Some thoughts on 8.0

[Andyroo]

Hello, we have returned to AI War as we always do for another few games, and here's some collated thoughts on the current version. We last played just before the turret rework, and have been playing on 7.6 (after 8's first exos killed us) with most cool stuff enabled.

Nomads: Like them. Can be hard to find at first, and can be annoying when they are directly over one of your planets that you need to select.

Turret rework: Like it, now our defences are determined by our power capacity rather than the turret limit. More planning required into what goes where.

Drone fleet: My brother in our game ended up with a nice drone fleet - neinzul enclave/combat carriers and tackler launchers.  They were effective and quite fun, but we seemed to get a fair bit of performance drop when using them.

Fallen Spire: We died. We had a good front line, mk4 turrets, modular forts, armour inhibitors/boosters, mass drivers, fleets all ready - and then we tried for the 2nd city. The AI response was incredible, we lost 1 home station and barely kept the 2nd. Then we tried to build it and another 50 large ships hit all at once - we didn't stand a chance. On 170 AIP, it felt like too much to have that many golems and dires coming at us, and the 1 city and its spire fleet we had didn't help much. Compared to the first city attacks, this was a colossal step up in deathmurderism. Don't know what others experiences are, but our strategic solution to this is to avoid fallen spire past first city in the future. No doubt cities/spirefleet would help against this level of attack, but we were not there yet. I think this needs looking at, more curve, less cliff.

Reclaimation: My role in our games was the main fleet - fighters, bombers, cruisers etc. I had to be very careful of enemy leech starships, even 1 seemed able to reclaim hundreds of my ships all on full health long after it had died. Couldnt quite explain how it was doing it - no other reclamation ships on the planet. It happened pretty much every time we used the main fleet. We went in, took out their ships, and they ended up with all of mine instead by the end. Unsure if there's a bug at play, but to reclaim that many ships on that much health didn't seem right at all.

Alt champ progress: Playing with this in a separate game, liking it, was getting tired of the same scenarios over and over. It seems each players knowledge gathering gives each player XP. Wondering if an 8 player game would result in 8x more champ XP - could be a bit mad.

Less numbers: Loving everything having less 000s at the end.

Forts: Tried human forts in one game, as I used to like them. They did not do too well, especially for the power cost. Would like to see some love here, don't see myself using them as long as I've got modular forts from the champion stuff.

Forcefields: With all the superweapons running around AI War these days, they seem a bit crap. With them piled up on a station, it doesn't take much to wipe them out. Perhaps time we humans figured out how to get Mk IV forcefields to go with our turrets?

I think that's about it, still a great game as always. Best coop around.

Edit:
AI Threat/special forces - working great these days!

[keith.lamothe]

Glad to hear it's going well in general

[motai]

Friendly commentary,

 Spire are balanced at their own level. yes your fleet helps you get started but yes if you arent DOING spire then you will not hold spire level aggression. this does end in a you win scenario so it is balanced and challenging. my prefferred way to win actually.

drone fleet is always handy and amusing. on the preformance hit as mentioned in other threads make sure the better computer is the host. also i would recommend that whoever does choose drones be that host on the better computer.

reclamation ships are odd. remember that reclamation damage is tracked  on each ship hit seperately. a high level leech ship multiplies its damage for reclamation. so preventing the death of your ships is vital around leech ships, otherwise you will get the i has your fleet effect. this can be used against the ai in the early game but is very difficult for the human later because mk 4/5 ships tend to get reclamation immunity. i think this was mostly to prevent abuse of the botnet and probably does need to be reworked in light of changes in superweapons.

forecefields are good more hp is great. also remember there is a second line of forcefield with armor. this might not seem like much but a force field with 20% the hp that takes 5% of the damage from most things is awesome. superweapons stomp on everything. so build your superweapons first

last but not least if you think spire gave you grief then try out the exile for a real challenge.

[_K_]

Just wanted to add my part:

I played with Botnet Golem - hard, and the way it works feels awkward. With the other 2 modes that spawn exos, you gradually gain control of the superweapons which supposedly matches the gradual growth of exo strength, and both golems and spirecraft contain tools to counter those exos.
But with Botnet, you either have it, or you do not. As result, there is no gradual growth of power on the player side to counter the exos. From my experience against 7.6/8.6 AI pair, beating the first exo is impossible without warheads unless you have the botnet.
On my next try i will try and just rush for the botnet golem, just to see how much strength it adds to my defences.

Regardless of that though, i believe he current exo model doesnt work well with the golem. I think it'd be better if the AI did not react at all until the player repaired the Botnet. Generate a lot of defence in the system with botnet to make the option have a downside. When the botnet is activated, then the AI starts responding. Would be cool to see anti-botnet exos only include ships immune to reclamation, maybe add a bit of AIP growth on top of that. Maybe make the exo target the botnet specifically, and once its dead, cancel the exos but give chunk of AIP. Then i'd probably consider the scenario fair.

[Draco18s]

Yeah, the botnet exos don't really work, but it was a pretty well defined consensus that the botnet was OP and should be broken off from the other golems.

[Andyroo]

Interesting enough, the mentioned first exo death on our 8.0 game was with botnet on - in retrospect that caused double exo at once rather than the scattered exos from the others. It has since been disabled.

I missed the damage multiplier on the leeches, that must be what did it. Will watch out for it in future/try them out again (I think I last tried them around 4.0).

And in response to Spire, we were trying to "do" spire, but on just 1 city its hard to "do" spire as you barely have spire - and the attacks the 2nd city events caused were on par with what we have experienced before as being the winning event attacks. We had our superweapons, but the attacks went from 4-5 spirecraft ship exos (first city) to 50 dires/golems exos (second city).

Good to see others players thoughts.

[motai]

another thought occured to me that keith might give feedback on, the spire and other exo waves have a time calc in them not just aip, so rushing spire can lead to much easier spire than waiting to be ready for it. i remember that trying to get 1st city by 30 minutes was usually more doable than waiting to hour 2. admitedly the map doesnt always cooperate but that may help too.

[Bognor]

About reclamation - if it's any help, sending your ships through a wormhole will rinse off any reclamation nanites.