AI War Beta 5.090 "Fish Or Cut Bait" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

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

The #1 request was that free threat not camp on a wormhole forever if the planet on the other side was too strong for it to consider attacking.  Fish or cut bait, the saying goes.  Now a ship that's still alive 30 minutes after being freed will switch to an alternate "threat fleet" behavior and coordinate with other such ships.  The behavior is somewhat similar to the special forces behavior except that it's primarily offensive in nature, looking for an opening where it can do something other than park on a wormhole.

The #2 request was to do something about the vast challenge-disparity between defending at a single chokepoint and defending multiple ingress points.  A single chokepoint will probably always be easier to defend, and that's fine, but the difference was larger than it needed to be.  So now the max time the AI can wait between waves (and thus how large those waves are) goes down somewhat with multiple ingress points (max effect at 4+ target planets).

The other side of that issue was the frustration of trying to have "satellite" worlds on high-difficulty games.  Basically you had two choices: pull turret and/or mobile cap from your main defenses to cover the "islands", or accept that the islands would die when tripped over by a few wayward AI ships.  And pulling stuff from your main defenses could be... contraindicated by the difficulty level.  So we've added a new "Mini-Fortress" unit that has a small per-planet cap but no global cap.  So defending your satellite worlds with miniforts does cost metal, crystal, and energy but it doesn't pull any potential unit-cap away from your main defenses.

There are several other items from the poll that we hope to get to soon, but those were the highest priority ones, and most of the rest of the time that went into this release was used on fixing a laundry list of bug and balance issues.  Some of them are fairly important; for one, I think several of you will appreciate units no longer moving slightly when given an attack order against something already in range (thus no longer resetting any ability/reload counters on fortreses, zenith siege engines, etc).

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.

[Lancefighter]

I cant believe you nerfed paralyzers by 93.75 dps.

I am really sad.

[keith.lamothe]

I cant believe you nerfed paralyzers by 93.75 dps.

I am really sad.

There was a nagging feeling at the back of my head as I looked at the 17.2-ish result from the computation and rounded down.  Must have been a premonition of this post

[Lancefighter]

I think I can live with it, its only slightly more than a percent of its total dps. And the 2s firerate helps a lot actually.

edit
you couldve done 3s /26k, for an overall dps increase of 73ish. I wouldve gone for that wholeheartedly.
edit; btw, I'm joking.

[_K_]

added a new "Mini-Fortress" unit to the SUP tab of the command-station/mobile-builder buy menu

Unlocking these costs 1000 knowledge

This sounds like a very VERY big deal. At least for my games, where i can often have 5+ ingress points due to my AIP greed. In these games many of my border planets had really ,eager defences as i had to spread them. Not only those mini-fortresses boost this approach, it also makes it possible to spam these at all regular non-border systems, making it ALOT easier to mitigate any leaks that may try to raid defenseless system. All at the cost of 1k knowledge.

I might be overestimating these, but being able to protect not just the border systems, but also your inner territory at virtually no price (cap distribution-wise) sounds unbalanced.
Also, dont forget the energy economy is still broken, so you cant even really balance these with a high energy cost, as you'd have to set it to something ridiculous for that to work.

The rest of the changes are welcome and look very interesting.

[Diazo]

added a new "Mini-Fortress" unit to the SUP tab of the command-station/mobile-builder buy menu

Unlocking these costs 1000 knowledge

This sounds like a very VERY big deal. At least for my games, where i can often have 5+ ingress points due to my AIP greed. In these games many of my border planets had really ,eager defences as i had to spread them. Not only those mini-fortresses boost this approach, it also makes it possible to spam these at all regular non-border systems, making it ALOT easier to mitigate any leaks that may try to raid defenseless system. All at the cost of 1k knowledge.

I might be overestimating these, but being able to protect not just the border systems, but also your inner territory at virtually no price (cap distribution-wise) sounds unbalanced.
Also, dont forget the energy economy is still broken, so you cant even really balance these with a high energy cost, as you'd have to set it to something ridiculous for that to work.

The rest of the changes are welcome and look very interesting.

I'm not sure, if there's a serious break in your defensive line, at only 2 per system that's only 20% the effectiveness of a Mk I fortress.

Yes, it will stop that 10 or 20 ship leak as they are designed to do, but if your defensive line has fallen, these are not going to deal with a couple hundred AI ships.

