AI War state of the game

[TechSY730]

There already is a "planetary defender preference" logic in place that some planets use. The chances for ship selection on these types of planets may need some tweaking, as for the planets that do use it, past the early game it typically isn't very visible. But the logic is there. The chance of a planet to use this logic may need some tweaking as well.

[Lancefighter]

Does uh. Does the arcen ftp of some sort actually have the installers for 2.0/3.0 up? Id be interested in seeing if those are available to make a few comparisons with.

[keith.lamothe]

Does uh. Does the arcen ftp of some sort actually have the installers for 2.0/3.0 up? Id be interested in seeing if those are available to make a few comparisons with.

I don't know where to find those installers off the top of my head, sorry.

[zoutzakje]

I have to agree with Faulty logic on everything he said. In my opinion, the state of the game is better than good. Of course there is always room for more improvements but they are not necessary to make the game interesting, because it already is. We are handed so many different options to make the game more interesting the way we want it.
Wingflier, do you honestly think that exo's and CPA's are one of the few things that make this game interesting/challenging? If taking a planet is not challenging to you, then you obviously need to play on a higher difficulty. Or fight against a nice pair of Tech Turtle and Raid Engine maybe. Or set a few minor factions on 10/10. Or play a nice game of crosshatch. We're given the options to make our games as hard or as easy as we want it, how we want it. Trust me, when your games are hard, blobbing is often the last thing you want to do. Every decision you make in a high difficulty game can and often will mean the end of you.
If you already do succesfully play high difficulty scenario's, then there is no hope for you lol. DF is the only strategy game I know of that might actually be harder and complexer than AI war.
Even if this game was tactically or strategically lacking, there aren't many better games of this genre out there.

[keith.lamothe]

However, where I disagree with him is that keeping things the way they are on the tactical level.  I think that is going to keep this game extremely niche.

The definition of "extremely" would be too subjective to debate in this context, but I disagree that the game is excessively niche.  It's sold amazingly well for a niche strategy game from an indie developer that was totally unknown before its release.

Nor is making it less niche my primary goal.  My primary goal is to make it more fun.  To the extent that I can broaden the audience by making the interface better, etc, that's great, but the mechanics themselves are not something I normally change simply to make the game appeal to people it didn't before (though expansions add stuff like FS or champions, partly for that goal).

Even I get bored quickly of playing for hours at a time, and only feeling a sense of real danger and challenge once or twice in this duration.

1) As is, the game can threaten you quite a bit more often than that.  It does depend on the settings, of course.

2) If you like I can give you options that will have the AI on you like white on rice the whole game through, hitting your offensive fleet and defensive positions (particularly the less-defended ones) constantly with nasty stuff (even specially-chosen counters).  But is that what you want?  You'd probably just get so bogged down fighting for your life that you wouldn't have much time to actually think strategically, much less act strategically.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Does uh. Does the arcen ftp of some sort actually have the installers for 2.0/3.0 up? Id be interested in seeing if those are available to make a few comparisons with.

There's a thread I made a while back about finding archived versions of old AI War installers, and some things were posted there. Check it out. It should have what you're looking for.

[HitmanN]

@HitmanN, from the 5.074 patch notes, August 30th of this year:

=== AI Reinforcement Focus ===

* AI planets now pick a primary, secondary, and tertiary type of ship to focus their reinforcements on. 
** It's not purely random, sometimes it picks ships that fit certain roles.
** When picking a new reinforcement ship for the central pulse or a non-special-forces guard-post-pulse, it has a 10% chance to pick any available ship like usual, and a 90% chance to pick one of its focus types.  When picking a focus type, it has 3 times as much chance to pick the primary as the secondary, and 3 times as much chance to pick the secondary as the tertiary.  If that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it.
** Whenever the AIs unlock new ship types due to AI progress, all AI planets "reroll" their focus types.

Thanks for the info. Started a couple of games quick and looked at the adjacent planets' lineups... and yeah, looks like there is some variance now. I definitely need to try a proper game sometime soon. xP

Did this change also cover starships, guardians and guard posts? It's hard to tell in early game since there aren't that many of those around, but I hope they also have similar variance in distribution.  Also, did the change affect the ships' placement on the planets in any way? Focused groups of specific ship types defending a specific structure, that sorta thing, or are they still spread around equally/randomly?

Sorry to hijack the thread with the questions. I'll leave my inquiries at these so you guys can stay on topic. ;p

[keith.lamothe]

Did this change also cover starships, guardians and guard posts? It's hard to tell in early game since there aren't that many of those around, but I hope they also have similar variance in distribution.  Also, did the change affect the ships' placement on the planets in any way? Focused groups of specific ship types defending a specific structure, that sorta thing, or are they still spread around equally/randomly?

