Prerelease 1.009G (5 Space Tugs, Mark III Engineers, memory use improvements).

[x4000]

Here's the latest prerelease:  http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1009G.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 1.008, so you have to already have 1.008 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

What's new since 1.009F:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.008 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-The way that blades hit their targets are now consistent with other shot types, which means that they will now properly trigger the command station warning sounds, etc.

-Cutlasses and Vampires are now immune to tractor beams, since they are completely helpless when held in that fashion.

-Previously, ships that had cloaking would never fire unless in attack-move or free-roaming modes, or unless they were explicitly given an attack order.  This was very problematic when they were hit by tachyon beam emitters, since they would then not defend themselves.  Now they will automatically fire at targets as long as they are decloaked, but they still won't break cloaking of their own accord to attack unless in attack-move or free-roaming modes.

-Previously, it was sometimes possible for maps to have fewer than 8 available starting positions for players.  Fixed.

-The cost of Mark II engineers has been increased by 400 each of metal and crystal, and they now take 10 seconds longer to build.

-New ship:  Mark III Engineers can now be unlocked at the ECON tab of command stations.  These engineers have an even larger repair radius, a very fast movement speed (but no teleportation), cloaking, and a high hull strength.  They have to decloak in order to perform repairs/acceleration, but they recloak quite quickly after stopping.

-The AI now uses more Mark III engineers on its core, home, and upgraded planets.  Most AIs still use the regular Mark I engineers everywhere else, but the Teleporter Turtle AI type uses Mark II (teleporting) engineers instead.

-The Mobile Repair Station is now immune to being insta-killed.

-Missiles can no longer be repaired.

-New Ships: The mobile repair station can now build five different variants of space tug, which are very fast ships with tractor beams that can automatically bring ships back to the nearest mobile repair station for healing, then send the ships back into the fray.

-Shot and explosion objects are once again reused, since it is now clear that they were not causing the prior desyncs.  This should help to keep memory usage as low as possible.

-The way that unit data is sent to the AI thread now requires no string concatenation, which should prevent the rare OutOfMemory exceptions that a few players with extra-high amounts of RAM were getting.

[darke]

-The cost of Mark II engineers has been increased by 400 each of metal and crystal, and they now take 10 seconds longer to build.

I did think the cost in knowledge and the lack of being able to easily go through the wormholes did offset the benefits of teleportation; but it did feel a little on the cheap side.

-New ship:  Mark III Engineers can now be unlocked at the ECON tab of command stations.  These engineers have an even larger repair radius, a very fast movement speed (but no teleportation), cloaking, and a high hull strength.  They have to decloak in order to perform repairs/acceleration, but they recloak quite quickly after stopping.

Yay! It will be interesting to see how well or not these compare with the repair tugs. I do worry though that the high hull strength and the ability to drag them through wormholes (due to lack of teleportation) might make tossing up a command center a bit too easy. (Thinking about a hit-and-run on a Tech III ion cannon, or Advanced Research Station on a world that's a little too hard to take over, such as a heavy Turtling world, or the intersection of a lot of Special Fortress "trains".)

-The AI now uses more Mark III engineers on its core, home, and upgraded planets.  Most AIs still use the regular Mark I engineers everywhere else, but the Teleporter Turtle AI type uses Mark II (teleporting) engineers instead.

Cool. That'll make a scatter-shot approach at taking the planet down be a little harder (not that it's particularly easy already ).

-New Ships: The mobile repair station can now build five different variants of space tug, which are very fast ships with tractor beams that can automatically bring ships back to the nearest mobile repair station for healing, then send the ships back into the fray.

It'll be interesting to see how this compares with a couple of the Tech III Engineers.

[PhilRoi]

take a peek at the Space tugs again.  Anytime i load a saved game where a tug is actively hauling a ship,   the tug will not release the ship after after repairs.  I saw this behavior with the haul if less then 100% tugs.   I'm getting ready to check the other types too.

[x4000]

I did think the cost in knowledge and the lack of being able to easily go through the wormholes did offset the benefits of teleportation; but it did feel a little on the cheap side.

Yeah, I know what you mean -- the cost increase isn't really that severe when you look at their total cost, though.

