AI War Beta 7.002-7.005 "Hacked To Pieces" Released!

[madcow]

I have a save right before I started hacking, so I'll have to reload it and watch it a little closer.

[ZaneWolfe]

I did a hack on a MKV Leach Starship fab, my first hack of the game btw, and it was spawning COUNTER ATTACK WAVES on MY worlds with timers in the 30 SECONDS range. If I may be so bold, what the hell is up with that? Thankfully I only had 3 worlds so my forces weren't spread that thin, but I still lost one world so I got hit with the Shark Plot (Both A and B) and things went down hill from there. So to ask again, what the hell? Not that I am terribly upset that it can do that now, but why was there no warning about that in the patch notes, and why does it spawn waves with 30 SECOND TIMERS, on THE FIRST HACK of the game. I had about 300 AIP, so I should have had plenty of wiggle room with over 300 Hacking Progress to use.

[TechSY730]

@ZaneWolfe Don't worry. The hacking response from the AI when you have a positive hacking progress is taking a pretty good nerf next version, in case you haven't been keeping up with the other thread.

[TechSY730]

Keith, is it at all possible for a hacked Mk. V engineer fab to add it to the command stations rather than the space dock, just so they can remain with the other engineers?

[Eternaly_Lost]

I did a hack on a MKV Leach Starship fab, my first hack of the game btw, and it was spawning COUNTER ATTACK WAVES on MY worlds with timers in the 30 SECONDS range. If I may be so bold, what the hell is up with that? Thankfully I only had 3 worlds so my forces weren't spread that thin, but I still lost one world so I got hit with the Shark Plot (Both A and B) and things went down hill from there. So to ask again, what the hell? Not that I am terribly upset that it can do that now, but why was there no warning about that in the patch notes, and why does it spawn waves with 30 SECOND TIMERS, on THE FIRST HACK of the game. I had about 300 AIP, so I should have had plenty of wiggle room with over 300 Hacking Progress to use.

Already basically asked about this when I noticed that Hacking response was going up with AIP. It turns out that the higher the AIP, the worse the hack, even if it is the very first one of the game. So you might be better off hacking before you even make any AIP.

Personally, I think that hacking response should go down as HaP gets higher and higher then the hack. Maybe on some sort of ratio. So if you doing a hack that costs 40, and your HaP is at 400, the AI is not going to care as much at all, as if you doing one that costs 40 and you only have 40.

[keith.lamothe]

Keith, is it at all possible for a hacked Mk. V engineer fab to add it to the command stations rather than the space dock, just so they can remain with the other engineers?

MkV engineers are queue-built (and have been since their introduction, since that's how that fab works).  Other engineers are self-built (placed at 1 hp and build from there).  They can't be built from the same builder under any circumstances, sorry.

[TechSY730]

Keith, is it at all possible for a hacked Mk. V engineer fab to add it to the command stations rather than the space dock, just so they can remain with the other engineers?

MkV engineers are queue-built (and have been since their introduction, since that's how that fab works).  Other engineers are self-built (placed at 1 hp and build from there).  They can't be built from the same builder under any circumstances, sorry.

Oh, that's a good point. Oh well. *shrug*

[TechSY730]

I did a hack on a MKV Leach Starship fab, my first hack of the game btw, and it was spawning COUNTER ATTACK WAVES on MY worlds with timers in the 30 SECONDS range. If I may be so bold, what the hell is up with that? Thankfully I only had 3 worlds so my forces weren't spread that thin, but I still lost one world so I got hit with the Shark Plot (Both A and B) and things went down hill from there. So to ask again, what the hell? Not that I am terribly upset that it can do that now, but why was there no warning about that in the patch notes, and why does it spawn waves with 30 SECOND TIMERS, on THE FIRST HACK of the game. I had about 300 AIP, so I should have had plenty of wiggle room with over 300 Hacking Progress to use.

Already basically asked about this when I noticed that Hacking response was going up with AIP. It turns out that the higher the AIP, the worse the hack, even if it is the very first one of the game. So you might be better off hacking before you even make any AIP.

Personally, I think that hacking response should go down as HaP gets higher and higher then the hack. Maybe on some sort of ratio. So if you doing a hack that costs 40, and your HaP is at 400, the AI is not going to care as much at all, as if you doing one that costs 40 and you only have 40.

That's sort of what the other thread was talking about, and something like this is happening for the next version.

The AI's base response to hacking is now based on AIP - HackingProgress, so that your early hacks are basically always easy, and having surplus HaP generally helps. Hopefully this won't make things too easy but the alternative has been fairly, um, "startling" to players doing their first hack of a game at 300 AIP or so

[madcow]

So I just went back to my save and thankfully at an autosave right at 18 hacking progress.

I was able to get down to -50 hacking progress at its normal rate, (that's around when units started to get a bit too high to control), but after around -50 it started ticking down -30 hacking progress every second (rather than adding hacking progress every time the AIP went down), is that the intended behavior? I rather quickly jumped from around -50 hacking progress to I kid you not -500 hacking progress (and 5k attacking ships) in no time at all.

Is that the intended behavior?

I realize we aren't really encouraged to hack past -50, its just the huge near-instant jump that I find a little concerning.

[keith.lamothe]

So I just went back to my save and thankfully at an autosave right at 18 hacking progress.

I was able to get down to -50 hacking progress at its normal rate, (that's around when units started to get a bit too high to control), but after around -50 it started ticking down -30 hacking progress every second (rather than adding hacking progress every time the AIP went down), is that the intended behavior?

Are you certain the AIP wasn't going down?  Bear in mind that one of the superterminal's responses to a ton of hacking (since quite a while ago) is reduce the "tick" interval, all the way down to once per second.  But each of those ticks should be doing the +1 AIP and -2 AIP.  Sometimes that makes it look like a net-zero or net-positive AIP change because you've hit the floor and the floor goes up, etc.  But if you're not on the floor the visible AIP on the main bar should go down 1 per tick.

As for the size of the HaP changes, -30 is certainly possible if you've been at it a while.  Iirc, the cost per-tick for the first 30 ticks is 1.  The cost per-tick for the 30 ticks after that is 2.  The cost per-tick for the 30 ticks after that is 4, and so on. So you may have been into the phase where each tick cost 32.  This is largely just an indication to stop   As is negative HaP of any kind, in most cases.  You can get away with it to some extent, but it's quickly just a big "I Die" button.

Anyway, if you have a save that would be helpful

[madcow]

Okay, didn't realize the tick would be increasing.  So I looked into it again, and the reason the AIP wasn't decreasing was due to actually hitting the AIP floor, oops! That would explain it

It does have a feel of going from "easy" to "omgwtf" but this is really from the perspective of a non-hardcore AI player.  I've gone ahead and attached my save, but it sounds like you nailed the reason it was ticking so fast.

I think a message about it ticking faster, or a warning once you hit negative hacking progress would be appropriate to help with the seemingly instant uberwave.

[Shrugging Khan]

So I didn't quite grasp this one yet: Does hacking a superterminal permit me to abort the hack once I'm done, and resume it later on? Or will the terminal still have to be destroyed at the end?

[madcow]

It can only be stopped by destroying the terminal.  So that part is unchanged, the hacking vessel isn't used for the super terminals - it starts when you build your command center and stops when the terminal is destroyed.

[Shrugging Khan]

Oooh, now I get it. Well...all's well then!

[keith.lamothe]

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