Prerelease 1.009A (Selection Rectangle Counts & Team Income Display)

[x4000]

Huh, that's unexpected -- thanks for the tip!  But yes, I'd expect them to only do this when in attack-move or free-roaming modes.

[Revenantus]

Just finished my first complete game of 1.009A (Diff 7). It ended in a stalemate 8.5 hours in sadly, I destroyed one of the AIs but there are two Tech IV planets between myself and the second AI, each of which had 3k ships defending it. Rather too much effort I think, I can only sit watching ships build for so long . With the AI progress timer ticking away victory might be unfeasible anyway.

I started with the Munitions Booster - my personal favourite due to their excellent synergy with all other ship types.

The scouting felt quite balanced, initially my scouts were generally able to travel 2-3 hops from my homeworld. As time went on this distance reduced to 1-2 hops due to to increasing size of the AIs wormhole garrisons. Upgrading to Tech II scouts didn't seem to make much difference in penetration range, possibly because I didn't invest in them early enough and by that point there were simply too many AI ships, which is fair enough. It'll be interesting to see in my next game if the range of the Tech II scouts is significantly different if I invest in them early on.

There were some occasions where the scouts were able to penetrate further than normal due to a relative lack of tachyon emitters, and lots of cases of planets causing complete dead ends due to the strength of their garrisons, this variability in the scouting is always interesting - much moreso than in the pre-wormhole command station era in which the early scouts were generally just slowly whittled away over time.

I then progressed straight to the Tech IV scout at which point scouting obviously just becomes a waiting game.

Since the addition of Wormhole Command Posts, Lightning Missiles become almost essential towards the end of the game. I had a fleet of 1000 ships wiped out in under a minute by the AI's wormhole garrison, though after sending through a batch of lightning missiles to make some headway a similar size fleet was able to go through and tackle all the remaining AI ships in the gravity well. This is presumably due to the combination of the AI's lightning turrets and the fact that my cruisers (in particular) are decimated before they are able to inflict any significant damage.

Initially I thought that the Lightning Missiles were particularly expensive, although, after seeing how many ships they are able to destroy when the enemy is in a tight formation (As is the case with wormhole garrisons) I think they may well have been better value than a fleet of ships of equivalent cost.

[x4000]

Just finished my first complete game of 1.009A (Diff 7). It ended in a stalemate 8.5 hours in sadly, I destroyed one of the AIs but there are two Tech IV planets between myself and the second AI, each of which had 3k ships defending it. Rather too much effort I think, I can only sit watching ships build for so long . With the AI progress timer ticking away victory might be unfeasible anyway.

Ouch, yeah.  That's a case where it sounds like the AI Alert level was tripped too soon, but I imagine it might have been unavoidable.

I started with the Munitions Booster - my personal favourite due to their excellent synergy with all other ship types.

Excellent, I'm so glad to hear of someone with a favorite other than Parasites.

The scouting felt quite balanced, initially my scouts were generally able to travel 2-3 hops from my homeworld. As time went on this distance reduced to 1-2 hops due to to increasing size of the AIs wormhole garrisons. Upgrading to Tech II scouts didn't seem to make much difference in penetration range, possibly because I didn't invest in them early enough and by that point there were simply too many AI ships, which is fair enough. It'll be interesting to see in my next game if the range of the Tech II scouts is significantly different if I invest in them early on.

Ah, that makes sense.  Also, you can group your Mark I and Mark II scouts and send them ALL at once, so even just increasing the numbers of them in that manner is likely to give better penetration into enemy planets.  But, I think you're right, they may be useful more earlier in the game than later.  Glad to hear it turned out to be so balanced for you!

There were some occasions where the scouts were able to penetrate further than normal due to a relative lack of tachyon emitters, and lots of cases of planets causing complete dead ends due to the strength of their garrisons, this variability in the scouting is always interesting - much moreso than in the pre-wormhole command station era in which the early scouts were generally just slowly whittled away over time.

Yep, yep.  That's always been sort of the case with the Mark III scouts, but now its much more emphasized because of the Cloaking Booster ability, and it's been brought down to Mark I and II.  So I'm glad to see that's made it so much more interesting.

I then progressed straight to the Tech IV scout at which point scouting obviously just becomes a waiting game.

Yep.  I tend to send it on the long, difficult paths, and still use the lower-level scouts where I can.  But that's just me.

Since the addition of Wormhole Command Posts, Lightning Missiles become almost essential towards the end of the game. I had a fleet of 1000 ships wiped out in under a minute by the AI's wormhole garrison, though after sending through a batch of lightning missiles to make some headway a similar size fleet was able to go through and tackle all the remaining AI ships in the gravity well. This is presumably due to the combination of the AI's lightning turrets and the fact that my cruisers (in particular) are decimated before they are able to inflict any significant damage.

