AI War Beta 4.038 Released!

[Ozymandiaz]

And no, having some massive single-chokepoint with massive turret defenses is not supposed to be a requirement   But currently it probably is, until the next balance changes at least.

Well, on my old dual AI 8 game I was able to keep the AI at bay, but it was getting more and more hard (tho I did start with the fallen spire as soon as it was ready with ep 1 and 2), and I never really got up to the second city, but I did clear all the systems on the way to that system so I am ready to do a recovery mission. But I got two systems to defend there, and my main fleet is stretched and I only use the spire ships (+ shield bearer mk 4s and flagships) to raid. And that is actually sufficient for taking down a system, the Spire ships really are that good. What I fear is when I got the next city up, I am wondering if that will be too much for my defence to handle.

So in a way its kind of balanced (given that I have yet to see teh end of the spire plot so I can not give final jugdment yet), tho it might be a bit more in the favour of the AI now then maybe it should, at least on dual AI 8 game. That is why I decided to try a new dual 7.6 AI game wiht one choke point (lucky map; 19 planets or so sealed by one choe. For reference its a 'realistic' map type that just happend to be in my favour ). This should also buy me some more testing time if my defences hold up decently.

I relize my current defence is bit overkill (or is it? we shall see... ), but I got the economy for it, and I wanted to test the AI to max.

One thing I did notice, is that a black hole machine is your friend, along with a few strong force fields. That buys a lot of time to kill  the AI while locking them in system (except black hole imune golems, that die easily alone however ).

All in all its an interesting challenge, but making it too easy is not fun either.

[Lancefighter]

haha yeah, such commonplace items...

Nah, mostly I end up with an ungodly number of high hp starships - mk4 bomb stars (eh probably my fault on asking for all the buffs *shrug*) spire, zenith, core...

All pushing their bows into my forcefields as if ramming it really will help.


edit
*sigh* and that wave of ~2kish (no wave warings) that included 800 mk3 z elec bombers. NOTHING kills those well enough >.> (also, my fault)

[mecharm]

Try littering the wormholes with Martyrs...that's what I did...then I died 

[Lancefighter]

I would, but that requires a fair bit of micro management.. nothing not always available under no wave warnings >.<

[mecharm]

Yeah, something like a "Distrubance in the Fo...Warp Field detected" timer would be awesome.

It would at least help the chest pains I get from holding back my breath during a 8 hour game...

[Lancefighter]

working on my 13th hour atm :p hoping to pick up the 5th hub within the hour.......


Otherwise, you learn to keep track of things by the control screen warnings fairly quickly :p

[snrub_guy]

Not far enough in the spire plot yet to tell you much about it, But built my first spirecraft last night. I don't usually like suicide ships, but I really like the martyr ships. Perfect for thinning down a world with a couple of hundred more ships than you want to fight. And four from an asteroid means it doesn't feel like a waste of a really limited resource. My only annoyance with them was i sent one in to clear out a planet, it collected 200 ships. Then I realised about 80 of them were AOE immune frigates! Argh. Ah well, still very useful.

I also think the icon for building the shield carrier spirecraft could do with a little tweaking. Because the ship obscures the red background it looks greyed out. I'll mantis it soon, as a little suggestion.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I used about 15 Mk I Martyrs to bring down 400 out of 1500 units at a major hub world. Another 600 or so were peeved enough to mount a counter attack. This was enough for a mere 80 ships (out of a starting 950) to survive the 7 hop journey into enemy territory and bring down a mining golem 4 minutes before it would have hit.

[x4000]

Great update! Not only does it fix that crash I was experiencing, but you also added some cool new content!

My pleasure!

The only problem is they have the same icon. I built a Ram and Martyr, and both has far-zoom icons that look nothing like them. In fact I think their far-zoom icons are supposed to be the ones used for the shild-bearer Spirecraft.

I just haven't done the art for them yet, just an artifact of beta.

Just one question: Do enemies attack asteroids on your planet? I'm wondering if I should just turn all the asteroids on the planets I own into ships. The only downside to that seems to be energy cost, but if enemies attack the asteroids it might be worth it. If not then I'll probably just build a couple of each type and save the rest till I think I'll need them.

No, they don't attack asteroids.  This is actually really important.  Leaving the asteroids alone makes them perfectly safe, but as soon as you start building mining enclosures on them the asteroid is gone immediately and the mining enclosure IS targeted.  If it is destroyed, you lose the asteroid and the spirecraft you would have gotten.

So I see why the spireships are generally unrepairable... well, because they are suicide ships >.>

The two that are suicide ships in this one are actually the only two.

[zebramatt]

My only annoyance with them was i sent one in to clear out a planet, it collected 200 ships. Then I realised about 80 of them were AOE immune frigates! Argh. Ah well, still very useful.

Sounds like a bug to me.

Have you posted it in Mantis?

See Winter Born's sig.

[Ozymandiaz]

I was trying som shiled bearer spire craft, it seem the models on them are so huge that (at least the MK II) are generally only shielding itself and not the fleet ships at low healt

I know they are not supposed to be repairable, but would it be an idea  to have the shield regen at a natural slow rate?

[snrub_guy]

My only annoyance with them was i sent one in to clear out a planet, it collected 200 ships. Then I realised about 80 of them were AOE immune frigates! Argh. Ah well, still very useful.

Sounds like a bug to me.

Have you posted it in Mantis?

See Winter Born's sig.

Wasn't going to, because Frigates are meant to be AOE immune. So I figured it wasn't a bug- just something you have to take into account.

[zebramatt]

My only annoyance with them was i sent one in to clear out a planet, it collected 200 ships. Then I realised about 80 of them were AOE immune frigates! Argh. Ah well, still very useful.

Sounds like a bug to me.

Have you posted it in Mantis?

See Winter Born's sig.

Wasn't going to, because Frigates are meant to be AOE immune. So I figured it wasn't a bug- just something you have to take into account.

They shouldn't tractor stuff they can't kill - that's just dumb! 

[x4000]

The shield bearers might indeed need larger force fields, I'd not considered that.  But definitely no regen or repairability on any spirecraft, period.  We need ways to balance these without that.

[Winter Born]

Spire Leaders are broken for me atm.

--------------------------
To try and be clear.
The patch notes and X4000 comments:

When you free them, they work for you. -1 AIP then. Until then, they work for the AI. +1 AIP them. If you kill them, they don't do either.
--------------------------

My game experience: Leaders under AI control give me a -1 AIP -- exactly the opposite. See the screen shots - At one minute after I start the game they reduce the AIP. I haven't even sent scouts out at 1 minute into the game and they are reducing my AIP to zero. (when you fix this please remove any AIP change until hour 1) .

At one hour I still haven't capped or killed any and again they all captive leaders reduce my AIP
Every hour after all captive leaders reduced my AIP - I did not cap or kill any as they were 4 or 5 hops away on a spoke map.

Dazio confirmed the same backward behavior


I think my previous crappy bug report and " I love these guys" comments mislead people. My bad  




Reopened mantis http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1502