Prerelease 1.010B (More Minor UI Tweaks)

[x4000]

The latest prerelease of AI War is now out:  http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1010B.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 1.009, so you have to already have 1.009 (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 1.010A:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.009 are attached at the bottom)

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

-Double-clicking items in the listboxes for joining a multiplayer game, listing profiles, and listing tutorials now automatically does the default action, rather than requiring a single-click and then a button press.

-There was previously an inaccuracy with the hostile wormholes count on planets not adjacent to human planets.  Fixed.  Before it was counting all warp gates as a hostile wormhole, but now it will just count exo-galaxy wormholes as it should be.

-Previously, changing a number of advanced options in the lobby was causing the chat history to be cleared.  Fixed.

CHANGES FROM PRIOR PRERELEASES
--------------

-When switching between planets, it now only restores your prior zoom/viewport-center when the planet is clicked on the galaxy map.  This is generally helpful, whereas the other modes of switching (Ctrl-clicking wormholes, activating hotkeys, etc) work better as they previously were, since in general they are not going back to old settings, but rather are adjusting the view to look at something specific.

-Pressing the ship selection shortcuts (comma, period, B, S, etc) no longer centers on the ships unless Shift is held.  This is how it used to work, and this aspect of the prior update was unintended.

[Pandemic]

Dunno if this is a bug, or really what this is at all... But when you build a Space Plane and you have your scout close to it, the little lines that come up when your engineer is repairing something appear. I really have no clue what this is... I guess it's more of a question then a bug report XD.


-Pandemic

[x4000]

Good question.  That's actually the "cloaking booster" ability of the scout:  http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Cloaking

[Pandemic]

Ah... interesting.

That may prove to be extremely useful 


-Pandemic

[darke]

Random unit thoughts:

Short Range Turret III feels both too expensive for it's cost, and possibly in the wrong place in the tech tree. Laser turrents are cheaper (half the price!), have more health, do 50% more damage over time (and do it in smaller chunks so better to minimize "overkill" for swarms of smaller ships). The only reason to use SRT III seems to be that it gives you more turrets since the only benefit from II is double the damage at a massive increase in cost.

Maybe if the SRT series scaled up in damage/health like the MLRS Turrets do, it would be a bit more of a reason to purchase them?

As to the place in the tech tree, it would be nice if they were useful as an alternative to Laser Turrets rather then having the Lasers depend on them. It would mean the Lightning Turrets aren't so incredibly deep in the tree (I don't think I've ever had the chance to research them ), and would be a good test of whether the balance of them is "right" too whether you continue to research the shell based tree, or swap to the laser/electicity based tree. And of course even if you had a preference, it would change depending upon what the enemies are throwing at you due to shell-resistance and the like.

On a similar thought, I also never seem to use the Tractor Beam Turret II, except if I run out of Turret I's (which almost never happens). It's possibly more "must have" when in higher AIs, or multiplayer when the AIs start tossing lots more ships at you in wormhole attacks but singleplayer/AI7 it doesn't seem to be needed, even when I'm playing against enthusiastic planet attacker AIs and increased AI resources.

Maybe if it slowed normally "immune to tractor beam" ships (non starship types) to 50% speed whilst in range? It would make it a "must get" for when being attacked by a raider or the various melee equipped AIs, like getting the Tachyon Beam Emitter is a must-get for Stealth equipped AIs.

Advanced Factories and Type IV teleporting ships don't really play nice together since the advanced factory is fixed, and the ships can't move through wormholes. Sure the Transport Ship can be used to partially minimise the inconvenience, but it's a pain to have to shuffle things around like that, and an expensive knowledge upgrade (and would essentially need to be factored into the "desirability" of the teleporting ships when you pick them at the start, or you get them when in game; I still feel like the AI is taunting me when I get a teleporting ship from an Advanced Research Station ).

Maybe if the Advanced Factory could be moved slowly like the Advanced Research Station. It would mean you could actually wander it around a little, but you'd certainly never want it directly on the front lines since it's so insanely fragile. Plus it only produces Tech IV ships, so you still don't have the ability to massively reinforce right near the front line easily like you would if you had mobile Tech I-III ship builders.

Mobile Repair Station: Cool concept, but it feels way too fiddly using it in practice. If the ships you build were all "magnetic" and kept themselves within a certain range of the station, except when flying out to grab things and return them, it would be much more convenient moving it around, especially between planets (so ships "built" from a particular station would always be "attached" to that station, if the station dies, they go poof as well presumably; would make it more inconvenient and expensive and mean you have to be a little more careful with them).

