AI War Beta 5.033 "And Other Times There Are A Few Too Many Ponies" Released!

[chemical_art]

meh, H/K's are supposed to be deadly. If you give them any other hull type than command grade, they will have to many weaknesses. Now it's just bombers.

What I was thinking was giving them a new armor type, like "Repulsive" or something. Basically, it would be like command grade in that very, very few things have a bonus against it, but melee units would still get 1x against it (or maybe a bit less), and turrets would get like .5x or maybe a bit higher against it.

Still makes them very difficult, and gives them almost no weaknesses, but doesn't make things like Spirecraft rams (this very sort of situation being one of the things you would be willing to use them for) worthless against them.

Having them weak to things that ordinarily don't hurt big craft would be interesting.

They would resist the generic defenses of all heavy craft: bombers, lasers, etc.

Melee and missiles as potential weaknesses come to mind for me.

But due keep in mind they are hard to kill with the absurd bonuses bombers get. Making them 4x harder to kill by removing that weakness alone with only a 1.0 as their weakness would require tweaking of their health.

Sorry, should of been clearer. This would basically be a copy of command grade armors except for those things that get a penalty against it. This implies that bombers would still have 4x against this new armor type.

Not a fan.

I'm not a fan of making anything else harder to kill except by bombers.

In my mind, the game should move away from it, not toward it. Bombers are already hyper important in the game context.

[chemical_art]

*patch changes*

Minor factions are fun!***

***In a variety of definitions oh how fun could be in games a la Dorf Fortress

[TechSY730]

(pruned)

Not a fan.

I'm not a fan of making anything else harder to kill except by bombers.

In my mind, the game should move away from it, not toward it. Bombers are already hyper important in the game context.

They are already "only bombers have a not so hard time killing it" state as is.

I wouldn't mind a new armor type that EVERYTHING has a 1x against and rebalance healths accordingly. In fact, I like that idea better.

I do agree with you that the heavy and ultra heavy hull types are spammed a bit too much currently.

[Diazo]

Just saw the new script option and intensity settings in the lobby. That is an exciting change I'm looking forward to.

Probably one of the first things I'm going to try is an all on, low intensity game.

Will still probably be a lot going on but that's half the fun. 

D.

[zoutzakje]

wow, just read the patch notes for .34  They look amazing. Not only do we get more randomize options (I laughed at the randomize + hidden option, that's gonna be fun ), we also get to adjust the difficulty of a lot of minor factions. And those scripts sound really interesting. I can imagine the beginner ones are going to be very useful for new players. Are we getting more scripts in the future?
And I see the dyson sphere fix I've been waiting for has made it in, awesome ^^
can't wait for this to come out.

[keith.lamothe]

Are we getting more scripts in the future?

Right now the script language is... really painful.  I was in the middle of switching it over to a much more concise, sane, and non-general-purpose grammar but was running low on time and wanted to get this done for now.  Once I switch it over it should be fairly straightforward for any of the programmers in the community to make them and share them around.  And I'm happy to make ones to fit specific requests, if it makes sense.

[zoutzakje]

Are we getting more scripts in the future?

Right now the script language is... really painful.  I was in the middle of switching it over to a much more concise, sane, and non-general-purpose grammar but was running low on time and wanted to get this done for now.  Once I switch it over it should be fairly straightforward for any of the programmers in the community to make them and share them around.  And I'm happy to make ones to fit specific requests, if it makes sense.

I see, makes sense. Well, I'll be playing all of those scripts you got so far and I'll be messing around with the randomize options a lot. So I'll be occupied for at least another few months ^^
Looking forward to it =)

[keith.lamothe]

Well, I'll be playing all of those scripts you got so far

I'd suggest just jumping to the Unknown Factions 4 (or Random Factions 4 if you want to be able to see what it picked), the other ones are for beginners and/or folks without all the expansions

and I'll be messing around with the randomize options a lot.

The only randomizing things added in the patch are part of the scripting feature: it's not so much that they're randomizing the minor factions, it's that they're programs that set up the lobby options and one of the things they can do is generate a random integer between one value and another

But the variable-strength minor factions and AI plots can be manually set in the lobby without using the script feature at all.

[Eternaly_Lost]

Question on the fallen spire changes. Given that 4 is normal, does that mean that it plays like a 7/7 game of fallen spire?

Will a 9/9 game of fallen spire with a setting of 4 play for the Fallen Spire stuff like a 7/7 game with a setting of 4 for fallen spire, or will it still be a lot harder?

[TechSY730]

Question on the fallen spire changes. Given that 4 is normal, does that mean that it plays like a 7/7 game of fallen spire?

Will a 9/9 game of fallen spire with a setting of 4 play for the Fallen Spire stuff like a 7/7 game with a setting of 4 for fallen spire, or will it still be a lot harder?

The way I read it is that these factors will scale the faction in addition to the factors already there. So fallen spire 4 on 9/9 will be harder then fallen spire 4 on 7/7, and fallen spire 8 on 9/9 will be harder then fallen spire 8 on 7/7, and finally fallen spire 8 on 9/9 will be harder then fallen spire 4 on 9/9.

The exact math between AI difficulty, AIP, minor faction scale, and everything else I don't know.

[keith.lamothe]

The way I read it is that these factors will scale the faction in addition to the factors already there.

Correct.  So Diff 9/9 + Fallen-Spire-2 will have FS-exos basically the same strength as they would be on Diff 7/7.

Playing FS on an intensity lower than 4 would probably be "make the game easier" button

[TechSY730]

Planning any other changes for 5.034, like maybe the 4th, 5th, and 6th on the 5th Worst Unit Poll? Or are you sort of "AI war-ed" out after what must of been a huge coding effort adjusting a huge portion of the fallen spire sizing and spawn rate math and implementing a freaking domain specific language into the game?

In any case, looking forward to this patch. My next game I will try some of the "negative" minor factions with lower intensities so I can learn to deal with them without being overwhelmed.


P.S. Any chance on getting the new scripting language's formal grammar posted somewhere?

[Wanderer]

Awwww. *waves goodbye to Dyson Win!*

These look really neat, thanks for this Keith.

[keith.lamothe]

Planning any other changes for 5.034, like maybe the 4th, 5th, and 6th on the 5th Worst Unit Poll?

I had thought to do so, but time did not permit, so will try for those in the next version    

Or are you sort of "AI war-ed" out after what must of been a huge coding effort adjusting a huge portion of the fallen spire sizing and spawn rate math

Oh, the FS-specific part was like 5 minutes if that, it's just a switch statement that sets a multiplier based on intensity.

and implementing a freaking domain specific language into the game?

That was rather more involved

P.S. Any chance on getting the new scripting language's formal grammar posted somewhere?

I'm not doing a formal grammar, so it will be implicit.  But after I change the grammar to something I don't hate writing in, I'll definitely post the details so the inclined can make their own scripts.  Frankly, if there are to be really finely tuned "produce a randomized scenario of a X 'total difficulty'" scripts, they'll come from the community, not from me   Takes a lot of iteration, time, playtests discussion, etc.

[x4000]

And it's out!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10617.0.html