AI War Beta 6.050 "Release Candidate 3" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one is the third release candidate, and is 7.0, unless some fairly critical bug or other such issue comes to our attention over the rest of the weekend.

Actually the changes in this were not for critical issues, but there were a couple very simple (as in just changing a couple boolean flags) changes that make the Zenith Hydra Head spawnable work a lot more sensibly.  I used to be able to leave well enough alone, so I blame Chris's example.

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.

[orzelek]

Few questions:
1. Why is full map visibility not giving enemy counts for planets? I need to send scouts to have numbers visible.
2. Having adv fabricators 4 hops from H/W is a rng luck?

Also.. Zenith Descendant/Exotic is Fun. And I didn't really play long only looked at his planets.

[TechSY730]

Few questions:
1. Why is full map visibility not giving enemy counts for planets? I need to send scouts to have numbers visible.

Having visibility is not always the same as having activr scouting info. Active souting info is what gives you enemy counts. Full map visisibility setting only gives full visisibility and passive scouting info (what structures on on the planet when you hover over the planet icon), not full active scouting.

There is a cheat that should give one full active scouting on all planets at all times, I think.

2. Having adv fabricators 4 hops from H/W is a rng luck?

An Adv factory cannot spawn closer than N hops from the homeworld unless the map size and layout gives it no choice but to. (I don't know what N is tbh)

But how close it does spawn within those bounds is indeed fully luck based.

[orzelek]

Full visibility gives you full scouting info for each planet. Thats why I got surprised that numbers are not on map.
You get full sidebar info on each planet not only buildings.

[TechSY730]

Full visibility gives you full scouting info for each planet. Thats why I got surprised that numbers are not on map.
You get full sidebar info on each planet not only buildings.

Oh.

Wait, I think the map filters out ship counts on a planet you have no ships on that planet, even if you have full scouting info on it (due to cheats or map settings or whatever).

That would seem like a true oversight.

But it has been doing this since the 3.0 days, probably before that too. As such, I'm no sure how high priority it is to the devs. *shug*

[chemical_art]

the full visibility thing is a bug corrected by micro. the onlything not given is the ship count in the galaxy viewer, but that is it. Threat, etc, work fine otherwise so i hardly notice.

[Jade E.]

I know I'm really late to the beta, but is there any chance we could get specific display filters for Core Turret Controllers or Dire Guardian Lairs?  They're both available under custom broad, but typing back and forth to switch between them is a minor pain

I'd actually really like to see a Broad Custom option for 'Dire Guardian' as well, but clicking through all the Narrow ones for each type isn't too bad.


The new subcommander planets are awesome, btw.  In my last game I ran hard into a Grav CS + 2 x FF3 on an AI with both sentinels and zbombards...  couldn't get enough ships in range to dent the FFs.  After losing that game due to an unrelated incident involving an Dire Artillery Guardian and my home planet's rear entrance, I started a new game on the same map... and now I'm trying to decide if I can get through a Grav Drill + Translocator CS + Translocator Eye + Fort3...   at least this time I have the option of popping the drill if worse comes to worse

[LordSloth]

I'm actually fine with this, but I wanted to check that it was intended since the patch notes for 6.047 are not explicit.

I have a Raid Engine within two hops of my homeworld on a simple 80 star map, release candidate 3.

Why am I fine with it? They're much less of a threat if I properly scout (or even auto-explore with mark ones) and take them out before going past minimum AIP.

Edit: For that matter, I also have Edit: two ARS within two hops.

[Kahuna]

What are these "sub commanders"? What do they look like? What's their purpose?

[Jade E.]

What are these "sub commanders"? What do they look like? What's their purpose?

From the 6.033 patch notes:

Added the concept of AI "subcommanders" to the expansion: each mkIII+ non-home AI planet has a chance (with higher marks having a higher chance) of getting a "subcommander personality" which allows it (during mapgen) to pick from a special set of new AI command stations, a special set of new AI guard posts (sometimes mixed with the existing ones), and place both station and guard posts according to its own whims.

As for what they look like, their command stations are much larger, beefier, and have various special abilities.  The planets are also arranged in unusual ways... although most of them I've found so far seem to be 'put all the guard posts right next to the command station'.  Which is brutally effective (particularly with force fields), if not particularly novel

[keith.lamothe]

New one

[Histidine]

I seem to remember a screenshot that had the subcommander name in the command station tooltip, what happened to that?

[keith.lamothe]

It's never shown in the tooltip, but it shows at the bottom of the F3 debug info for the current planet.