AI War Beta 7.011-7.012 "Salvaged Resources" Released!

[Toranth]

I also found something else wierd.  When AI salvage gets high enough it triggers a reprisal wave, right?  However, when the wave launches, it resets the salvage total to zero.  This means that anything that dies in AI (or neutral) space between when the wave is announced and when it launches does not count towards ANY reprisal wave.

I was able to repeat that a couple of times, too, by waiting at +!!! until the next natural wave and looking at the logs.

That's odd: it's supposed to only zero out the AISalvage counter on an AI player when a reprisal wave is announced.  Not when one is launched.  Reprisal salvage that comes in after the announcement (whether it's before or after launch) goes towards the next reprisal wave.  Which is announced at least 10 minutes after the previous one was announced (and may be announced much later if it takes that long to reach the minimum quantity of reprisal salvage).  Just to be clear, by "announced"  I mean the moment it shows up in the alert box.

The circumstances worked out like this:  I sent my fleet out, and when about half of it had been killed, it triggered a reprisal wave.  Then the other half was killed.  I waited until the next natural wave occured, and it said that the "reprisal strength" of that natural wave was zero.  I repeated this with several different groups of ships, and it worked out the same.

New though occurs to me:  Would it show up that way if the salvage strength was below the 100-strength threshold?  I.e., it was reporting '0', but actually meant '<100, so nothing added'?  If salvage only gets used when it triggers a reprisal wave, that seems off.  I think I'd like it better if salvage was always added to a wave, but had to get strong enough before triggering a new "(Reprisal)" wave.

May I also request that neutral systems not grant reprisal rights to the AI?

I've gone back and forth on that.  I agree that having it happen in was-just-a-human-system-a-moment-ago is a problem, as that's a double-whammy.  It'd also be nice to not have it be a huge nerf to beachheading (in the sense of permanent defenses adjacent to but not in your territory).

On the other hand, I don't want "losing a huge offensive fleetball" to not cause any significant reprisal salvage just because you popped the AI command station a few seconds before the casualties really started pouring in.

A possible solution that comes to mind is that "if it's a neutral planet, and you have supply there, the AI gets no reprisal salvage from your losses there", which covers border losses and beachheading.  But doesn't cover the loss of isolated outposts.

Maybe, something like "If it is a contested planet (both sides have Strength > X), the AI doesn't get anything"?  Or maybe "The salvage dispersal ticker always ticks, but no one gets anything if contested."  I haven't gotten far enough yet in my current experimental game to test out exactly how much blowback from beachheading Core Turrets everywhere will produce, but it's something I'm concerned about.

[Draco18s]

IDEA:  The command station CD timer.  If it is ticking down or if a command station is building it is not counted towards AI Salvage as it's not yet a "neutral system"  If the timer expires and you do not immediately rebuild, then it's your fault for not staking your claim.

Isolated outposts however will still remain a problem if you don't watch it and stealth a rebuilder around there to restart your ownership.

I had the same idea.

The "has supply" is a good one, too.

[Histidine]

Have a variable for the AI's salvage collection efficiency. This is 100% for all planets with an AI command station; if the command station dies, it falls to zero over X minutes. Planets that have been neutral  and/or player-occupied for a long time thus give the AI no salvage from player losses there.

[keith.lamothe]

Piggybacking on the existing timer is a good idea, but for now I'll try to stick with "minimum fiddliness" and just have casualties on neutrals not give scrap to anyone.  May be too easy to game that system, we'll see.  It may be that a lot of the ways of gaming it would strongly resemble "tactics to keep your fleet alive", which wouldn't exactly be a bad thing.  Unless they prove to be really annoying to use.

[TechSY730]

@Toranth Scrap always being added to a wave whenever it happens, and reprisal wave happens if they happen to accumulate enough, while that would seem more natural, it also seems like you could game that system some by basically waiting a wave between each attack you do so the strength of waves barely grows.

Then again, the niceness of having a consistent system may be worth that risk of cheesability. Or perhaps it may turn out that this might not be a big deal anyways, or not worth abusing.

