Author Topic: A Break  (Read 7714 times)

Offline Faulty Logic

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A Break
« on: March 24, 2014, 07:09:29 am »
My last game degenerated into a long siege of the AI homeworlds, and I abandoned it as a CPA was announced. The mini-exo attacks were the specific issue.

Anyway, a break. Specifically, the What happens if you don't get the (AIP) memo? challenge.

So:

7.6/7.6

120 planets, simple clusters, 881901521 Lightning Torpedo Frigates.

Vanilla/Vanilla

Swallowers disabled, resistance and rebellions 4, ultra low caps, and complete visibility.

Now, to conquer the entire galaxy.

I spend my first 13000 k on economic stations II-III, and enclave starships II-III.

I build the enclaves, LTFs, and riots, by the first wave.
14 AI ships (I) to Conditional in 2:59
*chuckle* *snort*
Huh, I never realized wave warnings varied by difficulty. Nice to have 3 minutes.

First and second waves easily destroyed. And I like the salvaging.

I conquer a neighboring planet, then check the ARS. Raiders aren't exactly my favorites, but it isn't worth hacking for zelecs or bulletproofs. I set up my mkI turrets here, the south entrance to my starting cluster.

The other ARS has sabotuers, which I'm happy with. I also hack for spire stealth battleships via design download. Given that k and fab hacking will be redundant, design downloading will be how I spend my Hacking, with maybe an ARS hack.

And conquer the rest of my cluster, bringing AIP to 431 (though 40 of that is just co-processors). At this point, I'm getting waves as big as the starting ones I'm used to. This is fun.

Unlocks:
Military and economic stations, engineer IIIs.
Assault transports.
Torpedo Frigates III, SSB II
All starships except raids, scouts, and cloakers.

I've also built all the merc fighters and the merc enclave.

Smooth sailing thus far, but the AIP isn't really crazy yet.

State of empire:
« Last Edit: March 24, 2014, 07:11:41 am by Faulty Logic »
If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

Offline Kahuna

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Re: A Break
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2014, 07:57:04 am »
Good to see you back my fellow veteran. Although I have bad news for you: 10/10 is still surprisingly easy.
set /A diff=10
if %diff%==max (
   set /A me=:)
) else (
   set /A me=SadPanda
)
echo Check out my AI War strategy guide and find your inner Super Cat!
echo 2592 hours of AI War and counting!
echo Kahuna matata!

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: A Break
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2014, 10:21:20 am »
The mini-exo attacks were the specific issue.
From the death of the core guard posts?


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What happens if you don't get the (AIP) memo? challenge.
Oh this should be good :)


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Lightning Torpedo Frigates
No such thing as too many warheads.


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Now, to conquer the entire galaxy.
What could go wrong?


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AIP to 431 (...) waves as big as the starting ones I'm used to
I knew Diff 10 wave size was a significant multiple of 7 (or 7.6), I hadn't realized it was that big.


Quote from: Kahuna
Although I have bad news for you: 10/10 is still surprisingly easy.
Any suggestions?  Is the core turret controller stuff a significant factor?  I knew I was being too nice to you hooligans ;)
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Offline Faulty Logic

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Re: A Break
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2014, 11:06:57 am »
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Good to see you back my fellow veteran.
Thanks. Good to be back.

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From the death of the core guard posts?
Yes. Without a chokepoint, they force you to take your time, and leave a decent part of your fleet on your homeworld.

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No such thing as too many warheads.
I think I'm the last person you need to tell that to...

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I knew Diff 10 wave size was a significant multiple of 7 (or 7.6), I hadn't realized it was that big.
Well, I usually play against AIs with 1.5ish wave multipliers, and this is a Vanilla game, as well. But the attacks have been pretty pitiful.

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Is the core turret controller stuff a significant factor?
No. I don't think the core turrets need more balancing work. They are nice or sometimes really good, depending on the situation, like other fabricators.

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Any suggestions?
There are two main things.

Enclave starships: for 4000 k, I get the ability to conquer most systems with no casualties.

