Author Topic: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)  (Read 4446 times)

Offline Bastardized

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I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« on: October 13, 2014, 03:35:35 pm »
Hi, I'm playing my first serious game and I was wondering about a few things.

Is there a way to be alerted when AI troops appear on my planets? An auto pause could be useful. I've lost planets 4-5 times without even realizing I was under attack. >.<

Is there a way to change the right unit display bar to show both my units and enemy units? When I send a scout I see my scout and enemy units/buildings on the right units display, but not when I send my army. Do you need scout intel to see this? If not, what is scout intel for? I often find myself searching all over the place for the structures I want to destroy. Also, what is the 0 at the top of the bar? I don't think I've seen this number change.

I was also wondering if there is a way to see both my ships and enemy ships on all planets in the galaxy view. For example in the screenshot I can see that 45 enemy ships are on my top left planet, but I can't see the enemy troops present at the AI home world in the bottom right. http://oi62.tinypic.com/xpc5sy.jpg

On the wiki it says that I can destroy a planet surrounding warp gates to prevent waves. Is it still accurate?

Is there a way to see the damage percent increase on ships? Do Flagships affect all units in range? If I put a markI flagship and a mark2 I'm guessing it uses the bigger number?

Some AI progress increase or decrement are affected by AI difficulty. For example it says that if I destroy 4 AI co-processors AIP will decrease by 120, but only 105 on difficulty 8. What happens if I put one AI on difficulty 7 and one on 8?

The game is great so far. I'm playing on difficulty 7. I didn't really know how to play early on however and this is making the game very hard now. q.q
« Last Edit: October 13, 2014, 03:37:44 pm by Bastardized »

Offline Aeson

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2014, 04:35:15 pm »
Is there a way to change the right unit display bar to show both my units and enemy units? When I send a scout I see my scout and enemy units/buildings on the right units display, but not when I send my army. Do you need scout intel to see this? If not, what is scout intel for? I often find myself searching all over the place for the structures I want to destroy. Also, what is the 0 at the top of the bar? I don't think I've seen this number change.

I was also wondering if there is a way to see both my ships and enemy ships on all planets in the galaxy view. For example in the screenshot I can see that 45 enemy ships are on my top left planet, but I can't see the enemy troops present at the AI home world in the bottom right. http://oi62.tinypic.com/xpc5sy.jpg
You need something that provides scout intelligence in order to see the list of enemy units. Command stations, scouts, scout starships, champions, youngling commandos, and eye bots, and perhaps some other ship types, provide scout intelligence. Alternatively, during game setup, there are some options for fog-of-war. Complete visibility essentially gives you a scout on every planet, and comes closest to what you're asking for.

On the wiki it says that I can destroy a planet surrounding warp gates to prevent waves. Is it still accurate?
Yes and no. Destroying warp gates allows you to funnel waves to where you would like them to go, as long as you still have at least one warp gate adjacent to a system you control. If you have only one warp gate adjacent to your territory, and that warp gate is adjacent to only one world, all normal waves will be funneled through that one world, and none of your other systems will be directly exposed to standard AI wave attacks. However, if you destroy all warp gates adjacent to your territory, then the computer gets to make use of cross-planet attack waves rather than the standard attack waves. Cross-planet attack waves will spawn at some warp gate in AI space, and move through the galaxy map until it hits a planet under your control. In this situation, you cannot directly affect where in your space the wave lands, but you can place defenses on AI or neutral worlds to weaken the wave before it hits.

Is there a way to see the damage percent increase on ships? Do Flagships affect all units in range? If I put a markI flagship and a mark2 I'm guessing it uses the bigger number?
When you hover over a unit whose attack is being boosted, you will see in the tool tip, next to the unit name, the words Attack Boosted, and then a number. This is the multiplier applied to the attack score of that unit. Subtract 1 and multiply by 100 and you have the percentage increase in that unit's attack score. Flagships and other attack boosters affect all ships within range up to a certain limit, but that limit is not a fixed number of vessels. Rather, it's a fixed 'size' of vessels, with size being a hidden attribute that makes some ships harder to boost than others.

Also note that some ships can only have their attack score boosted by so much, and others cannot be boosted at all.

Is there a way to be alerted when AI troops appear on my planets? An auto pause could be useful. I've lost planets 4-5 times without even realizing I was under attack. >.<
In the lower left corner of the screen when viewing a system, you'll find a set of buttons. One of the is labelled Controls. Click it, go to the planet-specific tab, and find the option that says "Alert when enemies present." That option defaults to 0 (i.e. no alerts, ever). Set it to some number of enemies that you feel is worth being warned about, and whenever at least that many enemy ships are present on that planet, you will be notified by an alert in the message log. You'll need to do this for each planet you want alerts for.

Offline Bastardized

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2014, 04:58:37 pm »
Thanks! There are some nice options in the control menu. I don't really want to remove the fog of war however. I just wanted to have quick access to the building list. It's tedious to find where that Ion Cannon is sometimes. I guess I'll bring some scouts.

