AI War Beta 5.027, "SuperTerminal Overload," Released!

[Wanderer]

Other comments...

ST: Well, I had some ideas but we'll see how this works.  I'm not sure if my ideas were more or less vicious to the nerfing of the overall effect of this structure.

However, time to pulse was always around 1 second.  What's '1 second' now instead of 15?  I've never seen 4 pulses/minute and I sat a 120+ FS frigate fleet on one for half a game for giggles.  Occasionally a chuckle when I'd watch.

Beam Starship: Oh, crap.
Warbird: Oh, SH!...... crap.

Nice balancer.  ST doesn't seem like a cheat switch anymore.  If I find one in my current game (after updating), I'll have to test your bull ride.

Edit:
5.028:
The MkIV Scout Starship: Now provides counter-missile coverage.

I wants it.  That and brave scouts.  Tasty!

[Eternaly_Lost]

Same kind of reason why you likely won't ever see a Dwarf Fortress 2 -- why would you?  Dwarf Fortress itself has never stopped growing, etc.

There already is a Dwarf Fortress 2, in a way at least. The Dwarf Fortress that everyone talks about is officially labeled, Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress. Meaning that is officially Volume 2 in it series.

You can get the first game here: http://www.bay12games.com/armok/download.html Although it nothing like the Dwarf Fortress that everyone plays.

[zoutzakje]

found the Super Terminal in my current game and luckily it is very close to my empire. Not going to use it yet though. I want AIP to rise enough to see some H/K's from Spirecraft Exo's before I bump it down (or die trying). So far AIP is 525 and I've only seen some golems come at me.

[keith.lamothe]

ST: Well, I had some ideas but we'll see how this works.  I'm not sure if my ideas were more or less vicious to the nerfing of the overall effect of this structure.

However, time to pulse was always around 1 second.  What's '1 second' now instead of 15?  I've never seen 4 pulses/minute and I sat a 120+ FS frigate fleet on one for half a game for giggles.  Occasionally a chuckle when I'd watch.

Those ST changes were from before the recent k-raiding/hacking discussion, I have more plans for those (not necessarily in the "make it harder" sense, just more interesting/balanceable).

Anyway, the ability-recharge time on an ST is (and has been since the 3.x days) 15 seconds, I really don't know why it would have been pulsing at 1/sec for you before.

[Diazo]

Keith:

Thank you for those export changes, I can now find all the numbers I need to update the wiki.

My only other request would be is there a separate file with the ship descriptions somewhere? A couple of the descriptions of the golems are long enough they exceed the allowable cell length of Excel and get cut off from the Ctrl-Sft-F8 dump and they do not appear in the Controls-Reference-Export .csv file that I saw.

Not a huge deal however, only happened to two ships out of all the ones I've done so far.

Patch 5.028 Scout Starship Changes

Oh, wow. This might be my first starship unlock now. Any knowledge/cap changes? (For reference, I unlock the counter-missile turret in well over half my games, if this is a mobile alternate.....)

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Thank you for those export changes, I can now find all the numbers I need to update the wiki.

Great!  Let me know if you find you need any other info.

My only other request would be is there a separate file with the ship descriptions somewhere? A couple of the descriptions of the golems are long enough they exceed the allowable cell length of Excel and get cut off from the Ctrl-Sft-F8 dump and they do not appear in the Controls-Reference-Export .csv file that I saw.

You may want to check the ships.xml (and 1ships.xml, etc for the expansion ships) in RuntimeData/Language/en/ , all the text for ship names/desc is there.  But some ships aren't uniquely represented there because they "borrow" another ship's description (fabricators, etc).  If you need an export with the actual in-game description for each individual object type, I could have it dump a .txt file that doesn't have to deal with spreadsheet cell width limitations.

Patch 5.028 Scout Starship Changes

Oh, wow. This might be my first starship unlock now. Any knowledge/cap changes? (For reference, I unlock the counter-missile turret in well over half my games, if this is a mobile alternate.....)

Bear in mind that only the mkIV gets counter-missile

[TechSY730]

Good night!
I knew the scout starship needed buffing, but isn't this a bit much?

