AI War Game Manual, Ver 1.03

[Revenantus]

This manual is no longer available, and is highly outdated at this point

Here you can download the AI War: Fleet Command Game Manual

Constructive criticism of all aspects, no matter how minor, of the manual is greatly encouraged. I will not be offended by any such comments, so please say whatever you feel is necessary to get your point across. I have every desire to make the manual as useful as I possibly can, and your feedback will be extremely valuable in helping me to do that.

Please note that the manual is NOT intended as a substitute for the Intermediate Tutorial.

I am especially interested in hearing if there are any sections that you feel may require a more in-depth explanation, or if there are any important pieces of information that have been omitted from the manual. Please be aware however, that many sections intentionally do not cover every single aspect and nuance of the game but rather focus on the key elements, for reasons of clarity and brevity.

This is a living document, and so there will be periodic updates to provide more detailed information, and to clarify existing information, based on player feedback.

Enjoy!

[darke]

Page 8 AI Types: Might want to mention something about how the harder the AI difficulty level, the more tactics each AI is granted the ability to potentially use. Either that or have it later on Pg21's difficulty section. Otherwise people will probably assume it's simply a case of the AI given more knowledge of the player so it can play better or something.

Page 12 Unit Selection: Should be forced to be at the top of Pg13 so the tips and notes are with the main text. Also this will push the BUILDING UNITS stuff down to the next page so it's above the menu it's describing. There's plenty of space on Pg14 for things to flow into. It'll also mean you can get a bit more space around the minimap on Pg12 so the under text looks equally spaced to the text above it.

Pg13 Unit selection filters: "For example, holding N + 1 will result in the selection of only Mark I ships." Might be clearer more explicitly said "For example, holding N + 1 whilst clicking and dragging will result in the selection of only Mark I ships." or similar (minus italics of course).

Pg13: "Orders can be given to the currently selected units." Better as: "Orders can only be given to the currently selected units." (Yes, I'm pedantic. )

Pg13: "Note: You cannot place Move and Attack orders in the same queue" That sounds geek-speaky. "Note: You cannot mix Move and Attack orders in the same queue. Placing an attack order will cancel all movement orders queued up, and vise versa." Or something. This seems to be a common problem people in the forum have tripped over, so more words to be more explicit never hurts.

Pg13: Should be a note at end of UNIT ORDERS section pointing towards the the advanced movement orders on page 28.

Pg14: "The Turret Tab (Turret): Stationary ships for defending your planets. This tab includes units such as short range turrets and tractor beam turrets." <- Should mention something about "short range offensive turrets" or something. Otherwise it's not obvious from the description the difference between the defence (mostly defensive defensive) and turret (mostly offensive defensive) tabs.

Pg14 CONSTRUCTORS: Doesn't mention the pause building button on the constructor, just the global one. Lacks a picture with arrows to the single/repeating loop icon and pause button.

All for now, will get around to the other half of the manual when I get more time.

[Kjara]

p19: I might be remembering wrong, but I thought it recently changed that parasites wouldn't put you negative energy wise anymore.

p25: Might want to say something about how cruisers are good against bombers

p26:  More info about the 3 different lines of starships might be useful

p29: Munitions boosters: It should be 4 other units simultaneously rather than 5(one booster is 2x, 4 boosters are 5x, the highest I've seen is 5x).

p:34 The ship selection filters part is unclear imo, I just figured out now that you had to click on a ship type while holding that down.  Before I had always figured it would be a systemwide thing(might just be me, but a little note somewhere around there wouldn't hurt)

[Fiskbit]

Regarding parasites, I believe they still reclaim even if it puts you into negative energy, unfortunately. I very much want this changed so that it doesn't take you negative; I really hope it makes it into an upcoming prerelease.

Furthermore, the current n+ filtering method causes a lot of confusion; I wonder if it should filter the units you currently have selected (as has been suggested before), though I understand that the two have slightly different functionality (the current method allows you to do more, I think). Hm.

[Kjara]

More info that might be useful somewhere is detail on how ai reinforcement works since controlling/understanding it is pretty important.  aka what happens if you kill the warp gate but not the command center, what happens when you kill only the command center, and what happens when you kill both(and special cases like special forces guard posts), what happens when there are no warp gates adjacent to a player, what troop accelerators/captive human settlements do, etc.

I know much of this is covered by tutorials, but having this info easily available without having to review the tutorial would be useful.

[Haagenti]

Perhaps it should have a REALLY introductory section up front on what the actual goal of the game is (right after page 2)

Something like (summarised):

- Humanity has been beaten to its knees: one orbital station around one planet is all that is left
- The AI thinks it has won the war, the remnants of humanity are beneath its contempt
- You have to use this lapse to kill the two AI Core Planets somewhere in the Galaxy
- Beware: your actions and elapsing time will slowly awaken the AI and resistance will stiffen

[Oewyn]

Weren't shield-bearers renamed to forcefield bearers or something?  I haven't played with them for a while.

