ANNOUNCE NEWS #786
Date: 4/24/2007 at 5:19
From: Fain, of the Red Masque
To : Everyone
Subj: Constructs/Colossi Update

Greetings everyone,

I've made some additions/changes to constructs/colossi and their battle
system, as always, please bug things that work incorrectly, and keep up
the constructive feedback on the forums!

+ Construct/Colossus damage has been reduced significantly.
+ Colossi will now have a variable balance time, depending on how much
health they currently have. The lower the health, the longer it takes
for them to recover balance.

I would like to emphasize CONSTRUCTIVE feedback on the forums, please.

Penned by My hand on the 1st of Juliary, in the year 174 CE.

====================================================

Since no one posted about this yet, I'll be the first. Now let's discuss.

Well, it means we'll have to really on bombarding via aetherships now to deal heavy damage due to the recent changes, plus the ones running the colossus will pretty much abandon it around 1/4 of the level due to slower balance time with lower health...

I'm not all that enthused by the change. I can't say why exactly. It feels like it was unnecessary. I don't have a lot of constructive criticism for it or feedback. I'm kind of burned out on the whole thing honestly.

When constructs were first introduced, Estarra allayed fears of "yet another conflict to drain us all" by saying that it would take several weakenings to destroy a construct. If I understand correctly, Serenwilde lost a fully healthy construct in a single weakening. This change addresses that, I think.

It supposedly wasn't fully upgraded so that may be it..

Agreed. Magnagora went through the same thing a few times. It's true that it takes a lot of energy and a huge force to take down a construct, but the fact that some organizations were doing it so consistently demonstrated that it was easier to do than was originally intended. So long as the collosus can still do more damage (even if only a little bit more) than the construct can heal between weakenings, I don't see any problems with the changes. It just means that it will take more effort, and possibly even more than two weakenings to take down a construct. I don't think Magnagora has ever kept a construct for more than three weakenings, but that could just be my mistaken memory. My understanding was that it was supposed to take several weakenings to take down a single construct, and that has proven not to be the case.

Serenwilde's construct wasn't upgraded at all from what I understand. If the change was done so a far superior force cannot take down a construct that is not upgraded at all in one weakening think about how many weakenings it will take to take down a construct that IS upgraded and is properly defended.

When a construct is upgraded, taking it down relies on at least one or two weakening where you are clearly dominant and can do a lot of damage to the construct. If the change makes it so that even when you are clearly dominant you're going to do a lot less damage than before..I just am not sure how that is going to work out.

The chances of an organization, yes even Celest, being able to consistently field enough force several weakenings in a row to take down a well defended construct is getting slimmer. It is hard to tell without seeing exactly how much reduced damage we're talking about.

I understand not wanting a construct to be able to be destroyed in one weakening. However the standard to measure it by should not be a construct that is the weakest it could possibly be. Celest took down a fully healthy construct in one weakening as well. This involved two battleships bombarding and a huge dominant ground force with scattered resistance at best. It should not be judged by that sort of force either. Catering to the outliers in the data set just makes it that much harder for the more standard efforts to be successful. We'll see how it goes.

But Lysandus is right in saying bombarding will play a larger role now. We really need an envoy dedicated to Aetherspace.

Your memory is mistaken. It kept some constructs 4 or 5 weakenings. I am not attempting to be arrogant here but perhaps the problem is not in the system itself but in how people are defending. If the system itself naturally allowed for reasonably interested attackers to take down a construct with some level of ease, then it would seem to make sense that Celest would have lost at least one construct by now. So far it has not been hard to keep the constructs safe. This change will not improve that situation.

From my memory, Celest has only actually destroyed one fully healthy construct in one weakening. I may be wrong here. To destroy that fully healthy construct required two fully manned battleships bombarding with a huge ground force. It took, I believe, three or four weakenings with that final massive effort in the last one to take down the Earth construct. That was three or four weakenings attacking every single time with a strong defense opposing and at least two of those weakenings being the very clearly dominant force. As I said before, Serenwilde lost one fully healthy but completely unupgraded construct to a very dominant Glomdoring force in one weakening. Non-upgraded construct and totally dominant force? Why would it not get destroyed in one weakening?

This will make it require more effort. Great. I think Celest can probably muster more effort if they really want to take down a construct. Not every organization is Celest. Where do they fall now on the scale of likelihood of taking down a construct? You miss one weakening and they can have that construct healed up to full. Then you're starting all over again. We'll have to see how much effort is the "more effort" here. I just don't want to see people not even bothering to attack because it's so difficult.

