AI War Beta 5.072-5.073 "A Revised Experience" Released!

[Diazo]

<snip CPA explination>

Thank you for that.

And yes, distance is the issue. This is the Scorched Earth game I am AARing and you can see my HW has 10 wormholes, all hostile because I'm not taking 10 systems for defensive purposes. (Hmmm, no screen shot of my HW in the AAR, only the galaxy, will need to correct that.)

The CPA came out of the closest one of course.

I'm going to experiment with intercepting it with my fleet in AI territory tonight when I get the chance, backed up by warhead spam probably.

It's going to be tough no matter how I cut this. I'm on a single HW start, I don't think I can build 10,000 units, let alone 10,000 military ships.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Any idea about why engineers are scaling down as more players join?

Iirc the per-player caps scaling down with the number of human homeworlds has been in the game since before I started working here.

The CPA came out of the closest one of course.

It's normal for a ton of free threat to get combined into carriers, but I'm not sure why it would have created the carriers so close to your homeworld.

Yea, just checked the code for both ways a carrier can be created.  One is dealing with a lot of free ships all on one planet, and it packs them up on that planet.  The other is dealing with a lot of free ships galaxy-wide, and it always puts them on an AI homeworld (unless there isn't one, but then the game is already over).

So it's gotta be the first code-path, but that doesn't make sense unless that single planet somehow had 10k ships to free, which seems... unlikely.

If you pass me the save I'd like to see exactly how it's determining where to spawn those carriers.

Not that sending them in a big stack from across the galaxy is going to let you live either, but it gives more room for cheese

[Diazo]

Oh, that makes sense.

The carriers all combined on an AI homeworld when the CPA was released and then crossed the galaxy to my homeworld.

They entered my homeworld through the warp point closest to my home command station (only about 20,000 range from it) rather then one of the warp points on the far side of the system.

('Closest one' in my previous post being the wormhole the carriers used, not the carriers being created adjacent to my homeworld.)

D.

[keith.lamothe]

The carriers all combined on an AI homeworld when the CPA was released and then crossed the galaxy to my homeworld.

Is that a statement or a guess?   If they did actually spawn on an AI homeworld then it's working-as-designed, and hopefully you can stage a series of ambushes to whittle it down and/or disperse it before it gets into apocalypse range.

Granted, you will have to stage these ambushes in AI territory, but that's half the fun

[Diazo]

The carriers all combined on an AI homeworld when the CPA was released and then crossed the galaxy to my homeworld.

Is that a statement or a guess?   If they did actually spawn on an AI homeworld then it's working-as-designed, and hopefully you can stage a series of ambushes to whittle it down and/or disperse it before it gets into apocalypse range.

Granted, you will have to stage these ambushes in AI territory, but that's half the fun

It's a statement.

The carriers punched out my bottom right fleet node on their way through which I intend to use as my staging ground to attack the AI homeworld in the bottom right.

Of course, my entire fleet is on the left side of the galaxy, the 100 turrets I left did not make a dent as the carriers rolled through.

And yes, going to stage ambushes from my homeworld as they approach, the fleet node is 5 hops away with 4 AI controlled systems between it and my homeworld so I'm not even going to try and save it.

D.

[LordSloth]

Any idea about why engineers are scaling down as more players join?

Iirc the per-player caps scaling down with the number of human homeworlds has been in the game since before I started working

Yep, that's the cause. Relatively recent is the exception of fortresses and force field and starships from the equation. Most stuff like fleetships scales down using some formula that I don't know, but seems relatively balanced given the additional benefits gained from a multi-homeworld start (single or co-op).

The problem comes down to this, however. The engineers cap scaling works out perfectly for a one player, multi-homeworld start. I'm at work again, but I think it scales down from 39 engineers to 13 engineers at 8 players 1 world each. That ends up difficult (though hardly impossible)  to work around.

[TechSY730]

I'm not trying to sound demanding, but any chance of 5.074 coming out tonight? Or is there something else big you have planned (either here or in another project)?

[chemical_art]

Oohh, quiet changes to some triangle ships.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm trying to get it out today; had some realizations overnight about a couple more rules the special forces need, but after that it should be ready

[TechSY730]

I'm trying to get it out today; had some realizations overnight about a couple more rules the special forces need, but after that it should be ready

No problem. I'd rather have a quality release than a rushed out but "incomplete" release; I'm willing to wait.
Just was startled by the silence last night (normally changes of this magnitude get pushed out pretty quickly), and I was curious what the status was.

[TechSY730]

Oh, for the special forces logic, when a special forces "group" heads out, can you make it such that those ships >N speed and does not self attrition over time will group move together to their target? This will prevent them from just "streaming" in uselessly. (The >N part is to keep a slower ship type from delaying the response too much by slowing down the group, for some yet to be determined N. They will still go, but will be willing to "trail" behind the main "blob")

Actually, that would be good for waves sent to AI planets (like cross planet waves, waves sent when there are no human planets they can get to, etc) to do for their spawned "attack to planet" order , except in that case the >N speed restriction is lifted so they will stay together (the self-attritioning types should still rush forward at full speed though).

Or would this be too big a chance to quickly implement, as I don't think the AI currently knows how to use group move?

[chemical_art]

The ai knows how to group move (they do in exo-waves).

The catch is they follow their leader, and they move at the leaders speed. And are immune to gravity. So you have plasma sieges moving twice their speed, etc.

Would that necessarily be a bad thing? I don't think so. Perhaps special forces could eventually the "follow the leader" logic of exo waves on a smaller scale.

[keith.lamothe]

Ships don't generally consider other ships on their side when making decisions (just rough ideas of how much power each team has on each planet); having them do so is very complex.

And actually in testing I found the non-group-move nature of the special forces preferable.  We'll see.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I could have it use an exo-like "speed cheat" but I think people get enough of that already

[chemical_art]

I could see why, but it would help ai response times, and since human players get a speed boost on their planets its not so far fetched that ai galaxy wide defenders move fast too. In addition, it would cause them to move in blobs instead in a trickle, which is a complaint of the original special forces.