That's very interesting!  I think that Mark III force fields (which are mobile) would also be able to fill a similar niche.  I'll need to think of other ways in which this niche can be filled.  But I'm glad to see the lightning missiles becoming so useful.

Initially I thought that the Lightning Missiles were particularly expensive, although, after seeing how many ships they are able to destroy when the enemy is in a tight formation (As is the case with wormhole garrisons) I think they may well have been better value than a fleet of ships of equivalent cost.

That was my thinking.  They are a super good value in the right circumstances, but in the wrong ones a waste of money.  In the past it was harder to create just the right circumstances, I think, but now each wormhole is a pretty darn good opportunity.

[darke]

Just finished my first complete game of 1.009A (Diff 7). It ended in a stalemate 8.5 hours in sadly, I destroyed one of the AIs but there are two Tech IV planets between myself and the second AI, each of which had 3k ships defending it. Rather too much effort I think, I can only sit watching ships build for so long . With the AI progress timer ticking away victory might be unfeasible anyway.

Ouch, yeah.  That's a case where it sounds like the AI Alert level was tripped too soon, but I imagine it might have been unavoidable.

I'm trying to get past a Tech III planet with 3k worth of ships on it as well. It has been pretty much adjacent to not one, but three worlds of mine for most of the game since I couldn't get past it. Even with a full stock of Tech II ships, some Tech III ships and Electricity Missiles I'm having issues getting past. The main problem is this is the "medium" AI that is electric/teleporting/defensive, so it seems to have an insane population boost and maximum.

I started with the Munitions Booster - my personal favourite due to their excellent synergy with all other ship types.

Excellent, I'm so glad to hear of someone with a favorite other than Parasites.

I don't mind them so much either, I just have problems keeping them alive. The AI uses them way too well though.

The scouting felt quite balanced, initially my scouts were generally able to travel 2-3 hops from my homeworld. As time went on this distance reduced to 1-2 hops due to to increasing size of the AIs wormhole garrisons. Upgrading to Tech II scouts didn't seem to make much difference in penetration range, possibly because I didn't invest in them early enough and by that point there were simply too many AI ships, which is fair enough. It'll be interesting to see in my next game if the range of the Tech II scouts is significantly different if I invest in them early on.

Ah, that makes sense.  Also, you can group your Mark I and Mark II scouts and send them ALL at once, so even just increasing the numbers of them in that manner is likely to give better penetration into enemy planets.  But, I think you're right, they may be useful more earlier in the game than later.  Glad to hear it turned out to be so balanced for you!

I'm lucky if my scouts get half way to the exit wormhole on the worlds on this map. The defensive AI is reallyreally defensive. A group of 30 Tech I+II+III Scouts can just barely penetrate past one of their worlds. I think I'm going to have to give up on my current 80 planet map, I've got barely a third of the map, mapped, AI level is about 350ish, and I just can't get any head way without scorched-earthing every world, which is really ramping up the AI level.

On the other hand, having one AI being seriously defensive is really slowing down their attacks on me, plus it does explain why it was unusually easy for me to secure my 7-wormhole starting world (not that it didn't take half an hour still...). Shame I can't really get anywhere though.

I'm starting to appreciate the teleporting lightning defensive ships though. The AI doesn't seem to use them particularly effectively (thankfully), but the couple I capture every now and again really do help with the defensive legwork on those worlds. It's a shame there isn't a way to set a per-world cap on them though, as if I were to use them I'd like to, say, have a space dock on infinite repeat on those worlds so they can replace the ones that get toasted every now and again. If there were a limit of, say, 10 per world rather then whatever it is in total, I could just set them up to repeat, as it is I had to keep checking back on the worlds that I'd populated them with the last time I played when them.

The parasites seem much better balanced now; I wasn't grabbing their Tech II and Tech III upgrades almost immediately like I used to this game.

On another note, bugs:

It seems that when I hold down z+x, I can see cloaked enemies' attack ranges, even if I can see neither their image nor the lilac circle. Does make the cloaking slightly less useful. Not sure if it was a one-off thing and there's something wierd I need to do to trigger it though, or it's there all the time.

[Revenantus]

I'm starting to appreciate the teleporting lightning defensive ships though. The AI doesn't seem to use them particularly effectively (thankfully), but the couple I capture every now and again really do help with the defensive legwork on those worlds. It's a shame there isn't a way to set a per-world cap on them though, as if I were to use them I'd like to, say, have a space dock on infinite repeat on those worlds so they can replace the ones that get toasted every now and again. If there were a limit of, say, 10 per world rather then whatever it is in total, I could just set them up to repeat, as it is I had to keep checking back on the worlds that I'd populated them with the last time I played when them.

