Ai beachheads

[etgfrogs]

hello, i'm back to playing the game again, i noticed with the new ai beachhead it orginaly said 10% of the time, yet on level 7 difficulty next to a mk 3 planet the last 4 waves(even a single wave of 13 electric bombers) have included two of these that instantly snipes the command center(the ai progress is only at 50 yet this happens and the ai ships rush to the next system leaving the defense fleet traped there), i'd be fine with them apearing once in a while, but it think either its a typo about it being 10% or its something wierd like 10*(ai difficulty)%.

it also doesn't help that the last 20 minutes i've spent trying to gain entrance into said mk3 system which was 2 hops away from my homeworld in a maze map, the ai parked 11 hives which make any early game force die the instant they show up there, the ships dont go back to low power mode either.

[Commiesalami]

In both cases I would recommend investing in 'The ships formally known as Siege starships which were formally known as dreadnoughts',  Or Antimatter Starships.

Hybrid Hives have 2 mil health sans their shields.  A cap of Mk1 Antimatter ships will be able to handle a hive per volley every 10 seconds (I Think)  once you have bombers take down their shields, and now with their health buffed they will survive long enough to handle all the hives your having trouble with.

As for the often appearances of Beachheads, having 4 waves appear in a row all with beachheads is improbable but still possible.  I'm playing a game vs a difficulty 9 AI (Golemite if anyone is counting) with AI Beacheads and I've only seen a beachhead once after many waves and 2 exo-galactic waves for Hard Spirecraft.  I'm not sure how much health beachheads have but they get focused down by my defense fleet too quickly to have any substantial amount of health and armor.

As for the sniping out the command station: build a forcefield around it, that'll stop it from being sniped.

[etgfrogs]

while yes, that would have worked if it wasn't a peacemaker ai(mass driver + anti warhead gun), the ai had a mass driver sitting reasonably away from the wormhole and fighters/bombers weren't faster then the hive ships so out of the 180 fighter/bombers i sent, only about 10 got close but barely did damage to the mass driver, but it was wierd because 2 more waves hit the planet and still had beachheads but this time the ai sent some of those hive ships shortly afterwards which killed my home station...guess i'll just play with the hive ships off because that was the main thing that stoped me.

oh, also forgot to mention, i had a forcefield on the command station, but thats pointless since beachead stops all supply on planet which shuts down the forcefield.

[x4000]

There's a 10% chance that any given wave will include a beachhead, which over a very long period of time should work out to 10% of the time you get a beachhead.  However, in a shorter span of time the nature of such random chance will mean it could be 100% of the time or 0% of the time or anything in between.  It's a simple RAND() call, so it's not looking at history and trying to space them out or anything.

[etgfrogs]

i guess the client glitched out or something because it was always with that save yet starting a new one that didn't happen, although that would be a pretty brutal ai that would intentionaly do those waves every single time...but maybe unballancing.

[x4000]

It's not a glitch, it's just the nature of statistical clustering.

[etgfrogs]

i guess thats true, on the bright side i'm doing alot better now that i've read through a few of the wiki things and i'm suprised about how good the raid starship is for destroying data centers and warp gates(hey, it fits it name now of being a "raiding" starship), i didn't realy understand how to use raid starships that well during the game that this happened, but at least i've learned now that i could have used a group of raid starships to destroy the ai command center allowing me to use the antimater starships against the hives without them getting insta gibbed by the mass driver...

[Ranakastrasz]

i guess thats true, on the bright side i'm doing alot better now that i've read through a few of the wiki things and i'm suprised about how good the raid starship is for destroying data centers and warp gates(hey, it fits it name now of being a "raiding" starship), i didn't realy understand how to use raid starships that well during the game that this happened, but at least i've learned now that i could have used a group of raid starships to destroy the ai command center allowing me to use the antimater starships against the hives without them getting insta gibbed by the mass driver...

Oh yes, I love raid starships. They are actually even able to take out guard-posts if you have a full cap of about the same level as the post. I use them in my fleet as well to take out the irritating crap underneath force-fields. I also use them to take out all of the tacyon guardians, data centers, warp gates, command centers, (if it is safe) resource nodes, and pretty much everything else that is able to be taken out in a few seconds by them.

It's not a glitch, it's just the nature of statistical clustering.

In my opinion, you should be using a less random random number generator. (because real random is too random) http://seanmonstar.com/post/708989796/a-less-random-generator

[x4000]

We actually intentionally use a more random RNG -- Mersenne Twister -- because the built in random isn't random enough.  This is not a case where I would want it to be less random, the fact that it's unpredictable is the goal.  If I wanted it to be more predictable there are far easier ways than what that guy is doing for this sort of thing.

[Commiesalami]

oh, also forgot to mention, i had a forcefield on the command station, but thats pointless since beachead stops all supply on planet which shuts down the forcefield.

My bad, I should have remembered that.  You could try to rebuild the command station on the edge of the system so it is out of range of the Beachhead (I remember that they have long range but I don't think its infinite).  This may not be viable if the wormhole is in the wrong place

[Ranakastrasz]

We actually intentionally use a more random RNG -- Mersenne Twister -- because the built in random isn't random enough.  This is not a case where I would want it to be less random, the fact that it's unpredictable is the goal.  If I wanted it to be more predictable there are far easier ways than what that guy is doing for this sort of thing.

Huh, I guess I have to google that now. "Mersenne Twister"

And yes, I agree that making it too predictable is a bad idea. The true randomness caused this thread to be necessary however.

[etgfrogs]

yea, guess i just made this thread in frustration, because the combination of having a hard time with the hives and the beachheads breaking through my early game defenses was annoying. but its still a fun game regardless, guess now i'm trying to look for a multi player game since i'm pretty easily beating level 7 ai(i'm about halfway through the game and i've kept the ai progress at 100)

[zebramatt]

We actually intentionally use a more random RNG -- Mersenne Twister -- because the built in random isn't random enough.  This is not a case where I would want it to be less random, the fact that it's unpredictable is the goal.  If I wanted it to be more predictable there are far easier ways than what that guy is doing for this sort of thing.

Huh, I guess I have to google that now. "Mersenne Twister"

And yes, I agree that making it too predictable is a bad idea. The true randomness caused this thread to be necessary however.

Although frustrating, the fact that the scenario described here is possible I find to be rather compelling. It makes our faceless AI conquerors all the more frightening.

[Blasphemy]

We actually intentionally use a more random RNG -- Mersenne Twister -- because the built in random isn't random enough.  This is not a case where I would want it to be less random, the fact that it's unpredictable is the goal.  If I wanted it to be more predictable there are far easier ways than what that guy is doing for this sort of thing.

Cool