No, haven't tried to do any of that, yet, but between the reinforcement focus and the new special forces (which also have ship preferences, of a different kind) I think you'll notice a different feel

[relmz32]

The more I've played recently, the more I've realized that even though each scenario and situation can differ wildly, they must all be handled in a similar way.  The ships you unlock, the technology you choose, the tactics that you use - I've realized that in every game, these stay almost exactly the same with little variation.

The ships/tech/tactics *you* choose may be similar or the same, but that does not mean that *I* do or that it is optimal.

Where before there was strategy and critical thinking before each battle, it has now devolved into an extremely repetitious process of taking every planet in the exact same way, with little resistance, and little chance of failure.

... (snip)

This is a strategy game isn't it?  When did it stop becoming a strategy game?  At what point did mindlessly moving all of your units into a vastly superior enemy army become a "good idea"?  It should not be.  That is not good design, and the game suffers for it.

The entire idea of the game is to out-think and outplay your vastly superior AI opponent is it not?  If you could win purely by blunt force and direct combat, then the humans never would have lost the war to begin with.  So why does the game reward you for brute forcing your opponent then?  I can't think of a good answer to this question.

This is primarly a strategy game, and as Keith points out, you are arguing about tactical issues. See 'The art of War,' which says, repeatedly, that achieving a concentration of firepower is the key to victory.

Ok overview of the game from a strategic and tactical standpoint:

Strategic:
Difficulty: Med to High (No add-ons)
Value: High
Complexity: High

Tactical:
Difficulty: Low to Med (No add-ons)
Value: Med to High
Complexity: Very High

I think part of the reason that you find yourself doing things mindlessly and yourself getting bored is not because things are easy, but because they are very complex. So rather than figure out which tech would be *best* you just pick out one that you are used to using. Rather than figure out what would be tactically best, you just go through and stomp things mindlessly, which works, but is not the best. I do not mean that you are a bad player or stupid, just that this is a very complicated game, and it is very hard to get traction in the game without mental shortcuts.

[KDR_11k]

Increasing Lethality does not give you the advantage, it gives the AI the advantage.  The AI has the superior force.  The reason this doesn't matter as much now is that it takes so long to whittle you down that you can just keep repairing and outlasting them in prolonged planet battles.  If however, every Guardian and Starship they sent took out huge swaths of units before finally going down, you'd really think twice about alerting the entire planet at once.

Higher lethality gives an advantage to whoever has the range advantage. You think Zombards are bad now?

What you want is a buff, not just higher lethality. The reason those guardians get to shoot you at all is because they're fairly tough and can survive enough of your fleet's alpha strike to at least get a volley off. Increase lethality and those guardians may not even get to fire once. Also higher lethality would marginalize things like lightning even more because if every unit dies to one shot from its counter what good is doing mere attrition damage?

It's also problematic to balance because higher lethality means the DPS calculations are skewed even more by overkill.

Oh and it weakens raids because it increases the chance that your raiders get gunned down before reaching their target. Same goes for bombers attacking forts or forcefields, especially when the AI is using them. Those bombers are attempting a bee line for their target and while they might kill their target faster the defenders get to kill them in a fraction of the time they needed before, greatly reducing the distance a bomber fleet can travel from the wormhole before being broken. E.g. if all lethality was quadrupled then you would only need to get one quarter of the bombers to the target but the bombers could also only move one quarter as much before being wiped out.

Super high lethality is the reason that WWI trench warfare was so damn static, leaving your trench would get you gunned down instantly while sitting in your trench did about eff all until someone lobs chemical weapons at you.

Kamikazes were effective because a fighter plane is still fairly hard to hit, all weapons in AI War are guaranteed hitters. Also I'm not sure but I don't think the US Navy got to deploy gravity turrets.

[brianc]

Hey guys, still relatively new here and it might be a stupid question but this game supports mods right?  As a frequent reader I know how integral Keith is to AI War and if he is highly interested in making a game of this style could it be done using the existing interface and ships from AI War as a mod?  If I'm wrong sorry I brought it up and feel free to delete.  I'm also very pleased that AI War will not be taking those drastic changes because, while it might be fun to test out, I still have a massive amount of things to learn and try within AI War and it is literally the greatest video game I have ever played.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Not particularly deep mod support is available. You can mod a couple of particular things, like altplanetnames, and maybe the language files, but that's about it.

[Lancefighter]

Sprites are all open for 'modding', but really just replacing the sprite with your own.

Honestly, modding support isnt what this game needs- modding is a tool to add new content to a game when youve stopped supporting it. Arcen hasnt stopped supporting the game yet.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I actually think you can do something with music too, by just adding more music files to the folder.

[Mánagarmr]

Getting a real sense of deja vu with this thread. But taking a genuinely holistic look at the game by the community could still bear some good fruit.

Also there's a joke somewhere in using gigantic walls of text to discuss blobbing.

I feel the same way. Didn't we just discuss this like a few weeks ago?