The AI 9 through 10 run

[rabican]

heh, now that you mention it i forgot that that game has both options toned to 1/10 And they were ofcourse a complete joke.

Not entirely sure how big a threat exos are, AIP is so low for vast majority of the  game that  they don't really get to build up.  And when they come you can easily concentrate the defenses on spots you absoulutely must defend (home, and factory if you have one).  Whelp, i need to play this again with proper settings.

[TechSY730]

For the multiple rebel colony thing, maybe something like reduce their base ship cap in half or to 2/3rds or something (in addition to making lose their cloaking much, much faster if their planet is lost again), but have each additional colony past the first add an extra half or quarter or something to their ship cap.
The Fallen spire has shown that dynamic ship caps are supported by the game, so something like that could work here. It would also have that greater risk, greater reward mechanic that is usually fun.

Also, was the fact that rebel colonies are not immune to tachyon beams intentional?

[relmz32]

This set of after action reports are great! 
Thanks for all the effort, especially in recording what happened in your games.
Maybe I'll post a couple of  (Significantly less impresssive) aar of my games, after I'm done with my refresher game.

[keith.lamothe]

In general I think it's mainly a matter of you playing at a high enough difficulty that if a knowledge unlock doesn't give you more offensive power it's just not on the table (mostly).  I generally see folks at saner levels getting a fairly large amount of turret unlo...

I have an idea.  Dunno when I'l get to it, but I think it will help

Cool, I look forward to seeing that.

Here's the relevant part of the release notes (as seen here, there's a few other things in there that we discussed here.  It's not out yet, hopefully will be this week, gotta get that AVWW official out the door) :

* Didn't want to let the AI have _all_ the fun, so: Added 4 new drone ship types that only the Neinzul Enclave Starship can build:
** Neinzul Laser Drone I-IV
*** MkI and II require Laser Turret II technology.  MkIII and IV require Laser Turret III technology.
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Laser Turrets have a bonus against.
** Neinzul Needler Drone I-IV
*** MkI and II require Basic Turret II technology.  MkIII and IV require Basic Turret III technology.
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Basic Turrets have a bonus against.
** Neinzul MLRS Drone I-IV
*** MkI and II require MLRS Turret II technology.  MkIII and IV require MLRS Turret III technology.
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that MLRS Turrets have a bonus against.
** Neinzul Missile Drone I-IV
*** MkI and II require Missile Turret II technology.  MkIII and IV require Missile Turret III technology.
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Missile Turrets have a bonus against.
** A Neinzul Enclave Starship can build any of these up to its own mark level once you have the corresponding turret technology, just select an enclave and click the "DRONE" tab on the buy menu (similar to how the Starship Constructor has a "RIOT" tab for the Riot Control Starships).
** Stat wise:
*** Each drone only lives 30 seconds; no repair, no attrition-stops-on-low-power, no regeneration chambers, nada.  It's got 30 seconds to hurt something.
*** Drones do not have the lightning speed of the normal Youngling types (not wanting these to horn in on what makes the younglings special).  One consequence is that the "mothership" has to be within a certain range of the stuff you want hurt.
*** Drones are pretty flimsy, but dying from enemy fire isn't much of an event for these.
*** Ship cap is about 25% of normal because these aren't supposed to be like a whole new ship unlock, they're just a bonus on top of what you already get for turret (and enclave starship) research.
*** Drones cannot traverse wormholes.
*** Drones are super, super cheap in both metal/crystal and energy.
*** Attack-power-wise n an individual basis they're about as strong as a normal fleet ship with 5x bonuses, making them fairly effective against the stuff with those hull types.
** The motivation behind these:
*** High-difficulty play can make it feel very painful to spend knowledge unlocking something that doesn't give an offensive boost.  That's fine, but turrets in particular could get very little love due to their... very limited offensive use, shall we say.  So having turret research provide a modest amount of offensive boost (if you have CoN and thus the Neinzul Enclave Starship, anyhow) seemed like a fun way to do things.  And we've already done the cross-tech thing with having turret research unlock spire capital ship modules in LotS, so doing a bit more of it seemed fine.
*** Despite the fairly massive buffs Neinzul Enclave Starships received not long ago there's still been a lot of feedback that they're underwhelming and that they don't have a lot of point.  Well, now they can build lots of little sharp points that will really annoy the AI for you, and they're the only way to build them.
*** But this is also not so powerful that you have to do turret research or even use the enclaves at all, it's just making it nicer if you do.

