AI War Beta 7.032-7.033 "Peaceful Interlude" Released!

[PokerChen]

On the topic of mark IV / V balance, from a person who hasn't played with them in this patch, what about giving players free access to mark IVs if they have researched mark IIIs and also capture a corresponding mark V controller? It's not dissimilar to the normal fleet-ship unlocks...

[tadrinth]

It's dissimilar in that you'd have to capture a particular controller; the factory grants mark IV of *all* your fleet ships.

It also means you only get the full benefit of a Core Turret Controller if you've unlocked Mark I-III of the same turret, in which case you may very well not need Mark IV of that turret.

It also means that to get Mark IV of a turret that you desperately need more of, you have to go find the associated Core Turret Controller, and if it was easily acquired, you probably would have captured or hacked it already. 

Finally, it would mean you only get Mark IV turrets if you have Vengeance of the Machine turned on.

Neat idea, but doesn't seem ideal in practice.

[tadrinth]

Oddly, I've never had a champion get to level 40.

There's two ways to get high level champions.  One is to do a very large map and enable repeat nebulas via chat command.  This changes it so that once you've done all 9 nebula missions, later nebulas will have repeats instead of just being empty.

The other way is to do nebulas extremely fast, to maximize the time bonus granted.  With eight champions in Zenith hulls with missiles and/or bomber drone bays, you can take out starbases ridiculously fast, since the missiles and bomber drones have large bonuses vs ultra-heavy.  This results in very large XP bonuses.  I have two nebula left and I think I just hit level 44. 

[Tridus]

I only ever play with one champion, so speed bonuses don't tend to happen. Didn't know about duplicate scenarios, but it seems like putting in a special command shouldn't be necessary if you're supposed to get to that level in normal play?

Maybe that's why alt progress feels weird to me. With the way I was using champions, levels were pretty slow. Comparatively alt progress is a lot faster. Once the unlocks aren't quite so slow in comparison to get, it'll probably feel really good. (In my current alt progress game, I have like 12 points with nothing to spend them on until I can get some more unlocks.)

[MaxAstro]

Something is borked with the Dyson Sphere spawns.  I freed the sphere and have a friendly planet within 2 hops, so the Dyson spawns attempt to head over to my planets.  As soon as they get onto the AI planet between the Sphere and my planet, their health starts dropping, and they die in seconds.

Must have been introduced in 7.032 or 7.033, I think, they were merrily patrolling my systems before I updated.

Save attached.

I wonder: Were rates of self-atrophy reduced when the "divide by 100" patch hit?  IIRC, Dyson Gatlings slowly lose health in AI territory as a balancing factor... could it be that they are losing health 100x too fast?  XD

[Draco18s]

I wonder: Were rates of self-atrophy reduced when the "divide by 100" patch hit?  IIRC, Dyson Gatlings slowly lose health in AI territory as a balancing factor... could it be that they are losing health 100x too fast?  XD

I believe self-attrition and self-repair is already based on a timer, not specific hitpoint counts.

[MaxAstro]

Yeah, I just tested with Younglings and those are working fine.

Still, it seems a likely explanation; it could be that ships that only self-attrition in certain circumstances use a different mechanic than ships that have self-attrition "baked-in" to their stats.

At the very least, I can confirm that no form of Dyson Gatling has the self-attrition ability that younglings have.

[tadrinth]

I started a game vs a Neinzul Youngster and the first wave was mostly regular ships with only a couple of Younglings.  It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the last time I fought a neinzul youngster the waves were entirely younglings and starships.  I'll try to do some testing when I get home to see if it's just the first wave or all waves.  If I had to guess, I would think the Youngster got changed to add younglings to waves as a bonus (like Heroic adds champions) rather than converting most waves entirely to younglings. Or I accidentally turned on schizo waves, but I don't think I did, and the Youngster behavior should override that anyway, I would think.

[keith.lamothe]

On the Dyson thing I'm sure it's just that the gatling's self-attrit wasn't adjusted with the scaling.  Normally that's done by timer instead of by actual health value, but both are possible from within the code.

I started a game vs a Neinzul Youngster and the first wave was mostly regular ships with only a couple of Younglings.  It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the last time I fought a neinzul youngster the waves were entirely younglings and starships.  I'll try to do some testing when I get home to see if it's just the first wave or all waves.

Very odd, thanks for the report.  Wave logs may help the diagnosis.

If I had to guess, I would think the Youngster got changed to add younglings to waves as a bonus (like Heroic adds champions) rather than converting most waves entirely to younglings.

I can tell you it's not that specific error

Or I accidentally turned on schizo waves, but I don't think I did, and the Youngster behavior should override that anyway, I would think.

Youngster actually forces Schizo, which is why there's generally multiple youngling types in one of its waves.
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[tadrinth]

Okay, that took a few tries to repro. Most of the time, it sends all-youngster waves.  Occasionally it does this instead though:

percentChanceParasiteWave (from AI type) = 0.03
percentChanceBomberWave (from AI type) = 0.06
percentChanceStealthWave (from AI type) = 0.06
= actually chosen WaveType: Parasite

Parasite waves try to spend 100% of the strength budget on types from the Parasite group
* called PickUnitsForWave with:  (... an empty list, how cute)
Some strength budget remaining from previous pick phases (if any), so spend what remains on types from the Normal group

It just happened to do that on the very first wave last game.  Looks like it tries to do a special wave, but fails because there aren't any such units, so it falls back to doing a regular, non-youngster schizo wave.  Confusing if you're not expecting it, but reasonable. 

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, gotcha.  Yea, I should just have it not do those rolls for that AI type.

[tadrinth]

Well, the Youngster description does say it "often" sends all-youngling waves, so it isn't totally unreasonable.   I could see just skipping the rolls where the AI has none of the appropriate unit type, as part of the basic wave logic.  The occasional all-bomber wave keeps things interesting. 

Looking at the logs, the Youngster doesn't get Shrikes, seems like it should; it gets Fireflies if the appropriate expansion is enabled. 

[relmz32]

So upon starting a new game with 7.033,  there are some graphical glitches with the percentage health of low hp units.
Scouts mk 1 read as 30%/30% , mk2 read 60%/60%, Full hp mk 1 Space Planes read 116%/116%

[tadrinth]

Any reason Spirecraft Scouts are not immune to forcefields?  Makes them unable to sneak past through Spire Shield Guard posts covering wormholes.  This might only really happen with Bouncer Rude Gesture planets, though. 

I think the Spirecraft map filter still lists Translocators as Ions, btw. 

[TechSY730]

Just FYI, allied resistance fighters will go for guard posts even if the guard post belongs to a vengeful AI (mantis link will be added later)