Author Topic: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused  (Read 6185 times)

Offline keith.lamothe

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AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« on: July 21, 2012, 11:41:01 am »
(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one deals with the resurgence of a most bothersome bug (for those not following the link, it's a joke about people beating 10/10).   On higher difficulties the AI will now be harder to "put to sleep" with AIP reduction.  The AI will now be more clever with the schizo-wave modifier and still send homogenous waves some of the time because they're sometimes more effective (particularly pure-bomber and pure-frigate, depending on circumstances).  Reinforcements have been buffed a bit as experience since the big reinforcement-system overhaul has shown what I expected: too few reinforcements now that it's actually paying for everything.  A few other things.

Oh, yea: Core Guard Posts.  Those are going to hurt more now.  They're still pretty quick to kill if you have a lot of firepower (indeed, the core spire shield guard post had its health cut nearly in half, and almost all of the others don't even have 10% of that), but they will take a much more serious bite out of your attacking force in the process.  One of the main ideas behind the Core Guard Posts to begin with was to have a kind of "multi-stage boss battle" at the end of the game.  Well, now it will be harder to gun them all down in one go ;)

The combination of the above will probably render 10/10 basically impossible to actually win in the absence of a lot of player cheese.  But I thought that after the last time I buffed 10/10, so I'm figuring someone will prove me wrong :)  If, on the other hand, I've made things too excruciating, please do let us know.  Balance is an ongoing process :)

There's also the much-requested slider for controlling the intensity of the new nebula/planet/etc backgrounds, and a memory optimization that may significantly help people running insanely big scenarios squeeze in under the memory ceiling for longer.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you  launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found  if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
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Offline Volatar

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2012, 11:51:48 am »
Good to see 10/10 recieve some buffs again.  ;)
« Last Edit: July 21, 2012, 11:54:26 am by Volatar »

Offline Cinth

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2012, 11:54:57 am »
Okay then  8)

Time to see if I can run my 7/7 16 120 game with normal caps  ;D

Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2012, 12:04:44 pm »
I'm a little late about this, but thanks for the new nebulae and nebula "intensity" slider. The new backgrounds look great! :)
« Last Edit: July 21, 2012, 01:01:55 pm by TechSY730 »

Offline Coppermantis

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2012, 12:32:07 pm »
The intensity slider is very nice, thanks for that. The backgrounds are great, although my Planetary texture pack has been nullified, sadly.
I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2012, 12:41:23 pm »
The intensity slider is very nice, thanks for that. The backgrounds are great, although my Planetary texture pack has been nullified, sadly.
Yea, mods of our games often feel as if they had been put into a chipper shredder.  Everything's fine until it suddenly turns on.
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Offline barryvm

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #6 on: July 21, 2012, 01:21:20 pm »
Just came back out of holiday, so I hadn't played since 2nd of July.
When I started up a new game yesterday I wanted to test the new enclave ship drones but I was really surprised by the amount of balance and gameplay changes you managed to make in just two weeks.
The final homeworld assaults are now much more challenging and entertaining and the incoming waves against chokepoints really changed the strategy for me.
The carnage even looks nicer with all the beatifull nebula in the background.

Good luck with the expansion !

Offline Cinth

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #7 on: July 21, 2012, 02:02:16 pm »
Was feeling kinda froggy and setup a 10/10 16 120.... x map and had one entry .... 10 minutes in and 2800 ship knock on my front door followed by 1800 2 minutes later with a smattering of younglings from P Wardens and Enclaves. Had to laugh at that. 15 minutes has to be the quickest game I've ever played  :o
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline Diazo

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2012, 02:46:28 pm »
Heh.

At least it wasn't a Support Corps.

Support Corps, due to it's nature of supporting the other AI, scales up in difficulty faster as the difficulty goes up.

Just lost a game to an average size wave that did not lose a ship for 30 seconds due to way too many decoy drones flying about.

Okay, it was 10/10 but the wave warning was only 700 ships, I should have been easily able to handle it.

Oh well, the 10/10 experiments continue.

D.

Offline Cinth

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2012, 03:10:17 pm »
Just a double dip of vanilla lol... Warden and Enclave spawns are rather insane... and they just keep adding up it seems...

Attempt #2 I let end when a combined 7800 AI Bomber IIs showed up (7 carriers  ::)

I didn't watch in horror.. just wondering WHY nothing auto targets them and why the fusion cutter immunity ... lots of my favorite ships are of that type  :-\

EDIT: 3rd attempt and the AI surrendered.. well threw a tantrum, flipped the chessboard, and stomped out of the room. As soon as I've picked up the pieces, and put everything away, I'll send you guys whatever you want to see (I had enabled the logging things and all that goodness. Just lemme know if you want any of it.)
« Last Edit: July 21, 2012, 04:25:54 pm by Cinth »
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline platinawolf

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #10 on: July 22, 2012, 01:03:25 pm »
Hmm,,, Seems my shard generator went poof ^^* Worked in 5.044 but for 5.046 when I zoom in to look at it, poof, massive information dump and no reactor visible :( And for some reason I haz no Expansions/3/* folder... Either steam ate the folder, your installer deleted it or it never existed,,, I think the first or second is most likely ^^* Hmm,,, Apparantly I have the folder in runtime data,,, *Sigh* To many different folders with the same name...  The file is there (ai war fleet command\RuntimeData\Expansions\3\Images\Ships\FallenSpire_SpireShardReactor\1.png) (attached it)
« Last Edit: July 22, 2012, 01:07:46 pm by platinawolf »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #11 on: July 22, 2012, 01:06:18 pm »
Our installer cannot actually delete files; it's one of the weaknesses of it.

I suggest a reinstall as something went om-nom on expansions/3/ folder, apparently.

But if you keep your settings.dat, inputbindings.dat, and Saves directory (all from RuntimeData) and put those into your new install you don't lose anything.
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Offline platinawolf

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #12 on: July 22, 2012, 01:10:15 pm »
But as it can find the city hub, why can't it find the shard reactor? The color mask image is there to, last edited when it was created... Straangee...

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #13 on: July 22, 2012, 01:20:18 pm »
Ohhhh, nevermind, no reinstall needed :)  It's just an improperly sized texture.  I can fix that.

Previously stuff that was non-power-of-2 on the y-axis would be loaded and used but would not have worked on older cards.  Now it actually complains.
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Offline platinawolf

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Re: AI War Beta 5.046 The AI Is Not Amused
« Reply #14 on: July 22, 2012, 01:24:11 pm »
^^* Very irritating, especially as I just had time to reinstall and confirm that it wasnt my fault :P But I notice ya changed the datastructure, explains the duplicate's in the root :) Do I get another note in the change-log? :P