Drones absorb the first round of enemy fire, even against preferential targeting, because the AI ships are in range of a drone first.

Drones have planetary range, from the center of a system.

Adding riots/assault transports allows even more force.

I think they scale too steeply. Instead of the usual 1:2:3:4, you get 1 : 3.33 : 7.5 : 14.3.
So I'd recommend linear scaling, and buff the baseline mkI to compensate. Like one batch of two drones each, with mark equal to the mark of the enclave, every five seconds.

(They also trigger reprisal waves and AI "you've lost a lot of ships" taunts.)


The other thing is hacking:

The fabricator hack, in particular, gives too much for its price.
Sabotage hacking is a little too cheap as well, IMO.

Research redirection and design sabotage seem too expensive.

Honorable mention to fleetships getting cheaper from the ARS rework.

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Although I have bad news for you: 10/10 is still surprisingly easy.
I think, with Vengeance, we have the tools to make it as hard as we need.
« Last Edit: March 24, 2014, 11:18:40 am by Faulty Logic »
If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: A Break
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2014, 04:48:32 am »
I suppose it makes sense that the latest provided "player goodies" (hacking and enclave starships), that haven't been fully balanced yet (due to a new product in a busy alpha and new child related delays, which are admittedly pretty darn good reasons) would be the thing that tips even 10/10 back in the players' favor.

Well, now that AI War is getting some attention again, hopefully these things can be put more into line. ;)

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: A Break
« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2014, 07:33:42 pm »
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Enclave starships: for 4000 k, I get the ability to conquer most systems with no casualties.

Drones absorb the first round of enemy fire, even against preferential targeting, because the AI ships are in range of a drone first.

Drones have planetary range, from the center of a system.

Adding riots/assault transports allows even more force.

I think they scale too steeply. Instead of the usual 1:2:3:4, you get 1 : 3.33 : 7.5 : 14.3.
So I'd recommend linear scaling, and buff the baseline mkI to compensate. Like one batch of two drones each, with mark equal to the mark of the enclave, every five seconds.
Good point about the non-linear scaling.  Iirc that came from the days when you had to buy turret tech to get the higher mark drones.  Put in the suggested linearization for 7.015.  From what I can see it's a 2x buff to the MkI, 1.2x buff to the MkII, 0.8x nerf to the MkIII, and 0.56x nerf to the MkIV.


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The fabricator hack, in particular, gives too much for its price.

Sabotage hacking is a little too cheap as well, IMO.

Research redirection and design sabotage seem too expensive.
That echoes a lot of what I've been hearing these last months, so for 7.015 I went with:

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* Trying another iteration on hacking costs based on feedback:
** Research Redirection first-hack-cost from 50 => 35.
** Fabricator Hacking first-hack-cost from 20 => 30.
** Design Corruption first-hack-cost from 30 => 20.
** Sabotage first-hack-cost from 2 => 10.

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Honorable mention to fleetships getting cheaper from the ARS rework.
As in something that would benefit from adjustment, or just part of the "new balance", such as it is (and what there is of it)?

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Although I have bad news for you: 10/10 is still surprisingly easy.
I think, with Vengeance, we have the tools to make it as hard as we need.
True, though the main balance targets I'm trying to stick with assume the absence of any serious cheese (either pro-player or anti-player; Shark 4+ being an example of serious anti-player cheese).

What I'd like to see, ideally, is 10/10 vs easy/moderate AI types (with no game-changing other settings) pushing players like you and Kahuna to the limit, and if you can still win at that point it's ok.  But 10/10 + any significant anti-player cheese (an AI type like Heroic, or Shark, or Hybrids, or whatever) without any corresponding pro-player cheese should basically just break you.  Maybe after a long, close campaign, but it shouldn't lose ;)  Not that you shouldn't be able to win campaigns against massive AI cheese (Shark-10 + Hunter-10 + Hybrids-10 + Heroic/Vicious-Exotic, etc), but you'd want to do that on lower difficulties.