Anyway, hopefully it will make those choices more interesting

[PokerChen]

In general I think it's mainly a matter of you playing at a high enough difficulty that if a knowledge unlock doesn't give you more offensive power it's just not on the table (mostly).  I generally see folks at saner levels getting a fairly large amount of turret unlo...

I have an idea.  Dunno when I'l get to it, but I think it will help

Cool, I look forward to seeing that.

Here's the relevant part of the release notes (as seen here, there's a few other things in there that we discussed here.  It's not out yet, hopefully will be this week, gotta get that AVWW official out the door) :

...

Anyway, hopefully it will make those choices more interesting

Right, well I'm seeing the potential for some universal low-mark usage - being of the camp that rarely unlocks any turrets costing 1000+ knowledge (except for Fallen Spire). We shall have to see how strong these drones are and whether they interfere with reinforcement rates for a deep-strike fleet.

There will likely be some intermittent background micro switching between in-battle drone building and out-of-battle fleet-building.

[Wanderer]

In general I think it's mainly a matter of you playing at a high enough difficulty that if a knowledge unlock doesn't give you more offensive power it's just not on the table (mostly).  I generally see folks at saner levels getting a fairly large amount of turret unlo...

I have an idea.  Dunno when I'l get to it, but I think it will help

Cool, I look forward to seeing that.

Here's the relevant part of the release notes (as seen here, there's a few other things in there that we discussed here.  It's not out yet, hopefully will be this week, gotta get that AVWW official out the door) :

Those look very interesting!  Depending on how the low-end ones work out I'll have to test out the larger ones.  Considering I almost always have Basic IIs unlocked the Needlers will probably get an extensive review by my fleet.  The idea of these almost reminds me of Protoss Carriers.  I hadn't had a chance to play with the improved versions yet but now I'll definately have to drag a few out.

You flipped the direction of the upgrade for the Tech improvements I'd had in mind, but this still looks like it could be interesting.  In particular that's going to get NASTY going through Tech II to Tech III... errr, wait, no not really, the Tech III boost is WAY the heck out further.  That should be fun.  I assume 10/10 still has the 300/800 III/IV limits.  Out of curiousity, did you plan on dropping that kind of granularity down to the 7.x spread as well, or do you not forsee a need?

Those carriers look MEAN.

To understand the change for the wave-sizes, I'm not sure I see where you're going with that.  I'd expected it to be affecting the size-factor due to time and how often they landed, not the wave size themselves (also I'd expected a bit more of a cap on the multi-planet, but I can see why it's not there).

Which from this is what I think you mean but I'm not entirely sure where/how:

On Diff 7+ the randomization of wave intervals (which feeds directly into step 5 of the wave size formula) has been changed to consider the number of planets that the AI can send waves against (and thus the probable defensive power of those worlds, i.e. chokepoints, and the viability or lack thereof of smaller waves):

Looking through both AIThreadWaveComputationLog, step 5:

3/5/2012 7:54:14 PM (5.029)
-----------------------------------
Starting CreateMixedWaveToPlanet at Game Time: 0:46:00 ; Player.AIType: Sledge_Hammer ; Player.AIDifficulty: 7 ; AIProgressionLevel: 71 ; AITechLevel: 1 ; WaveSize: 1.63
aiTypeBasedAIPIncrement : 30
workingShips = ( AIProgressionLevel * player.AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - player.AIDifficulty ) : 117.83
workingShips *= FInt.FromParts( 0, AILoop.Instance.AIRandom.Next( 800, 1100 ) ) : 104.25
workingShips = Min(workingShips,34 * handicap_multiplier) :104.25
numberShips = workingShips.IntValue :104
Inside AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, multiplier: 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType call, numberShips :104
numberTech123 = numberShips - numberDefensive - numberExplosive - numberCore :104

Well, no, that can't be right...  Alright, MainThreadComputationLog...

