Ow.

[TechSY730]

Made new thread about the spawner ships in AI hands thing.
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12960.0.html

[Faulty Logic]

How the crud did they get 17 of them on game spawn? Did that planet have only 17 of them and like nothing else mobile on that planet?

Precisely. I don't think 2 caps of mobile ships is a bug, per se. It was certainly a roadblock, though.

Now you might be happy that they get anti-dark matter ammo.

Yeah, spending 1000 k not to worry about them seems reasonable.

[Faulty Logic]

===Operation Entrenchment====
An exo is coming. I must prepare.

I take two more planets for an artillery golem and nanoswarms.

I repair the Hive.

I unlock military stations III for income and attack boost.

I unlock HBCs II-III.

I do 4 nebulae (not quite enough time to become a cruiser), deploying two mod forts at the choke.

And I build lots of spirecraft.

Gametime 5:10. Exo time.

One big hammer on the choke. Led by an H/K mkIII. My huge group of penetrators insta-kills him. 28 Rams deal with the three enemy golems, my golems, fleet, and fixed defences mop up.

That was easier than I expected. Of course, I did spend about 2 hours just preparing for the exo. I think a mild strength buff is still in order (their rate is good, though).

The last explosions from that battle have barely died, when CPA number 2 declares with 7500 ships. Joy.

Stopping here. State of Empire (not quite current, CPA will declare a couple minutes later):

[TechSY730]

Impressive work shutting the AIs stuff down so far.

However, you did just dump a bunch of spirecraft onto it, including some Rams, which you don't get to reuse, and you get a finite number of.

And also, only 5 hours in and you are already getting Mk. III H/Ks escorted by golems in exos, followed by a 7500 ship count CPA!? Ouch!! 10/10 hurts. 

[keith.lamothe]

One big hammer on the choke. Led by an H/K mkIII.

Oh, yeah!

My huge group of penetrators insta-kills him.

Oh, no!

28 Rams deal with the three enemy golems

You really know how to make the AI feel welcome.

only 5 hours in and you are already getting Mk. III H/Ks escorted by golems in exos, followed by a 7500 ship count CPA!? Ouch!! 10/10 hurts. 

Yea, but

I think a mild strength buff is still in order (their rate is good, though).

He still asks for more.  On the exos, at least.

We'll see about the CPA, but I think we all know where this is going.

[TechSY730]

Warhead?

Yea, that would work, but
1. The CPA will be threatfleet, so there is no telling where they would be. (Oh wait, is he playing with complete visibility? if so, this becomes a moot point.)
2. The AIP will go up, making the next CPAs even thougher. There does eventually come a point where attack forces get so large, not even warheads will be able to kill them all in time.
Not to mention all the other ways AIP makes things harder to deal with.


As for the exos, well, spirecraft are finite in number, and the exos will just keep getting nastier (don't they also come more often if AIP goes up?). He can't keep up the implosion/ram combo up forever.


I guess the key question is if he will be able to reach the CSGs and homeworlds in time before he is forced to use this sort of stuff so many times it no longer becomes sustainable (running out of spirecraft, or attacks and CPAs get too big for even martyrs and warheads to handle in time, Mk. V carrier spam, whatever)

[Faulty Logic]

Been pretty busy, with the return of health problems, the skyward alpha, and trying all of arcens' other games. But AI War remains my favorite, and I find time for it.

You really know how to make the AI feel welcome.

That was merely a welcome mat. This is a full greeting. And that isn't the craziest choke I've set up.

We'll see about the CPA, but I think we all know where this is going.

I read that as "my victory." Not there yet, though.

I guess the key question is if he will be able to reach the CSGs and homeworlds in time before he is forced to use this sort of stuff so many times it no longer becomes sustainable (running out of spirecraft, or attacks and CPAs get too big for even martyrs and warheads to handle in time, Mk. V carrier spam, whatever)

Indeed. I don't think I'll run out of spirecraft for quite a while, though.

===Operation Swat the CPA====

Yes, "swat" is the appropriate verb. A shadow cruiser (did the Mourner scenario in the 10 mins between announcement and arrival) and black widow kill threatballs fast. I used couple martyrs on the main threatball (3500), and cleaned the others. It wasn't hard, but those TDLs are really, really annoying to clean up. I think a health nerf is in order. Anyway, gametime is now 6:15. Like I said: tedious and time-consuming.

The new toggles are awesome. I'd like to thank whoever suggested them (yes, I'm shameless).

===Operation Advanced Negotiation====

Operational goals: Conquering the three-planet, FactIV/Widow/Arti/Z Reproc V branch, and achieving battleship size. AIP 129.

While Negotiating, repaired new golems, and built a new batch of spirecraft. Exo at 55% by the time I have a battleship. I'll take a couple ARS systems, then see about the latest batch of hacking buffs.