The things that currently come to mind for trying over the next couple months are:

1) Ratchet up the core numbers (wave size, reinforcement size, cpa size, exo size, etc) maybe 10% to 20%, interpolating back to Diff 8 (so 7.6 would stay the same, 8 gets a very slight buff, 8.3 a bit more, etc).

2) Add some very low-level randomly-utilized tactics for the AI to add some kind of counterbalance against certain clutch player units (on Diff 7+, but perhaps more likely on the higher ones).  Basically stuff like "X% chance every Y seconds to grab Z% of my good-against-heavy stuff on this planet and sic them on the nearest Riot Starship".  Similar with Enclaves, etc.  Nothing a player can't deal with, and random enough that it can't be too exploitable.  Not sure it would ultimately make a big difference, but trying to have the AI take into account what the truly dangerous units on the other side are (though it'd be pretty funny to see AI bombers pass up a Spire Battleship to pile onto a Riot I).

3) Possibly some more dirty tricks for hitting the player while weak, though that gets more into the territory of non-core mechanics like Shark.
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Offline Faulty Logic

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Re: A Break
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2014, 09:53:16 pm »
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From what I can see it's a 2x buff to the MkI, 1.2x buff to the MkII, 0.8x nerf to the MkIII, and 0.56x nerf to the MkIV.
Hmm, perhaps that is a bit too kind. I'd like to see how it actually works in play though, because the lower number of drones probably looks very different in-game than on-paper.

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As in something that would benefit from adjustment, or just part of the "new balance", such as it is (and what there is of it)?
I think there should be a minor adjustment upwards, to account for the possibility of a FactIV. Like to 4500 k for the mark IIIs. Maybe as high as 5000. Of course, I have a FactIV 100% of the time, which I gather isn't quite normal.

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add some very low-level randomly-utilized tactics for the AI to add some kind of counterbalance against certain clutch player units (on Diff 7+, but perhaps more likely on the higher ones).  Basically stuff like "X% chance every Y seconds to grab Z% of my good-against-heavy stuff on this planet and sic them on the nearest Riot Starship".
I don't think that would help. If the AI gets to me, they shoot the riots or enclaves pretty exclusively already.

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Possibly some more dirty tricks for hitting the player while weak
How about when the AI gets a bunch of salvage quickly, it lowers the threat and threatfleet commit threshold for a little while? It should also not use salvage strength unless it provides a significant boost to a wave, or maybe it should launch its own wave.


I think the next step up is how threat/threatfleet deals with mobile strength.

How does it currently handle it? From experiments, I think it only considers ships on the target as counting against it.

But it should consider nearby player fleets, possibly even coordinating to draw them off. It should also have a lower commit threshold (though never lower than 1:1) for attacking if there is another attack in progress.
If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: A Break
« Reply #7 on: March 26, 2014, 12:01:41 am »
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add some very low-level randomly-utilized tactics for the AI to add some kind of counterbalance against certain clutch player units (on Diff 7+, but perhaps more likely on the higher ones).  Basically stuff like "X% chance every Y seconds to grab Z% of my good-against-heavy stuff on this planet and sic them on the nearest Riot Starship".
I don't think that would help. If the AI gets to me, they shoot the riots or enclaves pretty exclusively already.

I'd think this would fall under "mid-level" unit control. Basically, army management within a system, and very basic, course grained micro tricks like focus firing. While the AI does decently with this on offense, it is a bit lacking when on defense. While it would be nice for the AI to get some awareness of these sorts of things, unlike in some games like, say, Starcraft, this isn't really that huge of a make or break thing in AI War so long as you can keep your stuff shooting at least some before dying.
And as Faulty Logic has sort of hinted at there, the very good unit level intelligence tends to give an emergent intelligence resembling decent army management and course grained micro control.

Still, it would be nice for this to be addressed (to make attacking systems at least "feel" more interesting, even if the actual effectiveness of the AI defense doesn't go up by a huge amount), but I wouldn't say this is a big issue with the AI at the moment.

