AI War Beta 4.046, "Megaton," Released!

[x4000]

0.47 changelog:

Bomber:

    * Base Move Speed from 28/25/22/18/30 => a flat 28 (same as a fighter).
    * Base Attack Power from 600/2700/4200/9000/15000 => 1500*mk.
    * Base Range from 1000/1300/3000/3400/3000 => 800 + (200*mk).
    * Attack Reload Time from 12/12/12/12/8 => a flat 12.
    * Base Health from 8,000/20,000/36,000/60,000/65,000 => 9,000*mk.
    * Armor Rating from 500/1500/3500/3500/5500 => 200 + (300*mk).

8000 health at MK I?

hugely nerfed armour improvement between MK?

this is madness!

One KEY thing to note about the posted healths for all fleet ships is that you have to multiply them  times 7.  As Keith noted, he actually buffed the health of the mark I bombers, not nerfed them.  The higher-mark ones got a bit of a nerf from that change.  But mark I ships just went up by 7000 health.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm certainly open to suggestions on any of those changes.  Let me put it this way: I'm far more open to suggestions than having my actions described as madness   I already know I'm insane. 

Anyway, there's a few general movements going on right now in the balance changes I'm making, a couple relevant to the bomber changes:
1) Bonus ships should be roughly 1.5 times as useful as triangle ships; this is a very rough thing when dealing with more exotic bonus ships but if it's just a straight-up-shoot-things then it's pretty straightforward.
2) Lowering armor ratings to prevent stuff with low/no armor piercing from being nearly useless against so many different types.  This generally means lower base values and less-than-linear increases with mark level.

If folks would really prefer that armor rating increase linearly with mark level I can do that, it'll just mean that stuff without any armor piercing is up a creek and we'll probably wind up with everything having armor piercing.  Which isn't the end of the world, just doesn't seem desirable to me.

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, and yea, when I write something like "Base Health from 8,000/20,000/36,000/60,000/65,000 => 9,000*mk.", the first set of numbers is the CURRENT value.  So reading that and complaining about 8000 health for a mkI is nonsensical   You should be complaining about 9000 health for a mkI!

More seriously, the reason I include both the old and new values is so you can see the proportions of the changes rather than just the absolute values, because the absolute values I'm working on (and using in the release notes) are not easily translated into the effective values you actually see in the game.

Put another way, mkI bomber health was increased by about 12.5%, mkII was reduced by about 10%, mkIII is staying exactly the same, mkIV was reduced by about 25%, mkV was reduced by something like 18%.

[mavorspam]

Awesome work guys! Any idea when that 80,000 dps parasite issue will be resolved? I'm waiting to start a new campaign up.

[Suzera]

Normal ship cap health is 5.6 * base. High is half that. Low I assume is double that.

Edit: Assuming I am remembering correctly. I could be off.

[keith.lamothe]

In general I think effective health on High caps is supposed to be 5*base.  But whenever I try to figure out the exact relationship it changes

[superking]

One KEY thing to note about the posted healths for all fleet ships is that you have to multiply them  times 7

Yeah, I reckon I missed that, why? 

I'm far more open to suggestions than having my actions described as madness    

my sincere apolagies

[keith.lamothe]

It's not that the changes aren't mad, it's just that it's not new information

[Mánagarmr]

One KEY thing to note about the posted healths for all fleet ships is that you have to multiply them  times 7

Yeah, I reckon I missed that, why? 

I vould alzo laik tu no ziz.

[Suzera]

In general I think effective health on High caps is supposed to be 5*base.  But whenever I try to figure out the exact relationship it changes

It might be high cap that is base * 5.6 then. I know I got that as a multiplier for some level of ship cap. Normal is still double high and low is double normal. I don't know why you don't just make their stats the same no matter the ship cap setting for balance though, much simpler. Oh, and double/quadruple AE unit damage only to make up for half/quarter amount of targets. 100 fighters is going to blow up 100 bombers in about the same time as 50 fighters will blow up 50 bombers in the same ship cap setting.

Post edit thoughts:
I guess you'd have to halve ion cannon refire too.

[Lancefighter]

ion cannon rof is already scaled..

[Suzera]

Oh. That's taken care of then!

[True-Chaos]

I'm certainly open to suggestions on any of those changes. 

Since you asked... My 2cents

Can you standardize the fire rate of the Bombards? Currently its something like

Mark I: 30 Seconds
Mark II: 30 Seconds
Mark III: 20 Seconds
Mark IV: 14 Seconds

[x4000]

One KEY thing to note about the posted healths for all fleet ships is that you have to multiply them  times 7

Yeah, I reckon I missed that, why? 

I vould alzo laik tu no ziz.

Because way back in alpha ships had much lower health, but then I decided they all needed more health, so I put in a global x3 multiplier.  That was later increased to x5, and very recently to x7 (just before 4.0).  The reason for that global multiplier is that it's a huge time saver for us being able to adjust the health of fleet ships in general versus other kinds of ships (starships, golems, etc), while keeping them relatively the same values next to each other and thus saving time for us on coding.

It's all precalculated right when the program opens, so doesn't add any ongoing CPU load.  And then Suzera is correct on the general multipliers coming into effect for health on TOP of that for different ship scales, etc.  I don't remember the exact shifts for those, though.

[Elukka]

So, I've been having a lot of "UnhandledError" messages in this version. No idea what causes them, but I think it's now broken my save... It spews out a bunch of the errors upon loading the save, and if the game is paused it can't be unpaused. I tried saving the game as another file, but the weirdest thing happens when I load it: all my reactors are gone. I'll attach the saves here in case they're any help in bug-squashing.