This sounds really cool, the ability to automatically maintain a particular mix of ships in a system would help enormously. Could the number of ships that are set to be maintained be deducted from the total available number, even if they haven't yet been constructed? This would prevent other space docks that are manufacturing the same ships from using up all the slots and preventing your garrison from reaching the specified size.

I started with the Munitions Booster - my personal favourite due to their excellent synergy with all other ship types.

Excellent, I'm so glad to hear of someone with a favorite other than Parasites.

I don't mind them so much either, I just have problems keeping them alive. The AI uses them way too well though.

A handy tip when attacking with munitions boosted fleets is to order them to group-move into range of the target you want them to attack, rather than actually ordering them to attack the target. This prevents all the different ship types from spreading out as they come into firing range of the target, and hence moving out of range of the munitions boosters. It would help when doing this if it were possible to see what the range of the ships is going to be upon reaching a particular position, rather than simply estimating and adjusting as they near their intended target. Maybe there could also be some sort of group-attack-move option, where the ships all move towards to target together until every single ship type is in range.

You can combine munitions boosted fleets with a Tech III forcefield to create a slow moving yet almost unstoppable bubble of destruction - very fun.

[x4000]

I'm trying to get past a Tech III planet with 3k worth of ships on it as well. It has been pretty much adjacent to not one, but three worlds of mine for most of the game since I couldn't get past it. Even with a full stock of Tech II ships, some Tech III ships and Electricity Missiles I'm having issues getting past. The main problem is this is the "medium" AI that is electric/teleporting/defensive, so it seems to have an insane population boost and maximum.

Yeah, when the adjacency is there for an extended period, those higher-level planets can be absolutely brutal.  That's one of the tough early-game decisions at this level of play; do I let this planet get even larger and more difficult, or do I try and grind against it now?  Or try some other tricky technique either later or earlier (destroying the command station early and taking your chances with the stuff that comes into your planets, or using missiles/force fields later to get through the wormhole when it is tougher).  I definitely want to expand on the options for these sorts of scenarios later on; with these latest releases and the AI guarding wormholes, the back-and-forth here has changed rather significantly, and I want to make sure it's not unbalanced in favor of the AI.

I'm lucky if my scouts get half way to the exit wormhole on the worlds on this map. The defensive AI is reallyreally defensive. A group of 30 Tech I+II+III Scouts can just barely penetrate past one of their worlds. I think I'm going to have to give up on my current 80 planet map, I've got barely a third of the map, mapped, AI level is about 350ish, and I just can't get any head way without scorched-earthing every world, which is really ramping up the AI level.

On the other hand, having one AI being seriously defensive is really slowing down their attacks on me, plus it does explain why it was unusually easy for me to secure my 7-wormhole starting world (not that it didn't take half an hour still...). Shame I can't really get anywhere though.

So, I guess you're playing against some manner of Turtle for at least one of the AIs.  Yeah, they do no attacks on your planets, but instead funnel all those units into fortifying their own planets.  When combined with a more aggressive AI as the other player, that can be a really brutal combination.

It seems that when I hold down z+x, I can see cloaked enemies' attack ranges, even if I can see neither their image nor the lilac circle. Does make the cloaking slightly less useful. Not sure if it was a one-off thing and there's something wierd I need to do to trigger it though, or it's there all the time.

Bah, good catch.   Added to my list.

I'll respond to your other points in a bit, Revenantus already had some interesting responses and I'm going to address both at once.

[x4000]

I'm starting to appreciate the teleporting lightning defensive ships though. The AI doesn't seem to use them particularly effectively (thankfully), but the couple I capture every now and again really do help with the defensive legwork on those worlds. It's a shame there isn't a way to set a per-world cap on them though, as if I were to use them I'd like to, say, have a space dock on infinite repeat on those worlds so they can replace the ones that get toasted every now and again. If there were a limit of, say, 10 per world rather then whatever it is in total, I could just set them up to repeat, as it is I had to keep checking back on the worlds that I'd populated them with the last time I played when them.

This sounds really cool, the ability to automatically maintain a particular mix of ships in a system would help enormously. Could the number of ships that are set to be maintained be deducted from the total available number, even if they haven't yet been constructed? This would prevent other space docks that are manufacturing the same ships from using up all the slots and preventing your garrison from reaching the specified size.

