5.021 criticisms

[keith.lamothe]

I will investigate the double-waving; I think that was intentional at some point but seems excessive now.

If you're investigating wave size calculation for bugs, I strongly suggest turning on Advanced Logging (settings screen -> advanced tab) and checking out the MainThreadWaveComputationLog.txt and AIThreadWaveComputationLog.txt files in your game's RuntimeData directory.  It should give you enough info on which of the rules is gutpunching you.  It's probably the one where the ship cap is used as the minimum size of a wave near the end.

[chemical_art]

Removing the double waving at the beginning would help a lot. Due to that mechanics I get on average 8 starships along with the 100 ships using the tank on low caps.

[Hearteater]

Yeah GUDare, in this thread I learned that starting at 9.3 actually, the AI is at TII from the start.  I didn't even notice your double wave problem because I just assumed you were taking it easy and playing only two homeworlds because your username just makes me instantly think multi-homeworld by this point .

[Wanderer]

Yeah GUDare, in this thread I learned that starting at 9.3 actually, the AI is at TII from the start.  I didn't even notice your double wave problem because I just assumed you were taking it easy and playing only two homeworlds because your username just makes me instantly think multi-homeworld by this point .

LOL, a fair enough assumption, which is why I felt I should point it out, especially after Epic 10/10 FS fights.

I've actually gone back to normal games for a bit to let my CPU "de-cook".  Though 2 might be fun.  I still need to get Keith a copy of that save file that constantly pauses on me.  Hm....

[Wanderer]

If you're investigating wave size calculation for bugs, I strongly suggest turning on Advanced Logging (settings screen -> advanced tab) and checking out the MainThreadWaveComputationLog.txt and AIThreadWaveComputationLog.txt files in your game's RuntimeData directory.  It should give you enough info on which of the rules is gutpunching you.  It's probably the one where the ship cap is used as the minimum size of a wave near the end.

It looks to be purely intentional, as though both AIs were spooling up two waves out of the gate, no extra mechanics involved.  Though you'll probably get more from these than I will:

[Hearteater]

Yup, looks like the AI thread is spawning 2 waves per triggered request.  But I did notice something else (besides step 9 is seriously boosting the wave size): I think the wave messages displayed to the player incorrectly list the number of ships.  If you look back at GUDare's screenshots of the waves, you'll see the following:

91 AI 1 Bombers, 3 Starships (II) to ...
90 AI 1 Bombers, 2 Starships (II) to ...

Looking at the logs (which are obviously from a different wave) you can see that it would never generate 91 Bombers one time and 90 the next, because it is defaulting to ship cap size.  However, if you add the number of starships to the ship cap of Bombers, which is 88, you get 88+3 = 91, and 88+2 = 90.  So the first number is actually the total number of ships including the starships.  Which is absolutely not what it looks like.

[keith.lamothe]

If you're investigating wave size calculation for bugs, I strongly suggest turning on Advanced Logging (settings screen -> advanced tab) and checking out the MainThreadWaveComputationLog.txt and AIThreadWaveComputationLog.txt files in your game's RuntimeData directory.  It should give you enough info on which of the rules is gutpunching you.  It's probably the one where the ship cap is used as the minimum size of a wave near the end.

It looks to be purely intentional, as though both AIs were spooling up two waves out of the gate, no extra mechanics involved.  Though you'll probably get more from these than I will:

Yea, it's just the minimum-full-cap rule.  And so the size of an individual wave at that stage of the game is probably the same all the way down to diff 1 because of that rule.  Diff 10 seems to be giving you extra waves, of course.  I'll need to find out exactly why it's doing that.

For kicks, can you try it again with schizo waves on?  That suppresses (for the most part) the at-least-one-full-cap rule because the wave is mixed then, and it doesn't try to figure out what the cap is of a mixed type.

[Wanderer]

For kicks, can you try it again with schizo waves on?  That suppresses (for the most part) the at-least-one-full-cap rule because the wave is mixed then, and it doesn't try to figure out what the cap is of a mixed type.

As requested:



It's force spawning two waves, it's not cap based.

[Hearteater]

Just checked, 9.8 is not sending double waves.  Difficulty 10 does send double waves.  I tried both 9.8/9.8 and 10/9.8.  I got single/single and double/single waves respectively.

