AI War Beta 4.072 Released -- Release Candidate 3!

[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.

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.   

Ah, ok. Thanks for the quick replay. So basically the Unity engine won't let it take advantage of all 8 GB of RAM I have. That's ok though, I haven't had any problems on High so far, and I was planning of playing my MP games on Normal caps anyways, cause I'm guessing that would be quicker network-wise and my college internet isn't exactly very fast. It would be nice if Unity fixes that, though, because I like having the massive number of ships.

[hullu]

Finally finished my first LotS game, took ages. Was 100 planets and 7 and 8 diff enemies.

--- SPOILERS ---



Well, apart from some bugs it was mostly fun except it was unbelievably grindy. Five cities is way too much if you ask me, especially since after every one you have to wait for around 2 millionish resources to get the survey for the next one, which takes a lot of time. Most of the over 15 hours I spent I spent waiting for stuff to build up.

What comes to the ships and balance of the campaign I got a feeling that the spire ships are extremely powerful, even to the point when I noticed my fleet of 2k 'normal' ships (everything upgraded up to lvl 4) was completely useless, and toward the end I actually stopped building fleet ships since they were, well, useless. Not sure if this is intentional.

Also, what was weird, was that I had to actually deliberately completed the LotS storyline, I could've squashed both the AIs any time I wanted to, with only half my spire fleet. 2 armored golems + 15ish LotS craft took out any planet without any losses I ran into (didn't try mark 5 planets, but mark 4s were a walkthrough).

I personally don't foresee myself playing another LotS capmaign any time soon, just too grindy, but I'll certainly enjoy the asteroid-crafts and the extended fleet ships.




Oh, another perhaps-a-bug, anyone else notice that 'golems - hard' minor faction doesn't actually (at least in my game) make golem attacks on you, but only spirecraft&starship attacks. In this game I had three counters going towars those rushes, spirecraft - hard, golems - hard, and lots campaign counter. And they all (I think) ended up in similiar attacks, dozen(s) of starships and spirecraft - I only saw golems in the last 30 minutes after building tranceiver. There might be a bug here since I thought the 'golems - hard' should be giving my golem attacks throughout the game instead of attacks like the other two exo-counters?

[BobTheJanitor]

-some fallen spire spoilers-

I have yet to finish a fallen spire game yet. Maybe now that the patches are starting to calm down I'll get through one. I did find the initial rescuing of the shards to be a blast. Getting them back to my homeworld while it seemed like everything in the galaxy was coming screaming down at me was pretty fun. It seems like I should have turned on hard Spirecraft, since the AI is throwing them at me anyway. Ironically with all the massive fleets and Spirecraft charging in at my homeworld, the only loss that I've had to reload out of has been from Raid Starships getting through my lines. I was a little confused by the spire builder unit (forget the name... looks like a many armed starfish) that I guess pumps out ships that are modular like Riot Starships? That wasn't really explained anywhere on the unit text, so all I see is that I can build two things that look exactly the same, except one says that it has lasers on it. If you do eventually get to the point where you have to decide not to crush the AI homeworld, that sounds like the balance is off. I'll have to actually finish a playthrough to give an informed opinion on that though.

[Fleet]

Cloaked attritioners were the greatest thing since sliced bread. *especially* before the attritioner cap reduction. I could make ungodly numbers of them and clear entire planets within seconds. And keep it that way.

[matyasbot]

If I was the AI and suddenly 'saw' cloaked attritioners, or attritioners with a large supporting force, what I'd do is move all my ships through the nearest wormhole onto another planet, then, if possible, attack the player with the newly freed ships.

I had no idea attritioners were that devastating, though, but I hadn't had much experience with the higher mark Spire ships, and the lower mark attritioners were not worth building at all (-300 HP per second, when most mark I ships have >100,000 health?).

[BobTheJanitor]

Cloaked attritioners were the greatest thing since sliced bread. *especially* before the attritioner cap reduction. I could make ungodly numbers of them and clear entire planets within seconds. And keep it that way.