Yes, I'm really loving this idea, too!  I'm thinking of making this perhaps through a new ship, something like a Garrison Command or something like that.  Then you could configure your desired loadouts there, and regardless of how many docks you have at the planet, they would collectively do as the Garrison Command stated.  Added to my list for future DLC.

A handy tip when attacking with munitions boosted fleets is to order them to group-move into range of the target you want them to attack, rather than actually ordering them to attack the target. This prevents all the different ship types from spreading out as they come into firing range of the target, and hence moving out of range of the munitions boosters. It would help when doing this if it were possible to see what the range of the ships is going to be upon reaching a particular position, rather than simply estimating and adjusting as they near their intended target. Maybe there could also be some sort of group-attack-move option, where the ships all move towards to target together until every single ship type is in range.

You can actually hold G+Alt and right-click to make them group-attack-move.  Ships will stop when they individually, not collectively, come into range, though.  I can't think of a better way to do that, since ships are never inherently linked in this game, but are always independent agents that you might be issuing group orders to at a given time.  You can also do something like have multiple control groups, and give slightly different attack-group-move orders to each.

You can combine munitions boosted fleets with a Tech III forcefield to create a slow moving yet almost unstoppable bubble of destruction - very fun.

Yeah, man, that must be really something.

[Revenantus]

You can actually hold G+Alt and right-click to make them group-attack-move.  Ships will stop when they individually, not collectively, come into range, though.  I can't think of a better way to do that, since ships are never inherently linked in this game, but are always independent agents that you might be issuing group orders to at a given time.  You can also do something like have multiple control groups, and give slightly different attack-group-move orders to each.

Hmm, I guess it's not so easy then. Perhaps some sort of escort command (i.e. ordering the fleet to follow another ship) could achieve the desired effect, still if the fleet were to stop when it was destroyed it would become irritating. Having multiple control groups isn't an ideal solution as I absolutely want the ships to stay together at all times - any failure in the formation is severely detrimental to their fighting strength.

Still, the ability to draw the selected ships attack ranges at the current location of the mouse pointer would allow the player to quickly select the optimum position to get everyone into firing range.

[x4000]

Hmm, I guess it's not so easy then. Perhaps some sort of escort command (i.e. ordering the fleet to follow another ship) could achieve the desired effect, still if the fleet were to stop when it was destroyed it would become irritating. Having multiple control groups isn't an ideal solution as I absolutely want the ships to stay together at all times - any failure in the formation is severely detrimental to their fighting strength.

Yeah... the group move is really meant to be in lieu of a more complex escort behavior.

Still, the ability to draw the selected ships attack ranges at the current location of the mouse pointer would allow the player to quickly select the optimum position to get everyone into firing range.

That is a good point, I think this would really help in general.  Added to my list.

[darke]

I'm lucky if my scouts get half way to the exit wormhole on the worlds on this map. The defensive AI is reallyreally defensive. A group of 30 Tech I+II+III Scouts can just barely penetrate past one of their worlds. I think I'm going to have to give up on my current 80 planet map, I've got barely a third of the map, mapped, AI level is about 350ish, and I just can't get any head way without scorched-earthing every world, which is really ramping up the AI level.

On the other hand, having one AI being seriously defensive is really slowing down their attacks on me, plus it does explain why it was unusually easy for me to secure my 7-wormhole starting world (not that it didn't take half an hour still...). Shame I can't really get anywhere though.

So, I guess you're playing against some manner of Turtle for at least one of the AIs.  Yeah, they do no attacks on your planets, but instead funnel all those units into fortifying their own planets.  When combined with a more aggressive AI as the other player, that can be a really brutal combination.

It was the Teleport Turtle AI. The other AI was the The Tank one, which was actually kind of interesting, since he was doing a pretty decent job of penetrating my defenses for a non-cloaking-centered AI.

It seems that when I hold down z+x, I can see cloaked enemies' attack ranges, even if I can see neither their image nor the lilac circle. Does make the cloaking slightly less useful. Not sure if it was a one-off thing and there's something wierd I need to do to trigger it though, or it's there all the time.

Bah, good catch.   Added to my list.

Ironically I was thinking last night that I hadn't seen many random bugs of that minor, slipped-through-the-cracks sort recently, and was thinking we might have cleared them all up.

