Author Topic: AI War Game Manual, Ver 1.03  (Read 18292 times)

Offline x4000

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #15 on: October 10, 2009, 09:43:22 am »
On the story thus far idea, I like that. I'll work on something today that can be used in then manual and the website, one video, etc.
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Offline x4000

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #16 on: October 10, 2009, 01:21:10 pm »
(Longer than I had originally intended, but I think it's valuable backstory.)

MISSION BRIEFING:
-----------------

Let me be frank with you, commanders.  We've lost a war you didn't even know we were fighting.  You're collectively the best military minds humanity has ever produced, and you've been called out of stasis as a matter of last resort.  It's been a few decades for some of you, centuries for others.  You come from both factions, so you may have fought against one another in the past -- but it is time to put any grievances aside.

What many of you may not know due to your time in the freeze is that our scientists and engineers have been hard at work creating automated war machines.  Over the last century, we've moved to pilot-less ships that are both created and operated using highly computerized technology.  With the ability to command these mechanical fleets from a distance came the idea to use Artificial Intelligence.  These decisions were not undertaken lightly, and we thought all of the appropriate safety checks were in place, but I think you can guess what has happened.

Both factions created AI commanders so fast, so organized, that none of our contemporary human commanders could match them.  There was even a great debate as to whether to remove the lot of you from stasis and let you go on with your lives.  Thank God we decided to keep you in reserve.  After the two AIs decided to work together, they eradicated us in a matter of days.

That was three weeks ago, and already they view us as beneath their contempt, not even worth stamping completely out.  The AIs have focused their attention elsewhere, on something outside the galaxy.  We don't know what it is that they are doing, what it is that they have found out there, but this may provide us with our one chance to strike back at them.

You're in the last tiny corner of the galaxy that is left to us, though we think there may be some captive settlements that yet survive.  When I say this is our last chance, do not think I exaggerate.  The AI is disinterested in our pitiful remaining forces at the moment, but they don't know about you -- when they see our fleets are growing, and are guided by competent, intelligent commanders, they will react.  The more you infringe on their territory, the more you demonstrate your power, the more likely they are to crush us.

The AI forces outnumber us ten thousand to one, so a direct assault would be suicide.  We have no resources, we have hardly any ships, and the schematics for our most advanced hardware are lost to the AIs.  Your mission is to take what little we have, and turn it into victory in whatever way you can.  Take back our resources from the AIs, steal knowledge of the ships we once built with ease, and destroy their data centers whenever you find one.  Most importantly, find and destroy their core command stations to wipe them out.

We've been beaten to our knees, but we're not going to sit by and watch our species die.  You're the best military minds we've ever been able to produce, and so if you can't prevail we really are lost.  Use your heads out there, and make sure not to let emotion or aggression cloud your better judgement.  Fight smart.  Remember your tactical training as well as the bigger picture.  Win where all others have failed.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2009, 03:45:24 pm by x4000 »
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Offline Revenantus

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #17 on: October 10, 2009, 05:23:33 pm »
Reads nicely, that would certainly get players in the right mindset, are you planning on including this in the game too?

Can I suggest reviewing one line? Perhaps it's just me, but the commander seems to sound slightly sheepish.

"These decisions were not undertaken lightly, and we thought all of the appropriate safety checks were in place, but I think you can guess what has happened."

To something along the lines of;

"These decisions were not undertaken lightly, but the development of increasingly autonomous AIs eventually caused them to exceed human control."





Offline RCIX

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #18 on: October 10, 2009, 06:05:28 pm »
That sounds cool! though may i ask what exactly the AI is focusing on outside the galaxy? or is that a secret for another expansion? :D
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Offline x4000

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #19 on: October 10, 2009, 06:11:01 pm »
are you planning on including this in the game too?

Probably not, I don't know where I would put it and this seems like the sort of thing that is commonly exclusive to the manual.

Can I suggest reviewing one line? Perhaps it's just me, but the commander seems to sound slightly sheepish.

I see what you were saying, but that's kind of how I see this guy -- a bit on the sheepish side, he's not a true bureaucrat and actually feels pretty guilty.  I mean, they had all these commanders here in stasis "just in case," but thought they could do better with AIs.  And they wound up almost obliterating humankind instead, so now they have to wake up these commanders and ask them to fix this mess that happened while they were out.  If this guy's anything but a complete prick, I'd think he'd feel at least the slightest bit sheepish. 