Advanced Warp Sensors seem to be a bit on the "why bother?" side as well. I used them a lot when I first started playing, especially on the easier difficulty levels, but once you get to a bit higher skilled they just don't seem to be all that useful. Again, possibly I'm just not playing multiplayer/higher-AI where the waves of ships are huge enough to matter to micro a stack of ships around, but generally my defenses are enough that I can just have a bunch of ships on roaming-attack and they'll swat down whatever was throwing itself against me whether I know the wormhole or not. And if they can't it's usually because the attack was way too powerful to defend against with their small force anyway (usually a couple of starships).

And on an unrelated note (and strangely enough something I only just noticed... yeah, quick on the uptake I am ), there's a distinct lack of MLRS III to match up with SRT III. I guess the Missile Turret was part of that upgrade chain previously so that's why it never existed or something.

[x4000]

Short Range Turret III feels both too expensive for it's cost, and possibly in the wrong place in the tech tree. Laser turrents are cheaper (half the price!), have more health, do 50% more damage over time (and do it in smaller chunks so better to minimize "overkill" for swarms of smaller ships). The only reason to use SRT III seems to be that it gives you more turrets since the only benefit from II is double the damage at a massive increase in cost.

Maybe if the SRT series scaled up in damage/health like the MLRS Turrets do, it would be a bit more of a reason to purchase them?

That is pretty much the reason I added them, is to give more turrets.  I think you're right about reducing their cost, though -- I'll look at that.  I think increasing their health would also be a good thing.

As to the place in the tech tree, it would be nice if they were useful as an alternative to Laser Turrets rather then having the Lasers depend on them. It would mean the Lightning Turrets aren't so incredibly deep in the tree (I don't think I've ever had the chance to research them ), and would be a good test of whether the balance of them is "right" too whether you continue to research the shell based tree, or swap to the laser/electicity based tree. And of course even if you had a preference, it would change depending upon what the enemies are throwing at you due to shell-resistance and the like.

That's true -- I think that having Laser turrets depend on Mark II rather than Mark III turrets is a great idea.  I've added this to my list, too.

On a similar thought, I also never seem to use the Tractor Beam Turret II, except if I run out of Turret I's (which almost never happens). It's possibly more "must have" when in higher AIs, or multiplayer when the AIs start tossing lots more ships at you in wormhole attacks but singleplayer/AI7 it doesn't seem to be needed, even when I'm playing against enthusiastic planet attacker AIs and increased AI resources.

Maybe if it slowed normally "immune to tractor beam" ships (non starship types) to 50% speed whilst in range? It would make it a "must get" for when being attacked by a raider or the various melee equipped AIs, like getting the Tachyon Beam Emitter is a must-get for Stealth equipped AIs.

I think that is an excellent point, actually.  The slowing of tractor-immune ships has come up a few times recently (I can't remember if that was you or someone else, sorry, too many conversations at once ).  And I like the way this would handle it -- as an unlockable ability only, basically.

Advanced Factories and Type IV teleporting ships don't really play nice together since the advanced factory is fixed, and the ships can't move through wormholes. Sure the Transport Ship can be used to partially minimise the inconvenience, but it's a pain to have to shuffle things around like that, and an expensive knowledge upgrade (and would essentially need to be factored into the "desirability" of the teleporting ships when you pick them at the start, or you get them when in game; I still feel like the AI is taunting me when I get a teleporting ship from an Advanced Research Station ).

Maybe if the Advanced Factory could be moved slowly like the Advanced Research Station. It would mean you could actually wander it around a little, but you'd certainly never want it directly on the front lines since it's so insanely fragile. Plus it only produces Tech IV ships, so you still don't have the ability to massively reinforce right near the front line easily like you would if you had mobile Tech I-III ship builders.

My reason for making them immobile is that then you have a must-defend planet where they are.  I'm not sure I want to give that up, you know?  I think what I would rather do is make the Mark IV teleporting ships able to use wormholes.  It would be a really cool advantage for them, and would provide a big incentive to upgrade to them.  In fact, I think I might even also make the Mark III variants teleporting.  I never find myself upgrading them beyond Mark II, otherwise.

Mobile Repair Station: Cool concept, but it feels way too fiddly using it in practice. If the ships you build were all "magnetic" and kept themselves within a certain range of the station, except when flying out to grab things and return them, it would be much more convenient moving it around, especially between planets (so ships "built" from a particular station would always be "attached" to that station, if the station dies, they go poof as well presumably; would make it more inconvenient and expensive and mean you have to be a little more careful with them).

