My Standards for 10/10 bug reports

[Kahuna]

I made these standards primarily for myself. Others can either agree or disagree with them or think of this as a challenge. I might change these at some point.

Minimum requirements
Difficulty: 10/10 (herp a derp)
1 Homeworld
No Fallen Spire

AI Types AI1 / AI2
Any wave sending / Any wave sending
Mad Bomber / Any
Raid Engine / Any

Map
#Planets: >=80
Map Style: Simple
Campaign Type: Conquest
Map Seed: Optional
Expansions: Enabled: 1-The Zenith Remnant, 2-Children of Neinzul, 3-Light of the Spire, 3-Light of the Spire, 4-Ancient Shadows

Ships
Available Ships: Normal or Complex
Enabled: Cloaking, Heavy Defense, Mines, Parasites, Starships, Turrets, Tractor Beams, Core Shield Gens
Optional: Teleporting, Swallowers, Fast Drones

Game Options
Combat Style: Normal
Unit Cap Scale: Normal
Visibility: Full Fog of War
Enable Cheats: Disabled (Must be disabled even if "Has Cheated" = False after the game is won)

AI Options
Minor Factions to Include:
Human Marauders: Optional
Human Resistance Fighters: <=2/10
Human Colony Rebellions: Optional
Zenith Traders: Enabled
Zenith Miners: >=4/10
Zenith Dyson Sphere: <=2/10
Zenith Devourer: Enabled
Neinzul Rocketry Corps: >=10/10
Neinzul Preservation Wardens: >=4/10
Neinzul Roaming Enclaves: >=4/10
Fallen Spire: Optional
Spire Civilian Leaders: Optional
Exos:
>=4/10 or disabled.
Broken Golems (Hard): >=4/10 / Disabled
Botnet Golem (Hard): >=4/10 / Disabled
Spirecraft (Hard): >=4/10 / Disabled
AI Modifiers:
1/2 Enemy Waves: Disabled
No Enemy Waves: Disabled
Everything else is optional
Auto AI Progress: Optional

AI Plots AI1 / AI2
Avenger: Enabled / Enabled
Hybrid Hives: >=4/10 / >=4/10
Advanced Hybrids: Optional / Optional
Astro Trains: Optional / Optional
Beachheads: Optional / Optional

Banned starting Bonus Ships: Shield Bearer, Spire Blade Spawner, Tackle Drone Launcher
These ships are allowed if you get them from Advanced Research Stations.

After the game is won the player must upload the save file.

[keith.lamothe]

My standards are not nearly so stringent

[Kahuna]

My standards are not nearly so stringent

I'm a perfectionist

[Draco18s]

I am unsure how these settings, winning on 10/10, and bug reports are related.

[Kahuna]

I am unsure how these settings, winning on 10/10, and bug reports are related.

That makes me a sad panda.

[keith.lamothe]

I am unsure how these settings, winning on 10/10, and bug reports are related.

If someone wins 10/10 on those settings, it's a bug

And I think it's a bug even if the situation was considerably more favorable.

[Draco18s]

I am unsure how these settings, winning on 10/10, and bug reports are related.

That makes me a sad panda.

In which case it's not "standards for 10/10 bug reports" it's "bug reporting 'win on 10/10' standards."

[Diazo]

Interesting, and totally different from my view.

I'm pretty sure it is because I've been doing it for so long that I have an 'old style' way of looking at things.

Which means it is me and the AI, nothing else.

So all the hybrids/exo/minor faction stuff you have enabled I would play with them disabled. (I'm not going to get into a relative difficulty argument, some of the stuff makes the game easier, some makes it harder and I'm leaving it at that.) Call it how I prefer to play.

The only thing I actually disagree with is AI Auto Progress must be at a minimum 1 per 30 mins. (For the record, my current 10/10 does have it disabled but I am experimenting with starships and did not want to be rushed.)

The other two big difference are AI type, this stays at "Random All Non-Tech" always.  (I do enable "Reveal Random AI Types" however.)

The other is I don't pick my bonus ship type, I pick my map (Lattice, 80 planet), click the "New Map Seed" button 2 or 3 times, then I hit 'Start Game' without looking at the map or starting ship type.

Random AI types, random bonus ship, random map location. This is all to keep the games feeling different. The way the Scorched Earth I'm fighting is cramping my strategy is very different then how a Spire Hammer or Train Master would.

Not picking the bonus ship makes sure I get a different one every game and not picking a super defensible map location also keeps things different.

Does this mean the RNG sometimes hates me and I lose the game before I start? Yes, but it makes each game at least a little different then the last.

So, to summarize:
All Expansions Enabled
Single HW, no champion
Diff 10/10, Random All Non-Tech
All Ship types enabled, including CSGs.
All minor factions and AI plots disabled. (Except Reveal Random AI Types). So no golems/spirecraft/fallen spire stuff.
Normal Caps, Normal Combat Style.
Default Fog of War (Full Fog of War I believe)

All bonus ship types allowed, but no picking ship type or map location, you hit "New Map Seed" and "Start Game" without looking at the galaxy map generated.

