AI War Beta 4.066 Released!

[x4000]

In terms of Steam, Impulse, and GamersGate, they'll all have the LotS expansion sometime next week, but it might not be on the same day.  We intend to have the official builds ready on Monday, and then it depends on the respective workloads before the various versions become available.  I think that with Steam in particular, it will be Thursday at the earliest before you see LotS officially there.

In terms of Google Checkout, it just depends on what FastSpring, our payment provider, opts to do.  We don't support anything directly, it's all run through them (keeps quite a bit of complexity and liability at arms length from us).

In terms of the fabricators and mark IV factories, those are seeded the same as always... but that's heavily random, so it will vary from game to game in general (always has).

In terms of defender mode, that's getting some tweaks in the next version to be a little less brutal.

[Red Spot]

In terms of the fabricators and mark IV factories, those are seeded the same as always... but that's heavily random, so it will vary from game to game in general (always has).

If you say so I believe you, but the game does give me a different feeling. I had a game, that I already restarted with the different patches, that had a mk4 fab and some fabs (+ some Golems) in a certain number of jumps from my homeplanet (seed: 1890136718 - x-map - E-bomber starting planet). Each and every reload it was the same (though the exact fabricator/golem changed a bit here and there). Now all I get is a lvl4 fab, no golems and no fabricators. Less AI-eyes to squash to get there, but again twice as many counterattack posts (several planets with 2 of them on there  )


edit: a question I wanted to ask but forgat, do the counterattack forces now spawn in 1 of the 4 corners of the planet? Or did I just happen to see some unintended spawn-ins? (I like it, but it did make me defend the wrong corners )

[x4000]

In terms of the fabricators and mark IV factories, those are seeded the same as always... but that's heavily random, so it will vary from game to game in general (always has).

If you say so I believe you, but the game does give me a different feeling. I had a game, that I already restarted with the different patches, that had a mk4 fab and some fabs (+ some Golems) in a certain number of jumps from my homeplanet (seed: 1890136718 - x-map - E-bomber starting planet). Each and every reload it was the same (though the exact fabricator/golem changed a bit here and there). Now all I get is a lvl4 fab, no golems and no fabricators. Less AI-eyes to squash to get there, but again twice as many counterattack posts (several planets with 2 of them on there  )

Well, the exact seed might be different now, for sure.  The explanation for the above is that when we changed the seeding for some of the other stuff (eyes, fortresses, etc) that affected any random operations that happened after that in the galaxy-creation process, since it's a linear thing. 

Basically, with a random number generator given the same seed (your map number), it will always give the exact same sequence of pesudo-random numbers.  So if the sequence is always 2, 4, 5, 1, 10, 13, 2, 4, etc, then you always get the exact same map.  However, if the first number is used for forcefields, and it actually now needs the first two numbers, then everything else gets slid down the random chain a bit and you get things like golems or what have you seeding differently given the same seed.

All that's to say that seeds will be different, but that it's not overall harder or easier (though it will certainly be harder or easier per map, as always).

edit: a question I wanted to ask but forgat, do the counterattack forces now spawn in 1 of the 4 corners of the planet? Or did I just happen to see some unintended spawn-ins? (I like it, but it did make me defend the wrong corners )

I'm not sure, but I believe so.

[Red Spot]

All that's to say that seeds will be different, but that it's not overall harder or easier (though it will certainly be harder or easier per map, as always).

It sure is harder on this seed, but this one may have been an easy one to begin with.  

edit: a question I wanted to ask but forgat, do the counterattack forces now spawn in 1 of the 4 corners of the planet? Or did I just happen to see some unintended spawn-ins? (I like it, but it did make me defend the wrong corners )

I'm not sure, but I believe so.

You believe it to be changed, or believe it to be a bug? I cant post a savegame, but I can surelly try to reproduce it with all the counterattack posts on above seed.

[keith.lamothe]

I tried the 30min defender (trial) mode on an 80 planet x-map taking 12 starting planets .... nasty nasty nasty stuff  

Eep! Yea, I've been working on the defender balance yesterday and today and while I've got it pretty good now in my working copy, trying to play that setup in 4.066 should prompt you for the contact info of your next-of-kin

a question I wanted to ask but forgat, do the counterattack forces now spawn in 1 of the 4 corners of the planet? Or did I just happen to see some unintended spawn-ins? (I like it, but it did make me defend the wrong corners )

Due to a silly error on my part it had always been picking something in the south-east quadrant of the 50k-70k range circle.  I quietly fixed it (perhaps for this version, I forget) to have an equal chance of picking any of the four quadrants.

[Red Spot]

You bastanasty person  
Thanks for it though, makes those counterattacks a real pain, as they should be.

edit: about the counterattack attacks, they do spawn the 3 mk1 fighters in the south-east corner. The ones that seem to lead these assaults.

[Echo35]

In terms of the fabricators and mark IV factories, those are seeded the same as always... but that's heavily random, so it will vary from game to game in general (always has).

If you say so I believe you, but the game does give me a different feeling. I had a game, that I already restarted with the different patches, that had a mk4 fab and some fabs (+ some Golems) in a certain number of jumps from my homeplanet (seed: 1890136718 - x-map - E-bomber starting planet). Each and every reload it was the same (though the exact fabricator/golem changed a bit here and there). Now all I get is a lvl4 fab, no golems and no fabricators. Less AI-eyes to squash to get there, but again twice as many counterattack posts (several planets with 2 of them on there  )


edit: a question I wanted to ask but forgat, do the counterattack forces now spawn in 1 of the 4 corners of the planet? Or did I just happen to see some unintended spawn-ins? (I like it, but it did make me defend the wrong corners )

I have had an oddly large number of high value things like Core Fabs and Golems appearing <= 6 jumps or so from my starting planet, which seems a little odd to me.

[Red Spot]

I have had an oddly large number of high value things like Core Fabs and Golems appearing <= 6 jumps or so from my starting planet, which seems a little odd to me.

I restarted the game with the map revealed to find that a single planet next to core-planets has a lvl4 fab, 2 fabricators, an armored golem, 4 ION-cannons (I-IV), and some Z-trader item (cant recall what it was). Never seen so much goodies on 1 planet, but I do like the idea of taking that planet specially in respect to its location
But now that I know the map ... I will be playing a different seed ... 

[Ozymandiaz]

There seems to be a slight "hole in the wall" behavior to the AI recently. When it has units on threat, it check player planets if it should attack or not.

This is fine, expect that it makes it easy to trick.

In my latest game I had a planet with 1500 MK V ships on the border. They were listed as "threat", but did not attack me due to my own forces being there. I could not attack the AI either. It was a stalemate sort of.

So I sent my entire force one jump back. This effectively made that particular planet less threatening to the AI, and it attack. Then I just sent my forces back, and after a hefty battle destroyed the AI and invaded the world.

While the old method had its downsides, I think this is a big downside of the new method as well.


Not sure what more to say then just airing that its fairly easy to trick the AIs threat buildup if you wish, and I think its not how you would want it

[x4000]

Well, the key thing here is that the AI also has retreat logic.  So if you trick it and then it sees that the situation is bad, then it will run away -- possibly back to where it came from, but possibly also some into your actual further-in planets, causing even further damage.

So while it is somewhat trickable, it will also recover in a lot of cases.  I may need to make a tweak to the retreat logic, though, as right now the AI isn't allowed to retreat if it's been on the planet for less than 30 seconds.  With the new logic for waiting, that probably can be taken out.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, something like 2 seconds or 5 seconds could avoid any major thrashing while minimizing the impact of this "fake-out" tactic.

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,8061.0.html