Old Fogey Tales, or Reverse Changelog

[Radiant Phoenix]

I'm interested in learning about what AI War used to be like, but I've also been around since before VotM, so I can maybe answer some questions by newer people.

My first question is: what were "outer" and "inner" planets?

I stumbled across the term while wandering around Mantis, in a suggestion to remove wave size multipliers from somethingsomething with ion cannons. (Wave size multipliers appear to be another old thing that no longer exists, but they seem much more self-explanatory)

[Captain Jack]

Isn't that the standard operable area and the outer limit of the gravity well? The green and yellow lines.

[Radiant Phoenix]

Context: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1365

[Toranth]

Presumably "outer" planets were those that bordered the AI and could receive waves, while "inner" planets would be your safer, interior, worlds away from the AI borders.

Ion Cannons, and Golems, and other things used to produce enhanced AI response once upon a time.  I don't really remember it, because it went away in 5.0, so I played the tutorial (maybe not even all the way through) and pretty much nothing else before 5.0 and Light of the Spire came out.  The linked Mantis entry gives a good representation of what I heard about it and why it went away.

What I remember... the good old days of Dyson Gatlings being able to produce unlimited sized hordes that would utterly crush any AI fleet... 
Or the brief time period between 5.031 and 5.033 when Mk III Harvesters gave 73 resources/second...
Or the pre-hacking remodel, when it was possible to K-raid (using Science Lab Mk IIIs!) the galaxy with no real drawbacks...

[CaptainTaz]

Science Lab Mk IIIs!

Huh? there is a mark 3?

[Draco18s]

Science Lab Mk IIIs!

Huh? there is a mark 3?

Was.
originally there was only the one and K-Raiding was done by simply gathering knowledge on a hostile planet in supply. The AI was then taught apt this tactic and would respond. Then the Mk3 science lab was added, making that is role (the Mk1 and 2 needing to be on friendly planets only, with the Mk2 being more resilient).

That went away when we got the Hacker, as it subsumed the role.

[CaptainTaz]

Science Lab Mk IIIs!

Huh? there is a mark 3?

Was.
originally there was only the one and K-Raiding was done by simply gathering knowledge on a hostile planet in supply. The AI was then taught apt this tactic and would respond. Then the Mk3 science lab was added, making that is role (the Mk1 and 2 needing to be on friendly planets only, with the Mk2 being more resilient).

That went away when we got the Hacker, as it subsumed the role.

Ahh, that's interesting!

[Radiant Phoenix]

New question: what were "Cruisers"?

EDIT: Ah, Missile Frigates.

[CaptainTaz]

If I may also ask, How was crystal differentiated from metal (Like, were there certain places for ONLY crystal or ONLY metal?) and how did having two required currencies affect the game?

[Radiant Phoenix]

If I may also ask, How was crystal differentiated from metal (Like, were there certain places for ONLY crystal or ONLY metal?) and how did having two required currencies affect the game?

There were separate resource gather points for each, and things had often wildly different costs in the two resources. So, you might find a bunch of planets with basically just crystal gather points, and suddenly raid starships were effectively cheaper.

Also, harvester upgrades were the preferred econ strategy then, so gather points were more important.

[CaptainTaz]

If I may also ask, How was crystal differentiated from metal (Like, were there certain places for ONLY crystal or ONLY metal?) and how did having two required currencies affect the game?

There were separate resource gather points for each, and things had often wildly different costs in the two resources. So, you might find a bunch of planets with basically just crystal gather points, and suddenly raid starships were effectively cheaper.

Also, harvester upgrades were the preferred econ strategy then, so gather points were more important.

Interesting. I wonder if it's possible to rollback the game to that time... I'd love to try some of this stuff out that I missed...

[Radiant Phoenix]

The change happened in 7.011, and I can't find my 6.000 installer anymore.

There's a 7.047 installer on the download site, though: http://aiwar.s3.amazonaws.com/AIWar7047-oldengine.zip

[Draco18s]

Metal and Crystal were basically the same, and it was merged as a result.  It had been talked about for a really long time, so trying to figure out what the "difference" was is kind of difficult.

Yeah, you could suddenly get a bunch of crystal points and certain ships would get "cheaper" but it wasn't any kind of strategic choice, as you generally used both in equal amounts all the time no matter what your strategy was.  It wasn't like Age of Empires where if you had a ton of wood and no stone you would just build units that used wood, because in AI War, you'd eventually hit the point at which you couldn't build more of them, but could build other ships (albeit more slowly).

[CaptainTaz]

Metal and Crystal were basically the same, and it was merged as a result.  It had been talked about for a really long time, so trying to figure out what the "difference" was is kind of difficult.

Yeah, you could suddenly get a bunch of crystal points and certain ships would get "cheaper" but it wasn't any kind of strategic choice, as you generally used both in equal amounts all the time no matter what your strategy was.  It wasn't like Age of Empires where if you had a ton of wood and no stone you would just build units that used wood, because in AI War, you'd eventually hit the point at which you couldn't build more of them, but could build other ships (albeit more slowly).

Ahh, I see. That makes sense.

Would have been interesting if some units used only one resource, but I can see why they went down the path of combining both.

[Toranth]

Metal and Crystal were basically the same, and it was merged as a result.  It had been talked about for a really long time, so trying to figure out what the "difference" was is kind of difficult.

Yeah, you could suddenly get a bunch of crystal points and certain ships would get "cheaper" but it wasn't any kind of strategic choice, as you generally used both in equal amounts all the time no matter what your strategy was.  It wasn't like Age of Empires where if you had a ton of wood and no stone you would just build units that used wood, because in AI War, you'd eventually hit the point at which you couldn't build more of them, but could build other ships (albeit more slowly).

Ahh, I see. That makes sense.

Would have been interesting if some units used only one resource, but I can see why they went down the path of combining both.

Some units did, and more used vastly unbalanced levels like 100 Metal and 2,000 Crystal.  But there were converters you could build that would (at less than 1:1) just turn Metal into Crystal or vice versa.

As Dracos said, it rarely mattered enough that you would need to take Metal vs Crystal into account as part of your strategic plans.  Merging it all to Metal was a good step, I think, looking back.  And Hacking Points is a far better and more interesting resource than Crystal was.