Actually, looking at that, maybe calling this the "Pure" play style is better? It is just the player and the AI, no distractions.

Now, if this meets the bug report standard or not is up for debate, there is a lot of game features I turn off, but I've been playing since before those features were released and while they are fun, for me a 'true' game of AI war does not have those features in play.

(Let me restate that this is just my opinion, there is no objective 'true' way to play AI war and this post is how I play, not how you should play.)

D.

[Martyn van Buren]

Yeah I've never even thought about playing 10/10, but in my idealized view I feel like I hope the balance is such that if you play with all minor factions off and hard AI types winning teeters just on the brink of out reach for our very best players.

[Diazo]

I am unsure how these settings, winning on 10/10, and bug reports are related.

That makes me a sad panda.

In which case it's not "standards for 10/10 bug reports" it's "bug reporting 'win on 10/10' standards."

It is something of an on-going joke that the Difficulty 10 AI being called Doom is appropriate and that a dual 10/10 game should be pretty much unwinnable.

For as difficult as 10/10 is these days, it used to be much tougher. As in the first AI wave being 1200 Laser Gatlings at the 15 minute mark tougher. (Pretty sure I personally saw that, it's been several months however.)

There is a reason a win against 10/10 was extremely rare, and even then required cheesing of some sort, before the difficulty rebalances started some months ago. (Patch 5.020 something I think?)

The oldest (and one of the cheesiest) wins against 10/10 that I can remember off the top of my head had someone do a 10 planet map, start 8 homeworlds and bum-rush both AI homeworlds in like 10 minutes. Things like that used to be required against 10/10 AIs to make any significant progress in the game.

Overall, I think it is better where it is today, although I think the current 10/10 game of today should be a 9.6 game and 10/10 a little harder.

Wins against 10/10 AIs (without cheese) are supposed to be rare.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, and I've been ratcheting it up higher and higher for a while now to get back to the basically-unbeatable level.  The main difference from a year ago is that then you'd get the first wave from both AIs at the same time, and the minimum wave sizes were pretty intense, so the first half hour of the game was artificially way harder than the rest of the game on 10/10.  I don't mind the opening moves being punishing (and if someone isn't a really good player I want 10/10 to kill them fast so they don't get too much time into it and feel disappointed when they get roflstomped), but I want it to be the same game

The CPA/Barracks changes in 5.071 will certainly add some... spice, on Diff 10.  I dunno if it will be enough to really change the equation for those folks who appear able to beat 10/10 through sheer force of will, but I think it's a step in the right direction.  Other stuff planned, just don't want to take too much time from AS content implementation at this point.

[Diazo]

Good to see things are scaling back up a bit.

For comparison I went and dug up one of my AARs from 2010.

I'm paraphrasing, but apparently at AIP of 14 I considered an 860 ship wave average sized. Those were not high cap units either, there were fighters/bombers.

Mind you, this is before the unit caps were split, so that's on High Caps, halve that to get the Normal caps I play on today, so 430.

Compared to my current 10/10 game, I'm at AIP 17 and the biggest wave I've had was infiltrators at 900 or so, but they are a high cap unit and I'm pretty sure that was a max-time wave with the bonus for attacking a single world.

Hmmm, that does not sound as bad as I remember it.

Going to go look some more, I don't think I ever survived that past mid-game back then so something was making it significantly harder.

D.

[Draco18s]

Wins against 10/10 AIs (without cheese) are supposed to be rare.

Oh sure.  But see, my point is, "bug reports" isn't the noun in the sentence, it's "10/10 wins."

I.e. it should not be read "I only submit bug reports when I play a 10/10 game with the following settings" but rather "If I win a 10/10 game with these settings, I submit a bug report."

[Diazo]

Meh, it is an internet forum.

This forum I think is mostly (all?) native-english speakers but a couple of the other forums I frequent have several posters who's english is not their first language. Because of that, I've gotten into the habit of responding to what I think people are trying to say and not worrying about spelling/grammar too much.

L33T speak is a different beast though, I loathe that because they are not even trying.

D.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Okay, I even missed the meaning here... and I was the guy who told my friends about the 10/10 bug fix joke. Maybe my brain's in 'carefully plan out a speech' mode.
"Wait, you mean you have to play on 10/10 and have all these crazy things on in order to report any kind of bug?" was my first thought. Whoops.

I'm of the opinion that all you need are all minor factions off, 1 homeworld, no champion, complex bonus ships, every ship type enabled, and no minor factions with all AI plots on at least 4/10. That seems like the most fair fight-y the game gets. Oh, no turtle AIs, but one support AI is allowed if you +100% handicap the other AI.