AI War Beta 3.716, "The AI Pacifier," Released!

[x4000]

That's the hope, for sure.

[Gallant Dragon]

I think the AI bumrush issue has returned, I was a few minutes into the game when I got hit by a raid starship, vampire claws, and various assorted ships.  Screen and savegame attached.

[Collic]

I can verify there are still a few issues with UI overlap. When using the build menu for stardocks (perhaps this effects others, not sure) the ship information pop-up obscures the building queue. I haven't been able to change queue order or remove ships from the queue since those buttons (hidden beneath the pop-up) don't seem to be responding to my mouse-clicks. I've attached a screen shot.

Not game breaker by any means, but I thought I'd mention it. My apologies if this is already known about ( I've only noticed it in the last build though).

Edit: I think the reason its an issue is because the information pop-up appears for the ship icons while mousing over the queue. A simple fix may be to just disable the normal pop-up when mousing over those icons - the information probably isn't really needed by the player at that stage, anyway.

edit: The building queue! not cue! edited (you need a face-palm smiley ).

[Ozymandiaz]

Currently it seems that the guardians are almost too strong now, maybe a tad much HP on them. I had my 1000 man fleet reduced to 250 after I entered a wormhole in very few seconds, I had to withdraw. Granted it was mostly MK I and II fighters and bombers, but also a few z mirrors Mk I and II (and some Mk I cruisers), I used to attack a Mk III world (I estimate between 200 and 300 AI units was on the world when I attacked, AIs are at 7.6 and . It was mostly a Mk III flak guardian that nuked my whole fleet after I came through the wormhole, but the staying power of the other guardians are very high.

I will do some more testing, but with such guardians the AI hardly need guard posts

[Collic]

Just checked out the release notes for the upcoming version and it looks great. I was finding the guardians a little overwhelming as well (ran into a brick wall at the third planet I tried to invade). I'm looking forward to trying again when they're a little easier to put down

Incidentally, if either of you get a chance to respond, where do the guardians factor in the new armour type classification - as turrets?

[x4000]

The guardians have varying hull types, like starships now do.  It's literally all over the place, same as with the fleet ships.  The idea is that there are various ship sizes, conceptually: large (starships), medium (guardians), and small (fleet ships), and they're all just a mix of various hull types, etc.  The sizes don't have any effect on anything combat-model-wise, it's just a matter of how powerful those ships are in firepower and health, etc.

[Collic]

I see, thanks for the speedy reply At some point perhaps it would be beneficial to put a list in the wiki detailing the various ship and hull types and maybe multiplier modifiers. If theres a readable file with this information somewhere perhaps one of us could make a start on that for you. Something for the future though, perhaps (unless its already there, of course).

[x4000]

Yep, you're right, it does need to go for the wiki eventually.  At the moment, you can see that in-line in the game with the F1 key to toggle through the various mark levels.  Or of course hovering over any ship gives you that, too.  But having a more searchable wiki article would be good.

[Giegue]

the gaurdians seems to attack rather than counter attack. I suggest perhaps a limited movement range, as a guardian attempted to leave its planet. perhaps it should only do this once the command station is destroyed.

[x4000]

I thought about various rules of that sort, but that winds up making them too passive.  These guys are meant to be some of the most aggressive around.  I'm not saying I'm opposed to all changes with them, but I haven't seen anything that would work better than this yet.

[x4000]

To clarify: the guardians should make you fear going into any AI planet at all, at least a bit, because of the reprisals of just even poking around, let alone attacking.  Making it feel more oppressive and dangerous to be around the AI with anything except scouts.

[Lancefighter]

Fun story.

I set up a sandbox game to test: diff 1, but both ai were the core. Sent out scouts... a few moments later, two spire starships showed up and started rampaging around my home system.

Fear going into systems indeed 

[x4000]

 

[Collic]

Heh, just came across my first tractor guardian. Bloody thing ran off with half my bombers then scampered back through the worm hole

Easily as fun as ether-jets. I love the guardian concept in general, far more interesting and less tedious than having to bust through umpteen tractor beam and lightning turrets when you travel through a wormhole. The smaller ship caps really encourage the use of starships as well, which I like a lot.

As a side note, I found them much less trouble with a full compliment of fleet and light starships, that may be a balance thing that needs to be looked at after the hp has been lowered in the next patch. Not completely sure on that, the planets I was attacking were a quite low level, so numbers would take care of that ( just the initial ones from my starting position).

[x4000]

I think the AI bumrush issue has returned, I was a few minutes into the game when I got hit by a raid starship, vampire claws, and various assorted ships.  Screen and savegame attached.

Apparently this is brought on by scouting -- I've seen this, too. We're working on it.