[keith.lamothe]

For kicks, can you try it again with schizo waves on?  That suppresses (for the most part) the at-least-one-full-cap rule because the wave is mixed then, and it doesn't try to figure out what the cap is of a mixed type.

As requested:

Thanks, that's showing that 3 of the 4 waves were not doing the min-of-single-cap rule.  The other one did the min-of-single-cap rule because it just happened to only roll a single non-starship type, and autocannon minipods at that (I keep wanting to say "autocannon monopods" because it's a much more humorous mental picture).

It's force spawning two waves, it's not cap based.

Yea, I just checked the code and it is intentionally doubling-up waves on diff 10.  It used to be anything >= 8, but that made 8 massively harder than 7.6 so we changed it.

I'm not actually sure how to proceed here as diff 10 is supposed to be pretty insane.  On the other hand, if someone is beating 9.8 consistently I'd like for them to have something other than "double the death" available to them as a step up from there.  On the third hand, they could just turn on hybrids, golems-hard, etc to make it harder.

What I'm considering right now is to:
- change the base scaling from 9 to 10 such that 9 is basically what 9 is now, 10 base wave sizes are roughly 1.8x what they are now, 9.8 is roughly 1.4x what 10 is now, 9.6 (or whatever the next lowest is) is roughly what 10 is now, and 9.3... well, haven't figured out all the numbers, just a general idea.
- remove the double-waves rule for 10
- going back and forth on this, but perhaps changing the minimum-of-one-full-cap per wave to a minimum of half a cap.  Right now (except for schizo) it's kind of "pegging" all early waves on all difficulties to the same size which seems kind of odd.

Basically 10 would get slightly easier (I might do 2x instead of 1.8x to avoid that) and 9.6 and 9.8 would get harder but would be more of "training for 10" as opposed to the jump from 9.8 to 10 being double-death.

But whenever my thoughts are of the form "to balance 10..." I'm reminded that 10 isn't supposed to be balanced, it's supposed to be doom   So dunno.

[chemical_art]

Biggest thing about 10 is that the first wave is doubled up, but afterward it doesn't necessarily (sometimes it does, but not always). It still results in the first wave being harder then the others.

[Wanderer]

Biggest thing about 10 is that the first wave is doubled up, but afterward it doesn't necessarily (sometimes it does, but not always). It still results in the first wave being harder then the others.

That's because after the first wave the two AIs don't always work together, so they don't always send their stuff at the same time.  What appears to be both sending a single wave is one sending a double.

[Wanderer]

What I'm considering right now is to:
- change the base scaling from 9 to 10 such that 9 is basically what 9 is now, 10 base wave sizes are roughly 1.8x what they are now, 9.8 is roughly 1.4x what 10 is now, 9.6 (or whatever the next lowest is) is roughly what 10 is now, and 9.3... well, haven't figured out all the numbers, just a general idea.
- remove the double-waves rule for 10
- going back and forth on this, but perhaps changing the minimum-of-one-full-cap per wave to a minimum of half a cap.  Right now (except for schizo) it's kind of "pegging" all early waves on all difficulties to the same size which seems kind of odd.

Basically 10 would get slightly easier (I might do 2x instead of 1.8x to avoid that) and 9.6 and 9.8 would get harder but would be more of "training for 10" as opposed to the jump from 9.8 to 10 being double-death.

But whenever my thoughts are of the form "to balance 10..." I'm reminded that 10 isn't supposed to be balanced, it's supposed to be doom   So dunno.

I've been thinking this over.

Honestly, I'm not looking to 'balance' AI 10.  I'm looking to be able to get it off the ground, so to speak.  You could even set it for 'first wave gets 1x, everything after gets 2x' and that'd be at least workable.  Think of it as the AI gearing up for war in a galaxy it thought it had pacified. 

The scaling + removal of double wave rule could be useful too.  For example, my scale of 43 bombers x 1.8 = ~75 Bomber II's (min capped to 88) + 2-3 starships.  That's a lot more reasonable than 166 of them + 4-6 starships.

Heck, you could leave it as is and just move the wave counter buildup to start at 10 minutes in or the first aggressive player action(the AI needed time to realize the Humans woke up).  That would mean everyone would start with a fleet build for the first ten minutes, but it gets rid of the 'Holy mother of gods' econ assault you need to outperform before you've even started playing.

