The First Words - A Newbie's First Game

[Wordsmith]

But the difference from the 40k situations I think you're describing is that when a heavy enemy attack comes in in AIW your main challenge is generally not keeping your defense force alive (though that can be hard), it's killing the enemy invaders before they kill something important.

Yeah, I figured. Useful on the offense, not so much on the defense. Still useful, though.

Another mechanical difference is that it's a lot more common in AIW (iirc) to find heavy enemy units with a high rate of fire.  Sure, those individual shots are getting soaked up, but it gets a whole lot of shots "per turn" and can afford to eat a few caps of your minnows.

Well, there are actually quite a few units in 40k with a high rate of fire - which is precisely why you use such high numbers of the high-cap ships. And while you can afford to eat a few caps' worth of casualties, I'd very much prefer not to. ;P

Also, in general when you're defending a serious attack you're substantially outnumbered.

Fair enough. I haven't really had any serious attacks launched against me yet.

So basically, you didn't read what I wrote?  Did you notice that high cap ships take LONGER to replace than low cap ships?

I did. And you're wrong. Again, you're looking at things too shallowly, I think. It takes longer to produce a full cap of high-cap ships, precisely because there are so many of them. But in the time it takes to produce a full cap of the low-cap ships, you could have four times that number of high-caps.

You don't have to measure everything by extremes.

Your 40k analogy isn't particularly useful in the context of AI Wars, for a list of reasons based on 40k mechanics and victory conditions that I don't feel it is necessary to go in to.

Which, you'll note, is why I didn't go into any 40k-specific mechanics, save the points (which were just used to show how the Conscripts were the same cheap unit-type as high-cap ships in this game). The Conscripts are an example. The same principle can be applied to any strategy game.

But the biggest issue is younglings are so much stronger than any other high cap spam unit they just make non-younglings obsolete.  So high caps really do need to be competitive DPS-wise, unless they have a special role (which Space Planes actually do).  But in no way are Micro Fighters, for example, better than any of the youngling options.

I never said they were, because I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know what Younglings are or how they render other stuff obsolete.

[Oralordos]

Younglings would be the designed spam units of this game. They are all extremely cheap and fast. They also usually have enough health to survive a couple hits. Their downside is that they attrition health over time. I think they die four? minutes after being made. When combined with the neinzul enclaves which are basically mobile factories, they can be a rather effective attack force.

[Kahuna]

Spire Stealth Battleship VS Laser Gatling

Spire Stealth Battleship

Cap: 5	| Rebuilt in 1s: 0,00746 (0,746% of 1 SSB)	| 2,46*0,00746=0,018=1,8% of 1 SSB
Health: 1.920.000
Cap Health: 9.600.000	| Health rebuilt in 1s: 14.328	| 2,46*14.328=35.247
DPS: 36.000
DPS With Multiplier: 50.400
Cap DPS: 180.000	| DPS rebuilt in 1s: 269	| 2,46*269=662
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 252.000	| DPS WM rebuilt in 1s: 376	| 2,46*376=925
Build Time: 134s
Cap Build Time: 670s	| Helped by Engineers: 670/272=2,46	| 670/2,46=272s
Total Cost: 22.000
Cap Total Cost: 110.000	| Total resources used in 1s: 164	| 2,46*403

Laser Gatling

Cap: 272	| Rebuilt in 1s: 1
Health: 39.400
Cap Health: 10.716.800	| Health rebuilt in 1s: 39.400
DPS: 600
DPS With Multiplier: 1080
Cap DPS: 163.200	| DPS rebuilt in 1s: 600
Cap DPS With Multiplier: 293.760	| DPS WM rebuilt in 1s: 1.080
Build Time: 1s
Cap Build Time: 272s
Total Cost: 400
Cap Total Cost: 108.800	| Total resources used in 1s: 400

In terms of..
..Health: 1 SSB = 49 LGs
..DPS: 1 SSB = 60 LGs
..Build Time: 1 SSB = 134 LGs
..Total Cost: 1 SSB = 55 LGs

Boom! Laser Gatlings win!

[Hearteater]

Do you need me to explain by SSB are a bad comparison, or are you just being silly?

[Faulty Logic]

Could many of the high cap ships use a bit of a buff? Yes. But they are not as bad players like to think they are

There are a some cases where they are the better solution, like against ship that deals huge damage with every shot (zombards, H/Ks, Forts, armored golem) or you want to clog up the enemy defences (ion cannon, Doomsquid, spiders, honeycombs), but, succinctly, they suck.

The breakdown: High-cap ships are relatively:

Expensive: they die so often that they cost significantly more over time.

Ineffective: because their damage curve decays so fast, they end up dealing less damage than lower cap units.

