AI War Beta 6.042 "Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one is a whole big pile of polish for 7.0 and the VotM expansion.

Some highlights:

- Working with the ship design screen should be easier with shift-click support for copying a module from one slot to one or more others, and the logic to auto-upgrade your champion designs when you unlock a higher-mark usable module should save a lot of time too.

- You can now set FRD Engineers and FRD Remains Rebuilders separately, and the behavior of "endpoint" redirector posts and multi-planet-FRD (for engineers, rebuilders, and other stuff with "assist" targets) has been improved in general.

- Fixed some bugs interfering with carrier auto-deployment.  They should now be much more reliably forthcoming.

- Fixed a bug that was letting the hunter plot spawn way more H/Ks and stuff over time due to packing some away in carriers.  Such a curious malfunction, and I'm sure the AI will be very happy to have it fixed.  Wouldn't want to overrun the galaxy with a few hundred free Hunter/Killers, after all.

- Fixed a ton of text issues kindly reported by the community.  One was actually not just a textual problem: the Sledgehammer AI type has really been effectively "vanilla" for... a really long time :)  But it's been given a special of less-frequent-but-heavier waves 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.

[Wingflier]

Thanks Keith, I really appreciate it

[Histidine]

Have you ever found it funny that the Vanilla AI type isn't base game?

[keith.lamothe]

Have you ever found it funny that the Vanilla AI type isn't base game?

Yes, though with the bundling I wonder how many regular players don't have LotS

[TechSY730]

Speaking of which, is there a Technologist Vanilla and a Technologist Everything?

Seems like there should be, especially given the name of this expansion.

[keith.lamothe]

Speaking of which, is there a Technologist Vanilla and a Technologist Everything?

Seems like there should be, especially given the name of this expansion.

You can do an Everything plus one of the Technologist types with Dual Types.  And Technologist Sledgehammer basically was Technologist Vanilla but is now "Technologist Vanilla that sends waves 2.5x less often and 2.0x as big".

[Toranth]

Since we're making changes to the Alarm Posts, can we take the guns away?  I had an interesting experience with an enemy Alarm post and my Zombie Zenith Mirrors - although the Mirrors ignored the Alarm Post, the Alarm Post wouldn't return the favor, and eventually killed itself. 

[LaughingThesaurus]

Since we're making changes to the Alarm Posts, can we take the guns away?  I had an interesting experience with an enemy Alarm post and my Zombie Zenith Mirrors - although the Mirrors ignored the Alarm Post, the Alarm Post wouldn't return the favor, and eventually killed itself.

If I had an alarm that I couldn't trigger that would trigger on explosion, and it had guns, I would shoot it at a ship that deflects bullets as a strategy. That sounds pretty legit to me, but I guess it'd be like if you deflected damage to something that caused a serious AIP increase. Well, without the permanence. Unless you die.

[Faulty Logic]

After trying the showdown again, I think it's close to right, now, though I don't have enough data to analyze scaling with superweapons (I tried it without).

Those extra ships for the final cpa don't add that much firepower (or at least, that much nuclear-immune firepower), except for the Hunter plot and Nemeses. I don't particularly like that aspect, but it is acceptable given that you have your mod forts and diplomatic fleet if you're dealing with nemeses, and Hunter is strictly optional.

(The new graphic is also much cooler.)

On another note, why are Dire Guardians not a plot? They act like one, in that they are a strict benefit to the AI, and can be turned off, so I expected them to be with the other plots, and not in ship types.

I'd also like them to have a scalar.

[keith.lamothe]

After trying the showdown again, I think it's close to right, now, though I don't have enough data to analyze scaling with superweapons (I tried it without).

Thanks for the non-superweapon test; good to know that the baseline experience is getting there.  From there it's mainly a matter of figuring out how much extra % a player can be expected to handle with each of the different superweapon bits and pieces.

Those extra ships for the final cpa don't add that much firepower (or at least, that much nuclear-immune firepower), except for the Hunter plot and Nemeses. I don't particularly like that aspect, but it is acceptable given that you have your mod forts and diplomatic fleet if you're dealing with nemeses, and Hunter is strictly optional.

Yea, Hunter+Showdown isn't a friendly combo, but at least it's nothing like Shark+Showdown.

On another note, why are Dire Guardians not a plot? They act like one, in that they are a strict benefit to the AI, and can be turned off, so I expected them to be with the other plots, and not in ship types.

I wanted them to default to on, as a counterbalance to the core turret controllers always being on.  Not that they really counter each other, but working out in the overall.

They can be disabled mainly because I figured someone would fuss otherwise.  The DGs are not actually that hard to deal with since you have advance warning and can usually arrange a nice "welcome" for each as it spawns, but I'm sure someone wouldn't want them to be on just because the expansion was.  Though there's a metric ton of stuff (coprocs, alarm posts, etc) that seeds in all TZR games without remorse or recourse.

All that said, I could move DGs to a plot with a scalar... but if I try to have them default to on then there'll probably be a long string of mantis records about that and so forth

[Faulty Logic]

There should be a way to decolonize a system without triggering the Shark, for when a player wants an empty system for whatever reason (e.g. dyson sphere with a capturable). Give it a ~60 second timer to prevent cheesing, though.

[keith.lamothe]

There should be a way to decolonize a system without triggering the Shark, for when a player wants an empty system for whatever reason (e.g. dyson sphere with a capturable). Give it a ~60 second timer to prevent cheesing, though.

How would the timer prevent cheesing?

[Faulty Logic]

By timer I mean you start a countdown lasting about a minute (or two), and at the end of that, your station is destroyed without triggering shark.

You can't cancel the timer once started, and the destruction of your station still causes the delay before rebuilding, colony ship and energy destruction, etc.

I don't see much cheese happening with those conditions.

[keith.lamothe]

By timer I mean you start a countdown lasting about a minute (or two), and at the end of that, your station is destroyed without triggering shark.

You can't cancel the timer once started, and the destruction of your station still causes the delay before rebuilding, colony ship and energy destruction, etc.

I don't see much cheese happening with those conditions.

What about "2000 Eyebots to YourIsolatedPlanet in 1:01 (or 2:01)"?

[Faulty Logic]

I wouldn't consider that cheese, as dealing with threat is particularly nasty these days and in most winning setups ordinary waves rarely accomplish anything, but you could add the condition that you can't start the countdown if a wave has declared against the planet.