AI War Beta 5.006, "Raiders Of The Lost Desync," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/03/ai-war-beta-5006-raiders-of-lost-desync.html

This one fixes a desync that has been haunting my nightmares for months.  It's been incredibly, incredibly rare, to the point that only a few players have ever even seen it.  But those players could reproduce it reliably, while almost nobody else could reproduce it at all.  Knock on wood, today that saga ends.  One savegame provided by those same players most affected, Fleet and Tssbackus, has finally yielded a reproducible case for me.  The battle was hard, but in the end we nailed it to the wall.

But that's not all! This release also has some pretty notable balance shifts around translocation shots, specifically so that your military command stations are now more powerful and less unwieldy.  Also regeneration got a few tweaks to be less unwieldy when fortresses and force fields and such are around, too.

Lastly, and I'm sure most excitingly for the largest number of people, is some notable raid starship rebalancing.  The raids have been split into two lines: one for the humans and one for the AIs, and the human ones have been made about 20% more powerful, while the AI ones are now only 50% as strong as the human counterparts.  In other words, your raids will survive a bit longer against the AI missile guard posts, while the AI starships won't wreak quite so much havoc all through your systems when they come in any volume.

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.

[BobTheJanitor]

Nice! Of course I notice this right before bedtime, and now it's too late to play around with the new version. The translocation and raid starship changes look particularly great.

[superking]

with military command stations, it'd be cool if you could set a rally point that all translocated ships are teleported to

[Shrugging Khan]

Such as...right on top of a minefield? 

[Philo]

Great job on the Raids. Just a question though. Which one is now more effective, or say, better. The human or the AI Raid starship?
And why not just make them the same?

[zoutzakje]

great job with the military cc thing, now I might actually use them again ^^
a lot of other nice stuff as well in this one, so thank you ^^

[TechSY730]

Great job on the Raids. Just a question though. Which one is now more effective, or say, better. The human or the AI Raid starship?
And why not just make them the same?

Human ones are better now.

And the reason they are no longer the same (unlike all the previous versions) is because it is VERY hard to find a set of stats for Raid starships that will be balanced in both the hands of the humans and the AI. This is the "easy" way out, which considering how many other things Chris is having to deal with right now, is understandable.

Also, great job nailing that very obscure desync.

[Sunshine!]

As usual, you guys are awesome.  Seriously, if only we could get this kind of support from other game devs, nobody would be complaining about the current state of PC gaming.

[Philo]

Human ones are better now.

And the reason they are no longer the same (unlike all the previous versions) is because it is VERY hard to find a set of stats for Raid starships that will be balanced in both the hands of the humans and the AI. This is the "easy" way out, which considering how many other things Chris is having to deal with right now, is understandable.

Yeah, I think this is a good fix for now, since the Raids were overpowered against the human Home station. I think in the future if possible, make the AI Raid Starships the same as human ones but give the Home base station more health or some kind of protection against Raids.

I think AI Raids should be effective at taking out your other Command Stations than Home station though. I just hope they aren't underpowered now.

[zoutzakje]

Btw, I like how Chris is giving his beta's names since recently

first we had the RAMinator, then The Balancer, and now Raiders of the Lost Desync. Now we just read the title and we know about the most important change(s) / fix(es) right away

[zebramatt]

I don't see this Raid change as a temporary solution at all. I think it's a long-needed move which will finally make it possible for them to find balance. I know it feels like a little of an arbitrary hack but the benefit to gameplay more than justifies it.

And this is coming from the guy who still plays Medium Spirecraft and Golems!

[Fruden]

 Hi, would you guys mind looking at the issue with massive fleets of patrolling dysons next? I finally upgraded my big campaign from 4.x to 5.x recently and initially it was alright, but a couple hours later i've got such massive dyson fleets patrolling that the ai is stalking me with absurd number of ships. I'm talking about 1 planet that was stalked by 1000-1500 ships now being stalked by 7000 ships (and still climbing) and the whole threat going from 2000-4000 before attacks to currently 16000 and still going up. By the way, that 1 planet being stalked by 7000 ships? It has 200 turrets and 1 fortress. The map says it has ~650 firepower while the stalkers are getting close to 3000 firepower and still not attacking.

 That's with ai progress going from ~250 to ~350 in around 5 hours time at difficulty 9.

 Anyway, just in case i had kept a copy of my last 4.x, but i'm not motivated playing again those few hours i played in 5.x . Still i might not have a choice since this game might be ruined and it would suck terribly to lose my big 35 hour campaign because patrolling dysons make the ai go crazy with the stalking.

[TechSY730]

I don't see this Raid change as a temporary solution at all. I think it's a long-needed move which will finally make it possible for them to find balance. I know it feels like a little of an arbitrary hack but the benefit to gameplay more than justifies it.

So you are under the opinion that there is no single set of stats and attributes that is balanced for both humans and the AI? In other words, outside of this sort of split, do you think it is impossible to balance raid starships for both human an AI players?

[x4000]

Glad it's a hit!

Btw, I like how Chris is giving his beta's names since recently

first we had the RAMinator, then The Balancer, and now Raiders of the Lost Desync. Now we just read the title and we know about the most important change(s) / fix(es) right away

Yeah, I've done that off and on in the past, too.  The problem is when there are releases coming daily, it can be hard to think up interesting names.  But I definitely prefer naming them when I can!

Hi, would you guys mind looking at the issue with massive fleets of patrolling dysons next?

It's on our list to look at soon, for sure.  You could always preemptively attack the AI to adjust how much they are stalking you, or move your fleets and defenses inward so that the AI ships continuously come into the dyson paths and get crunched.  It really seems like there ought to be an inventive way to make use of that mechanic as-is, rather than it  being a liability.

I don't see this Raid change as a temporary solution at all. I think it's a long-needed move which will finally make it possible for them to find balance. I know it feels like a little of an arbitrary hack but the benefit to gameplay more than justifies it.

So you are under the opinion that there is no single set of stats and attributes that is balanced for both humans and the AI? In other words, outside of this sort of split, do you think it is impossible to balance raid starships for both human an AI players?

That is my opinion, whatever his is.  The AI and Human defensive arsenals are wildly different, and no set of raid starship stats would be reasonably effective at penetrating both without clobbering one of them.

[Vinraith]

It's on our list to look at soon, for sure.  You could always preemptively attack the AI to adjust how much they are stalking you, or move your fleets and defenses inward so that the AI ships continuously come into the dyson paths and get crunched.  It really seems like there ought to be an inventive way to make use of that mechanic as-is, rather than it  being a liability.

Dyson firepower is so high on its own that it seems to be impossible to tempt the AI into a system that contains them (even if one pulls back every defense on has), unfortunately. I agree that it seems like there should be some way to "use" this situation, but so far I've had no luck finding it.