Not favored by secondary mechanics: like putting ships under a ff, transport-unloads, cloaker starships, AoE, and eyes.


I think a major buff is in order, about a 50% dps or health increase.

[TechSY730]

Those two cases you mentioned are actually much more useful than you are giving them credit for.

Even if they weren't, 50% above normal target balance for fleet ships seems a bit much. 20-25% seems closer to a good point.

[Faulty Logic]

Those two cases you mentioned are actually much more useful than you are giving them credit for.

Even if they weren't, 50% above normal target balance for fleet ships seems a bit much. 20-25% seems closer to a good point.

In both cases, the AI prefers to target your normal/low caps.

20-25% to both, or one?

Another buff I would like to see (even more than either dps or health) would be to dramatically increase their speed, giving them a unique use.

[Minotaar]

I just checked the high-cap fleet ships, and none of them can really compare favorably to younglings (space planes got a large buff not so long ago and are now rather formidable, though). I think it mostly comes down to them having a much larger cap cost and no real advantage in stats (and they are usually much worse on HP to boot). Decreasing their cost would just make both fill the same role, though, so I would be in favor of increasing their damage across the board, so that they can swarm smaller groups of enemies but not participate in sustained battles without severe casualties. The attrition wars would still be the domain of younglings.
Decreasing the rate of fire for more damage would also help with the random armor. I mean, Laser Gatling has a polycrystal multiplier, 600 armor piercing and still can't get through a bomber's 1200 armor without an almost 80% damage reduction! Combine that with the fact that the AI usually has mark advantage and things are really not looking great for our swarmers.
So really, give them some more damage, they need it
(also we really better continue this discussion somewhere else)

[Wordsmith]

(also we really better continue this discussion somewhere else)

As interesting as it is, yeah, I think it would be best off in another thread.

Anyway, because I am a glutton for punishment (and because I'm starting to realize that Difficulty 5 really isn't any challenge here; after about twenty more minutes of gameplay from the last thing I posted, I held Cabot, had pretty much maxed-out resource pools, and was rebuilding my army without any real threat from any of the nearby AI planets). I also admit that I just want to see all the cool new stuff that came with the expansion packs, so there's that as well.

So. Incoming shortly, a new game! 7/7 this time, with rather more features enabled.

NEW GAME DETAILS:
 - Map Style: Clusters
 - Opponents: Two Difficulty 7 AIs, each a Random Moderate.
 - Expansions: All.
 - AI Progress Rate: 1 per 30 minutes.
 - Enabled Features: Human Raiders, Human Resistance Fighters, Human Colony Rebellions, Zenith Traders, Broken Golems (Moderate). All of those to whom it applies are at 4/10.
 - AI Plots: Astro Trains and Beachheads on both AIs, because screw taking this slow, I want to get steamrollered.
 - Starting Bonus Ship: SPACE PLAAAAAAANES oh my god I know nothing about them except they are laser planes in space and they are also swarm units yeeeeeeeeessssssss

The Map



My home planet, which I have chosen to call "Forrester", is in the lower-left cluster. You can probably see the Space Plane icon on it, but just to be sure.

Let's see how long it takes me to get utterly crushed.

EDIT: Oh, and some questions. What do the "x3" or "x5" or "x6" multiplier icons on the map mean? What is the point of selecting multiple planets prior to game start, and why does it highlight a path between them? I never could figure either of those out.

[LaughingThesaurus]

You should look into picking up the beta updates. They're always worth getting, and are generally speaking very stable. If they aren't stable, give it 5 minutes and Keith will probably have already fixed it by then. Balance is another story, but I don't think perfect balance is quite AI War's biggest focus either way.

[Wordsmith]

You should look into picking up the beta updates. They're always worth getting, and are generally speaking very stable. If they aren't stable, give it 5 minutes and Keith will probably have already fixed it by then. Balance is another story, but I don't think perfect balance is quite AI War's biggest focus either way.

I actually tried, a couple times. Every time it told me to restart the game to install them, but it would always say immediately afterwards that there were the same updates available for install. I might try it again in a bit, but for now I'm content with what I've got.

[LaughingThesaurus]

You should be able to get some support on that elsewhere, but until then, happy AI hunting!

[Oralordos]

Sounds like you're having the Windows Virtual Store bug. It's popped up a couple times before. You can find a solution here.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Sounds like you're having the Windows Virtual Store bug. It's popped up a couple times before. You can find a solution here.

Is this the windows 8 nonsense? It breaks the games of entire companies now?

[Wordsmith]

I'm actually on Mac OS X 10.5.8, playing via Steam, so I highly doubt it's a Windows bug.  But thanks for trying to help!