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

[Mánagarmr]

Many long-time members of the Arcen community will appreciate one particular fix: the bug that caused a "ghost" of a unit's build queue to sometimes draw just a little below it is now gone. Finding the greater-than sign that needed to be greater-than-or-equal-to took 3 hours, so be happy!

I am most pleased.

[Ricca]

Um, slight problem, maybe.

I've somehow ended up with 2 Spire Archives on the same planet. Haven't capped it yet, but... well. Never run into this before. Is it intended?

EDIT - Seems not. They both selfdestructed when they hit 9000 knowledge. Pity.

[Eternaly_Lost]

Well I just found a nice bug...

Noting quite like finding that your next Fallen Spire shard is located in a backwater planet that the Survey ships can not get too...

I got a save if you need it, but I think this is rather clear on it own.

[Toranth]

Just noticed my game had created a ArcenDebugLog.txt, and it contained a lot of these:

Code: [Select]

8/12/2012 11:28:32 AM
(harmless note, this file is optional) ExplosionNoiseSuppression.txt not found (checked path c:/program files (x86)/steam/steamapps/common/ai war fleet command/RuntimeData/ExplosionNoiseSuppression.txt)

   at System.Environment.get_StackTrace()
   at ArcenDebugging.ArcenDebugLog(System.String Message, DebugLogDestination Destination, Boolean IncludeStackTrace, Verbosity Verbosity)
   at ArcenDebugging.ArcenDebugLog(System.String Message, DebugLogDestination Destination, Verbosity Verbosity)
   at ArcenDebugging.ArcenDebugLog(System.String Message, Verbosity Verbosity)
   at GameSettings.PrepareFGObjectTypesWithDisabledExplosionSoundsList()
   at GameSettings.GetDoesForegroundObjectTypeHaveExplosionSoundSuppressed(ForegroundObjectType ObjectType)
   at ForegroundUnitTypeImmutable..ctor(ForegroundObjectType Type)
   at DatabaseContent.Update(Int32 Step)
   at Game.ContinueInitializeGame()
   at Game.ContinueMultiStageProcess()
   at MainCameraLogic.MainUpdateLogic()
   at MainCameraLogic.Update()
It says it is harmless, and it certainly doesn't seem to be doing anything, but it is filling up that log file.

On I'm sure a completely unrelated note, about how much memory usage can Unity handle before it crashed?  I just had my first crash, but the program had been running a long time with a LOT of units active.  No point in complaining if it was a known issue with the engine.


EDIT:  I just noticed, my "Give" button is flickering on/off a lot as the game runs, even though there are no other players.  Couldn't see any errors reported about it in the logs, though.

[keith.lamothe]

Well I just found a nice bug...

Noting quite like finding that your next Fallen Spire shard is located in a backwater planet that the Survey ships can not get too...

I got a save if you need it, but I think this is rather clear on it own.

Haha, oops.  I had it ignoring the offroad planets in the part of the shard-seeding logic that I thought that mattered, but there was another I'd missed.  Got it for 5.060

Just noticed my game had created a ArcenDebugLog.txt, and it contained a lot of these:

How many?  I would expect one per time you've run the game.

On I'm sure a completely unrelated note, about how much memory usage can Unity handle before it crashed?

Depends.  If it's textures (unmanaged memory) it can handle something like 600-700MB of those before problems get pretty certain.  If it's most anything else (in managed memory) it can handle 700-800MB before you're up a creek.  But it's tricky for you to tell as a user how much of what is being used because task-manager will generally report the game as using the full managed heap size (roughly 800MB) plus whatever textures are currently in memory (and sometimes it takes a long time for it to actually release memory after unloading textures... if it even does that, not sure). 

I just had my first crash, but the program had been running a long time with a LOT of units active.  No point in complaining if it was a known issue with the engine.

It is known that it will crash at some point within the possible load, but it shouldn't be getting out-of-memory on common loads.  But running the program a long time and not restarting between games will eventually build up to a problem probably due to textures not unloading, etc.

