AI War Beta 5.015, "Martyred Forcefields," Released!

[Giegue]

it quadruples the requirement for shredders each time? don't you think thats a bit much? maybe triple the damage or something. and I think double is what it used to be.

and yeah, that forcefield thing is definately going to encourage cheating on my part

[keith.lamothe]

it quadruples the requirement for shredders each time? don't you think thats a bit much? maybe triple the damage or something. and I think double is what it used to be.

The previous was just a linear multiplier, not something like this, and it was allowing absurdly large swarms.  I tested the quadruple rate pretty thoroughly: merely doubling it each time was not nearly enough in practice to keep it in an acceptable range.  With the quadrupling it's actually fairly easy to grow the swarm up to three caps worth, though it requires setting up a situation correctly to avoid the swarm taking too much fire while it "feeds", etc.

And if folks see that it's just too harsh, it can be changed.

and yeah, that forcefield thing is definately going to encourage cheating on my part

The main things shut out by the forcefield changes _were_ cheating, for the most part

[TechSY730]

I still miss the continuous formula of the old system. Isn't their some version of the formula that gives the current 4x of last ship cap every ship cap, but is continuous rather than a hard jump (exponential, I think)? Though if you do that, it should probably be reduced down to 3x, as each additional shredder would harder to get than the last, instead of only getting harder to get every ship cap worth.

[keith.lamothe]

I still miss the continuous formula of the old system. Isn't their some version of the formula that gives the current 4x of last ship cap every ship cap, but is continuous rather than a hard jump (exponential, I think)? Though if you do that, it should probably be reduced down to 3x, as each additional shredder would harder to get than the last, instead of only getting harder to get every ship cap worth.

The continous approach does have an engineering appeal, but it was also way more CPU-costly than it needed to be, and if you've got a swarm of 700 shredders all scoring hits roughly every 1-2 seconds, it was getting into the realm of an issue.

[Philo]

Playing a game with a friend now I can really see the forcefields need a buff. Against a exowave attack the shields were basically useless and our bases got destroyed before we could really even start to wither down the enemy forces. You really need to buff the force fields in one way or other very soon since this is impossible to defend as it is right now.

Prolly would have lost that game anyway but now even if we had a good army the shields wouldn't of lasted at all either way.
--
Also, for the next patch could it be possible to save your CTRLS settings for the next game

[keith.lamothe]

Playing a game with a friend now I can really see the forcefields need a buff. Against a exowave attack the shields were basically useless and our bases got destroyed before we could really even start to wither down the enemy forces. You really need to buff the force fields in one way or other very soon since this is impossible to defend as it is right now.

Prolly would have lost that game anyway but now even if we had a good army the shields wouldn't of lasted at all either way.

Is that with all 3 exo-sources on?

Also, for the next patch could it be possible to save your CTRLS settings for the next game

Iirc you can already save and load the galaxy controls.

[Philo]

Yeah it is with three exowaves. But we only got the 2 of them and prolly would've lost anyway since our army was not that awesome. No golem and only tier 2 units.
Anyway, I'll just wait to see what everyone else has to say about this.

[Commiesalami]

The exo-waves that come when building the first spire city blew threw my defenses (ignoring my gravity turrets and me sniping out what I considered lead ships) and to keep them at my chokehold point I needed to scrap every other single forcefield and build all 9 on a single wormhole and those barely held out (All less than 15% health).

On another point, I'm wondering if there is any extra gravity immunity given to the waves that appear [in this case] when building the first city.  I was killing every gravity immune ship I could see, but the strike forces still ignored my gravity turrets.

[Mayjori]

could someone point to or explain exactly what was done to forcefields please? I don't see in the patch notes exactly what was done and in the middle of a computer reformat so can't get at it in game.

[Commiesalami]

could someone point to or explain exactly what was done to forcefields please? I don't see in the patch notes exactly what was done and in the middle of a computer reformat so can't get at it in game.

Quick Version:  You cannot repair ships and structures underneath force fields while the force field is under attack.

[zebramatt]

On another point, I'm wondering if there is any extra gravity immunity given to the waves that appear [in this case] when building the first city.  I was killing every gravity immune ship I could see, but the strike forces still ignored my gravity turrets.