[keith.lamothe]

Good night!
I knew the scout starship needed buffing, but isn't this a bit much?

The HP change for the mkI might be more than it should be, but I think in general it's not overkill.  If scouting gets too easy we can adjust for that.  The main goal was to increase their non-scouting utility: we already have dedicated scout fleet ships, but the starships aren't nearly as expendable, etc.

[TechSY730]

Also, will the cloak boosting interfere with their ability to be cloak boosted? I would rather them be cloak boosted first, and then try to cloak boost others.

[Hearteater]

I think I'd rather they do the boosting.  They are immune to Ions.  I see them as basically "carrying" your scouts a system or two deeper.  I'd rather get a scout fleet ship in place to picket than a Scout Starship anyway.  Besides, multiple Scout Starships can boost themselves, which combined with their health boost should let them do pretty well.

[Wanderer]

Anyway, the ability-recharge time on an ST is (and has been since the 3.x days) 15 seconds, I really don't know why it would have been pulsing at 1/sec for you before.

Perhaps I have no ability to count.  We shall see.

[chemical_art]

I just may start using scout starships again.

I propose, to cause great annoyance, a new guardpost. The spider guardpost. It would have a weak attack, but it would shoot  (3 * mk) times a salvo. It's goal is not hull damage but engine damage. I think the default ai does not exploit this mechanic as much as it could, and now with scout starships being usable it would help lots.

I know there is a spider guardian, but they from my experience are not that effective. They are a hybrid of damage and engine damage. The spider post would sacrifice damage to get the advanced engine damage tartgeting logic and have a rapid engine damage attack.

[keith.lamothe]

I propose, to cause great annoyance, a new guardpost. The spider guardpost. It would have a weak attack, but it would shoot  (3 * mk) times a salvo. It's goal is not hull damage but engine damage. I think the default ai does not exploit this mechanic as much as it could, and now with scout starships being usable it would help lots.

I know there is a spider guardian, but they from my experience are not that effective. They are a hybrid of damage and engine damage. The spider post would sacrifice damage to get the advanced engine damage tartgeting logic and have a rapid engine damage attack.

The spider guardian does in fact have the PrioritizesEngineDamage flag, so it should be doing as well as, say, 20 spider turrets would on your side (they have the same reload time, the turret does 200 ED per shot, the guardian does 100*mk ED per shot and you generally don't see mkI guardians, and the guardian fires 20 shots per salvo).  Are you not seeing that, or is it just that 20 spider turrets wouldn't be all that effective against a ravening player fleet anyway?

Anyway: sure, a spider guard post would be interesting to add at some point, though the idea of a "spider command station" fits neatly into the previously discussed idea of varied AI command stations, too.  It'd be a pain to try to just neuter that system

[chemical_art]

The spider guardian does in fact have the PrioritizesEngineDamage flag, so it should be doing as well as, say, 20 spider turrets would on your side (they have the same reload time, the turret does 200 ED per shot, the guardian does 100*mk ED per shot and you generally don't see mkI guardians, and the guardian fires 20 shots per salvo).  Are you not seeing that, or is it just that 20 spider turrets wouldn't be all that effective against a ravening player fleet anyway?

Anyway: sure, a spider guard post would be interesting to add at some point, though the idea of a "spider command station" fits neatly into the previously discussed idea of varied AI command stations, too.  It'd be a pain to try to just neuter that system

I think it is a matter of they not being that common. If you had spider abilities seeded into both guardposts and guardians I think it would make more of an impact, especially those systems that have both on the same planet. Having the two and then a command station also doing so would simply be salt on the wound, and that is a good thing since it is nullified by scouts.

Ah, there is an ai type there: Spider. Favors units that do engine damage. Increased likely hood to seed spider defenses, comes automatically with spider fleet ships, etc.

[Shrugging Khan]

It'd be a pain to try to just neuter that system

Not really. Either just swarm the system with high cap ships to effect target saturation, or use infinite engine health ships, OR use ships with enough range to not need a lot of moving. Or just drive a hive golem in and let the wasps take care of everything