Ulstrasonic fences. Do they work at all?

[Callonia]

I was hoping that was the case, but it is not. When I chose the 3 rings of fence versus the default 2 from the quest decision it did absolutely nothing. Everything from Scrabs to Worms just walked right up to my city and proceeded to demolish all of my improvements.

Those aliens were currently green when they did that, and I might add that it did not improve over the course of time or with overlapping fields. I planted three cities three tiles away all with fences and they didn't matter one bit. Aliens came and went with the same frequency as before the fences. It is definitely a broken mechanic.

Its kinda funny to me now because I always chose the +1 range for fences in BE but in RT, I always choose the trade unit shield.

 

[mnf]

Yeah, the choice used to mean something, and even back then the trade route protection was much more valuable seeing how cities often have overlaps so most of the times we didn't need the extra range anyway.

Now there's simply no reason at all to build the fence after we get the trade route protection. This is one of the cases where game balance (reliable protection) should have triumphed.

 

[bkn42]

I've found the land aliens will pillage trade routes without mercy, but sea routes tend to be pretty safe. Kraken pillage all the freakin time, but tend to leave trade routes alone.

 

[DutchJob]

I want the old fence back.

Last couple of games I was swamped by sea bugs, 6 or so moving in and out. All the while the bombardment signal going of. Simply annoying.

 

[Zenstrive]

This feature is a must have before, but quite useless except for the trade immunity....

 

[Gorbles]

It's interesting to see more complaints about Aliens now that people can't shove up instant immunity to them.

 

[kipwheeler]

Yes. We wanted the aliens to matter more since we could ignore them safely in the old game. Now they do matter more as a harassing obstacle! Working as intended.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Yes. We wanted the aliens to matter more since we could ignore them safely in the old game. Now they do matter more as a harassing obstacle! Working as intended.

Mostly. I mean I'm rather happy with how aliens matter more now and that the UF isn't an instant game-over for them... but I'd still like to get something out of building them, otherwise, they should be removed from the game.

Personally, I'd be fairly happy if they didn't do ironclad repulsion (like the old one) but instead had a static, definite effect. There are more than a few ideas out there what the UF could do that makes aliens less of a nuisance without robbing them of their "teeth".

 

[Gorbles]

What kind of definite, static effect though? The problem here is there is nothing that isn't an absolute that is easily-visible to the end user. Hence the complaints.

The repel ratio could work out at 90% and ten Aliens in a row would result in a forum post or thread complaining UF wasn't effective. It's because percentage-based modifiers can have both positive or negative results in implementation.

Absolute hex repel? Too strong.
Strength reduction for all Aliens in a radius? Again, trivialises Alien combat.

I can't think of many definite effects that provide a fair solution. Bonus to combat vs. Aliens? Same difference in reverse. What else is there that is obvious to the player?

 

[Lord Tirian]

I can't think of many definite effects that provide a fair solution. Bonus to combat vs. Aliens? Same difference in reverse. What else is there that is obvious to the player?

I can think of a couple of them:

• Movement reduction to 1 tile/turn
• Pillaging protection
• Civilian protection (workers/settlers/explorers) - you can use it to cheese by building "worker walls", though
• Trickle damage (-5 or 10 HP/turn), won't do much but give the psychological effect that something happened and offsets healing
• Scatter effect (when attacked by a military unit, they are displaced 1 tile after the attack)

It probably has to be a combination of the percentage repulsion and one or two of these (e.g. the movement reduction alone is super-weak and not that noticeable given ZoCs), but the important thing is the psychology, I think, namely a visible effect that you won't see otherwise.

 

[Gorbles]

The only thing that would reliably work there, I feel, is civilian protection. Pillaging does happen, albeit rarely, and is easily-fixed. Movement reduction once you're inside that kind of hex range is insignificant. That way the range extension (as supposed to trade immunity) would actually be a benefit, especially if the range extension was increased further.

It's a good idea. Combining that with other changes, my ideal "fix" for the whole set would be:

1. Trade Immunity Quest reward turns into Trade Protection (modifier that can be affected by Aggression). Keep the modifier high, of course. If you manage Alien aggression well (orange or below), you should be rewarded by a good 75%+ safety rate or so.

