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

[ZaneWolfe]

Ok, here's what's going on:

1) Counterattack posts only "scan" from planets where the AI has a unit with "warp-gate-wave" or "warp-gate-full".  Generally this just means either Warp Gates or Warp Gate Guardians.  Though I think AI Eyes also count, they did at one point at least (iirc).

2) If a counterattack post literally cannot find ANY target within range of all planets it can "scan" from, it just picks a random planet out of the total set.

3) In the save you posted there, an awful lot of warp gates have apparently had very unfortunate accidents.  Thus, there's just nowhere for the counterattack post to reach, so it goes random.

If I colonize the neutral "FA Veramente Schifo" planet in the bottom-left quadrant, and then pop one of those counter attack posts, the counter wave goes there.

In other words it's working as designed, you've just left it no valid targets so it's picking invalid ones

However, the change to Counter Attack posts was supposed to cause them to spawn in AI space if they have no valid human worlds, which makes them spawn as threatfleet. I know because 90% of them actually do just that, spawn in AI space and not in my backyard. Its only that rare bug that actually targets a random human world, and it ALWAYS targets deep in my territory.

This is the patch note, from 6.013

In honor of tying for second in the poll, Counterattack guard posts:
Can no longer just send a wave anywhere, the target must be within X hops of a warp gate, where X is the mark level of the counterattack guard post in question.
Wave timer down from 14 minutes => 10 minutes, due to player complaints that it was annoying to have to wait that long.

If you check, the save, I currently have 6 other Warp Counter Attacks inbound, all which are going to a random AI world/somewhere else besides my worlds. I've not had the time to test to see if its only because so many other Counter Attacks are inbound, but is it possible that is the case? Or is it just supposed to pick a random world, which could be ANYWHERE, Neutral, AI, or Human? So, given that the AI tends to have more territory, that's why it is appearing to be just going to AI worlds if it doesn't have a valid Human world to normally target?


Edit Unrelated To The Above

Spirecraft Shieldbearer health from 14M*mk => 25M*mk.
Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.

I see these things every freaking exo past early game.... THANKS FAULTY. If I may suggest a minor buff to Botnet to go with this, give it partial shield immunity, allowing it to fire at things that are under shields. Like the Zenith Devastator can. Least then my new Super Botnet will help make a dent in those exos that always seem to have Spirecraft Shields for cover.

[Kahuna]

All golems.. especially Botnet golem.. except Artillery, Cursed and Hive golems are absolutely useless against exos and will die in about  2 seconds.

[TechSY730]

Also if I remember correctly all of the new sub commander guard posts have many times more health than normal guard posts. They need to be nerfed so they're at the same level with the old guard posts. Imo the point of the sub commanders is to give the ai more TOOLS not just power. If it was all about ""fun!"" sub commander planets could as well be core planets and have reserves protecting them.

I have a feeling that subcommander planets in general sort of need nerfing.
Right now, many of them feel almost as nasty as what you would expect out of an AI core planet, which is probably taking it too far.

EDIT:
I agree that the subcommanders should just be about specialized rules about how things are to be placed and what the AI chooses, but the kinds of things it gets to choose from are still normally balanced stuff (except maybe for more instances of them, eg, a slightly higher than what would normally of been allowed guard post count)

EDIT2:
Also, with many of the new guard posts in Vengence of the Machine, it would be nice if they could be made balanced to the level of normal guard posts, and be seeded normally, though with a reduced chance compared to the specialized placement logic of the subcommanders (due to many of the new ones having an unusual nature)

EDIT3:
I guess I should clarify. IMO, what I proposed in this post seems like it would result in situations that are more fun (legitimate fun). Other than the making the AI smarter and more cunning, IMHO, we have finally reached the point where the base game (what is present in every game, instead of minor factions or whatnot) has enough "fun!" (the semi-sarcastic kind referring to almost to full blown unfairness). In fact, as of the 5th expansion even, the base game had reached its "saturation point" of "fun!". Subcommanders in their current form, IMHO, push it one step beyond reasonable.
Granted, most of those ""fun!" points" have been "spent" on core worlds and ESPECIALLY AI homeworlds, but that is another discussion (though "fixing" this would open up a lot of potential in the rest of the game).

Anyways, long story short, there is enough "super power" tools in the AI arsenal that, IMO, does not need subcommanders getting more "extra strength" tools. Tools balanced to normal strength should be enough.

EDIT4:
I lost track of what EDIT3 was originally supposed to be for.
EDIT3 was supposed to be saying "This is all IMO".

[Kahuna]

"This is all IMO".

It's also true.

[keith.lamothe]

Spirecraft Shieldbearer health from 14M*mk => 25M*mk.
Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.

I see these things every freaking exo past early game.... THANKS FAULTY.

