AI War Beta 4.049, "Firepower," Released!

[keith.lamothe]

that looks ridiculous 

[superking]

It's actually spawning those ships out of thin air.  I don't think they necessarily come from the AI homeworlds; in the case of Spikey's screenshot he actually has a planet right next to an AI homeworld.

I feel like the AI should have to pay for that insane production somehow, like not reinforcing/counting down to waves while spamming

[Elukka]

It seems a tad artificial if they just spawn out of thin air. :/ I know the AI supposedly has extragalactic ship production facilities, but... I dunno, it just seems wrong. I agree the AI should pay for it. It'd be a lot better if it seemed like it was redirecting its resources to deal with your superfleet instead of being able to magically summon endless ships just because your fleet exists.

[Spikey00]

Defenses?  I have no defenses but my valiant ships that I refuse to end the game with, supposedly.

It is my most unfortunate field report that I bring you this problem.

[keith.lamothe]

@superking & Elukka: Well, thematically, it does pay for them.  As far as taking away from other stuff that's actually present in the galaxy in the game, why should it do that in this case when it doesn't "pay" anything for:
1) Waves getting larger with higher AIP.
2) Reinforcements getting larger with higher AIP.
3) AI Eye spawns with more human ships on the eye's planet.

?

I do sympathize with the desire; honestly I prefer an opponent that has a visible infrastructure that I can actually do something about and is a closed system entirely visible to me (that was one of the inspirations behind the hybrids), but the AI is simply not designed that way (and that is one of the reasons it is so much more effective than most RTS AIs) and for this one mechanic to start acting like it wouldn't really fit.

[Spikey00]

On that regard with the insta-spawning:  it would be really difficult in destroying the home command station conventionally (I had almost 200 spire ships) in that manner, because they're all core ships and you can't do anything about it directly, else they just respawn.

[Echo35]

After some fiddling around I managed to get it to display firepower for allies and AI on planets (For some reason it was showing my firepower rating and the AI ship count ><), though the Wave indicator is still showing ships in the wave, not firepower. Is this intended? Also, how the heck does a Scout have a firepower rating of 2?

[Ozymandiaz]

I am not entirely sure I am happy with the new changes that a big fleet gathers threat, as such. Just now on my home world that borders two hostile worlds I build some generic defenses, but when I take my fleet to that planet, full cap of MK I + Mk II Fighter, Bomber Cruiser and Raptors + a few starships suddenly the AI gathers more threat.

My fleet is realtively small, and if I unlock the MK III units I am sure it will involve a lot of microing on my part to avoid the AI gather more threat.

Should perhaps the cap for the threat be raised a bit?

[superking]

@superking & Elukka: Well, thematically, it does pay for them.  As far as taking away from other stuff that's actually present in the galaxy in the game, why should it do that in this case when it doesn't "pay" anything for:
1) Waves getting larger with higher AIP.
2) Reinforcements getting larger with higher AIP.
3) AI Eye spawns with more human ships on the eye's planet.

the players AIP management decides how much the AI gets "paid" for waves and reinforcements, and it is a finite payment that occours regularly via timer.

the AI eye can be easily destroyed and is limited by the numerical superiority of human ships on a single planet.


meanwhile, the 'spam when humans get high firepower anywhere' mechanic represents a potentially infinite spam of AI ships... I just think that should be limited in some way  

[Spikey00]

I am not entirely sure I am happy with the new changes that a big fleet gathers threat, as such. Just now on my home world that borders two hostile worlds I build some generic defenses, but when I take my fleet to that planet, full cap of MK I + Mk II Fighter, Bomber Cruiser and Raptors + a few starships suddenly the AI gathers more threat.

My fleet is realtively small, and if I unlock the MK III units I am sure it will involve a lot of microing on my part to avoid the AI gather more threat.

Should perhaps the cap for the threat be raised a bit?

Yeah, I think this mechanic needs to be reworked.  I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I'm tabbed out (trying to get more logs for sniper waves but not playing because of that bug... *cough*) and I'm having a constant log of hunters being created, and thus I assume there will be an infinite amount of ships being created in time, them being crunched again, more AI ships spawning, etc.

I'll have to agree here that I really don't like the AI receiving even more free ships out of nowhere, but I'm not familiar with the threshold before this happens, so I'll have to leave it there as a preliminary thought on the idea.

[ShadowOTE]

Good thing I read the patchnotes - I updated and found the fleets that had been sitting nice and tight in AI territory were unlocked and about to hit me like an unplanned CPA. Luckily my initial in-system defenses managed to hold them off long enough for my fleet to show up, but I still lost two minor systems to the AI as a result. Oh well, at least my threat has dropped down to much more reasonable levels

[Vinraith]

Just had my first experience with Hunter/Killers, and they are comically underpowered right now. A mark 1, mark 2, and a mark 3 were killed by a few hundred mixed ships on a world with virtually no static defenses. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those the equivalent of like 3,000 ships each? That system should have been steamrolled.

[Spikey00]

After tabbing out, talking with Lance, watching some stream of someone watching some stream, going to shower, and then coming back, apparently this is what I have while waiting for some waves (only one came, apparently, but not spiders or a normal fleet ship):



So yes, the mechanic for spawning ships in accordance to player threat needs to be refined.

[Suzera]

@superking & Elukka: Well, thematically, it does pay for them.  As far as taking away from other stuff that's actually present in the galaxy in the game, why should it do that in this case when it doesn't "pay" anything for:
1) Waves getting larger with higher AIP.
2) Reinforcements getting larger with higher AIP.
3) AI Eye spawns with more human ships on the eye's planet.

?

I do sympathize with the desire; honestly I prefer an opponent that has a visible infrastructure that I can actually do something about and is a closed system entirely visible to me (that was one of the inspirations behind the hybrids), but the AI is simply not designed that way (and that is one of the reasons it is so much more effective than most RTS AIs) and for this one mechanic to start acting like it wouldn't really fit.

The first two are things the human pays for getting more planets. It is also limited with time.

AI Eyes I think spawn a ridiculous number of units which leads to repetitive motions against them that usually aren't a big deal to execute. It doesn't have a limit either, but at least you can avoid the penalty, or at least have it only spawn, at worst, 1/2 your ships in the system for each AI Eye if you do a huuuuge arc around the thing.

If fleet ships + starships seemed like they would ever get to 10k firepower, I'd be more concerned with this new mechanic. As that doesn't seem to happen, not too worried since that's all that's generally needed for victory. If they do eventually though, it's just a reason to only ever pick the best ships, again, and not build certain ARS ships except for last when at cap resources and then leave them somewhere where they'll rot doing nothing except in emergencies.

This is worse than taking a ton of AIP was/is for the two golems that are both automatically over 10k firepower and worse than a full fleet of ships. The stream of ships is pretty ridiculous. I don't know if this makes spirecraft a terrible deal as well right now.

[orzelek]

I took the black widow golem with golems set to medium level... and it's pretty much useless currently.

It provokes constant stream of aggression from AI, requires huge maintenance due to self attrition (MRS + 3 Mk I&II engies are barely repairing it and resource outflows are around thousand or so.

And apparently it can't be scrapped... so I will need to suicide it on some AI planet and survive the "CPA" generated by it... net effect = I'm in much worse situation I was before capturing it.