Am I doing something wrong?

[Tyladhras]

I've been playing AI War since it was released so I don't think I'm making any newbie mistakes.

My problem is this;

I'm playing on difficulty 7 and/or 7.3 so it's only on "normal".  But quite often, only 10-15 minutes in (and I'm not playing it on a fast setting or anything), the AI's will gank my homeworld with excess of 500-600 ships.  I just don't have the time or resources to put up a large enough defense that fast.  I don't think I can really contend with the AI on such a large scale so early in the game and it's quite frustrating to just be beaten into submission before the game's really even begun.

I'm open to suggestions however.

[Red Spot]

Actually that is quite a big number imo, but it should be managable. I would make sure to unlock at least 2 mk2 fleetship, and not bother much with turrets at start.
Get some engies supporting the dock and spew out caps of the mk2 version ships first and the rest later, perhaps build a few tractor-turrets near the gate and an exta FF or 2 on your CC.
With 2 mk2 caps and 4 mk1 caps you should have somewhere around 500-600 units yourself and be equal in power, ship vs ship. Where you get the edge(or more so) is by the fact you replace your losses at the spot where the AIs numbers will just go down.
Do not put your engies on FRD but keep them near your dock/CC, supporting and rebuilding the FFs when needed.

Also, micro your blob. Dont micro your 'ships', micro your 'blob'. Get them to the largest concentration of ships and kick them down, always taking down the group that goes for the CC first (check them, you'll see the AI split up and target different things, dont care about harvesters and such).

[chemical_art]

I've been playing AI War since it was released so I don't think I'm making any newbie mistakes.

My problem is this;

I'm playing on difficulty 7 and/or 7.3 so it's only on "normal".  But quite often, only 10-15 minutes in (and I'm not playing it on a fast setting or anything), the AI's will gank my homeworld with excess of 500-600 ships.  I just don't have the time or resources to put up a large enough defense that fast.  I don't think I can really contend with the AI on such a large scale so early in the game and it's quite frustrating to just be beaten into submission before the game's really even begun.

I'm open to suggestions however.

Prelude: Screenshots speak a thousand words.

Couple of things: 7.0 is "normal" and should be winnable provided you already know the game well. But it takes either a lot of reading or experience to know this game well. So if you are losing and are new it may not be just you, you just may not know everything so are suffering.
Secondly, what was your AIP like? Or perhaps, what was the number of the AI progress?

Thirdly, what kind of AI type were you playing against? If you picked a random one, you might have gotten a very aggressive one.

Fourthly, screenshots speak a thousand words.

EDIT: No matter what, multiple shield generators over your homeworld (first planet) is ALWAYS a good idea. Like 3 or 4.

[BobTheJanitor]

How much AIP can you really get in when you're only 10-15 minutes in? I don't know if it would be that. Is this actually a wave that is coming in, or is this just some kind of crazy border aggression? If the first, that's a big wave but possible if you're doing something to bump up the AIP early. If the second, I have no clue how it could be happening.

[chemical_art]

How much AIP can you really get in when you're only 10-15 minutes in? I don't know if it would be that. Is this actually a wave that is coming in, or is this just some kind of crazy border aggression? If the first, that's a big wave but possible if you're doing something to bump up the AIP early. If the second, I have no clue how it could be happening.

Mad Bomber + Taking an AI world (this combined with civilian spires = 40 AIP before first wave) + bad luck + enemy AI that supports or otherwise strengthens waves = messy wave

Or maybe its shredders gone horrible right (making them awful). Idk, I crave a screenshot.

[Tyladhras]

Prelude: Screenshots speak a thousand words.

Couple of things: 7.0 is "normal" and should be winnable provided you already know the game well. But it takes either a lot of reading or experience to know this game well. So if you are losing and are new it may not be just you, you just may not know everything so are suffering.
Secondly, what was your AIP like? Or perhaps, what was the number of the AI progress?

Thirdly, what kind of AI type were you playing against? If you picked a random one, you might have gotten a very aggressive one.

Fourthly, screenshots speak a thousand words.

