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

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, so call it MkIII FF vs 100 MkIII bombers = 38 seconds of delay (thanks for the math).  And if you stack all 9 MkIs, 5 MkIIs, and 5 MkIIIs together you get about 556 million hp: about 10x a MkIIIs hp so presumably they would hold off 100 MkIII bombers for 380 seconds (6 and a third minutes) or 1000 MkIII bombers for 38 seconds.

All very rough given that situations are generally not so simple, but what would people want those numbers to be?  I've got some changes in mind but I don't want to mention the numbers lest it color the feedback unduly

[Philo]

Well how does the forcefield hold up against mark v bombers, say even 30 of them? Cause that's what you'll be getting at exogalactic waves.

Also, it'll be pretty late in the game when you can actually use your Knowledge for those mark III forcefields. Unless you want to sacrifice everything else like new ships and command station upgrades, which you shouldn't cause then the exos will shred you to pieces.
--
I'd be fine with more expensive but much more durable forcefields. Cause right now what the hell can you do when the first exowaves just decide to beeline straight to your base? You have no time to kill them cause your army is not big enough to take them all out if they won't stay and fight in one place. And you won't have mark III shields either. Which means, you're dead no matter how you approach it.

[TechSY730]

Well how does the forcefield hold up against mark v bombers, say even 30 of them? Cause that's what you'll be getting at exogalactic waves.

Also, it'll be pretty late in the game when you can actually use your Knowledge for those mark III forcefields. Unless you want to sacrifice everything else like new ships and command station upgrades, which you shouldn't cause then the exos will shred you to pieces.
--
I'd be fine with more expensive but much more durable forcefields. Cause right now what the hell can you do when the first exowaves just decide to beeline straight to your base? You have no time to kill them and you won't have mark III shields either. Which means, you're dead no matter how you approach it.

Well, I don't have AI war available to me at the moment, but I can work off my previous math.

If a Mk. III has 28,800 base damage, then a Mk. I has a third of that, which is 9,600. Thus, a Mk. V has five times of that, which is 48,000. Once again, 6x structural bonus, so 288,000. With 30 Mk. V bombers, that's 8,640,000. Again, Mk. III forcefield has 56,000,000. Thus ~=6.481 salvos, which with 12 seconds per firing, and depending on how well they are "staggering" their shots, is 77.78 to 84 seconds for 30 Mk. V bombers to take out a Mk. III forcefield.

So yea, Mk. V bombers hurt, but not enough that you can severely cut down on their numbers and still expect just as good results.

EDIT: Typos fixed

EDIT2: Oh you are wondering what would happen if you didn't have Mk. III forcefields. Well considering that 30 Mk. V bombers have less firepower than 100 Mk. III bombers, I can safely say that the Mk. II forcefield will last even longer than the previous scenario. So in other words, a Mk. II forcefield would hold up against 30 Mk. V bombers a good deal longer than 20 seconds.

[keith.lamothe]

MkV bombers aren't nice, no, and they're even worse in exos due to their beeline behavior, but riot starships (you can get the mkIs for free now) and/or spider turrets (which cost knowledge but are a _very_ solid investment for defense) are excellent for doing engine damage to those bombers so they "drop out" of the exo battlegroup (engine damaged ships don't get their speed set to the lead ship's speed + 5 like usual) ; they'll keep trying to get to the lead ship but if you shoot out the engines hard enough they'll just not be able to catch up.  Then after the rest of the exo is dealt with you can sweep up the bombers with fighters.

I'm just armchair quarterbacking with that, though, so let me know where that plan goes horribly wrong

[Philo]

I haven't actually checked but my impression was that the fleet ships about doubled in power every tier? So a full cap of tier 1's would have around the same dps as a half cap of tier 2's?
I have no idea if this is true though.

Edit: Yeah and about those spider turrets, yeah they help a whole bunch no matter what wave. I'll have to play a little more with this patch to see more situations.

[Hearteater]

Mark V should be x5 as strong as Mark I, but cost 2^5 as much to make I believe.

[Philo]

Mark V should be x5 as strong as Mark I, but cost 2^5 as much to make I believe.

Alright then. Cleared that out.

