AI War Beta 5.008, "Bad Robot, No Cookie," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/03/ai-war-beta-5008-bad-robot-no-cookie.html

This one is pretty minor, just with a few balance tweaks and a bugfix related to minor factions and zombies going off their leashes too far.  Since that one in particular is really important to some folks, we're going ahead and releasing the patch for this today.  Enjoy!

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.

[Fleet]

The convention of naming patches is really growing on me.

Although I have to say, I have absolutely no idea no idea what you mean by "Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Heavy Corvette" through "Light Destroyer" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer"."

Now, I know I'm not as active as I used to be, but did I miss something?

[keith.lamothe]

Although I have to say, I have absolutely no idea no idea what you mean by "Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Heavy Corvette" through "Light Destroyer" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer"."

Now, I know I'm not as active as I used to be, but did I miss something?

I considered just not giving the details on those changes because the terms only have meaning for the event-attack composition logic.  All it means is that those two ship types (zelecs and sentinels) will cost more points when the AI is building one of those exo attacks (which are only used for Spirecraft-Hard, Broken-Golems-Hard, and Fallen-Spire exo-galactic strikeforces and for the Fallen-Spire chase groups).

The details can be safely ignored

[Fleet]

Ah, thanks for the translation into points, that's a language I understand.

[Fruden]

 Hey, i got my first black widow golem this morning, so i don't know if this is by design or what, but it looks like ships caught by its tractors have their range increased pretty significantly. Fighters that are tractored at max range can't shoot back, but electric bombers can, and laser gatlings usually can but not always.

 Is this supposed to happen? This seems to significantly reduce the value of the golem since whenever i run around with it most of its tractored ships are beating it up, but maybe its for some good reason i havent heard? If so, would it be possible to selectively turn off the tractors but keep the guns going? I almost really like the thing since it's pretty fast but it's so incredibly expensive to use since it's eating damage like crazy, it costs me more to use than the trio of armored artillery and cursed golems!!!!

[Orelius]

Generally, the black widow golem is best used to quickly disable a large number of ships and leave them for the rest of your fleet to mop up.

So, in that situation, I would normally pop the black widow golem in, snag a bunch of ships, pop out and allow my fleet to decimate those ships.  It's not really meant to be a front-line golem like the armored golem.

[TechSY730]

Hey, i got my first black widow golem this morning, so i don't know if this is by design or what, but it looks like ships caught by its tractors have their range increased pretty significantly. Fighters that are tractored at max range can't shoot back, but electric bombers can, and laser gatlings usually can but not always.

 Is this supposed to happen? This seems to significantly reduce the value of the golem since whenever i run around with it most of its tractored ships are beating it up, but maybe its for some good reason i havent heard? If so, would it be possible to selectively turn off the tractors but keep the guns going? I almost really like the thing since it's pretty fast but it's so incredibly expensive to use since it's eating damage like crazy, it costs me more to use than the trio of armored artillery and cursed golems!!!!

Yes, tractored units can always fire upon what has tractored them, regardless of range. This is to prevent short range units from becoming completely helpless once tractored.

Or at least that is what is supposed to happen. The fact you are seeing inconsistent results from tractored units is strange. Perhaps it has to do with the shortcuts the engine takes with range calculations when there are big battles going on.

You might want to make a report on the bug tracker about this.

[Fruden]

So, in that situation, I would normally pop the black widow golem in, snag a bunch of ships, pop out and allow my fleet to decimate those ships.  It's not really meant to be a front-line golem like the armored golem.

 I was using it with other ships to buy them time to do damage. Or i was using it as a decoy to get large portions of the invading enemy ships off my turrets until they were ready to deal with the rest. It wasnt supposed to get damaged at all since it was almost always out of range of enemy ships.

Yes, tractored units can always fire upon what has tractored them, regardless of range. This is to prevent short range units from becoming completely helpless once tractored.

 Alright, thanks for the info, i didn't know this. I thought it might have been something to do with recent golem changes, but i guess it's a holdover from when the ai had tractor turrets.

[TechSY730]

Yes, tractored units can always fire upon what has tractored them, regardless of range. This is to prevent short range units from becoming completely helpless once tractored.

 Alright, thanks for the info, i didn't know this. I thought it might have been something to do with recent golem changes, but i guess it's a holdover from when the ai had tractor turrets.

They still do have tractor units, but they don't use them nearly as much as they used to.

Anyways, the robots are going to have to have their cookies denied a little longer. 
They minor factions and zombies don't seem to be joining in on human attacks, even though they do go out when the number of freed ships gets a little too high on one planet. As this "helping attacks" behaviour was supposed to be one of the hallmarks of the new patrolling behavior, you might want to check into that. 

I've got a save with a big army on an adjacent enemy planet and plenty of dyson gattlings wandering around that should be helping now, but aren't, if you want it.

[Sir t]

I've seen gatlings dive in to help out.

On another issue, are siege starships supposed to be able to damage the Shields of Spire cities? I have a save from last night where 5 of them were shooting the spire cities and the shields were going down. And there was no other AI units there so it was definably the siege starships.

[zebramatt]

I've no idea whether this is because of my huge Gatling army going rogue, or my SC Penetrator abuse, or something else, but I've just posted a save on Mantis which demonstrates a planet with an AI Eye and no command station or guard posts of any kind.

It reports that one guard post is keeping it alive!

[TechSY730]

I've no idea whether this is because of my huge Gatling army going rogue, or my SC Penetrator abuse, or something else, but I've just posted a save on Mantis which demonstrates a planet with an AI Eye and no command station or guard posts of any kind.

It reports that one guard post is keeping it alive!

Just posted on the bug tracker as well, but I checked this out. There is a stealth guard post on the planet in question. Those annoying little buggers can keep the AI eye alive as well.

[zebramatt]

I've no idea whether this is because of my huge Gatling army going rogue, or my SC Penetrator abuse, or something else, but I've just posted a save on Mantis which demonstrates a planet with an AI Eye and no command station or guard posts of any kind.

It reports that one guard post is keeping it alive!

Just posted on the bug tracker as well, but I checked this out. There is a stealth guard post on the planet in question. Those annoying little buggers can keep the AI eye alive as well.

You know, I thought it might be something like that!

It's all right - I took the planet for my own anyway!

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,8500.0.html