[Huw]

Sorry, I haven't had time to read it all yet, but I just wanted to say thanks for including me in the credits - that actually means a lot to me.

[Revenantus]

Thanks for the great feedback so far, everyone. I'll have a new version up with many of your suggestions soon. They'll be an extra section on the credits page for everyone who assisted with refining the manual.

Sorry, I haven't had time to read it all yet, but I just wanted to say thanks for including me in the credits - that actually means a lot to me.

You're most welcome, and definitely deserve to be included, as does everyone else who received a credit.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

Nice work on the manual, it looks very professional and is quite comprehensive.  I haven't had a ton of time to read through it, but here are a few minor fixes that stood out to me:

Page 15: The description for the economic tab starts out "Ships useful for growing you economy."

Page 15: The abbreviation for the turret tab is "(Turret)" when it should be "(Tur)" to match the other abbreviations and the screenshot above it.

Page 19: Under the Manufactories heading, the last sentence of the first paragraph reads "metal and crystal manufactorites can available on the Economy Tab on the
Build Menu."

On the contents/bookmarks tree (depending on what PDF reader you use), the Credits are listed as being on page 31 and are in fact linked there the same as the Shortcut Keys Reference (this is not true of the contents pages at the start of the manual, only the navigation tree).

[Revenantus]

0.99 is now available.

Page 8 AI Types: Might want to mention something about how the harder the AI difficulty level, the more tactics each AI is granted the ability to potentially use. Either that or have it later on Pg21's difficulty section. Otherwise people will probably assume it's simply a case of the AI given more knowledge of the player so it can play better or something.

Page 12 Unit Selection: Should be forced to be at the top of Pg13 so the tips and notes are with the main text. Also this will push the BUILDING UNITS stuff down to the next page so it's above the menu it's describing. There's plenty of space on Pg14 for things to flow into. It'll also mean you can get a bit more space around the minimap on Pg12 so the under text looks equally spaced to the text above it.

Pg13 Unit selection filters: "For example, holding N + 1 will result in the selection of only Mark I ships." Might be clearer more explicitly said "For example, holding N + 1 whilst clicking and dragging will result in the selection of only Mark I ships." or similar (minus italics of course).

Pg13: "Orders can be given to the currently selected units." Better as: "Orders can only be given to the currently selected units." (Yes, I'm pedantic. )

Pg13: "Note: You cannot place Move and Attack orders in the same queue" That sounds geek-speaky. "Note: You cannot mix Move and Attack orders in the same queue. Placing an attack order will cancel all movement orders queued up, and vise versa." Or something. This seems to be a common problem people in the forum have tripped over, so more words to be more explicit never hurts.

Good calls.

Pg13: Should be a note at end of UNIT ORDERS section pointing towards the the advanced movement orders on page 28.

Pg14: "The Turret Tab (Turret): Stationary ships for defending your planets. This tab includes units such as short range turrets and tractor beam turrets." <- Should mention something about "short range offensive turrets" or something. Otherwise it's not obvious from the description the difference between the defence (mostly defensive defensive) and turret (mostly offensive defensive) tabs.

Not convinced of these, but I'll bear them in mind.

Pg14 CONSTRUCTORS: Doesn't mention the pause building button on the constructor, just the global one. Lacks a picture with arrows to the single/repeating loop icon and pause button.

Figure added.

Perhaps it should have a REALLY introductory section up front on what the actual goal of the game is (right after page 2)

Something like (summarised):

- Humanity has been beaten to its knees: one orbital station around one planet is all that is left
- The AI thinks it has won the war, the remnants of humanity are beneath its contempt
- You have to use this lapse to kill the two AI Core Planets somewhere in the Galaxy
- Beware: your actions and elapsing time will slowly awaken the AI and resistance will stiffen

To me this is tending towards the territory of the intermediate tutorial, do other players feel that this is something that should be in the manual?

Nice work on the manual, it looks very professional and is quite comprehensive.  I haven't had a ton of time to read through it, but here are a few minor fixes that stood out to me:

Page 15: The description for the economic tab starts out "Ships useful for growing you economy."

Page 15: The abbreviation for the turret tab is "(Turret)" when it should be "(Tur)" to match the other abbreviations and the screenshot above it.

Page 19: Under the Manufactories heading, the last sentence of the first paragraph reads "metal and crystal manufactorites can available on the Economy Tab on the
Build Menu."

