AI War "Tip of the Day" -- What do you wish you'd known?

[unclean]

Do you have cloaked enemy ships in your systems that even tachyon warheads can't find? Take a fleet of ships to an adjacent system and then detonate an EMP warhead in the offending system! Once the nefarious enemy is revealed (the EMP shuts their cloaks off among other things), bring the aforementioned ships back to mop the little gits up. I had Red Cossack laughing in vent the other night when I cleaned out 3 systems of cloaked Raptors this way. 

Not that they hurt you or anything, but it's creepy enough just having them sitting around in your system. WATCHING. ALWAYS WATCHING.

[keith.lamothe]

Do you have cloaked enemy ships in your systems that even tachyon warheads can't find? Take a fleet of ships to an adjacent system and then detonate an EMP warhead in the offending system! Once the nefarious enemy is revealed (the EMP shuts their cloaks off among other things), bring the aforementioned ships back to mop the little gits up. I had Red Cossack laughing in vent the other night when I cleaned out 3 systems of cloaked Raptors this way. 

Not that they hurt you or anything, but it's creepy enough just having them sitting around in your system. WATCHING. ALWAYS WATCHING.

Tachyons wouldn't decloak the raptors?  Do you have a save of that?  Permacloaked things require EMP'ing since they're, well, immune to tachyon.  But raptors aren't permacloaked

I made some changes roughly a month ago to cut down on the permanent cloaked residents, like having it auto-detonate stealth tachyon emitters left by the AI when you take the planet.  Though I guess those went away with AI turrets.

Anyway, yea, those enemy units permanently stuck on your planets are bad both for OCD players (like myself) and the CPU due to extra processing that your units will frequently be doing ("Enemy! Can I shoot it? Awww" ... "Enemy! Can I shoot it? Awww" ... "Enemy! Can I shoot it? Awww" ...).  So I want them gone.

I'm just referring to the truly permanent stuff, as in it's an hour after you capped the planet and the cloaked number is still there.

[Salamander]

I'm not sure if we have any of these little buggers left in our systems as I can't stand having the blighters hanging around in my worlds. I thought it was odd when everything I found was Raptors which don't say they are perma-cloaked. Red Cossack had detonated a tachyon warhead earlier and it didn't uncloak the Raptors in that system so I used EMPs in the three systems while hunting them down with my Spire Gravity Drone group.

[wyvern83]

How do we know they aren't mines?

I think both of my current games have this, keith you might be able to use my save from http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1605 It's pre-conversion to LotS but the stealth count is still there if I'm remembering it right. I can check my current copy when I get home if it isn't there, it should  be in the upper half of the map. The snake chain makes a 90 degree turn to the right (from the upper left side), the corner system has an Adv. Factory, the one you will want is within 1-4 jumps distal from there and there may be more than one in that area.

[keith.lamothe]

How do we know they aren't mines?

I believe I made AI mines auto-die when you claim the system.  It's a tad of a gimme but that's ok.

Anyway, I'll try to take a look at that save soon

[Ixiohm]

To permanently enable planet names on galaxy map:
Press 'Esc' -> Settings ->Interface tab -> Enable : 'Always show planet names in galaxy map'.
Alternatively press Ctrl to show the names.

[Mithror]

Tachyons wouldn't decloak the raptors?  Do you have a save of that?  Permacloaked things require EMP'ing since they're, well, immune to tachyon.  But raptors aren't permacloaked

I made some changes roughly a month ago to cut down on the permanent cloaked residents, like having it auto-detonate stealth tachyon emitters left by the AI when you take the planet.  Though I guess those went away with AI turrets.

Anyway, yea, those enemy units permanently stuck on your planets are bad both for OCD players (like myself) and the CPU due to extra processing that your units will frequently be doing ("Enemy! Can I shoot it? Awww" ... "Enemy! Can I shoot it? Awww" ... "Enemy! Can I shoot it? Awww" ...).  So I want them gone.

I'm just referring to the truly permanent stuff, as in it's an hour after you capped the planet and the cloaked number is still there.

Would it be possible to have your stuff that can detect cloaked units set in a "search for any cloaked units"-mode? When I encountered this, I initially wanted my microfighters to fly around the planet and detect the enemy, but doing that manually is quite tedious. I also didn't succeed. Would be cool if FRD would trigger detectors to search for cloaked ships if you know that there are cloaked ships in the system.

[keith.lamothe]

I've thought a fair bit about an automatic "sweep for cloaked units" thing, and it does sound cool (not to mention useful for this particular case), but honestly it seems like something more appropriate to a tactical-level game rather than grand-strategy.  It would also be a significant CPU cost to keep a ton of units moving like that.  My desire in AI War's case is that you shouldn't need to spend mental cycles cleaning up cloaked stuff left by the previous occupants and that poses no real threat to you.  If the AI has legitimately invaded with a bunch of cloaked units that's another story, but it should shortly be using those against you rather than just sitting around.

[Suzera]

They sit around for hours sometimes unfortunately. If you can read my most recent video, you'll see I often have red numbers on of most of my planets all the time. Those are cloaked units.

[soMe_RandoM]

Forcefields can "free" your units from tractors

i assume this mobile tractoring units?

[zebramatt]

They sit around for hours sometimes unfortunately. If you can read my most recent video, you'll see I often have red numbers on of most of my planets all the time. Those are cloaked units.

What about adding an aspect to the tactical/strategic AI's logic such that it rounds up its idle cloaked units in player territory and, I don't know, does something with them?

[Red Spot]

Those rebuilders just like to stick around, just incase you want to hire them to rebuild what their brothers just nuked

[Red Spot]

When you can build different lvl's of shield on top of each other, when your mk3 FF has been damaged enough to become smaller than than the mk2 FF your engineers can repair it while the mk2 FF take the damage, once the mk3 FF has been repaired enough the mk2 FF can be repaired, and so on. Your engineers will do this by themselves if left alone near the FF's.
This can make a planet under attack by several 100 mk2 ships last quite some time for it will fall, giving you ample time to get reinforcements in, or even build them at the spot.

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, I so abuse layered-ffs with engies   It can get even worse: you can "circumvent" the cannot-repair-within-x-seconds-of-being-damaged rule by scrapping a mostly-depleted ff and flash-building a replacement with a ton of engineers.  Fully exploited (lots of pausing, a fair bit of resources, dodgy ethics) this can defend against an almost infinite amount of incoming damage.  Almost.

[BobTheJanitor]

Oh, I so abuse layered-ffs with engies   It can get even worse: you can "circumvent" the cannot-repair-within-x-seconds-of-being-damaged rule by scrapping a mostly-depleted ff and flash-building a replacement with a ton of engineers.  Fully exploited (lots of pausing, a fair bit of resources, dodgy ethics) this can defend against an almost infinite amount of incoming damage.  Almost.

Don't post that here! The developers will see it and fix the exploit!