[keith.lamothe]

I haven't actually checked but my impression was that the fleet ships about doubled in power every tier? So a full cap of tier 1's would have around the same dps as a half cap of tier 2's?
I have no idea if this is true though.

No, it's linear.  As in the code which sets the attack power for the various marks of bomber is literally:

Code: [Select]

this.BaseAttackPower = 2400 * this.ShipLevel;
That's for high ship caps; on normal that's multiplied by 2, on low multiplied by 4, but the ship counts will be accordingly halved and quartered.

And yes, costs increase faster than the strength increases, but it's not quite as bad as used to be; the current code for that is:

Code: [Select]

        switch ( this.ShipLevel )
        {
            case 2:
                this.BaseMetalCost *= 2;
                this.BaseCrystalCost *= 2;
                break;
            case 3:
                this.BaseMetalCost *= 4;
                this.BaseCrystalCost *= 4;
                break;
            case 4:
                this.BaseMetalCost *= 6;
                this.BaseCrystalCost *= 6;
                break;
            case 5:
                this.BaseMetalCost *= 8;
                this.BaseCrystalCost *= 8;
                break;
        }


[TechSY730]

So for most fleet ships:
Power/HP/Armor = Base*Mk. lvl
Crystal/Metal = Max(1, 2*(Mk. lvl - 1))*Base

Is this right?

[keith.lamothe]

So for most fleet ships:
Power/HP/Armor = Base*Mk. lvl

Yea.  Also, armor piercing is multiplied if they have it.  And some ships (bombers included) get a modest (much lower than linear, usually only 100 or 200 units) range increase per mark, which is basically just a courtesy so that typically your lower mark ships of a given ship type will be in front of your higher mark ones when all attacking the same target.

Crystal/Metal = Max(1, 2*(Mk. lvl - 1))*Base

Yea, that's right, if you want to have it all in a single expression.

[Philo]

Hmm, this is interesting. Do you play single player by chance ?
Because in our 3 player games, the first couple of Exo-Waves are more of an annoyance than a challenge.

It's usually just 2 player games how we're playing.

This case in case that happened might have to do with us having 4 mark IV next to our bases when we began the game, pretty much slowed our expansion. And a 1000 hit wave with half being bombers hitting us exactly the same time as the exowave. And, the AI being intelligent enough to go the far way and not attack straight to our most fortified point. bastard.
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Yeah I mean usually the first exowaves don't destroy you but at least for us they're always a challenge still. And I dunno, I just always felt the force fields should've been more strong. But, I'll have to try this a little more to see how it is.

[Mayjori]

I definitely like the idea of buffing the shields in some way after the current nurfage. As for how much, I couldn't really say.

I've heard it mentioned about stacking regular mark 1-3 shields with the shields on the Spire cities, but that dosn't make sense to me, one of the HUGE benefits of spire city shields is that you can shoot from under them without any damage modifier being applied.

[keith.lamothe]

I've heard it mentioned about stacking regular mark 1-3 shields with the shields on the Spire cities, but that dosn't make sense to me, one of the HUGE benefits of spire city shields is that you can shoot from under them without any damage modifier being applied.

Yea, that is one of the biggest advantages, but typically I find I need the extra hps from the human generators until I research the highest tier of spire city shields, or the exos punch through before I can kill them.

[Mayjori]

I've heard it mentioned about stacking regular mark 1-3 shields with the shields on the Spire cities, but that dosn't make sense to me, one of the HUGE benefits of spire city shields is that you can shoot from under them without any damage modifier being applied.

Yea, that is one of the biggest advantages, but typically I find I need the extra hps from the human generators until I research the highest tier of spire city shields, or the exos punch through before I can kill them.

well, that kinda sucks, why not just make them like the regular shields and make it so the spire city weapons are immune to the shield damaging thingy.

[x4000]

It may actually be time to start introducing higher-mark forcefields in general.  Perhaps we need to reduce the knowledge cost of the first three tiers only slightly, then add tiers 4-5 and make them cost enough knowledge so that getting to mark V is the same in K cost that getting to mark III previously was.  People have definitely expressed a desire for more force fields in general, and this would allow some specialization with them.

I also think that probably now is a good time to start letting force fields travel through wormholes again -- maybe.  Because the biggest exploit of cross-wormhole travel (engies repairing the force fields as they move with a fleet) is now solved in a much better way.