AI War Beta 5.007, "Zombies Are For Eating My Neighbors," Released!

[x4000]

Yeah, it REALLY varies, heh.

[TechSY730]

My game is currently on a simple map type. As such bottle-necking to only one or two planets is impossible. (Yes, I do only have one planet where they send waves into, but that doesn't stop freed ships from spreading around, and thus triggering resistance ships to spread all around.)

The effectiveness of the new minor faction behaviour may be HUGE for some map types (like X, snake, tree, spokes, and other map types where limited exposure is possible due to the abundance of low wormhole count planets), but very detrimental to their usefulness on other map types (like simple, realistic, grid, lattice, crosshatch, and other maps where limited exposure is impossible due to the scarcity of low wormhole count planets)

Of course, those are the best and worst cases, but they highlight how hard it is to get a behavior that will be sane in most cases if that behavior does not also include a check for its own current state (like how many other resistance ships are planning to go in, or something).

[x4000]

Which is, overall, fine with me -- a lot of things really vary by map type.  Having all map types play the same, and have equal difficulty, is definitely in no way a goal of mine (quite the reverse).  That's not a reason to be stupid about how things are programmed, but in this case the intelligence of the drone-like minor factions of this sort is not something that I want to increase all that much, as they aren't meant to be THAT effective.

Longer-term, bringing back the friendly enclaves and making them more intelligent IS a goal.  And if we do that, I'd probably also apply that smarter logic to the resistance fighters if it was feasible, as those are meant to be smarter in general.  I guess I'm mainly talking about zombies and dyson gatlings that are meant to be less intelligent and more drone-like.

[Zeba]

I just loaded up my save, I think the dyson gatlings are going to win the game for me. I may not actually need a fleet. I had about 250 stored up, they are casually knocking out every AI ship on every border world and taking few to no losses. I don't think "suiciding" is a concern. 

I try to preserve my npc defenders with a nice fat merc fighter and bomber blob near the hotspot borders. Plz don't change npc defender mechanics as they are another nice addition to free up my buildable offensive forces and seem to be perfectly balanced for a difficulty 8 game.

[Vinraith]

I just loaded up my save, I think the dyson gatlings are going to win the game for me. I may not actually need a fleet. I had about 250 stored up, they are casually knocking out every AI ship on every border world and taking few to no losses. I don't think "suiciding" is a concern. 

I try to preserve my npc defenders with a nice fat merc fighter and bomber blob near the hotspot borders. Plz don't change npc defender mechanics as they are another nice addition to free up my buildable offensive forces and seem to be perfectly balanced for a difficulty 8 game.

In practice it balances out pretty well. I was expecting that dyson blob to be impossibly powerful but it melted away fairly quickly after wiping out about 1200 ships worth of threat.

[TechSY730]

Is the "if on friendly territory, only go into enemy territory if there are >= 100 free ships or if there are a >=10 human military ships on the enemy planet" rule holding for you guys? I have just saw some resistance ships that were on my planet go into an enemy system where they had less than 100 ships total, which of course means it had less than 100 freed ships. The only ship I had there was a scout, which is most certainly less than the 10 human military ships rule.

I'm not posting a bug report yet, because I may have missed something, so I would like some feedback from others first.

[Philo]

One thing I've seen now is the military command center translocating a single fighter and some other ship around, with the actual bullets doing no damage to them. A single fighter was able to stay alive in my system for a few minutes against the Military base mark 1. The base just kept translocating it, but the bullets didn't hit. Or at least they didn't do damage.

[chemical_art]

These betas are piling up faster then my game sessions! 

First spire civilians are wonderfully fixed. Then Ram and Cpu was boosted. Now my Ram will be saved even more thanks to less roaming ships on both sides? Endgame will be fun, whenever I finally get the time to play it.

[Vinraith]

Is the "if on friendly territory, only go into enemy territory if there are >= 100 free ships or if there are a >=10 human military ships on the enemy planet" rule holding for you guys? I have just saw some resistance ships that were on my planet go into an enemy system where they had less than 100 ships total, which of course means it had less than 100 freed ships. The only ship I had there was a scout, which is most certainly less than the 10 human military ships rule.

I'm not posting a bug report yet, because I may have missed something, so I would like some feedback from others first.

I'm seeing the same behavior, they seem to pretty much go wherever they like. I've seen gatlings and resistance ships as much as three or four worlds deep into enemy territory without my having any ships deeper than 1 hop.

[zoutzakje]

Is the "if on friendly territory, only go into enemy territory if there are >= 100 free ships or if there are a >=10 human military ships on the enemy planet" rule holding for you guys? I have just saw some resistance ships that were on my planet go into an enemy system where they had less than 100 ships total, which of course means it had less than 100 freed ships. The only ship I had there was a scout, which is most certainly less than the 10 human military ships rule.

I'm not posting a bug report yet, because I may have missed something, so I would like some feedback from others first.

I'm seeing the same behavior, they seem to pretty much go wherever they like. I've seen gatlings and resistance ships as much as three or four worlds deep into enemy territory without my having any ships deeper than 1 hop.

same here. the dysons spawn and go into enemy territory everywhere, while I barely got any threat at all. even noticed a few getting killed at a core world, while my planets are nowhere near coreworlds yet.
So I think some1 should open a mantis ticket, because I don't think this is how it's supposed to work.

[x4000]

Got it for the next one -- thanks!

* Human-allied zombies and minor factions were not being properly limited in their pool of planets to fix, thanks to a typo in their logic.  It should now be fixed.

[TechSY730]

Got it for the next one -- thanks!

* Human-allied zombies and minor factions were not being properly limited in their pool of planets to fix, thanks to a typo in their logic.  It should now be fixed.

YES! Thanks.  


Now we get to wait a whole week or more for the next version to come out before my resistance ships start acting sane again.  

(Yea, that's a bit cynical, but you said that you are now shifting back to AVWW, which means it could be a long time until the next version gets pushed out)

[x4000]

When we have already-completed features that I'm aware of, it doesn't take nearly a week.  The delay would have been if I hadn't actually looked for the issue yet.

[TechSY730]

When we have already-completed features that I'm aware of, it doesn't take nearly a week.  The delay would have been if I hadn't actually looked for the issue yet.

Good to know. Will I get to "enjoy" a weekend of "free roaming minor factions", or will this get pushed out before the weekend starts? (you seem to rarely push things out on a Saturday or Sunday)

[zebramatt]

Got it for the next one -- thanks!

* Human-allied zombies and minor factions were not being properly limited in their pool of planets to fix, thanks to a typo in their logic.  It should now be fixed.

That'd explain why I lost so many so quickly... and the AI's surrounding planets are all wastelands.