Prelude;  Do I really need screenshots to display the aforementioned 500-600 AI ships?  I don't need a thousand words to describe my problem. A huge blob of AI ships trashing my perimeter defences, outrunning my fleet and blowing up my command centre (I think you get the idea), is that really screenshot worthy?

The game classifies 7.3 as normal (I've beat it on 7 and wanted to try something a bit harder), above that is getting into hard.  Also, did you read my post?  I said I wasn't new.

Secondly, AIP was not very high at all, it would have been above 0 if I'd blown up a command centre before I get ganked.  Which leads on to your third point; the AI was indeed on random, however, it has occured - more often true with aggressive AI's- also with any AI that launches raids.  I'm talking about combined AI raids, they both occassionally raid at the same time and while one AI has had a manageable fleet (only 200 ships or so), the other attacks at the same time with over 400.

Fourthly, I read your post so I answered it the first time.  Don't patronise me.




This doesn't happen every game so I suspect I may just have been unlucky, it's just happening often enough to be a problem.  As far as AIP goes, I'm lucky if I've gotten as far as taking one other planet.  So the AIP is only at 15 or so (command centre + warp gate, maybe a special guard post too) but it's never been higher than 20.  Also, it's actually waves, not border aggression and I'm not playing with any options that strengthen waves.

Although, something I have observed is that, there is an absurd amount of neinzul youngling ships in these waves.  I'm not playing with neinzul enthusiastic AI but these ships have been present in every incident so far in huge numbers, comprising maybe half of the enemy ships.  Not sure what to make of this.

I'll give the extra shield generators a try and see how that goes.

[chemical_art]

Prelude;  Do I really need screenshots to display the aforementioned 500-600 AI ships?  I don't need a thousand words to describe my problem. A huge blob of AI ships trashing my perimeter defences, outrunning my fleet and blowing up my command centre (I think you get the idea), is that really screenshot worthy?

The game classifies 7.3 as normal, above that is getting into hard.  Also, did you read my post?  I said I wasn't new.

Secondly, AIP was not very high at all, it would have been above 0 if I'd blown up a command centre before I get ganked.  Which leads on to your third point; the AI was indeed on random, however, it has occured - more often true with aggressive AI's- also with any AI that launches raids.  I'm talking about combined AI raids, they both occassionally raid at the same time and while one AI has had a manageable fleet (only 200 ships or so), the other attacks at the same time with over 400.

Fourthly, I read your post so I answered it the first time.  Don't patronise me.




This doesn't happen every game so I suspect I may just been unlucky, it's just happening often enough to be a problem.  As far as AIP goes, I'm lucky if I've gotten as far as taking one other planet.  So the AIP is only at 15 or so (command centre + warp gate, maybe a special guard post too) but it's never been higher than 20.  Also, it's actually waves, not border aggression and I'm not playing with any options that strengthen waves.

Although, something I have observed is that, there is an absurd amount of neinzul youngling ships in these waves.  I'm not playing with neinzul enthusiastic AI but these ships have been present in every incident so far in huge numbers, comprising maybe half of the enemy ships.  Not sure what to make of this.

Whoa, sorry. That picture thing was simply meant to help figure out what happened, because "500 -600 ships" is not as specific as "200 bombers, 100 fighters, 300 nenzul" or whatever the enemy fleet composition is. A picture would also describe the AI progress and other things, including the fact that both AI sent fleets at once and that nenzul are part of the fleet. Also, I meant to delete that second reference, I wasn't trying to be patronizing at all.

Those nenzul are most likely leading to the very high number of enemy ships, because the AI sends many more then they would of normal ships. While the AI may typically send hundreds of ships in a normal wave at a certain AIP, they send thousands of nenzul younglings in their place for the same AIP. I am against an AI who uses them extensively, and the most effective tactic I find is to build many shields over the command station and manually order my fighters to FRD engage all polycrystal hulls since only those hulls have the firepower to break the shields before the younglings die / retreat due to self attrition. Lightning turrets help as well since they hit hundreds / thousands of units at once.


Also, "normal" is relative. I doubt many people would find AI war to be "normal" to begin with, and the difficulty scale certainly is deceptive. "Normal" for me as far as difficulty in Ai war is  "The AI uses all its tactics, but doesn't cheat especially much. It's the full game. A normal game. Not necessarily an easy one."

