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

[x4000]

Hmm, that is tricky, then.

[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.

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.

Amen!

On the Dyson topic, I'll have to sadly abstain from any patch which nerfs them or changes their behavior until I've finished the game I'm playing - my defensive line depends on those little Gatlings!

[x4000]

I don't plan on nerfing them, but having a chance to "go offensive" against the nearby AI stalkers might be a good thing for keeping framerate up.  But, that could indeed wreak havoc on your defensive line, to be sure.

[Fruden]

 Well in 4.x and before dysons constantly suicided, so this was probably my biggest surprise when i upgraded this week-end. It was fun at first until i had my threat jump up by 10k-15k... the dysons have a firepower rating of about 40 each so it quickly moves up, and since the ai has paralizers this time they arent as effective as they could be.

 But, i just played 1 hour and figured out a way to lure 6000 ships in the way of the dysons. What i did was destroy my command stations in a way to limit the dyson highway. Within 10 minutes instead of having 50-100 dysons at that planet i had less than 10, then the 3000 ships + 23 carriers warped in, then i rebuilt the command stations (and the highway), and within 5-10 minutes they were back to break some ais.

 Of course, with these forces the ai should have trounced my system even with the dysons, but luckily they love to chase the cursed golem all over the place, so i lost 10-20 turrets in all and around 25% of the cursed's health.

 Also on the subject of the firepower rating... well there are some oddities... armored golem at 1000, artillery golem at 2000, cursed golem at 650 and... fully charged hive golem at 56000 + 28000 in cargo...

 That's pretty silly, i've been using it to scare the ai in not attacking. It's currently sitting on a planet with a dozen snipers, a military station, and 1 heavy beam, scaring 3000-4000 ships in not attacking.

[Fleet]

And here I thought the AI was just plotting against Tss and I every time we came close to winning. Really, after seeing these things on and off for quite some time, we began to suspect there was an intelligence behind these sabotage attempts. Finally we can put that line to rest, its getting so old between us.

[x4000]

And here I thought the AI was just plotting against Tss and I every time we came close to winning. Really, after seeing these things on and off for quite some time, we began to suspect there was an intelligence behind these sabotage attempts. Finally we can put that line to rest, its getting so old between us.

 

[BobTheJanitor]

Just saw the upcoming changes to allied ships and zombies in 5.007. And the fix to zombie ship caps? You did all this, and it's not even my birthday!  

[x4000]

My pleasure.

[Buttons840]

   * Previously, zombiefied ships were being bound by player ship caps, but they should not have been. Fixed.
          o Thanks to Dalden and Ozymandiaz for reporting.

    * Previously, allied minor faction and zombie ships would just patrol around player planets endlessly, which was helpful for defense, but problematic for two reasons: first, that it could cause massive amounts of slowdown after many hours of them stacking up, and second, that it could cause massive buildups of AI stalkers, who never dare to attack the planets with so many defenders, which leads to something akin to stalemate situations.
          o Thus the allied minor faction and zombie logic has been adjusted as follows:
                + Neutral planets are now considered the same as allied planets, and the ships will patrol to them like any others.
                + If there are more than about 100 of AI threat ships on an adjacent planet, the ships will also patrol to that planet to clean them off.
                + If the human-allied team has more than a token military force (more than about 10 ships) on a planet, then these ships will patrol to there, to help aid in that attack.
                      # This allows for small raids to still happen with raid starships or whatever without assistance from these minor factions, but it enlists their help for larger-scale engagements.
          o Thanks to many players for weighing in on this, including Burnstreet, Draco18s, TechSY730, vinco, BluePhoenix, and ArcDM for reporting various things related to this, with various suggestions.

Here's some notes from the upcoming release I just noticed.  A good solution IMO.

To change the subject just a bit, how do neutral minor factions like raiders or neutral Dysons behave?

[x4000]

Actually, neutral work more or less that way, I think.

[Vinraith]

Hmm, that is tricky, then.

If you didn't want it to work that way, I suppose you could have the AI consider minor faction firepower differently than player firepower when making a decision about attacking a system. Perhaps scale it by some factor. I think the net effect of that, though, is just to make the game that much easier.

Still, maybe that's better than having those factions just cause a massive stalemate like they do right now.

Would a save game with this situation be beneficial?

[Otagan]

Random question based on some of my observations around the forum in the last month or so.  Do you have any intention of rebalancing Spire Penetrators?  I freely admit that I have yet to play a game of LotS (unfortunately), but I've seen a decent number of people comment on how extremely powerful they are, and unless I'm missing something in the patch note history regarding them, I don't see any nerfs that would affect them.

Basically, I don't have any first-hand confirmation that they are a problem and no strong personal opinion on the topic, but I'm curious if there is any intent to do anything with them or if they are functioning as the design intended.

[zebramatt]

I don't plan on nerfing them, but having a chance to "go offensive" against the nearby AI stalkers might be a good thing for keeping framerate up.  But, that could indeed wreak havoc on your defensive line, to be sure.

Don't get me wrong - I'm actually quite attracted to the idea of them going on the offensive from time to time! I especially liked the idea of them obeying a similar firepower calculation mechanic to the AI forces, but maintaining their patrol rather than idly around wormholes whilst they decide.

Indeed, if their behavior were to only change beyond a certain threshold number of Gatlings (in total or per planet), I may be able to compensate for the drop in numbers with additional static defenses. Maybe.

Edit: Totally forgot I hadn't hit "Post". Turns out I probably will do the update - I reckon my defensive line can bear these changes!

Although the "more than about 100" scares me a little: won't this lead to 'em killing themselves all off eventually, if patrolling a particularly tough AI world?

[Sir t]

I think thats the intention, that their numbers would be attritted down to prevent their numbers building up too much.

Any joy on this minor issue? http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3069 Just asking as it would take about 2 minutes to fix, its just correcting a description.

[Sunshine!]

That old description is still accurate for AIP change.  It decreases AIP by 1, but increases AI floor by .2, just the mechanism to actually achieve that change is AIP decrease by 2, increase by 1, since every increase increases the AIP floor by .2.