2K mark V ship exo at 80 minutes in.

[vigilo confido]

The ships were 80% Maws, reprocessors, and bombards, and had nasty starships/guardians.

I only have hard golems turned on at an intensity of 4 on difficulty 8. That is the only thing that could trigger the EXO wave but there was no warning either. 2K core ships just walked up to my homeworld 80 minutes in and it was over.  TechSY730 has the logs.

The bug is solved: The destruction of a core shield generator on a fortress baron blew up all the shields on the vengeful AI planets causing unbelievable pain.

Please Keith.

[TechSY730]

Also lots of guardians thrown in.

That wave wouldn't of been so bad, if it wasn't for the face that most of the ships were Mk. IV and V...that sealed our fate.


I have a log for it from the main thread, but that only tells us what was spawned (which we already knew what is was, painfully); we are trying to reproduce with advanced logging on the host to get the "why".

[relmz32]

Did you happen to have the Dark Spire enabled at the time?

[TechSY730]

No, but we did have Golems Hard and an exotic vengeful AI. We suspect is was the golems hard, as this happened a couple of minutes after capturing a cursed golem.

[vigilo confido]

Here is the log. It seems like the AI sent the same exo many times. There were no ships on a vengeful AI planet and I do not know what really caused the EXO to even trigger.

[relmz32]

It was the Vengeful AI.

The chain destruction of the CSG C-Secondaries Triggered a bunch of Medium sized Vengeance Exos.

6/1/2014 2:08:39 PM (7.033)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Vengeful Spawn due to death of CoreShieldGeneratorGroupCSecondary; Game Time: 1:18:27
base vengeful value of unit = 50
AIP = 72
balancing factor = 0.5
tantrum exo budget = base * AIP * balancing factor = 1800


6/1/2014 2:08:39 PM (7.033)
-----------------------------------
Populating EventAttackArmada, 8100 total points; Game Time: 1:18:27

6/1/2014 2:08:39 PM (7.033)
-----------------------------------
BattleGroup of 4050 Points
FGType   SubTier   Tier   CostEach   Count   TotalCost   ReferenceOnly_StrengthEach   ReferenceOnly_TotalStrength
Fighter   Heavy   Drone   6   16   96   2   32
FighterII   Light   Cutter   8   8   64   4   32
MissileShip   Light   Cutter   8   8   64   2   16
MissileShipII   Medium   Cutter   12   8   96   4   32
FighterIII   Medium   Cutter   12   6   72   6   36
Bomber   Medium   Cutter   12   2   24   2   4
FighterIV   Heavy   Cutter   16   10   160   8   80
BomberII   Heavy   Cutter   16   2   32   4   8
Cruiser   Heavy   Cutter   16   4   64   6   24
BomberIII   Light   Corvette   32   6   192   6   36
CruiserIV   Light   Corvette   32   6   192   8   48
CoreFighter   Light   Corvette   32   3   96   10   30
BomberIV   Medium   Corvette   48   9   432   8   72
CoreBattleCruiser   Medium   Corvette   48   6   288   10   60
ZenithReprocessor   Heavy   Corvette   64   5   320   24   120
CoreBomber   Heavy   Corvette   64   1   64   10   10
ZenithReprocessorIII   Medium   Frigate   96   3   288   72   216
SpireMaw   Medium   Frigate   96   1   96   38.4   38.4
SpireMawII   Heavy   Frigate   128   2   256   76.8   153.6
ZenithReprocessorIV   Heavy   Frigate   128   1   128   96   96
AIGuardianArtilleryII   Light   Cruiser   1024   1   1024   192   192
None   None   None   0   0   0   null   null
None   None   None   0   0   0   null   null
Battlegroup actual budget spent: 4048 on 108 ships (for reference that is 589.2 strength).


6/1/2014 2:08:39 PM (7.033)
-----------------------------------
BattleGroup of 4050 Points
FGType   SubTier   Tier   CostEach   Count   TotalCost   ReferenceOnly_StrengthEach   ReferenceOnly_TotalStrength
Fighter   Heavy   Drone   6   16   96   2   32
MissileShip   Light   Cutter   8   12   96   2   24
FighterII   Light   Cutter   8   4   32   4   16
MissileShipII   Medium   Cutter   12   10   120   4   40
Bomber   Medium   Cutter   12   2   24   2   4
FighterIII   Medium   Cutter   12   4   48   6   24
FighterIV   Heavy   Cutter   16   6   96   8   48
BomberII   Heavy   Cutter   16   6   96   4   24
Cruiser   Heavy   Cutter   16   4   64   6   24
CoreFighter   Light   Corvette   32   5   160   10   50
CruiserIV   Light   Corvette   32   6   192   8   48
BomberIII   Light   Corvette   32   4   128   6   24
BomberIV   Medium   Corvette   48   8   384   8   64
CoreBattleCruiser   Medium   Corvette   48   7   336   10   70
ZenithReprocessor   Heavy   Corvette   64   5   320   24   120
CoreBomber   Heavy   Corvette   64   1   64   10   10
SpireMaw   Medium   Frigate   96   2   192   38.4   76.8
ZenithReprocessorIII   Medium   Frigate   96   2   192   72   144
ZenithReprocessorIV   Heavy   Frigate   128   2   256   96   192
SpireMawII   Heavy   Frigate   128   1   128   76.8   76.8
AIGuardian_InfiltrationII   Light   Cruiser   1024   1   1024   192   192
Battlegroup actual budget spent: 4048 on 108 ships (for reference that is 589.2 strength).

Times 8

[TechSY730]

Also, warpgate and command center seem to count for two exos, though that is a bit more sensible, and I don't think that is an issue.


It is the simultaneous kills of CSGs with each counting that are unreasonable.

[keith.lamothe]

The shield gens are supposed to all count when they go down.  Vengeful is a hard AI, and it should respond pretty energetically when you remove one of its key defenses.

That said, since it was putting out a "red-hard" performance there, for 7.034:

* The Vengeful AI's response-exos when you blow up something it cares about has been halved.
** The response for destroying non-A core shield generators has been further halved, as the chain reaction of all of them going at once can be quite... energetic.

The vengeful's numbers have been like that for over a year so I'm not going to do a hotfix just for that, but it should be out this week.

Anyway, thanks for the report and the clarification, I was rather confused about what could have spawned such an attack with no warning.  Answer: somebody put in the emotion chip.

[vigilo confido]

Exos need to be tuned down early game is all. Later in the game, the exos become easier and easier to deal with currently. It is such a slow process to blow up a command station right now, especially the tougher ones.  I think the exos for blowing up command station should not trigger an exo for destroying the warp gate.

I like the CSG nerf to exos but a 50% nerf across the board seems a little harsh.

[TechSY730]

Also, I think the issue is more that the responses of vengeful are not very well "normalized". Like the response from CSG A seems ridiculously strong compared to others.

[TechSY730]

While we are on the topic of vengeful AI:
15363: Resistance fighters, et al. should not auto target Vengeful AI guard posts (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=15363)

[keith.lamothe]

Also, I think the issue is more that the responses of vengeful are not very well "normalized". Like the response from CSG A seems ridiculously strong compared to others.

The CSG-A response is stronger because that one doesn't cause an every-single-one cascade when one dies.  Though the very last one you kill does kill a second one too.