AI War Beta 5.052-5.057 "From The Shadows" Released!

[Cinth]

Riot Control SS and Mod Fort have the "Switch To Ship" button on the Ship Design panel. Clicking on the button gave interesting results 

Instant spawning stuff... A full cap of Riots and Mod Forts at the anchor world. Interesting to say the least. Now if my Raid SS would spawn that fast.....

[keith.lamothe]

Maybe I should re read the release notes, but I thought an basic Modular fort should be close to a cap of regular forts, while a modular fort with III modules should exceed a regular fort. Maybe I read it wrong.

No, you read it right, and if you put at least 2 HBC IIIs on it it will be 5.5x as much total output (roughly) as 5 mkI forts.  If you put 4 HBC IIIs on it it will have a total output about 7x that of 5 mkI forts.

Anyway, I'm open to suggestions, that just seemed a good initial balance point.

[keith.lamothe]

Riot Control SS and Mod Fort have the "Switch To Ship" button on the Ship Design panel. Clicking on the button gave interesting results 

Ah, another unintentional side effect of normal+champion, probably

[chemical_art]

Perhaps it is just me, but I've never had beam weapons of any sort give full dps, whether it be spire ships or hbc. They hit one or two targets, and the rest is just wasted.

Perhaps a casualty of rarely playing "normal" (yet alone high) cap games.

If I micro them, I can maybe get 1/2 of their total dps.

So maybe modular forts excel on offense. Should have known. The best shields increase their health by 125%, but if you replace that with weapons you increase their max dps by 550%, so in practice you boost damage by at least 200% on average.

Again, in fallen spire, who cares? I get max lasers, shields, and hbcs by default. I guess I should be happy.

I pity the fool who does not, though.

On the other hand, you could with the same amount of research get MK III forts, who while putting you in debt forever would still be better in every way if you could afford it.

So are modular forts the poor man's fort? Not a bad alternative I suppose.

[Cinth]

Riot Control SS and Mod Fort have the "Switch To Ship" button on the Ship Design panel. Clicking on the button gave interesting results 

Ah, another unintentional side effect of normal+champion, probably

Guessed that was it. Then I had the idea that maybe the Champ ships deserve their own tab.

[chemical_art]

Also, shadow frigate targetting logic is wonky.

I tell it to focus on one target. It's main guns focus on said target. It's guns, however, do not either hit the said target nor randomly target all targets in range, but rather a different target of the same class. It is annoying. It is getting the worst of both worlds: The modules are neither focus fireing on a target for lesser efficency as the main guns, nor are the guns attack the most efficent targets. The frigate, in its current form, is picking the worst of targets.

Note: this is when I FRD the said target.

[pheonix89]

Perhaps it is just me, but I've never had beam weapons of any sort give full dps, whether it be spire ships or hbc. They hit one or two targets, and the rest is just wasted.

Park them so they can fire directly into the wormhole. Add tractor beams or grav turrets, plus spiders, problem solved.

The mod fort has one big advantage that makes it much stronger than its stats look that noone has mentioned. It's modular weapons deal with the weakness to bombers quite nicely. The missiles aren't quite as strong per volley as the ones on turrets, but they fire much faster and hit polycrystal hard. Slap on 4 missiles, your choice of 4 light turrets, 2 shield and 2 HBCs and you've functionally got a MK 3 fortress that doesn't roll over and die to bombers.

[TechSY730]

Also, shadow frigate targetting logic is wonky.

I tell it to focus on one target. It's main guns focus on said target. It's guns, however, do not either hit the said target nor randomly target all targets in range, but rather a different target of the same class. It is annoying. It is getting the worst of both worlds: The modules are neither focus fireing on a target for lesser efficency as the main guns, nor are the guns attack the most efficent targets. The frigate, in its current form, is picking the worst of targets.

Note: this is when I FRD the said target.

I think this is an issue with modules in general, though it is very visible with the shadow frigates as you tend to give more attention to them.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, shadow frigate targetting logic is wonky.

