Ychom mine layer overpowered?

[Mahou]

I'm having serious trouble conquering Ychom planets due to their mine layers.

Since you're forced to deal with the other enemy ground units, by the time you can start attacking the mine layers and fortresses there are mines everywhere.

I attacked an Ychom planet with 22 heavy tanks and 18 rocket launchers against 17 Ychom ground troops including some 5 mine layers and 3 fortresses.

Their normal units were easily defeated, but trying to attack the mine layers and fortresses resulted in losing all my troops with only 1 fortress destroyed.

I also tried an automatic attack, but this just made all my 40 ground unit mysteriously disappear the moment my fleet arrived at the planet.

You'd expect that 40 against 17+3 fortresses should be an easy win really...

[Dávid Karnok]

They place mines over roads, so sending troops over the streets is quite devastating. You could try with more rocket sleds or just destroy buildings and move through their footprint to reduce mine exposure.

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További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

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Best regards,

David Karnok

[Mahou]

Thanks for the reply David. Many kudos for bringing back this awesome classic by the way!!

I usually try to do minimal damage to the colony, but in this case a more destructive approach may be necessary indeed.

But when a fortress is inbetween a lot of other buildings, losses due to mines are unavoidable and seem disproportionate.

It's also hard to control unit movement, the ground unit AI isn't state of the art obviously (don't worry, not a request).

I guess ground combat isn't my favorite part of the game. :P

Op donderdag 30 oktober 2014 12:06:26 UTC+1 schreef Dávid:

They place mines over roads, so sending troops over the streets is quite devastating. You could try with more rocket sleds or just destroy buildings and move through their footprint to reduce mine exposure.

2014-10-30 11:58 GMT+01:00 Mahou <mfho...@gmail.com>:

I'm having serious trouble conquering Ychom planets due to their mine layers.

Since you're forced to deal with the other enemy ground units, by the time you can start attacking the mine layers and fortresses there are mines everywhere.

I attacked an Ychom planet with 22 heavy tanks and 18 rocket launchers against 17 Ychom ground troops including some 5 mine layers and 3 fortresses.

Their normal units were easily defeated, but trying to attack the mine layers and fortresses resulted in losing all my troops with only 1 fortress destroyed.

I also tried an automatic attack, but this just made all my 40 ground unit mysteriously disappear the moment my fleet arrived at the planet.

You'd expect that 40 against 17+3 fortresses should be an easy win really...

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.

Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discussion+unsub...@googlegroups.com címre.

További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Mahou]

I just checked the ingame description of the Ychom in the state room terminal.

There it says that every colony is equipped with a mine laying saucer, so that would mean only one per colony.

I do vaguely remember only 1 saucer per colony in the DOS version, but not very inclined to test it right now.

[Mahou]

Pretty sure it should be only 1 per colony now. I just barely conquered a colony with 10 behemoths, 16 heavy tanks and 20 rocket launchers, only having 1 rocket launcher left because the last fortress didn't shoot at it for some reason. It definitely wasn't this hard to conquer Ychom planets in the original game.

Op zaterdag 1 november 2014 12:15:08 UTC+1 schreef Mahou:

[JJaffray]

You can't always expect to take a heavily defended planet in one attack ;P

I've played a lot of AI vs AI games recently and the Ychom I think have only ended up in a huge galaxy wide stalemate once, the rest of the time they were destroyed and I never saw them outright dominate. I don't think they're imbalanced or anything.

[Mahou]

This is not about balancing, this is about staying true to the original. I'm fairly sure that in the original game Ychom worlds are supposed to have only one mine layer. It also says so in the ingame description of the Ychom. I remember going after the Ychom fairly quickly when I played the DOS version and they weren't this hard to beat.

[JJaffray]

I'm pretty sure the Ychom get more than one mine layer per planet if you leave them for long enough.

If I'm not mistaken each race has a special tank unit (humans all share the Behemoth) and none of them have this kind of restriction. I see no reason why the Ychom would suffer a special penalty when there is none applied to the other races.

I have no memory of this one mine layer per planet rule nor can I find any evidence of it.

[JJaffray]

Also, there is nothing that forces you to ever attack the Ychom in the campaign but it's certainly an option, however it's only really worthwhile if you do it early on when you are trying to grab planets for research purposes. If you do it early, mine layers aren't really a problem. You said you had Behemoths already? I think you should just be destroying the Dargslan if you are this advanced.

[Mahou]

Like I said, check ingame description of the Ychom...

