AI War Beta 3.902 Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2010/10/ai-war-beta-3902-released.html

This one mainly fixes a bug in the last one that was causing savegames to all be 0 bytes.  Yikes.  We rushed this fix out as soon as we'd realized, thanks for your patience.

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.

[zebramatt]

Thank the Gods for that! 

[x4000]

No kidding.

[Ozymandiaz]

Nice

Also, do the new music track get downloaded with the new patching, or must I get the new installer like last time?

[x4000]

The recent new music track was in the patch.

[Ozymandiaz]

The recent new music track was in the patch.

Sweetness. I really like the new music as well!

Looking forward to some testing today, finally got more then a a few minutes to spare

[x4000]

Thanks!

[Collic]

Excellent! I knew you'd fix that one up super fast. No need to apologise for save game hosing - it comes with the territory

I'll have a crack at the new version now, looking forward to it.

Edit: Just had a quick play, one thing I've noticed is the music is skipping for me again (previously it did on high unit cap size, but was fine on normal). Waves seem to start at a good size- much improved from recent versions Haven't played long enough to comment on them otherwise, though.

[Ktoff]

I can confirm the skippy music. Whenever you open something new, but also when nothing (obvious) happens.

Also, the settings importer seems to forget about the altplanetnames.txt

Cheers,
KToff

Edit: Also, when alt-tabbing out of the game, the game does not know you have stopped pressing the alt-key unless you press (and release) it again.
Final Edit: Not a Bug, but the game runs much slower than 3.189. When accelerating the Sim speed to +10 in Unity it runs at ~2.5 to 3 times normal speed. The old Version runs at more than 10 times (12?). +10 sim speed does not feel fast anymore :-)

[Ktoff]

Well, i just spent thirty minutes just to get my ass handed to me by the AI (2 AI 7)...I realize that a lot has changed and that i probably have to relearn the dynamic of the game, but it feels as if it has gotten a lot harder.

To begin this new game i started out slow and built up quitly on my planet before venturing out and causing unneeded trouble (no rushing for the first planet after 10-15 minutes :-) ). So i sit there and build my (MkI) ships to the ship cap(tank as special ship), add a couple of Starships to the mix and even get a Mass driver from the Zenith trader that is so nice to drop by.

Once everything is built up and i want to take my fleet and get my first planet. But wait... a wave of 1 starship and ~70 tanks is anounced and i think to myself: it will be nice to see my fleet in action. The wave pops in and the starship goes down quickly under the fire of my mass driver and the siege starship. The tanks merily proceed to my station, while my fleet tries to take down the incoming enemies. 3 (+-2) minutes later, 60 tanks are left and my command station is gone....

Yes i neglected towery defences BUT, shouldn't a fully stocked fleet be able to take out the first wave that appears? After killing of the command station the tanks killed of any stationary stuff that was left and when they had obliterated everything, there were still 30 tanks left.

I have been defeated by the AI before, but then i usually thought that it was my fault or that the AI had done something clever....

[keith.lamothe]

For the folks with skippy music, can you post the specific saves where you are getting the problem?  Basically the solution is for me to profile the memory usage and cut out the foreach's and whatnot that are causing the transient allocations, but I can't find them unless I have a simulation-state that's actually firing the offending code branches   Posting the saves in this thread is fine for this particular issue, though if you want to toss them into an existing mantis thread on the issue that's ok too.

@Ktoff:

It may be that the tanks simply have too much armor, or the armor mechanic should have a minimum of 10% damage or something like that.  Also, it may be that one of the triangle ships needs to be stronger against them.

To clarify, these were space tanks and not "armor", right?

[Sizzle]

Standard disclaimer, I am traveling on business so cannot test, but I can theorycraft:

This seems to indicate that either early scouting is mandatory to determine the fleet unlocks the AI's have, or that the armor bonuses for various hull types that being unprepared for them is a hard counter -- implying the bonuses / penalties for various armor types are too harsh across the board, and an adjustment in favor of increased base damage and lesser modifiers is perhaps needed.

Is it intended that immediate scouting is mandatory at difficulty 7?

[keith.lamothe]

I may not have been clear enough: it's quite likely not a problem with you not having relearned the game, it's just that we really haven't balanced everything after the huge changes before.  Lots of stuff has been rebalanced, but basically unless someone complains we aren't going to know and thus aren't going to fix, because we just don't have time to playtest ourselves  So thanks

And immediate scouting should not be mandatory-for-survival-of-the-first-wave on diff 7, I'd say.

[Ktoff]

I saw the 'balancing' thread just after dumping my rant here and i thought that it should have gone elsewhere...

Yes space tanks. I have lost due to a wave of space tanks before, but that was more of a 'i just moved 90% of my fleet offworld, where do these fricking tanks come from now?' situation :-)

The music problem happens in everygame. Appart from a the parts where i first open the science lab, give scouts an autoexplore order for the first time and stuff like that, it also skips every 15-25 seconds (so not terribly often) for no apparent reason even in the beginning of the game (within the first two minutes :-)). I have not played longer than 30 minutes in the new version yet.

I attached a 1:30 save just in case you can get any useful information out.
Good night and keep up the good work,
Ktoff

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, really, skipping in the really early game?  That's odd, considering how little transient allocation was left there.  I've been working on that though, and it's down quite a bit.  I'm about to tackle the GUI's transient now, we'll see how much I can get of it.

Thanks for the save

On the space tanks thing, yea, even a MkI has 30000 armor, which basically means anything you have at the start will only do 5% of their standard damage.  Not sure how to handle that, but thinking about it.