AI War Beta 5.076 "Clusters Of Pain" Released!

[LordSloth]

So rather than be vague, I put some effort into tracking down and reproducing my "frozen" patrols.
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9468

Summary: I can recreate this behavior, but it is relatively minor (yet cheesable), since the AI Special Forces will react properly to other stimuli, such as you attacking another system. If you have no enemy presence in any AI systems, draw a patrol to a target system, and park some stealth ships there, then the entire patrol force (or near enough) will camp out that system until prompted to travel elsewhere. It doesn't matter if the AI firepower in system is ten times greater than yours or of roughly equal parity.

Where it *is* cheesable:
1). You can set up an entire patrol for destruction by lightning warhead rather easily.
2). On a cluster type map, you can dramatically delay their response time due to their unwillingness to travel through your territory. On the other hand, it is likely to be more dangerous (barring said warhead) if you're on a simple or realistic style of map, due to a dramatically decreased response time for the entire spec op force.

Suggestion:
1). If fighting has not occurred in a system for the last five minutes, then do a comparison of firepower and free up a portion of the special ops in the system. If there is a huge firepower disparity in the AI's favor (10:1?) then free up two thirds of the special ops. If there is a minor firepower disparity in the AI's favor (3:1), then free up one third of the special ops to the usual rallying point.

2). Alternatively, give it the ability to spawn zombies or tachyon warheads from spec ops posts if things go on very long?

3). On dispersing forces to react to human incursions: I actually need to observe proper, non-cheesed behavior first. Now that I know how I'm causing it, I should be able to avoid it.

[Lancefighter]

oh gods, experienced the awesomeness that is dark spire and devourer golems working together.

What a spectacularly evil combination. By 50 minutes, the entire map was covered in the little things.. I get the feeling the game actually ended (the point of no return) around 20 minutes in. Also, they triggered a raid engine, which murdered us before we even knew they existed.

Anyway, something kinda interesting of note; Faulty Logic plays with a very strict seeming "i dont leave the aip floor until I engage the homeworlds". That seems like a.. kinda.. boring way to play aiwar. Is that intentional? Are there too many ways to reduce aip? Is gaining aip too threatening?

Is maybe the jump between mk1 waves and mk2 waves too much? (seeing as mk2 units are literally twice as strong as mk1 units)

(he literally sat in his homeworld shaking his head at me for a good 50 minutes until he died..)

[Faulty Logic]

Looking at various sources, I play on the extreme low end of AIP. Lancefighter... well, let me just say that he does not play that way.
Here is my clipboard from that game: *facepalm*

But yes, it was the dark spire + devourer that killed us, though I am not sure if the actual direct cause of death (about 800 mkIII ships with guardians) was caused by a raid engine, or just freed ships.

[chemical_art]

Lancefighter we all play different ways.

I used to do what you do and take everything.

Now I hover less then 100 aip if i can...

Playing 9+ games makes you phobic

[Lancefighter]

I dunno. Like I mentioned ingame, most of the time winning is only tangentially related to my goal. Id much rather be doing something sill, like launching autobombs at all the nearby systems.. Or randomly blowing stuff up.

Additionally, I dont really feel the game *starts* until I get a nice economic base of 3/5/9 whatever systems and can actually afford to lose starships. And as I mentioned, I really dont like sitting around doing nothing. Its kinda boring. If the game ever presents a time when I feel my time could be better spent watching netflix, I think that is actually a problem, and needs to be fixed.

And really, I think my questions on aip are valid - Is it intentional that the only way to play the game is to never let the aip be greater than the floor?
it seems a great many people play that way.

[PokerChen]

Selection effect - people who play on 9+ are more likely to be regular posters. ;P

I believe it's intentional to not encourage players to kill everything in sight. It's very okay to keep yourself near the mark-I limit, like I do, until you get some extra AIP reductions and extra firepower, though this won't work on the top difficulty.

but hey, where *are* all those diff-7 players?

[Soyweiser]

Selection effect - people who play on 9+ are more likely to be regular posters. ;P

I believe it's intentional to not encourage players to kill everything in sight. It's very okay to keep yourself near the mark-I limit, like I do, until you get some extra AIP reductions and extra firepower, though this won't work on the top difficulty.

but hey, where *are* all those diff-7 players?

I'm a diff 7 player!

But, you actually make a good point. For the long term broader appeal of the game it might not always be the best idea to listen to the hardcore diff-9+ players. Regular forum posters are usually the more hardcore players. And only listening to the hardcore portion of your fanbase makes the game more hardcore and thus drawing in fewer and fewer new players.