I tell it to focus on one target. It's main guns focus on said target. It's guns, however, do not either hit the said target nor randomly target all targets in range, but rather a different target of the same class. It is annoying. It is getting the worst of both worlds: The modules are neither focus fireing on a target for lesser efficency as the main guns, nor are the guns attack the most efficent targets. The frigate, in its current form, is picking the worst of targets.

Note: this is when I FRD the said target.

Yes, this is a general modules thing but whenever I tested it specifically by giving a single target order (not in FRD though) it would always fire everything at the target.  After the target went down or after a lot of time passed it would get less focused, though.

[TechSY730]

Also, shadow frigate targetting logic is wonky.

I tell it to focus on one target. It's main guns focus on said target. It's guns, however, do not either hit the said target nor randomly target all targets in range, but rather a different target of the same class. It is annoying. It is getting the worst of both worlds: The modules are neither focus fireing on a target for lesser efficency as the main guns, nor are the guns attack the most efficent targets. The frigate, in its current form, is picking the worst of targets.

Note: this is when I FRD the said target.

Yes, this is a general modules thing but whenever I tested it specifically by giving a single target order (not in FRD though) it would always fire everything at the target.  After the target went down or after a lot of time passed it would get less focused, though.

I wonder if when doing an FRD attack onto a target, the modules "inherit" that FRD command. But as modules are immobile (or at least on their own they are), they can't FRD. So they set their target priority, and since they cannot FRD, fall back to their standby behavior, sit there and attack what is nearby (often times, not what the parent is firing at)

What should happen is that they should take an FRD attack onto a target order and instead "decay" that into a normal attack onto a target order (to the same target of course)
Similar thing for attack-move attack onto a target command.

[rchaneberg]

I for one love the new modular fort, but that may be because I tend to always play fallen spire and I'm used to the unlocks.  I'm also enjoying the synergy between getting the new mod forts to watch my home planet while I just go out and terrorize the neighbors with the new Frigate.

I finally feel like I have a big powerful human* ship to go and show the AI who's boss.

*mostly

-I also like the spread fire that the Shadow frigate tends toward. It may not kill as quickly, but it seems like there should be much less overkill and I seem to see it's modules preferring to hit what they have bonuses towards anyway.

Thanks for a wonderful new expansion, feels like a new game to me

[chemical_art]

Can't wait for the extra side missions.

Right now after the first one (I just did a second one) It plateaus quickly, then you get very incremental gains.

Looking forward to having the starship fully scale with AI power.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for a wonderful new expansion, feels like a new game to me

That's largely the idea, glad you're enjoying it   Just getting started on the content, really, up to now it's been something like 80% underlying-framework.

[rchaneberg]

That's largely the idea, glad you're enjoying it   Just getting started on the content, really, up to now it's been something like 80% underlying-framework.

Yeah, I'm probably gonna let it sit for a few days before I really get into it,but it's clearly the start of something very fun. Poking around in the images folder is really just building the level of excitement too, it looks like you have some very cool(and very terrifying) things on the horizon.

Any chance any of the new champions are going to have cloaking or at least a cloaking module?  Seems like you could get a very submarine warfare feel from flying a lone, nearly undetectable ship and harassing the AI with it. Like having your own Klingon Bird of Prey.

[chemical_art]

That's largely the idea, glad you're enjoying it   Just getting started on the content, really, up to now it's been something like 80% underlying-framework.

Yeah, I'm probably gonna let it sit for a few days before I really get into it,but it's clearly the start of something very fun. Poking around in the images folder is really just building the level of excitement too, it looks like you have some very cool(and very terrifying) things on the horizon.

Any chance any of the new champions are going to have cloaking or at least a cloaking module?  Seems like you could get a very submarine warfare feel from flying a lone, nearly undetectable ship and harassing the AI with it. Like having your own Klingon Bird of Prey.

*Play silent hunter (III)

*Most badass ship under the sea, popping out of nowhere to cause panic

*Most vulunerable ship ever if seen

*Constantly feeling both powerful and helpless is what make submarine games work. Sort of get the feeling with cloaking ships, except if they are are seen they always die and always come back (unlike submarines)