I lover de AI war and the all round awesomeness of its developers, but I dont like AI war 4.0 onward, and no matter how many times I boot it up and try get back into it, I come away unhappy. I'm not complaining in the sense I expect somthing to be done about it- I've had my moneys worth of fun out of AI war about 30x over- but encase any other players share my issues. I still have the last version of AI War 3.0 installed and recently started playing it again, so much of my critisism is probably a result of being able to compare the two- I perceive many changes as steps backward
Critisisms- The main menu screen of AI war 4.0+ is ugly, much uglier than the 3.0 menu screen. the 3.0 screen had a sensible layout in terms of function, with the writing large and spread out down the screen. the current menu screen crams everything into the bottom left. the old menu screen had stationary stars and moving nebula. It looked nice. the new one has moving stars, which looks frankly archahic (and often wrong, with the star layers moving at illogical looking speeds relative to eachother). the list of expansions in the top right hand corner is really ugly.
- an extension on the menu systems, the buttons are essentially black with an ugly white halo round them. the white halo around buttons looks really poor in my oppinion
- The GUI on the game lobby screen looks much less proffesional than the 3.0 lobby. the menu panels are seperate, leaving a blank spot of grind in the bottom right hand corner on a wide screen that looks really poor.
- the AI War font now in use looks childish, and can be difficult to read where smaller
- the children of neinzul music, particually the children of neinzul menu music, is frankly dreadful in my oppinon... it sounds more like midi and completely lacking the tone of the other two menu tracks.
- the removal of the 3.0 group move toggle button from the bottom left game GUI is a crime, it was such an elegant solution to the problem of having to switch between group and independant move that didn't require me to hold down 3 keys to que FRD group-moves... I miss that button terribly.
- firing up 3.0 again made me remember how very good the strong/weak display was. this has been raised enough times, but it was so liberating to be able to know at a glance if cruisers are effective against MRLS, or zenith polarisers, instead of having to squint at armour types. quick quiz: off the top of your head, do you know what armour type the spire tractor platform is? and which trigange and bonus units have a bonus against that type? if you dont, you need to look at lots of panels and lists of bonuses.
- game balance. this requires a longer rant and I'll do this tommorow, watch this space (or dont). much of this involves spire ships, both the numbers the AI use them in, the inconsistencies of targetting them w/ seige starship, and other balance issues, like the weakness of flagships (the higher base HP of raid starships, considering the 20% damage everything does to them.) and gaurdians, fortresses.
apolagies if these kind of observations are unwelcome
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Are you playing the latest beta, or the last stable version?
yes, I always update before playing.
I'm not sure why you are complaining about the Neinzul soundtrack. I like it. Yes, its title music is most certainly not all that great (in fact, I might replace it with another song in my installation), but the rest of it sounds fine IMO.
yes to clarify, my complaint there is 99% targetted at the neinzul menu music, some of the neinzul tracks are pretty nice. the neinzul menu music track really spoils the tone for me. It's not a huge problem since I can easily just delete it out the game folder, just raising the issue encase others felt the same.
And of course there's the reference tab itself, but I imagine you're wanting something that doesn't involve opening any windows.
yeah, to me having to open the reffrence window little better than having to squint around at each ships stats to see if it has a bonus against the armour class of a given target (and then whether it has an attack that makes it useless against targets it lacks bonuses against, or whether it would lose anyway due to having feeble HP or somthing similar). this is even more of a chore to me because the armour classes are just so arbitary- there is no visual indication on any ship of what armour class it is, and no logical connection between ship size, or armament, or anything else, and armour type. its seemingly random, so lots of stat checking or memorising is required everytime you encounter a new type of ship.
On the removal of the group move toggle button, my condolences on your loss Wink We were making a concious decision to not have a dedicated piece of HUD just for that one movement modifier. But I hadn't realized how much some people missed that. So just put in for 5.004:
* Added "Toggle Use-Group-Move-By-Default" In-Game key-bind (no default key, but you can set one on the In-Game tab of the input bindings window):
** Toggles the value of the Use-Group-Move-By-Default global control (normally changed through the controls screen, but can be set this way for convenience).
** Note that if you have the controls window open while using this key-bind, the controls window will not automatically update to reflect the change as that would destroy any changes made since the window was opened.
** To make it easier to know which way it was toggled (without having to open the controls window, which would defeat the purpose), using this toggle displays a local message on the screen noting the change.
ah keith, you are an officer and a gentleman
although why you would remove a peice of the hud that was so revolutionary and functional!
TA spring & starcraft do not have a dedicated group move/independant move button, but I sure wish they did because it reduced keyboard usage (I am a beleiver that the less the player has to use the keyboard when playing, the better and more functional the game GUI. TA spring scores highly here, and SC II very poorly.)
Ships are far better balanced now (except for spire fleetships - that's being worked on, I believe). An option should probably be added to "disable Spire fleetships" while the ships are being fixed though, because running up against certain Spire fleetship units can simple ruin a game, moreso than any other existing units (even eyebots, since those can now be defended against).
