Just lost my first game

[vordrax]

Hello all, I have owned AI War: Fleet Command for a bit, but until the most recent update I never really played it (bought it on Steam after hearing so much good about it last year, and my friends and I had issues getting multiplayer to work, so it was shelved until this week when I bought Light of the Spire.)

I've enjoyed reading the forum a great deal, which is usually the case for me- I find myself more comfortable in the things on your feet of the observer rather than the actor. But I played a game, AI difficulty set to 6, after the tutorial (and the game is fairly logical with easy-to-access information, probably the most user-friendly RTS I've played once you get past the initial shock of seeing so much available out of the gate.)

Anyways, blah blah. But I got to about 6 hours into my game, and my main tactic was using Human Raid Starships to cripple AI planets before dealing with them (they're probably my favorite ship right now, so fast and brutal.) I was a few missions into the Fallen Spire campaign as well, I was about to deliver the Shard that would create the Spire Colony ship. And suddenly, my home planet was attacked.

"No sweat," says I. AI aggression is still at level 1, and it's a small force- I have over 500 ships at my home planet, idling on defense mode. And suddenly, "YOU LOSE" pops up. Baffled, I hit tab and go to my planet to see exactly what had happened.

The AI, of course, had taken a page from my book. It sent a small but apparently effective force of raiders to destroy my command center through the force field, ignoring all of my turrets and tractor beams and doodads. "Clever girl," says I, while appreciating the irony.

Time to start a new game.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the forums

And yea, anything that can fire through forcefields can be insanely dangerous in the wrong circumstances.  Thankfully they tend to be pretty fragile.

[x4000]

Welcome indeed, and thanks for the kind words.

As the programmer of the AI in question, I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed or proud to say how many times the AI has caught me out with similar strategies involving raiders or raid starships or similar zipping past outer defenses and getting my homeworld.  I've definitely taken to multi-stacking buffer planets between my home planet and the nearest AI planet whenever I can.  And thus, whenever any AI ships arrive at my homeworld, I treat it as the most important thing going on -- because if those ships got to that planet, odds are they are some sort of raider that is presently making a beeline for my command station!

[Cyborg]

I'm sure we could help you get multiplayer going if you post in the technical support section of the forum. It usually boils down to this:

• You must know how to access the administrative interface of your router. You can easily look this up in the manual or online.
• You must associate the default AI port 32320 with your local IP address (usually starts with 192.0.*.*) on your router's port forwarding page. You are essentially asking all incoming traffic to your router at that port be forwarded to your computer.

Of course, this is more easily said than done, but feel free to make a new post, and we can probably get it set up for you.

[Volatar]

I'm sure we could help you get multiplayer going if you post in the technical support section of the forum. It usually boils down to this:

• You must know how to access the administrative interface of your router. You can easily look this up in the manual or online.
• You must associate the default AI port 32320 with your local IP address (usually starts with 192.0.*.*) on your router's port forwarding page. You are essentially asking all incoming traffic to your router at that port be forwarded to your computer.

Of course, this is more easily said than done, but feel free to make a new post, and we can probably get it set up for you.

Alternatively, you could go the easy route and just use Tunngle.

[keith.lamothe]

I am periodically astounded by the modern difficulties involved in getting a structured sequence of electrons from one conductor to another.  Modern technology isn't content with that, it wants a grand continents-spanning pirouetting dance of electrons and radio waves and photons and protocols and bouncers.

The scary part is that it works.

Except when you want to play a multiplayer game

[vordrax]

Thank you all for the warm welcome! I am very pleased with this game (currently responsible for two other people buying the game as well, attempting to convince two others.) I don't know if anyone else gets this same "vibe" from the game, but it gives me the same feeling I had when reading the last bit of Ender's Game (a book I greatly enjoyed), though I can't place my finger on why.

Thank you for the multiplayer help, though I should have been more clear- it is functioning after the last set of updates we downloaded. Whether it is due to something that changed in the game or something that changed in our environment, I can't really say. We were using Hamachi (as we do for pretty much everything, it cuts down on so much hassle) and getting the "Waiting For Players" message. We spent about 5 hours troubleshooting the issue and reading about it, which is how I found this forum, actually- and I'd have posted, but there was already a great deal of information available, and we'd attempted everything we saw. So we assumed it was something wrong on our end and gave up for a while. As stated, I'm something of a forum lurker, and my interest in this game piqued so much, I told my friend we had to try again. It worked without issue.

I've read, on the Steam forum, that there was an issue with Steam not downloading the latest update for whatever reason. If that was the case, it might have contributed to our problem. But it is sorted now, and I'm quite pleased. We now have access to the greatest "tower-defense-space-combat-grand-strategy-robot-battle" game of all time, and as stated, I am very pleased.

Also wanted to note, one of my favorite things about indie games is that their developers actually spend time communicating with their consumers- x4000 in particular, I noticed, even talks on the Steam forums to help point players to solutions for the game. Hope you don't burn yourself out on the community though. Probably the best reason not to put in PvP, I'd hate to see this friendly community get poisoned by a competitive atmosphere (not that competition is always bad, but competitive internet communities are by far the worst.)

I am periodically astounded by the modern difficulties involved in getting a structured sequence of electrons from one conductor to another.  Modern technology isn't content with that, it wants a grand continents-spanning pirouetting dance of electrons and radio waves and photons and protocols and bouncers.

Oh yes, troubleshooting networking issues is horrific. I'd almost rather have someone bring a computer to me with a sandwich inside and say "FIXIT" than have them come to me and say "I can't connect to the internet."

[Nalgas]

I don't know if anyone else gets this same "vibe" from the game, but it gives me the same feeling I had when reading the last bit of Ender's Game (a book I greatly enjoyed), though I can't place my finger on why.

I just reread that a few months ago for the first time in years.  Still good.

There are some similarities.  You're the commander in your game room/war room giving remote orders to your fleets of ships, which are hopelessly outnumbered by the enemies, which despite acting individually do things that are coordinated on a very large scale.  In the end, it doesn't matter how much you lose along the way as long as you can pull off some kind of last ditch attempt to take out their homeworld and end it once and for all.

Just remember, the enemy's warp gate is down.