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Possibly some more dirty tricks for hitting the player while weak
How about when the AI gets a bunch of salvage quickly, it lowers the threat and threatfleet commit threshold for a little while? It should also not use salvage strength unless it provides a significant boost to a wave, or maybe it should launch its own wave.


I think the next step up is how threat/threatfleet deals with mobile strength.

How does it currently handle it? From experiments, I think it only considers ships on the target as counting against it.

But it should consider nearby player fleets, possibly even coordinating to draw them off. It should also have a lower commit threshold (though never lower than 1:1) for attacking if there is another attack in progress.

Agreed. Ideas to increase the "adjacent of adjacent planet awareness" in various decision making processes have been floating around a while (including several by me ;)), and I do think it is a great next step that would have very good reward to effort ratios.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: A Break
« Reply #8 on: March 27, 2014, 11:26:00 am »
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From what I can see it's a 2x buff to the MkI, 1.2x buff to the MkII, 0.8x nerf to the MkIII, and 0.56x nerf to the MkIV.
Hmm, perhaps that is a bit too kind. I'd like to see how it actually works in play though, because the lower number of drones probably looks very different in-game than on-paper.
Yep, it's worth a shot.  That particular unit has spent so long in the "rarely useful" pile (for many players, at least) that it'd be a shame to over-nerf it.  Took a number of re-imaginations (iirc) to finally make it something people really enjoyed using.  But we don't need it skewing balance heavily, either.


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I think there should be a minor adjustment upwards, to account for the possibility of a FactIV. Like to 4500 k for the mark IIIs. Maybe as high as 5000. Of course, I have a FactIV 100% of the time, which I gather isn't quite normal.
Hmm, yea, 4000 => 4500 wouldn't be excruciating.  I guess I'm not clear on how much mkIII fleet ships are unlocked anyway.  In my own experience I tend to prefer either starships or (if more defensive weight is really needed) turrets.  So when I look at spending 6500 K on one line of units... I tend to only do that for specific bonus types that I really have a major use for.  But I'm not playing scenarios that really push me, either.


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I don't think that would help. If the AI gets to me, they shoot the riots or enclaves pretty exclusively already.
Ah, good to know.  Yea, little tactical cheeses tend to be high on development effort, and probably aren't going to do much in terms of payoff.


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Possibly some more dirty tricks for hitting the player while weak
How about when the AI gets a bunch of salvage quickly, it lowers the threat and threatfleet commit threshold for a little while? It should also not use salvage strength unless it provides a significant boost to a wave, or maybe it should launch its own wave.
For the next version salvage-reprisals will be separate from normal waves, btw.

On lowering the commit thresholds, I don't think I'd want to do that artificially; the planet hit by the reprisal-wave would experience a natural reduction in the threshold due to the wave's firepower being on the enemy planet.  But to lower the threshold further would seem to invite a gain:loss ratio that the AI would normally find unfavorable, for no particularly strong reason.


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I think the next step up is how threat/threatfleet deals with mobile strength.

How does it currently handle it? From experiments, I think it only considers ships on the target as counting against it.
Well, there's multiple different contexts in which it could be asking that kind of question.


When an individual chunk of threat ships has nothing better to do (not engaged in a fight, not needing to go defend an AI core/home planet) it looks for a good candidate human planet that it can get to from where it is.

Step 1) For all planets in the game:
1a) Calculate the enemy strength and the allied strength on that planet. 
1b) From that, compute a "balance of power" (enemy-allied, but minimum zero even if there's a ton of uncontested AI strength there).
1c) Compute the total "desirability" of all the human-controlled units there.  Most units have zero,  Ion cannons have 10.  Captive human settlements have 100.  Fabs have 1000.  Normal command stations have 1.  A home command station dominates with 1000000.  An AdvFact has 10000.  And so on.

Step 2) Starting from the threat-chunk's current planet:
2a) assign a "Difficulty" to the planet equal to floor(balance_of_power/(threat_chunk_strength/2)).  Note that this is integral math, intentionally "coarsening" the dififculties so it doesn't feel compelled to prefer something with 65% of its strength to something with 75% of it, etc.
2b) for each neighbor planet (that hasn't already been processed), add it to the list, with a starting difficulty equal to this planet's difficulty + 2.  This makes it prefer shorter paths, even through uncontested territory.