Ships in a strike group will always travel at the speed of their lead ship, regardless of gravity effects. Take out the lead ship (the biggest one) and the rest will succumb!

[Mayjori]

could someone point to or explain exactly what was done to forcefields please? I don't see in the patch notes exactly what was done and in the middle of a computer reformat so can't get at it in game.

Quick Version:  You cannot repair ships and structures underneath force fields while the force field is under attack.

even if they are powered down?
At early-mid and on the whole repair spammy thing isn't nearly as effective as people are saying, at least with the AI set to 9 or above...... were people who were crying about it on AI 2 or something.... god that is such an irritating change, makes me not even want to play.

lame

[zebramatt]

could someone point to or explain exactly what was done to forcefields please? I don't see in the patch notes exactly what was done and in the middle of a computer reformat so can't get at it in game.

Quick Version:  You cannot repair ships and structures underneath force fields while the force field is under attack.

What? That's not right, is it? It should just be force fields which you can't repair; not all ships!

Here's the patch note:

For a very long time it's been possible to ward off almost any amount of damage through sufficient micro of a pile of forcefield generators and engineers (to repair the ff's as they collapse within the protection of other generators, or go on low power mode, or are being newly built). While ff's are supposed to be extremely helpful in protecting stuff, it wasn't intended that they be able to do so indefinitely while under constant attack. So:

• When a forcefield is damaged by enemy fire, all allied forcefields whose fields are in contact (or very close to it) with the damaged ff will take 1 point of damage from the energy conducted along the surface of the field. The damage itself is inconsequential since the ff's have millions of hp, but it will trigger the "cannot be repaired less than 6 seconds after being damaged" logic. This also applies to forcefields currently under construction or in low-power mode. So it won't be possible to repair some forcefields in a ff-pile while others in the same group are under fire.
• Forcefield generators now cannot be assisted during construction if they have been damaged recently.
• When a new forcefield is placed for construction, if it is in near any allied forcefields (low power or not) that is currently unrepairable due to recent damage, the newly placed forcefield inherits the longest assist-delay present among those neighbors. So it won't be possible to speed-build new generators under other fields that are currently under fire.
• This also applies to all the "shield bearer" and module type shields.

If this leaves some situations unreasonably hard other changes can be made to compensate, we just wanted to close this "micro to dodge anything" loophole.

[x4000]

Yes, just forcefields, not all ships.

[TechSY730]

The exo-waves are really meant to crush forcefields, honestly; the force fields are pretty much paper when the spirecraft are around.  And actually if you have 50-100 bombers sitting outside a forcefield, it should be down in seconds.  Otherwise, forcefields are basically just "perfect invincibility except in extremely unlikely circumstances that don't even occur in every game."  Though if you're playing fallen spire, you'll obviously see that waaay more.

Hmm, now that I think about it, 100 Mk. III bombers should be able to take out a Mk. III ff in 2 or 3 salvos. I'll have to double check the math to be sure though. Thankfully, due to the somewhat slow firing rate of bombers, this can give you enough time to react. Now if you got 200 Mk. III bombers up near your ff, you've got a big problem on your hands.

Now that I have time, I have done the math. This is all on normal ship caps with normal game speed.

Mk. III bombers do 28,800 damage per shot. They also have a 6x structural bonus (which forcefields have). This gives them 172,800 damage per shot against forcefields.
Now in the hypothetical scenario above, there are 100 Mk. III bombers. Lets assume for the sake of simplicity that they all fire at the same time. This means a single salvo from all 100 of them against a forcefield does 17,280,000 damage. A Mk. III force field has 56,000,000 HP. This means that their needs to be 56,000,000/17,280,000 ~= 3.241 salvos from all of them. As bombers have a reload time of 12 seconds, this means 38.89 to 48 seconds 100 Mk. III bombers to destroy a Mk. III forcefield, depending on how "synchronized" their shots are.

For comparison, a Mk. II forcefield has 30,000,000 HP, which means 100 Mk. III bombers could take that out in ~=1.736 salvos, or between 20.83 to 24 seconds to take it out.

Make of this as you will.

(If you want statistics of Mk. I forcefield survivability under this situation, let me know.)

EDIT: Fixed some typos, most notably fixing where I put periods instead of commas.