AI War 4 Beta 3.702 Released.

[x4000]

That's fine -- as an advanced player, you have your tools like the control nodes, use of FRD, control groups, etc.  By all means, use them as you wish!  This is about the default functionality for newer players, and making the game more accessible.  I'm not going to debate this; I was simply stating why I made the change, and that's been done. 

Things like the teleportation and auto-roaming-all-the-time that would be off-putting to new players are right out.  I'm looking at a bank account right now that's dangerously depleted despite the recent outpouring of support and press, and having new players get put off by an engineer that disappears at "random" when there's not much impact to advanced players to fix that... yeah, it's a no-brainer to me.

[Lancefighter]

... could you add a control node: engineers teleport?  pretty please?

[x4000]

Not high on my to-do list, and I prefer to have a consistent balance as much as possible, anyway.  The engineers need to be usable at an advanced level without pissing me off.

[superking]

or just have the MK I non-teleporting, and then the future unlockables gain teleporting powaar

[Lancefighter]

Not high on my to-do list, and I prefer to have a consistent balance as much as possible, anyway.  The engineers need to be usable at an advanced level without pissing me off.

see! it goes straight back to that. You claim engineers are better off with speed 100, yet you refuse to add a control node to make engineers worse   (yet more preferable for us old timers)
(well, what about the old system of higher tier engineers teleporting? :\  do experimental engineers still teleport?)

[Ozymandiaz]

I noticed engineers are no longer teleporting

Is this intentional?

Edit: I just found the patch notes.

But I got to comment, I perfer the teleporting of the engineer. I did not think they where an annoyance, nor hard to learn

I agree. I hope this change does not make it to a full release. I disagree with the notion that the teleportation makes them more difficult to control, use, or manage.

Zero percent chance of that changing back.  It's better this way, and vastly easier for new players.  It's more functional even for advanced players.

Think about it: you're a new player, you see this engineer thing you're supposed to use, and you go to click on it.  But then it just vanishes!  WTF!  You have to know to zoom out and find it, and even then if it's got a lot to do it's blipping around and finding it can be a devil.  And you can never just go back to where you left it, it's always a hunt that frustrates even me.

No chance of going back to the old way, no chance at all, sorry...  That's one of those things that I think is just too crucial of a learning curve problem, and it has been subconsciously annoying me enough that I couldn't believe I didn't realize how much I hated it before now, either.  Plus it gets rid of the constant piff piff piff sound in all games on your planets.

I'm not sure what the objections are related to, if it's a worry that engineers are nerfed or what.  They are actually just as functional, especially if you put them in FRD mode, even though they can't cover an entire planet with quite the same speed.  But it's pretty close, given their blazing move speed and their huge repair range.

Well, my worry is that I no longer can support many planets at the same time as effectively with the same engineer group. On a single planet, it is fine, no objection there. But when I want to move them to a new planet, say 4 jumps away it does take some time. And if the planets are hostile they will likely die, and given the limited engineer ship cap, I might need several groups now to support several fronts and factories. All around it seems a bit harder now to use them aggressively and as support within my own borders during late gameish game play

Edit: I do not want to seem aggressive with this subject, just voicing my feeling on something i have gotten used to

[AlexV]

But the .NET version loaded for you in 2.5 seconds?  Hmm, let me see...

Yep. To be fair, it's loading off an SSD, which does help. Further figures, which may or may not be of interest: Loading a reasonably large save game file (2MB) takes 5.8s on the old version, and 7.7s on Unity.

[x4000]

But the .NET version loaded for you in 2.5 seconds?  Hmm, let me see...

Yep. To be fair, it's loading off an SSD, which does help. Further figures, which may or may not be of interest: Loading a reasonably large save game file (2MB) takes 5.8s on the old version, and 7.7s on Unity.

Well, those have all been optimized about as much as we can, unfortunately, so not much we can do.