6/1/2012 5:38:24 PM (5.035)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 1.44 on wave at Game Time: 11:04:58

CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 72
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 103.99
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 52
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 62.39
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 56.15
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 56.15
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 252.66
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 252

Um, I don't get it.

Core CPA Guard Posts now trigger in response to >= 1 enemy human military ship being present, rather than > 1. So that Artillery Golem won't get by on the ol' "But I'm just *one* ship!" excuse anymore.
 

LOL.  that's cute.  "That's no moon..."

MK V Maws... Nom nom nom nom nom... heeeeere little fabricator...

[Wanderer]

what's your next game going to be?

Sorry, got caught up in the discussion on my opinions, heh.

My next game?   A nice fat 8 homeworld Battle Royale.  I haven't enjoyed one of those in a while.

[Wanderer]

Actually crosshatch 10/10 is suprisingly easy , i managed to first the first one of those where i survived first 2hours.

That's primarily because I conned Keith into lowering the opening smackdown that 10/10 used to provide so you could get your feet under you before the waves overwhelmed you.  The opening moves used to have to be perfectly timed simply to survive the opening waves at 7 minutes.  Now that it's been gentled, the early game is survivable.  It's mid-late game that's supposed to simply eat you. 

You get relatively easy acess to every planet , can blow up all the DC's and lurk at low aip for long time.

I'll agree with this, it was one of the ways I was beating the 9/9 I AAR'd.

With jumpships you can clear the galaxy from DC's as soon as you get your second planet.

Hm, Spirecraft aren't a ship type I usually look at for significant tactics, but this does make a good point.  You do need to scout pretty heavily though to do this.

And once you lurk enough to get a colony rebellion you no longer need to use rest of your fleet offensively at all.  The op   Rebel units clear all the stuff up for you with ease. Also cherrypicking your planets in crosshatch is very easy. You'll gain plenty of golems /shields/ars easily . If there is ST or botnet you can probably even connect your planets without too much hassle.

The problem with this is that the AI also has pretty much unlimited access to all of your worlds.  This isn't a significant problem in the early game.  It becomes disasterous later.

Sure the border agression is pure murder and 90% of your fleet will be in defense for most of the game but crosshatch still isn't much more difficult for 10/10 than any other map

Hm.  You've got me curious about trying that out now.

[Wanderer]

For the multiple rebel colony thing, maybe something like reduce their base ship cap in half or to 2/3rds or something (in addition to making lose their cloaking much, much faster if their planet is lost again), but have each additional colony past the first add an extra half or quarter or something to their ship cap.
The Fallen spire has shown that dynamic ship caps are supported by the game, so something like that could work here. It would also have that greater risk, greater reward mechanic that is usually fun.

This makes sense to me, actually, due to the fact that each colony is a point of possible serious loss.  However, how often do you really expect to see two (or more) colonies when they average spawning at 8 to 9 hours in?

Also, was the fact that rebel colonies are not immune to tachyon beams intentional?

I'm pretty sure that's a yes.

[Wanderer]

This set of after action reports are great! 
Thanks for all the effort, especially in recording what happened in your games.
Maybe I'll post a couple of  (Significantly less impresssive) aar of my games, after I'm done with my refresher game.

Thanks for that.  If there's something in particular you found helpful in these please let me know, I'll try to make sure those are included in future AARs.

