AI War Beta 6.013 "Core Foamhammer" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one adds Core (MkV) versions of the 18 fleet ships that previously maxed out at MkIV.  So you can now get those from Core Fabricators.  Abuse of Core Shield Bearers may result in... well, I guess you don't have much to fear if you have Core Shield Bearers.

The bulk of this release answers the results of the recent nerf polls with significant hammerings handed out all around.

Gravity won the AI-side poll and came in second on the human-side.  Since the universal gravitational constant laughed at us when we tried to nerf it, we instead nerfed the units trying to use said gravity.  Except the player home forcefield grav-generator, that's still just as nasty as it was.

Manufactories won the Player-side poll.  Yea, the things that convert metal to crystal and vice versa when you ask them to.  The player sentiment wasn't that these were overpowered (that would have been kind of amusing) but that they were unnecessary.  Why have them be physical structures with automated turn-on/turn-off logic when the game could just handle the conversion automatically?  Normally we wouldn't have prioritized this, but the poll told us it was important to the players, so it's been done.  The foam hammer hit the Manufactories so hard that they don't exist anymore, and the conversion is now done on an as-needed basis (there's still a control you can use to restrict or completely prevent the conversion, if desired).

Other winners include Counterattack Guard Posts, the Spirecraft Scout, the Ravenous Shadow (which will now be even more hungry, thank you very much), and the Interplanetary Munitions Booster.  Salute the victoriously Hammered!

This release also includes a few other changes, including some buffs to Heavy Bomber Starships, Regeneration Golems, Spire Corvettes, MkII Transports, and munitions-boosting-for-starships.  An attempt was also made to rein in certain Astro Train varieties.

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.

[Diazo]

Why must you torment me at the start of a work day with this? 

Anyways, now that all the starship changes are out I'll see if I can get those up on the wiki tonight.

D.

[TechSY730]

Glad to see the glorious return of the hamsters!

Anyways, looking forward to trying this tonight. Especially because I had to abandon my current game (they are "stonewalling" one of my core planets they managed to take out very well, and an exo is soon to come, which doesn't bode well), so now I can take advantage of all the new stuff that can be seeded.

Speaking of which, when the Plasma Siege Starship does the FF splash damage thing, and it hits a command station, including the home command station, no "attack warning" for the command station taking damage is fired. May want to look into that.


And just reposting this so I don't forget about it.

Just a completely self-serving bump to two small-ish requests for the next version.

Can you give it the "prefer large targets" flag like the plasma siege does, so that way it does try to avoid overkill on the "weak" fleet ships?

Saw the changes to the Astro trains. Thanks.

However, can the tractor trains please be added to the list of "auto attacked" trains, so your units don't get dragged out into nowhere without any sort of effort to try to escape?

Widow trains too. (Though both need a huge health reduction for this to have any real effect)

[keith.lamothe]

Why must you torment me at the start of a work day with this? 

So that I don't have to stay up late at night to see if I broke the game

[Diazo]

I suppose that is a good enough reason.

Okay, I'll let you get away with it. 

Still, can't wait to get home, I might actually get a Spire City built tonight!

D.

[_K_]

core (MkV) versions of the 18 fleet ships that previously maxed out at MkIV

This is glorious. Even though i know core fabs dont contribute much to my fleet power, having some cool "special" ships feels great. Having more kinds of those is nice.

[Hearteater]

Can't wait for Eye Bot Vs to hit some poor unsuspecting player.  Does Speed Racer AI increase their speed?  That would be hilarious, especially if the AI didn't have any other Eye Bots unlocked so they came as a surprise.

[keith.lamothe]

Can't wait for Eye Bot Vs to hit some poor unsuspecting player.  Does Speed Racer AI increase their speed?  That would be hilarious, especially if the AI didn't have any other Eye Bots unlocked so they came as a surprise.

Yea, that could be pretty nasty.

I forget, do the AI's core bonus types (the ones where it has mkV but none of the lower marks) show up in exos and whatnot?  Seems like most of the normal forms of aggression aren't likely to get to mkV levels unless you free a bunch of threat on an AI core/HW planet.  Well, and potentially CPAs though I don't think it does nearly as much scraping the barrel (and getting to the grungy mkV bottom layer) on those anymore.

[Lancefighter]

 (... and if that doesn't work just dumps it all over the floor).

Pretty accurate.

Overall seems to be good patch, gravity nerfs were completely justified and seems good.

Starships finally getting some love (its actually useful to munitions boost them now..) I should probably start up a game sometime and see how that goes.

[keith.lamothe]

Starships finally getting some love (its actually useful to munitions boost them now..) I should probably start up a game sometime and see how that goes.

I imagine a mkV spire starship with max munitions boost would be pretty funny right now.  Assuming the target sits still.

If not, there's always the mkV plasma siege starship with max munitions boost.

[LordSloth]

For maximum hilarity, add zenith spacetime manipulators to your Plasma Siege Starships. Add enough and you should be able to auto-kite Raid Starships.... Even in AI territory. Supplementing with Riots, Spiders, or miniforts would just be plain cheating.

[LaughingThesaurus]

"Abuse of Core Shield Bearers may result in you being too well defended. Use at your own discretion."

[Vyndicu]

I have a question about the new counterattack warp guard posts. If I deepstrike a level 2 counterattack warp guard post at least 3 or more solar system hop away. What happens? Do they warp to an AI solar system and hoof all the way to your solar system? If yes SWEET more reasons to deep-strike counterattack warp guard post.

[Hearteater]

I believe the count starts at player worlds, and have nothing to do with the location of the Counter Attack GP.

[Diazo]

In honor of tying for second in the poll, Counterattack guard posts:

    Can no longer just send a wave anywhere, the target must be within X hops of a warp gate, where X is the mark level of the counterattack guard post in question.
    Wave timer down from 14 minutes => 10 minutes, due to player complaints that it was annoying to have to wait that long.

It is actually from an AI Warp Gate (Full) as I read the patch notes.

So extensive gate raiding could in theory prevent the counter attack post from launching a wave behind the front lines, but 3 or 4 hops for a Mk III or IV counter attack post is a lot of territory.

Most of the time, this will mean the AI system adjacent to your territory unless you are methodical about gate raiding the AI's warp gates.

D.