AI War Beta 6.022-6.023 "Honored Bugs" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one congratulates the 4 winners of our recent "bug of the year" poll by... well, exterminating them.  Sometimes it's tough being the winner.

#1 was a longstanding-but-not-really-noticed-until-recently problem in the mapgen logic causing all Advanced Research Stations, Fabricators, and various other (though not all) capturables to seed only on planets controlled by the first AI player.  Normally this didn't matter a whole lot, but if the first AI happened to be a really annoying type (Scorched Earth, notably) the pain was... noticeable.  Anyway, several bugs were involved but mapgen is now more equitable in that regard.

#2 was another longstanding problem with how the preferred-target rules (where stuff you give a direct attack order to should prefer to shoot things similar to the designated target) worked when attacking Hybrids.  It turns out that the problem basically applied to anything with a modular forcefield and there were also some problems with focus-fire and preferred-targeting in the general case.  Normally I wouldn't have spent hours chasing something like this down because I perceive other things as being more important to the community, but the poll was helpful in correcting that perception.  So this stuff is quite a bit tidier now.  Not a great time to be a Hybrid, I suppose.

#3 turned out to not even be a bug: complaints that nothing was happening to go with the "Defensive Hybrids Are Mobilizing" message that can show up when you have Advanced Hybrids on and a CPA or exo or such happens.  In the test case I saw the defensive hybrids were indeed switching to offensive types, but they still didn't have enough firepower to think they had a chance so they continued not-attacking.  That's by design, as otherwise they just all charge to their deaths (more than usual, I mean).  Nonetheless, this "mobilization" mechanic has been beefed up to be more noticeable.  Maybe not such a bad time to be a Hybrid, I suppose.

#4 was updating the turret types to work nicely with ultra-low caps by changing them to have base caps divisible by 8.  Rounding up all the stats for those into the newer more cap-oriented model took time, but it's done now.  Which is good, as there's noises being made about rebalancing turrets in other ways.  We'll see.

There are several other bugfixes and balance changes in this release.  Notably, the exponential scaling of wave size with AIP on Diff 8+ has been removed after several months of feedback on it, and balance iteration continues on the nebula scenarios.

Update: 6.023 hotfix to fix an unhandled-errors bug in the last version with auto-load.

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.

[Vyndicu]

Sweet I am so looking forward to see this nebula changes in action. 

[TechSY730]

Nice to see some long standing stuff get fixed up some.

Also, nice to see that the hybrids are a bit more...active now. They were turtling up a bit too much and starting to become a grind before... 


Anyways, what was the motivation for "Removed the rule in the wave-size calculation where it used "(AIP * 0.8 ) ^ 1.1" instead of just AIP on diff >= 8."

I mean, I am kind of glad to see it happen, but I didn't see anywhere near a consensus on whether the exponential needed to be "dialed back" some.
Is it because now that the AI is harder in many other ways in terms of being smarter instead of just "MOAR", this rule was no longer needed?

Also, someone needs to update the wave size rules thing in the wiki accordingly...
Wait, I could do it; I've been trusted with an account.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, nice to see that the hybrids are a bit more...active now. They were turtling up a bit too much and starting to become a grind before... 

Oh, they'll still turtle up if all you give them is forts forts forts everywhere.  Otherwise they just ineffectually die on the forts.  Basically, if you turtle, they turtle.  If you play a bit looser on some part of your borders, or if they achieve a big enough force to win, they'll actually attack.  Though judging by your savegame I think you already found an effective hybrid population control solution (which I may need to remedy )

[TechSY730]

Also, nice to see that the hybrids are a bit more...active now. They were turtling up a bit too much and starting to become a grind before... 

Oh, they'll still turtle up if all you give them is forts forts forts everywhere.  Otherwise they just ineffectually die on the forts.  Basically, if you turtle, they turtle.  If you play a bit looser on some part of your borders, or if they achieve a big enough force to win, they'll actually attack.  Though judging by your savegame I think you already found an effective hybrid population control solution (which I may need to remedy )

Erm, what would that be? I didn't really do anything in that game but pop hybrid facilities, and a cursed golem I keep around for emergencies.
(Later on in that game, I got a Mk. V infiltrator fab, which I used for harassment too)

Though I am kiting my missile frigates and other similarly long ranged stuff...

[keith.lamothe]

Erm, what would that be?

There was a planet you'd killed the command station on adjacent to your territory that the hybrids would try to park on in prep for an attack, but the dyson gatlings and resistance fighters and such would just repeatedly clean them out.

