AI War Beta 5.058-5.060 "Further Shadows" Released!

[Draco18s]

HA! I just update in the middle of my campaign. Let's just say.. I'm trolling the AI.

You're making an argument for making the Beachhead AI plot non-optional.

I play with beachheads on one AI, trains on the other.  I get both plots, but not a double-helping of both.

[Cinth]

HA! I just update in the middle of my campaign. Let's just say.. I'm trolling the AI.

You're making an argument for making the Beachhead AI plot non-optional.

Unless beachheads can be carried by carriers then I don't see as how it will help the AI.
That being said, I should play a round with beachheads enabled to see what exactly it does (I've looked it up in the wiki).

[LordSloth]

Don't the turtles get extra reinforcements also?

Turtles?

*checks Varone's post again*

Oh.. oh my.  I'm so sorry.  Abandon all hope

Yes, I'm quite horrified. I started a game against 7.3 Teleport Turtle and 7.3 Backdoor Hacker. Every planet adjacent to my homeworld was a teleporter turtle with a MK3 Fortress. (except for the one with a co-processor, that only had a mk1).  30 minutes in, and they had reinforced to 600 units in one system. Before I quit after thirty minutes, one system had built to 1000 units and I hadn't taken a single planet. I had resorted to just trying to snipe the command stations but it was too late. I was doomed.  I'm at 65 AI progress, 1 Homeworld, 2 station-less AI systems.

Oh, and a Hacker system further out that I hadn't been regularly trying to get something done in: 977 units. If I had actually had the misfortune to start next to a mark 3/4 world, I'd be scared silly, instead of just horrified at the game I've set myself up with.

[Kemeno]

Well, can't leave those adjacent planets alone at the start of the game anymore apparently... 

Also, for some reason, the moment I send ANY ships to the planet in that screenshot showed, ALL of the AI ships at all the guard posts immediately leave their guard posts to attack me. Isn't that not supposed to happen unless I massively outnumber them?

And how do I deal with all of those maws? They ate half my fleet! Aside from not waiting 30 minutes to attack of course

[keith.lamothe]

Yes, I'm quite horrified. I started a game against 7.3 Teleport Turtle and 7.3 Backdoor Hacker. Every planet adjacent to my homeworld was a teleporter turtle with a MK3 Fortress. (except for the one with a co-processor, that only had a mk1).  30 minutes in, and they had reinforced to 600 units in one system. Before I quit after thirty minutes, one system had built to 1000 units and I hadn't taken a single planet.

That's odd, the only thing I changed was to make it based off of AIP/40 instead of AIP/270 (for the guard post part of it), and it's floored at 1 so any AIP value under 41 should be giving you exactly the same behavior as before.

Could you enable reinforcement logging and attach those after running the first 30 minutes or so of a 7.3/7.3 Teleport Turtle and Backdoor Hacker where you don't get any AIP?

[Lancefighter]

As a public service announcement, I would like to remind all expansion players that completely forgetting about the rest of the universe while microing your hero in a nebula is NOT, I repeat NOT good for your home command station's health.

Please take some time out of your micromanagement to ensure your home command station is not getting murdered.


Edit; And on a related note - Tell autosave to not overwrite itself. 
This PSA brought to you by that guy that died at exactly 1:30:00. No. Seriously.

[Diazo]

I'm not sure what the relation between initial seeding and reinforcement pulse is supposed to be but I started a new game on diff 10.

3 adjacent planets, first reinforce pulse at 3 minutes game time:
Mk IV: Starts with 111, after Reinforce 1: 235
Mk IV: Starts with 101, 200 after first reinforce
Mk I: Starts with 41, 90 after first reinforce.

edit: Ack, this posted? Meant to close it and post when I actually had more details.

Oh well, it's up, completed the numbers.

[keith.lamothe]

Mk IV: Starts with 111, after Reinforce 1: 235

Erp!?

Must be a bug in there... will go hunting.

As a public service announcement, I would like to remind all expansion players that completely forgetting about the rest of the universe while microing your hero in a nebula is NOT, I repeat NOT good for your home command station's health.

That happened to me a lot in testing, so I took to "set space dock to loop build" as my first testing step

[LordSloth]

Started over, same everything, except this time the AIs weren't random, but the exact same as last time.

Two things of note: My scouts have a weird auto-explore fixation on Bartledan, a planet two hops to my west. Noticed this with mk 1 scouts always following the route, decided to see what happened with a Mark IV scout starship or two. They park right on that wormhole for some reason. I took the other one manually hunting for the AI Homeworlds so I had something to look at.

Fortresses and AI Command Stations in the two adjacent systems without co-processors are covered with Shield Bearers, and the Mark 3 Fortresses are parked directly overhead. This influenced my decision not to pop any command stations at all.  At the base 20 AIP and 31 minutes, the three adjacent worlds are at 522, 425, 488

If you'd like, I can compare with two vanilla AIs.

Correction: I have spire civilian leaders on, that means I'm actually 10 above base AIP.

[Lancefighter]

As a public service announcement, I would like to remind all expansion players that completely forgetting about the rest of the universe while microing your hero in a nebula is NOT, I repeat NOT good for your home command station's health.

That happened to me a lot in testing, so I took to "set space dock to loop build" as my first testing step

Mmmm yes youd think that would be enough. Turns out, auto-rebuilding even an set of mark 1 fleet ships wasnt enough. Maybe if I spent less research on those fancy new starships (I'm not sure if I like the splitting of zenith and spire starships yet.. I want starship bonus ships ): ) I took those and a-moved them in the direction of the nearest world while i was busy parading around my fancy giant warbird. I was so close to finishing that nebula event too.

[Varone]

HA! I just update in the middle of my campaign. Let's just say.. I'm trolling the AI.

You're making an argument for making the Beachhead AI plot non-optional.

Unless beachheads can be carried by carriers then I don't see as how it will help the AI.
That being said, I should play a round with beachheads enabled to see what exactly it does (I've looked it up in the wiki).

If you play with cross planet waves then beachheads are put into carriers when the waves reach the right size for carriers. Otherwise the beachhead is dumped on the planet the wave spawns at.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm not sure what the relation between initial seeding and reinforcement pulse is supposed to be but I started a new game on diff 10.

3 adjacent planets:
Mk IV: Starts with 111, after Reinforce 1: 235
Mk IV: Starts with 101, 200 after first reinforce
Mk I:

Hmm, odd, in my case I had two mkI/IIs and the one I was watching went from 33 to 66 after the first pulse.  Not good, but not that catastrophic.  Will do a bit more.

[Aklyon]

HA! I just update in the middle of my campaign. Let's just say.. I'm trolling the AI.

That is an absurd amount of shieldery.

[keith.lamothe]

Bug #1 found:

* Fixed a bug where offroad planets (nebula) were counting as non-AI-controlled-worlds for the purposes of determining how many worlds the AI could reinforce.

But that wouldn't explain this fully.  That's been operative since 5.052.

[LordSloth]

Did the vanilla AI game, everything else (including spire civilians) was the same. More reasonable this time, averaging ~300 ships with no warp gates raided or command stations popped.

Still the same scout fixation- have NOT tried a different map seed.