I capture two of the three remaining ARSs (grav drain, sentinel frigate), and gate raid to preserve single-entry (AIP 154), when an 11,000 ship CPA declares. Sigh.

Apparently the AI thinks its reserve is made entirely of bombers. Every one of the ~5000 ships contributed by the SR is a bomber.

The various threatballs are too cowardly to attack, so I kill them one by one. Gametime 8:20.

Exo at 78%.

Should be enough time for some hacking.

Observations
You might want to update guardian-creation-from-carrier costs to reflect their new nastiness.

Firefly bombs are fun.

The SF-Alarm posts may need a revisit. ~10,000 extra threat is no picnic, especially led by enemy frigates.

AI homeworlds should have planetary tachyon emission. As part of the home command station. There's just too much cloaking-related cheese that can occur (penetrator/ram assassinations are the worst of it).

State of Empire:

[keith.lamothe]

Been pretty busy, with the return of health problems, the skyward alpha, and trying all of arcens' other games. But AI War remains my favorite, and I find time for it.

I hope you feel better soon (and that those problems are not serious).  Glad the games are there to entertain you.  For some definition of "entertain".

Yes, "swat" is the appropriate verb. A shadow cruiser (did the Mourner scenario in the 10 mins between announcement and arrival) and black widow kill threatballs fast.

Clearly the AI needs more fear of wormholes.

Apparently the AI thinks its reserve is made entirely of bombers. Every one of the ~5000 ships contributed by the SR is a bomber.

It has this curious notion that 5000+ bombers can actually penetrate your defenses.

You might want to update guardian-creation-from-carrier costs to reflect their new nastiness.

Hmm, yea, I guess that aspect of their pricing didn't get updated, though the other ones did in various ways.

The SF-Alarm posts may need a revisit. ~10,000 extra threat is no picnic, especially led by enemy frigates.

They may need a revisit in the sense of emphasizing to the player that "there is something on this planet that can kill you".  The mechanic itself I like quite a bit.

[Faulty Logic]

I hope you feel better soon (and that those problems are not serious).  Glad the games are there to entertain you.  For some definition of "entertain".

Nothing close to life-threatening, but it seriously interferes with going to school. AI War (among others, but mainly this) has been the difference between bad and terrible days.

It has this curious notion that 5000+ bombers can actually penetrate your defenses.

Silly AI. Can't it read the "no fleetships" sign, made of insanity inducers, translocators, and turrets?

They may need a revisit in the sense of emphasizing to the player that "there is something on this planet that can kill you".  The mechanic itself I like quite a bit.

I'd up the AIP to 10, but if you destroy the post, you definitely won't get a special forces attack.

===Operation Mad Hacker====

First hack: complete. Cute new mechanic, there, that warp-counterwave at 30 seconds almost cost me a fabricator.

Unlocks so far:
Harvester IIIs
Military command IIIs
Engi IIs
Y firefly, nanoswarm IIIs
Grav drain IIIs
Sentinel IIs
Enclave IIIs
FlagshipIIs
Heavy Bomber IIs
Zenith/Spire I
Riot IIs
FortressIs
Miniforts.

There is never enough k.

Gametime 8:33, exo progress 82%.

Hack 2 was nastier, due to guardian changes more than anything else. My spider golems were severely damaged by enemy artillery guardians.

Conquer a couple more planets (continuity, bulletproof V/exp engi), and unlock riotIIIs and sentinel IIIs.

By the time my golems are repaired and riots are built, it's about 9 hours. And with only 5% to go, I'll simply wait for the exo.

===Operation Exoswat====

Negotiator and minions deal with the group going for the ACS, and the other exos target the golems (all at the choke). A wave (2300), and threatfleet (7 frigates, 300 TDLS, ~20 guardians, 500 misc) join it. Leading is an H/K III. It gets the same treatment as last time, and the other stuff is pretty much slaughtered.

In other news, a colony rebellion declared, on an artillery golem/raid engine/ grav drill planet, and my AIP is back down to 162. It's not looking good for the AI.

State of Empire (and chokepoint picture (add 32 rams for what it looked like pre-exo)):

[keith.lamothe]

Nothing close to life-threatening, but it seriously interferes with going to school. AI War (among others, but mainly this) has been the difference between bad and terrible days.

Sorry it's so rough.  Glad that cheesing the living daylights out of an unsuspecting piece of circuitry can be of some assistance, though.

Silly AI. Can't it read the "no fleetships" sign, made of insanity inducers, translocators, and turrets?

None of the ships seem to file proper reports before dropping off the comm net, for some reason.

"Dispatching Taskforce #111001101, objective: discern status of Taskforce #111001100"

Operation Exoswat

More mechanical futility, I see.