With Spirecraft turned on, you can wipe out planets faster than with cloaked attritioners. Just pop them into an enemy planet and right back out, wait for the enemy ships to mass up on the wormhole, then send a martyr through to grab a handful and drag them back through immediately to where your turrets and fleet are waiting to chop them up. Repeat a few times in a row and you've probably cleaned most of the planet of fleet ships and you can just mop up the guard posts at your leisure.

[TechSY730]

Unless you did what I did, and send the attritioner to a Mk. IV world by mistake. 

[Fleet]

If I was the AI and suddenly 'saw' cloaked attritioners, or attritioners with a large supporting force, what I'd do is move all my ships through the nearest wormhole onto another planet, then, if possible, attack the player with the newly freed ships.

I had no idea attritioners were that devastating, though, but I hadn't had much experience with the higher mark Spire ships, and the lower mark attritioners were not worth building at all (-300 HP per second, when most mark I ships have >100,000 health?).

Well, once we took a good chunk of the galaxy we were pushing 40 or 50 attritioners. And some of them were higher than Mk I. Although I think the higher mark ones were rare enough that, by mark, the lower marks did more total DPS.

[Ozymandiaz]

-some fallen spire spoilers-

I have yet to finish a fallen spire game yet. Maybe now that the patches are starting to calm down I'll get through one. I did find the initial rescuing of the shards to be a blast. Getting them back to my homeworld while it seemed like everything in the galaxy was coming screaming down at me was pretty fun. It seems like I should have turned on hard Spirecraft, since the AI is throwing them at me anyway. Ironically with all the massive fleets and Spirecraft charging in at my homeworld, the only loss that I've had to reload out of has been from Raid Starships getting through my lines. I was a little confused by the spire builder unit (forget the name... looks like a many armed starfish) that I guess pumps out ships that are modular like Riot Starships? That wasn't really explained anywhere on the unit text, so all I see is that I can build two things that look exactly the same, except one says that it has lasers on it. If you do eventually get to the point where you have to decide not to crush the AI homeworld, that sounds like the balance is off. I'll have to actually finish a playthrough to give an informed opinion on that though.

I finished my sipre game som time ago, but at that time there was some wave bugs that put a stopper in it for me. 100000 ships in waves, and 50000 ships already attacking was a bit too much for me (computer wise, the spire ships themself owned the AI hard) This was tuned down later tho, but since I had already won, kind of, I did not load the game again since it was getting so laggy at that point .

Also some bug with the spire not shooting last cmd station for the AI, but just hanging around doing nothing, that was also sorted I belive

[hullu]

Also some bug with the spire not shooting last cmd station for the AI, but just hanging around doing nothing, that was also sorted I belive

Actually that happened to me just yesteray, just forgot about it, perhaps should ssearch mantis for it. Was on 4.072. Took over five extra minutes to send my fleet across to finish the last station:/

[keith.lamothe]

Well, apart from some bugs it was mostly fun except it was unbelievably grindy. Five cities is way too much if you ask me, especially since after every one you have to wait for around 2 millionish resources to get the survey for the next one, which takes a lot of time. Most of the over 15 hours I spent I spent waiting for stuff to build up.

And the AI wasn't keeping things sufficiently "interesting" while you were waiting, by the various stuff it was throwing at you? Sounds odd, with the Diff 8 stuff.

What comes to the ships and balance of the campaign I got a feeling that the spire ships are extremely powerful, even to the point when I noticed my fleet of 2k 'normal' ships (everything upgraded up to lvl 4) was completely useless, and toward the end I actually stopped building fleet ships since they were, well, useless. Not sure if this is intentional.

Also, what was weird, was that I had to actually deliberately completed the LotS storyline, I could've squashed both the AIs any time I wanted to, with only half my spire fleet. 2 armored golems + 15ish LotS craft took out any planet without any losses I ran into (didn't try mark 5 planets, but mark 4s were a walkthrough).

I think you just didn't realize that all that buildup to the five cities is basically the main phase of the game, and where most of the challenge is to be found, and where the AI has to stop you (and tries) if it wants to win.  Once you have five cities and a capitol and all that gives you... you win.  Unless you don't, of course.  Depending on the game setup it might still not be possible to fly over to the AI home command stations and press the "fire" button and that's what the alternate victory is for.  But if you can, congratulations, you win!   You have constructed the death star and blown Yavin to bits... oh, wait, that may not be the right analogy.

