terms of singleplayer, the issue is more than the human player can outproduce the AI by such a margin as to build such a fleet (without running much risk of an early assault by the AI, the human player has free reign to expand leading to an industry advantage). In my opinion the problem is that the AI "wastes" industry building warships that just sit around for passive defense. It should choose (in some randomized game theoretic way) to either build warships and use them aggressively, or not build warships so early.

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