Beginner Questions

[jeriktelorian]

My friends and I have completed one AI War game during the 4.xx phase, and we had a lot of fun. Due to scheduling we hadn't been able to get another good game going, but our schedules finally have enough time for another game now. From browsing the forums and playing a bit I've noticed some things that I'd like some help on, partly because it looks like they've changed pretty dramatically from when we last played (hacking is new and scary).

• First, I noticed there are now two concentric rings on planet view; green and yellow. I'm not sure what they mean, though they seem to have some sort of relevance to where my scouts will go.
• Second, the wiki states that resources will overflow from one player to his team-mates if he hits 999,999. We haven't seen any evidence of this, and we even tried a little experiment -- when someone got to 999,999, we had them gift some resources to another player, and our incomes stayed the same. Did this change?
• Eyebots suck. Any suggestion for dealing with them? We're putting up Tachyon emitters with lasers on our command centers in hopes of holding them at bay (since lasers do extra damage to refractive, I think). Any other suggestions?
• Back when we played, there was no penalty for knowledge-stealing. It was always a group effort, but we were able to pull knowledge from systems as needed. It seems like this has changed. We're currently in the early stages of a game with a 5 and 7 AI, what are reasonable limits for us to play with in terms of hacking? What do you guys think is more important, knowledge or ship types?
  Moreover, this seems like it will leave us with fairly little knowledge, any strategies for dealing with that?
• Just to clarify, neutering a system is destroying the guard posts without destroying the command post or warp gate, right?

I appreciate your advice. I've been trawling the forums but a lot of the discussion is very high level, and it's hard sometimes to understand things when I play fairly rarely, and don't spend much time here. Thanks for the help.

[Hearteater]

1. From the patch notes: On planet view, the game now draws two circles representing the key zones of the planet's "gravity well". These will generally only be seen when zoomed very far out. The inner circle (60000 range from planet center) represents the bounds of the area within which stationary structures may be built and transports may unload. The outer circle (80000 range from planet center) represents the boundary beyond which ship engines are unable to maintain a useful velocity.

3. Lightning Turrets wreck Refractive armor.  With a Tachyon Emitter at a warp point, you should be able to erase them.  Build a Counter Missile Turret and that's game for the poor Eyebots.  Make sure the Lightning Turrets are within range of the CMT.  CMT don't stop missiles passing over their targetting area, just missiles aimed at targets within it.

4. K-Raid when you have to, otherwise hold off.  Scouting for ARS and seeing what option are available will tell you whether you need to save hacking for ship selection, or K-Raiding.  Note that in multiplayer, you each get to pick your own ship when you hack an ARS.  If you don't hack, you both get the default.  So an ARS with two good choices is a very good target for ship hacking.

5. Generally yes.  Most people don't include killing Wormhole Guard Posts in neutering.

[Wanderer]

Hearteater got most of these.

2) I can't be sure but gifting isn't the idea.  It's if you hit 999,999 in a particular item (let's say metal) and your partner has 500,000, your overflow will go to his banks.  If he's at 999k too it'll just disappear.  If that's not happening post a bug up in Mantis for Arcen to take a poke at.  They'll probably need a save game.

3) I usually leave a bit of basic turrets or HBC near my command centers instead of the Lightnings because they're cheaper to upgrade for more of them, but same effect.  Eyebots require Tachyon turrets, and by preference counter-missile turrets (2 for 1, they shut down Missile Frigs, too) and short range non-missile non-snipe defense units.  Pick your flavor.

4) That's my fault.  I K-Raided out about 50,000 K in a game I AAR'd and kind of got Keith's attention with that.  Personally ARS Ship Choice is more important to me, but I'm used to running at lower numbers of research.  There's been some mods so each of you can choose differently if you like on an ARS hack.  Just science II it first and decide if you need to.  K-Raiding's original intent was to get you out of a hole if you dug it for no AIP gain, and that's being more enforced now.  I've found that usually I can hack 2 ARS and get in a K-Raid or two still at higher levels if I'm very selective regarding the target.  You shouldn't be completely hosed up.

