AI War Beta 5.005, "The Balancer," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/03/ai-war-beta-5005-balancer-released.html

This one fixes a bug with savegames in 5.004, and also includes a large selection of balance tweaks requested by players since 5.0.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

[NickAragua]

Played a round of 5.004 last night, the loading times across the board are visibly improved, even on my "pretty fast" machine - it even gets rid of that initial pop-in effect. Good to know I'll be able to load the save I made, too.

Who wanted those commandos boosted though? They're a pain in the ass enough as it is!

[Sunshine!]

I wanted the commandos boosted - they underperform compared to the other Neinzul combat ships.  It's a little sad when I pick Weasels as #1 all-round Neinzul combat ship instead of Commandos.  It was really just an issue of Commandos having less than half the HP of the other three Neinzul combat ships, as well as a little bit less damage (especially less damage when it comes to bonus ship types), so they had significantly less total life-span damage.

Gotta say I love most of the changes, and I posted a possible solution for the Grav Drains in another thread for Keith.  I should probably toss it up on the bugtracker as well.

[Red Spot]

Nice, thanks

I pretty much like all tweaks/fixes/improvements, however, I cant help feel a wee bit sorry about the cap-nerf of the Blade Spawners 
How am I now going to control neutered planets .. free of micro

[Buttons840]

Nice, thanks

I pretty much like all tweaks/fixes/improvements, however, I cant help feel a wee bit sorry about the cap-nerf of the Blade Spawners 
How am I now going to control neutered planets .. free of micro

Fortresses would be great for holding neutered planets if they repaired themselves a little faster and did a little better against bombers.  Right now it seems like 2 or 3 bombers can kill a lone fortress.

[BobTheJanitor]

Nice, thanks

I pretty much like all tweaks/fixes/improvements, however, I cant help feel a wee bit sorry about the cap-nerf of the Blade Spawners 
How am I now going to control neutered planets .. free of micro

Fortresses would be great for holding neutered planets if they repaired themselves a little faster and did a little better against bombers.  Right now it seems like 2 or 3 bombers can kill a lone fortress.

But then taking out AI fortresses would be even more of a long painful process. I very much don't want the balance of fortresses vs bombers to be fiddled with... Drop a fortress plus like 20 viral shredders there, that should pretty well cover anything that comes in to your neutered planet. When you come back later to check on it, you'll still have a fortress, along with 500 shredders. 

[Shrugging Khan]

Anything done about the hybrid insanity? :/

Basically, playing 120 on 8.something with hybrids on is...defence mode. I'm not a very aggressive player (har har, to those who know me), so blitzing all production facilities or trying to spread the hybrids thin doesn't work to well for me. Lasted for some 7 hours before they ganked my Home Station from some backwater planet I hadn't been watching.

[TechSY730]

Anything done about the hybrid insanity? :/

Basically, playing 120 on 8.something with hybrids on is...defence mode. I'm not a very aggressive player (har har, to those who know me), so blitzing all production facilities or trying to spread the hybrids thin doesn't work to well for me. Lasted for some 7 hours before they ganked my Home Station from some backwater planet I hadn't been watching.

Hmm, has somebody made the suggestion to make the Hybrid cap not scale linearly with map size? Thanks to how powerful they are, linear is too steep.

Anyways, the way to survive is to find their spawners and start taking them out decently early in the game. That will slow their respawn rate and I think lower their cap as well.

Thanks to this, Hybrids should make you play more aggressively, not merely defend more. Despite how fun it is giving the AI awesome stuff setting up defenses to deal with thanks to how Hybrids work, they actually punish turtles, not give them more fun stuff to blow up.

This counter-intuitive "turtle punishing" behavior probably should be made a little more explicit in their tool-tips. How it is described now, there is little to indicate that slowing down to build up your defenses more so you can kill them hurts your chances in the long run.

[Garthor]

I find that the best option for dealing with Hybrids is to just have a fleet going around pruning them every once in a while.  By their nature, defensive Hybrids will always bumrush your ships the moment they exit the wormhole, so you can just pop in, bunker down, and wipe them out.  You have to be rather proactive about this, though, as if you let them get too concentrated then they can definitely overwhelm your fleet and then things go bad.

Obviously, an AI Eye next to one of your systems will make this... not work.

[Sunshine!]

Not true, the AI eye shouldn't be a problem because the combination of the hybrids, their escorts, and the AI defense fleet on the planet should keep AI forces within the range of being 1/2 the size of your forces.

[Garthor]

Not true, the AI eye shouldn't be a problem because the combination of the hybrids, their escorts, and the AI defense fleet on the planet should keep AI forces within the range of being 1/2 the size of your forces.

Except your entire purpose there is to be killing their fleet, which naturally results in them having fewer ships, because you blew them up.

[Sunshine!]

Your entire purpose is to be killing the Hybrids.  If I'm sending a fleet in after 28 hybrids, I'm not expecting to get them back, and attacking the escorts is kind of a waste of time.  Actually managed to do that (not on an AI eye planet, but still) with a shipcap of mk1/mk2 fighters, mk1/mk2 bombers, mk1/mk2 chameleons, mk1/mk2 spiders.  I didn't get any back, but I think I actually netted 30 hybrids or more (because they kept sending reinforcements)

[RogueThunder]

Are orbital mass drivers immune to radar dampening? If not as of this change they REALLY should be. Really really.

[superking]

I think it would be nice to have a function where when the number of active hybrids increases, the proportion of hybrids produced that are attackers increases. that way, after eg. 50 hybrids are out, all the ones produced thereafter are attackers

I also think that the higher the number of hybrids on the map, the less of an attackers advantage they should require (so by the 120 max, they are 100% attacking no matter what)

[superking]

starship balance still needs looking at imo, the gap between the insane power of the zenith and weediness of the flagship is mad. bomber starships are perfectly effective vs spammy fleetships thanks to high RoF. Raid starships would surely function OK if balanced to eg. 5000 armour, and then heavier guns of flagships/bomber starships/beamcannons would be an effective response instead of bouncing off just as ineffectually as fleetship weapons.