[x4000]

Well, my worry is that I no longer can support many planets at the same time as effectively with the same engineer group. On a single planet, it is fine, no objection there. But when I want to move them to a new planet, say 4 jumps away it does take some time. And if the planets are hostile they will likely die, and given the limited engineer ship cap, I might need several groups now to support several fronts and factories. All around it seems a bit harder now to use them aggressively and as support within my own borders during late gameish game play

Edit: I do not want to seem aggressive with this subject, just voicing my feeling on something i have gotten used to

Well, I thought of this when I made the change, and honestly it's something I'm pretty happy about, too.  I've been finding lately that I never unlock even mark II engineers because my cap of mark I engineers is enough to just cover all my planets.  There again... something seems off.  Having to actually weigh whether you want more engineers in addition to better ones is an important consideration in most strategy games, but with the teleporting that was something that disappeared here.

I tell you what I will do, though: engineer energy costs were recently reduced from something like 4000 to 1,000, but I'm going to quarter those again: so, 250 for the mark I engineer.  That way it's not prohibitively energy-expensive to maintain a larger fleet of those on various planets, which should also help with this whole balance thing.

[Ozymandiaz]

Well, my worry is that I no longer can support many planets at the same time as effectively with the same engineer group. On a single planet, it is fine, no objection there. But when I want to move them to a new planet, say 4 jumps away it does take some time. And if the planets are hostile they will likely die, and given the limited engineer ship cap, I might need several groups now to support several fronts and factories. All around it seems a bit harder now to use them aggressively and as support within my own borders during late gameish game play

Edit: I do not want to seem aggressive with this subject, just voicing my feeling on something i have gotten used to

Well, I thought of this when I made the change, and honestly it's something I'm pretty happy about, too.  I've been finding lately that I never unlock even mark II engineers because my cap of mark I engineers is enough to just cover all my planets.  There again... something seems off.  Having to actually weigh whether you want more engineers in addition to better ones is an important consideration in most strategy games, but with the teleporting that was something that disappeared here.

I tell you what I will do, though: engineer energy costs were recently reduced from something like 4000 to 1,000, but I'm going to quarter those again: so, 250 for the mark I engineer.  That way it's not prohibitively energy-expensive to maintain a larger fleet of those on various planets, which should also help with this whole balance thing.

Hmm, I almost always unlock engineer Mk II straight off the bat, and consider engineers MK III strongly later in the game

[Winter Born]

On the engineers: way back in the past lvl-1 moved normally and lvl3 and maybe lvl-2 had the teleport ability. Perhaps that could become the new way again. Teleporting lvl-3s would be worth the Kn cost to me.
Conventional moving lvl-1s would take care of the learning curve for new players. Teleporting upper tiers would be a granular increase in the learning curve, a way for newer players to be introduced to managing teleporting units other than selecting a teleporting bonus ship.

I think many players have gotten used to teleporting engineers across hostile space. We were also used to deep transport raids, K-raiding, etc. Ultimatly X4000 makes the rules and pays the bills. I will put in a request for upper tier engineer teleporting in Mantis

[Mánagarmr]

On the engineering issue: Personally I'm fine either way. They seem to be performing their jobs just fine anyway. Also not having the teleportation sound ringing through my skull all the time is quite nice, and also makes you go "HUH!" once you hear it and start looking for bad guys

As for the loading times: Seriously. You're arguing over 2 seconds? While longer loading times aren't that nice, but a comparison of 7 or 9 seconds is rather unnoticeable.

[x4000]

All right, all right:



* The mark III and Experimental engineers are now once again teleporting, for players who really love that feature.  The metal/crystal costs of the mark III engineers have been increased somewhat to compensate, however (about a 50% increase).

[Winter Born]

All right, all right:



* The mark III and Experimental engineers are now once again teleporting, for players who really love that feature.  The metal/crystal costs of the mark III engineers have been increased somewhat to compensate, however (about a 50% increase).

Love ya Chris

Oh and 330 in mantis needs to be marked complete 

[Lancefighter]

All right, all right:



* The mark III and Experimental engineers are now once again teleporting, for players who really love that feature.  The metal/crystal costs of the mark III engineers have been increased somewhat to compensate, however (about a 50% increase).

I love you too