5) Usually, yes.  I call it nerf/neuter though so I can keep track in my head when I do which, but that's a personal preference.  I do kill off WHGPs on occassion but that's mostly for my high-traffic areas so guardians and small ships don't end up harassing smaller reinforcement flights to the fleet on the highways.  WHGPs will not affect max population for a system, it's more a matter of them being able to be placed in the most inconvenient locations... on wormholes.

[Diazo]

Back when we played, there was no penalty for knowledge-stealing. It was always a group effort, but we were able to pull knowledge from systems as needed. It seems like this has changed. We're currently in the early stages of a game with a 5 and 7 AI, what are reasonable limits for us to play with in terms of hacking? What do you guys think is more important, knowledge or ship types?
Moreover, this seems like it will leave us with fairly little knowledge, any strategies for dealing with that?

Just to expand on this, K-stealing counts as Hacking the AI. This is a relatively new mechanic that was recently added to the game.

3 different things count as Hacking the AI: Knowledge-Stealing, Ship-Hacking and Activating a Superterminal.

There is a wiki article about it here, it is pretty short at the moment so if you have any other questions be sure to post them.

D.

[TechSY730]

About the resources overflow thing. There is a known bug where overflow from allies does not get counted in the resources in/out per second counts in the status bar, but the transfer still occurs. I think I remember them mentioning that to fix that, some fairly significant tweaking to the resource tracking logic would be needed, so it would have to wait for later.
Sadly, this does have the side effect of making it very difficult to tell if the logic is working or not.

[jeriktelorian]

Thanks for your advice folks, I really appreciate it. I'm sorry for wasting space with these simple issues, but we tend to play AI War in spurts, and things change fast around here while we are off shooting folks in BF3.

Wanderer, you said you can choose ships when you hack. By using a level 2 do you mean sending a Level 2 science vessel through the wormhole into the hostile system? It would be nice to evaluate my options, especially since some of the ARS's are very deep in enemy territory, and we don't really want to go there if we can avoid it.

[Hearteater]

You need to get any science vessel into the system with the ARS to see what ship types will be available.  The Science Vessel II has cloaking and so it makes an ideal candidate for doing that.  You still need to worry about Tachyon Guardians of course.

[Wanderer]

Wanderer, you said you can choose ships when you hack. By using a level 2 do you mean sending a Level 2 science vessel through the wormhole into the hostile system? It would be nice to evaluate my options, especially since some of the ARS's are very deep in enemy territory, and we don't really want to go there if we can avoid it.

Well, if you have CSGs on you're going to most of 'em anyway, but yes I did mean a Science II.  Blow all the tachy's between you and it and then just float 'er on over.

[jeriktelorian]

Wanderer, you said you can choose ships when you hack. By using a level 2 do you mean sending a Level 2 science vessel through the wormhole into the hostile system? It would be nice to evaluate my options, especially since some of the ARS's are very deep in enemy territory, and we don't really want to go there if we can avoid it.

Well, if you have CSGs on you're going to most of 'em anyway, but yes I did mean a Science II.  Blow all the tachy's between you and it and then just float 'er on over.

I did this exactly, worked like a charm until the AI whipped up some Tachyon Micro Fighters.

I have another question you folks may be able to answer. What is an Exo-Wave, and can they occur during any game type?

All I have determined from a forums search is that I should hold an intense fear of them.

[keith.lamothe]

I did this exactly, worked like a charm until the AI whipped up some Tachyon Micro Fighters.

Yep, some just take some cornmeal, milk, eggs, and tachyon emitters and they whip up quite easily

I have another question you folks may be able to answer. What is an Exo-Wave, and can they occur during any game type?

All I have determined from a forums search is that I should hold an intense fear of them.

In summary, that's a good approach.  And no, they don't show up in every game.  There are three specific minor factions which can lead to exos.  If you don't mind a few spoilers:

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_How_Exogalactic_Strikeforces_Work