Going to start a game to play with them later today, but on paper I'm thinking they look okay. Of course, a balance tweak once they are actually seen in action is expected but I would not expect a big one based on a quick bit of theory craft.

D.

[Mánagarmr]

I believe they are less of a "wave defense" thing and more of a "passerby defense" thing.

[Diazo]

I believe they are less of a "wave defense" thing and more of a "passerby defense" thing.

That is my understanding also.

I read _K_'s post as a concern that these could invalidate the AI's threat as it makes defense in depth too easy as there is no global cap.

I don't see them as being strong enough for that, pending play testing with them of course.

D.

[KDR_11k]

They'll at least attrition anything that breaks through.

[Mánagarmr]

They'll at least attrition anything that breaks through.

Yes, but so would any turrets placed there as well, so I don't see a problem as long as they aren't an "iWin" plug against any serious border aggression.

[Eternaly_Lost]

This bug, even though it was claimed to be fixed was not: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9669
...

The reason I get Mk3 engineers is to move them rapidly around to repair things around the place, now there no reason to do so. Give them an order to go to another planet and they just drive over slowly, rather then teleport to the wormhole then go though like they used to do.

[keith.lamothe]

The 1k knowledge cost may be too low, but I figured I would be more likely to get helpful feedback on them if they were too easy to use, than too hard

And really, you're not getting very much firepower on any given planet for that 1k.

But playtesting is really the only way to tell, so go forth and be slaughtered

This bug, even though it was claimed to be fixed was not: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9669
...

The reason I get Mk3 engineers is to move them rapidly around to repair things around the place, now there no reason to do so. Give them an order to go to another planet and they just drive over slowly, rather then teleport to the wormhole then go though like they used to do.

Odd.  Will take a look.

In the meantime, do they work if you give them a non-group-move order?  If you have global-group-move on, just hold G while giving an order to suppress it.

[Eternaly_Lost]

The 1k knowledge cost may be too low, but I figured I would be more likely to get helpful feedback on them if they were too easy to use, than too hard

And really, you're not getting very much firepower on any given planet for that 1k.

But playtesting is really the only way to tell, so go forth and be slaughtered

This bug, even though it was claimed to be fixed was not: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9669
...

The reason I get Mk3 engineers is to move them rapidly around to repair things around the place, now there no reason to do so. Give them an order to go to another planet and they just drive over slowly, rather then teleport to the wormhole then go though like they used to do.

Odd.  Will take a look.

In the meantime, do they work if you give them a non-group-move order?  If you have global-group-move on, just hold G while giving an order to suppress it.

It works if I give them a non-group-move order just fine.

[contingencyplan]

The 1k knowledge cost may be too low, but I figured I would be more likely to get helpful feedback on them if they were too easy to use, than too hard

And really, you're not getting very much firepower on any given planet for that 1k.

But playtesting is really the only way to tell, so go forth and be slaughtered

This bug, even though it was claimed to be fixed was not: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9669
...

The reason I get Mk3 engineers is to move them rapidly around to repair things around the place, now there no reason to do so. Give them an order to go to another planet and they just drive over slowly, rather then teleport to the wormhole then go though like they used to do.

Odd.  Will take a look.

In the meantime, do they work if you give them a non-group-move order?  If you have global-group-move on, just hold G while giving an order to suppress it.

It works if I give them a non-group-move order just fine.

I was coming here to post this, except with my Teleporting Leeches. Group-moving within a system works just fine (i.e., they teleport), group-move between planets doesn't (they slowboat), non-group-move between planets does (they teleport).


This is with group-move on by default and my MkI and MkII Teleporting Leeches in their own control group (nothing else selected).

[chemical_art]

Reposting this from the other thread:

The new mini forts sound interesting, but really nerf military comm stations in the process.

Half their value was that you'd build one to deal with threat that entered your world while not wasting turrets that could be used elsewhere. Now that you get units that destroy units far more effective then the military comm station, there is far less a niche to get them. Yes, they are still somewhat nice for their planet wide firepower cap, but if you used spire capital ships or golems or starships for the bulk of your power you need nothing more then the free MK I versions. I'm saying this as the guy whose defended military comm stations vehemently against those who say econ stations are best.

Also these units are capless, so you can place them everywhere, so you can devote your K research to econ stations and still be MUCH better defended then investing in MK II military stations. This would be true even if the new mini forts were 3k.