[RockyBst]

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13588.msg164482.html#msg164482
aka cloacker starships + warheads = empty reserve

Hmm, interesting. I'm already flashbanging the AI homeworld with my sensor hacker to get a fleet of spirecraft rams in there to take out the guard posts, didn't think about sending in a fleet of lightning warheads as well. However I thought all mark 5 ships were immune to warheads?

[LordSloth]

Although there isn't an underlying system elsewhere, I would think the simplest metric for 'should this neutral system give the AI salvage' is: are there any guard posts left?  I could complicate things further by some fractional relationship between # of guard posts, and amount of salvage w/o command... but I'll think on this again once I take another look at the full list of AI types, and finish getting some caffeine. As half the AI ships like to go on roaming when the command station goes down, perhaps each guard post (w/o command) could contribute to the salvage such that the AI that replaces wormhole gps with regular gps would get -more- salvage decapitated, I dunno.

This has been a brainstorm or brainfart. I'll accept either one.

[Toranth]

AI War Beta 7.011-7.012 "Salvaged Resources" Released!

Fallen Spire Campaign says "Thank you."



 

I really want to just be able to pick a map, then select my starter ships. Rather then select both. I'll dig up the thread that lets me hack to do that in the meantime.

Wait there is a hack for that? Can you link the thread or PM it to me? So many possibilities...

Details here.

[Oralordos]

That looks like a picture that would go with your avatar. 

[Kahuna]

I thought all mark 5 ships were immune to warheads?

Nope.
Check their immunities. If there's no "Immune to Area Damage" then it's not immune to Lightning Warheads.

[TechSY730]

I didn't want to necro the starting ships post, so I will put it here.

This has probably been suggested, but how about a compromise on the starting ship thing.

Instead of making the starting ship and map layout share the same seed, allow them to be "rolled for" separately. That way, you still get some more flexibility, but still some randomness to try to encourage variety.

Yea, I know this will basically mean separate ship selection in single player (just find a good map, reroll ship types until your favored start location has a ship type you would like to start with), but in multi-player games, this system could still force some adaptability from the players (as it is highly unlikely for them to get all of their favored starting ships at their favored starting points)

[keith.lamothe]

The circumstances worked out like this:  I sent my fleet out, and when about half of it had been killed, it triggered a reprisal wave.  Then the other half was killed.  I waited until the next natural wave occured, and it said that the "reprisal strength" of that natural wave was zero.  I repeated this with several different groups of ships, and it worked out the same.

New though occurs to me:  Would it show up that way if the salvage strength was below the 100-strength threshold?  I.e., it was reporting '0', but actually meant '<100, so nothing added'?  If salvage only gets used when it triggers a reprisal wave, that seems off.  I think I'd like it better if salvage was always added to a wave, but had to get strong enough before triggering a new "(Reprisal)" wave.

It only adds in the salvage on an actual reprisal wave.  The salvage is ignored for other waves.

Right now the "(Reprisal)" thing is shown for any wave with extra strength from salvage, so just having it piggy back on the extra onto the next natural wave would show that too.

Probably it had more than the 100 strength of salvage available, but it was still on that "10 minutes minimum between reprisal waves" rule.  So 10 minutes after the first one announced the next one would.  Or had you waited longer than that?  If so it would be the 100-strength rule.

I'll keep thinking about it but for now I think I'd like to keep it so it only uses the salvage for reprisal waves.  There's a bunch of salvage-related revisions already in the next patch.  But I'm happy to consider changing this particular thing for the patch after the next.

[Draco18s]

However I thought all mark 5 ships were immune to warheads?

Immune to nukes.  Nukes are not the only warhead.

[Bognor]

During the 5+ years since the game's development, over 90 distinct "causes of death" for ships have worked their way into the code.

I love this game!

[Lancefighter]

So I think I'm a bit late to this particular release party, but I just have one (maybe) itty bitty request. Can you add a 'random bonusship' to the 'select bonus ship' menu?