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

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one finally implements a change that's been on the table in the forums for a month or so: fleet ship caps no longer go down at higher marks.  This will help them be more attractive to human players and more useful for both players and the AI (previously a cap of mkV fleet ships actually had a lower cap-dps than a cap of mkIV fleet ships, for instance).  The AI still gets a modifier to wave size to keep the higher-tech waves in check, but it's no longer being applied twice like it was.  Also, to keep the tech-level difference from being too sudden in waves, the mixed-tech-level-wave rule from diff 9+ now applies to diff 5+.

Since all that was getting shaken up anyway, we went ahead and normalized the cap of all fleet ships that change with unit-cap-scale to be a multiple of 8.  This makes it so playing on Low or Ultra-Low caps doesn't "chop off" any part of the cap when dividing it by 4 or 8.  To make this work without changing balance, however, a ton of numbers had to be changed to maintain cap-dps and cap-health (and metal, crystal, and energy costs) compared to the previous version.  There's still some balance change, but it's within a pretty narrow margin.  And the good news is that while these changes were made the internal math was also made a lot more consistent with how we're actually balancing these things now.

There's also several bugfixes and balance changes, most notably reducing the "zombie apocalypse" potential of the recently-added Dark Spire minor faction.  I thought it was entertaining ;)

Update: 5.078 hotfix is out to fix a bug where the AI was ignoring unit-cap-scale when sending waves.  Result = hilarity.

Update: 5.079 hotfix is out to fix two nasty bugs, including one that could actually corrupt a savegame.  Sorry about that!  It was those nasty Dark Spire again *shakes fist*.  I knew I was adding something mean to the game with those, but there's been this and the (unintentionally severe) zombie apocalypse a few versions ago, so it would seem I had no idea.

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.

[Diazo]

FIRST!

Heh, what surprises will this give me when I start eating that CPA tonight? There's been something in each patch that has surprised me so far.....

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Heh, what surprises will this give me when I start eating that CPA tonight? There's been something in each patch that has surprised me so far.....

I don't think any of it really applies in a big way to your immediate situation with that CPA   The waves will be a bit bigger, though, due to them not applying the tech-level factor twice.

[Diazo]

I'm not sure.

The CPA has already been announced, but the ships don't actually get assigned until the CPA is released which has not happened yet in my save.

I'm thinking it will change the mix of ships I face somewhat.

Having said that, at 10K ships, I don't think it's on a level that I will notice.

D.

[Lancefighter]

You would release this now.

Right as I start a nebula (the 3-way one..)
Right as a wave hits
And right as the first spire shard gets found.

Not really sure how I managed to get all of those to coincide..

edit; Oh, and its a mk2 wave. I somehow managed to make myself mk2 right before this wave.
Oh cool, and some hybrid attacks.

Also, silly question: Is it by design that the ships you get from nebulas cant go to other nebulas?

[Diazo]

Also, silly question: Is it by design that the ships you get from nebulas cant go to other nebulas?

I think so, isn't there something in the Journal about ships being able to leave but not return?

D.

[Lancefighter]

People actually read the journal? >_>
jking, i just skim through them more than reading. It just kinda seems odd that wormholes to nebulas, only champions can go through, no matter where the untis came from

[keith.lamothe]

You would release this now.

Didn't it warn you "New Patch (IV) to Homeworld in 03:20"?

Oh, right, you play with warnings off

Also, silly question: Is it by design that the ships you get from nebulas cant go to other nebulas?

Very much by design, otherwise they'd get quite near impossible to balance.

[Diazo]

I know there was a mention in the Journal about the Champion have a "Shadow Drive" that allows it to use the weak wormholes to enter the nebulas.

I also remember (but am not sure) that in the 'you win' journal entry for the first scenario (the Epsilon Edradie faction) there is a mention they will send out what ships they have to help but that it is a one-way trip for them.

Not on my gaming computer at the moment so I can not confirm.

D.

edit: and here comes the sneaky, sneaky dev. There a cloaker SS around here somewhere?

[Lancefighter]

I had almost also set up a superterminal hacking center thing, but decided against it until I would finish that nebula.. Come to think of it, if any random ai ship comes along and pops the halfbuilt commandcenter, the remainds rebuilder I have there will instantly(well, like a minute warning) build another one. And then I wouldve had a superterminal spewing ships at me..

This game is actually a lot lighter on waves - Rolled a teleporter turtle and an assassin, so only working with half waves atm.

[Nic]

It looks like the apocalyptic cap rework took its first victim -- Microparasite's ship cap seems to be set at 1...

[keith.lamothe]

It looks like the apocalyptic cap rework took its first victim -- Microparasite's ship cap seems to be set at 1...

Oops, I'd done a pretty thorough side-by-side compare of the old stats and new stats, but apparently I missed some   Thanks for letting me know.

[Diazo]

Ummm.

My Shadow destroyer can not build modules at all.

Anyone else seeing this?

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Ummm.

My Shadow destroyer can not build modules at all.

Anyone else seeing this?

D.

Just tested a new game with a shadow ship and was able to build my normal 2n+2m+2l+2s loadout just fine.

Do you have a friendly engineer nearby to actually contribute the building power?

[Diazo]

Erg.

The engineer is there, the resources are not.

This time around the CPA split so I lost all 3 of my conquered systems, meaning I lost 3 energy collectors.

I build 9 Metal Converters to compensate, I do not have enough income to run them all, meaning I can't build anything, including Shadow Destroyer modules.

I'm thinking the energy changes to starships have made this unwinnable, I might try once more but I'm not even getting close.

Having said that, the cap changes seem to have done nothing, the ship spread was as I expected.

D.

edit: Forget repairs also, those take resources. 

edit the 2nd: The painful thing is I could take the CPA if it splits. I've got it down to 4,800 ships and the left half hit a grav drill, I've got almost 10 minutes to rebuild if I had any resources. As it is, pretty sure I'm done.

For the record, I am at 8 Metal Conveters and I'm running -500 metal and -900 crystal. Even scrapping my Harvester Exo-Shields only gets me down to 7 Metal Converters running.

This is with a significant chunk of my fleet dead too....

D.