I can appreciate somewhat where you're coming from. I still think collossi should be able to do more damage than can be healed. Still, I think the original idea was that even a massively dominant force should not be able to destroy a construct in one weakening. I like the idea of it being more of a gradual thing - along those lines, depending on how much damage was reduced, I would be okay with reducing healing so the constructs can't be so easily healed up. The idea is that it takes consistency on the part of the attackers to take down the construct. If healing and attack power are reduced similarly, then the defenders still will not be able to completely heal their construct between battles, but it will still take the attackers longer to tear them down. That also allows the defenders to rebuild them for a lower cost, since they stood longer.

I'm with you, I think we'll need to wait and see how drastic this change was and how it plays out, but I think it was a move in the right direction. Hopefully they didn't move too far; construct battles are actually a lot of fun, I don't want to see them become obsolete either. Finding the balance could take a few more iterations still.

My concerns about the changes:
Collosi start fighting each other ... and just "slap" each other for the whole weakinging, not able to kill other COLLOSI (not constructs). this would make defense a little... too easy. Although I've only seen one of thse so far, but even then Xenthos held off all the serens with the guardian construct -shrug-
Summary - I'm concerned this makes attacking impossible since breaking the defense to hit the ocnstructs would be to hard

I like the change. And it wasn't exactly a superior force that beat Serenwilde, they were just too unorganised. We just kinda stood there, focused negatively on Serens construct and killed some Serens, it WAS pretty easy. We did nothing additionally, no bombarding, no whatever stuff, we just had a fully upgraded colossus attacking the unupgraded Seren construct.

So you had a large force, they were unorganized, you had a fully upgraded colossus with people focusing on it, they had a completely unupgraded construct with no one focusing on it (was someone at least operating it?).

Basically this is a worst case scenario for a defensive force with a built construct with no effort having put in at all for its defense. We can make it so this doesn't get taken down in one weakening. But what if you had bombarding ships too? Should we make it so it couldn't be taken down in one weakening with a dominant ground force and one ship bombarding? How about two ships bombarding? At which point do we say "If they have this level of force attacking the construct, they can take it down in one weakening." The more we dillute the attacking force's power in order to avoid this taking down a construct in one weakening the more infeasible the entire system becomes unless there are more tweaks that will make successive weakenings build on the the prior ones, which they currently do not really do.

They only build on each other if you managed to do a good deal of damage in the previous weakening which generally requires a very successful attack. You can have a situation where you attack just to reduce how much they can heal up but this is predicated on the idea that a really strong push in the next one or two weakenings will see the construct destroyed. If an org can do, let's say half the damage they currently do, that is a huge impact on how well you can chain weakenings together to take down a construct. Currently chaining depends on that hammering offense at the end of the chain that decimates the enemy and can deal a huge amount of damage to the construct.

Let's say now we do 2500 with a solid offense as opposed to 5000. Heal about half of that by the next one. Another solid offense 2500, etc. We're talking 8 weakenings of solid offense every single time in order to take down a construct. You have a weaker offense in one or two of those, you're starting all over. Do you feel most orgs are interested in that sort of effort? I don't.

Naturally I have no clue if the change will have quite as dramatic an effect, my example numbers are only to give an idea of the kind of impact we're discussing. It is not just a simple matter of "Oh good, can't destroy it in one weakening now"

Hopefully as more orgs start to experience what a typical attack situation is like when you're facing reasonably prepared defenders they will start to understand this. Focusing on making sure you can't destroy a construct in one session is really not the way to go. At least not without other incentives for actually bothering to launch an attack as opposed to the vast majority of the incentives being dependent on actually taking the construct down because if we stay on the current path we will not see many constructs actually taken down in the future.

Constructs should not be destroyed in one weakening no matter the conditions, I think.

In my mind, aethership usage should be necessary to destroy a construct, not just helpfull.


hmmm, should probabbly also be required to defend I think., not so convinced of that though.

Not being able to take down a construct in one weakening NO MATTER WHAT is retarded. That is all.

So even if an organization fields a force of 20 people on the ground and three ships bombarding with no resistance, they shouldn't be able to take down a construct in one weakening. Please see my above post for why precisely this sort of thinking is likely to be a very bad idea.

I think we're just looking at things from different sides. You are looking from the offensive side, looking for a good bonus for the effort. Some of us (basically, all of the Mags) are looking from the defensive side, which has become overly tedius and frustrating. There has to be a balance between the two. If you have a colossus alone, even with a solid force I think it should take around 3-5 consecutive weakenings to take down a construct. If you're using ships, that could be balanced to the lower end, but even then, finishing a construct in one weakening is a bit much. I think the bare minimum should be around 2 weakenings (this means a limit on the effects of focusing on constructs). If you have more than two ships, maximum effect from focusing, and a fully upgraded colossus, then one weakening might be okay. Anything less than that should not happen.

