AI War Beta 5.076 "Clusters Of Pain" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one is out tonight instead of Monday because a recent change broke the tutorial.

But it also contains two significant bits of content for the Ancient Shadows expansion: a variant of the Clusters map type with more outlandish intra-cluster arrangement, and a new minor faction: the Dark Spire.

Some of you may be thinking "Hey, I've already run into the Dark Spire in a nebula!".  Well, you're right, and there's a degree of overlap here.  But this is actually a Minor Faction that can be enabled in the lobby, and doesn't have anything to do with the nebula scenarios or champions.  It can be pretty intense, though the balance numbers are only based on preliminary testing and may need substantial adjustment.

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.

[Lancefighter]

Dont tell me...

Spirecraft rams are now able to be powered down?

edit; You didn't do that yet. I am disappoint.

[keith.lamothe]

Dont tell me...

Spirecraft rams are now able to be powered down?

edit; You didn't do that yet. I am disappoint.

I definitely thought about it, but on minimum time right now

[Lancefighter]

youre missing absolutely amazing dota right here, keith (if youre not watching it. i dontknow. But its amazing)

[Wingflier]

Damn you and your secrecy Keith!  Now I have to figure it out on my own

And I agree with Lancefighter.  These last 2 games have been the most epic games in the tournament.

[keith.lamothe]

I plan to watch the replays; hopefully no one spoils who won

[vortexion]

Just when I think its safe to start a new game to try out the new things... BAM another patch. Is it possible to turn on the new minor faction on an already started game? I'd like to play with it immediately, but I'd rather not abandon this game either. If not it'll just have to wait till next game. I'm loving all the new additions to the shadow ship since I last played.

[keith.lamothe]

Is it possible to turn on the new minor faction on an already started game? I'd like to play with it immediately, but I'd rather not abandon this game either.

Not really, no, sorry.  Glad you're enjoying the game

[Toranth]

New patch, yay!  Love the new map type - It may be my new favorite.
But...  Math has told me how you named this patch.  See, the following equation applies:

First Encounter with Dark Spire + Neinzul Nester AI = Patch Title.




PS - Minor issue:  If you set 'Kiting' to non-zero, then attempt to revert it to zero later, all non-player 1 Champions stay in the Kiting state and cannot be reverted to normal.

[Lancefighter]

hmm.. something might be wrong here.. Lets play 'spot the difference'

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3569927/Screenshot_2012_09_01_22_07_51.png

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3569927/Screenshot_2012_09_01_22_07_56.png

[Faulty Logic]

Amusing. Seems the old logic was overwritten.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, cute.  Yea, I thought I'd put a switch in, but I guess not.  Simple enough to fix.

[Soyweiser]

I was wondering about the special forces guard posts. Has the reinforcement mechanic for them also changed? It used to be so that special forces posts would only get troops when the planets they are on where reinforced. (at least according to the wiki). Is this still the case or not? If not it might be more worthwhile to kill guard posts everywhere, to reduce the amount of spawns you get.

[keith.lamothe]

I was wondering about the special forces guard posts. Has the reinforcement mechanic for them also changed? It used to be so that special forces posts would only get troops when the planets they are on where reinforced. (at least according to the wiki). Is this still the case or not? If not it might be more worthwhile to kill guard posts everywhere, to reduce the amount of spawns you get.

From the 5.074 release notes:

=== Special Forces made more interesting ===

* AI Special Forces:
** Now get periodic extra spawns (in addition to the usual trickle from reinforcements) if under a "special forces population cap" determined by difficulty, AIP, etc.
*** The spawns are spread out among all special forces posts (and special forces guardians) in the galaxy, except those in non-AI territory.  Each post in non-AI territory instead increases the special-forces-population-cap by about 5%.  So there's a reason to kill them, in tension with the +1 AIP from killing them.
*** If you're curious about the math, etc, turn on Advanced Logging and check SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt in your RuntimeData directory after the game has run for a bit.  There's some minor spoilers in there about what ships each AI has, but nothing you probably won't find out looking at a few AI planets anyway.
** Will now rally to defend an AI planet that is under significant attack and at least mildly important (AI Homeworld, core world, or a planet with a CSG, ARS, Advanced Factory, Super Terminal, or Broken Golem on it, giving priority to HWs/core-worlds).
** Now keep the special-forces flag even when they have encountered the enemy, so that rallying to a planet does not just dump all the special forces there as normal threat.
** When not rallying to defend a planet, will select a staging planet about 3 hops deep into AI territory and rally there until an eligible AI planet is attacked.
** To prevent a player's first attack from running into several hundred AI ships out for blood, as entertaining as it was during testing, special forces ships are no longer seeded during the initial map seeding.
** Thanks to Hearteater, Faulty Logic, Martyn van Buren, Diazo, TechSY730, Lancefighter, Sunshine!, Bossman, Draco18s, Ozymandiaz, Wingflier, and chemical_art for feedback inspiring these changes.

Those new spawns are not based on the number of special forces guard posts, but they do come from them (and, incidentally, the AI home command stations, so you can't shut them out by killing every special forces post).  But if you've killed the AI command station on a planet, you probably also want to kill the special forces guard post there (if any) because it will then cease to be a spawn point and instead increase the strength of the special forces spawns.

Killing a special forces guard post on an AI planet does have some benefit, if that planet was going to be on alert much, because it does deny the normal reinforcements contribution to the special forces from that post, but I hear tell that players don't like to spend AIP on that kind of thing

[Toranth]

Yeah, ok, I think the Dark Spire faction may be in need of some balancing.  I started a 10/10 game, and within an hour, the Dark Spire had conquered the entire galaxy.

I've attached the DarkSpire log, but just to give a little background, there was a nebula 2 hops from my homeworld.  I sent my Champions there to do the scenario after I'd gotten a few defenses in place.  The results... were not pretty.  See the screenshot (Total ships in the universe was about 18,000 at that point).