Step 3) Sort the planets:
3a) If planet A desirability > 0 and planet B desirability zero, prefer A
3b) Else, if planet A difficulty less than planet B difficulty, prefer A (due to coarseness there can be a lot of comparisons where this is equal)
3c) Else, if planet A desirability greater than planet B, prefer A
3d) Else, go by whatever order they happen to be in

(at this point if the "cmd:log ai threat choice" command is on it will dump an entry headed "Analysis of potential targets:" to LogicLog_AIChoosingThreatAttackTarget_AIThread.txt, with the sorted list of planets, desirabilities, and difficulties)

Step 4) For each planet in the sorted list:
1a) If desirability >= 1000000 (meaning it has a human home command station, essentially), pick that one and stop
1b) Else, 25% chance of: pick that one and stop
1c) Else, continue the loop (if that was the last planet in the list, it picks that one, but getting to the bottom should be rather rare to say the least)

Then it picks the shortest path (which accounts for enemy strength and such, but the details aren't terribly important here) and sends the threat-chunk on its way.  But the above logic has no direct bearing on when/if a given ship actually commits to a specific wormhole-transit.

So I'm not sure it should really consider mobile-enemy-strength-elsewhere at that point.  Not because it doesn't matter but because in the time it takes the AI to route that threat-chunk over there the human player could probably redeploy mobile strength just about anywhere.  So it would count equally for any planet, and thus not really count at all.

Or do you mean that it should _not count_ mobile strength for that kind of longer-term analysis?  And thus be better aligned with targets that might be uncovered later.


The "should I wait at this wormhole or go through?" logic, for normal threat ships, is:

Step 1) Take the allied strength currently on the target planet.
Step 2) Add the strength of all threat ships waiting against that planet (can be on different planets camping different wormholes, all neighboring the target)
Step 3) Add the strength of all "galaxy-wide-chase" ships (from exos, mainly) whose next wormhole hop goes to the target planet.
Step 4) Subtract the enemy strength currently on the enemy planet
Step 5) If the result is > 0, go through

(to see why the AI's waiting against a particular planet, go to that planet and use the "cmd:log ai wait" command, future wait checks against it will log to LogicLog_AICheckForClearingWaitPointsAgainstSpecifiedPlanet_AIThread.txt)

So I guess there's a place where it could add in "enemy mobile strength on all adjacent planets".  Though that just makes it one hop more skittish, and still fairly easy to game if you try. 

So possibly something more complex like taking each map-contiguous chunk of mobile enemy strength and adding it to the "available enemy mobile strength" of all planets it can path to without passing through a planet with allied-strength over a certain % of that enemy-mobile-chunk's strength.  Possibly with some attenuation for number-of-hops.

That wouldn't be computationally cheap, but this stuff's happening on the AI thread which exists to do computationally expensive stuff for the sake of exterminating the human race.


The threatfleet-proper has somewhat different logic (iirc I didn't pull it all into the revised threat thing) but I can go back over that another time.  In general the threatfleet concept itself is a lot less necessary since the threat-behavior overhaul a while ago.  Though its behavior of hanging a few planets back and concentrating strength isn't a bad thing, at least for variety.


The current iteration of almost all the above is the result of experiments with that "The Battle Of Midnight" save, btw.


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It should also have a lower commit threshold (though never lower than 1:1) for attacking if there is another attack in progress.
That's a good point.  And "engaged" enemy-mobile-strength would automatically be discounted/attenuated due to the presence of a "blocking" allied strength.  Other than that the fact of a separate attack doesn't really change the chance of "can the forces waiting against this planet actually win?", but the overall psychological effect (and somewhat the military one, if enough energy collectors can be killed) would probably be worthwhile taking some extra risks for a coordinated assault.

