Prerelease 3.034 (HUGE Perf Boost to battles, CPA nerf in multiplayer, bugfixes)

[x4000]

The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.000 or greater of the game.  Just open the game and you can quickly download the prerelease through the updates tab.  If you don't yet have 3.000 or greater, you can download 3.000 here.  This prerelease version is compatible with any vendor's version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.

Note:  If you have bug reports related to this release, please log them in the bug reports subforum with one bug per topic.  It makes things infinitely easier for us.  Thanks!

Looking for a Patch That Can Be Manually-Installed?
Because of the time involved in creating multiple versions of each patch, we only create manually-installable patches for official versions of the game, not each beta prerelease.  But, if you're running version 3.022 of the game or higher, you can easily crete your own manually-installable beta patch!  If you don't yet have 3.022, but do have 3.000 or greater, you can download a simple zip containing the files of 3.022 here.  Simply unpack those on top of your existing files in your AI War folder, and voila -- you're on 3.022.

To create your own manual beta patch, you'll want to go here.  This folder contains all of the beta updates.  You just need whatever the most recent one is at the time (probably the same version number as this post).  Download that zip file, which if you try to open will say it's corrupt -- that's okay, it's not really a zip file.  Next download the updated Director.Xml file from that folder.  Finally create a new zip file on your computer, and put both the director and the fake-zip-file inside it.  Call your outer zip file something that starts with Beta and ends with an extension of .zip.  Beta.zip will work just fine, or you can name it after the specific version number if you want to hang onto it.  And that's it!  Now you have your very own manually-installable package of the AI War beta version of your choice, which you can install by simply selecting via your Updates window in the game.

What's new since 3.030:
(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-Fixed a bug that could cause the load/save screen to take over a minute to come up in some circumstances.

-Interplanetary Munitions Boosters now only give a 100% boost (to 2x) instead of a 200% boost (to 3x).

-Cross Planet Attacks now scale less severely with number of human players (multiplier is 1 + 0.33 for each additional player now instead of just the number of players).

-Several performance improvements have been made to how very large battles (more than a few thousand ships at a time) work.  In general, this about triples performance when there are more than 2000 ships on each of two opposing sides on a planet.  On smaller battles the effect is somewhat less striking, but still really significant.

CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
--------------

-Fixed another thread synchronization bug with Game Command pooling that was causing IndexOutOfBounds exceptions in game.

-Fixed a bug that made you have to click the "Star" buy category icon on starship constructors or the "Mod:Riot" buy category icon on riot starships if you had selected the other in the meantime; they were in the same buy category group but are no longer so.

Updates in 3.034:

-Fixed a crash bug when enemy AIs used riot starships.

[RCIX]

Just curious, what was the system that got optimized?

[x4000]

Just curious, what was the system that got optimized?

A variety of things in the targeting and collision detection.  I'm using a much less precise distance check for some various distance checks -- a method I called, internally, VeryBasicWrongRange.   But, the thing is, as long as it is consistent and makes sense, it's not needing to be precise in the same sense that I was having it be before.  In addition to that, there are some targeting things that are now being shortcutted in the really larger battles (per 1000 enemies).  It makes ships a little bit slower to change target lists in those situations, but the effect on performance is well worth it and the target list updates are still fast enough that it's not really noticeable.  And it also skips some range checks in FRD mode there, which weren't really being weighted all that much anyway, because ships were after their best targets with the least number of other ships on top of them, etc.

Anyway, lots of little stuff like that. VeryBasicWrongRange was about 2/3 of the improvement, and the other 1/3 is from the various other changes.

[Kalzarius]

I received an exception noting that IKPShotShotgunEnemy sound could not be found.

[x4000]

I received an exception noting that IKPShotShotgunEnemy sound could not be found.

Whoops, yeah, looks like that was never created.  Keith wouldn't have known to, but all shots also need an Enemy variant for when enemies use them.  Otherwise, as happened here evidently, you get a crash instead.  Fixed for 3.034, which is now out.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I checked that Superchugarific savegame on this patch and it worked noticably much better. Still not fast by any means but not at a standstill either.

Note; The IP munitions booster description still says it triples attack

[keith.lamothe]

This is probably as good a place as any to post the upcoming balance changes to the Riot.

For those interested in the ugly particulars of the Riot rebalancing:

Detailed comparison of 3.031 and 3.035:

Ship	"3.031"	ED/Shot	Shots	Cycles/Salvo	EDPC	VS "3.035"	ED/Shot	Shots	Cycles/Salvo	EDPC	Diff	EDPC	Percent	Config 1 Count	Config 1 EDPC
Riot Main Gun		100	5	70	7.1		33	5	70	2.4		-4.8	-67.00%	1	2.357142857
Riot Machine Gun		30	3	20	4.5		8	3	20	1.2		-3.3	-73.33%	2	2.4
Riot Laser		35	4	80	1.8		9	4	80	0.5		-1.3	-74.29%	2	0.9
Riot Shotgun		22	50	100	11.0		7	50	100	3.5		-7.5	-68.18%	2	7
Riot Tazer		50	1	120	0.4		16	1	120	0.1		-0.3	-68.00%	0	0

