AI War Beta 4.072 Released -- Release Candidate 3!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/01/ai-war-beta-4072-released-release.html

This one is small, but exciting.  We may have finally found that phantom desync!  For anyone who has been having any multiplayer desyncs in the last week, we'd love to hear from you if your issues seem to be gone, or especially if you get a new desync with this version.  Fingers crossed!

A short list of other fixes are also in this version, so see the release notes for details.  We're pretty much done with changes we're going to make pre-5.0 unless there are still desyncs around or other critical-to-enjoyment issues are found.  Right now the known issues list is pretty much devoid of those, so we're keeping our list of changes to a minimum to avoid introducing any new issues at the last second.

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.

[superking]

lol, no wonder playing on high caps has been so horrifically brutal

[x4000]

Indeed!

[Burnstreet]

Nice one.

I'll try out the blade spawner balance.

However, the limit of 2 per guard posts seems not to apply.
In the attached save my fleet is in system Parce and I had just cleaned it up completely, only command station and warp gate remaining.
One reinforcement range brought 14 new ones at the command station. after a few seconds game time, some more green ones should spawn there.

This is still on 4.071, I'll update now.

[Burnstreet]

Ok, I just confirmed this in 4.072.

I had advanced logging turned on but it contains no useful information on the spawning, at least I can't see any

I just continued that game and mpw have a save where - after 4 reinforcement waves where I killed all but the spawners - 92 MK2 spawners are bombarding me. Unfortunately I cannot post it because of my bad internet connection, upload times out :/

---

They still have sniper range and with only 10 spawners my full fleet is still unable to kill all of the blades before they can do damage - 2 to 3 are getting through. They seem to be so fast that they reach their target before the lower range ships can even react.
As long as you can kill off 70% of the blades with a reasonable point defense force, per cap Dps seems ok to me.

[c4sc4]

Resistance Fighter Bombers and Resistance Frigates now have the "HasWarpEngineMufflers" flag, which prevents the warp-in and warp-out sounds from playing when they go through a wormhole (kinda nice when they're patrolling your planets at a rapid pace).

Thank you!

[Invelios]

Fixed a relatively longstanding error (since unit cap scale was introduced) in wave size computation: previously the wave size would be multiplied by the unit-cap-scale-multiplier (high = 1, normal = 0.5, low = 0.25) and then later by the ship-type-specific ship cap multiplier (e.g. on high fighter = 1, sentinel-frigate = 0.1, zenith-bombard = 0.25); the problem is that thte ship-type-specific cap was _already_ multiplied by the overall unit-cap-scale multiplier. So waves on high had the correct size, normal waves were 1/2 the correct size, and low waves were 1/4 the correct size.

oh wow, no wonder I've been having trouble lately. I used to only play on low cause all I had was a laptop that had trouble staying at 100% even on low. However, I got a new desktop for Christmas and switched to high since it can easily handle the game on high ship caps. I instantly noticed that wave where a lot more brutal than on low caps, but I thought I was just not used to that number of ships yet. Glad to hear the waves on high will be slightly toned down, because it was almost impossible for me to do anything other than defend with my entire fleet before.

[x4000]

We really recommend normal, even for beefy machines.  It's possible to run into RAM problems in long games on High even if you have lots of RAM.  This is because of the limits of 32bit systems, for instance.

[BobTheJanitor]

Other non-player ships could probably use the warp mufflers too. I'm noticing this now with dyson gatlings and botnet zombies. They both seem to have decided that picking a path through 3-4 planets and going back and forth on that path forever is a fun thing to do. So if I click on any of those planets now: whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh...

[Echo35]

Resistance Fighter Bombers and Resistance Frigates now have the "HasWarpEngineMufflers" flag, which prevents the warp-in and warp-out sounds from playing when they go through a wormhole (kinda nice when they're patrolling your planets at a rapid pace).

Thank you!

lol, that. Those things made my ears bleed when a wave came in.

[Zeba]

Since I'm too lazy to make a mantis ticket I'll just say it here. The galaxy map button lets the underlying buttons be selectable when you try to open up the map. Not a huge issue as you just make sure to click the highest part of the button but it's still annoying.

Otherwise its another great update that continues to add to the game. Not many game devolopers can claim that tbh.

[TechSY730]

With all the weird issues involving the AI attacking that just came in on Mantis, is there something strange going on with attacking in this version?

Other than that. Thanks for continuing to push on.

[Invelios]

We really recommend normal, even for beefy machines.  It's possible to run into RAM problems in long games on High even if you have lots of RAM.  This is because of the limits of 32bit systems, for instance.

Really? Would it make a difference if my OS was 64-bit, or is that a limitation of AI War itself? I haven't had any issues yet.

[Tridus]

We really recommend normal, even for beefy machines.  It's possible to run into RAM problems in long games on High even if you have lots of RAM.  This is because of the limits of 32bit systems, for instance.

Really? Would it make a difference if my OS was 64-bit, or is that a limitation of AI War itself? I haven't had any issues yet.

The game is probably compiled as 32 bit so it can run on a 32 bit CPU/OS, which would put the limitation there. (There are some compiler options that can work around some of that, but full 64 bit support is pretty rare in games still.)

[x4000]

We really recommend normal, even for beefy machines.  It's possible to run into RAM problems in long games on High even if you have lots of RAM.  This is because of the limits of 32bit systems, for instance.

Really? Would it make a difference if my OS was 64-bit, or is that a limitation of AI War itself? I haven't had any issues yet.

The game is probably compiled as 32 bit so it can run on a 32 bit CPU/OS, which would put the limitation there. (There are some compiler options that can work around some of that, but full 64 bit support is pretty rare in games still.)

Yes, it's a limitation of AI War itself.  Or, more appropriately, of the Unity 3D engine.  We seem to get about 800mb of "heap space" for keeping track of data based on how the Unity 3D engine is compiled.  The rest is used for the unity 3d engine itself, images, etc.  So for most people they'll get a heap error when the game hits 1.6GB of usage or thereabouts, regardless of how much RAM you have or what your OS is.  This is something we're hoping that Unity will address in the future, but as it stands it's mainly only a limitation you can hit very easily in the High ship caps, and even then not everyone will run into it at all.  I'm just saying the risk is incredibly higher there, as the game simulation tends to be power of 2 more CPU and ram intensity on High ship caps.  Not intensity*2.  Intensty^2.