Perhaps it could key off what % of the total galaxy-wide human strength is currently "engaged" (so if a particular chunk is facing equal-or-greater allied-strength it's 100% engaged, but only 50% against something half its strength, etc).

Thoughts?
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Offline Faulty Logic

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Re: A Break
« Reply #9 on: March 29, 2014, 06:43:19 am »
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I think there should be a minor adjustment upwards, to account for the possibility of a FactIV. Like to 4500 k for the mark IIIs. Maybe as high as 5000. Of course, I have a FactIV 100% of the time, which I gather isn't quite normal.
I think I take this back. I don't end up unlocking quite enough mkIII fleetships to offset the loss of the free mkIIs from back in the day.

The enclave nerf was close to perfect. With careful management and support, they are still powerful, but they definitely can't take a system on their own. There is one thing regarding them that the AI shouldn't be doing, though. Ships headed toward my fleet will often stop going toward the fleet to engage the drones.

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So I guess there's a place where it could add in "enemy mobile strength on all adjacent planets".  Though that just makes it one hop more skittish, and still fairly easy to game if you try.
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Perhaps it could key off what % of the total galaxy-wide human strength is currently "engaged" (so if a particular chunk is facing equal-or-greater allied-strength it's 100% engaged, but only 50% against something half its strength, etc). 
Something like this sounds really awesome. Though I was thinking more than just adjacent, but not galaxy-wide. I would start by having it consider my fleets to project their full strength within three hops of the actual fleet, unless it was "engaged," in which case it projects their unengaged strength.

So it ignores fleets four or more hops out. I chose that distance because that's when the fleet will sometimes be able to pull off a heroic rescue, but will often arrive too late to save the target. One could try to game at that distance, but it would be risky.

It shouldn't need to be contiguous with the target to count, because of transports/"safe" AI planets.

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Other than that the fact of a separate attack doesn't really change the chance of "can the forces waiting against this planet actually win?"
It absolutely does. I will always have a limited amount of mobile strength to deploy. And if it's off countering the first attack, the second has a better chance.


Nothing much to report on the actual AAR front. I'm at 6 hours, and the first CPA was laughable, with ~650 ships at four hours. While laughing madly and giggling uncontrollably, I conquered the lower right cluster, hacking for Zevastators and minirams. I also got missile and MLRS controllers, firefliesV, nanoswarmsV, decoy drones, warbird starships, and grenade launchers V.

Unlocks:

Fighters, raiders, minirams, stealth battleships, LTFs and sabotuers to mkIII.
All starships except scouts, cloakers and raids to mkIII, including Zevastators.
Engi IIIs, econIIIs, milIIIs.
Assault transports, ffIIIs, HFFIs, FortsIII, mod fort, miniforts.
Gravity turrets III.

I have full mercenary caps of everything but the bomber. And I have 20 of those.

Defense is still not an issue. I have three ways in, each with a milIII and some turretry. Combined with the fleetship/merc fleet, I haven't had any issues, even at AIP 851. Though waves throwing eleven starships at me was fairly amusing.

State of empire:
« Last Edit: March 29, 2014, 07:26:58 am by Faulty Logic »
If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: A Break
« Reply #10 on: March 29, 2014, 10:12:43 am »
Glad to hear the enclave change worked well.  There wasn't too much wailing and of gnashing of teeth elsewhere.


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Something like this sounds really awesome. Though I was thinking more than just adjacent, but not galaxy-wide. I would start by having it consider my fleets to project their full strength within three hops of the actual fleet, unless it was "engaged," in which case it projects their unengaged strength.

So it ignores fleets four or more hops out. I chose that distance because that's when the fleet will sometimes be able to pull off a heroic rescue, but will often arrive too late to save the target. One could try to game at that distance, but it would be risky.
Hmm, yea, 3 hops is probably a sufficient check, yea.  If someone can cheese that it's probably non-trivial enough to qualify as a legitimate tactic.  And if their fleet counted as a deterrent literally across their entire front that might actually be more cheesable.


