AI War Beta 7.025-7.028 "Extermination Protocol MkI" Released!

[Toranth]

That would result in:

26,000 * 2 (count) * 4.5 (Diff 9) *  2.1 (Intensity 10) = 491,400; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 198 nemesis per exo... wait, you said 680 total for the current math, did you mean 340 in each exo and thus 680 total?  Or 680 in each exo, for a total spawn of 1,360 (good grief) ?

680 total, 340 from each AI.  Assuming I'm reading it right, the logs take the count listed after the exo-price purchase, and divide by two to get the spawn for each AI.

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, right, the line is "championsPerExo = ( ( adjustedExoBudget / theoreticalExoCostPerChampion ) / 2 ).IntValue = ", so adjustedExoBudget is for the total, not just for the one.

I should not be trusted with math, you see


So to continue:

26,000 * 2 (count) * 4.5 (Diff 9) *  2.1 (Intensity 10) = 491,400; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 198 nemesis frigates total.

Switching to intensity 5:
26,000 * 2 (count) * 4.5 (Diff 9) *  1.05 (Intensity 5) = 245,700; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 99 nemesis frigates total.

Switching to 1 champ:
26,000 * 1 (count) * 4.5 (Diff 9) *  1.05 (Intensity 5) = 122,850; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 49 nemesis frigates total.

Switching to diff 7:
26,000 * 1 (count) * 1 (Diff 7) *  1.05 (Intensity 5) = 27,300; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 11 nemesis frigates total.  So kind of anemic (relatively speaking, at least), but probably not inappropriate for the first exo on diff 7.  And 11 nemesis frigates on galaxy-wide-chase logic for one's home command station would still be enough to provide a wake-up call to a new-ish player just futzing around with a champ for the first time.


Anyway, thoughts on those numbers?


By the way, if you think it would help I can have it mix in the nemesis DD, CA, and BB sizes too, at the exo-point equivalents of their heroic-wave costs.  But I'm guessing those would be even worse than the frigates in terms of total pain, so wanted to get this in the ballpark with just the FF nemesis units first.

[Arc-3N-4B]

Ah yes, champion exos. Ran into my first one (2 champs, nemesis response set to 2/10), wouldn't have been dangerous if it didn't spawn on the furthest edge of the galaxy on a What Memo-type game (80 planets, 7/7, got golems/botnet/spirecraft easy to try the new ones out)...when I was tanking on my homeworld. They killed half of the command stations on the way there (thank god for mil 3's HP) and died to my defenses on the homeworld.

On a side note, among other things, I haven't spotted a single ARS in that game, and I've scouted 40 (?) planets out of 80.

The AI types are AI 1: Everything/Vengeful (with hybrids 4 or 5 and advanced hybrids 7), AI 2: Special Forces Captain/Exotic (with hunter 6), minor factions are dyson 6 (because advanced hybrids), trader (who STILL hasn't shown up on our homeworld), spirecraft/golem/botnet easy (because we wanted to try them out. I love the new siege towers and translocators).

Also, AI 1 (the Everything AI) is in fact getting protector starships. No modules, thankfully. I think protectors can build shields, right? If so, maybe let them have a shield, at least.

Also, I'm spotting EMP guardians for AI 2. I thought they only showed up on 8/8 and up?

Also also, there totally should be a Nuke Guardian on diff 10, not eligible for exo-waves of course.

Also also also that special forces HURTS. Thank god I haven't seen a SF alarm.

And last but not least I was up til 4:00AM playing that game...

EDIT: On a side note, the champion planetary tachyon ability you can get will decloak everything...including subspace signals from Fallen Spire, oddly enough. (Found this out in our previous game, at least they can't be destroyed, to my knowledge)

[Toranth]

So to continue:

26,000 * 2 (count) * 4.5 (Diff 9) *  2.1 (Intensity 10) = 491,400; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 198 nemesis frigates total.

Switching to intensity 5:
26,000 * 2 (count) * 4.5 (Diff 9) *  1.05 (Intensity 5) = 245,700; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 99 nemesis frigates total.

Switching to 1 champ:
26,000 * 1 (count) * 4.5 (Diff 9) *  1.05 (Intensity 5) = 122,850; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 49 nemesis frigates total.

Switching to diff 7:
26,000 * 1 (count) * 1 (Diff 7) *  1.05 (Intensity 5) = 27,300; @ 2480 per-each that's ~= 11 nemesis frigates total.  So kind of anemic (relatively speaking, at least), but probably not inappropriate for the first exo on diff 7.  And 11 nemesis frigates on galaxy-wide-chase logic for one's home command station would still be enough to provide a wake-up call to a new-ish player just futzing around with a champ for the first time.