Had my first crash too:

Code: [Select]

-----------------------------------Application_ThreadException-----------------------------------
System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
   at AIWar.Mat.sin_lookup(FInt i, FInt j) in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\Mat.cs:line 303
   at AIWar.Mat.Sin(FInt i) in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\Mat.cs:line 298
   at AIWar.Mat.Cos(FInt i) in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\Mat.cs:line 351
   at AIWar.ForegroundObject.MovePlayerUnit(Boolean RecalculateFull) in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\Framework\ForegroundObject.cs:line 3989
   at AIWar.GameForm.RunNextCycle(Boolean DoRendering, Boolean DoScrollingAndInput) in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\GameLoop.cs:line 732
   at AIWar.GameForm.gameLoop() in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\GameLoop.cs:line 238
   at AIWar.GameForm.GameForm_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\vcprojs\AIWar\GameFormParts\Startup.cs:line 272
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl()
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

I've been running through the various AIs recently, (basically 'til I get bored of the map ), just to test them to see if any are particularly harder/easier due to changes recently. Other then the Teleport Turtle AI which seems to make scouting all but impossible due to it's wormhole defense getting a little too enthusiastic with it's tachyon turrets, the only other one that seems a bit out of balance is the Special Forces AI. Currently due to it's lack of ability to assault it's units as a group, rather then as a "stream", it feels a little too easy to assault the world.

On the plus side the "take out the command center and flee" technique isn't as effective on it's worlds since they continue to stream units; however it's special forces command posts don't seem to gain "levels" like the rest of the units, so once you get a decent force of Tech II cruisers you can just get your forces, plot a tangent path beside the special forces bases just out of their range, then go and pay attention to something else whilst your forces wipe them out with minimal losses. The "grouping" of assaults will mitigate this after a bit, but I think the health of these things needs to ramp up depending on the Tech level of the planet they're on, otherwise they feel like they're getting easier as the game goes on, rather then harder like the other worlds.

Also, there seems like there might be a bug somewhere related to their bases, since it appears that at least on one world I took their special forces bases self destructed at one point, possibly after I build a command center. Not sure if this is intended as a random thing, or if it's just buggy.

[x4000]

It was the Teleport Turtle AI. The other AI was the The Tank one, which was actually kind of interesting, since he was doing a pretty decent job of penetrating my defenses for a non-cloaking-centered AI.

Ah, that would be a cool/tough combo.

Ironically I was thinking last night that I hadn't seen many random bugs of that minor, slipped-through-the-cracks sort recently, and was thinking we might have cleared them all up.

Did you remember to knock on wood while you were thinking that.

Had my first crash too:

This one is incredibly odd and rare, it's basically a bug in calculating the Sin/Cos of an angle.  Very much an edge case, and nothing that has changed since alpha, so that's odd.  Must have been some sort of incredibly unlikely rounding issue.  I've put in a fix in the next version that will prevent that from happening.  Thanks for posting it!

I've been running through the various AIs recently, (basically 'til I get bored of the map ), just to test them to see if any are particularly harder/easier due to changes recently. Other then the Teleport Turtle AI which seems to make scouting all but impossible due to it's wormhole defense getting a little too enthusiastic with it's tachyon turrets, the only other one that seems a bit out of balance is the Special Forces AI. Currently due to it's lack of ability to assault it's units as a group, rather then as a "stream", it feels a little too easy to assault the world.

My upcoming 1.009 updates should hopefully make the Special Forces AI more formidable.  Also, for unrelated reasons the turtle AIs are going to be a little bit less enthusiastic about building huge garrisons at every wormhole, same as all AI players will be.  It was just a bit overdone at the moment, I think -- but if you want the same old kind of challenge, there's either difficulty 8 or I will be adding some AI modifiers that will let people double or remove the AI Wormhole Defense aspects.

On the plus side the "take out the command center and flee" technique isn't as effective on it's worlds since they continue to stream units; however it's special forces command posts don't seem to gain "levels" like the rest of the units, so once you get a decent force of Tech II cruisers you can just get your forces, plot a tangent path beside the special forces bases just out of their range, then go and pay attention to something else whilst your forces wipe them out with minimal losses. The "grouping" of assaults will mitigate this after a bit, but I think the health of these things needs to ramp up depending on the Tech level of the planet they're on, otherwise they feel like they're getting easier as the game goes on, rather then harder like the other worlds.

These only ramp up when the overall AI Progress ramps up, and there's not much I can do to change that, unfortunately, since the units that they spawn (that wander all around the map), don't stay at all localized to any area.  So you'd have random Mark IV or even Mark V ships occasionally (or frequently, if your positioning is unlucky) wandering into your planets as the game goes on.  Of course, once that AI progress tech level goes up, then the Mark II or Mark III ships start coming through.  Special Forces Captains are definitely likely to be hardest at the very start, rather than as the game goes, though; especially with the upcoming grouping changes, it should be even more deadly than it currently is.