As it stands, it's not skill to get 10 going, it's luck.  You have to get a perfect opening wave (or only use particular AIs), do everything perfect, and hang on for the ride, hoping the second wave is delayed till after 15:00 or they split their wave arrivals, just in case you survive the first one.  The double capped wave + TII is a wrecking ball at 8:15 by itself.

On your side note: The minimum wave value does seem kind of odd, offhand.  I'm picturing booting up a level 2 game and getting 160 bombers in the first wave.  Admittedly, at that level, they'd arrive at around 40 minutes in, but still.  Actually thinking of it that way maybe it's not that odd.  AI won't bother until it's got enough to send that's worth the fight.  Erm, um, hrm.

9.8, from what I can tell, is roughly similar at this moment to 10, just 1x waves and slightly lower buildup rates.  I'm going to boot up a game or two and play it out a bit.  That might help give me a few epiphanies towards a 'Hey, what about this?' ideas.  I may try AI 10 on schizo just to bring down the sheer mass of things it sends at me a few times as well.  Schizo is supposed to be harder, not easier, though...

Edit: Confirmed.  AI10/10 Wave 1 is survivable on schizo without 4x capped waves.  That's with a horrible starter planet (4 metal 8 crystal).  To wit: Snipers to level 2, both econ boosts, additional 40x crystal - metal converters, maxxed off triangle ships.  That's it.  Another build: IREs to see if they'd handle the starships better.  They did, slightly different micro. 5/7 world.

It's the sheer mass of that first wave on standard.  Well, if turning on the 'hard' option makes it easier, I'm all for it.  Of course you could get a capped wave early if it only rolls one ship type, but... well...  *shrug*.

Side note: Leech IIs are damnably hard to kill with base units.

I'm going to play out the sniper one a bit (the worst of the econ setups for my choices).  I just cranked open bomber IIs to help with starship waves (and fortress baron's forts) and started scouting at about 11:30 in. 

[Wanderer]

I take that back.  It's unlikely you will survive the first wave...  even on schizo.

It's an interesting scenario.  You can build either to stop the starships or the fleetships.  The mixed schizo fleet ships are kind of interesting, it really depends on what the AI spawns.  IE: Shield ships, no real concerns.  Mirrors?  Ow.  Your bonus ship will dictate relatively heavily which mineral you want strong at the home planet.  A 7/5 split seems to work reasonably on that dependency.

For DPS, Light Starship and Flagship are actually your cheapest DPS available to you.  Their investment however is so heavy that it's very hard to get them up and running in a reasonable time to fight off a larger fleet alongside your fleet-ships.  It's definately interesting.  It's also definately not wrecking ball levels, though it'd be nice if the starship count would cut back a bit.  A few Raid Starships take your immediate attention.  The Bomber starships HAVE to come right on its tail for attention, they move pretty quick.  After that, you're dealing with the fleet ships while the starships and leeches wander up to your forcefield.  If you don't stop them though they'll chew up your ff in nothing flat.  A couple of grav turrets can make all the difference here, but they won't save you.  Just give you enough time to respond.

There's usually an antimatter or two in the back that will make mincemeat out of your starships if you let them, otherwise they'll probably go off and beat on your economy.  It's another drawback to trying to get starships into the mix early.  You're usually better off with the AI having 'wasted' starships here.  It's a curious thing.

One other note... be VERY careful of your fleet starting to hide under your FF.  If they do that, you're not going to have enough firepower to survive ever.  Even if you FRD them to outside the FF, they'll spawn and start shooting at whatever's against the FF.  That 90% reduction will cream any chance you have of surviving.  To avoid this, build another space dock outside the FF and ignore the initial one.

Apologies about the starship values, I did some BAAAAD math in the background here.  They're actually the worst!

[keith.lamothe]

I'm thinking that one simple change may help a lot: change the timing so that the second AI player's time-to-first-wave is 50% higher than the first player's.  They'll double up at some point during the game due to randomization but they don't have to double up on the very first one.

I do want to get rid of the double-wave-per-player-on-diff-10 rule but basically I'd replace it with base wave sizes roughly 2x what they are now (on 10), so that wouldn't really change the challenge.