n00b Qs

[Tharg]

Hi -

I'm very much enjoying the game.  I did the tutorial then started a difficulty 4 game, as I don't really play RTSs.  That was very easy and it gave me a chance to make some mistakes and get to grips with a few more fundamentals.  Then I tried a difficulty 7 with completely random AIs and I was pretty much annihilated.  So now I'm on a difficulty 6 with easy AIs and it's going ok.  Perhaps a bit easy but I'm learning.

I have a few questions though.  I will probably add more to this thread as I think of them.

Can the planetary cloaker things cloak valuable ships like advanced research or data banks?  One of these is nearby.

There's an arm of the system that I've completely taken over or 'neutered'.  Is it safe now, or will I still get some wondering ships from the neutered planets?

There's also a captured human settlement nearby.  It says if I get it attacks on the system will be 3X as strong.  What are people's thoughts on these?  If I take or neuter all adjacent planets will it still be attacked etc.?  Should I just leave it if possible?

I've forgotten the rest for now, it's late here, but I'll be back with more.

Thanks in advance.

[x4000]

I'm very much enjoying the game.  I did the tutorial then started a difficulty 4 game, as I don't really play RTSs.  That was very easy and it gave me a chance to make some mistakes and get to grips with a few more fundamentals.  Then I tried a difficulty 7 with completely random AIs and I was pretty much annihilated.  So now I'm on a difficulty 6 with easy AIs and it's going ok.  Perhaps a bit easy but I'm learning.

I have a few questions though.  I will probably add more to this thread as I think of them.

Glad you're enjoying the game!

Can the planetary cloaker things cloak valuable ships like advanced research or data banks?  One of these is nearby.

Yes, those cloak literally everything at the planet aside from the cloaker itself.

There's an arm of the system that I've completely taken over or 'neutered'.  Is it safe now, or will I still get some wondering ships from the neutered planets?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, if you took it over (and it belongs to you), that is different from neutering.  If you own a planet, AI ships won't come from nowhere on it; they will only come through wormholes if they are freely moving around the map, or through incoming raids.

What I think I am understanding is that there is a pocket of planets that you have neutered (destroyed guard posts, special forces guard posts, etc), and which are not connected to any other AI planets?  If that is the case, you should be able to rest comfortable that nothing will come from that area.  The only risk normally would be if Special Forces ships were coming through them to come attack you.  If there is ever a cross-planet attack announced, then you may face some ships from that other side, too.  Also, when you send your own ships into that area if it stirs up the AI guards enough, they may become free and come after you.  Otherwise, if the planets are neutered and isolated from all other AI planets, you should have nothing to worry about from that direction.

There's also a captured human settlement nearby.  It says if I get it attacks on the system will be 3X as strong.  What are people's thoughts on these?  If I take or neuter all adjacent planets will it still be attacked etc.?  Should I just leave it if possible?

It depends on the tactical situation of the planet, as you have alluded.  If you take or neuter all adjacent planets, then the only risk associated with the settlement is if it is destroyed by wandering ships (such as AI ships that attack another of your planets, then retreat to the settlement's planet to destroy it).  That would come with a +100 AI Progress cost, and is bad news.  So no matter what, you're going to have a bit of an extra worry with defending that thing to avoid that AIP increase if it is destroyed.  But as far as the other thing, about the 3X larger waves, if you just gate raid all the adjacent planets then that is no longer any worry whatsoever.  The nice thing about the settlement is that it gives you a bunch of resources per second (45 metal and crystal, if I recall).  But it is a security risk.

If you're able to secure the planet well enough, then go for it; I tend to like taking settlements, but I also have lost more than one (and paid the price) in various games.

[Tharg]

Thanks for the replies.  I think I'll try to take the settlement, it just wouldn't feel right to abandon my brothers.

For the "taken over or 'neutered'.", I meant that some planets are taken over while some are neutered (pic : http://tharg.co.uk/AI_War/pics/AI_Galaxy.JPG ).  I've also taken out the guard posts and just left the command ships.  I think I was confusing cross planetary attacks with attacks from wormholes when all adjacent warp gates are destroyed.  I expected to be safe when the gates on that arm were gone (one gate adjacent to the other end of my empire was still there), then I got a cross planetary attack and was surprised by them coming through where I thought I was safe.  Actually I was also surprised to get the attack at all.

[x4000]

My pleasure on the replay.  And, thanks for clarifying with the image -- you should indeed be quite safe from those planets aside from if another CPA comes. Looks good!

[Tharg]

I think I have a bug in my current game, but I'm not sure.

The AI keeps reinforcing at empty space, where there may have been a guard post or warp gate previously.

I posted a screeny and a save in this thread :

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3863.0.html

Is it a bug or do I misunderstand something?

I am up to the latest beta patch.  Is it possible to regress the save to an earlier version, assuming it's a new bug?  Or failing this, is there a way I can use the same map in a new game after regressing?