Anyway, if you see more crashes, let us know, but it may be that you just hit the wall

EDIT:  I just noticed, my "Give" button is flickering on/off a lot as the game runs, even though there are no other players.  Couldn't see any errors reported about it in the logs, though.

I've been seeing Give-flicker for... I don't remember not seeing it   Not sure what might be causing it.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well, I find that that works without a forcefield anyway. The spire stations are stupidly easy to avoid damage from. The thing is, lasers can be dodged, and all the other stations can't be micro'd away from. I noticed that issue myself.
...Although if you DO have a force field, you can just do that without suffering any damage anyway. That's not even necessary to trivialize the whole ordeal though.

[Cyborg]

May we get a "getting started" with this expansion? It's not entirely clear. So far I have been playing it as usual, but now I have Billy Badass going around doing the dirty work. Is this the intention?

[Diazo]

I'm having a blast with the new stuff.

However, some attacks (that don't have FF immunity) seem to ignore the Shadow Destroyers Shield.

Notably Sentinel Frigates, they are doing hull damage with my shield still up above 80%.

I see nothing in the descriptions or immunities that would explain this.

Ideas?

D>

[keith.lamothe]

May we get a "getting started" with this expansion? It's not entirely clear. So far I have been playing it as usual, but now I have Billy Badass going around doing the dirty work. Is this the intention?

In brief, yes, though the variety and balance are still very much in progress.

The "Getting Started With Champions" for someone new to the expansion at this point would be:
1) Go to lobby, set up a game like you normally would.
2) Pick Normal+Champion as your player role.
3) Start game.
4) Play normally and use the champion however you like.
5) When you see a blue wormhole, wait until you expect a 30ish-minutes (or more) lull in the war against the AI, then take your champion through it.
- The lull is optional, it's just easier when you're first getting used to the nebula scenarios to not be fighting in there and dealing with major normal-war shenanigans at the same time (and if it's major enough you probably want your champion there anyway).

There's also some journals that pop up (one at the start, and then some in each nebula), read those if you haven't done so before.

As for the expansion in general, there will also be some new bonus types, AI types, etc, but I imagine they won't need much introduction when they get added.

[Toranth]

I may have found another issue.
My Fallen Spire Capital Ships do not seem to be able to damage buildings with their main weapons any more.  I've been cheating around to explore the Champion stuff, and created some Spire ships.  However, when I sent a mob of Spire Firgates to attack a Special Forces Guard Post, they were unable to damage it, even after several minutes.  The modules seem to work fine, as usual, and the main guns still seem to be able to kill AI ships... but not any buildings.

Related to the Spire modules - My Spire Fleet (100 ships, all with modules) entered a system with a Parasite Eye and about 250 AI ships.  The Eye immediately activated, and said I had 500+ too many ships in the system.  My guess is that the modules are now being counted as individual ships?  Or something.

Still on odd Fallen Spire stuff, I think the Hybrids may have detected and killed my signal at one point (evil new Hybrid plot, I see).  There were 1000 or so Hybrids and 10,000 normal ships (Lots of Preservation Wardens, for example) in a system where the signal appeared.  After a short while, the signal went away.  I was able to reload from the autosave and duplicate it, but I forgot to copy the Autosave off to a different file and it got overwritten   Oops.  I've still got a save a good while before that I might use to try to re-duplicate the issue if you want.

Also, are the rules for Signal Spawning still the same?  Aka, shard signals won't pass over a Mk IV world (until the end)?  I just had the first City shard appear 3 hops past my homeworld, on the other side of a Mk IV world.  Very odd.  (The planet did have a weak wormhole on it, that I have not explored.  Don't know if that would matter).


Finally, a comment regarding Champions.
Could we get an overlay for the Galaxy Map that shows where the Champions are?  When using multiple Champions, it get's hard to find them sometimes.  Crtl-H will cycle through them, but it's inconvenient to keep going Next->Is this the one I want?->No->Next.  The "Find" option only shows that one that directly belongs to me, and none of the allied ones.