Also, there seems like there might be a bug somewhere related to their bases, since it appears that at least on one world I took their special forces bases self destructed at one point, possibly after I build a command center. Not sure if this is intended as a random thing, or if it's just buggy.

Hmm, I've never seen that before.  Let me know if you continue to see it, but I wonder if some of your long-range ships took it out without your notice, or something like that.

[darke]

It was the Teleport Turtle AI. The other AI was the The Tank one, which was actually kind of interesting, since he was doing a pretty decent job of penetrating my defenses for a non-cloaking-centered AI.

Ah, that would be a cool/tough combo.

It was certainly interesting, and it did compliment nicely. I had to use The Tank's less-defended worlds to get around particularly tough Turtle worlds at times.

Ironically I was thinking last night that I hadn't seen many random bugs of that minor, slipped-through-the-cracks sort recently, and was thinking we might have cleared them all up.

Did you remember to knock on wood while you were thinking that.

Of course not. A few minutes later I tripped over that cloaked-ships-still-show-attack-radius bug.

Had my first crash too:

This one is incredibly odd and rare, it's basically a bug in calculating the Sin/Cos of an angle.  Very much an edge case, and nothing that has changed since alpha, so that's odd.  Must have been some sort of incredibly unlikely rounding issue.  I've put in a fix in the next version that will prevent that from happening.  Thanks for posting it!

Heh. Probably the floating point registers rounding 0.0000000001 to 0.0 and something dying due to it really not liking null/inf at that point.

I've been running through the various AIs recently, (basically 'til I get bored of the map ), just to test them to see if any are particularly harder/easier due to changes recently. Other then the Teleport Turtle AI which seems to make scouting all but impossible due to it's wormhole defense getting a little too enthusiastic with it's tachyon turrets, the only other one that seems a bit out of balance is the Special Forces AI. Currently due to it's lack of ability to assault it's units as a group, rather then as a "stream", it feels a little too easy to assault the world.

My upcoming 1.009 updates should hopefully make the Special Forces AI more formidable.  Also, for unrelated reasons the turtle AIs are going to be a little bit less enthusiastic about building huge garrisons at every wormhole, same as all AI players will be.  It was just a bit overdone at the moment, I think -- but if you want the same old kind of challenge, there's either difficulty 8 or I will be adding some AI modifiers that will let people double or remove the AI Wormhole Defense aspects.

Cool. Given that about 75% of my games are a stalemate at the moment at AI7, I think I'll cope.

Also, there seems like there might be a bug somewhere related to their bases, since it appears that at least on one world I took their special forces bases self destructed at one point, possibly after I build a command center. Not sure if this is intended as a random thing, or if it's just buggy.

Hmm, I've never seen that before.  Let me know if you continue to see it, but I wonder if some of your long-range ships took it out without your notice, or something like that.

I saw it happen three or four times I guess. It always confused me because my ships were along way away, and I didn't have any sniper/etc ships too. Often I'd have had a bunch of ships send on their way to the special fortress location on the other side of the map; I'd get distracted doing other busywork trying to keep things safe/repaired, maybe dragging in my science vessels or something, then I'd look back to try to micromanage my ships, only to notice that they were not in range, yet the special fortress was gone, then I'd check the other points, again on the "other side of the map" so I knew that I couldn't have accidentally killed them, but they were also missing too, but the turrets that surrounded them was still there.

If I get around to it, I'll try and play a game with two special fortress AI's sometime soon and see if I can reliably duplicate it, because it's rather strange.

Anyway, more bugs & things:

The alert when things are attacking your primary command center is really useful; even more useful would be one for something attacking any of your command centers. Between the Tank AI in the last game, and the Special Forces one in this game I lost a lot of command centers because I couldn't really tell the difference between "yet another attack on my world that I don't really need to pay attention to" and one where I discover 10 or 20 minutes later that I don't have a command center where once there was one.

You can't repair engine damage on vorticular cutlass, since it can't be repaired, which makes the ship rather useless. I'm guessing this may be one for an engine rating of "inf" or similar.

Mobile repair stations have all kind of weird things happening to them:
They often won't detect when something has moved into range of their healing that needs healing. I've seen multiple instances of multiple ships in a damaged state (they hadn't been attacked for ages), sitting right next to it yet it's not healing anything. I think it's got something to do with the problem noted later about it not noticing that it has finished healing something.

There's something weird with it's healing range. It will actually heal at a relatively large distance, but only if you bring it within, umm, about two diameter's of it's selection circle of an object to be healed? After that you can take it quite a distance away and it's still healing, but it won't detect unless it's close it seems.

