AI War Beta 6.046 "Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine MkII " Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one is another heap of polish as we near the 7.0/VotM official release.

Zenith Hydras, one of the new VotM ships, were significantly reworked.  Before they were a solid combat ship, but ultimately not very interesting.  Now they spawn extra heads (as separate ships) after taking a certain amount of damage.  The heads are short-lived but add a substantial amount of DPS compared to just the main unit.

The Objectives tab of the Stats window received several hours of work to improve its existing listings and add a ton more.

And there's a bunch of balance and bugfix stuff, too.

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.

[relmz32]

should the torpedoes from the Lightning Torpedo Frigates and/or enclave starships' drones be counted by AI Eyes for the purpose of the humans having a 2:1 advantage?

How should one deal with spider guardians? The tooltip says to use scout starships to protect your other ships, but they do not work. Their theoretical counter is the frigate, but the guardian counters missile frigates. With it's speed, range, and engine damage, it also counters fighters and bombers.

Edit: Oh, and thanks for the new update. Meant to lead with that.

[Tridus]

should the torpedoes from the Lightning Torpedo Frigates and/or enclave starships' drones be counted by AI Eyes for the purpose of the humans having a 2:1 advantage?

The drones probably should, because mk III and IV enclave ships can flood a system with drones pretty quickly and it should probably take more to take out eyes than "use your starships to draw the enemy ships close and kill them, then let your enclave ships sit there". LTF warheads probably not, that's the thing's ammo.

How should one deal with spider guardians? The tooltip says to use scout starships to protect your other ships, but they do not work. Their theoretical counter is the frigate, but the guardian counters missile frigates. With it's speed, range, and engine damage, it also counters fighters and bombers.

The scout starship description also says it provides anti-sniper coverage, so if that's not working it's a bug that should be looked at.

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, when I changed the spider guardian to not use sniper ammo I didn't catch that description bit, will do, thanks

[keith.lamothe]

And the torpedoes are effectively drones and should count, yes.

[relmz32]

And the torpedoes are effectively drones and should count, yes.

Ok, fair enough. Thanks.

So... with the spider guardians, what am i supposed to do?

[keith.lamothe]

So... with the spider guardians, what am i supposed to do?

Kill them

If the engine damage is a problem, you can try attacking it with just engine-damage-immune stuff, or with stuff that outranges the spider, or bringing in engies or mobile space docks to repair the engines after the battle, or just let the engine-dead ships auto-heal their engines after the battle (takes longer, but will happen) or scrap the engine-dead ships and rebuild them.

[Toranth]

should the torpedoes from the Lightning Torpedo Frigates and/or enclave starships' drones be counted by AI Eyes for the purpose of the humans having a 2:1 advantage?

The drones probably should, because mk III and IV enclave ships can flood a system with drones pretty quickly and it should probably take more to take out eyes than "use your starships to draw the enemy ships close and kill them, then let your enclave ships sit there". LTF warheads probably not, that's the thing's ammo.

And the torpedoes are effectively drones and should count, yes.

But they can't be scrapped, move slowly, have a 3 minute lifespan, and a full set of Mk I-V LTFs can produce hundreds of torps.  Basically makes LTFs a NO-GO when hitting up Eyes.  Especially Raid or Nuclear.
Drones at least can be scrapped to prevent the BOOM.

[relmz32]

should the torpedoes from the Lightning Torpedo Frigates and/or enclave starships' drones be counted by AI Eyes for the purpose of the humans having a 2:1 advantage?

The drones probably should, because mk III and IV enclave ships can flood a system with drones pretty quickly and it should probably take more to take out eyes than "use your starships to draw the enemy ships close and kill them, then let your enclave ships sit there". LTF warheads probably not, that's the thing's ammo.

And the torpedoes are effectively drones and should count, yes.

But they can't be scrapped, move slowly, have a 3 minute lifespan, and a full set of Mk I-V LTFs can produce hundreds of torps.  Basically makes LTFs a NO-GO when hitting up Eyes.  Especially Raid or Nuclear.
Drones at least can be scrapped to prevent the BOOM.

yeah, i ended up in that situation, and just scrapped all my other ships.

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, yea, the 3 minute lifetime thing is an issue.  Used to be rather shorter, but that was an effective-range problem, and I don't want these to be yet-another-really-fast-spawnable.

[ZaneWolfe]

Hmm, yea, the 3 minute lifetime thing is an issue.  Used to be rather shorter, but that was an effective-range problem, and I don't want these to be yet-another-really-fast-spawnable.

Then this is fairly easy to solve without making them into a fast drone like TDL or Blade Spawners. Give the player the ability to control the torpedoes. It will allow us to scrap them if needed and prevent having to either speed up the drones and/or raising their attrition rate.

[relmz32]

Also, why are there unreasonably powerful starships on Human homeworld adjacent AI planets? I have a Zenith starship mk 2, 2 Flagship mk 4!!, a Seige Starship mk 2, and a bomber starship. On one planet.

[keith.lamothe]

Give the player the ability to control the torpedoes.

I can smell the cheese from here.  But yea, that's probably the simplest solution.

[tmm]

Also, why are there unreasonably powerful starships on Human homeworld adjacent AI planets? I have a Zenith starship mk 2, 2 Flagship mk 4!!, a Seige Starship mk 2, and a bomber starship. On one planet.

I've been seeing this a lot myself.  A common pattern when starting games recently has been that if I'm not *very* careful in my first couple attacks, multiple Mk III+ starships will get released to threat and run over my home command before my paltry 150k energy of units can wet noodle them to death. 

One (short) game recently I had a raid engine AI with a planetary cloak adjacent to the first system I wanted to take, I poked in and took it out, which I pretty much had to do, but that caused 3x Bomber Starship III, 2x Flagship III, 1x Leech Starship III to be released to threat, immediately decide I didn't have enough in my home system to stop them, and a very very quick loss.

It'd be nice to see something done, as it leads to a lot of uninteresting losses in the super early game.

[TechSY730]

Also, why are there unreasonably powerful starships on Human homeworld adjacent AI planets? I have a Zenith starship mk 2, 2 Flagship mk 4!!, a Seige Starship mk 2, and a bomber starship. On one planet.

I can confirm this. Something funky is going on with the marks of game-start seeded ships, especially starships (though fleet ships are sometimes of odd marks as well).

I think this only a game seed issue; I think reinforcements obey marks properly when at low AIPs.