AI War Beta 6.033-6.034 "Bonus Tricks" Released!

[Toranth]

Fixed a bug that could cause unhandled exceptions when a CPA launched and would previously have dropped a carrier on a planet with no warp gate and no command station at all (still works fine as long as there's either an AI or human command station there).  Thanks to leb0fh for the report.

I'm glad this one is getting fixed.  I just encountered it in my game.  It not only throws lots of errors, it prevent waves from executing (appearing) and prevents the game from being won.  You can still lose, however.

Hmm.  Are you *sure* this bug was accidental?

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm.  Are you *sure* this bug was accidental?

I plead the fifth?

Will get the fix out soon, just trying to wrestle some protector starship stuff down.  You guys probably had no idea how much work finite counter missile (or whatever) capability is.

Hmm, or maybe it was intentional

[keith.lamothe]

Update: 6.034 hotfix to fix an unhandled errors problem with CPA launches due to the attempt to make the carriers not drop on neutered planets.  A few other small changes in there too.

[chemical_art]

After glancing at the stats, I think the devastator would benefit a lot, lot more with it doing 400,000 damage every 2 seconds, or at least 1 million every 5 seconds.

Right now, with its extremely long relative reload rate and caps, it is not that efficient at removing threats under shields. Given that it is the niche of it, it should not be bad at all.

[Cinth]

Looking at them on UL caps /Normal combat, they do 2M every 10 seconds.  That will pretty much one shot all but the heaviest of ships and turrets.  These in the AI's hands are going to be a nightmare.

[chemical_art]

Looking at them on UL caps /Normal combat, they do 2M every 10 seconds.  That will pretty much one shot all but the heaviest of ships and turrets.  These in the AI's hands are going to be a nightmare.

My changes were not meant to make them deal more damage (they still deal the same damage), it was to make them fire more rapidly so they can engage smaller units better. Against triangle ships, they deal on the order of 7x overkill on low caps. Considering that the shield piercing is powerful but limited in usage, the situations where it is needed (clearing units out from under shields) it should be effective.

On normal caps, it would take the two devastators over 8 minutes to kill a cap of fighters, bombers, or artillary frigates in combat. That is very lackluster.

[Cinth]

Like any siege unit, it isn't meant to fight those smaller ships.  That is what you have a fleet for.  it seems like this ship was intended to target capitol ships.  Those types aren't voluminous.

[chemical_art]

Like any siege unit, it isn't meant to fight those smaller ships.  That is what you have a fleet for.  it seems like this ship was intended to target capitol ships.  Those types aren't voluminous.

This would be more true if it had a bonus to heavier hulls, but it doesn't. It is a generic wrecker of units under shields.

This unit needs to excel at this narrow role, because there already is a base unit that fulfill the role of building wreckers under shields (raiders).

Even as a creator, having the unit being effective under shields is already a  narrow field. Having it need to be effective against essentially starship and above level threats AND be under shields is too narrow...

To put it another way, it is so niche that I, as creator, wouldn't want it 

[keith.lamothe]

@chemical_art: I understood your meaning in the concept for them as anti-capital-ship, so stuff like Spire Destroyers on up.  They should be pretty inefficient against anything with the standard fleet ship cap, or even half that.

That said, scaling it to 5 seconds would be ok.

And it can be shifted to have a bonus vs heavy or whatever.

[Aklyon]

Its an impressive amount of damage, but it certainly could do with some help in other areas yeah.

[ColdPrototype]

Am I correctly understanding that now cloaking is just out of the picture for HW assaults?

[chemical_art]

@chemical_art: I understood your meaning in the concept for them as anti-capital-ship, so stuff like Spire Destroyers on up.  They should be pretty inefficient against anything with the standard fleet ship cap, or even half that.

That said, scaling it to 5 seconds would be ok.

And it can be shifted to have a bonus vs heavy or whatever.

I think if you were to shift it to say deal 300,000 damage per 3 seconds, but deal 2x bonus to ultra heavy, that would work. It would make it OK at dealing with fleet ships, good with dealing with threats under shields and the biggest threats, and great against big threats under shields, I'd be happy.

These numbers would give it a 45% of its current dps against non heavy targets but with firing at 3x the rate, and 90% of the current damage while allowing it to retarget after defeating the target.

[Cinth]

The ship is almost as strong as the Z S FF (as far as main gun). Hits harder than the Bombard and fires 3x as fast.

And it isn't even a raider with 44 speed.  And we have a raider type ss with the Raid SS...

This ship is a capitol ship killer.

[chemical_art]

Digging around some more, making its rate of fire at 5 seconds works sort of. A 1.2 multiplier against ultra heavy and reducing dps slightly as well.

However, I still don't like on how normal cap games it is absolutely terrible in fleet combat, but in low or ultra low caps it is much better. Seems too imbalanced. I'm starting to think this is the source of my stress at seeing the number, and not the fact it isn't effective.

For fleetships, high reload is less of a problem for the ships themselves scale just as well. For starships, it doesn't. In this case, from each step downward in caps makes the ship twice as effective in MK X vs MK X fights. I don't like that.

Can weapon reload time be effected by caps similar to ion cannons? If so, making it so it take 2 / 4 / 8 / 16 seconds to fire based on high / normal / low / ultra low caps, with shots adjusting to match to maintain dps?

[chemical_art]

Posting separately to ensure I convey that I've thought about this a bit:

1. Make the rate of fire vary by cap, but keep dps the same
2. Very, very small bonus to ultra heavy
3. Emphasize in the description more that it fires very, very powerful shots, to better convey its slow rate of fire has benefits.

And 2 potential, additional ideas:

A) It prioritizes the "is it large?" flag that the old heavy bomber starships used, if possible (so it prioritizes heavier targets if no ultra heavies are around)
B) If A) is not possible, make it only have the "is it large?" modifier, but give more bonuses to its damage (ultra heavy)