Since some people had asked me before "how do you DO it?" and me not really being able to explain what they're doing wrong (besides throwing math at their bad ship picks) and prompted much complaining in recent changes, I have been considering broadcasting some gameplay of AI War. Is there any interest in this? I can't really show the old ways of floor AIP + 30 planet deepstrike anymore with the core planet data center removal which pretty much causes it not to exist and mk wave size multiplier changes which removes the excessive benefit, but I can still show what I am doing now.
I don't really have a minimum amount of interest before I say yes, but I wanted to check before I hassled. If it is less than 8 people who want to stick around for almost the entire game, it can possibly be spectated directly in game though if everyone that wants to is in the US on good cable or better connections. I'm probably going to use some web broadcasting site like justin.tv unless someone knows a better one (I don't). It'll be live so people can ask why I am doing particular things as it goes along, or post here after watching previous plays if the service supports something like that. I would fraps it for lossless (or at least higher) quality, but I don't exactly have a place to host hours-long videos at higher quality.
I'll probably wait until at least 3/4 of the bonus ships are hit with the balance stick though before I do this if I do this though. I also may need a bit to rethink and restructure my earlygame strategy with the half-energy on mk 1 stuff and better bonus ships (and thus ARS). I'll need some time to recrunch and test things.
Settings considered as of now (kept basic to show core strategy):
1HW
120 planets (forced harder deepstriking)
Difficulty 8
Random non-technologist (reroll turtles and other no/tiny-wave AIs. I'll take mad bomber + backdoor hacker if it comes up and you'll see me make that the only warp link open ever)
Show random AI types
Core shields on
Normal ship cap (small if the autokiting feature is cool but takes up too much CPU. I doubt that though because I have a great machine)
Blitz speed
All planets revealed (scouting is usually pretty trivial and a boring busywork timesink except in a few special cases)
Other instant map reroll factors (that I can think of so far):
-AI gets autobombs at the start (it adds a lot to the difficulty, which is already pretty hard at 8 )
-AI gets SBs at the start (tentative, with the bomber change going in today it might be ok and I'll remove this. Still no strong turret counter though but they shoot weakly and are immune to tractors so probably won't protect as well on offense as defense)
-Counterpost on more than one ARS planet (and thus forcing two counterposts via shield)
Expansions Disabled:
Neinzul (the ships are generally too weak, and I'd rather the AI got more useful things with the bonus ships being buffed recently)
Spire (the new ships and things are wonkily balanced still, and the wave size minimums do funny things sometimes)
