AI War Beta 5.084 "Diplomatic Incident" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one continues our process of finishing up the last new content for the Ancient Shadows expansion, and adds another scenario that can seed in a nebula.  There are a few old friend/foes/friendly-foes in there, hence the title of this release.

Several balance changes, particularly to the bring the Dark Spire minor faction back into some semblance of sanity (they're supposed to destabilize the situation, not destabilize your computer), and playtesting shows good results there.

The Zenith Reprocessor now has a bit more "character", now being something of a sneaky raider (i.e. "dude, where's my car?").

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.

[chemical_art]

I was wondering when the maruaders were coming

[keith.lamothe]

I was wondering when the maruaders were coming

They're actually the guys in the first scenario (the sorrow's fang); no marauders in this new one.  Definitely something that goes marauding, though.

[Cinth]

Interesting scenario there. So is that supposed to be an EER fold-out on victory?

[Arkillion]

Wow thank for that fast update I can try to finish my fallen spire campgain!!
I feel honored to have my name in the patch notes

[keith.lamothe]

Interesting scenario there. So is that supposed to be an EER fold-out on victory?

Oops

[Lancefighter]

I'm not really sure making the champions immune to transport is the right thing to do. I mostly just dont like that arbitrarily I now have a core part of my fleet immune to transport.. I mean sure, maybe make them immune to jumpship transport, or make them 'heavier' in a transport, whatever..


mostly i just wanted to write something completely random to mark this thread so itd show up on my new replies to my posts. I'm really lazy about forum reading..

[KDR_11k]

I usually have the champion on gravity scrubbing duty when I send transports around so I don't see a change there .

[TechSY730]

I'm not really sure making the champions immune to transport is the right thing to do. I mostly just dont like that arbitrarily I now have a core part of my fleet immune to transport.. I mean sure, maybe make them immune to jumpship transport, or make them 'heavier' in a transport, whatever..

Think about it in terms of Champion only players. They cannot load their ships into transports, as they have no transports (AFIAK, you cannot load into an ally's transport).
Champions need to be balanced in terms of both champion and champion+normal players, and transportability a pretty big difference change (as people have demonstrated...).

mostly i just wanted to write something completely random to mark this thread so itd show up on my new replies to my posts. I'm really lazy about forum reading..

You can just click notify, and that will also "register" you to receive updates for that thread.

[LordSloth]

Sorry, Keith. I'm going to have to abandon my current game and start a new game with zenith reprocessors now. I expect to have a lot of fun with them. Maybe even too much fun. Here's hoping I don't.

completely innocent question On an entirely unrelated note, are there any levels of resource income or fortress or production from a zenith trader that you would consider OP? This is purely rhetorical, of course for now

[keith.lamothe]

completely innocent question On an entirely unrelated note, are there any levels of resource income or fortress or production from a zenith trader that you would consider OP? This is purely rhetorical, of course for now

If I didn't know better I'd read that as "I'm going to reprocess the Zenith Trader"

Anyway, yes, there are degrees of reprocessing income that I would consider OP enough to need nerfing.  If I do it will probably be by:
1) Reducing the metal/crystal cost on any AI-only (or otherwise never-built-normally) unit that has some absurdly-high m/c cost (which wouldn't have mattered before).
2) If even entirely legit m+c costs are resulting in excess reprocessing, then nerfing the percent of target m+c reclaimed by killing with 100% reprocessing damage.

But I don't know if any of that's necessary yet.  Show me the money cheese

[Diazo]

I'm not sure there is a big worry there.

I'm pretty sure all the really high resource cost targets have the Immune to Reclamation tag and so do not get reprocessed already.

Looking for cheese is always fun but I'm not sure there is any to find here, or enough to find here to worry about it.

D.

[Draco18s]

(AFIAK, you cannot load into an ally's transport).

Actually, you can.  You just can't get them back out by yourself.

[LaughingThesaurus]

When I saw the title of the update, I first thought that the nuke got adjusted somehow. You know, diplomatic incident?

[KDR_11k]

Which gives me an idea for a challenge: Having a nuke II on FRD on your homeworld.