[orzelek]

I'm playing on 7-7.3 - didn't go above that as of yet. I'm usually adding hybrids (both AI's at 4 on base one, no advanced ones) to have a bit more.. fun.
And I actually finished one game up until now and that was while testing the spire toys.. it wa s a bit brutal at times and my defenses there were based on... delay them and try to shoot while they come (and kill economy once that tons of turrets start rebuilding after that)

I didn't finish game in standard way yet. I was close to H/W attacks few times but then things like new toys or patches come and I restart to test them out

[Kahuna]

Selection effect - people who play on 9+ are more likely to be regular posters. ;P

I believe it's intentional to not encourage players to kill everything in sight. It's very okay to keep yourself near the mark-I limit, like I do, until you get some extra AIP reductions and extra firepower, though this won't work on the top difficulty.

but hey, where *are* all those diff-7 players?

I'm a diff 7 player!

But, you actually make a good point. For the long term broader appeal of the game it might not always be the best idea to listen to the hardcore diff-9+ players. Regular forum posters are usually the more hardcore players. And only listening to the hardcore portion of your fanbase makes the game more hardcore and thus drawing in fewer and fewer new players.

There's always the 1 Sandbox Difficulty! Even my grand parents' cat would pwn the AI on that difficulty level!

[Soyweiser]

There's always the 1 Sandbox Difficulty! Even my grand parents' cat would pwn the AI on that difficulty level!

This is exactly the problem with only listening to your hardcore audience. They can be a bit dismissive of new player concerns.

[Mánagarmr]

The game should be balanced around diff 7-8 since there's where the majority of the players will be playing. That said, it should absolutely not be neglected on 9-10.

[Diazo]

Heh.

I guess I fit the profile as a prolific forum poster who plays on high difficulty.

Almost all of my games these days are diff 10/10 so.....

Having said that, I try to keep this in mind when posting, see my disclaimer in the "Is AIP limiting" thread.

I also try to keep in mind that I pretty much define Low AIP playstyle. I was not going to come off the AIP floor until my 4th planet capture in my current game.

But I play diff 10/10 on the Lattice type map, I simply don't have enough units to play any other way.

Actually, hmmmm....... (watch for a new thread by me to go up in a minute.)

Lost my train of thought now, but that's me for what it's worth.

D.

[Soyweiser]

The game should be balanced around diff 7-8 since there's where the majority of the players will be playing. That said, it should absolutely not be neglected on 9-10.

Of course not. I agree! diff 10 should be unwinnable . I just wanted to point out that forum people (the 1% of a games users that make up the regular forum posters) are usually the hardcore people mostly interested in the hardcore interests. Easily leading to a sliding scale of the game becoming more and more only for those hardcore people.

But, the game needs balance. Time needs to be spend on both diff 7, diff 10, new features, bug, the tutorial etc. Not that I have doubt that Arcen Games is not doing this atm. I think they probably understand that the forum people are the hardcore "diff 10 is to easy" people. While most other people are still struggling with diff 7.

[Coppermantis]

but hey, where *are* all those diff-7 players?

You rang?

[keith.lamothe]

Is it intentional that the only way to play the game is to never let the aip be greater than the floor?

No, and that is by far not the only way to play the game

If you're trying to win 10/10, or possibly even 9+, then yea, you need to ride the floor.  I don't see a problem with that.

On the 7-7.6 range you can get away with a couple hundred AIP before things get seriously dangerous, assuming you have a decent defensive setup.  If you really crank the defenses you can probably hit 500 AIP before things get completely out of hand (non-superweapon game).

FWIW, I certainly don't ride the AIP floor when I play.


On the question of what difficulty to balance around: 7, 7.3, and 7.6.  Anything lower is intentionally for a low(er)-challenge game, anything higher is getting into the "so I hear you liek to suffer?" range.  The fact that the suffer range is so large is reflective of the people I tend to hear from   But the 7-7.6 range is very much the focus in that if there is anything seriously wrong with the balance on those difficulties that takes definite priority over the others (though if 1-6 got really hard for some reason that'd be important to fix too, for the sake of new players).

But I haven't been hearing complaints about 7-7.6 being too hard or too easy lately   I have been getting complaints about 10/10, largely due to my meddling with it earlier this year to remove some artificial "it kills you in the first 15 minutes, but if you survive it's actually a lot easier than that" problems.  I think 10/10 is actually fairly close at this point (in the next version) to where it needs to be, though I'm sure our resident cheesemasters will find some way of breaking that illusion