And people say this game has no PVP.

[Draco18s]

All golems.. especially Botnet golem.. except Artillery, Cursed and Hive golems are absolutely useless against exos and will die in about  2 seconds.

And this is why I don't play exowave golems.

Or exowave spirecraft, for similar reasons.

Playing exowave both is basically "send me two exowaves, plz" while none of the tools you get for that punishment actually help you deal with it.

[Kahuna]

if I remember correctly all of the new sub commander guard posts have many times more health than normal guard posts.

I did not remember correctly. They're just OP in general.

[keith.lamothe]

if I remember correctly all of the new sub commander guard posts have many times more health than normal guard posts.

I did not remember correctly. They're just OP in general.

They make Super Cat look like this?

[Histidine]

It occurred to me that Cargo Train packages are going to be much nastier with the buffed golems.

Of course the only winning move was already not to play with trains anyway, so there's no real change there.

[Kahuna]

All golems.. especially Botnet golem.. except Artillery, Cursed and Hive golems are absolutely useless against exos and will die in about  2 seconds.

And this is why I don't play exowave golems.

This is why it would be same for me if golems or spirecraft didn't exist at all.
If I play on Hard I get Exos.
I don't like Medium.
And Easy is cheese and too easy.

Possible solutions:
-Make Exos NOT prioritize Golems over Home Command Station or Command Stations in general.
-Remove or nerf (a lot) all Implosion stuff.

[keith.lamothe]

New one

[Kahuna]

if I remember correctly all of the new sub commander guard posts have many times more health than normal guard posts.

I did not remember correctly. They're just OP in general.

They make Super Cat look like this?

Yep ):
set /A me=SadPanda

[Draco18s]

This is why it would be same for me if golems or spirecraft didn't exist at all.
If I play on Hard I get Exos.
I don't like Medium.
And Easy is cheese and too easy.

Possible solutions:
-Make Exos NOT prioritize Golems over Home Command Station or Command Stations in general.
-Remove or nerf (a lot) all Implosion stuff.

I play on Easy spirecraft and Medium golems, IIRC.
I would also suggest:
-using a single exo-timer no matter how many exo triggering options are involved, more options just means the timer ticks faster.
 - - this has the effect of not slamming the player with an effective double-size exo which is more than twice as difficult to fend off
 - - exception: shard recovery, because that's not on a timer.  May be worth preventing/delaying other exos during that time however.

Edit:
Oh, another idea.
Take the shard exo logic and apply it to golem activation!
Not sure how to apply that to spirecraft (every 5 asteroids? 10? better asteroids count as more than 1 towards this?) but for golems it would work wonderfully, I think.

[keith.lamothe]

I would also suggest:
-using a single exo-timer no matter how many exo triggering options are involved, more options just means the timer ticks faster.
 - - this has the effect of not slamming the player with an effective double-size exo which is more than twice as difficult to fend off

But then you're left with either:

1) The exos are still reasonably far apart, and the individual attack strength you face from Golems+Spirecraft is the same as if you just had one of them, thus being easier than just having one of them.
or
2) The exos are coming so close together that you can't mount reasonable offensive operations without an exo landing during them.

Neither strikes me as desirable.

[Draco18s]

1) The exos are still reasonably far apart, and the individual attack strength you face from Golems+Spirecraft is the same as if you just had one of them, thus being easier than just having one of them.
or
2) The exos are coming so close together that you can't mount reasonable offensive operations without an exo landing during them.

See the edited idea.

Per these:
I already feel that the exos (especially with as large as they are) are coming so close together that I can't mount reasonable offensive operations.  Which is why I turned them off.  "Alright, I have a fleet, lets go murd--" exowave announced "--er that exowave.  And the second one that I know is only 2 minutes behind it."  Exowaves murdered.  "And now I have no fleet, lets refleet." One refleet later.  "Alright, I have a fleet, lets go murder--" exowave announced.  I was never able to advance beyond holding a handful of planets because anything I wanted to do required that an exowave be at least 30 minutes out, which was never the case.  By the time I had enough ships to actually DO anything an exo was only 10 minutes away, which was enough to build whatever I didn't already have built and go deal with the exo.

Twice as often at half (effective) strength would actually be just strait up more reasonable.  Because I wouldn't be sacrificing my entire fleet dealing with it,* I'd actually have units left over that weren't freshly minted.  So either, I can split my fleet into halves, or I can go on a raiding party only a few minutes post-exo.

*Last time I played with exowaves it took 135% of my total fleet strength to deal with.  Yes, over 100% because as things died I was building new things and I'd need those, they'd get sent in, and also die.  Often it was the bare scraps of a fleet manufactured in the final minutes that mopped up that One Last Starship from the exo.