AI War Beta 6.005 "Burning The Candle At Both Ends" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one answers the results of our three recent polls on which units most need rebalancing (in both directions, for player and/or AI).

Congratulations (and changes) thus go out to: the Tackle Drone Launcher, "Mysterious" Colony Ship (nebula unit), Zenith Bombard, Teleport Raider, Infiltrator, Superfortress, Zenith Power Generator, and Champion Drone Bays.  Racking up that much infamy isn't easy, so give them a hand folks.

We also incorporated new far-zoom icons for LotS, like we did with Ancient Shadows a couple versions ago.  Thanks again to long-time community member HitmanN for those.

Speaking of ship icons, the planetary summary sidebar's been changed to render those in a manner more consistent with the rest of the game.  Previously they were losing some clarity, and I think they look better now.

We also fixed a few bugs in this one, including one that basically broke the Doom Accelerator modules in the last couple releases.  Oops!  Well, taken care of now.

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.

[Pluto]

Very perfect timing, just after I finish classes for the day.  I say very perfect, but I really mean "why did you do this to me when I need to do homework".

[keith.lamothe]

Very perfect timing, just after I finish classes for the day.  I say very perfect, but I really mean "why did you do this to me when I need to do homework".

I'm sure the AI will be happy to help you with your homework

[LaughingThesaurus]

My God that superfortress gets a lot of numbers.
I want it. Can I have it?

[keith.lamothe]

My God that superfortress gets a lot of numbers.
I want it. Can I have it?

I'm sure your local Zenith Trader representative will be along shortly to offer you one for a phenomenal fee

[Pluto]

I'm sure the AI wouldn't do that badly, I need to write a priority-queue, and I'm pretty darn sure at least something along those lines is used in this game.

Must. Resist. Urge.  Homework first.  Do you think my professor would mind if I just used the STL library for this?..  I'd get back to something enjoyable so much sooner.  The superfortress is tempting - I just built one in my latest FS game.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm sure the AI wouldn't do that badly, I need to write a priority-queue, and I'm pretty darn sure at least something along those lines is used in this game.

Nope.  There's a few lists that are sorted by priority, but they're in fairly performance-critical parts of the code so we keep it as simple as possible.

Must. Resist. Urge.  Homework first.  Do you think my professor would mind if I just used the STL library for this?..  I'd get back to something enjoyable so much sooner.  The superfortress is tempting - I just built one in my latest FS game.

The game will still be here

[TechSY730]

I'm sure the AI wouldn't do that badly, I need to write a priority-queue, and I'm pretty darn sure at least something along those lines is used in this game.

Must. Resist. Urge.  Homework first.  Do you think my professor would mind if I just used the STL library for this?..  I'd get back to something enjoyable so much sooner.  The superfortress is tempting - I just built one in my latest FS game.

You could do it the lazy way and just tack stuff into a vector, and then calling sort or stable_sort on it every time a retrieval operation is performed.

Or you could be ultra lazy and just write a class what inherits from priority_queue but doesn't actually override anything, so it acts exactly like a priority_queue. (also, with this technique, you can still claim "I wrote a class that is a priority queue" and it would technically be true.)

[keith.lamothe]

(also, with this technique, you can still claim "I wrote a class that is a priority queue" and it would technically be true.)

And the professor can still claim "I gave you a grade".

[relmz32]

I'm sure the AI wouldn't do that badly, I need to write a priority-queue, and I'm pretty darn sure at least something along those lines is used in this game.

Must. Resist. Urge.  Homework first.  Do you think my professor would mind if I just used the STL library for this?..  I'd get back to something enjoyable so much sooner.  The superfortress is tempting - I just built one in my latest FS game.

Yeah, do the HW. Plus, Priority queues are awesome and used in a lot of applications. Hand-building one is a great exercise. Also, Prof's usually have rules about what Libraries you can use, if you have any questions, your professor is probably very happy to answer them. Just don't use a heap or stack that will trivialize the problem.

Edit: Also, if you *do* have trouble with CS work, I would happily provide direction, just post in the Off Topic Forums. Have fun, and good luck!

[Hearteater]

I love priority queues! That is the first thing I code in a new langauge.  I'd recommend aa pairing heap implementation, although a fibanacci priority queue is fun too and has very similar performance.  As others mentioned, throw something up in off topic if you've got questions.  And if you need a good general data structures book, I can dig up the name of mine from school.  I still use it to this day.

[Ricca]

Also in honor of being one of the winners of the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Infiltrator:
Cap Health from 11,124,400M*mk => 15M*mk.

Hopefully a typo, or else I'm going to have nightmares over Infiltrators that had over 200 billion HP each.

[Cinth]

You have an extra M in there Ricca

"Cap Health from 11,124,400*mk => 15M*mk."

[Ricca]

Ah, I see it's been fixed in the wiki.

In fairness, 11,124,400 is hardly a normal number in terms of Cap HP.

[keith.lamothe]

You have an extra M in there Ricca

"Cap Health from 11,124,400*mk => 15M*mk."

I had just edited it after he mentioned it.  Originally it had an M.