AI War Beta 7.045 "Beltsander of Worlds MkII" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one is more polish work for the new expansion, and also for the rest of the game.

- Fallen Spire has been substantially rebalanced in favor of powerful capital ships (on the human side) and powerful FS exos (on the AI side), and away from its naturally high AIP causing runaway wave sizes (due to reinforcement redirection).

- The Galaxy Map Filters have been reorganized and improved somewhat; more work needed there but it's a start.

- And a ton of miscellaneous stuff, notes linked above for the curious.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

[TechSY730]

A very nice looking release. Really starting to clean up some long standing annoyances.

For those of you who were wondering about this, this update introduces the mechanic of implosion resistance (I guess only taking a percent of the damage, which is already a percent, but I don't really know). Currently only the fallen spire stuff has it, but the release notes do note that giving it to other superweapons is a possibility if balance analysis seems to point to needing it.

[orzelek]

I think that exodian blade could use that resistance - implosion guardians are a quick death and they outrange it.

I retested the save that was crashing after the win - it can be won now thanks to force field ignore on blade and it doesn't hang the game.

[Bognor]

ROFL@ me being credited (among others) for the Zenith Reprocessor change when all I did was oppose it 

[keith.lamothe]

ROFL@ me being credited (among others) for the Zenith Reprocessor change when all I did was oppose it 

Whoops, haha.  Just fixed that.  I do go back through discussions to build those lists and I do try to actually pay attention to the words, but slips are inevitable   Always happy to correct errors or omissions with those.

[Eternaly_Lost]

The FS exos during the construction and activation of the transceiver are no longer capped at a certain point (other than for arithmetic safety, but that would be... pretty high).

Challenge accepted. 16 Homeworld 10/10 Fallen Spire, here I come.

I think I can already hear my CPU crying for mercy.

[keith.lamothe]

I think I can already hear my CPU crying for mercy.

I suspect it gave up trying that long ago

For reference, the old cap was basically the number of cities * 60k plus 60k for the capital.  The new cap (during the transceiver thing) is around 2 million (on the value before it's actually spent, and in between it's scaled up for FS intensity, number of homeworlds).  So if you had a ton of cities before this may only be a doubling or so.

[Kahuna]

Zenith mirrors in carriers now damage according to their "takes 10 times damage from everything" rule. Normally it ignores the contained unit's vulnerabilities but since this one applies to literally all incoming damage and otherwise they're 10 times harder to kill than they're supposed to be...

What's the point of Zenith Mirrors taking 10x more damage btw? Why can't their health just be reduced by health/10?

[keith.lamothe]

Zenith mirrors in carriers now damage according to their "takes 10 times damage from everything" rule. Normally it ignores the contained unit's vulnerabilities but since this one applies to literally all incoming damage and otherwise they're 10 times harder to kill than they're supposed to be...

What's the point of Zenith Mirrors taking 10x more damage btw? Why can't their health just be reduced by health/10?

The *10 makes the reflected shots more powerful.

We could have just make reflected shots do *10 damage, but that would have been more complex in the code.

[Zincat]

Uhm, I am a relatively inexperienced player but... after this patch, the strength of the exowave for building cities seems to be too much for what I have to defend with. Unless I make liberal use of warheads, I can't seem to survive at all building the third city.

More details here
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15918.msg176588.html#msg176588

[keith.lamothe]

Uhm, I am a relatively inexperienced player but... after this patch, the strength of the exowave for building cities seems to be too much for what I have to defend with. Unless I make liberal use of warheads, I can't seem to survive at all building the third city.

More details here
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15918.msg176588.html#msg176588

Responded there.  Thanks

[The Hunter]

With the buff of FS ships, i think Spire Hammer might need point value fine-tuning again.

[keith.lamothe]

With the buff of FS ships, i think Spire Hammer might need point value fine-tuning again.

I did roughly triple the point values that spire hammer spends for them.  They might need more than that (3x hp + 3x attack != 3x utility) but it shouldn't be massively off.

[ZaneWolfe]

Now when reinforcements would redirect strength to waves for being over 200 AIP, 20% of that strength is actually retained for reinforcements per completed spire city hub (to a max of 100% at 5 cities). Balance-wise this is due to FS games being intended to get into the 2000+ AIP range, without the normal waves becoming utterly cataclysmic forces of doom. Thematically, it makes sense that the AI would give more thought to its defenses in the face of a human-spire alliance.

QUESTION! Does this, and if so where, cap out anymore Keith? Because even in FS games, the pre-cap reinforcements could get crazy. As I recall, it was for FS games that the 200 AIP factors into reinforcement cap was introduced. Admittedly I can't recall when it starts to get really nuts anymore, but I still remember it doing so.

[keith.lamothe]

Now when reinforcements would redirect strength to waves for being over 200 AIP, 20% of that strength is actually retained for reinforcements per completed spire city hub (to a max of 100% at 5 cities). Balance-wise this is due to FS games being intended to get into the 2000+ AIP range, without the normal waves becoming utterly cataclysmic forces of doom. Thematically, it makes sense that the AI would give more thought to its defenses in the face of a human-spire alliance.

QUESTION! Does this, and if so where, cap out anymore Keith? Because even in FS games, the pre-cap reinforcements could get crazy. As I recall, it was for FS games that the 200 AIP factors into reinforcement cap was introduced. Admittedly I can't recall when it starts to get really nuts anymore, but I still remember it doing so.

I didn't add any capping behavior, no.

I fully expect the reinforcements to go pretty nuts, but I think once you've got a full 5-city fleet (and thus reinforcements have only just started getting their full 100% effect from high AIP) that your capital fleet should be able to cleave through any AI planet, however reinforced (bear in mind that there's a pop cap for planet reinforcements), like a hot knife through butter.

If the special forces or strategic reserve show up that could be like a hot knife finding an anvil in the middle of the butter, but avoiding/dealing-with that is left as an exercise for the reader