AI War Beta 4.033 Released!

[Ozymandiaz]

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

Oh, I missed that

[NickAragua]

So, did someone misplace a decimal point or is it expected behavior to regularly get size 2000 waves at ~250 AI progress? Before the latest update, I was getting 2-3-400 sized waves.

[HitmanN]

I suppose that depends on the ship type. I got about 1000 parasites at about 290 AIP or so

So far the new waves are much more challenging, and there's more incentive to go after every single data center in my current game.

A large wave of Armor Ships murdered one of my planets though. Have they always had a bonus against turrets? O_o Ouch. They seem much better against defenses than small ships, unlike their description says. They eat tractor beams for lunch and then steamroll over any turrets that have bonus against them. My defenses were pretty poor admittedly, but that was a rather big surprise.

I had to generally double or triple my defenses in all choke points to match the new waves, but that's a challenge I accept. Aside from the armor ship incident, I like the tougher waves.

[NickAragua]

Nah, it was ~200 bombers or frigates or other normal fleet ships before, now, the same non-wave multiplied planets get like 10x the attacking ships. I'm all for challenge and waves being non-trivial, but having 2000 bombers barreling down my throat at AI progress 250 isn't really fun.

[Vinraith]

So, did someone misplace a decimal point or is it expected behavior to regularly get size 2000 waves at ~250 AI progress? Before the latest update, I was getting 2-3-400 sized waves.

Odd, as mentioned earlier at AI progress 680 I'm getting 1000 ship waves (which seems about right). What difficulty are we talking about here? You're sure there are no multipliers? Assuming those answers are "something reasonable" and "yes" I'd take this one to Mantis.

[x4000]

Difficulty 8 is currently out of whack, far too difficult. Having the jump in numbers of waves simply does work well for that, as has been pointed out in another post elsewhere here. I'm going to take that off, and for diff 8 that would mean half as many ships per wave, and 1/3 as many on diff 9.

[Ozymandiaz]

Difficulty 8 is currently out of whack, far too difficult. Having the jump in numbers of waves simply does work well for that, as has been pointed out in another post elsewhere here. I'm going to take that off, and for diff 8 that would mean half as many ships per wave, and 1/3 as many on diff 9.

Indeed, in my current dual AI 8 game the difficulty suddenly spiked up after recent testing, despite having invested some nice knowledge in defence (my Mk II force field and MK I fortresses was killed in just a few secnod of the main AI comming in range of them {on that note, maybe player fortresses needs a bit of HP boost?})

In addition ot the AI sending golems after the spire I get big waves in addition. My poor fleet and defences evnetually got overwhelemed (I put the save on ice for now and started a new game for some more special testing I have been wanting to do for a while )

[dlcooper]

Difficulty 8 is currently out of whack

Everybody will be happy to know that more "whack" has been ordered! 


Sorry, just had to.

[x4000]

Difficulty 8 is currently out of whack

Everybody will be happy to know that more "whack" has been ordered! 


Sorry, just had to.

[Salamander]

You just had to tempt us with these new mineral deposits we can't use yet didn't you? 

My one friend that shows up to play the most and I started a new game this weekend with the 4.033 and there's a couple of things I'm curious about. This game is set on 2 level 5 AIs on a 50 planet standard galaxy with only the traders active as a minor faction.

-We started next to each other with each having 2 other unique ways out and he had a standard system and a IV next to him while I had a standard system and a III next to me. I had thought I had seen that we weren't supposed to get higher level systems adjacent to our homeworlds, at least at lower levels anyway. We managed to handle it, as they did not reinforce too heavily, but is it working as intended?

-I have a tight cluster of 3 level III systems and 2 of them had those counter-attack posts. One had 2, and the other one 1. I sent in bombers alone for the first 2 and we sent in raid starships for the third one as it was behind a FF (one at a time of course, raiding all three at once would be a recipe for disaster). The problem here is that the waves were 2x 3x the normal waves at the time and they really tore us up even though I always leave significant static defenses behind and we sent in practically our whole fleets to handle them. At least one of the waves had over 150 Sentinel Frigates which was a terror for poor Parasite V Fabricator which even with it's own FF and other defenses was destoryed. I may start using warp jammer stations more for systems like this. But the sizes of the waves compared to our normal waves was huge. I'm glad these posts are rare, but ouch!

-Related to the previous point, we are seing excessive amounts of Sentinel Frigates in the AI systems, up to about 200 or so. I'm not sure if that's intentional and just our bad luck, or if this is an actual problem. I'm glad I always leave defenses behind as these guys breaking through can really cause some havoc.

Minor points overall one way or the other as this game and Blood Bowl:Legendary Edition are the 2 games I'm really playing right now. Keep the new stuff coming! 

[x4000]

You just had to tempt us with these new mineral deposits we can't use yet didn't you? 