And the only reason why I had behemoths when I beat them is because I wasn't able to beat them before, at least not without doing multiple waves and wasting lots of money. Whatever your opinion, I am still convinced the Ychom had only 1 mine layer per colony in the original game. Saying that all the other races can use multiple special tanks is not a valid argument. First of all the Garthog can also only have 1 special tank as well, which is utterly useless by the way, and the game's races are unbalanced by definition, because originally it's a story driven campaign game. In the campaign the Ychom are the first new race you encounter after the Garthogg and due to their limited techology are an obvious first target if you're planning on conquest.

Op dinsdag 4 november 2014 03:23:07 UTC+1 schreef JJaffray:

[JJaffray]

I've managed to look at the in game description, which I wasn't able to do earlier although I did try to look elsewhere online, and you are correct in that it says "Ychoms have a unique way of defending their colonies, each has a mine-deploying saucer".

I am still not certain how literal a restriction this is supposed to be because there are numerous grammatical and spelling errors in the original game, possibly due to Hungarian -> English translations. I am also unsure because I have no memory of this restriction, maybe I have just forgotten about it.

I just played through the campaign on hard and it wasn't really a big deal. Making the game easier than it already is seems unnecessary to me, but I don't really care either way haha. 

Verify your suspicions and see what happens! :P

[Harrach Gergely]

Getting tired of this pointless argument I looked up the Ychom
description page in the original Hungarian version which literally
says this (see attachment):

"The Ychom

A peaceful, trading people. The have a good relationship with the Free
Traders' Alliance. The Ychom protect their own colonies with an
interesting weapon: a mine-laying machine."

This nowhere says one per colony.

Regards,
Gergely

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> ---
> Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok
> „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
> Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz

> küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com

[Mahou]

To Gergely:

Click here: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/open-ig-discussion/XVL40jp12Ak/unsubscribe
Problem solved.

Anyway this may make the 1 argument about the English description less valid, but doesn't prove the opposite either.

I started playing the original DOS version now, because I noticed some other differences as well. Once I get to Admiral rank we'll see whether I was right or not I guess. May take a while tho, since on a 2 week holiday from Friday.

As for the game being easy, actually there are many parts in open-IG which make it much easier than the DOS version. For example the fact that ships overlap during combat or being able to control time during ground combat.

Since there are already many things different in comparison to the DOS version, maybe I shouldn't be complaining. :P Old game still working like a charm here so I guess I could just stick to the original lol

Op woensdag 5 november 2014 15:36:52 UTC+1 schreef gharrach:

[Dávid Karnok]

As far as I can tell, the original had many things scripted and the AI most certainly bypassed many game mechanics. For example, there were reports of alien fleets gaining full strength out of blue. In the original, radar didn't affect the AI and could attack any fleet or planet, even out of sight ones. In Open-IG, the aim is to make the AI adhere to the same rules as the player.

I think the extra Ychom minelayer make it more interresting to capture a planet. There are several strategies available: use rocket sleds to destroy buildings and cut through the footprint as the minelayers only place mines on roads. Attack power plants from distance to cut the power to the barracks. Attack in tandem with a second fleet and more tanks.

If you are into some modding, you can find the tech.xml in one of the zips, locate the YchomMineLayer entry and add a <property name='one-per-fleet' value='true'/> under it to limit the number of items.

Controlling time in battles was a no-brainer. Since the AI would essentially micro-manage its own units, the player should be able to do it as well without any time pressure.

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Azért kapta ezt az üzenetet, mert feliratkozott a Google Csoportok „Open-IG-discussion” csoportjára.
Az erről a csoportról és az ahhoz kapcsolódó e-mailekről való leiratkozáshoz küldjön egy e-amailt a(z) open-ig-discuss...@googlegroups.com címre.
További lehetőségekért látogasson el ide: https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Harrach Gergely]

Hi David,

I fully agree with your point. Another inexpensive strategy could be
to sacrifice light tanks on the mines.

Mind you, thank god the AI doesn't think like a human, otherwise the
Sullep and the Dargslan would be unbeatable with 45 special units per
fleet.

Maybe you could consider an "attack ground" option for the rocket
sleds, like in Warcraft II / Starcraft.

Gergely

[JJaffray]

That's not true actually Gergely!  I couldn't care less if they used 45 special units per fleet because they can take over my planets with a single light tank if they want :) I don't use planetary defenses outside of the campaign, and even then I only use them early game vs garthogs because you have to or you get fired.

Also, there is no "attack ground" function in Starcraft =P I actually think this is a bad idea because it would essentially ruin the mine layer for the Ychom and it's pretty much all they have going for them.

Nice idea with the light tanks though. If you absolutely must take out some mines to reach a final fortress or the mine layer itself and you have exhausted all other tactics of using rocket sleds, taking out nuclear power planets etc then yeah using light tanks to clear sounds like the best thing you can do really.