Author Topic: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!  (Read 4960 times)

Offline KingIsaacLinksr

  • Master Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,332
  • A Paladin Without A Crusade...
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #15 on: July 22, 2011, 07:50:24 pm »
why've you guys been naming patches lately?  :-\

Lately?  They've done them pretty often since at least 3.XX. 

King
Casual reviewer with a sense of justice.
Visit the Arcen Mantis to help: https://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/
A Paladin's Blog. Long form videogame reviews focusing on mechanics and narrative analyzing. Plus other stuff. www.kingisaaclinksr.com

Offline Ranakastrasz

  • Full Member Mark III
  • ***
  • Posts: 242
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #16 on: July 22, 2011, 09:42:28 pm »

Lately?  They've done them pretty often since at least 3.XX. 

King
Sounds Like it has something to do with the new Unity Engine

Offline KingIsaacLinksr

  • Master Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,332
  • A Paladin Without A Crusade...
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #17 on: July 22, 2011, 11:39:01 pm »

Lately?  They've done them pretty often since at least 3.XX. 

King
Sounds Like it has something to do with the new Unity Engine

I doubt it, but I'll wait for X4000 to weigh in on this. 

King
Casual reviewer with a sense of justice.
Visit the Arcen Mantis to help: https://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/
A Paladin's Blog. Long form videogame reviews focusing on mechanics and narrative analyzing. Plus other stuff. www.kingisaaclinksr.com

Offline Ranakastrasz

  • Full Member Mark III
  • ***
  • Posts: 242
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #18 on: July 23, 2011, 10:11:11 am »

Lately?  They've done them pretty often since at least 3.XX. 

King
Sounds Like it has something to do with the new Unity Engine

I doubt it, but I'll wait for X4000 to weigh in on this. 

King
Sorry, I was being sarcastic. It was somewhat late, So I forgot to add /sarcasm at the end.

Offline Cyborg

  • Master Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,957
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #19 on: July 23, 2011, 11:26:42 am »
LOL, I feel sorry for Cyborg after reading all of that. I totally agree with Cyborg on this particular issue but at page 7 or so I found a reasonable reason on why not to go on demanding automation, Keith wrote:

Quote
I don't want to do an automation that's going to be obsolete the next time we get into a phase of revisiting game structure.

Hope you can find some way to make energy require less micro and more strategy.


I can appreciate a good compromise. At least we have something now. I think the most troublesome part of "Cyborg versus the world" is that I was actually trying to work with The World so they could continue playing their energy game (which, for those of us who figured it out, it isn't a game at all) yet allow those who understand it to not be annoyed by the tedium.  I still do not understand why some people cannot allow others to play the game the way they want to play it if it clearly doesn't affect them (because it would have been checkbox, like every other automation control). We have tons of automation in this game which is not called Starcraft but yet somehow the energy game being exposed for what it was is going too far. Probably more an issue that I brought it up; if Keith had mentioned it in a patch note, they would be thanking him. A lesson in group dynamics for you.

And that being said, I'm happy with the compromise for now. Hopefully the next expansion will address the current state of the resource much more thoroughly.
Kahuna strategy guide:
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13369.0.html

Suggestions, bugs? Don't be lazy, give back:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/

Planetcracker. Believe it.

The stigma of hunger. http://wayw.re/Vi12BK

Offline keith.lamothe

  • Arcen Games Staff
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 19,505
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #20 on: July 23, 2011, 12:07:57 pm »
... "Automated Energy Hamster"? Really? *dies laughing*
Chris and I had a fair bit of discussion of alternate ways of handling energy to get around the it's-basically-trivial-decisions-in-the-common-case thing, and basically every idea I had was something he'd already tried a loooong time ago and found was worse than what we have now.  As he said, once you get to an implementation where you've tried a bunch of other things and it's _still_ the least of all available evils, you've probably found a good place to settle for a while.

After I implemented that chat log thing with these keybinds I told Chris that you really know you've settled in when the game starts to make fun of its own implementation (and, to some degree, the players who it bothers) ;)

That said, still thinking of things for the next big dev cycle and so on.

Also, if the chat message joke gets on your nerves (it can be spammy) you can change it to a blank (the empty string) in the main.xml language file and the game will just not create the chat log message.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games? Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Mánagarmr

  • Core Member Mark V
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,272
  • if (isInRange(target)) { kill(target); }
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #21 on: July 23, 2011, 02:19:26 pm »
No no, doesn't bother me in the slightest. It just made me go "HUH?" and then laugh when I saw it. It's basically doing what I'm already doing, only faster. I usually just open the reactor list, find the first Mark III I see and turn it off. If there is none, go for Mark II. This keypress just makes it faster.
Click here to get started with Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports.

Thank you for contributing to making the game better!

Offline Cyborg

  • Master Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,957
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #22 on: July 23, 2011, 02:29:46 pm »
No no, doesn't bother me in the slightest. It just made me go "HUH?" and then laugh when I saw it. It's basically doing what I'm already doing, only faster. I usually just open the reactor list, find the first Mark III I see and turn it off. If there is none, go for Mark II. This keypress just makes it faster.

I hope you mean Mark I.  :-\


metalCrystalpowerRate(power per resource)
2250001250
151540,0001333
404080,0001000
Kahuna strategy guide:
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13369.0.html

Suggestions, bugs? Don't be lazy, give back:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/

Planetcracker. Believe it.

The stigma of hunger. http://wayw.re/Vi12BK

Offline Mánagarmr

  • Core Member Mark V
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,272
  • if (isInRange(target)) { kill(target); }
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #23 on: July 23, 2011, 03:00:11 pm »
Nope, meant Mark II. I'm not that very anal about my efficiency and if I'm 40k + energy ahead I'm not gonna go start finding 8 Mk Is to turn off :/
Click here to get started with Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports.

Thank you for contributing to making the game better!

Offline Philo

  • Full Member Mark II
  • ***
  • Posts: 176
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #24 on: July 26, 2011, 07:46:05 am »
Thanks for this great update guys. Solves a lot of stuff. Solves the auto-building of engies on allied planets and now having red/yellow forcefields to cover the Command Stations when they have invulnerability is a real big bonus. Especially for new players since they can immediately see there's something different about this forcefield.

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: AI War Beta 5.012, "Efficient Invincibility," Released!
« Reply #25 on: July 29, 2011, 08:33:33 pm »
Been away at the beach, but back now and catching up a bit.  Will still be a bit slow until Monday.  But, feeling nice and recharged. :)

why've you guys been naming patches lately?  :-\

Then it's a lot easier to remember which one was which.  Pop quiz: what was in 5.007?  Answer: I don't have any idea either.

Not that that really matters, but I feel like more descriptive is better than less, and it also makes the main index page of the website more interesting rather than just a bunch of numbers.

Oh, and: I really have fun coming up with names for things in general.  It's an odd character quirk.  When it's a patch every day that's too much for me, but even then for the notable ones I try to name them.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!