AI War Beta 4.063, "The Praying Mantis," Released!

[Red Spot]

Just loaded my previous/recent game to see how it would handle with the recent beta.
It 'feels' as if the AIP is higher as it actually was, and all seemingly 'free' ships attack immidiatly after the game has loaded.

I feel glad I didn't actually intended to continue that game, it however was fun trying to salvage my empire

[RogueThunder]

Just thought I'd pop in and say that transports do half decently now in my experiences thus far. Yeah, MkIII forts and Superforts munch on them... As do multiple forts. But that makes sense. MkI and II forts hurt still too, but can't horribly dominate them xD...

[hullu]

Gravity Drills don't seem to be working right. Some ships are speed 8, some are normal, feels random, can't find a pattern. Not sure if this problem was there before, but definitely in this version.

[x4000]

I'm not sure I quite understand how you'd get a trader to visit other than trying to deepstrike and intentionally create pockets of AI worlds that the trader has no path to get to other than through a world controlled by you, otherwise they'll route around your empire.

In general, it's expected that you're not taking every planet, but are hopping around with gaps of 2-3 planets of the AI between your planets.  Otherwise you're really wasting AIP.  It's not even something I consider deepstriking, that's just good 'ol planet hopping.  If you do that, by the mid-game you'll likely have a lot of paths between AI planets that cross your planets.  Just not your core network.

Also, does the trader choose the AI world it paths to at random? If so, say you create a pocket of 3 AI worlds, you'd have a 3/(80 - number_of_player_worlds)   say the player has 10 worlds here... so 3/70 or a 4% chance the trader could come visiting each time it changes it's mind as to destination...  seems like you'd be lucky some games to ever see the trader, and thats only with extreme effort on your part.  I think I'm not understanding the mechanic fully at all, this seems like a nerf with a 20,000 mile wide bat which isn't usually you guys' style.

Yes, it's random.  But you're assuming that you've left one AI planet inside your network.  In that case, sure, 4% sounds about right.  But with anything that's random, that could actually mean zero visits or a ton of visits, right -- it's not evenly distributed, it's random.

But, as per my notes above, it's assumed that you're hopping around planets at least some, and even if you're not you're going to wind up with inevitable open flanks on the sides of your outermost planets where there are AI planets on both sides.  In those cases, the likelihood of trader visits can skyrocket.  In a lot of maps, that can actually lead to closer to a 50% chance per trader re-pathing (which, incidentally, it was always a flat 50%).

If you just turtle in a corner, the trader won't notice you, this is true.  But assuming that you take any planets at all ourside of your safe little corner, all sorts of possible AI paths will suddenly be crisscrossing your planets.  The net effect and goal here is to make the trader not visit the turtle zones, and also to not visit you much until later in the game.  Along with the other stuff already noted in past posts here.

Hope that makes sense.

[x4000]

Just loaded my previous/recent game to see how it would handle with the recent beta.
It 'feels' as if the AIP is higher as it actually was, and all seemingly 'free' ships attack immidiatly after the game has loaded.

I feel glad I didn't actually intended to continue that game, it however was fun trying to salvage my empire

A lot of those are likely free/threat ships that should have attacked you before, but which were hanging back due to incorrect firepower calculations.  That feeling of the AIP being higher than it actually was shouldn't last, that's just a matter of it self-correcting for past incorrect decisions, if that makes sense.

Just thought I'd pop in and say that transports do half decently now in my experiences thus far. Yeah, MkIII forts and Superforts munch on them... As do multiple forts. But that makes sense. MkI and II forts hurt still too, but can't horribly dominate them xD...

Excellent!  That sounds exactly as desired, then.

Gravity Drills don't seem to be working right. Some ships are speed 8, some are normal, feels random, can't find a pattern. Not sure if this problem was there before, but definitely in this version.

If you have a save you wouldn't mind posting in mantis (if one isn't already there), that would be great!  Sounds like some sort of bug, for sure.

[BobTheJanitor]

I think the main question is, does the trader (A) actively plot a route around your planets if he can find a way to do so, or does he (B) just look for another AI planet somewhere and plot the straightest path, regardless of whether it goes through human planets or not? If A, it's possible you'll never see one without specifically cutting off all paths from some AI planets to some other AI planets. If B you'll probably see him eventually, but just not all the time.

[x4000]

I think the main question is, does the trader (A) actively plot a route around your planets if he can find a way to do so, or does he (B) just look for another AI planet somewhere and plot the straightest path, regardless of whether it goes through human planets or not? If A, it's possible you'll never see one without specifically cutting off all paths from some AI planets to some other AI planets. If B you'll probably see him eventually, but just not all the time.

B, definitely B.  He doesn't try to avoid you at all, he just also doesn't explicitly try to visit you, he just does so while passing through between AI planets.

[Reality]

Red Spot, I got the same feeling. I reloaded a game about three hours earlier than my latest save (where things were in a bit of a crapstorm) and was almost immediately attacked by a massive "stalker" force that I never encountered the first time I played. I think it might have trickled through in small groups the first time around - this time about 400 mark 2 and 3 ships hit me (with about 210 aip on difficulty 6). I'm playing with the scenario but it seems much harder to hold off than anything I encountered the first play through.

[x4000]

Red Spot, I got the same feeling. I reloaded a game about three hours earlier than my latest save (where things were in a bit of a crapstorm) and was almost immediately attacked by a massive "stalker" force that I never encountered the first time I played. I think it might have trickled through in small groups the first time around - this time about 400 mark 2 and 3 ships hit me (with about 210 aip on difficulty 6). I'm playing with the scenario but it seems much harder to hold off than anything I encountered the first play through.

What I expect to see is the following progression -- let me know if this isn't what you observe:

Stage 1
To compensate from having been too cautious before, you now find yourself in the aforementioned crapstorm. 

Stage 2
If you survive, once all those excess units that had been stalking you are dead, you'll find that in general it goes back to the way it was before, except that your threat counter stays lower and you get attacked by notable AI forces more often (the same dudes that were there before, that would have just been stalking you and then hitting you with titanic numbers after an incredibly long time).  Now they'll come in more moderate (but still very dangerous, just not game-ending) chunks more often. 

Those game-ending chunks would be something you obviously had not run into before, but that's what they were building to eventually do.

[Sizzle]

I think the main question is, does the trader (A) actively plot a route around your planets if he can find a way to do so, or does he (B) just look for another AI planet somewhere and plot the straightest path, regardless of whether it goes through human planets or not? If A, it's possible you'll never see one without specifically cutting off all paths from some AI planets to some other AI planets. If B you'll probably see him eventually, but just not all the time.

B, definitely B.  He doesn't try to avoid you at all, he just also doesn't explicitly try to visit you, he just does so while passing through between AI planets.

Ah.... see I was thinking it was A... (see what I said earlier ".... intentionally create pockets of AI worlds that the trader has no path to get to other than through a world controlled by you, otherwise they'll route around your empire." )

That makes it oh so much better.  I was thinking they're trying to avoid player space actively such that they had to be trapped (which sounded like a huge effort to make for a 4% chance at visiting after trying to make an isolated pocket).

[x4000]

I gotcha -- sorry for the confusion, glad that cleared it up, anyway!

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,8016.0.html