The cliche military jerks that feel no remorse and are all about business are all too common in military fiction, in my opinion, and I just can't write characters like that without finding them unbelievable, anyway -- I know a number of people in the military, even some ex-special-forces types, and none of them are that way.  I'm interested in what people think on this point, I don't want to kill the mood with that line or anything, but it was intentionally done at any rate.

though may i ask what exactly the AI is focusing on outside the galaxy? or is that a secret for another expansion? :D

It's a secret, yes. :)
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Offline Echo35

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #20 on: October 10, 2009, 07:40:32 pm »
The cliche military jerks that feel no remorse and are all about business are all too common in military fiction, in my opinion, and I just can't write characters like that without finding them unbelievable, anyway -- I know a number of people in the military, even some ex-special-forces types, and none of them are that way.  I'm interested in what people think on this point, I don't want to kill the mood with that line or anything, but it was intentionally done at any rate.

Agreed. Every single movie I see and a large portion of the books I read, the military is portrayed as either full of total ass holes, or completely power hungry maniacs, and being in a predominately military family, and knowing many military personnel as a result, I do agree this is largely untrue.

Offline darke

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #21 on: October 14, 2009, 10:56:03 pm »
Pg16: "A thick gray line indicates that the connected planets are supplied by your team." Might want to make a parenthetical "see page X for Supply" here, or ditch the past tense and rewrite it to use capitalised "Supply" so that it's obvious that it's a game mechanic. :)

Actually that's something I have noticed, anything that's a game mechanic should only ever be used in the same tense if possible, or have a parenthetical reference to what it's really called. It also should be capitalised. It's not only a good hint for the player, but it makes sure that your translations are much more accurate since present/past and active/passive versions can be translated completely differently depending upon the language.

Also, in a similar vein there's a lot of erratic capitalisation of buildings and ships. "command station" rather then "Command Station", sometimes in the same paragraph they are written with different caps. Then later on there's "science labs and Advanced Research Stations", "Science Labs" should be capitalised if you're going to caps the other ones as well. :)

Pg18: "Each metal and crystal harvester will" should be "Each Metal Harvester and Crystal Harvester will", not to mention the sentence is vague. Something like "Each Metal Harvester will produce 12 metal per second, and each Crystal Harvester will produce 12 crystal per second." is much clearer.

Pg18: Under "manufacturies" you don't mention the two different types by name. Second paragraph, first sentence should be rewritten similarity to the harvester sentence above.

Pg18: "As long as the planet is supplied by your team, any science labs and Advanced Research Stations on the planet will automatically gather knowledge." comma in the middle isn't necessary. Science Labs should be title capped like the ARS. Also should be some sort of "planet has Supply" or similar back reference as previous.

"You can unlock units in almost any order you wish, allowing you to customize your civilization to suit your preferred play-style." again comma not necessary, though this really should in active voice too, which would make the comma make sense "You can unlock units in almost any order you wish, this allows you to customize your civilization to suit your preferred play-style." (Though really maybe it should be two sentences? Gah, this English stuff is annoying... :) )

Pg19: Energy: You can't seem to make up your mind as to whether it's an "Energy Reactor" or an "energy reactor" again here. :) Also you're using title-cased-"Reactor" rather then "Energy Reactor" in places too.

Pg19: "Low-power mode" is this hyphenated or not? It's different in different places. :)

Pg21: AI Difficulty: It mentions AI7 as being the level the AI executes all tactics it knows, I thought there was one or two tactics changes that kicked in at AI8 though.

Pg21: Auto AI Progress: you may wish to mention what the default is. (1 point ever 30 minutes? I can't remember it's been so long since I looked at that tab. :) )

Pg23: Command Stations: some command stations actually consume crystal/metal rather then produce it. :)

Pg24: Bonus ships: should mention that all players in a multiplayer game get the same bonus ship when they capture an ARS.

Should also say something like "examples of bonus ship types with more unique abilities follow" or something, also might want to note something like "over XX different bonus ships" or something in there as well just so it seems like there's a lot more then two. :)

"Shield bearers", aren't these things force-field bearers now?

"Science Labs" should be capitalised in title case if ARS are going to be. :)

(Still more to come, and yes more picky then usual. It happens when you've just done the same thing to a work related way-too-many-pages document. :) )

Offline darke

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #22 on: October 15, 2009, 12:34:30 am »
Pg28: Teleporting: I believe there's an exception for Engineer's teleporting where they don't get stunned after teleporting.

Munitions boosters: Might want to add something like "for a maximum of 5 times the damage" or similar since "5x" is what will appear on the display in game. Also I thought the higher levels of the Munitions Boosters actually gave a higher maximum? I might just be confused.

