AI War Beta 3.713, "The Balance Destroyer," Released!

[keith.lamothe]

With the scaling of ship caps I was wondering how the cluster bonus would be handled, I too think this is the way to go.

I actually already implemented the scaling for the cluster properties, but yea, I think the cluster penalties in particular were just "don't use this ship".  Particularly for the Sentinel Frigates.  Of course, Fortresses could be way OP now (in a way, back to where they used to be, plus) without the cluster penalty.  And I thought the cluster bonuses on autocannons were actually quite fun.

It just makes more sense for polarizers to decimate shields than armor (at first glance anyways, I'm sure we will get over the semantics)

Yea, we'll have to come up with new names and sci-fi-bs for a number of things

[Sizzle]

I have always envisioned shields as miniature personal forcefields (and I'm certain that I'm not alone in this), I do hope that they make a return.
It just makes more sense for polarizers to decimate shields than armor (at first glance anyways, I'm sure we will get over the semantics)

+1 on this

I don't think theres any lack of room for innovation in terms of putting up a small-radius forcefield around some ships.  By small I mean not-going-to-cover-any-other-ships-worth-a-darn.   Those ships have "shields".

Other ships could have 5 meter thick armor, and no shields.

None of the existing mechanics (by existing I mean the new stuff you guys have implemented) needs to change; forcefields already have a regeneration rate.  This also allows for some additional differentiation between ships.  Shields regen.  Armor does not.  (Unless it's a biological ship, but I digress!).

[Fleet]

I don't think theres any lack of room for innovation in terms of putting up a small-radius forcefield around some ships.  By small I mean not-going-to-cover-any-other-ships-worth-a-darn.   Those ships have "shields".

Other ships could have 5 meter thick armor, and no shields.

None of the existing mechanics (by existing I mean the new stuff you guys have implemented) needs to change; forcefields already have a regeneration rate.  This also allows for some additional differentiation between ships.  Shields regen.  Armor does not.  (Unless it's a biological ship, but I digress!).

Could we please include a "Borg" and "Species 8472" minor faction? Or ship bonus ship type? Please!!!

[Mánagarmr]

*deep and booming voice* This isn't Star Trek!

[x4000]

To a few points:

1. First, thanks for all the support, and thanks Lars for the applause.

2. Like Keith said, you're pretty much seeing how the hotdog is made. So so much surgery, but this is the last of the major changes before guardians. And a few ai behavior changes.

3. Regarding the vagueness of the acid sprayer description, that's because their tooltip (like all ship tooltips) shows the multipliers directly now.

4. If you want the bonuses in an export, the "secondary excel exports" do include that info. But you really should not need it, as it's right on the screen now.

5. Regarding fortresses being OP now: the only reason they were OP before was that you could just use them to make an amazing bottleneck. I intend to put in some checks and balances for bottlenecks coming up. And really, the real daner with fortresses was that you could always have tons of them per planet when playing multiplayer, since the penalty was per-player only.

I... Think that was everything. Working off memory here, and writing from my phone.

[MaxAstro]

Wow, so many complete overhauls...  I haven't been playing during the beta (normally I do, but this time I decided to wait for the full release) but I can't wait to see how differently the game plays.

That said, one question about shot types no longer being displayed: What about ships that are immune to certain shot types?  Shell, Minor Electric, Missile, and Dark Matter all come to mind as shot types that it's important to know which ships use, as several things are immune to them.

[x4000]

Yeah, the shot types removal was my error, they will be back for the next release.

[superking]

Yea, I've been guessing that some players are watching all this (throughout the 3.700+ betas) thinking "you know, guys, I liked the game just fine before, is all this ripping-things-apart really necessary?"  And it's probably even emotionally draining for some of them.

YES    no more strong vs weak bonuses? this is by far my biggest gripe, suddenly I have these arbitrary bonus numbers that require me to do maths in my head and squint and armor classes to know what hurts what, and short of testing it out, I have no way of knowing for example whether deflector drones beat ether jets for cost..  this seems like a step backwards.

[Winter Born]

All this and a baby too!   Amazing work.