[TechSY730]

Also, "normal" is relative. I doubt many people would find AI war to be "normal" to begin with, and the difficulty scale certainly is deceptive. "Normal" for me as far as difficulty in Ai war is  "The AI uses all its tactics, but doesn't cheat especially much. It's the full game. A normal game. Not necessarily an easy one."

Exactly. Normal is a bit vague. Does it mean normal, standard behavior for the AI? Does it mean normal difficulty for those familiar with RTSs in general? Does it mean normal difficulty for those with a decent understanding of AI war? It doesn't help that different games have different choices of difficulty points for what "normal" is, making the issue even more confusing.

The tool-tip for the difficulty straight up tells you that normal means average difficulty for those who know AI war decently, but it is buried under so much other text that it is easy to miss.

Changing the name to medium won't help either, as the same problem exists. By definition, medium means the middle or somewhere around the middle. But that doesn't do you much good if you don't know what how hard the hard difficulty is, and how easy the easy difficulty is for that game. So we are still back to a scale which varies very much by game.


I'm not sure if there is a satisfactory solution other than making it more prominent in the tool-tip that 7.0 is for those who have a decent grasp on the game, and that 6.0 is for those who have a decent grasp for RTSs in general but are just starting AI war.

I would like to get peoples opinion on whether it is good practice for the difficulty called normal or medium be the one with "average" difficulty for those who are familiar with the genre but new to the particular game, or "average" difficulty for those who have a decent to moderate grasp on how the game works and good strategies for it.

[Tyladhras]

Whoa, sorry. That picture thing was simply meant to help figure out what happened, because "500 -600 ships" is not as specific as "200 bombers, 100 fighters, 300 nenzul" or whatever the enemy fleet composition is. A picture would also describe the AI progress and other things, including the fact that both AI sent fleets at once and that nenzul are part of the fleet. Also, I meant to delete that second reference, I wasn't trying to be patronizing at all.

Those nenzul are most likely leading to the very high number of enemy ships, because the AI sends many more then they would of normal ships. While the AI may typically send hundreds of ships in a normal wave at a certain AIP, they send thousands of nenzul younglings in their place for the same AIP. I am against an AI who uses them extensively, and the most effective tactic I find is to build many shields over the command station and manually order my fighters to FRD engage all polycrystal hulls since only those hulls have the firepower to break the shields before the younglings die / retreat due to self attrition. Lightning turrets help as well since they hit hundreds / thousands of units at once.

Also, "normal" is relative. I doubt many people would find AI war to be "normal" to begin with, and the difficulty scale certainly is deceptive. "Normal" for me as far as difficulty in Ai war is  "The AI uses all its tactics, but doesn't cheat especially much. It's the full game. A normal game. Not necessarily an easy one."

Ah right, didn't realise you were actually asking for fleet composition.  The point I was trying to get across was that the AI attacked with such ridiculously huge numbers that it felt like their fleet composition didn't really matter because I just couldn't kill enough of them in time.  There's fielding powerful fleets and then there's cracking a nut with a sledge hammer.  This rather felt like the latter.

I've been using lightning turrets although they don't do a huge amount of damage and mines have helped to some extent.  I might give EMP mines a try as well as the extra shields.  Also, the fighters thing should help a lot.  It's possibly a hangover from when AI War was first out and there was a lot less ships to choose from and all you needed to know was fighters kill bombers, bombers kill frigates and stations and frigates kill fighters.  Kind of a rock paper scissors scenario but there's a lot of different ship types now that I should probably take the time to learn.  I'm also still not quite so familiar with all the new hull types either so reading up on that might help.

I agree AI war is not like other strategy games, but then I wasn't talking about it in comparison to the wider genre.  My point about it being "normal" is that the difficulty is only slightly higher than the last setting I won on.  I've won on difficulty 7, so I thought I'd go for 7.3  It's not exactly a huge jump.  Or rather, I wouldn't expect it to be.  Of course I may have proven myself wrong...  