Heh, it takes a while to implement the full thing, that's all, so you have a partial implementation for now.

-We started next to each other with each having 2 other unique ways out and he had a standard system and a IV next to him while I had a standard system and a III next to me. I had thought I had seen that we weren't supposed to get higher level systems adjacent to our homeworlds, at least at lower levels anyway. We managed to handle it, as they did not reinforce too heavily, but is it working as intended?

This is working as intended, yes.

-I have a tight cluster of 3 level III systems and 2 of them had those counter-attack posts. One had 2, and the other one 1. I sent in bombers alone for the first 2 and we sent in raid starships for the third one as it was behind a FF (one at a time of course, raiding all three at once would be a recipe for disaster). The problem here is that the waves were 2x 3x the normal waves at the time and they really tore us up even though I always leave significant static defenses behind and we sent in practically our whole fleets to handle them. At least one of the waves had over 150 Sentinel Frigates which was a terror for poor Parasite V Fabricator which even with it's own FF and other defenses was destoryed. I may start using warp jammer stations more for systems like this. But the sizes of the waves compared to our normal waves was huge. I'm glad these posts are rare, but ouch!

These are going to get a bit of a rebalance in the next patch, for today.

-Related to the previous point, we are seing excessive amounts of Sentinel Frigates in the AI systems, up to about 200 or so. I'm not sure if that's intentional and just our bad luck, or if this is an actual problem. I'm glad I always leave defenses behind as these guys breaking through can really cause some havoc.

That's... sort of inwork.  Having a ton of sentinel frigates or zenith bombers in a wave can be pretty deadly, and the new spire bonus ships will be similarly high-powered-but-low-shipcap type units, so we'll have to figure out a way to get this working better than it has been.  Stay tuned on that.

Minor points overall one way or the other as this game and Blood Bowl:Legendary Edition are the 2 games I'm really playing right now. Keep the new stuff coming! 

Many thanks!

[keith.lamothe]

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.

Well, we aren't done yet, and suffice it to say that once you get past this "building up" phase, you may find yourself playing a very different game balance wise.  Also, remember the cautions in the journal text? 

That said, please remember that the balance (frequency and size) of those special attacks is by no means final, indeed 4.033's should be nearly 3x easier than 4.032's.  Perhaps it needs to be cranked down to 2x easier than it is now, dunno.  I don't want to make it too easy or you're going to walk all over the AI with those massive golem-level cruisers and supporting destroyers, etc.  It's a tightrope walk.

By the way, what difficulties were the AI players in your case?

[Ozymandiaz]

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.

Well, we aren't done yet, and suffice it to say that once you get past this "building up" phase, you may find yourself playing a very different game balance wise.  Also, remember the cautions in the journal text? 

That said, please remember that the balance (frequency and size) of those special attacks is by no means final, indeed 4.033's should be nearly 3x easier than 4.032's.  Perhaps it needs to be cranked down to 2x easier than it is now, dunno.  I don't want to make it too easy or you're going to walk all over the AI with those massive golem-level cruisers and supporting destroyers, etc.  It's a tightrope walk.

By the way, what difficulties were the AI players in your case?

AI will eventually stop pounding you with massive golem fleets?

The spire quest is defiantly interesting, tho I am having a hard time running my dual AI 8 game atm (golems + huge fleets + massive waves = dead home command)

[keith.lamothe]

Well in 4.033 the golem fleets should be taking 3x longer to show up and give you 3x as much time in between

But yea, I guess I should have made it more clear in the Fallen-Spire minor faction description, but playing on diff 8 is kind of asking for it

It should be winnable, if you're good and don't make any really big mistakes, but you're in for at least a moderately-epic challenge.

That said, if you're currently testing it at diff 8, please continue to do so, it should work fine if you're willing to deal with the increasingly-intense fight-for-your-life

[orzelek]

My fight and playing with spire is against two lvl 7 AI's (around 170 AIP now).
I have no normal waves which helps immensely I think (AI's are support corps and shield ninny - I didn't disable the waves).
I still have one spire city - and after I built last habitat for it (no idea what it gave so I will remove it probably) I received a wave of I think 800+ with things like widow golems (3 or 4), bunch of core starships (around same number as golems I think), and "uncountable" number of zenith starships and spire starships - no real idea but seen at least 6+ of these and they tend to die quite fast to mlrs so I may have missed some that died on outer defense rings or in the fray (mlrs as unlocked unit helps.. but not against cores since they are missile immune).

Will I need to build second spire city - it seems that this won't be survivable if I get twice the attack wave with it build up completely. My HW has two force fields that feel very abused...
Basically currently I'm using full cap of Mk I/II (and III/IV bombers) to defend. Had awful unlocks so nothing helpful there. With second city I would need to commit also spire ships to defense. I may actually try to build it now and see if I can survive - and hope that next stages will help.....