Author Topic: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!  (Read 5257 times)

Offline keith.lamothe

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AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« on: October 03, 2012, 07:34:06 pm »
(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one addresses a number of issues that were a high priority (for the timeframe of the upcoming official version) for our community in this poll.  Specifically:

Engineer logic for picking what targets to assist first.  Mostly this relates to repair order, but also somewhat to build-assistance.  Let us know how it feels now, and what else would improve the default logic.

Rebuilder logic has also been redone.  Prioritization wasn't really a problem here, but a number of changes over the years had resulted in a fairly pants-on-head behavior for these.  Basically each rebuilder could rebuild something once every ten seconds, but most players couldn't tell because a pile of 20 would all try to rebuild the same one.  One rebuilder would succeed, the rest would wait a second or two until they could retarget.  And then retarget all onto the same one.  And one would succeed... and so on.  The recharge time paled in comparison to the "waiting in line" time.  Also, FRD rebuilders tended to "yoyo" back and forth between targets and their FRD point.  Now they're much better at spreading out across the available target remains, and will yoyo much less frequently.  Partly this is because their recharge time is now 1 second.  That may be more of a buff than intended, please let us know if it makes things too easy (probably not) or what else would improve their logic.

Fabricators and Advanced Factories will now avoid seeding near wormholes, much like human home command stations.  The longstanding bug of always-2-spider-V-fabs has also been fixed, and in general fabs are more likely to be Core fabs, since there are more different types of those to go around variety-wise.

Another one that's been very popular for a long time: teleporting units now use their normal engines (which have been upgraded somewhat, for the ones that used to be glacially slow) when given a group-move order.  This is one I didn't even think could be done and thus didn't feel a lot of motivation to deal with, but it showing up towards the top of both the mantis votes and the 6.0 poll helped there ;)

Please keep the feedback coming, the official release isn't very far away and we want it to be as solid as possible.

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.
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Offline Volatar

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2012, 07:59:56 pm »
Partly this is because their recharge time is now 1 second.  That may be more of a buff than intended, please let us know if it makes things too easy (probably not) or what else would improve their logic.

I never felt that time was the problem anyways. I have always had enough time to rebuild between waves. It's the resource cost that hurts.

Also, thanks for the Engineer changes.

Offline Lancefighter

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2012, 08:37:29 pm »
It will fix a few of the issues I was seeing (minor fringe cases of "i need like 20 rebuilders on this planet when stuff goes wrong")

Which most of the time was perfectly fine, but can get difficult to juggle them all, when I have one on each planet anyway, along with a few worlds having tons..

Now, ill need about 5, and they will end up doing twice as much work
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Offline contingencyplan

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2012, 03:52:59 am »
One undesired behavior I found: group-moving a collection of teleport-only ships makes them slowboat to their destination. In my case, I use group-move by default, and I keep my teleport-enabled ships in their own control group.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2012, 10:02:07 am »
One undesired behavior I found: group-moving a collection of teleport-only ships makes them slowboat to their destination. In my case, I use group-move by default, and I keep my teleport-enabled ships in their own control group.

I think solving this to be...desirable for everyone is going to be a nightmare.

The way I'd like to see it is the teleporters do multiple small-hops keeping, roughly, alongside the non teleporting units.

Offline MaxAstro

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2012, 10:05:30 am »
One undesired behavior I found: group-moving a collection of teleport-only ships makes them slowboat to their destination. In my case, I use group-move by default, and I keep my teleport-enabled ships in their own control group.

Actually, I think this is a better behavior - I can think of edge cases where you would want teleporting ships to not use their teleport engines, and it would be nice to not have to select another ship with them.

Just means you have to hold 'g' when giving them orders if you want them to teleport, in your case.

Although, your case could also be solved by making group move a "per control group" thing like FRD.

Offline Diazo

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2012, 10:08:18 am »
One undesired behavior I found: group-moving a collection of teleport-only ships makes them slowboat to their destination. In my case, I use group-move by default, and I keep my teleport-enabled ships in their own control group.

I think solving this to be...desirable for everyone is going to be a nightmare.

The way I'd like to see it is the teleporters do multiple small-hops keeping, roughly, alongside the non teleporting units.

The problem is define small hop? And how do you make them pause?

There is no 'wait' command in the game at all as far as I am aware so the teleporters would still jump out in front, just in a series of small hops instead of one big one.