Also the healing beams continue to show even after it's finished healing, until you move the station far enough away the object isn't within healing radius. In fact the healing beams will continue to show even when the object moves out of range, even when the object moves onto another map. Sometimes the beams stop when you move the station, sometimes the beams continue for ages until something triggers that it should stop healing the not-in-range object.

It seems to work fine when it works, but it feels like you've got to be more lucky then anything to wiggle the various ships around until they get into just the right place for it to trigger properly.

[x4000]

Of course not. A few minutes later I tripped over that cloaked-ships-still-show-attack-radius bug.

Those spirits in the wood (or is it trees?)... I tell ya, they're always meddling!

Heh. Probably the floating point registers rounding 0.0000000001 to 0.0 and something dying due to it really not liking null/inf at that point.

It's an index out of range issue, actually, but same basic idea.  I'm using Sin lookup tables for speed, like most games tend to, and it was doing some sort of funky rounding or whatever that was not being caught by the existing check code.  Very strange, but no biggie with a try/catch.

Cool. Given that about 75% of my games are a stalemate at the moment at AI7, I think I'll cope.

Yeah, I've been hearing about a lot of stalemates at difficulty 7 recently, so that's why the change!

I saw it happen three or four times I guess. It always confused me because my ships were along way away, and I didn't have any sniper/etc ships too. Often I'd have had a bunch of ships send on their way to the special fortress location on the other side of the map; I'd get distracted doing other busywork trying to keep things safe/repaired, maybe dragging in my science vessels or something, then I'd look back to try to micromanage my ships, only to notice that they were not in range, yet the special fortress was gone, then I'd check the other points, again on the "other side of the map" so I knew that I couldn't have accidentally killed them, but they were also missing too, but the turrets that surrounded them was still there.

Hmm... Any chance you had captured an ion cannon or something like that on those planets?  I'll look into this more, though -- thanks for the added detail!

The alert when things are attacking your primary command center is really useful; even more useful would be one for something attacking any of your command centers. Between the Tank AI in the last game, and the Special Forces one in this game I lost a lot of command centers because I couldn't really tell the difference between "yet another attack on my world that I don't really need to pay attention to" and one where I discover 10 or 20 minutes later that I don't have a command center where once there was one.

Yeah, that's a good point; I've certainly lost them without realizing, too.  I'll have to make some sort of thing for that, maybe one of those little visual alerts in the upper left.  An audio alert might get kind of annoying, but let me know what you think.

You can't repair engine damage on vorticular cutlass, since it can't be repaired, which makes the ship rather useless. I'm guessing this may be one for an engine rating of "inf" or similar.

Ooh, good thought for this and the vampire.  Letting their engines get damaged makes them useless, anyway.

Mobile repair stations have all kind of weird things happening to them:
They often won't detect when something has moved into range of their healing that needs healing. I've seen multiple instances of multiple ships in a damaged state (they hadn't been attacked for ages), sitting right next to it yet it's not healing anything. I think it's got something to do with the problem noted later about it not noticing that it has finished healing something.

There's something weird with it's healing range. It will actually heal at a relatively large distance, but only if you bring it within, umm, about two diameter's of it's selection circle of an object to be healed? After that you can take it quite a distance away and it's still healing, but it won't detect unless it's close it seems.

Also the healing beams continue to show even after it's finished healing, until you move the station far enough away the object isn't within healing radius. In fact the healing beams will continue to show even when the object moves out of range, even when the object moves onto another map. Sometimes the beams stop when you move the station, sometimes the beams continue for ages until something triggers that it should stop healing the not-in-range object.

It seems to work fine when it works, but it feels like you've got to be more lucky then anything to wiggle the various ships around until they get into just the right place for it to trigger properly.

Hmm, that's all related, it sounds like.  Thanks for letting me know, I should be able to get that resolved pretty speedily for the next prerelease (to come out today).

[darke]

Heh. Probably the floating point registers rounding 0.0000000001 to 0.0 and something dying due to it really not liking null/inf at that point.

It's an index out of range issue, actually, but same basic idea.  I'm using Sin lookup tables for speed, like most games tend to, and it was doing some sort of funky rounding or whatever that was not being caught by the existing check code.  Very strange, but no biggie with a try/catch.

Ah, that makes sense.

Cool. Given that about 75% of my games are a stalemate at the moment at AI7, I think I'll cope.

Yeah, I've been hearing about a lot of stalemates at difficulty 7 recently, so that's why the change!