[TechSY730]

You flipped the direction of the upgrade for the Tech improvements I'd had in mind, but this still looks like it could be interesting.  In particular that's going to get NASTY going through Tech II to Tech III... errr, wait, no not really, the Tech III boost is WAY the heck out further.  That should be fun.  I assume 10/10 still has the 300/800 III/IV limits.  Out of curiousity, did you plan on dropping that kind of granularity down to the 7.x spread as well, or do you not forsee a need?

Not sure if this type of mechanic would be appropriate for 7.0, but maybe for >=7.3 or >=8.0 or >=8.3

[keith.lamothe]

You flipped the direction of the upgrade for the Tech improvements I'd had in mind, but this still looks like it could be interesting.  In particular that's going to get NASTY going through Tech II to Tech III... errr, wait, no not really, the Tech III boost is WAY the heck out further.  That should be fun.  I assume 10/10 still has the 300/800 III/IV limits.

No, 10/10 will also be working off the base of 300/800/1200 for II/III/IV, but the actual thresholds on 10 will be 0/500/900 or something like that (haven't checked in-game).  So avoiding a full transition to MkIII should be quite possible (if you hit 500 AIP on 10/10 then either you're playing FS or you're going to lose).  But at 300 AIP you're getting waves that are "spending" about 60% of their strength on MkIII ships.  So it's a bit nicer to you in some respects, but that's fine considering the other changes.  Particularly the carrier change; I expect that's going to cause some serious brown-trousers moments.  Which is also fine, because the difference between 1000 ships and 1000 ships + 1 carrier carrying another 1000 ships should be suitably frightening  

Out of curiousity, did you plan on dropping that kind of granularity down to the 7.x spread as well, or do you not forsee a need?

I considered it, and I would like to, but I wanted to try this out on the higher difficulties first.  7.0 is still fair game for new players, really, and I wasn't sure if doing this would complicate things too much.

Those carriers look MEAN.

Oh, they are.  I expect heated complaints   They're also a lot less dangerous than the contained ships, so I expect said complaints to settle down after the culture shock, too.

To understand the change for the wave-sizes, I'm not sure I see where you're going with that.  I'd expected it to be affecting the size-factor due to time and how often they landed, not the wave size themselves (also I'd expected a bit more of a cap on the multi-planet, but I can see why it's not there).

Sorry, I should have included a link in the notes to this: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Why_Do_Enemy_Waves_Get_So_Large%3F#How_Wave_Sizes_Are_Calculated .  That's the "official" formula when I'm giving step numbers.  If I'm trying to talk about lines from the log I'll probably just quote an example line or something like that.

But yea, that bit about wave intervals shouldn't impact the total ships thrown at you in waves across a given period of time, it just concentrates them more if the AI sees a limited number of entry points.  Combined with the carriers, I expect real lethality on 10/10

[Hearteater]

On Diff 9+ it always gets two picks from this new set. So you could get an Eye + a Core Raid, or two CPAs, or two Eyes (which is actually kind of nice to you since they don't really stack), or whatever. But not 3 Core Raids. And not none of the above.

Why wouldn't two AI Eyes spawn twice as much?  Or at least have half the threshold (so 1:1 instead of 2:1)?

[keith.lamothe]

On Diff 9+ it always gets two picks from this new set. So you could get an Eye + a Core Raid, or two CPAs, or two Eyes (which is actually kind of nice to you since they don't really stack), or whatever. But not 3 Core Raids. And not none of the above.

Why wouldn't two AI Eyes spawn twice as much?  Or at least have half the threshold (so 1:1 instead of 2:1)?

Their logic doesn't tell them so   An eye, on its "turn", simply checks friendly vs enemy and if it's worse than 1:2 it spawns enough to even the difference, all at once (iirc), so doubling them doesn't really even increase the rate.

I may do something to prevent it from doubling those, or make a new separate "Core Eye" type or something like that is more dangerous as a pair, etc.  For now I think it's fine.

[Oralordos]

You know, you are going to have to put Wanderer's name into your game credits as someone who can beat 10/10 in a fair fight. Or at least reference his achievement in the title of the next release.