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Author Topic: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.  (Read 2407 times)

Offline Lancefighter

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Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« on: December 03, 2010, 01:43:45 am »
I'm always a fan of games where the AI manages to trump me before the minute counter passes its difficulty, and this one was certainly no exception.

Dont get me wrong and take this as a whine post - read it as a 'lol lance, you really screwed up there'..


So here I am, minding my own business, busy being on the brink of extinction, with only one thing on my mind - the prototype design for something our engineers are calling a 'stealth battleship'. Having been given this planet as our only choice for survival, I dont quite think the Ai intended for us to get our hands on something that looked this powerful - an invisible ship that would ruin any pilot's day in an instant.

Well, safe for the moment in my command chair, I gave my intelligence officer a green light on recon gathering missions he has been begging for the last few days. Its only a minor dent in our current economic production after all.

After his order of recon ships was complete, i sent word that I wanted some of these stealthy battleship things ready to go shoot stuff sometime soon. My thinking on the matter - if you cant see it, then it cant lead you back to us as being responsible.....

Safe under our modified forcefield, and a small group of stealth pewpewdevices available, i sent them to a nearby out of the way system to do explody things. Turns out, they make things explode fairly well.. their shakedown cruise went without trouble, their main issue being..

Klaxons suddenly go off around me, the lights dimming with their reddish hue distinctive of combat situations. With my assumptions of relative safety due to cloaky stuff, I neglected there might be a response to the battleship's cruise..
Outside, clearly visible in the viewport, was a small group of the AI's own stealth battleships. Being lax in my defenses, we had literally nothing to combat them.. when all of the sudden, more ships appear. Blade spawners.. armor rotters? Yesh.

With the blade spawners properly ignoring forcefields, and the battleships properly blowing anything up thats blade immune.. and I suppose the armor rotters showing up for the photo op, there wasnt much that could be done. Building engineers was an excersize in futility, with all of my power stations down, no construction yards.. there was nothing to be done it seemed.
I sat back in my chair, while preparing my resignation on my console for the political types to laugh at, if they saw it in time before the stations hull went the way of everything else out there.. dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
.

And well.. Eh. Boom, game over at 7:36. Random story probably wasnt required, but I felt like embellishing over the usual "WAHH I GOT ROFLSTOMPED BY THE AI" post..
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Offline Winter Born

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #1 on: December 03, 2010, 02:00:32 am »
ROFL
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Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2010, 03:26:12 am »
lol epic. 

This makes AI War so great, mistakes get you killed.  :D

King
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Offline x4000

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2010, 08:50:43 am »
Lol, that's really great and funny. :D
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Offline Red Cossack

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2010, 11:04:44 am »
I have to compliment you guys on how annoying the AI can be with stealth battleships.  I started a game with them and the computer had them as well.  I used mine like a hammer, he went with scalpel.  While I was taking systems, he snuck into systems, killed engineers, harvesters and and small defense clumps, and then recloaked and hid whenever I sent forces back to deal with him.  I had to unlock some turrets and items to deal with cloakers, thus blunting my attacks.  Heres to you Mr. Bastard AI programmers.  :)
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Offline x4000

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2010, 11:11:32 am »
The best part?  There is no explicit AI code for the stealth battleships.  The emergent AI analyzes the ships' abilities, and that's what they decided to do with them. :)
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Offline Nemo

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2010, 12:37:34 pm »
Quote from: x4000 on December 03, 2010, 11:11:32 am
The best part?  There is no explicit AI code for the stealth battleships.  The emergent AI analyzes the ships' abilities, and that's what they decided to do with them. :)

Thats so cool.  ;D
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Offline x4000

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2010, 12:47:17 pm »
I agree. :)
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Offline Yuugi

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #8 on: December 03, 2010, 01:03:24 pm »
On that note, how much of the tractor behavior is hardcoded?

I got caught by the getting-stuff-tractored-into-system-with-neighbouring-raid-engine shenanigans today, too.

It's really really evil. But fun. I love it. :D
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Offline x4000

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #9 on: December 03, 2010, 01:10:02 pm »
That's fairly hardcoded: ships that have mobility and an enemy ship in their tractors will usually make a beeline for the nearest special forces guard post. But it's very fun to run into. :)
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Offline Yuugi

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #10 on: December 03, 2010, 01:14:51 pm »
That explains a lot.

The special forces guardpost info is very useful, thanks. Now I know why that guardian dragged my ships through -that- wormhole. :D

I guess them purposely heading to raid engines would be too mean. Hah.
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Offline Awod

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #11 on: December 03, 2010, 09:56:35 pm »
Loved the story.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #12 on: December 04, 2010, 02:27:25 pm »
This story reminds me of a time when I was playing against one of the heavy stealther AI types.  My Home Planet had barely any defense at all, relying more heavily on the outer planets adjacent to it to act as chokepoints instead.  During a large attack by the AI, several hundred cloaked ships got through, but were not much of a threat as I quickly cleaned them up with my mobile forces.

However, little did I know that a few of the cloaked ships had hidden during the battle, and not shown themselves.  For HOURS they must have sat there, in wait.  Somewhere during the campaign (I was playing with a friend who had already lost his Homeworld), I had an energy crisis due to a personal mistake (I was upgrading some all my Econ Orbitals to MKII and wasn't thinking).  I had a sudden energy brownout so all my shields went down.  I however, wasn't worried because there were no attacks occurring and none of my planets were under any immediate threat (or so I thought).  Before I knew it I had a "Home Station Under Attack!" Warning, and my heart jumped in my chest.  I quickly switched my attention Home to see 3 MKI Raptors slowly picking away at my Home Station.  I lucked out because they were so low level, but if they had been MKIV or even Core, the game could very well have been over.  I think I almost had a heart attack before I figured out what was going on.  SNEAKY SNEAKY AI
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Offline Yuugi

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Re: Ahh, the good old 8 minute loss.
« Reply #13 on: December 05, 2010, 02:10:39 pm »
The above is the reason I always build scouts in my home system and send them from there wherever I want them to go, then keep an eye on the starmap as they move around. Just to see if there's any cloaked ships still stuck in my systems.

Though those often tend to be MkIII Engineers hiding god knows where.
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