Second, would there be any way to copy designs between Champions?  Or to force them to respawn with the design they had when they died?  (Primarily for the Extra Champions).  With multiple Champions, it is a minor annoyance reconfigure them every time they die.

[keith.lamothe]

I may have found another issue.
My Fallen Spire Capital Ships do not seem to be able to damage buildings with their main weapons any more.  I've been cheating around to explore the Champion stuff, and created some Spire ships.  However, when I sent a mob of Spire Firgates to attack a Special Forces Guard Post, they were unable to damage it, even after several minutes.  The modules seem to work fine, as usual, and the main guns still seem to be able to kill AI ships... but not any buildings.

Hmm, probably related to a fix I put in to make the photon lance weapon type work for enemy-to-all ships (the dark spire guys in that nebula mission).  Thanks for letting me know, it should be a simple fix.

Related to the Spire modules - My Spire Fleet (100 ships, all with modules) entered a system with a Parasite Eye and about 250 AI ships.  The Eye immediately activated, and said I had 500+ too many ships in the system.  My guess is that the modules are now being counted as individual ships?  Or something.

They've been counted that way for a long time

Still on odd Fallen Spire stuff, I think the Hybrids may have detected and killed my signal at one point (evil new Hybrid plot, I see).  There were 1000 or so Hybrids and 10,000 normal ships (Lots of Preservation Wardens, for example) in a system where the signal appeared.  After a short while, the signal went away.  I was able to reload from the autosave and duplicate it, but I forgot to copy the Autosave off to a different file and it got overwritten   Oops.  I've still got a save a good while before that I might use to try to re-duplicate the issue if you want.

Hmm, it's possible, though I thought I'd also made the signals literally invincible too. (checks), yep they have the invincible flag.

If you can replicate it, though, I'm quite interested in seeing that.

Also, are the rules for Signal Spawning still the same?  Aka, shard signals won't pass over a Mk IV world (until the end)?

That rule only applies to the first two shards

Finally, a comment regarding Champions.
Could we get an overlay for the Galaxy Map that shows where the Champions are?

Sure, great idea  

Second, would there be any way to copy designs between Champions?  Or to force them to respawn with the design they had when they died?  (Primarily for the Extra Champions).  With multiple Champions, it is a minor annoyance reconfigure them every time they die.

You can already accomplish this by... oh, right, save-design saves it to that player, so you can't load it from another player.

But if you set up their modules  using the ship-design interface (select a champion, hit Ctrl+M or use the context menu and do view-ship-modules) then it will queue that same set of modules up again when respawning   It can't really remember it when you do it via the normal build queue operations because it's really hard to know when you're "done" and whether you want to "save" a given "full" state or not.

[Martyn van Buren]

I'd favor a bit more of a penalty for sending the champion on suicide missions; it doesn't feel very frightening to get overwhelmed without it.  Perhaps when it's destroyed the core has to be recovered by an engineer to rebuild it?  There would still be times when it might make sense to send it on a kamikaze mission deep in AI territory, but you'd have to be careful it was in a place you could get your fleet soon enough to have it when you need it.

[Oralordos]

While I agree that a minor penalty of some sort would be appropriate, don't forget that sometimes someone will be playing as just a Champion. You will want the champion to almost always be able to do something to avoid boredom.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Isn't there also the horrible deep strike response if you DO send the champion off on missions deep in AI territory? The problem that arises is if you send it off 30 planets deep to do a strike and lose it, you don't want to be retrieving it while 3000 ships are on your tail. The ships are bad enough!

[KDR_11k]

MOBAs simply apply a lengthy respawn timer and feeding the enemy team (though +AIP would likely make people too scared to use the thing at all). Maybe have a 60 second respawn delay or significantly slower module rebuilding and possibly give the AI one free reinforcement tick every time a champion dies.