Exactly. Normal is a bit vague. Does it mean normal, standard behavior for the AI? Does it mean normal difficulty for those familiar with RTSs in general? Does it mean normal difficulty for those with a decent understanding of AI war? It doesn't help that different games have different choices of difficulty points for what "normal" is, making the issue even more confusing.

The tool-tip for the difficulty straight up tells you that normal means average difficulty for those who know AI war decently, but it is buried under so much other text that it is easy to miss.

Changing the name to medium won't help either, as the same problem exists. By definition, medium means the middle or somewhere around the middle. But that doesn't do you much good if you don't know what how hard the hard difficulty is, and how easy the easy difficulty is for that game. So we are still back to a scale which varies very much by game.


I'm not sure if there is a satisfactory solution other than making it more prominent in the tool-tip that 7.0 is for those who have a decent grasp on the game, and that 6.0 is for those who have a decent grasp for RTSs in general but are just starting AI war.

I would like to get peoples opinion on whether it is good practice for the difficulty called normal or medium be the one with "average" difficulty for those who are familiar with the genre but new to the particular game, or "average" difficulty for those who have a decent to moderate grasp on how the game works and good strategies for it.

"Normal" is the technical difficulty at which people who know the game but are not necessarily excellent strategists and/or familiar with every tiny nuance of the game can enjoy a challenge but still find the game winnable.  Difficulty should always be based on the game and not the wider market.  Otherwise you're going to start having settings like "hard compared to C&C", "easy compared to Supreme Commander".  When your talking about AI War difficulty settings, normal is not relative.  It's a technical definition.  If you're going down the relative argument then all explanation would be removed and there would only be numerical settings of difficulty with no explaining description.  You'd have to trawl forums to see that 7 is what most people consider normal.  I think you're confusing what is technically classed as "normal" in terms of the statistical difficulty and what particular difficulty most people "normally" play on (ie; what they find a challenge but still winnable).  You could give it any other name and it would still be difficulty 7.  Ergo, what you call it is irrelevant.

This is where AI War differs from most strategy games in that respect.  Most games give you an analogue (easy, medium/normal, hard, etc) difficulty setting where you only know that one setting is harder than another.  How much harder?  You don't know.  AI War gives you a rough statistical guide as to how big the difference is but they have the courtesy to say "this value is for people who are familiar with the game will have an enjoyable challenge" (ie: by assigning an explanation; easy, normal, etc to the numerical value).  In AI War's case, and not the wider genre, which was the point I was getting at, it's not quite so relative.

[Entrenched Homperson]

 Did they have infiltrators? I've been ganked by those by the first AI Wave on difficulty 6 before, and I play on 7.3+ Now, depending on how intense a game I want. If the AI has those I'm very sad, because the only thing I've seen that can deal with them at all requires you knowing the AI has them before the first wave, and spending every resource you have for the counter, which I've found is pretty much multiple Heavy Beam Platforms.

Heavy Beam Platforms just rock I've unlocked up to Mark V before and it's worth it. Next best thing to Ion Cannons.

[Tyladhras]

I've always toyed with heavy beam cannons, just how much damage can the MkI and MkII cause?

[Entrenched Homperson]

Mark I arent really worth it, there generaly the second thing I unlock after all my economy stuff. I plant them at wormholes that are gonna be attacked. By Mark II they start to be valuable, cause they get a MASSIVE boost in health and a pretty good boost in damage. Planting the 20 of them at a wormhold can inflict more damage then fortresses I've found, but they don't have the lasting power. A good first or last line of defense.

Though I dont know if I should be giving advice cause I just got demolished  three games in a row   
I was kinda unlucky though, kept getting counter attack posts and I repaired this artillery golem, and they killed it and my poor ARS.

[Lightbulb]

One initial question: Did you download the beta patch?

Ah right, didn't realise you were actually asking for fleet composition.  The point I was trying to get across was that the AI attacked with such ridiculously huge numbers that it felt like their fleet composition didn't really matter because I just couldn't kill enough of them in time.  There's fielding powerful fleets and then there's cracking a nut with a sledge hammer.  This rather felt like the latter.

I think it was all intended as a joke to be honest - that's how I read it anyway. I don't think I have ever really seen much flaming or baiting on this forum so I would err on the side of "they were joking" rather than "they're an ass" on this forum.