On the contents/bookmarks tree (depending on what PDF reader you use), the Credits are listed as being on page 31 and are in fact linked there the same as the Shortcut Keys Reference (this is not true of the contents pages at the start of the manual, only the navigation tree).

All great catches, especially that one in the resources section, that's just embarrassing.

p19: I might be remembering wrong, but I thought it recently changed that parasites wouldn't put you negative energy wise anymore.

p25: Might want to say something about how cruisers are good against bombers

p26:  More info about the 3 different lines of starships might be useful

p29: Munitions boosters: It should be 4 other units simultaneously rather than 5(one booster is 2x, 4 boosters are 5x, the highest I've seen is 5x).

p:34 The ship selection filters part is unclear imo, I just figured out now that you had to click on a ship type while holding that down.  Before I had always figured it would be a systemwide thing(might just be me, but a little note somewhere around there wouldn't hurt)

The second point is covered under bombers, where it states that they're vulnerable to cruisers, the fourth point should hopefully have been clarified - darke was concerned about that too. Thanks for the catch on the munitions boosting section.

I actually want to avoid covering the specifics on the starships - they're fun to encounter in game and the tooltips provide the necessary info there.

I'm sorry I'm not more active on the forum right now - I have my final exams of the year coming up in a week after which I'll be free to devote myself to AI War again.

On a related note, I've signed my soul over to Adobe for a copy of InDesign. I think I might be running up against the limits of what's practical in LaTeX, and it'll allow me to include some much more sophisticated features in future revisions of the manual.

[Volatar]

Perhaps it should have a REALLY introductory section up front on what the actual goal of the game is (right after page 2)

Something like (summarised):

- Humanity has been beaten to its knees: one orbital station around one planet is all that is left
- The AI thinks it has won the war, the remnants of humanity are beneath its contempt
- You have to use this lapse to kill the two AI Core Planets somewhere in the Galaxy
- Beware: your actions and elapsing time will slowly awaken the AI and resistance will stiffen

To me this is tending towards the territory of the intermediate tutorial, do other players feel that this is something that should be in the manual?

Yes, very much so. If you look at other game manuals you will find the story first, and I think that it is something that would be good for the AI War manual.

[Velox]

Perhaps it should have a REALLY introductory section up front on what the actual goal of the game is (right after page 2)

Something like (summarised):

- Humanity has been beaten to its knees: one orbital station around one planet is all that is left
- The AI thinks it has won the war, the remnants of humanity are beneath its contempt
- You have to use this lapse to kill the two AI Core Planets somewhere in the Galaxy
- Beware: your actions and elapsing time will slowly awaken the AI and resistance will stiffen

To me this is tending towards the territory of the intermediate tutorial, do other players feel that this is something that should be in the manual?

Yes, very much so. If you look at other game manuals you will find the story first, and I think that it is something that would be good for the AI War manual.

     I tend to agree.  It would be out of place in a simple command reference, but as this is something more (and very nice, btw) I think some introductory "Our Story Thus Far" content - just a single page, even - ought to be included.  It feels somewhat odd and out-of-context otherwise.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

Here's a few more issues I came across:

Page 11: At the bottom of the page it reads "Planetary Summary will provide you will information regarding that unit"

Page 19: The bolded text reads "Protect your energy reactors, If your net energy balance" which should probably be two separate sentences.

Page 21: Under AI difficulty it says "Difficulty 7 is the recommended difficulty for RTS veterans, at this level the AI" which should probably be two sentences.

Page 21: Under the # of Planets section it says planets can be selected in increments of 10, but there's actually a mixture of 5 and 10 planet increments.

Page 23: Under the Bombers description it says "They’re are vital for attacking powerful defenses"

Also, throughout the manual, at times the word "Mark" (when referring to ship levels) is capitalized and other times it is not. I would suggest that those be consistent throughout (I would lean towards capitalizing them, personally).

[Revenantus]

Here's a few more issues I came across:

Page 11: At the bottom of the page it reads "Planetary Summary will provide you will information regarding that unit"

Page 19: The bolded text reads "Protect your energy reactors, If your net energy balance" which should probably be two separate sentences.

Page 21: Under AI difficulty it says "Difficulty 7 is the recommended difficulty for RTS veterans, at this level the AI" which should probably be two sentences.

Page 21: Under the # of Planets section it says planets can be selected in increments of 10, but there's actually a mixture of 5 and 10 planet increments.

Page 23: Under the Bombers description it says "They’re are vital for attacking powerful defenses"

Also, throughout the manual, at times the word "Mark" (when referring to ship levels) is capitalized and other times it is not. I would suggest that those be consistent throughout (I would lean towards capitalizing them, personally).

Thanks! Fixed for 0.991.