Overall, I think around 4 weakenings is a good typical number. Healing should be reduced so that if you miss a weakening, the construct cannot be fully healed. They should be able to heal back about the same amount of damage as they might take during a weakening. So, if the attackers get three weakenings in a row and almost destroy a construct, then they skip one completely, the construct should be back to around the health it had after the second weakening. That way, the attackers don't have to start over, but they also don't have it handed to them. Eventually, almost every construct will go down, but they will last long enough to be worth their cost.

I have played bad RTS games before, and I have played good RTS games before.

I have found that a bad RTS is defined as a game that I can sit and wait, use all the resources on the level, and then just send my massive army to the other side of the map, and then wait to win the game.


I see this as being the problem with being able to destroy a construct in one weakening. If a construct can be destroyed in one weakening alone, than that means that every single weakening, people have to be certain they can be online, otherwise all the effort they put into raising a construct is gone, simply because they had to go to their best friends wedding that weekend (as did everybody else

please note it will always be possible to destroy a construct in one weakening if your enemy is not defending and you have a major offensive force.

To illustrate, with 4 upgraded ships doing 800-900 damage a hit you can certainly take out a construct in one weakening, each ship simply does 2 - 3 bombards and you then place a colossus to finish it off. (you can't destroy a construct without a colossus).

Second does this mean the colossus will also be able to stand longer then before, because if it takes 4 weakenings to destroy a construct it stands to reason I can have a colossus stand there for 4 weakening aslong as the enemy does not destroy it.

I think they should of left the colossuses alone and should of changed bombard (an unupgraded construct being destroyed really doesn't stand symbol of normality as it couldn't heal at all, and if you place a construct you make sure there will be a security in the next weakening to place the upgrades) The fact Celest could destroy a mag construct in less then a full weakening (we destroyed another first) was all because we had 2 ships bombarding and them doing serious havock.

My idea for bombard:

-a construct or colossus can only be bombarded by one ship, but multiple ships can bombard multiple constructs/colossuses
-The empath can channel a restortation ray to the colossus or construct, but if it does it can not bombard.

I'm not just looking at it from a position of wanting bonuses for attackers. Celest has been on the defensive for several weakenings now and I can see from that perspective as well. I'm trying to look at it from a perspective of the entire system actually working and both offense and defense having some incentive to participate.

Clearly defense doesn't much want to participate in the system when their constructs can be blasted to bits easily. Offense doesn't much want to participate when they're essentially beating their heads against a wall in terms of trying to take down a construct. We're leaning towards the latter at the moment.

There are so many variables in this system that any changes can have a lot more effects than initially considered. Putting a maximum on the number of people present or focusing on a construct/colossi is a good idea. This will essentially set a maximum amount of ground damage that can be done to a construct in one weakening. Making this not enough damage to completely destroy an unpgraded construct is..reasonable I guess. Though I'm still of the opinion that if you don't upgrade your construct you deserve to lose it. (Even more so if they would *please* change it so that we can upgrade constructs even if there is not a weakening going on) This would make it so that any extra damage done would be determined by how many ships you could get bombarding. With enough ships bombarding you could take down a construct in one weakening. Without enough, you can't.

Then make the max damage done to a construct in one weakening be a quarter *after* how much the construct can be healed in the time between weakenings is taken into account. So for example if you can heal 1000 between weakenings make it so you can do a maximum of 3500. It would then require about 4 weakenings (or whatever number is decided) for a strong offense to take down a construct. It would take less than 4 weakenings for a very strong offense with aethership capability to take down a construct. It would take a lot more than 4 weakenings for a weak offense to take down a construct.

So if a group had a weak offense and were facing a very strong offense, they would lose their construct in 1 or 2 weakenings and should likely consider not building them at all. If a group had a weak offense and were facing a strong offense they would lose their construct in probably 3-4 weakenings. If a group had a weak offense and were facing a weak offense, who knows really. If a group had a very strong defense though their opposition would have to have a very strong offense in order to have any chance of taking down a construct at all. Which is perhaps how it should be.

Could work. Though in this sort of situation you would likely only see the strong or the very strong participating at all.

I have to say that this is wrong, actually (your statement that it takes a huge force to take down a construct). Given my experiences with Serenwilde's operating of a construct, I am highly confident that given a fully upgraded Colossus and 30 seconds before they have an operator enter the engagement, I could have completely destroyed any of their constructs in one weakening (fully upgraded or not). Alone.

Maybe if they had 20 people there just standing around watching for an hour, it'd be close... but less than that, and their constructs were toast.

I had actually been considering doing just that, but felt it would be a bit low.

Sheesh, those were some long posts to read through.

Anyway, despite what you said, and while I agree with most other things you said (I think, at least) , I still don't think that it should be possible to take down a construct in one weakening.
Maybe just cap the number of aetherships able to bombard a construct, like Anisu said, and somehow tone down Colossus damage a bit, or buff Construct health, not sure which.

And I meant that they had a large force, and we were like...five, I think. They had around double the amount from us.