I personally don't foresee myself playing another LotS capmaign any time soon, just too grindy, but I'll certainly enjoy the asteroid-crafts and the extended fleet ships.

Well, I wish I'd had some of this feedback about 2 weeks ago, now it's simply too late to make any significant changes before the official release.  But we can look at it post-5.0

For what it's worth, I played a full FS game on diff 7/7 and had a blast.  I never felt like it was overly grindy, I was generally having to stay on my toes the whole time, had to fight several rolling-defense battles all the way from my frontline to my homeworld, etc.  It may have had something to do with my first two unlocks being Econ Station MkII and Econ Station MkIII   And later getting the mkIII harvesters...  Between my personal experience and a general lack of the kind of feedback you just provided, I didn't think I had to change much other than fix bugs as they were reported.

Oh, another perhaps-a-bug, anyone else notice that 'golems - hard' minor faction doesn't actually (at least in my game) make golem attacks on you, but only spirecraft&starship attacks. In this game I had three counters going towars those rushes, spirecraft - hard, golems - hard, and lots campaign counter. And they all (I think) ended up in similiar attacks, dozen(s) of starships and spirecraft - I only saw golems in the last 30 minutes after building tranceiver. There might be a bug here since I thought the 'golems - hard' should be giving my golem attacks throughout the game instead of attacks like the other two exo-counters?

No, the FS, Golems - hard, and Spirecraft - hard exogalactic strikeforces all use the same logic.  The spirecraft ships simply have a lower "point cost" than golems.  Golems generally don't show up until you get into the really crazy point totals (the transceiver phase will do it).  I'll check the tooltips on those -hard minor factions to make sure they don't specifically say what they send anymore.

I was a little confused by the spire builder unit (forget the name... looks like a many armed starfish) that I guess pumps out ships that are modular like Riot Starships? That wasn't really explained anywhere on the unit text, so all I see is that I can build two things that look exactly the same, except one says that it has lasers on it.

I'm guessing you mean the City Hub?  There isn't room in its unit text to explain what each of the 3 main structures you can build do.  The text on the individual structures should give a decent idea though.  A lot of the info is in the journal articles around that time (that I'm assuming pretty much no one reads, as I've gotten almost zero specific feedback about them).  There's also a walkthrough article in the wiki now:

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Fallen_Spire_Walkthrough

If you do eventually get to the point where you have to decide not to crush the AI homeworld, that sounds like the balance is off.

Not necessarily, it just means that you've (probably) won   The last phase of the campaign is totally optional (all of it pretty much is, actually) and the journals say _repeatedly_ that you don't have to take the next step and that you may be able to resolve things the "simple" way.

Also some bug with the spire not shooting last cmd station for the AI, but just hanging around doing nothing, that was also sorted I belive

Actually that happened to me just yesteray, just forgot about it, perhaps should ssearch mantis for it. Was on 4.072. Took over five extra minutes to send my fleet across to finish the last station:/

Good grief I need to know these things!   In my testing it was fine, but perhaps changes since then broke the targeting, etc.  Does anyone have a save illustrating this?

Anyway, I had just assumed that folks were happy with the Fallen Spire stuff due to lack of feedback (that I was aware of) to the contrary.  There was a big flurry earlier on that mostly boiled down to it being brutally hard and we nerfed that until it wasn't anymore.  It's possible that went too far, particularly if diff 8 felt grindy rather than smashy

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, ok. Thanks for the quick replay. So basically the Unity engine won't let it take advantage of all 8 GB of RAM I have.

Actually no 32-bit application can.  Even if we could compile a 64-bit version (we used to be able to on the previous engine) we wouldn't distribute it publicly because it would be nearly impossible for us to properly support multiplayer between a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version due to differences in the math and thus desyncs.  Also, the 64-bit version runs significantly slower.