Yay! It will be interesting to see how well or not these compare with the repair tugs. I do worry though that the high hull strength and the ability to drag them through wormholes (due to lack of teleportation) might make tossing up a command center a bit too easy. (Thinking about a hit-and-run on a Tech III ion cannon, or Advanced Research Station on a world that's a little too hard to take over, such as a heavy Turtling world, or the intersection of a lot of Special Fortress "trains".)

Humm... that's an interesting point.  Of course, if the planet is too nasty, the risk of it swarming you and killing you with all those guys (who might be released from guard duty when the command station goes up) might be a little high.  But if this becomes too much of a problem, then I'll have to give the AI some sort of counter, I suppose.  Let's see how it plays out in practice, if people are exploiting it too much then I'll add a counter.  Great thoughts, though.

Cool. That'll make a scatter-shot approach at taking the planet down be a little harder (not that it's particularly easy already ).

Haha, yeah.

-New Ships: The mobile repair station can now build five different variants of space tug, which are very fast ships with tractor beams that can automatically bring ships back to the nearest mobile repair station for healing, then send the ships back into the fray.

It'll be interesting to see how this compares with a couple of the Tech III Engineers.

From my testing, the mobile repair station paired with space tugs is wicked awesome.  Especially when your starships are there, etc.

[x4000]

take a peek at the Space tugs again.  Anytime i load a saved game where a tug is actively hauling a ship,   the tug will not release the ship after after repairs.  I saw this behavior with the haul if less then 100% tugs.   I'm getting ready to check the other types too.

Oh, thanks for that -- looks like all of thsoe types will exhibit that behavior.  I've put in a fix for that with 1.009H, which will be coming out this morning.  Good catch!

[PhilRoi]

saw another Tug bug.  I'll watch close and see if I can spot it again.   I had a tug grab a cruiser and act like a ram.   locked onto it and continued in the same direction exactly opposite the repair pad.
probably a minor error.   and I haven't seen it yet since but if i can catch one doing it and save it,  i'll post the save.

[x4000]

saw another Tug bug.  I'll watch close and see if I can spot it again.   I had a tug grab a cruiser and act like a ram.   locked onto it and continued in the same direction exactly opposite the repair pad.
probably a minor error.   and I haven't seen it yet since but if i can catch one doing it and save it,  i'll post the save.

That's a strange one, I haven't seen that.  If you can catch one in the act, I'd definitely love to see it -- and if you have any ideas on how to duplicate that, too.

[x4000]

silly question.  where are the saves hidden away?   not seeing them in the SAVE folder in the game program dir?  Got another TUG bug for you to look at.

You must be on Vista, which doesn't allow saving of new files into the Program Files folder without elevated permissions.  Take a look in the Settings window and see the Game Data Directory path -- that's where your saves are (it's most likely under your personal profile).

[PhilRoi]

found it. beforte i saw your reply.  here's the save

check out near the top of the planet locetloc(SP?)

tugs are hanging out and won't leave top of screen.

[x4000]

Okay, thanks for that -- I can duplicate the issue with that savegame, and I think I've figured out how to fix it. One thing you'll want to do when the new version is out is enable overzoom and far zoom, and look up at the top of that planet, since there are a couple of ships that got shoved out of the planet area up there.

Thanks!

[PhilRoi]

thats what i figured happened.   just wasn't sure what was making the tugs shove something out there in the first place.

[x4000]

Yeah, I'm really not sure what was the root cause of that, either, except that they were trying to go to some repair stations that were nonexistent.  Possibly one repair station died or something... I'm not sure.  But having them check that their target repair station isn't dead or on another planet before they go to it seems to have fixed the problem.  I'll have the next prerelease up in an hour or so, and we'll see if you can get it to break again.

[PhilRoi]

I have only had 1 repair station that whole game.  I did move it around several times.   perhaps the tug's get "lost" if the target repair station moves on them after they start a tow.

[x4000]

Maybe... that shouldn't have been happening, though.  Oh well.  At least it's not happening any longer.

[Admiral]

-Cutlasses and Vampires are now immune to tractor beams, since they are completely helpless when held in that fashion.

Completely immune? How about have them simply slowed down (50%? 75%?) while being affected by a tractor beam instead?

-The way that unit data is sent to the AI thread now requires no string concatenation, which should prevent the rare OutOfMemory exceptions that a few players with extra-high amounts of RAM were getting.

Since when is 8G RAM "extra-high"?

Cheers!