And I think that's finally all. :)


Offline x4000

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #23 on: October 15, 2009, 12:38:28 am »
The 5x refers to how many ships it can boost, actually.  The damage is always doubled per the number of boosters attached to a ship.  So the higher-level boosters don't increase the damage at all on a per-ship basis compared to the lower-level boosters, but they can boost a much larger segment of your fleet.  Assuming that you have a big fleet, the net effect is pretty much the same, but it bears noting.
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Offline Fiskbit

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #24 on: October 15, 2009, 07:45:41 am »
Pg18: "As long as the planet is supplied by your team, any science labs and Advanced Research Stations on the planet will automatically gather knowledge." comma in the middle isn't necessary. Science Labs should be title capped like the ARS. Also should be some sort of "planet has Supply" or similar back reference as previous.

"You can unlock units in almost any order you wish, allowing you to customize your civilization to suit your preferred play-style." again comma not necessary, though this really should in active voice too, which would make the comma make sense "You can unlock units in almost any order you wish, this allows you to customize your civilization to suit your preferred play-style." (Though really maybe it should be two sentences? Gah, this English stuff is annoying... :) )

I feel that the comma is necessary in both cases, and your proposed change for the latter is a run-on sentence, unfortunately. :P I can be pretty anal about grammar and syntax and will be combing through the manual within the next couple of days for problems of this sort.

Thanks for the suggestions. Feel free to keep posting more; they're appreciated! :)
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Offline Haagenti

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #25 on: October 15, 2009, 10:46:57 am »
The AI Type and AI Difficulty section could be slightly clearer, as the interaction between these is not immediately obvious.

Suggested rewrite:

AI DIFFICULTY
The AI difficulty affects the sophistication of the AI’s tactics, as well as the number of
reinforcements it will receive. Difficulty 7 is the recommended difficulty for RTS veterans. At this
level, the AI will execute all of the tactics at its disposal. New players, especially those new to
the genre, may prefer to start at difficulty 4.

AI TYPE
In addition to the difficulty levels, there are also a number of AI Types available. Each AI Type has distinct
tactics and abilities and often unique and specialized units. AI Types are divided into three tiers, Easy, Medium, and Hard. Note that a Hard AI on a low difficulty level may (or may not) be stronger than an Easy AI on a high difficulty level.
It is also possible to choose a random AI type. In this case you can only find out which AI Type you are playing against by analysing its tactics and units during the campaign.
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Offline Revenantus

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 0.991
« Reply #26 on: October 17, 2009, 01:01:03 pm »
Thanks everyone, the new version is up.

Everyone's contributions have been really useful - I've literally just finished converting the manual to an InDesign document.

Haag, there's now a note in the fast facts section under AI types and difficulty stating that the overall AI strength is a combination of both its type and difficulty, so hopefully there won't be any confusion there. I've reworded the campaign setup section slightly to make it clear that there's a distinction between AI type and difficulty, let me know if you think it's sufficient.

darke, good calls on my inconsistent capitalization and hyphenation. My current rules are;

 - Unit names are NOT capitalized, except where they occur in lists.
 - Interface elements, e.g. Minimap, are capitalized.
 - Game mechanics, e.g. Supply, are capitalized. I'm considering modifying the tense as per your suggestion, if anyone else has any comments on that issue they'd be appreciated.

Low Power Mode is no longer hyphenated.

If anyone would rather have their real name in the credits section of the manual, rather than their handle, please let me know.

EDIT: Along with this evening's proof read, I'll also be updating the unit images. Damn you Phil... :D

« Last Edit: October 17, 2009, 01:07:09 pm by Revenantus »

Offline x4000

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 1.03
« Reply #27 on: November 03, 2009, 02:30:16 pm »
BTW, the metal cheat shows in the controls area as 1 000 000 instead of 100 000 if the developers didn't know already.
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Offline Revenantus

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 1.03
« Reply #28 on: November 04, 2009, 07:07:02 am »
My apologies, thanks for informing me.

New versions Here, 2.001B.png includes the new cheat codes.

EDIT: If you wish to install these yourself, copy the required .png file to your Images/ShortcutKeys directory, and rename it to 1.png.
« Last Edit: November 04, 2009, 07:15:33 am by Revenantus »

Offline x4000

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Re: AI War Game Manual, Ver 1.03
« Reply #29 on: November 04, 2009, 10:23:21 am »
Thanks! I will include these in the 2.001 prereleases.
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