AI War Beta 4.043, "The AI's Revenge," Released!

[wyvern83]

That's a brilliant idea superking, that would be very interesting.  Would these be new 'half' structures or 'halves' of the existing core guard posts?

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I'm not being mean when I mention this but I've noticed this more often recently: its guard or guardian, the u comes before the a.

Any post or bug report where either of those words are misspelled will be missing from any forum or mantis search where they are spelled correctly.  You and mr_lolz, (there are a few others), have great ideas; it would be a shame that people, who are unaware of the misspelling, might miss finding your stuff because of it.

Edit: for greater clarity of where I was coming from.

[x4000]

Various notes:

1. Yes, there is a bug with the spawning of the core shield generators at present: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1727  Difficulty isn't meant to affect when and how they appear.  Existing saves should have them populated as would a new save, but the same bug effects both existing and new saves at the moment.

2. Glad you guys like the Ender's Game references.  Best. Book. Ever. 

3. I'm not really considering alternate designs for them at the moment: especially not ones that require massive extra coding time and new structures for not much reason.  I think a number of people have the wrong idea about a lot of these.  With all the various secondary networks of them, it's super simple: destroy any single node in the network and the whole thing disappears.  Voila.  You start out with a bunch of nodes, but can -- in the act of taking four planets only -- have zero secondaries left.  For the advanced research station planets, you just need to remember to capture four out of five of them, which most players already did.  That is all.  It matches the intent of what I was wanting to require quite perfectly, and something more general with "how many did I take overall" isn't going to accomplish the same thing. 

4. At any rate, other suggestions about "let me attack the home planet even though these still exist" are ludicrously beside the point: the entire point is that NO attacks can be made on the home planet until you take these out.  It's put in place to specifically stop the ultra-low-planet-count games.  Also, these won't be optional as an AI Plot or similar.  I think that some of the gut negative reactions come from not understanding exactly how these work; it's much simpler than people seem to assume.  For more on my motivations here: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1706

5. Regarding  how the emergent behavior will be changed by the recent changes to the AI: it's definitely impacted quite a ton.  Just exactly how it's impacted is difficult to say at the moment, because that's sort of the nature of emergent behavior (it gives unexpected results), but my main expected results are that it will become less predictable, better at sneaking around your defenses, better at responding to deep strikes, more clever about responding to when you attack it with overwhelming force at a planet, and so on.  And I think from past recent beta versions, it's already demonstrably better at not throwing away the lives of its ships on attacking planets where it -- so far -- has no hope of hurting you.  That's led to threat-buildup and what players have already started calling the AI "stalking" their planets.  Which seems cool to me.

[superking]

its very possible that me and mr_lolz are the same person (and both have a mild blindspot where it comes to the spelling of 'guard')

fair enough @ CSG, they were just ideas

question: what was the motivation for making harvesters so tough (40,000 HP, 30,000 armour)? even with the 20% minimal damage change from armour, thats equivalent of 200,000hp and vs all the weak cloaking/raiding types that used to be so effective at neutralising harvesters that is huge... nothing short of a sizeable group, or raid/seige/bomber starships are threatening and I have yet to feel a need for the exo-shield in AI war 4.0 (which is also proportionally much cheaper to run with the new economy)

I assume that one reason for the supertough harvester was to prevent noobs who get harvester raided early stalling, but now the home station makes like +600 instead of +80 it seems like that isn't going to be much of an issue

[x4000]

I don't recall making harvesters that heavily armored -- must have been Keith.  I think it sounds like overkill on the armor, actually -- I hadn't even thought about the fact I rarely lose harvesters anymore...

[keith.lamothe]

Actually I specifically recall you suggesting the high armor for the harvesters, but I could be specifically wrong

[x4000]

That's entirely possible, I was running on next to no sleep for a while.

[x4000]

New version: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7782.0.html

[wyvern83]

its very possible that me and mr_lolz are the same person (and both have a mild blindspot where it comes to the spelling of 'guard')

Are you?

[HitmanN]

You start out with a bunch of nodes, but can -- in the act of taking four planets only -- have zero secondaries left.

So, why not just make those four all primary CSG's. That way you don't need to memorize all the different networks you've taken care of. It's just unnecessary bookkeeping to do for the player.

It matches the intent of what I was wanting to require quite perfectly, and something more general with "how many did I take overall" isn't going to accomplish the same thing.

Huh? The current setup IS a "how many did I take overall" setup. It still comes down to destroying specific number or CSG's. One of each secondary network, and all but one of the primary. Could just as well be primary CSG's all of them, same total number, same end result.

I just can't see the point of the secondary networks. The primary one makes sense. Simple solution to block access, using only one type of unit. Elegant, straightforward. Then there are these secondary networks that are brittle, relatively easy to kill, adding very little in terms of challenge, yet they occupy FOUR types of units. Confusing, complicated, four times the chore to follow and keep track of. Surely there are better ways to add the same challenge without introducing a plethora of sub-units.

[x4000]

The point is choice. Requiring that players take specific planets beyond the ars would be incredibly lame. The secondary networks require you to take one out of a variety of networks, rather than a specific planet. This is hugely valuable.

Then you do NOT have to keep track of anything, because as soon as you kill any secondary node in a network, the rest disappear completely. Well, there might be a bug with that at the moment, but that's how it should work.

See? Easy and sensible.

[ShadowOTE]

I do like superking's idea, since it spices things up, but perhaps layering it on top of the core invulnerability? Make the "weak" networks not contribute to AI home world invulnerability, but instead provide items on superking's suggestions list? That sounds like it might be the best of both worlds.

[x4000]

I'm perfectly willing to consider extra stuff in addition to this -- absolutely.  Probably not for the short-term, though, as we have a lot on the list of bugs and other incomplete features, etc.  This first pass was the broad stroke to fix at least the worst of the offenders, but we can build up from there.

[ShadowOTE]

True, the important thing in the short term is balancing out the basics of the new mechanic and polishing LoS. If it's not already in Mantis, maybe add it as a suggestion for future consideration?