Broadcasting playing AI War

[keith.lamothe]

Everything except perma-AIP flooring? That's really the only thing nerfed into the ground. Everything else may have gotten nerfed a bit, but they're all more even now so it's more decidey which to do for the situation than a given before the game starts.

I think I also nailed the whole melting-down-ion-cannons-to-sidestep-early-game-economy thing, but that may be just a really minor thing in the grand scheme

[Suzera]

Yeah, that was just coincidence. I still melt them down now and then though because they are a TREMENDOUS drain to repair. If they get scratched, they get scrapped if they are mk 3+, regardless of how full I am or not.

[Dyers_Eve]

I'm just chiming in that Diff 8 is really hard and a pretty giant step from 7.6. I smoked the AI on 7 then went to 7.3 then won pretty convincingly on 7.6 but on diff 8 oh my. I can't remember why I died repeatedly but I don't think I made it past 2 hours or past the first cpa. Hell, the first wave in diff 8 can get pretty dicey. You have to spend a lot of resources on defense and use a lot of your fleet for defense. I think AI type plays a huge role in actual difficulty as well, the AIs that don't send waves make the game much, much easier. The AIs launch waves simultaneously usually so 2x wave sending AIs can overload your defenses a lot more than one wave sending AI can. God forbid you select mad bomber on diff8+. I'm playing a high AIP 7.6 diff game currently and if I can master that I'm gonna take another shot at diff8.

I think an after action report with screenshots and notes are more useful than a long video. Unless you are micro'ing like in a game of starcraft then videos shouldn't show that much. Or even upload a save game at different spots so someone can see everything, I dunno.

[Mánagarmr]

There's a big step-up in waves between 7.6 and 8, that might be what is causing it for you Dyers. I think the wave multiplier goes up by about the double, and you also get another starship added to each wave, in addition to any increased aggression and tactics from the AI. So yeah, 7.6 and 8 are quite different monsters.

[Suzera]

Unless you are micro'ing like in a game of starcraft then videos shouldn't show that much.

There are minor (compared to Starcraft) but very important bits of micro for the huge jumps in efficiency that don't come out in screenshots easily, and are likely what many people are missing in the HOW DO YOU DO IT?!??! category. You'll hear lots of BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP when I am in battles from me moving things.

See this for a singular narrow example: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7856.msg67192.html#msg67192

To put each time I do something like that into screenshots would take FOREVER.

Difficulty 8 is so much bigger because one of the final multiplier is changed from 3 to 4 so even aside from the second step instead of about 30-50%, you have another 33% at the end leading to 8 being almost double 7.6, but 8.3 only being another 30-50% or so over 8. It really should be smoothed out. The higher than linear ship amount increase doesn't help when there is a fixed ship cap for humans with respect to difficulty. Each additional ship is worth more the more you add.

I've done Mad Bomber + Backdoor Hacker on 8 before. It's not all THAT much harder after the first wave.