I will have to keep my old AI around as AI War "Classic"  -- might be a niche sales catagory there  

[x4000]

Yea, I've been guessing that some players are watching all this (throughout the 3.700+ betas) thinking "you know, guys, I liked the game just fine before, is all this ripping-things-apart really necessary?"  And it's probably even emotionally draining for some of them.

YES    no more strong vs weak bonuses? this is by far my biggest gripe, suddenly I have these arbitrary bonus numbers that require me to do maths in my head and squint and armor classes to know what hurts what, and short of testing it out, I have no way of knowing for example whether deflector drones beat ether jets for cost..  this seems like a step backwards.

I figures some folks might say this. And it's possible that we might put the strong/weak data back in there as an option. But, I really and truly don't think you'll need it, so I took it out from even being an option in the current version, to see how people do with it. You don't need to do any math, if a ship has a bonus against an enemy hull type you can assume it wins, or at least does enough damage to be worthwhile in battle against it. There were a number of reasons that the strong/weak data was hugely misleading a lot of the time; it felt comforting, but sometimes was actually leading you down the wrong path.

[o1knives]

I will have to keep my old AI around as AI War "Classic"  -- might be a niche sales catagory there  

I already have 3.120 and 3.189 archived for posterity!

I am generally in favor of these changes, though I'm not sure how much I like exactly how fast combat moves.   The loss of shields hurts, if only from a sci-fi immersion standpoint.  How can you have spaceships without shields?  Then there would be no place for the cute female whose only job (as far as anyone can tell) is to announce "Forward shields at 50%!" 

(Looking forward to some free time this weekend to see how I like these newest changes!)

[Ozymandiaz]

Kind of cross post quoting:

I've already converted all the tracks to 128bit mp3; am I permitted to post the link here?

Is he?

[superking]

I figures some folks might say this. And it's possible that we might put the strong/weak data back in there as an option. But, I really and truly don't think you'll need it, so I took it out from even being an option in the current version, to see how people do with it. You don't need to do any math, if a ship has a bonus against an enemy hull type you can assume it wins, or at least does enough damage to be worthwhile in battle against it. There were a number of reasons that the strong/weak data was hugely misleading a lot of the time; it felt comforting, but sometimes was actually leading you down the wrong path.

but that in turn means memorizing the hull types, which doesn't seem  remotely intuitive. fighters are light armor so bombers logically must be... Polycrystal? ah ha, vampires they must be melee-types like these cutlasses... except they aren't. can my vampires cost effectively defeat those cutlasses? let me get my calculator. I guess my complaint is that since I cannot guess what armor type eg, a paralyser, or a spaceplane is, I have to manually check each time and then memorize it unless I want to check again. then, I have to check the bonus damage on my ship, and likewise memorize. then I have to figure out whether my ship has any other attributes- for example, very low HP- which mean it is still unlikely to win. this is all time spent before I comprehend the relationship between just two units. previously I could glance at the profile, see the name of the enemy ship in red and already know 'these are not good against those' without any need to glance back and forth between the unit stat windows- it allowed me to make instant decisions and confidently use shiptypes I had never used before with just a glance at their STRONG vs WEAK page.

I see the arguments for the new method- it lets players see the raw numbers and make their own calculations of efficiency, and it is common to most the mainstream rts like warcraft- but I preferred the existing system both because it was a groundbreaking step forward and because it effectively meant there was no NEED to look at stats or armour types. anyway, conservative rant over  

also:
melee ships don't seem to attack properly atm, and radar jammers dont seem to work

[Lancefighter]

Bombers: The new Anti-Flagship.
Seriously?

I note very little gets bonuses to neutron hulls, at least none of the triangle, so that leaves virtually no units good vs starships. Except bombers, who eat flagships for pre-breakfast snack.

[x4000]

Kind of cross post quoting:

I've already converted all the tracks to 128bit mp3; am I permitted to post the link here?

Is he?

We'd prefer not, honestly. While I don't aim to control what you do with any of the assets included with the game, Pablo does have the rights for the music outside of use in the game, and he sells it on iTunes.  So I'd rather not have the mp3s floating around, though it's certainly a patron system with Pablo's music as much as it is for the game itself.