AI War Beta 4.048 Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2010/12/ai-war-beta-4047-released_09.html

As expected, this one is mostly just to fix some bugs in the prior version.  It also improves sniper turrets, spider turrets, and how firepower ratings are calculated.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

[Vinraith]

Good grief, there are people that think spider turrets needed improving?  

Those things are a one-unit defense force. Not that I'm complaining, but they were already an obligatory unlock as far as I'm concerned.

[snelg]

Looks like the game is working properly again (no black screens), thanks for the quick fix! 

[keith.lamothe]

Good grief, there are people that think spider turrets needed improving?  

Those things are a one-unit defense force. Not that I'm complaining, but they were already an obligatory unlock as far as I'm concerned.

It's really more a matter of some folks wanting more sniper turrets, largely for dealing with Raid Starships (and you now need to get your sniper turrets pretty close to said Raids for it to work).

So to some degree it's something of a gimme.  If y'all think it's overpowered perhaps we could just add a Sniper Turret MkII and put Spiders on top of them or something like that.

[Suzera]

Good grief, there are people that think spider turrets needed improving?  

Those things are a one-unit defense force. Not that I'm complaining, but they were already an obligatory unlock as far as I'm concerned.

What difficulty do you play on? They're only mostly useful as minor roaming trash cleaners by difficulty 8 from what I have seen when you're dealing in thousands of units at times in waves with 200+ AIP. They do have a narrow use for countering counterposts to some extent though since those start pretty far out at the slow movement distance and mostly in carriers. They take forever and make a lot of noise trying to blow up random bits of 5-10 non-bomber mk 4 ships stuck on random non-front or back-front planets though.

I can live without the regular damage (though I'd probably go bump them way back down on my unlock list in most cases), but it's just very very distracting to use them in what I consider their best capacity. All the other turrets had them very very beat for raw damage output per ship cap too for wave defense.

[Vinraith]

Good grief, there are people that think spider turrets needed improving?  

Those things are a one-unit defense force. Not that I'm complaining, but they were already an obligatory unlock as far as I'm concerned.

What difficulty do you play on? They're only mostly useful as minor roaming trash cleaners by difficulty 8 from what I have seen when you're dealing in thousands of units at times in waves with 200+ AIP. They do have a narrow use for countering counterposts to some extent though since those start pretty far out at the slow movement distance and mostly in carriers. They take forever and make a lot of noise trying to blow up random bits of 5-10 non-bomber mk 4 ships stuck on random non-front or back-front planets though...

I can live without the regular damage (though I'd probably go bump them way back down on my unlock list in most cases), but it's just very very distracting to use them in what I consider their best capacity. All the other turrets had them very very beat for raw damage output per ship cap too for wave defense.

In the 7.3 to 7.6 range. 5 spider turrets is sufficient to keep a system secure from "regular" border leakage, in my experience. 30 are enough to stop a 2000 ship wave cold in its tracks. They're absolute life savers, in my experience, because even if the system in question is lost the threat is physically stopped. Now, granted, with the new rules change making dead engines not zero-out speed, they're probably a lot less useful than they were before.

[superking]

Good grief, there are people that think spider turrets needed improving?  

Those things are a one-unit defense force. Not that I'm complaining, but they were already an obligatory unlock as far as I'm concerned.

It's really more a matter of some folks wanting more sniper turrets, largely for dealing with Raid Starships (and you now need to get your sniper turrets pretty close to said Raids for it to work).

So to some degree it's something of a gimme.  If y'all think it's overpowered perhaps we could just add a Sniper Turret MkII and put Spiders on top of them or something like that.

that would be cool, but wont make them less overpowered when you do unlock them 

[keith.lamothe]

30 can stop 2000? At 30 firing every 6 seconds, that would take 400 seconds to hit each one once.  Do those attacks actually take 6-7 minutes to get through your planet?

[Vinraith]

30 can stop 2000? At 30 firing every 6 seconds, that would take 400 seconds to hit each one once.  Do those attacks actually take 6-7 minutes to get through your planet?

I don't mean to suggest they're alone when they're doing that. Essentially they allow the tractors to cycle and maintain a grip on things. 6-7 minutes seems longer than that was taking in my experience, though. Hmm, maybe I'm misremembering the spider turret count there. I built and rebuilt that system so many times I may have had 50 or 60 there by the end of the game instead of 30.

The main thing I can tell you is that, several times in my most recent game, a system with a respectable number of automated defenses and a few hundred ships held against enemy forces in the 2000-4000 range in large part because by the time my main fleet got there, none of the enemy ships could move anymore and were therefore incapable of threatening any other systems. Perhaps what they're best at is covering mistakes, which may be why Suzera has no idea what I'm talking about.  

[superking]

30 can stop 2000? At 30 firing every 6 seconds, that would take 400 seconds to hit each one once.  Do those attacks actually take 6-7 minutes to get through your planet?

they do when they stop to fight your forces en route.. I have easily seen 1000+ immobilised ships on one of my planets before.

suggestion for spacetank balance:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1956

[Vinraith]

30 can stop 2000? At 30 firing every 6 seconds, that would take 400 seconds to hit each one once.  Do those attacks actually take 6-7 minutes to get through your planet?

they do when they stop to fight your forces en route.. I have easily seen 1000+ immobilised ships on one of my planets before.

Yeah, that too. a few hundred ships, some force fields, the AI is easily distracted.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting they're overpowered, in fact their greatest strength is gone now that dead engines don't equate to a move speed of zero, I was just surprised.

[Spikey00]

Border Aggression has always had a mechanism whereby it would get more severe the longer players played: the cap of total attacking units plus threat would increase by 20 per hour of play. The cap would basically not release any ships to border aggression if the total number of enemies attacking and/or threatening exceeds that cap.

However, there was a catch: the cap was capped at 1/4 the total size of the player's current military. This cap on the cap has now been removed, so very long games now get ever-increasing border aggression caps.

Note that this doesn't mean that border aggression will definitely increase linearly over an entire long game, but it won't be artificially kept low if it would have been high late in a 60-hour game or whatever.

Border Aggression is now keyed based on firepower. The caps for BA now go up by the equivalent of 20 mark III bombers per hour.

So does this mean that my 25k threat level disappear eventually? 

[Suzera]

30 can stop 2000? At 30 firing every 6 seconds, that would take 400 seconds to hit each one once.  Do those attacks actually take 6-7 minutes to get through your planet?

they do when they stop to fight your forces en route.. I have easily seen 1000+ immobilised ships on one of my planets before.

Is that because the spiders couldn't blow up trickle-ins fast enough and they kept accruing?

The only time I've seen anywhere near that is when placing 50-80 down on a single planet to help against a counterwave.

[x4000]

Spikey -- no, it wouldn't have any effect on that.  Border aggression is about increasing threat, not doing anything else.

[Echo35]

Not to completely derail the conversation here, but I had a wave of 350 ships incoming to a border world that was about to spawn and then suddenly vanished. No wave at all. I reloaded my save from earlier and the wave wasn't even showing up there. It's like it just suddenly disappeared or got called off. My threat indicator isn't even up high, so it's like the wave was never being planned in the first place. Change the wave calculations up on us or something?