AI War Beta 4.033 Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2010/11/ai-war-beta-4033-released.html

This release includes some bugfixes and balance fixes, as well as episode 5 of the Fallen Spire story campaign.  The Fallen Spire story is really coming together at this stage, and this also has a lot of refinements to the prior episodes.

Also of significance is that the model for how big waves are has been completely redone.  Fear the high AI Progress -- for real this time.  In general this is attempting to bring back some of that "high AI Progress is super bad" flavor from AI War 2.0 and prior, while removing the insane difficulty of the earliest waves in the last few betas.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 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 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

[Giegue]

woa! I could've sworn you guys didn't work on weekends. this is a nice unexpected suprise for today!

also: It seems my report on the neinzul youngling AI didn't make it in time.

[x4000]

woa! I could've sworn you guys didn't work on weekends. this is a nice unexpected suprise for today!

Keith almost always does, but I haven't been much the last couple of weekends (before that, I regularly was as well).  Anyway, glad you like it!

also: It seems my report on the neinzul youngling AI didn't make it in time.

That's not an overly high priority during this particularly development phase, we probably won't get to it until after the 19th unless we happen to see the issue as we're looking at something else.  Except for critical bugs, we're mostly deferring all that stuff until the polish phase because... oh, I'll just refer you to this: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7533.0.html

[Lancefighter]

because shiny new toys are better than old toys with slightly broken parts ^^

Looks good so far, especally the parts about "you wont get murdered by 7 ai golems if you try to do the spire plot" and "aip hurts again"

[keith.lamothe]

"you wont get murdered by 7 ai golems if you try to do the spire plot"

Yet.

[Vinraith]

A completely new formula for wave sizes has now been put in place, and it puts a much more linear weight on AI Progress and difficulty when determining wave size. This attempts to go back to some of the earlier 2.0-and-before feel of the AI Progress increases while staying away from extreme early game difficulty with the first waves.

Forgive the physics and math guy but is there any chance we could get a bit more detail on this? Or is it intended to be vague so that we'll run afoul of it and die horribly? Not that I don't approve of that kind of thing.  

[HitmanN]

Also of significance is that the model for how big waves are has been completely redone.  Fear the high AI Progress -- for real this time.  In general this is attempting to bring back some of that "high AI Progress is super bad" flavor from AI War 2.0 and prior, while removing the insane difficulty of the earliest waves in the last few betas.

Nice. I was getting bored of the AIP hardly ever having any real effect on my games. ;P Hopefully this'll make a difference.

[Vinraith]

Also of significance is that the model for how big waves are has been completely redone.  Fear the high AI Progress -- for real this time.  In general this is attempting to bring back some of that "high AI Progress is super bad" flavor from AI War 2.0 and prior, while removing the insane difficulty of the earliest waves in the last few betas.

Nice. I was getting bored of the AIP hardly ever having any real effect on my games. ;P Hopefully this'll make a difference.

Well, in my current game (diff 7 on both AI's) at 680 AI progress we were getting 300 ship waves, we're now getting 1000 ship waves. That seems about right to me, really, as it makes waves something we have to pay attention to. In the past, we've just restricted warp gate access down to a couple of systems, built up a bunch of automated defenses in those systems, and then gone on about our business totally ignoring wave warnings. If we do that now, with a high AIP, we lose the systems in question. This is as it should be. It's nice for AIP to have more meaning than simply "stay below the Mark III threshold," which is how I've seen it through most of my time playing the game.

[Ozymandiaz]

Time to load up my Spire save again then!

After last night I was unsure if I would actually survive the next wave, thoose hordes of Armored golems and accompanying starships really put my defences, and all myfleet ships, to the brink


Btw, I like the removal of the spire time limit, while it was sufficient time as it was, it did fleel a bit rushed

[Lancefighter]

after playing a bit, generally it seems sounds have taken a turn for the worse on windows machines :x sounds are not always playing (if there is an instance of the sound, it doesnt seem to want to repeat, example, giving multiple move orders quickly) and I am not actually sure ai taunts are playing to completion... the sounds in general seem a lot less.. present.

[Ozymandiaz]

after playing a bit, generally it seems sounds have taken a turn for the worse on windows machines :x sounds are not always playing (if there is an instance of the sound, it doesnt seem to want to repeat, example, giving multiple move orders quickly) and I am not actually sure ai taunts are playing to completion... the sounds in general seem a lot less.. present.

Indeed, sound is a bit weird now. Not always playing.

[Ozymandiaz]

I just started a new game, and granted I built the Zenith Energy thing, but I just had, as my first wave, 4 waves incoming. I am playing against a vanilla AI and a special forces one.

So the numbers for each wave is ok, but the number of waves was surprising. I could not stand against 3000 ships so early

[orzelek]

After reaching last step of spire quest... I have quite simple conclusion:
If you want to play with spire for fun - sure do. They are nice and give set of quite powerful rewards. If you want to win - leave them alone.
Need to defend from mutliple golem, dozen of starships waves (with only one spire city - I won't dare to build second one - not that insane) is not helping you win.. it's preventing you from winning. You need to either commit all spire toys to defend.. (why bother then?) or need to commit you fleet and use spire toys for attack.
Using spire ships to attack is nice... but they have quite many direct counters: bombers (Mk IV+ will cuddly hug  them and worlds close to core have many Mk V ones), fortresses - high dps on ships with low armor, anything anti-starship.

[Ozymandiaz]

I started a new game, and it seem the 2 hours survey time limit is still in place.

After reaching last step of spire quest... I have quite simple conclusion:
If you want to play with spire for fun - sure do. They are nice and give set of quite powerful rewards. If you want to win - leave them alone.
Need to defend from mutliple golem, dozen of starships waves (with only one spire city - I won't dare to build second one - not that insane) is not helping you win.. it's preventing you from winning. You need to either commit all spire toys to defend.. (why bother then?) or need to commit you fleet and use spire toys for attack.
Using spire ships to attack is nice... but they have quite many direct counters: bombers (Mk IV+ will cuddly hug  them and worlds close to core have many Mk V ones), fortresses - high dps on ships with low armor, anything anti-starship.

Well, the Spire quests are not over yet, and from my peek looks at the spire graphics some goodies are coming out .

But I will admit, the constant AI harassment is a pain, and I was not actually able to keep up my defenses without having to commit my entire fleet to it in my last game.

(also, LOTS is still in beta )

[Lancefighter]

removal of the 2h timer is for the next prerelease, not this one