AI War Beta 3.715, "The AI Strikes Back," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2010/10/ai-war-beta-3715-ai-strikes-back.html

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At long last, AI Guardians have arrived!  The first 40 of those ships (5 mark levels each of 8 ship classes) are now in, and a couple of them are pictured below.  These are basically overlarge, fairly slow, and fairly powerful ships that guard guard posts and command stations -- until provoked. 

In a lot of respects, they fill the same niche as turrets used to for the AI (the AI no longer gets any turrets, if you're just joining us), with two key differences: a lot more firepower is concentrated into each guardian; and the guardians have the ability to go on the offensive when you make them angry.  That's hugely important, as it makes the counterattack risk from attacking a planet inherently higher.

Also in this release are some key changes to starships, and how the AI uses those.  You'll be seeing at least one starship in every offensive wave now, which is one big difference.  Additionally, the AI is now able to use starships in more than just the "planetary roamer" mode that they normally have been.  This allows for attacks and retreats from starships, without those starships deciding to stick around permanently on the first AI planet they run into.

There are, of course, also a number of bugfixes.  The issue with the high threat right at the start of the game on lower-than-high unit cap scales has been fixed.  Additionally, we fixed the longtime issue of having at least a tiny bit of threat right at the start, simply by funneling those units into special forces during the first 60 seconds of the game.  So not only is the core bug fixed, but there's now a safety value of sorts in place to keep it from happening again.

Also, a lot of the window/dropdown/tooltip height positioning issues have been fixed, with great suffering, by Keith.  The z-indexing model for windows in Unity leaves a lot to be desired, and the documentation of that z-indexing model leaves even more to be desired, but Keith persevered and found a solution at last that seems to resolve all the issues.  He's asked me to relay that any more bug reports relating to window draw order are risking bodily harm. ;)

Oh, and by the way -- the turret caps are higher again.  With the starships and the guardians the way they are now, you'll need them.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 3.701 or later, you can download the windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

[keith.lamothe]

Sweet

And yea, the draw order thing should be working pretty well now.  There are still a few outstanding issues with the context menu which I'm working on now.

[keith.lamothe]

Sweet

And yea, the draw order thing should be working pretty well now.  There are still a few outstanding draw-order issues with the context menu which I'm working on now.

[Lancefighter]

Guardians seem to be a little stupid: I came up against a countersniper ai, so I sent out scout starships to explore. Turns out, they really LOVE giving up their post when they see something.. within a few minutes i found ~half dozen artillery, ~half dozen flak golems, and a few of some other types heading towards my home.

Other than that, they dont really seem that special.. nor fantastic. ARtillery ones seem the most annoying just because they can apply their damage longer, but then they seem to like running straight towards my home turretwalls once they catch sight of one of my starships.

[x4000]

I probably need to make them stronger; I was a bit too conservative with the guardians, really.

Also, that problem with the scout starships attracting everything was actually an issue with the scout starship, not the guardians or other units.  It had a flag on it that it shouldn't have; that's fixed for the next version.

[keith.lamothe]

I probably need to make them stronger; I was a bit too conservative with the guardians, really.

Yea, I find it's much more entertaining to balance things like that really high for the first go. 

Not that I've ever done that

[x4000]

Yeah, so it goes.

[Lancefighter]

i agree. Buff them up to the millions of hitpoints, but make them slower/less willing to leave post - the damn things ran away from my light starships more often than i think they should have

[x4000]

Their willingness to leave their posts is a pretty key attribute, though -- they're more interesting as a counterattack force that can slip past your main fleet than as simply stationary guardians -- the guard posts themselves can take care of themselves pretty well, right?  But the big complaint was that those weren't mobile.  Well, the guardians are.

But yeah, they need a big buff.

[Lancefighter]

well thats it - they dont feel to me like defensive starships (as it seems you are trying to make them). They feel to me like mobile turrets.
I suppose i can withhold real judgment until they come in proper extra-boosted form (or maybe get far enough into a game to play with some high mk worlds)

[Shardz]

I posted this earlier in the 3.714 thread and it probably got passed up with the server burp there. Just a crazy idea on my part really.

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7328.msg59426.html#msg59426

[keith.lamothe]

This is tricky territory to get into, tactically.  Basically a lot of human players are going to have impenetrable walls of doom awaiting any AI units foolish enough to actually attack them, short of a big CPA.  They can even stop hybrid swarms once they get used to the idea.  This is why some of the hybrids will have ways of dealing with turtling players

For these guys, there's a few different things you can do, ranging from the cheapshots (some guardians doing limited-aoe-emp/para) to the gutpunches (millions of hp, devestating weapons) to the devious (using a similar staged-attack logic to hybrids, which isn't a good idea for these).  And many others, I'm sure are buzzing around in your head

[x4000]

They feel to me like mobile turrets.
I suppose i can withhold real judgment until they come in proper extra-boosted form (or maybe get far enough into a game to play with some high mk worlds)

Bingo, that's exactly what they are, and are intended to be. I pretty much said as much in the release notes, but I guess I didn't come right out and fully say it.  These are turrets that can also launch counterattacks.

[x4000]

This is tricky territory to get into, tactically.  Basically a lot of human players are going to have impenetrable walls of doom awaiting any AI units foolish enough to actually attack them, short of a big CPA.  They can even stop hybrid swarms once they get used to the idea.  This is why some of the hybrids will have ways of dealing with turtling players

For these guys, there's a few different things you can do, ranging from the cheapshots (some guardians doing limited-aoe-emp/para) to the gutpunches (millions of hp, devestating weapons) to the devious (using a similar staged-attack logic to hybrids, which isn't a good idea for these).  And many others, I'm sure are buzzing around in your head

Or you can introduce a new AI mechanic.  Hunter/Killers are coming in probably the next release, and they'll deal with players who bottleneck.  Meanwhile, AI Eyes will deal with players who blob onto AI planets.

[x4000]

I posted this earlier in the 3.714 thread and it probably got passed up with the server burp there. Just a crazy idea on my part really.

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7328.msg59426.html#msg59426

Critical alerts we generally put on the left side of the screen in the alerts box.  We're thinking about stuff like that.  And actually the text in question does change to red when the threat/attack/whatever gets above a certain level, but the main thing is that a threat (or attack) of less than a couple of hundred ships is generally considered pretty negligible.