Anyway, thoughts on those numbers?

That sounds pretty good.  That actually roughly matches up with what I see for the Golem/Spirecraft - Hard Exowave strength.  The log for my last Diff 9, Intensity 4 game produced an Exo with 117,000 budget.  That'd match with the ~49 Nemesis frigates here (122,000 budget).
The one thing that concerns me is how much of an impact the Trader Goodies had - unfortunately I can't think of a way to balance for that.

By the way, if you think it would help I can have it mix in the nemesis DD, CA, and BB sizes too, at the exo-point equivalents of their heroic-wave costs.  But I'm guessing those would be even worse than the frigates in terms of total pain, so wanted to get this in the ballpark with just the FF nemesis units first.

I certainly think it'd make it much more 'exciting', and I'd be in favor of it in general.  The Spire Dreadnaughts in Spire Hammer waves certainly taught me some fear, and it'd be fun to spread that around a bit.
The modules could make balancing a lot more complicated here, though.  Just as a comparison, a weapon-focused layout BB will usually do about 10 times as much damage as an equivalent layout Frigate, but only have 2-3 times the HP.  A shield-heavy BB will have 5 times the HP, but only do 3-4 times the damage.


PS:  Found a reproducible bug:  The Nemesis Exowave "Synchronizing with CPA" thing?  If you save your game during that part, then reload, the Exowave resumes charging at the normal rate.  I've got saves with examples, if you need them.

[keith.lamothe]

The one thing that concerns me is how much of an impact the Trader Goodies had - unfortunately I can't think of a way to balance for that.

Yea, I think for some time our old friend the ZTraitor has been throwing a wrench into the balancing process.  Chokepoints with Trader Toys are _much_ nastier than chokepoints without.  The AI gets some nastiness from it too, but overall the difference in "can the human survive/win?" is very much in the player's favor.  Which isn't necessarily a problem as some factions are player-slanted, but this seems a bit far over.  Especially when facing forcefield-heavy threats like nemesis champs and hybrids.

So it'd be nice if we could address the trader-chokepoint thing somehow.  I'm considering having any purchase (human or AI) make it instantly warp to another random planet, so that you have a harder time stacking all the toys on one planet.  But that might be very frustrating to some players who are used to the way it's been.

So I think there's probably more mileage to be had from addressing the individual trader toys.

For the Planetary Armor Inhibitor, which makes it _massively_ easier to actually reduce the offensive power of an incoming nemesis-ball (because you generally have to punch through much more than just one nemesis's shields before you can actually kill even a single one of them), I'm thinking it would be good to change "completely shuts down all enemy forcefields" to "makes all enemy forcefields take double damage".  That way it definitely helps against the nemesis units, but you still have to contend with shield-overlap.

But on the other side, the Planetary Armor Booster could be given "makes all friendly forcefields take half damage", which would give the station FF net more time (though that could make AI ones on certain planets a real pain).

PS:  Found a reproducible bug:  The Nemesis Exowave "Synchronizing with CPA" thing?  If you save your game during that part, then reload, the Exowave resumes charging at the normal rate.  I've got saves with examples, if you need them.

Got it for 7.028, thanks.  The synchronize-time was being saved with the broken-golems data, and that wasn't being saved if broken-golems wasn't on.  Now it will just always save all faction and plot data, since it's overall quite small.  Will probably get 7.028 out tomorrow morning with those most recently discussed nemesis exo math changes.  Possibly some hacking ones too, if I can figure out what the next step is.

[Kahuna]

"makes all friendly forcefields take half damage"

Pretty plzz

[keith.lamothe]

"makes all friendly forcefields take half damage"

Pretty plzz

I bet it would make those Carriers SadPanda.

[Fleet Unity]

So it'd be nice if we could address the trader-chokepoint thing somehow.  I'm considering having any purchase (human or AI) make it instantly warp to another random planet, so that you have a harder time stacking all the toys on one planet.  But that might be very frustrating to some players who are used to the way it's been."

Yeah I know I will not enjoy that if you cannot pick where you want them to build it, that just seems pointless and if you do that please make it warp to one of your own planets not to an AI one for what you build. Or to balance it why not just make them cost more metal or make the AI buy more from them I know its only a 1% chance for them or something. I know they cost a lot now and take a long time to build, but its been this way for a long time I know the trader items are powerful but I thought that was the point of them and on big maps they rarely seem to ever come to your planets or maybe its just me.

