AI War Beta 7.019-7.020 "Oops MkII" Released!

[TechSY730]

First, I just posted my first mantis bug report in a quite a long time (13883: Command stations under construction still gather scrap (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=13883)). Man, I had forgotten how fulfilling that is.


Second, what is the AI cost for plasma siege starships? Often, I see the AI sending plasma seiges around in the first few waves, but then using more of flagships and parasite starships as the AIP goes up. Seems like it should be the other way around.

I have logs if you want them.

[keith.lamothe]

First, I just posted my first mantis bug report in a quite a long time (13883: Command stations under construction still gather scrap (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=13883)). Man, I had forgotten how fulfilling that is.

I'm grateful for the testing and reporting, though in this case I'm not sure it needs fixing   More a question of whose territory it is, than what facilities are fully online.  Neutral planets actually accumulate scrap for the human too, but it's essentially a 0% efficiency gathering.

Second, what is the AI cost for plasma siege starships? Often, I see the AI sending plasma seiges around in the first few waves, but then using more of flagships and parasite starships as the AIP goes up. Seems like it should be the other way around.

I have logs if you want them.

I believe they cost the same as the other cap-of-2 starships (flagships, Bomber Starships, Leech Starships).  You could check the logs for the cost @each of whatever's thrown into those waves.

Bear in mind that it randomly picks between the different starship types when figuring what to send, though the Spire, Zenith, Raid, and Bomber ones are available one tech-level later than the others.  So a mkI wave, theoretically, can only pick a mkI flagship, a mkI leech starship, or a mkI plasma siege starship.  Possibly dropping the bomber-stars down into that group would dilute the early game plasma sieges a bit.

Each wave has an 80% chance of picking "schizo" starships (like normal, where it randomly picks for each one) and a 20% chance of going "mono" starships where it picks the same one over and over.

[TechSY730]

Yea, I thought it could of been that statistical clustering again.

Still, it seemed frequent enough to at least inquire, but it isn't frequent enough to make sheer chance a less likely thing than a problem in the code.


And yea, I hope to be around with you guys for several more years to come, even if I can't be as active as I was during my college days.

[TechSY730]

Oh, new, more substantial bug.

13918: Giving resources does not work (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=13918)

EDIT: Amendment, only sometimes does it fail to work.
However, once it stops working, it seems to take a save reload to fix.

[keith.lamothe]

Update: 7.020 hotfix for some performance problems (i.e. 10 second freezes, in some cases on some machines) recently introduced into the reinforcement logic.


Odd about the give-resources thing, will make a note to look at that soon.

[tadrinth]

Now I know why the horde of cockroaches was roaming around ineffectually last game. 

Last game I raided five additional warp gates to put the core guardpost counter-attack exos on the right side of my chokepoints, so changing those exos to spawn at the homeworlds would have saved me 25 AIP (I didn't have any other exo sources on). 

I foresee the AI doing a lot of counterattacks right as my fleet becomes occupied...  Are those new "should I attack" modifiers going to be gated by difficulty at all? 

[Draco18s]

By the way, at some point we lost the "add player to new game: new player is granted a random bonus unit" feature.  Now they join in with only the triangle fleet ships.

(This is from at least 7.017)

[keith.lamothe]

I foresee the AI doing a lot of counterattacks right as my fleet becomes occupied...  Are those new "should I attack" modifiers going to be gated by difficulty at all?

I thought of that after putting them in; yea they'll probably be 7+ checks.

[Toranth]

Finally got it!
I mentioned before that the H/K Factory was acting wonky?  I've finally got a save where it happens almost every time.
Edit:  Added a Mantis report.

In the attached save game, do the following steps:
1)  Load the game.
2)  Pause immediately upon load - before the "X massive ships enroute to your planets" message appears.  The game time should be 27:18:34.
3)  Switch to the starmap.  Do not switch to any other systems; leave the human Homeworld selected.
4)  Switch back to the planet view.
5)  Let the game run.
6)  Sometime in the next 90 seconds, the AI homeworld way off to the right will active its H/K Factory and suddenly there will be a new H/K Mk I enroute.
7)  If you hit time 27:20:00 without it happenening, reload from the beginning and try again.

The actual time the H/K spawns is random - it's been within a few seconds of the load, and it's been more than 5 minutes after.  But 90% of the time, it'll happen in the first 90 seconds after load.  I've included a log file that shows some of the times it has happened.
It happens even if I shut down AI War and reload, or reboot my PC.

[keith.lamothe]

Cool, thanks, managed to track down the H/K factory thing and fix it

[tadrinth]

It's probably overkill, but the difficulty could also affect how many hops out your fleet projects strength.  Maybe two hops on diff 7+, and then 3 on diff 8+?  That would make it a bit easier to ride to the rescue on lower difficulties.  Just throwing the idea out there. 

[Draco18s]

It's probably overkill, but the difficulty could also affect how many hops out your fleet projects strength.  Maybe two hops on diff 7+, and then 3 on diff 8+?  That would make it a bit easier to ride to the rescue on lower difficulties.  Just throwing the idea out there.

+1 to this.

Side note:
The AI having less than perfect visibility would be great too.  Make it require its own scouts, which with dedicated effort can be located, destroyed, and with appropriate tachyon coverage, prevent the AI from inserting new ones.

[keith.lamothe]

The general idea is for the AI to play fully "smart" on 7 or higher.  After 7 is when it starts ladling on the cheese in the form of increasingly punishing bonuses to wave size, etc (and a few units only present on higher difficulties, but not much of that).

On the AI's visibility, I understand that it would be more interesting that way but I've not been able to think of a way of limited AI visibility that wouldn't do one or more of the following:

1) Make the player's knowledge/exploitation of the mechanic the difference between a decent challenge and cakewalk, or (if the rest of the game's balance were altered to fit that) between a decent challenge and an utterly crushingly doomed struggle.

2) Make the player's proper response to the mechanic require a highly disproportionate (to the fun value) amount of player attention and micro.  Who here liked it when the AI left blobs of cloaked threat behind your front lines?  Now imagine cloaked AI scouts on half or more of your worlds.  Periodically replenished.

3) Be a pain in the rear to code.

[Chthon]

2) Make the player's proper response to the mechanic require a highly disproportionate (to the fun value) amount of player attention and micro.  Who here liked it when the AI left blobs of cloaked threat behind your front lines?  Now imagine cloaked AI scouts on half or more of your worlds.  Periodically replenished.

I would like to see them try.  My border worlds always have military commands and/or anti-spies.  Mk III if I can manage it.  If I use Mk II or I then I make sure it can tachyon at least the important wormholes and have other tachyon and guns aimed at unimportant wormholes.

[Toranth]

2) Make the player's proper response to the mechanic require a highly disproportionate (to the fun value) amount of player attention and micro.  Who here liked it when the AI left blobs of cloaked threat behind your front lines?  Now imagine cloaked AI scouts on half or more of your worlds.  Periodically replenished.

I would like to see them try.  My border worlds always have military commands and/or anti-spies.  Mk III if I can manage it.  If I use Mk II or I then I make sure it can tachyon at least the important wormholes and have other tachyon and guns aimed at unimportant wormholes.

Of course, other than those Military command stations, the human player is extremely limited in the number of Tachyon supplying options.  That's been one of the issues with letting the AI truly take advantage of Cloaking.

Personally, I'd love to see cloaking upgraded - for both sides.  For humans, make it so that cloaking only gives a unit count, not details.  And for the AI, make it so that cloaked units Strength is slowly forgotten.  Cloaked attackers wouldn't put worlds on alert or trigger Raid Engines, etc.