AI War Beta 6.044-60.45 "So That's What A Vines Map Looks Like" Released!

[LaughingThesaurus]

Oh, does it really? See, I don't really know how those work exactly. It seems like all of the beneficial things are more packed together (so less distance to go for cool stuff. Increases the pace of a game, and I like that increased pace), but I also thought the same thing applied to things like the dire guardians. Like, if you had the rocketry corps or something enabled there would just be more related to the amount of planets.

[keith.lamothe]

There's not necessarily a consistent rule for what things have seed count proportional to galaxy size, but generally the really critical stuff (ARS, AdvFact, ASC, Data Centers, and less critical but still important things like fabs) ignores galaxy size, where the more "this is a structure that makes life 'interesting' on one planet and/or its neighbors" stuff seeds proportionately to galaxy size.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Ahh, so you're saying that's why I don't encounter, say, two or three eyes on the same planet.

[keith.lamothe]

Ahh, so you're saying that's why I don't encounter, say, two or three eyes on the same planet.

Well, that and the fact that most seeding routines only check a given planet once

But it would be why you don't see, say, Eyes on 20% of planets on an 80 planet map and on 50% of planets on a 30 planet map given identical settings.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Yeah, I can think of more ideal situations than having eyes on half the planets in the galaxy. That'd be a bloody nightmare.
Well then, I guess I don't have to worry any more than the requisite amount.

[Aklyon]

For some reason I have this mental image of Keith sitting down at his computer sipping his coffee before work and thinking "hmm, lets see what happens if I put a rabid barracuda and knife-wielding monkey in  the virtual thunderdome this time. Oh, Not coded yet?  Ahh very well for fun let's try hunter killers and dire guardians instead."

Probably not those animals exactly (it'd have to be some kind of fishman to fight on land, and I'm not sure if monkeys can wield items ingame of if they have to be monkeymen first), but you could probably setup a fight like that in DF Arena mode and see the ridiculous results.

[Oralordos]

Thinking back to the old carp bug, I get the feeling the unarmed fishman would annihilate the knife wielding monkey.

[Aklyon]

Thinking back to the old carp bug, I get the feeling the unarmed fishman would annihilate the knife wielding monkey.

Anything fighting a giant sponge (the doomy invincible to all damage except air-drowning thing, because they lack any important body parts and can nudge you to death.) loses, but a fishman beating a monkey to death isn't too far off either.

[Bognor]

Yeah, I can think of more ideal situations than having eyes on half the planets in the galaxy. That'd be a bloody nightmare.
Well then, I guess I don't have to worry any more than the requisite amount.

Just fyi, Mad Bombers, Neinzul Youngsters, Vicious Raiders, Extreme Raiders, Technologist Raiders, Scorched Earth, Attritioners, The Tanks, and The Cores all get half the normal number of Eyes.  See AI Opponent Types.

[Bognor]

Can the Sledgehammer's new "double wave size but half wave frequency" be a dominant trait?  I'd like the reduced micro of fewer waves, but just halving the number using the lobby option without giving the AI some compensatory benefit feels... cheap.

[LordSloth]

So, AI Eyes aren't actually that plentiful. There are only 11 or so in my galaxy right now. I just notice them more when they do show up. I think i've got a bias, and a worst-of dual-ai pairing deals in the past.

I am wondering if you can prevent Dire Guardian lairs from spawning within two hops of a homeworld on difficulties below eight. Having them shape your initial expansion seems like an interesting challenge, but I kind of feel like colonizing homeworld adjacent systems is a core '7' principal of play, albeit from old wiki advice. Might make cluster maps a bit boring though.

I have noticed some out of depth starships in homeworld adjacent systems (mk2 zenith and mk4 flagship hurt) that can't get guardians, but it might be something I've mistakenly set up, so I'm starting a game or two with full visibility, logging, and five-minute auto-saves.

I should be able to track whether it's something i've been doing, accidentally agroing, or some rare quirk of circumstances since I would spot it in 20-40 minutes of game start, but not in the first ten or so.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Yeah, I can think of more ideal situations than having eyes on half the planets in the galaxy. That'd be a bloody nightmare.
Well then, I guess I don't have to worry any more than the requisite amount.

Just fyi, Mad Bombers, Neinzul Youngsters, Vicious Raiders, Extreme Raiders, Technologist Raiders, Scorched Earth, Attritioners, The Tanks, and The Cores all get half the normal number of Eyes.  See AI Opponent Types.

Some of those are odd choices. I can see the more brutal ones having less for sure, but... The Tank? As far as I know, Neinzul Youngster isn't so bad either. The Core I think is still awaiting a buff. Were those AI types intended to be much harder so they had the eye penalty in compensation? Most importantly, purely for other players, is there going to be some kind of Watcher AI type?

[Lancefighter]

Are the showdown devices supposed to remove all ai guard posts and free all units .. on a failed showdown attempt?

[Kahuna]

Can the Sledgehammer's new "double wave size but half wave frequency" be a dominant trait?

Good point^^ I certainly hope so. It IS a positive (positive for the AI.. negative for the player..) trait after all. So not only would it make sense but it would also be FUN and unique! No other AI type has this trait.

[Kahuna]

Yeah, I can think of more ideal situations than having eyes on half the planets in the galaxy. That'd be a bloody nightmare.
Well then, I guess I don't have to worry any more than the requisite amount.

Just fyi, Mad Bombers, Neinzul Youngsters, Vicious Raiders, Extreme Raiders, Technologist Raiders, Scorched Earth, Attritioners, The Tanks, and The Cores all get half the normal number of Eyes.  See AI Opponent Types.

Some of those are odd choices. I can see the more brutal ones having less for sure, but... The Tank? As far as I know, Neinzul Youngster isn't so bad either. The Core I think is still awaiting a buff. Were those AI types intended to be much harder so they had the eye penalty in compensation? Most importantly, purely for other players, is there going to be some kind of Watcher AI type?

Well there are 2 types of AIs. Offensive and defensive. The difficulty levels (Easier, Moderate, Harder and Red) are sub types. Offensive AIs have less defenses and thus less Eyes. The Tank, Neinzul Youngster and The Core are offensive AIs.

Also The Core has been buffed

By popular demand, "The Core" AI type now no longer has penalties to wave size or reinforcement size, since the AI already always gets a 0.5 multiplier when getting mkV ships in those contexts to begin with.