2. UF range Quest reward increased from +1 to +2 (so from 2 to 4 hex range).

3. Base ability now provides protection for civilian units, but Aliens still block tiles (unless friendly). No modifier for military units, meaning that increased Alien aggression will result in military losses. This could be abused not just for the wall of Workers, mind, but plopping a single Worker on your City means they won't attack it. Could be coded to avoid this perhaps.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Pillaging does happen, albeit rarely, and is easily-fixed.

I was under the impression that massive aliens auto-pillage (Kraken, siege worms and - not sure about this - the Makara). While it happens rarely, it's super annoying if you actually go through the trouble to max out your relationship with them.

I mean it's quite cool that they do that, it certainly fits the "massive" moniker but it's annoying if you got to the point that the aliens are basically your best buddies!

This could be abused not just for the wall of Workers, mind, but plopping a single Worker on your City means they won't attack it. Could be coded to avoid this perhaps.

The obvious solution is, of course, that the Civilian protection only applies to tiles with civilians and nothing but civilians. If there's something else (military or city), tough luck, the aliens are not that discerning.

I still think the movement reduction has an effect, especially with multiple cities. Additionally, it adds a lot of pre-warning to actual city attacks, since it will take an alien entering from outside 3 turns until it attacks (1st turn: enter outer ring, 2nd turn: enter inner ring, 3rd turn: finally attacking). As I said before, this needs to be combined with something, of course.

 

[masda_gib]

I think it would also help, if the trade unit immunity is not global but per building.

So, your trade unit is only protected if the originating city has an UF (and you chose the quest option). This way it is not 1 UF = global immunity anymore.

And yeah, the other quest option should give +2 range. Even in Vanilla BE, the additional effect was barely noticable.

 

[gunnergoz]

It would make sense to me that the fence would be more effective the more energy your city generated per turn. That, combined with a larger effective radius for the quest option choice, might make fences work well enough to be a viable option in RT, as opposed to the trade unit security.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well I think there are a few things that are important with how aliens+UF should work out

1. Alien attitude should be important, if you make the aliens red, they should cause you actual problems (mass pillaging, capturing units, cities, or just tying down a defensive force) on all your border areas (at any part of the game)... If the aliens are green, they should still cause you some problems in the border, but not significant ones.

2. Aliens should not be a 'random kill' in the early game (krakens wandering across a sea city)

3. The UF should be important in handling them, enough to help, but not enough to render them unimportant

4. The quest should make a difference and be balanced

So...
Alien behavior
Blue..don't attack anything, your units bump them out of the way, UF doesn't affect them
Green..Non-collosals attack your units + tiles occasionally (more often near their nests, less often near your city), colossals only attack units within 2 range of a nest
Orange..all aliens attack your units + tiles often (more often near their nests, less often near your city), all aliens attack your city Occasionally
Red..attack your units, tiles, + cities Always (they only back off to wait for reinforcements)

Alien power...
scales up throughout the game somehow (so that by late game Colossal aliens are matches for ultimate units)..ideally due to your units

Base Effects of UF
Orange aliens don't attack your city
City defense bonus v. aliens attacking your city (red ones)

Quest Bonus
Green+Orange don't attack for radius 2 around this city
Combat Bonus v. aliens to city attacks and all units in range 2 around this city
OR
Green+Orange don't attack trade units From this city
Aliens that Do attack Trade units from this city take X damage (red ones)


If the boost wasn't too big, and alien power scaled up enough, then those would be significant choices.
Assuming keeping the aliens at blue was also difficult and involved actual costs.

 

[Callonia]

If the alien is listed as colossal, it has the autopillage ability. And Makara is colossal.

 

[Zenstrive]

maybe if coming into UF area makes the alien units unable to attack, just pillage, I would accept that. The logic is that once into the UF area, the aliens may lose focus, got hurt, and destroying surrounding area, but unable to think beyond themselves, thus no attack.

 

[Lucius_]

Heads up, Fence is getting a fix in the balance patch per Mr McDonough. Not sure if it will go back to the way it was in BE as default or if they are making the fence into a hard repellent via quest choice or if they are making more repellent to just green aliens. It was a one off comment in today's livestream.

 

[Zenstrive]

hopefully they'll just revert it back to previous effect, except maybe for brown to red aliens.

 

[kipwheeler]

I don't want them to revert it back to the old effect. It was silly overpowered when it completely shut out all aliens.