The way it is now is the best way I can think of, it just needs an additional check that if all selected units are teleporters, then teleport rather then the current move with engines if group-move enabled check that happens. (Warning: Have not actually tried teleporters since the patch.)
D.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2012, 10:10:18 am by Diazo »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2012, 10:24:21 am »
The way I'd like to see it is the teleporters do multiple small-hops keeping, roughly, alongside the non teleporting units.
Basically impossible, because "group move" actually has nothing to do with the "group" once the order has been given.

All it does is set a speed limit, it pays no attention to the ongoing position of (or existence of) the other units in the group.  In other words, it has no idea where they are, or where to hop to.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2012, 10:29:28 am »
The way I'd like to see it is the teleporters do multiple small-hops keeping, roughly, alongside the non teleporting units.
Basically impossible

I know, Keith, I know. :)
Just because I said that it's what I'd like to see doesn't mean its even remotely possible.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #9 on: October 04, 2012, 10:34:46 am »
I know, Keith, I know. :)
But you don't know how those ships feel; even in group move, they're all alone! ;)
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #10 on: October 04, 2012, 10:38:30 am »
I know, Keith, I know. :)
But you don't know how those ships feel; even in group move, they're all alone! ;)

Those poor, poor ships.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #11 on: October 04, 2012, 10:48:23 am »
The way I'd like to see it is the teleporters do multiple small-hops keeping, roughly, alongside the non teleporting units.
Basically impossible, because "group move" actually has nothing to do with the "group" once the order has been given.

All it does is set a speed limit, it pays no attention to the ongoing position of (or existence of) the other units in the group.  In other words, it has no idea where they are, or where to hop to.

Actually, it doesn't have to try to keep up with the non-teleporting units. As long as it maintains the same average speed, to the same destination, it should keep together decently. And group move DOES have that information, a destination and a target speed.

Lets say the group move speed to 20 merps/s (merp being a completely made up unit of distance for this game for the purpose of this exercise), and the game is setup to make group moving teleporting units "mini-hop" every .5 game seconds.
Then, with 20 merps/s, how much do we need to move every .5 seconds? That would me 20 merps/s * .5 s/hop = 10 merps/hop. Thus, if they move 10 merps every .5 seconds, they should pretty decently keep up with a group of non-teleporting stuff moving 20 merps/s normally, provided they are given the same move target of course. And the beauty of this is that the teleporters don't have to care at all about the non-teleporters; the group move speed and final destination (and the seconds per hop time, which is an internal variable of the game applied to all group moving teleporting stuff) is enough to approximate very well this "stick with the group" functionality.

EDIT: Though this fails to factor on delay times due to teleport paralysis stun
« Last Edit: October 04, 2012, 10:55:36 am by TechSY730 »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #12 on: October 04, 2012, 10:52:42 am »
Lets say the group move speed to 20 merps/s (merp being a completely made up unit of distance for this game for the purpose of this exercise), and the game is setup to make group moving teleporting units "mini-hop" every .5 game seconds.
Then, with 20 merps/s, how much do we need to move every .5 seconds? That would me 20 merps/s * .5 s/hop = 10 merps/hop. Thus, if they move 10 merps every .5 seconds, they should pretty decently keep up with a group of non-teleporting stuff moving 20 merps/s normally, provided they are given the same move target of course. And the beauty of this is that the teleporters don't have to care at all about the non-teleporters; the group move speed and final destination (and the seconds per hop time, which is an internal variable of the game applied to all group moving teleporting stuff) is enough to approximate very well this "stick with the group" functionality.
Aside from the fact that it would produce less satisfactory results than an already implemented behavior, sure :)

Specifically, if they do minihops, and by luck of the draw hop out in front of the group to get in range of whatever and get alpha'd into smithereens... is that what you want group move to do?  Or do you want them to just, y'know, stick with the group?
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Offline LaughingThesaurus

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #13 on: October 04, 2012, 10:12:53 pm »
To the guy who said "I use group move as a default and I want to teleport my teleporters without holding g": Could there feasibly be a way to code the game so that if you're group moving only teleporters, then all teleporters will just teleport to where they were ordered to move?

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!
« Reply #14 on: October 04, 2012, 10:18:36 pm »
To the guy who said "I use group move as a default and I want to teleport my teleporters without holding g": Could there feasibly be a way to code the game so that if you're group moving only teleporters, then all teleporters will just teleport to where they were ordered to move?
That change is already in for 5.090 :)
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