---------------

Now, first up: I have no idea how much you know about AI War - so I may well seem patronising - I apologise.

The short version is: We can't answer your question you have given nowhere near enough data.

----------------------

AI War basically has a LOT of different systems which all interact to produce the effect of an AI. So basically, a combination of many little factors - both random and caused by your actions - will have caused this effect.

I can think of half a dozen things that might have caused your problem. However it would take all day to go through the list only for you to say: "Nope, that didn't happen because X".

Now I assume you are (relatively) new to AI War so you might not know that doing X caused blob of death. Therefore you wouldn't mention it - and we might not think of it - so we'll never get to the bottom of the situation.


Now, some specific questions:

What DID you do in that 15 minutes? Where did you send your ships? What does the galaxy map look like? What does your home world defences look like? Do you have a save from before it happened?


Finally it is of course possible you hit a bug. However this is even further reason to work out what exactly happened so it can be fixed.

[hullu]

I'm not saying this is what is happening here but one rare (?) way to get insane aggression with a wave is be playing X with a special forces commnder AI and start from near the middle. Your forces might stop the trickle from coming in because of firepower calculations or something, but once the waves hit so do hundreds of special forces ships. Or that's what I think happened!

That really hurt me in one game once=)

Doesn't sound like this is what's happening up here, very to extremely unlikely to get this to happen many times by random. But X can make pretty harsh border aggression near the beginning of the game if the AI has many mobile ships.

[Tyladhras]

One initial question: Did you download the beta patch?

---------------

Now, first up: I have no idea how much you know about AI War - so I may well seem patronising - I apologise.

The short version is: We can't answer your question you have given nowhere near enough data.

----------------------

AI War basically has a LOT of different systems which all interact to produce the effect of an AI. So basically, a combination of many little factors - both random and caused by your actions - will have caused this effect.

I can think of half a dozen things that might have caused your problem. However it would take all day to go through the list only for you to say: "Nope, that didn't happen because X".

Now I assume you are (relatively) new to AI War so you might not know that doing X caused blob of death. Therefore you wouldn't mention it - and we might not think of it - so we'll never get to the bottom of the situation.


Now, some specific questions:

What DID you do in that 15 minutes? Where did you send your ships? What does the galaxy map look like? What does your home world defences look like? Do you have a save from before it happened?


Finally it is of course possible you hit a bug. However this is even further reason to work out what exactly happened so it can be fixed.

I believe I mentioned I'd maybe gotten as far as taking one other system.  And scouted.  Is there much else you can do that early in the game?  Otherwise, I've done nothing to increase threat/AI progress (I believe I said that it had only raised by about 15-20).  It's also happened on several different maps so I don't think the galaxy map is all that relevant.  I don't have a save because, well, it's only 15 minutes.  How early do you save?  I do have the beta, not sure what difference that makes.  Probably less stable I suppose and might make for a few bugs but I doubt it.

Also, you assume wrong that I'm new to AI War, I've already said in my opening post that I've been playing since its release.  It only comes across as patronising (if not patronising then simply rude) when people don't seem to take in what you've already said.

What someone else already mentioned, and I've tried out to some success is using multiple shield generators and assigning polycrystal hulls as preferred targets as this often included bombers and other heavy-hitting ships that wreck up said shields.  Having rexamined the problem, as I stated before, I'm still not entirely used to all the "hull" classifications.  I still get slightly confused with the orginal game (before expansions) when fighters killed bombers, frigates killed fighters, etc and there was a much more limited variety of ships so you only had to worry about bombers taking out shields, there were no neinzul or spire or zenith ships.  Even in Zenith there was still only a limited number of ships that were good vs shields or structures and there still wasn't different hull types.  I think my actual problem is that I'm still struggling to cross-over from the older way of playing AI War.  Tactics that used to work, don't anymore.

However, my current change in tactics as well as a few new structures that I originally hadn't considered seems to be helping a lot (courtesy of advice from Chemical_Art & Entrenched Homeperson).  For the most part, I seem to have provided enough data for other people to provide helpful advice.

So in short, people have answered my question.  Thanks!