Summary comparison of 3.030, 3.031, and 3.035:

Ship	Number	3.030 EDPC/each	3.030 EDPC	3.031 EDPC/each	3.031 EDPC	3.035 EDPC/each	3.035 EDPC
Riot Main Gun	1	10.71	10.71	7.14	7.14	2.86	2.86
Riot Machine Gun	2	4.00	8.00	4.50	9.00	1.50	3.00
Riot Laser	2	5.00	10.00	1.75	3.50	0.55	1.10
Riot Shotgun	2	55.00	110.00	11.00	22.00	4.50	9.00
Riot Tazer	0	0.83	0.00	0.42	0.00	0.17	0.00
Total	7		138.71		41.64		15.96

Comparison of Riot to most other engine damaging ships (I left out infiltrators, armor ships, and bomber starships, possibly a few others)

Ship	Cap	ED	Shots	Recharge	ShipEDPC	CapEDPC	Cost	CostToCap	Energy	EnergyToCap
Black Widow Golem	1	300	50	80	187.5	187.5	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Spider Turret	158	60	1	120	0.5	79	7200	1137600	50	7900
Flagship	3	10	9	70	1.285714286	3.857142857	88000	264000	5000	15000
Dreadnought	5	150	1	80	1.875	9.375	88000	440000	1000	5000
Dreadnought II	5	250	1	70	3.571428571	17.85714286	128000	640000	1000	5000
Dreadnought III	5	350	1	60	5.833333333	29.16666667	168000	840000	1200	6000
Spider	170	15	1	90	0.166666667	28.33333333	120	20400	30	5100
Spider II	158	30	1	90	0.333333333	52.66666667	480	75840	30	4740
Spider III	118	50	1	90	0.555555556	65.55555556	690	81420	30	3540
Spider IV	42	50	3	90	1.666666667	70	1000	42000	30	1260
Riot/2M/2L/2S	4				16	64	80000	320000	1500	6000

Changed the ship cap for the Riot MkI from 5 to 4, so I don't have to nerf the individual ones as hard.  Probably should raise the cost a bit, but it seems odd to have them cost more than dreadnoughts. Also, machine gun range changed from 14000 to 11000, shotgun range changed from 12500 to 9000 (main gun is still 3000, laser 20000, and tazer 4000).


Basically the Riot MkI (to cap) will be somewhat superior to the Spider II (to cap), more or less equivalent to the Spider III, and inferior to the Spider IV (the IV's getting a buff for 3.035, already reflected in those numbers, basically it was worse than the III at EPDC-to-cap).


Edit: does anyone know how to get any kind of cell or column border on the tables in this forum?  I mean, sure, I could just use the wiki, but I'd rather not for such transient numbers.
That may still be too good, but we'll see.  I don't want to nerf this thing into the floor because I think testing feedback would drop off if people stopped using them (that and they're just too cool to do that)

[Kjara]

Spider IV (the IV's getting a buff for 3.035, already reflected in those numbers, basically it was worse than the III at EPDC-to-cap).

This is true about pretty much every ship(aka cruiser dps for mk III vs mkIV, etc).  If you plan on changing it for spiders(who main purpose clearly is engine damage), do you plan on making similar changes to pretty much everyother ship?  I was thinking the point right now was that mk IV's gave less "whatever they are good at" then the mkIII's at cap due to the fact they don't cost any knowledge once you have the III's(not that I'm against the other way, but I feel it should be consistent).

[I-KP]

Oo.  Numbers.  And lots of them.   

For me the biggest thing that makes Riots seem to be far more effective than they should be is that they are able to reduce so many ships' engines down to zero.  I posted something here: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3904.0.html, that explains why and a possible way to retain the line's ability to affect very large numbers of ships at once but without being able to solo everything, and also without nerfing the line's ability to break up a charge by constantly reducing its engine DPS.  (The blue text is the most relevant to this subject.)  I don't know if it's doable, or even desireable, but it's there nevertheless.

I do like the idea of this modular beta malarky but the more I play with it the less I want to nanny the blessed things all of the time.  I actually don't want to have to keep checking, over and over, if a single ship has lost a module or two.  When I've built a ship I don't then really want to have to spend time clicking on it lots of times in order to get what I expected.  Selecting modules is nice and all that, but is it really all that important?  I dunno.  It just feels like it's getting a bit too micro-ish, y' know?

[Kjara]

Clearly we need an auto-rebuild module control node .

Edit: Another riot based minor issue: Its pretty hard to get range circles out of the modules(as you have problems mousing over them anywhere but the closest zoom, and the range circles are unlikely to be useful there).

Not sure what a good solution is, but having the riot starship inherit all of the range circles of its modules might be nice.

[x4000]

New version: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3913.0.html

[keith.lamothe]

I am intending to have auto-rebuild-modules be the normal behavior (just have the hardpoint remember its last module type, etc) and have a control node for stopping that behavior.