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It shouldn't need to be contiguous with the target to count, because of transports/"safe" AI planets.
I meant to have it check for AI strength on each planet to see if it would "block" a human fleet of that strength, but you do have a good point about transports and such.  Ultimately a sufficiently motivated and creative human player will find a way through the planet.  Even if I had the SF intentionally scissor in on the retreat vector. 

In theory it could discount BHG hops or whatever, but that's getting pretty edge-casey.


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Other than that the fact of a separate attack doesn't really change the chance of "can the forces waiting against this planet actually win?"
It absolutely does. I will always have a limited amount of mobile strength to deploy. And if it's off countering the first attack, the second has a better chance.
I meant "actually win against the strength already there", specifically the static strength.  Doesn't matter how much of your fleet is elsewhere if the static strength is 1:1 with the strength the AI has on hand to attack the planet.  There's a chance the AI will win, and a chance it will lose.

That said, if your whole mobile fleet is engaged elsewhere at least it wouldn't make that 1:1 fight harder on the AI.  And ultimately the player is less likely to personally micro multiple simultaneous defensive engagements.  So yea, I see the point.


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Nothing much to report on the actual AAR front. I'm at 6 hours, and the first CPA was laughable, with ~650 ships at four hours.
That's like your first wave on a "normal" game, I'm guessing.


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Though waves throwing eleven starships at me was fairly amusing.
Glad to hear that change seems to be working correctly.  Helps the waves scale better.  Not that it will help them here.
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Offline Kahuna

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Re: A Break
« Reply #11 on: April 01, 2014, 08:48:38 am »
the first CPA was laughable, with ~650 ships at four hours.
HAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAA

While laughing madly and giggling uncontrollably
Don't know about you but I actually loled out loud when I read that. ~650 ships. That's not even half of a "normal" wave.

EDIT: Oh it's ultra low caps. Still funny though.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2014, 09:06:18 am by Kahuna »
set /A diff=10
if %diff%==max (
   set /A me=:)
) else (
   set /A me=SadPanda
)
echo Check out my AI War strategy guide and find your inner Super Cat!
echo 2592 hours of AI War and counting!
echo Kahuna matata!

Offline Faulty Logic

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Re: A Break
« Reply #12 on: April 01, 2014, 06:58:19 pm »
Quote
That's like your first wave on a "normal" game, I'm guessing.
No, the first wave on 10 and ultra-low is usually around a hundred ships.

I continue stomping around. The third cluster took a while, mainly because of warp counter posts. I'm at mercenary caps, and money is pretty much irrelevant. I have all the k I need, too, though I haven't quite unlocked everything yet.

Downloaded corvettes, hacked an ARS to give me shield bearers, got beam frigates from another ARS, and captured a starIV and FactIV, along with a frigateV and Raid starV fabricator, and the best core turret controller: spiders.

The second CPA had 1900 ships, and bounced off my fixed defenses and fleet.

At around a thousand AIP, the AI is sending me what would be early/mid game waves. Around 300 mkIV ships, with 15 or so mkIV starships. I worry what the new starship wave scaling will do to my normal play.

A colony rebelled, and I just conquered a path to it.

State of Empire:

If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: A Break
« Reply #13 on: April 01, 2014, 07:01:52 pm »
A colony rebelled, and I just conquered a path to it.
When the unstoppable AI-stomping force roared in, I wonder if that colony felt liberated or, well, just conquered ;) 
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Offline Faulty Logic

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Re: A Break
« Reply #14 on: April 08, 2014, 02:11:00 am »
And the stompage continues. Nothing much to say, I conquered the upper middle and upper left clusters with no problems. The AI HW with wrath lance and gravity trap did cause a few casualties, but nothing major. I've hit the econ ceiling. We're in endgame, I'm going as fast as I can, and the only thing to slow me down are counterattack posts.

AIP 1839. Waves contain 500-2000 fleetships and 15-50 starships.

One odd behaviour: AI ships won't kill a fabricator if it's on a neutral planet. They read as threat, there's a fab in their system, but they ignore it.

State of Empire:
If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

 

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