[x4000]

There is not an easy way to regress it, but I was seeing that last night also. If you save and reload the game, or open the manage players interface and then just hit save on that screen (basically, anything that causes the game to do a full sync), that will fix the issue for current planets. I hope to have a fix in for that by later tonight, I think this is a new issue. In my case, there were some errors in the aierrors.txt file on the host when this happened. Can you post your aierrors.txt file if there is one? If yours has anything different than what mine did, that would hopefully help with a fix there. At any rate, doing a quick sync fixed the problem we were seeing (and now when you load your game fresh this next time that will already have fixes it, but it might recur when you take new planets).

[Tharg]

Sweet, thanks, I'll let you know if the workaround works.

I don't seem to have a aierrors.txt, although I have attempted to restart since the error so I don't know if it might have been deleted?

Edit : Yup that fixed it.

[x4000]

Glad the workaround functioned, at least.  I found the actual error tonight, it was fixed fully in 3.037, which is out now.  Thanks for the report!

[snow2.0]

As tharg was already asking about the captive settlement he found, i'd like to add my own question about them:
If i have multiple settlements (I've got homeworlder AIs in my current game), will the waves progress to 3-6-9-12... or 3-9-27-81... ?

[x4000]

As tharg was already asking about the captive settlement he found, i'd like to add my own question about them:
If i have multiple settlements (I've got homeworlder AIs in my current game), will the waves progress to 3-6-9-12... or 3-9-27-81... ?

3, 9, 27, etc. However, they would all have to be on the same planet for that to happen. They only increase the size of waves to their planet, not to all planets. So if you get all the warp gates adjacent to the planet of a captive settlement, the it has no effect on any wave size, ever. Can be quite nice!

[Tharg]

Another question :

There's two Fabricators at either end of my galaxy.  Both produce Anti Starship Thingamies.  Is there any advantage (such as higher ship cap) to owning both?

[Dmdunn]

Nope, but if one is blown up you can still use the other.

Also, if they were in different locations you could get them were you wanted faster.

[Tharg]

Thanks again for the help, all.  I have recently completed and won a difficulty 6 game (with a bit of savescumming) so I've started another.

However in my new game there don't appear to be any guard posts.  There are some special ops ones but no normal ones.  Is this just because my AI progress is still very low?  It's at 31 at the moment I think; I've just taken out a data bank.  Or is this a bug?

Also I have been getting odd behaviour with some of the ship pathing.  I'm afraid that I don't know the versions I was using at each time (I always update to the beta) but it seems to come and go and change slightly with each one.

• Sometimes when ships are moving off the bottom of the screen I get a weird trail of 'phantom ships' moving very quickly from their destination to the top left of the screen.  I don't know if it's relevant but my screen res is pretty big - 1920 X 1080.
• I get odd behaviour around forcefields, but I note a few more threads about this, so I guess it is being resolved.
• I also get jerky movement from ships being tugged.  It seems that they move away from the tug (to their previous destination) then teleport back to near the tug (from memory, I am not on my PC right now).
• Last night I had some ships in 'yellow mode' (alt-right-click) acting like those in 'purple mode' (v-right-click) and vice versa.  I think there may have been a later patch last night (GMT) after I saw this.

[x4000]

Congrats on the victory!  There's nothing wrong with a little savescumming, especially when learning, as I think it enhances the ability to experiment and learn further.

Regarding the special forces guard posts being everywhere instead of regular guard posts, sounds like you're playing against one or more special forces captains.  Different AI types uses sometimes radically different mechanics such as this.

Regarding the various bugs, please report those in the bug reports forum in individual topics if you're wanting us to definitely see them, etc.  Otherwise they have a good chance of getting missed, and even if we do see it it creates more work for us to try moving those over.

Regarding your specific ones, though:
- This was something fixed before 3.060 to my knowledge, are you playing on 3.060 or the 3.080 series, or something older?
- There are some issues with this at the moment, yes, in 3.080 series only.  Unless you're talking about a different issue.
- This is a known issue at the moment, not sure why that started happening but it was sometime in the post 3.016 timeframe.
- This was a known issue in betas around 3.040, but hasn't been an issue since that I know of.  If you're playing on the 3.080 series, this could be an issue with the new way that target selection is being combined.

Please don't respond further on this particular thread about those various bugs -- I'd like to keep this forum for strategy discussion only.  However, if you're on 3.060 or later and seeing those issues, we'd definitely like to hear about them in the bug reports forum so that Keith can take a look into them.  Thanks for your support!

[Velox]

However in my new game there don't appear to be any guard posts.  There are some special ops ones but no normal ones.  Is this just because my AI progress is still very low?  It's at 31 at the moment I think; I've just taken out a data bank.  Or is this a bug?

     Either a special forces captain as x4k suggests, or a cloaking master - their guard posts are cloaked, the bastards.