AI War Beta 4.034 Released!

[keith.lamothe]

Having a delay for getting into a wormhole or transport opens up a heap of "we then need to also do xyz" like having the ship move off the wormhole, wait until the delay timer runs out, re-issue the wormhole/transport command (taking priority over any implicit commands it may have received in that time but _not_ any explicit commands), does it try to follow the transport while it waits, etc.

So an insta-hit thing fixes the real problem without adding any finicky interface things.

My other thought was to have ships entering a wormhole just take a lot longer to "fade out", and to be vulnerable to shot hits during that time but have stuff no longer be able to fire new shots at it.  But that would have been somewhat more fiddly than the insta-hit thing and wouldn't have done anything about the entering-transport thing.

[Lancefighter]

of random note - i often have my raid starships with their shields moving through the wormhole with my fleet.. If a forcefield is covering the unit while it goes through the wormhole, theory states that it would be protected, yes? (the ff would take the damage instead?)

[orzelek]

Spire plot feedback - it was savescum time this time... first wave after building of second spire city. It literally flew over everything I had and killed my HW - even when pounded non stop by all spire ships I had and my fleet (which died in a matter of some not much seconds). After few reloads I managed to save my HW - and after that both spire cities (one left at 9% hp). I think it maybe a "bit" over the top tho. Core spire ships were in 50+ quantity in that wave, few golems to look fancy, some other starshpis I had no time to count and on that about 900 Mk V ships. I think that all of normal ships were Mk V. If I read diaries correctly - building that number of spire cities is simply not doable...

Even MRLS Mk III won't save me next time probably...

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, you probably had such a high event-attack counter at that point that even if the accumulation rate dropped a lot it just would have been too much for you.

Still working on the balance of what it can do with those points, in any event.

[Ozymandiaz]

The wave after the current golem wave in my old save was better this time around (I just had to weather the wave I saved during previous version), seems the new counter is working more balanced. I was not put to the brink of extinction right away this time around .

Still have not build the second city, since the survey system was a lot of jumps off (5 or 6) and behind several nasty fortified systems in a dead end "arm" of the map. I am getting close tho, and will have removed the opposition so I can do survey soon

[Ozymandiaz]

Edit, I also want to add, the Dysons are back to their old glory!

[orzelek]

My last report form this test - after next wave I kind of lost. I still have my home - but both spire hubs were destroyed, from my spire fleet only 2 cruiser and destroyers survived.
Enemy wave was around 800 hundred ships in 3 or 4 groups with composition: around 3-4 golems (armored and widows), 10+ cores, 5-10+ spires and few hundred of assorted fleet ships.

This attack came after I successfully dealt with a CPA and was quite ready to take the next survey. While MRLS-es are very effective at countering core starshpis - spires are similarly very effective when destroying the city. And something (I think mostly bombers but also golems seem to have decent firepower) was removing spire frigs very fast - other spire ships barely survived.

I may try to load from earlier save and try to micro more or something... but for now I think I lost my interest in getting hammered by uncountable AI ships.

Attached advanced log with event data.

[keith.lamothe]

Ouch, yea, 304,725 points is rather higher than the starting point of 10,000.  At that point victory is very unlikely indeed.

Also, is the log correct in reporting that you're at over 20 hours into the game?

Anyway, it's pretty unlikely that the point total would get that high with the newer rules, but your save still has the accumulation from earlier.  If you'd like to try to continue that one, if you can send me a save where you don't have any incoming threat (or at least not more than you're fine handling) I can cut down the accumulation to something reasonable for that stage and you can pick up from there.

Up to you, I know it's been pretty frustrating

[orzelek]

I have save before that wave hit. My position in that save is quite poor - many entry points but can try to consolidate a bit and place all needed spire cities without to much AIP cost.
The log is correct about the game time - I'm playing slowly usually which seems to be very heavily punished by spire plot. Also had issues with economy for some time as I don't unlock economy things usually.

Also I'm a bit out of ideas how to attack AI H/W's in this save.. I was counting that doing spire plot would be great help for that


Edit: Hmm I just read the next version patch notes... and if higher mark ships will get buffed - this attacks will get much more dangerous than they already are.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, took a look, and yea, the main problem is that your first hub has been up for nearly 10 hours and your second for something between 3 and 4.  Remember how the journals were warning you that the AI wasn't going to like this?

I don't think 20 hour games are going to work well with the Fallen-Spire progression no matter what I do, unless I just totally gut the challenge.

That said, this next coming version will cut back a lot of the excessive accumulation of the counter for you, but in the future please understand that the AI will kill you if you send up flares like those cities and then wait that long   I mean, what's it supposed to do, just wait for you to build up a big Spire fleet and come kill it?

And yes, following the progression into the multi-city phase does make it likely that normal ways of attacking an AI homeworld become much harder or impossible.  Should you succeed in following the progression further, however, victory is possible.

[Lancefighter]

will scout starships be getting the fancy damping ability as well?

[Nightchill]

I don't think 20 hour games are going to work well with the Fallen-Spire progression no matter what I do, unless I just totally gut the challenge.

That said, this next coming version will cut back a lot of the excessive accumulation of the counter for you, but in the future please understand that the AI will kill you if you send up flares like those cities and then wait that long   I mean, what's it supposed to do, just wait for you to build up a big Spire fleet and come kill it?

This is also likely to be a problem for me then. I play slowly, so any games I finish are in the 30 - 40 hour range.

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, goodness, yea, if you're planning to play 30 hours, you should probably take the journal entry's advice and stop at the refugee outpost

Of course, depending on how good a defender you are, you can probably hold one or two cities against the AI for a good 10 hours or so (like orzelek did), but I'm not sure how much fun that would be.  The idea is that once you start building cities and capital ships, the AI is not going to mess around like it did when you were just a few small outposts.

The upside is that when the AI thinks you pose that kind of threat... well, maybe you do

[x4000]

will scout starships be getting the fancy damping ability as well?

Probably not, as they're pretty tough already by comparison to regular scouts.  But once we see the stuff in practice more, I might change on that.

[x4000]

I don't think 20 hour games are going to work well with the Fallen-Spire progression no matter what I do, unless I just totally gut the challenge.

That said, this next coming version will cut back a lot of the excessive accumulation of the counter for you, but in the future please understand that the AI will kill you if you send up flares like those cities and then wait that long   I mean, what's it supposed to do, just wait for you to build up a big Spire fleet and come kill it?

This is also likely to be a problem for me then. I play slowly, so any games I finish are in the 30 - 40 hour range.

Bear in mind, also, that the Fallen Spire game is pretty different from the regular one.  If you want to pursue it to the end, the way that the game turns out and how you wind up spending your time are pretty different.  Without giving away spoilers, I'll just say that.