[TechSY730]

Erm, what would that be?

There was a planet you'd killed the command station on adjacent to your territory that the hybrids would try to park on in prep for an attack, but the dyson gatlings and resistance fighters and such would just repeatedly clean them out.

Oh that. I think that may have been just a planet I lost, and never bothered to get again in my mad "fast forward" waiting for the "defensive hybrids are mobilizing". The only planets I left neutral on purpose in my actual play-through is the dyson planet and my "forward bases" for AI HW assualts after I was done killing the respective AI HW.

Though yea, neutral planets adjacent to player space can be great ways to bait AI units as they will usually enter without hesitation into neutral space, but still have a space that minor factions are still willing to go into without hesitation.

[Faulty Logic]

The Diff > 8 escalation of the "Alternative Minimum AIP" rule that's used for computing how fast golems/spirecraft exos are "grown" has been toned way down

Awesome.

Removed the rule in the wave-size calculation where it used "(AIP * 0.8 ) ^ 1.1" instead of just AIP on diff >= 8.

Awesome.

More nebula balance stuff:
The recently-added "small base death causes one-time surge in large base production" rule:

   Is now not applied to the GraySpire-vs-Dysons, HumanResistance-vs-RavenousShadow, or
   Explosive-colony-ships nebula scenarios.
   Fixed a bug where it wasn't applying to the neinzul bases in the early 3-way sceanrios.
   On the scenarios where it does apply, is now about 1/5th as strong as it was (it is still
   multiplied by champion hull size).

Champion missile module attack power from 60k*mk => 50k*mk.

Ravenous Shadow, due to feedback that the last nerf was excessive (though the reduction in move speed and attack range were well received) :
   Base Health from 700M => 750M.
   Base Damage per shot from 54k => 65k (5k more than pre-nerf).
   Shots-per-salvo from 40 => 45 (back to pre-nerf).

Awesome.

CPA ships now go straight to threatfleet rather than spending 30 minutes in normal threat behavior, as that was allowing them to be more easily intimidated (by forts, for example) into just sitting on the other side of a wormhole from a huge human chokepoint. Certain humans are too good at arranging accidents for threatballs for that to work well.

Uh-oh.

[keith.lamothe]

Uh-oh.

I'm sure you'll still cheese it just fine, but it may involve a somewhat more interesting multi-stage cheese.  Like a lightning-cheddar warhead with booster-stage rockets, etc.

[PokerChen]

Erm, what would that be?

There was a planet you'd killed the command station on adjacent to your territory that the hybrids would try to park on in prep for an attack, but the dyson gatlings and resistance fighters and such would just repeatedly clean them out.

The no man's land frag-fest phenomenon seems to apply to many AI forces, including exo-pathing.

[Faulty Logic]

I'm sure you'll still cheese it just fine, but it may involve a somewhat more interesting multi-stage cheese.  Like a lightning-cheddar warhead with booster-stage rockets, etc.

Probably. My cheese-fu is the only reason I'm still alive, after all.

I could Negotiate with the threatfleet if it doesn't attack, or lure it to where my riots can drag it back to the chop-shop.

But threatfleet is much, much more annoying than threat, even more so on open maps (though I'm not playing an open map atm).


About the nebulae: any chance of a difficulty scalar, or new scenarios?

[keith.lamothe]

About the nebulae: any chance of a difficulty scalar, or new scenarios?

On the diffiuclty scalar, you mean like the minor faction variable intensity thing?  Yea, I do want to do that.  Wanting to settle out the current set of balance changes (mainly the shift from rubberbanding to death-throe-spawning) before going all multiversal on it, though.

For new scenarios, those will take a fair bit of time but I do want to do them.  Other things to settle out first, I think.

[keith.lamothe]

The no man's land frag-fest phenomenon seems to apply to many AI forces, including exo-pathing.

Yea, it's not particularly smart about knowing the difference between "empty planet with no command station" and "planet with no command station but enough human firepower to blow up the galaxy".  Though the threatfleet pays very close attention to such things, so it's not impossible.

[PokerChen]

Semi-related, but some of these nebulae missions would require a bit less micro if there was a "heel" command. Sometimes you want to stick as close to your allied ships to shield them, or to the mini cookie-monster.

[Toranth]

An Ancient and Honored Bug has decided to come out of retirement in a slightly new format:

Line Placement does not follow selected line

Yup, Line Placement issues are back...