I think more than anything else, this is the single biggest problem with AI War currently: the AI usage of neinzul fleet ships.
consider:
you are on AIP 10, on a mark II planet. the AI has about 26 ships on most of its planets.
you attack the planet with a moderate force.
in
situation A, the AI does not have spire fleetships. it reinforces with about 30 odd random ships that have a shipcap that is some small variant default 96. This is perfectly manageable, as the reinforcing ships have a total DPS of around 35% of a single shipcap.
in
situation B, the AI has tractor platforms and stealth battleships unlocked. it reinforces with 4-5 of each plus a few other little ships. this is horrific and terrible, as the reinforcing ships have a total DPS and HP of 200% a normal shipcap. this is the equivalent of the AI reinforcing with 192 fighters... at AIP 10.
the difference in difficulty between situation A and situation B is huge.
this is increased further by the lack of counters for both of these ships- the radar dampening and sneakiness of the cloaked battleships makes it difficult to engage them with all your forces at once unless clumped, and none of the default ship types have a bonus VS the armour type of Tractor platforms, Turret. seige starships do not target them despite their high HP and size- this struck me as quite illogical as it took me a while to realise it was not firing. it adds up that Destroying 4-5 tractor platforms with MK I and MK II ships will take you a while, by which time the AI reinforces again, with a similar number of spire fleetships.
until the spawning of reinforcing ships is in some way proportional to their shipcaps- eg, spawning a shipcap=15 ship costs the same as spawning 6x shipcap=90 ships (or is 6x less likely), the AI unlocking low shipcap units is always going to artifically up the difficulty.
As for GUI and music, that basically boils down to personal taste mostly (at least the music). I did like the old sci fi-ish GUI, but the new one does not bother me, its not like it matters to me what the buttons look like (and they are not bad either imo, just different), all I am really interested in is pure gameplay, and the rest is fluff on top of it
I often get friends and housemates to try out AI war and most of them place great importance on visuals and polish, they will fail to be immersed or even dismiss the game out of hand if it dosnt look appealing. the menu screen & game lobby of 3.0 just looked that much more polished (even if it was lower-res).
The GUI on the game lobby screen looks much less proffesional than the 3.0 lobby. the menu panels are seperate, leaving a blank spot of grid in the bottom right hand corner on a wide screen that looks really poor.
just to come back to this point, does anyone else play at a resolution where this looks wonky?
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the balance between many of the bonus types (specifically base game & zenith rem) is actually pretty good, if less interesting than the 3.0 interactions.
teleport raiders, impulse emitters, deflection drones, acid sprayers & most the neinzul types are weak and I suspect are still never chosen by experienced players as starting types.
spacetanks & Z charmeleons suffer from being dull concepts (just bombers with better stats.) the tank isnt especially slow or tough, and the charmeleon is just a bomber with huge DPS but without the bonuses (and with a superfluous invisiblility while stationary, given their stats). Z charmeleon would be more interesting as a slow defensive ambush unit, and spacetanks as somthing with a little more contrast from the bomber.
N viral shredders never received the reproduction from lightning that made their concept interesting. the N ais attack waves are not well balanced or enjoyable to fight.
due to some interaction with the new armour system, the Z mirror no longer causes any significant damage with reflected projectiles (where before it had the possiblity to be incredibly devestating, or just die almost instantly toshots from a missle unit). its gone from one of the most interesting and potentially most powerful units (but not often) to somthing very washed out, a tougher deflection drone with a superfluous reflection ability.
the new parasites, both the standard ship and the leech starship, are sterile and uninteresting now, with complicated formulas governing their reclamation and a general loss of identity. the leech starship in particular has gone from one of the most iconic units (the spray of leech projectiles, the clever methods players developed of optimising farming). the old parasite system sure wasnt balanced, but it was fun, it was interesting and it could potentially have been balanced into sanity without being gutted. the new system is not interesting, and while the parasite bonus ship is actually more effective (in some circumstances) than the old ones, the new leech starship is horrible and dull... a large element of the 3.0 gameplay that really was fun removed.
the bomber starship had a more interesting concept in 3.0 (the spray of bomber projectiles that crippled engines) than it does now (a slow firing seige starship weapon with super short range).
the light starship is useless and very expensive now, and it dies to gaurdians almost instantly.
the flagship is likewise very weak compared to the other lines, where it used to be a powerhouse. the old 3.0 debate was always whether to unlock raid, flagship or leech first; now, raid is the best choice. bomber starships are the alternative, vital unless you want to spend long periods of game watching the HP of spire gaurdposts slowly trickle down. flagships are potentially useful for the damage boosts, but weak. seige starships are no longer useful at sniping gaurdposts or hitting shields from a distance where the nightmares underneath cant rip you apart (the two reasons players are most likely to want a seige unit) and now perform anti gaurdian & starship only- however, their targetting is inconsistant and they have no effect vs Stealth battleships, blade spawners or tractor platform, all of which are terrifiying at MK III+ and all difficult to counter in the rapidity that the AI reinforces them. the leech starship is not worth using or unlocking. the raid starships stats seem completely unreasonable and illgoical (an ultra-light armour type, only with 90,000 armour.. that seems like alot of armour, but its also the fastest ship in the game and the most resilient starship for straight up fighting.)
the spire fleetships are overpowered. fighting an AI with gravity rippers or the other slowing type becomes agony. the armour rotter is incredibly powerful and effective in the players hands (for attacking gaurdians, gaurdposts, starships etc). the blade spawner is the ultimate seige units in players hands, and in the AIs hands makes attacking AI systems a miserable affair. the tractor platform is devestating in the AIs hands because the numbers they reinforce with and their armour type (turret) making them difficult to quickly destroy with most units (and immunity to seige); the stealth battleship at higher marks (III+) is madness (and when used by the player, in a group with MK I, II & III together becomes an all powerful raiding tool), and in the hands of the AI (ie. large numbers, cloak, dampening and seige immunity) almost unstoppable.
a number of gameplay mechanics- AI eye + spire gaurdposts, fortresses etc- make the player resort to long periods of extremely dull and agonizing repetition.
all of these might seem like minor niggles, but they add up to somthing fairly broken. I find most of my games atm are ruined by the apperance of AI spire fleetships, whereby I take gross losses and get frustrated.
