AI War Beta 6.026-6.027 "The Guard Before The Storm" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one contains many visible changes but mainly a lot of behind-the-scenes changes in preparation for the upcoming "Vengeance of the Machine" expansion (more details to come on that fairly soon).

Some of those changes are peeking out from behind the curtain: the AI's Guardians are now becoming another source of variety between games (i.e. Replay Value).  So we're revising the existing guardians to be more notable so that you'll care whether the AI rolled Laser Guardians or Artillery Guardians or Special Forces Guardians (or all three) or whatever.  Right now there are only 19 guardian types to choose from (Tachyon Guardians are separate) so there's something like a 40% chance in any given game that one guardian type will be in the initial 3 picks for both fo the AI players.  That's not too bad, as far as variety goes, but one goal of the expansion is to add substantially to that guardian variety.  We'll see!

Other notable changes include some significant follow-up buffs to the Enclave after its recent re-imagination, fixes for some longstanding (mainly edge-case) AI behavior quirks, and an increase in the number of rolls of tissue paper used to armor Advanced Factories.

Update: 6.027 hotfix to get some for-next-expansion stuff back behind the scenes (sounds of something being hit with a cane). "Shoo! Shoo!"

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.

[Cinth]

Quick q about the guardians.  How do the new Core Guardians compare to the old Core Guardians strength wise?

[Faulty Logic]

Looks good, mostly.

Enclave Starships:
Higher-mark drones no longer require turret research.
Drone spawning counts doubled.
Drone health from 2000*mk => 40k*mk (so about half a fighter, now).
Drone DPS increased by 50%.

Wow. Yeah. That'll do it.

The AI now unlocks new bonus types at every 100 total AIP instead of every 200 total AIP, and the unlocks are rolled separately for each of the two AI types instead of for the AI team as a whole.

You just hid the AI getting four times the unlocks in two lines of a massive patch.

Making Guardians More Interesting/Varied

And much stronger. This is gonna make life more difficult.

No nebula reward scaling

You did say this would be in the patch. I had been looking forward to that all week 

[keith.lamothe]

Wow. Yeah. That'll do it.

Yea, I imagine we'll have to nerf the enclaves before long.  It will be a novel experience.

You just hid the AI getting four times the unlocks in two lines of a massive patch.

It can go back to every 200 AIP or whatever, I just happened to be in that part of the code and remembered some complaints about the "unlock lines" being so high they never really got to more than one or maybe two of them.

Making Guardians More Interesting/Varied

And much stronger. This is gonna make life more difficult.

I suggest evaluating these in new games; they shouldn't break any older stuff but it'll be a bit extra painful.  Now you'll actually be able to plan around what guardian types the AI has, which can greatly reduce their actual threat to your forces.

No nebula reward scaling

You did say this would be in the patch. I had been looking forward to that all week 

Yea, I wanted it in there, but I just ran out of time if I wanted to get the patch out today in time for any big problems to be caught before I was offline for the night.

If someone hadn't hauled out a long list of AI bugs in the last release thread, on the other hand...

[LordSloth]

Out of curiosity, do any of those enclave changes affect either of the neinzul minor factions? If not, can we expect an AI opponent who does? uses human-equivalent enclave starships?

[keith.lamothe]

Out of curiosity, do any of those enclave changes affect either of the neinzul minor factions? If not, can we expect an AI opponent who does? uses human-equivalent enclave starships?

It doesn't impact any minor factions, but the AI's Carrier Guardian is now very enclave-like.  Hence it being renamed the Enclave guardian.

[Radiant Phoenix]

You just hid the AI getting four times the unlocks in two lines of a massive patch.

It can go back to every 200 AIP or whatever, I just happened to be in that part of the code and remembered some complaints about the "unlock lines" being so high they never really got to more than one or maybe two of them.

I would consider making the unlocks slow down as AIP goes up.

So, like, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800 or something. (I'm pretty sure I saw a picture of a game that went over 6400 AIP and still won)

Basically, there's one unlock that comes basically as soon as you start really fighting, one shortly after, one as you enter the mid-game, one in the late-game, and some more if you go high AIP.

How many bonus ship types does each AI start out with again? I'm assuming it's, like, one or two, but I think it might currently be three or four.

Out of curiosity, do any of those enclave changes affect either of the neinzul minor factions? If not, can we expect an AI opponent who does? uses human-equivalent enclave starships?

It doesn't impact any minor factions, but the AI's Carrier Guardian is now very enclave-like.  Hence it being renamed the Enclave guardian.

If it acts like a hive golem, I would call it a hive guardian.

(Enclaves spawn drones in FRD, while the hive golem stores them)

[keith.lamothe]

Update: 6.027 hotfix to get some for-next-expansion stuff back behind the scenes (sounds of something being hit with a cane). "Shoo! Shoo!"

(this was found while the nebula rewards scaling was being implemented, so that's also in now)

[Faulty Logic]

Thanks! I've been wanting to try 8 champions for a while.

Hmm, Bouncer/Exotic.

Are you taking suggestions for new AI types?

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, Bouncer/Exotic.

Yea, I forgot a flag on them so they were showing (without descriptive text).  You could even give them a try if you're still on 6.026, I don't think they'd actually break anything, but who knows.

Are you taking suggestions for new AI types?

For this expansion I've got the ideas I want to implement for those, but if you've got ideas mantis is a good place and we do look there when pulling stuff together for new expansions.  You're also quite welcome to link them here and I'll think about it, in theory it could fit in (or displace one I've got planned to a later expansion), just depends on the scope impact and how cool it sounds.

[Faulty Logic]

The Cloud has core posts (the kind that provide invincibility on the AI Home Command Station) on all of its core worlds. Moderate.

Dual Processor has two homeworlds next to each other, with all that entails. RED.  >D

[keith.lamothe]

The Cloud has core posts (the kind that provide invincibility on the AI Home Command Station) on all of its core worlds. Moderate.

Along with new Buzzword Marketing Core Guard Posts, I'm sure.  Yea, that one could work.

Dual Processor has two homeworlds next to each other, with all that entails. RED.  >D

Oh goodness the pain to get the code to work with multiple AI HWs per AI.  In theory it's set up for it, but that theory is 4 years old.  But one of the core worlds could be "promoted" to have the full set of core posts and have a command station that functions as a core post for protecting the actual home station.

[Coppermantis]

If we're suggesting AI Types:

Vanguard: Does heavy attacks on the player with an AIP-dependent number of guardians replacing Starships in its waves.

[Aklyon]

First of all, YAY for the enclaves buff. That sounds awesome.

What exactly does the nebula scaling bit mean, though?

[Cinth]

What exactly does the nebula scaling bit mean, though?

Basically it gives you cap * # of champs or # of homeworlds (which ever is larger) for rewards.

So having 16 homeworlds would give you 16 mod forts but one homeworld with 8 champs would give you 8 mod forts.