[Draco18s]

I keep the trader off these days.  Not because I don't like it, but because it just feels cheesy.  Of the few toys worth building, they are worth ten times as much.  And the metal cost is actually pretty irrelevant for those toys  Ion cannons are overpriced, superfort is probably about right, radar damper 1 is worthless while 2 is amazing.  Armor inhibitor/boosters are omg-amazing.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, "Zenith Cheese Merchant" might be more accurate.

[Fleet Unity]

I assume "cheesy" means to easy right? What I do not understand and maybe I just do not know how to play AI War but I have been seeing this term a lot lately, I guess what I do not understand is this I think the AI is pretty powerful on difficulty 7 and even with just two players they can seem to over run a heavily defended system with or with out the Zenith trader items. I guess my real question is this it seems that a lot of changes are to making the AI more powerful but making the humans items you can build weaker I know you need balance in the game but it seems that things that worked well for a long time is considered too easy or too over powered now like I said maybe I do not know how to play AI War in the depth others can seem to play I guess I am more a casual player myself or maybe I am just not understating the strategy of AI War but anyway "Cheesy" means over powered right?

[Draco18s]

I think the AI is pretty powerful on difficulty 7 and even with just two players they can seem to over run a heavily defended system with or with out the Zenith trader items.

Depends on the options you have on and your playstyle.  I don't turn the Spire quest on, I don't turn on trains, I tend to keep golems and asteroids on "easy" (because I don't like the downsides of medium and hard).  Even on easy I tend not to use asteroids much, though with the recent buffs that'll probably change.

You should turn off the trader and leave everything else you do alone, and try the What Memo? challenge.  Me, with all the lobby options down at "off" I got up to 35 planets (with 1 other human ally) before the AI steamrolled through our stuff.  We recovered, but the game's been on hold for a while.

[keith.lamothe]

I assume "cheesy" means to easy right? What I do not understand and maybe I just do not know how to play AI War but I have been seeing this term a lot lately, I guess what I do not understand is this I think the AI is pretty powerful on difficulty 7 and even with just two players they can seem to over run a heavily defended system with or with out the Zenith trader items. I guess my real question is this it seems that a lot of changes are to making the AI more powerful but making the humans items you can build weaker I know you need balance in the game but it seems that things that worked well for a long time is considered too easy or too over powered now like I said maybe I do not know how to play AI War in the dept others can seem to play I guess I am more a casual player myself or maybe I am just not understating the strategy of AI War but anyway "Cheesy" means over powered right?

Cheese generally means "human players getting away with more than they should be able to", yes.  Sometimes it's because something is OP, sometimes it's because of a bug that prevents the AI from reacting properly, etc.

Some mild forms of cheese (kiting like crazy with a ball of Riot Starships, Enclave Starships, Mobile Space Docks, Protector Starships, and Shield Bearers, for instance) are fine.  That's the player using units that are individually reasonably balanced (arguably, at least, some of those may still be somewhat OP) and combining it with good tactics to achieve remarkable kill-to-loss ratios.  Which, naturally, is the only way to win when you're massively outnumbered and outgunned, as the marketing text goes.

In general a lot of recent changes have been aimed at making the game harder, yes.  This is largely due to a lot of somewhat-less-recent changes making the game easier (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not).  And partly due to players just finding more things that work that have actually been there for a while.

But I try to leave Diff 7 mostly untouched in terms of numeric balance, so that it can be won without cheese and without superweapons by a relatively new player with some strategy game experience.  Doesn't mean they'll win on their first try, of course.

[Fleet Unity]

Ok thanks for answering I just saw the term "Cheesy" a lot and was not sure what that term was but for kiting that is when your ships pull away I guess.

[Fleet Unity]

I think the AI is pretty powerful on difficulty 7 and even with just two players they can seem to over run a heavily defended system with or with out the Zenith trader items.

Depends on the options you have on and your playstyle.  I don't turn the Spire quest on, I don't turn on trains, I tend to keep golems and asteroids on "easy" (because I don't like the downsides of medium and hard).  Even on easy I tend not to use asteroids much, though with the recent buffs that'll probably change.

You should turn off the trader and leave everything else you do alone, and try the What Memo? challenge.  Me, with all the lobby options down at "off" I got up to 35 planets (with 1 other human ally) before the AI steamrolled through our stuff.  We recovered, but the game's been on hold for a while.

Ok yes I should try that sometime I usually play on 80 to 120 planet maps 120 if I or my team what a longer game I also usually play on epic speed as I do like more time to think. For the Golems or Spirecraft I usually only build a few for defense of a planet and do not take them with my main fleet as I rather use them for defense I guess I am more of a turtle player I attack plants yes and use golems for that but I usually like to use them for defense and never on their own but like you said with the recent buffs I will use them more myself. I just like to have an option to build them if I need them.