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

[Lancefighter]

my method is perfectly fine just requires a lot of being awesome, and slightly lucky on world gen.

The huge changes to the metal switcher things made it a lot harder to do

[KDR_11k]

I just labbed it and didn't see any gain from the reprocessors.

For the experiment I used diff 1 AIs, that also meant no settlements or cryo pods. Scrapping all harvesters and pausing their reconstruction gave me exactly the +300 of the home command which can be counteracted by three matter converters. Only trouble was finding targets for the reprocessors . Diff 1 really doesn't spawn much.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I was adding another mechanic for a new bonus ship type and found some bugs where reclamation damage (and thus reprocessing damage, because I used the same pattern) wasn't being checked on-unit-death depending on exactly how it died.  In some cases that's intentional, but in a lot of them it wasn't.  And there was another bug where reprocessing damage wasn't being checked in one of the two places reclamation damage was being checked, and it's kind of the common case

[Lancefighter]

A new mechanic for bonus ship you say? Could it be that this new bonus ship will be created at the starship constructor ?

[Hearteater]

While you're tweaking them, maybe for fun the AI should get to use the M+C it gets from Reprocessors to buy extra reinforcements.

[keith.lamothe]

A new mechanic for bonus ship you say? Could it be that this new bonus ship will be created at the starship constructor ?

Nope.

[Lancefighter]

does this bonus ship transform from a swarm of youngling things into a cool new starship?

[keith.lamothe]

does this bonus ship transform from a swarm of youngling things into a cool new starship?

Nope.

One of the new ones is a youngling, though.

[chemical_art]

does this bonus ship transform from a swarm of youngling things into a cool new starship?

Nope.

One of the new ones is a youngling, though.

Ecstasy. I found you again.

[Hearteater]

does this bonus ship transform from a swarm of youngling things into a cool new starship?

You might be interested in this idea:

Also, a Nanoswarm Fortress sounds very cool.  I envision an AI Fortress with the same health as human fortresses that is made up of a swarm of tiny nano ships.  For every 0.4% of its maximum health it takes in damage, one nano ship is released (their health is 0.4% of the fortress's maximum health).  Fully "killing" a Fortress would release 250 nano ships.  When no threat remains, the nano ships return to the fortress (if it doesn't exist, they return to the fortress's location) and add themselves back into the fortress, increasing its health by their own remaining health.

As an added bonus, nano ships deal 50% "disassembler" damage.  Any ship killed with disassembler damage spawns new nano ships when it dies.  One for every X points of disassembler damage where X is the health of the original nano ships.  New nano ships are part of the original fortress and can recombine allowing the fortress to reach up to double its original health.

That should satisfy those people who get bored killing fortresses .

EDIT: Mantis'd it since I never did originally.

[KDR_11k]

Just make AVWW's Green Amoeba boss into an AIW ship

[keith.lamothe]

Just make AVWW's Green Amoeba boss into an AIW ship

Thus would begin again the quest for A Valley Without Amoebas.

[Coppermantis]

Well, I know what the new Youngling bonus ship's name is--unless you lied in the .png names. From what I can tell, there's the Youngling, one Spire ship and a few Core guard posts left, the CGPs in particular look cool.

[LordSloth]

Further thoughts based on our continuing AIP game, no expansions, base vanilla. 4 hours, 29 minutes in no CPA yet. AIP 285. We're actually having trouble finding EXCUSES to raise our AIP higher. Should get another 60 from ars, then grabbing a few fabs after the CPA. After that, I guess we should liberate all the enslaved humans from their AI oppressors. Did I mention one of the AIs is an Entrenched Homeworlder type? At least it'll give me an excuse and a  risk of higher AIP. Want to try and hit AIP III before taking on the homeworlds, if at all possible.

• All 8 Experimental Fabricators, all of them Spider V. All four starship fabricators seem to be Heavy Bombers. Core Fabs display some nice diversity.

Are these really the only experimental/starship fabricator types in the base game?

• 7 Advanced Factories. Didn't expect so many.
• Since when was that "How stupid do you think we are?" AI voice taunt in there? I've never noticed it before, and it really creeped me out. Enjoyed it.
• My co-op friend and I, combined, nearly outnumber the AI. 7,00/7,000 versus the 14,000 AI ships.
• Stealth ships like autocannons are so much nicer with the expansions turned off. There are a lot, lot less gravity effects in the universe.
• Raider fleetships are more horrible than I remembered. I think they need a speed buff. Note, radar dampening is a LOT less effective when traveling parallel to special forces patrols. I'm considering taking out all the spec op posts I can find.

In other words, no real epiphanies on game balance... other than the fact I'm finding the base game a lot more fun than I would have thought, due to raiding and stealth and lack of gravity effects and tractor platforms and such. It allows a lot more nimble feel to the game. Might go looking for ways to turnthat down even further.

The only big suggestion I have is boost raider fleetship speed significantly. It needs to be at least 16 faster (on normal speed) than fighters, like they are . Now that fighters have gone from 76->84, Raiders just can't hope to evade the patrols. That mere 8 speed difference just means they get slaughtered way too easily. More would be better, but I'm not sure what the sweet spot for evading a fighter patrol actually is. Anyways, a full cap of raptors up to mark four feels less satisfying than a cap of autocannons up to mark three. Again, normal speed.

I've gone from 120 FPS or so to 15 FPS.. When no AI is busy attacking, even. Normal cap was a bad idea.

P.S. I was surprised to see a homeworld neinzul spawner with that expansion off. But it's nice to have a little taste of that in vanilla.

[KDR_11k]

It looks like the special forces have decided to turn one of my systems into a highway (the system is one of two chokepoints between two halves of the galaxy, I only took it for the CSG and hive golem). My response was setting up spider turrets. Now there are like 400 ships stranded on a neutral planet.