AI War Beta 5.050 Botnet Escape

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one responds to most of the remaining feedback from the last round of polls.  Specifically:

The Zenith/Spire starships got their long awaited promotion into two new separate lines of starship.  The Player Home Forcefield Generator got grav and tachyon coverage (and two semi-related issues with home defense were addressed).  The Spire Stealth Battleship was made a little easier to catch (mainly this helps handle AI-controlled ones), and Spire Shield Guard Posts won't take so long to kill.  And there was one other...

Ah, yes, the Botnet Golem.  Long believed to be the most overpowered unit in the game, things weren't looking good for the Botnet.  But thanks to some players reminding us how much fun that overpowered golem is, a (hopefully) better solution was reached: the botnet has retained all its power but is now its own minor faction.  It functions basically as before but now we can balance it separately from the rest of the golems.

There's also a few  other changes and fixes (golems/spirecraft exos are now more aggressive in general, notably), so look at the notes if you're curious :)

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.

[doctorfrog]

Good decision on the BNG. And happy ascension day for the Botnet Golem, as it has now been elevated to a minor god.

[Wanderer]

Good decision on the BNG. And happy ascension day for the Botnet Golem, as it has now been elevated to a minor god.

Flavor text for the Botnet Golem: "Along the side of this crippled monstrousity, you see the name of the ship, or at least what's left of the name.  Armok."

[keith.lamothe]

Flavor text for the Botnet Golem: "Along the side of this crippled monstrousity, you see the name of the ship, or at least what's left of the name.  Armok."

Hahahahaha.

Time to load up a bunch of pointy things into a minecart and fling it at the AI... wait, we already have transports.

[Wanderer]

Previously any youngling type used in a wave would have its quantity doubled to compensate for the short lifetime. That made sense at the time but younglings have received many buffs (particularly the tiger, which is much like a bomber) since then. So the multiplier has been changed from 2 => 1.5.

Further balance feedback, in either direction, is quite welcome.

Yay.  I'll let you know.  Part of the problem is I don't have my defenses fully in place but still, that swarm is just.. well, locusts comes to mind.  So does the words "Freight Train".

The Player Home Forcefield Generator, in honor of tying for second in the seventh "worst unit" poll (seriously, it's a freebie unit, but if it floats your boat...) :

Snort, laugh.  Fair enough.  That's a pretty brutal upgrade, too.  Wow.  The following + FF sneaks were really my biggest concerns but daaamn, alrighty then!

The Cryogenic Pods and Human Home Settlements that start next to each human home command station are now immune to the splash effect from being under a forcefield net hit by a plasma-siege shot. Previously it was possible to be in an early-game situation where it was nearly impossible to keep them from being destroyed by Plasma Siege Starships coming in with waves on a wormhole within firing range of the home command station.

Awesomesauce, I no longer must be hyper-afraid of short-range wormholes in the early game.  Raids will still make a mess of things but dual Sieges were... well... yeah.  Luckily I only saw that once.

Looking forward to the starship changes.  They look interesting now.  Might be able to build the anti-Eye starship fleet again.  The loss of the spires pretty much killed that when they got brought 'in line'.

[PokerChen]

Changes for 5.050 are being propagated to the wiki. NB: 5.046 hasn't, I think.

[chemical_art]

When I glance at the home command station, i see it still in its tooltip saying it costs 3,333 to repair.

[keith.lamothe]

When I glance at the home command station, i see it still in its tooltip saying it costs 3,333 to repair.

Where does it say that?  I was looking at the tooltip and it listed 3,333 as the per-second construction cost (not that you build those) but I didn't see a repair cost.

[TechSY730]

When I glance at the home command station, i see it still in its tooltip saying it costs 3,333 to repair.

Where does it say that?  I was looking at the tooltip and it listed 3,333 as the per-second construction cost (not that you build those) but I didn't see a repair cost.

And that is part of the problem I think, the auto-assist cutoff goes off of the listed construction, even for repairs, regardless of that unit's repair cost modifier (if any).

[keith.lamothe]

And that is part of the problem I think, the auto-assist cutoff goes off of the listed construction, even for repairs, regardless of that unit's repair cost modifier (if any).

No, I checked both in the code and via test, it goes off the construction cost when deciding to assist something that's self-building (like a turret after placement and before completion) and it goes off the repair cost when deciding to assist something that's not self-building but is damaged (leaving aside things with build queues).

[TechSY730]

And that is part of the problem I think, the auto-assist cutoff goes off of the listed construction, even for repairs, regardless of that unit's repair cost modifier (if any).

No, I checked both in the code and via test, it goes off the construction cost when deciding to assist something that's self-building (like a turret after placement and before completion) and it goes off the repair cost when deciding to assist something that's not self-building but is damaged (leaving aside things with build queues).

Oh, that's cool.

So all this time I was complaining about something that wasn't even in the game in the first place. 


Still that is good to know. It might be nice to list non 1.0 repair cost modifiers in the list of misc ship properties, but that's not a big deal by any means.

[TechSY730]

You know how you asked about any UI weirdness? Remember how I reported both backspace AND highlighting to be broken in number only textboxes? Well, I can't seem to reproduce that anymore, since it seems to have moved to single line NORMAL textboxes, including planet name and the chat box.
Like before, it is inconsistent. Sometimes I can highlight in one game run, and sometimes in other game runs I can't.

Anyone else seeing this? I want to know if this is an artifact of Wine, or an actual GUI bug.

[zoutzakje]

awesome patch, thanks a lot ^^
The botnet changes seem fair to me. Promoted to a minor faction, yet making it harder when enabled. 800k energy and +100 AIP on moderate... that's a serious impact. And if playing on hard, does this mean we can now get 3 exo's at the same time? :O (botnet hard, golems hard, fallen spire). sounds like fun
I really didn't think there was anything wrong with the Home FF. It was free and it was better than a standard mk I FF. The new upgrades will prove to be useful though.

You can really tell that the new expansion development has begon, we're getting a lot of patches again ^^

[chemical_art]

Has Fallen spire been changed lately?

In my current game (which has been updated 3 or 4 times) I have the first city building shard.

I  claimed it ten minutes ago, but I still keep having task groups spawn and attack me.

Edit: Give me ten more minutes, maybe it just takes a while to catch up...

Nope, they are outright spawning task groups despite me having the shard.

[zoutzakje]

Has Fallen spire been changed lately?

In my current game (which has been updated 3 or 4 times) I have the first city building shard.

I  claimed it ten minutes ago, but I still keep having task groups spawn and attack me.

Edit: Give me ten more minutes, maybe it just takes a while to catch up...

Nope, they are outright spawning task groups despite me having the shard.

you've probably thought of this, but I'll ask anyway... Are you sure the shard is at your homeworld and not at one of your colonies? I once made that mistake lol. Luckily the zombie defense would hold out and I found out in time.