AI War Beta 5.077-5.079 "Cap Tectonics" Released!

[TechSY730]

First I heard about this idea. I approve. Mantis?

Also, does it get mkV drones?

I don't think it ever got onto mantis. It needs to be.

Also, this idea was proposed before the whole drone thing was introduced, so no consideration for what implications this would have on drones would be. (Actually, I forgot who first came up with the idea, so I don't even know who to credit)
I would vote against mk. V drones, as the Mk. III and Mk. IV drones are already near OP when combined with the now ultra fast build times of the higher mark enclaves. But that's not a huge deal.

[chemical_art]

First I heard about this idea. I approve. Mantis?

Also, does it get mkV drones?

I don't think it ever got onto mantis. It needs to be.

Also, this idea was proposed before the whole drone thing was introduced, so no consideration for what implications this would have on drones would be. (Actually, I forgot who first came up with the idea, so I don't even know who to credit)
I would vote against mk. V drones, as the Mk. III and Mk. IV drones are already near OP when combined with the now ultra fast build times of the higher mark enclaves. But that's not a huge deal.

III and IV drones being OP doesn't make the IV factory OP when it costs magnitudes more then the III which can make the drones.

In other words, if the drones are OP that should be addressed, but that alone shouldn't make the V impossible.

[Faulty Logic]

Now mantised.

I would like to see mkV drones, especially given that the player now has limited k to unlock fleetship IIIs, because they have spent it on the Neinzul Enclave line. But their presence wouldn't make a huge difference to me.

[LordSloth]

There has been some discussion in another thread whether or not AI progress is too prohibitive without any super weapons, so in order to do some research on that, and help a friend prep an AI War LP, we're doing a casual two player test run. And we're treating AIP progress very casually (not nuke casual, but casual nonetheless). Not a lot to report yet, but just dropping it in here so I don't forget the feedback before tomorrow.

No expansions in order to familiarize ourself with the basic game, complex ship types, no basic mechanics turned off.
No minor factions or plots or any twists from the basic formula. I'm sad to say, not even any trains. No Human Resistance, Colonies, any types of superweapons
Simple Map type - within fairly close distance of three ARS, three MkIV Factories, no nasty surprises. On the other hand, we haven't spotted a single Data Center or Co-processor yet.
80 Planets, 29 scouted, 51 unexplored.
7/7 AIs, Sledge Hammer and Entrenched Homeworlder
2 Hours 6 minutes: 7 systems held by my ally and I. 70 planets held by the enemy. Though we're playing casual with regards to AIP, we're going to take two more systems from the AI and then stop at 206 AIP progress and see how we're handling the new mixed waves before pushing up into AIP II. I will actually be aiming to take down data centers.. if I actually see them.

So far its has been incredibly easy- we started in an suprisingly easy pocket with two homeworlds each. I took force field bearers and anti-armor (absolutely wonderful combo), he took Electric Shuttles and MLRS. He hasn't really been worried about the patrols.
Combined, we have over seven thousand ships and the ai has over twelve thousand. We unlocked autocannon minipods, and I'm extremely happy with them and my double-normal cap. Eleven hundred autocannons do tend to kill things.

We might be a little overpowered at this point, but the AI should hopefully start catching up to our overpowered combos and numbers of bonus ships pretty soon.

[Mánagarmr]

Multiple homeworlds is an extreme force multiplier and the AI doesn't get enough to properly counter that, so I might personally disqualify your test on that basis. Other than that, I've already stated my opinion that AIP is not too prohibitive on "normal" difficulty. 10/10 really doesn't count, since that's basically almost impossible.

[chemical_art]

Multiple homeworlds is an extreme force multiplier and the AI doesn't get enough to properly counter that, so I might personally disqualify your test on that basis. Other than that, I've already stated my opinion that AIP is not too prohibitive on "normal" difficulty. 10/10 really doesn't count, since that's basically almost impossible.

Results will very with multiple homeworlds.

Early game you slaughter due to insane economy. But big player empires suffer more for the ai gets twice the response while the player gets a dimensioning improvement of its econ compared to a single world game per planet taken.

However, aip makes an even more exponential of a difference. So if players pursue an ultra low game they can hold well, but the game can spiral out of control even faster then normal due to aip.

[Bognor]

It looks like Lancefighter has already run a good test on Reprocessors, but in case anyone's interested, Zharmad describes a clever technique for achieving zero resource income in this post.

[Draco18s]

It looks like Lancefighter has already run a good test on Reprocessors, but in case anyone's interested, Zharmad describes a clever technique for achieving zero resource income in this post.

Shame the rest of that post's content is out of date.

[Diazo]

Speaking about out of date, the wiki.

Keith: Do you have a general sense of how many big changes are left for the expansion?

I'm getting to the point where I have free time to start redoing the fleet ship pages for the wiki but I don't want to start and then have to re-start because some more changes went through.

The impression I get is that, barring balance tweaks to the new ships like the Medic Frigate, there should be no more changes incoming so it is safe for me to start on this but I want to check first.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Keith: Do you have a general sense of how many big changes are left for the expansion?

On my list I've got 3 more bonus types, 3 core guard posts (which may or may not be core guard posts when I'm done with them, and potentially there could just be 2), the last champion hull size, and the last nebula splinter faction (and thus at least one more scenario, though realistically I need more than that to avoid duplicate scenarios inside one game in the release version).  That's it for the content.

As for significant changes, I imagine there's a lot of balance changes, possibly even mechanics changes (like the recent special forces redo) before the official.  But in general I'll be trying to trend downward in severity of changes, so that there can actually be an official

[Diazo]

Alright.

I'm going to start looking at redoing the individual ship pages for the non-expansion stuff then, it sounds like those won't change again.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm going to start looking at redoing the individual ship pages for the non-expansion stuff then, it sounds like those won't change again.

Probably not on a game-wide scale again, no, though turrets and other non-bonus/triangle ships may get the cap-normalization-to-multiple-of-eight treatment.

[Diazo]

That's fine, the fleet ships are the largest chunk of pages.

Once I start I'm probably looking at a month just for them, never mind the turrets/starships/minor faction stuff.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Once I start I'm probably looking at a month just for them, never mind the turrets/starships/minor faction stuff.

Don't wear yourself out   But thanks very much for the effort.

[Diazo]

Only do a couple pages a day, that is why I'm expecting it to take so long.

And once I'm able to automate it, it's only a copy-paste into the wiki.

So overall, not actually too bad.

D.