Now I only wonder about AI progress increase when mixing two AIs of different strength. =x

Offline tadrinth

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2014, 09:25:39 pm »
Now I only wonder about AI progress increase when mixing two AIs of different strength. =x

Quote
If the two AIs are different difficulties, the higher is used in this case

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-5.000_Beta#Prerelease_5.046_The_AI_Is_Not_Amused

« Last Edit: October 13, 2014, 10:52:02 pm by tadrinth »

Offline Aeson

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2014, 10:27:48 pm »
Thanks! There are some nice options in the control menu. I don't really want to remove the fog of war however. I just wanted to have quick access to the building list. It's tedious to find where that Ion Cannon is sometimes. I guess I'll bring some scouts.
If you plan to bring scouts along with your fleet, I'd suggest turning on the "Brave Scout Starships" option in the Galaxy tab of the Controls menu and use a Scout Starship with your fleet. It's much easier to bring along a Scout Starship with that toggle enabled than it is to bring along a regular scout, as Scout Starships with Brave Scout Starships enabled will be selected with military ships when you do drag-box selections and won't flee to who knows where on the system border every time they pass through a wormhole. Brave Scout Starships are less useful for regular scouting because of this, but you were probably going to use the standard scout fleetship type for regular scouting, anyways.

Offline Aklyon

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2014, 10:57:59 pm »
Also, alt-right click has a useful menu! (For varying degrees of usefulness)
It has auto-explore and auto-picket for scouts (both which sometimes are better done manually if you have a priority in mind for where to go), line place (mainly for mines, also useful for other things you may want to place in lines), and auto-gather knowledge (which generally only seems to work with adjacent planets, you'll have to send your labs manually most of the time to new planets, or all the time for neutrals).

Additionally, with nothing selected it allows you to change your galaxy layout to a custom one, or to chuck resources at another player(s) in adjustable quantities.

Offline Bastardized

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2014, 12:13:49 am »
Thanks for all the information everyone. I guess I'm going to use the scout starship from now on. I was finding no reason to buy it.

Sadly that will be for another game. The AI went crazy after I attacked its homeworld and it wiped me out. q.q

Offline Aklyon

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2014, 12:16:10 am »
It tends to react poorly to anyone stepping on its lawn, yes ;)

Offline Kahuna

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2014, 01:06:46 am »
Every time I see one of these threads I really miss the process of getting into AI War. Learning and trying new things..
..maybe I should lobotomize myself and start all over again.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2014, 01:10:31 am by Kahuna »
set /A diff=10
if %diff%==max (
   set /A me=:)
) else (
   set /A me=SadPanda
)
echo Check out my AI War strategy guide and find your inner Super Cat!
echo 2592 hours of AI War and counting!
echo Kahuna matata!

Offline Zair

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #9 on: October 14, 2014, 01:38:15 am »
Addendum about Scout Starships - if you're facing a lot of sniper fire from all the way across the system - snipers, sniper guardians, those metal demons known as Sentinel Frigates ... Scout Starships are immune to sniper shots and extend that immunity to friendly ships nearby.

Another funny thing I learned - long range ships that auto-kite will not auto-kite away from ships they can't actually shoot at. A scout starship will let you get close to that sniper battery that would've kept chewing you away otherwise.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2014, 09:23:19 am »
Every time I see one of these threads I really miss the process of getting into AI War. Learning and trying new things..
..maybe I should lobotomize myself and start all over again.

This is why I muddled around trying to create a fully procedurally generated RTS.  I made enough to show that it was possible on the unit scale (that is: with any kind of combat system with enough variables, there exists a rock-paper-scissors relationship almost everywhere, although it takes some fine tuning of the relative weights to minimize outliers).  Other people have shown that proc-gen maps are valid (cough, AI War among others) as well as plot (SPAZ, Tower of Guns).  Procedural graphics are harder, but I managed it for my tech demo (or for some ship sprites check this demo, which shows the algorithmic scaling possible--warning: the third sprite is huge and will temporarily freeze the browser for a short period, there's then a grace period afterwards where the swf does nothing and you can close the tab).

I just don't have the resources or skill level to really finish it.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2014, 09:25:14 am by Draco18s »

Offline Bud Backer

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #11 on: October 14, 2014, 12:17:11 pm »
Hope you don't mind my asking on your thread, but I saw someone mention "Auto Picket".

What is that?

Offline Aklyon

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #12 on: October 14, 2014, 12:31:52 pm »
It sends out scouts to planets, although not always well. One of the scouts then flees to the edge of the universe gravity well and sits there, like you sent it to that planet manually. Useful for keeping scouts on your border.

Offline tadrinth

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #13 on: October 14, 2014, 02:04:31 pm »
I saw someone mention "Auto Picket".

It's one of the commands available if you alt+right click with scouts selected.  It orders each scout to a different planet, starting with the ones nearest to the current planet, ignoring those that already have scouts.  It's very useful for setting up one scout per planet on the planets near you, especially if you've cleared tachyon from them.  If there's still tachyon sentinels, it may take a few batches of scouts ordered to picket to get decent coverage. 

Offline Bud Backer

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Re: I'm new and I have some questions. Help please! =)
« Reply #14 on: October 14, 2014, 10:30:39 pm »
Wow, even more to discover!  alt+rt click... Some interesting options depending on ones selection. Thanks guys!