I saw it happen three or four times I guess. It always confused me because my ships were along way away, and I didn't have any sniper/etc ships too. Often I'd have had a bunch of ships send on their way to the special fortress location on the other side of the map; I'd get distracted doing other busywork trying to keep things safe/repaired, maybe dragging in my science vessels or something, then I'd look back to try to micromanage my ships, only to notice that they were not in range, yet the special fortress was gone, then I'd check the other points, again on the "other side of the map" so I knew that I couldn't have accidentally killed them, but they were also missing too, but the turrets that surrounded them was still there.

Hmm... Any chance you had captured an ion cannon or something like that on those planets?  I'll look into this more, though -- thanks for the added detail!

... that's actually quite possible. I do have a vague feeling that a couple of those times were me shuffling around a colony ship or engineer between wormholes, and that's usually when I'll be dealing with that in the middle of a still very-hostile world.

The alert when things are attacking your primary command center is really useful; even more useful would be one for something attacking any of your command centers. Between the Tank AI in the last game, and the Special Forces one in this game I lost a lot of command centers because I couldn't really tell the difference between "yet another attack on my world that I don't really need to pay attention to" and one where I discover 10 or 20 minutes later that I don't have a command center where once there was one.

Yeah, that's a good point; I've certainly lost them without realizing, too.  I'll have to make some sort of thing for that, maybe one of those little visual alerts in the upper left.  An audio alert might get kind of annoying, but let me know what you think.

Either would be ok really. It really is one of those things you have to react to immediately, since your command centers are surprisingly fragile even to a single bomber slipping through, and often your ships will be guarding a wormhole, or even in an adjacent system, or you need to quickly build a turret or something so it's rather important that you notice as soon as possible.

At the least a flashing message saying something like "Command Station under attack at <world>" like the main one flashes would be be useful. I'm not sure if it's necessary to worry about trying to handle warning about more then one world's command station at a time, I've not actually seen it happen, and if it does you've got far more problems to worry about then just trying to keep a single station safe.

You can't repair engine damage on vorticular cutlass, since it can't be repaired, which makes the ship rather useless. I'm guessing this may be one for an engine rating of "inf" or similar.

Ooh, good thought for this and the vampire.  Letting their engines get damaged makes them useless, anyway.

Yeah.

Mobile repair stations have all kind of weird things happening to them:
They often won't detect when something has moved into range of their healing that needs healing. I've seen multiple instances of multiple ships in a damaged state (they hadn't been attacked for ages), sitting right next to it yet it's not healing anything. I think it's got something to do with the problem noted later about it not noticing that it has finished healing something.

There's something weird with it's healing range. It will actually heal at a relatively large distance, but only if you bring it within, umm, about two diameter's of it's selection circle of an object to be healed? After that you can take it quite a distance away and it's still healing, but it won't detect unless it's close it seems.

Also the healing beams continue to show even after it's finished healing, until you move the station far enough away the object isn't within healing radius. In fact the healing beams will continue to show even when the object moves out of range, even when the object moves onto another map. Sometimes the beams stop when you move the station, sometimes the beams continue for ages until something triggers that it should stop healing the not-in-range object.

It seems to work fine when it works, but it feels like you've got to be more lucky then anything to wiggle the various ships around until they get into just the right place for it to trigger properly.

Hmm, that's all related, it sounds like.  Thanks for letting me know, I should be able to get that resolved pretty speedily for the next prerelease (to come out today).

Cool. I shall give it a try next time. (Since I want to finish this map with the current warp defense level; just to see how hard the end game worlds are. )

[x4000]

Hmm... Any chance you had captured an ion cannon or something like that on those planets?  I'll look into this more, though -- thanks for the added detail!

... that's actually quite possible. I do have a vague feeling that a couple of those times were me shuffling around a colony ship or engineer between wormholes, and that's usually when I'll be dealing with that in the middle of a still very-hostile world.

I'll make it so that the command posts (all varieties) are immune to being insta-killed, and hopefully that will solve this one, then!

Either would be ok really. It really is one of those things you have to react to immediately, since your command centers are surprisingly fragile even to a single bomber slipping through, and often your ships will be guarding a wormhole, or even in an adjacent system, or you need to quickly build a turret or something so it's rather important that you notice as soon as possible.

At the least a flashing message saying something like "Command Station under attack at <world>" like the main one flashes would be be useful. I'm not sure if it's necessary to worry about trying to handle warning about more then one world's command station at a time, I've not actually seen it happen, and if it does you've got far more problems to worry about then just trying to keep a single station safe.

All good.

Cool. I shall give it a try next time. (Since I want to finish this map with the current warp defense level; just to see how hard the end game worlds are. )

Actually, the wormhole defenses won't be adjusted one way or another in existing savegames, so you can update without worry of that.  The only adjustments I'm making are in how the map is seeded at the very start, so for maps that have already been started, they won't see that shift.