AI War Beta 5.023, "Plasma Siege Starships," Released!

[Spikey00]

Don't know how I feel about the... plasma siege starship.  I thought the siege starship (not anti-matter) was quite balanced and served a unique role in a fleet in which that they could attack capital ships and structures from afar while having being quite vulnerable under combat, incurring a lot of cost to replace them if you weren't careful about preserving them (they used to have, what, 1m HP?) which in itself was an incentive to protect them with your fleet especially since they moved ridiculously slow (12 speed?).  The removal of a long-range bombardment vessel non-exclusive to bonus ships hinders a playstyle involving high-risk starship guerilla players.

Not sure about having another close-range "bomber" type of starship--I think we have enough of that with the bomber and fleet starships already, so maybe this idea may be better transferred to a bonus ship. 


Maybe a repairable shield-bearing starship (I kid, I kid). 

[Wanderer]

Ummmmmm.....

I think my siege starships just killed an ARS.  No beuno.

[TechSY730]

Ummmmmm.....

I think my siege starships just killed an ARS.  No beuno.

Uh oh. Did you remember to exclude "do not attack these even though they belong to the enemy because they are important capturables" from the splash damage effect?
Sounds like one for mantis. (make sure to mark it as major severity)

Also, I fully support the AOE starship, but I don't think we should re-purpose the Plasma Siege Starship for that role. I do think we need some sort of heavy hitting, moderately long range starship.

Also, isn't 4k base range (which would be like 7k in game range or something?) is a bit short? I wouldn't mind having it the same range is missile frigates (10k in game range), even if I do trade a bit of DPS for it.

Also (wow, 3 also's), a greater percent of damage to fewer ships seems like a good idea. Maybe to incentivize higher marks, it can hit that same percentage of damage but against more ships at higher marks. Though the increase to weapon damage needs to be kept in mind, as each ship would be receiving a higher amount of damage.

[c4sc4]

The Shards recovered in the Fallen-Spire events are no longer cloakable. Previously they could be cloaked via a cloaking starship; this was not deliberate on our part and made those recoveries way easier than they really should be.

Ahh, now I'm actually going to have to try during those recoveries.

Previously Sniper and Spider turrets cost 8 to 10 times as much metal+crystal to build a cap of compared to all other turret types, so:

    * Base Metal Cost from 1500 => 300.
    * Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 1500.

This is really awesome, those turrets were always annoyingly expensive to build.

[Wanderer]

Sounds like one for mantis. (make sure to mark it as major severity)

Entered to Mantis.

[Shrugging Khan]

Better to keep them in transports and only pop them out for particular jobs, eh? 

[keith.lamothe]

I think my siege starships just killed an ARS.  No beuno.

LOL.

I guess they're still working out their angst from the Antimatter era.

It's due to the damage being applied in a new code path (well, the same one as the 1-point-of-splash-damage rule when hitting a pile of ff's) and not checking things that are normally checked.  Will fix.

Reminds me of when I added Paint Attack (since suspended due to excessive memory consumption) : it was a new way of designating targets.  Reports of friendly fire casualties quickly followed.

[Ktoff]

Come on guys.... give me a break! How am I supposed to ever finish a game on one version if you keep rolling out new ones?

(Yes I know I can just keep playing the old version, but I want the new stuff :-) )

I guess there are worse things to complain about....

[TechSY730]

Come on guys.... give me a break! How am I supposed to ever finish a game on one version if you keep rolling out new ones?

(Yes I know I can just keep playing the old version, but I want the new stuff :-) )

I guess there are worse things to complain about....

The latest versions have been relatively good about not breaking existing save games, and not breaking balance of situations from previous versions. You should be able to load the old save in this version with few repercussions.

[Shrugging Khan]

I feel you, Ktoff. I can't bring myself to not start a new game, too

[keith.lamothe]

I feel you, Ktoff. I can't bring myself to not start a new game, too

FWIW, unless there's something more severe than the siege's being able to take out ARS's and the such, we probably won't be doing another AIW release for at least a few days.  That particular bug is borderline severe enough, but in the short term it should be easy enough to avoid having those specific units shooting at ff's that have critical capturables under them.  I could be wrong, of course, with that enormously-longer-range-than-I'd-intended

[Commiesalami]

Awww … I really liked the anti-matter starships.  They busted up Guardians like nobody's buisness.  Have 3 or 4 camping the wormhole that my troops attacked from providing support fire caused a very noticable decrease in losses.  I guess these can field the same role, but the shorter range is going make it harder to have them as a 2nd line craft like I've been managing.

Also Anti-matter Starships + Spire Maws were an amazing combo.

[BobTheJanitor]

Come on guys.... give me a break! How am I supposed to ever finish a game on one version if you keep rolling out new ones?

(Yes I know I can just keep playing the old version, but I want the new stuff :-) )

I guess there are worse things to complain about....

This is nothing compared to the push up to the release of 5.0. Then it was literally something different every few days. Go check out the patch notes for 5.0: http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_5.000_Release and then imagine all those changes staggered over a few months. AIW has been pretty quiet lately, with months of little to no changes. I find it more entertaining when the game changes every other day, personally. Keeps you on your toes.

[TechSY730]

Awww … I really liked the anti-matter starships.  They busted up Guardians like nobody's buisness.  Have 3 or 4 camping the wormhole that my troops attacked from providing support fire caused a very noticable decrease in losses.  I guess these can field the same role, but the shorter range is going make it harder to have them as a 2nd line craft like I've been managing.

Agreed.

See my suggestion Mantis issue #5538 for an adjustment to get a compromise between the old Anti-matter starship and the new Plasma Siege Starship.

[HellishFiend]

Come on guys.... give me a break! How am I supposed to ever finish a game on one version if you keep rolling out new ones?

(Yes I know I can just keep playing the old version, but I want the new stuff :-) )

I guess there are worse things to complain about....

lol, I am quite sure I remember seeing this exact same post from someone else back in the day. Glad to see that hasnt changed.