I wonder how much of this is the spokes.  At least for the CPAs/threatfleet.  The absolutely unreadable nature of most spokes maps has probably kept people from exploiting this much, but with manual graph untangling the AI's lack of tolerance for disjoint graphs seems to be showing.

[TechSY730]

Gee, I wonder how much of this probable coming up victory can be written up to "Spirecraft cheese" (martyr, ram, and penetrator, I'm looking at you) and "AI lack of response to mobile cloak if it gets past the static tachyon defenses" cheese.

Also, the sometimes...odd behavior of the AI when there are more than 1 large-ish disconnected clusters that make up its AI space is indeed quite abusable. Many of the "this group of ships should go to a planet" type systems will cause ships to just blindly stumble into human worlds if there are no other ways they can go. (This is opposed to "I should go to a planet" decisions that happen on a per-ship basis. Those generally will wait until its somewhat safe before charging in)
This can lead to some glorious cheese, especially for "weakly connected" map types like tree, spokes, and the various maze types.

[Faulty Logic]

Gee, I wonder how much of this probable coming up victory can be written up to "Spirecraft cheese" (martyr, ram, and penetrator, I'm looking at you) and "AI lack of response to mobile cloak if it gets past the static tachyon defenses" cheese.

I don't consider the spirecraft cheese (unless I did something like kill the HW with just penetrators/cloaked rams), because they are, after all, superweapons. Martyrs have saved me time, but have never been vital. Rams did exactly what they were supposed to, same with penetrators.

I really don't mind the cloaking situation as it stands, except on the AI HWs, which, IMO, should always have planetary tachyons.

Many of the "this group of ships should go to a planet" type systems will cause ships to just blindly stumble into human worlds if there are no other ways they can go.

This hasn't happened. If anything, it's the opposite problem, of them being too cowardly to attack, even if they would win (or at least do some damage).

Do threatfleets consider the firepower of neighboring threatfleets when they make their "should I attack" decision? Because I've had systems defended by only a fort+miniforts, and 1500 ships around it, in groups of about 300, and no attack.

I wonder how much of this is the spokes.  At least for the CPAs/threatfleet.

Well, I did build my strategy around the map, making it difficult to really be sure. However, spokes definitely helps, for chokepointing waves (it's not nearly so good for exos, though), and isolating AI fleets from each other.

 I'll typically burn a few warheads at CPA time, and I haven't had to this game, so it has saved me about 10 AIP (at most), though the Golems/Spirecraft alleviate base game threats quite a bit.

cheesing the living daylights out of an unsuspecting piece of circuitry

Anything standing out as disqualifyingly cheesy?

[keith.lamothe]

cheesing the living daylights out of an unsuspecting piece of circuitry

Anything standing out as disqualifyingly cheesy?

Not really.  My main concern is that the AI is just not handling the disjoint graph problem well; I honestly don't know why those threatfleet ships are just waiting to cross rather than just crossing if they've got a target planet (which they always do).  That might not be better but at least it would have a chance of hurting you instead of just feeding the widow golem.

To your question: the wait logic does consider other threatballs targeting the same planet, yes.

Other than that I wonder about the Spirecraft and how their benefit can be balanced.  Golems too, to a lesser extent.  I mean, I can keep making the exos bigger on Diff 10, but I don't know that this is the right way.  Perhaps having them try to coordinate with CPAs a bit or something like that.

[Faulty Logic]

Here's the CPA:

It'll hit in about 10 seconds, freeze for about a minute, then pile up on the wormholes. Debug shows that they typically target planets a few hops away, don't know if that explains it.

Edit: sure I have logs:

[TechSY730]

Do threatfleets consider the firepower of neighboring threatfleets when they make their "should I attack" decision? Because I've had systems defended by only a fort+miniforts, and 1500 ships around it, in groups of about 300, and no attack.

I think this is the key thing to investigate. Why didn't they attack in this case? Does regular threat also do this "also adjacent planets" check? Does regular threat also factor in threat fleet that is planning on attacking the planet they are waiting on, and vica versa?

If so, why didn't they attack in this case?

I have seen this several times myself as well. Is it the "consider human planets to have X times they really have" thing going that happens at higher difficulties kicking in a bit too aggressively? (Aka, is X set too high for high difficulties) Is there some sort of bug making them not go in when the intended logic says they should?
Hmm, got logs?


Also, mentioning the "afraid of wormholes" thing. I think it would be a smart move if some of the ships waiting around a wormhole pulled back a bit (but still on the same planet) so they don't get insta-alpha'd by a strong AOE coming through. Again, only some, not all, as having some right one top of the wormhole does often allow their alpha to shutdown more moderate forms of attack coming through.