What we would like from Unity is to be able to use more of the 32-bit addressing space via extended addressing.  We're only talking a difference between roughly 1.6GB total process memory and (guessing here) 2.6GB, as opposed to 64-bit which could probably use as much ram as you could physically stuff into your machine (16GB+, depending on motherboard, etc), but it would be nice.

For now our various optimizations have made it basically stable, on low or normal caps, and we're content to leave it there for now (hoping to hear back from Unity on the various memory things, though).  Anyone hitting out-of-memory errors should let us know.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'm guessing you mean the City Hub?  There isn't room in its unit text to explain what each of the 3 main structures you can build do.  The text on the individual structures should give a decent idea though.  A lot of the info is in the journal articles around that time (that I'm assuming pretty much no one reads, as I've gotten almost zero specific feedback about them).  There's also a walkthrough article in the wiki now:

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Fallen_Spire_Walkthrough

I read the journals. I quite liked them, actually. I feel they add a nice sense of storyline without being too obtrusive. They fit well with the very straightforward story framework that AI War already has. However the last journal I got when I got to the point of building the city hub doesn't seem like it did a lot to tell me exactly what to do next. Maybe I should go back and reread it though, it's possible I've just missed something. I saw that I could initially only build one thing, I think that would be the Shard Reactor. The others seemed to show ship caps of 0 so I figured I needed to do something else in the campaign before those would work. So I set it to loop build 3 of the Shard Reactors, until I came back later with one completed and another half done and realized that it had now unlocked some of the other things for building. I guess the others require a Shard Reactor first before they become buildable? I was a little unclear on this, and I get the feeling that building two shard reactors was a waste of limited build space. Now that I look at the wiki article (which I had been avoiding because of the giant spoiler warning, but I think I'm beyond worrying about spoilers at this point, and I don't think it's going to turn out that the AI is my father at the end anyway) I see that I really will have to scrap that second reactor and use that limited build space for something else. I did build one shipyard with my last spot though. But then I was kind of at a loss as to what I need to do next.

I don't think there are any AI command stations on any adjacent worlds, and I can't verify now (being at work at the moment), but I do believe that an adjacent world still has a coprocessor that I've left alive on it. Is there a chance that the supply-interfering behavior of the coprocessor is somehow keeping the hub from upgrading to level 2? It seems like I'm running blindly into everything that could trip me up about the city hub. I know it's late to suggest brand new things, but if you used the tutorial method of popping up messages in the corner to explain EXACTLY what the city hub does, and how there are 3 build slots it can support at first, and how the structures are dependent on first building other structures from it and what is required to get it to upgrade so that the storyline will continue, that might be a great help. I see that one could probably puzzle this out by reading all the descriptions of all the buildables, but the ship cap of 0 for everything else threw me off into the wrong assumption that these things would unlock as I played further, instead of as I built other things.

Sorry I couldn't get around to fully playtesting and giving feedback (more than you could possibly want) on fallen spire earlier than this. If only I had bought this game a few months back, I'm sure I'd have been all over it, because I do get a kick out of beta testing and pointing out microscopic issues. I blame myself for not being smart enough to buy AI War the first time I heard of it!

[Invelios]

For now our various optimizations have made it basically stable, on low or normal caps, and we're content to leave it there for now (hoping to hear back from Unity on the various memory things, though).  Anyone hitting out-of-memory errors should let us know.

Well, I used the cheats to do a little testing, and I don't seem to have much problem with high even in big battles. I had an 80 planet map, High ship caps, High performance file, and used cheats to get myself about 10K units. Then I used the Massive CPA cheat, sped the game up to +10 till they poured in, normalized the game speed again, and was still at 90%+ for the entire battle. I even called in some carriers using the massive wave cheat and still had 90%+. It never said I hit an out-of-memory error either.

Of course, I guess the conditions would be a little different when the game has to keep track of all the ships on every planet throughout a long game, especially if there where a lot of planets on alert for most of the game.

[orzelek]

LotS campaign setup: I was saying that it's grindy after few cities - but that was attributed to different factors then. I'm also not to keen to try next LotS game from similar reasons. The grind price of being powerful is a successful stopper of fun I'm not exactly playing right now so didn't test how LotS is after all the balance changes tho.