I'm not sure quite what the issue is -- you're forgetting to bring along your space tugs between planets?  Since those are all in one column on the planetary sidebar, that's a one-click solution to select them all.  Also, you could just assign the repair station to a control group, and then any tugs it creates should also be in that control group.  Then if you just issue a control group order, away they all go.  On offense, for me the mobile repair stations have been vastly more effective than engineers -- I'm not quite sure what your complaints with them are, beyond having to find multiple ships to send from one planet to the next, rather than just one.

(By the by -- space tugs don't have any allegiance to a particular mobile repair station.  If you have two repair stations on a planet, the space tugs will bring ships back to whichever one is closest at the time.  So you don't have to worry with keeping track of which tugs go with which repair station or whatever).

Advanced Warp Sensors seem to be a bit on the "why bother?" side as well. I used them a lot when I first started playing, especially on the easier difficulty levels, but once you get to a bit higher skilled they just don't seem to be all that useful. Again, possibly I'm just not playing multiplayer/higher-AI where the waves of ships are huge enough to matter to micro a stack of ships around, but generally my defenses are enough that I can just have a bunch of ships on roaming-attack and they'll swat down whatever was throwing itself against me whether I know the wormhole or not. And if they can't it's usually because the attack was way too powerful to defend against with their small force anyway (usually a couple of starships).

You were the one asking for "candy" ships, I think.  This is the original, from before you had asked.  These sensors predated free-roaming defender mode (and attack-move mode, incidentally), so they were a lot more useful then.  I agree that they are mostly useful in very specific circumstances, or for new players.  That's a big part of the reason for the very low cost.  The very definition of a "candy" tech, I think -- moderate-to-small use, low cost, etc.

And on an unrelated note (and strangely enough something I only just noticed... yeah, quick on the uptake I am ), there's a distinct lack of MLRS III to match up with SRT III. I guess the Missile Turret was part of that upgrade chain previously so that's why it never existed or something.

This is true, the missile turret was part of that upgrade chain.  Of course, I've never been all that regimented about having 3 or 4 levels of all the non-combat ships.  But I think the time may be right for a MLRS Turret III, just because of the changes to the tech chains.  Added to my list!

[darke]

Short Range Turret III feels both too expensive for it's cost, and possibly in the wrong place in the tech tree. Laser turrents are cheaper (half the price!), have more health, do 50% more damage over time (and do it in smaller chunks so better to minimize "overkill" for swarms of smaller ships). The only reason to use SRT III seems to be that it gives you more turrets since the only benefit from II is double the damage at a massive increase in cost.

Maybe if the SRT series scaled up in damage/health like the MLRS Turrets do, it would be a bit more of a reason to purchase them?

That is pretty much the reason I added them, is to give more turrets.  I think you're right about reducing their cost, though -- I'll look at that.  I think increasing their health would also be a good thing.

Yeah. I could see the cost increase logic, double the damage == increase the cost by four times, but the Tech III are very expensive glass cannons without a little bit of health to go with them.

On a similar thought, I also never seem to use the Tractor Beam Turret II, except if I run out of Turret I's (which almost never happens). It's possibly more "must have" when in higher AIs, or multiplayer when the AIs start tossing lots more ships at you in wormhole attacks but singleplayer/AI7 it doesn't seem to be needed, even when I'm playing against enthusiastic planet attacker AIs and increased AI resources.

Maybe if it slowed normally "immune to tractor beam" ships (non starship types) to 50% speed whilst in range? It would make it a "must get" for when being attacked by a raider or the various melee equipped AIs, like getting the Tachyon Beam Emitter is a must-get for Stealth equipped AIs.

I think that is an excellent point, actually.  The slowing of tractor-immune ships has come up a few times recently (I can't remember if that was you or someone else, sorry, too many conversations at once ).  And I like the way this would handle it -- as an unlockable ability only, basically.

I think someone else mentioned it, and yeah, it's hard to keep conversations straight here at times.   I only really noticed it since I finally managed to get a start with a Special Forces AI (first time in 15 attempts; I still think the need a bit of a nerf at the beginning! ), and it had those Vorticular things. They're pretty nippy, pretty strong, and take down a harvester in, like, two hits.

There really needs to be a checkbox on your command center to automatically start rebuilding harvesters when the planet is clear of enemies for situations like this.

Advanced Factories and Type IV teleporting ships don't really play nice together since the advanced factory is fixed, and the ships can't move through wormholes. Sure the Transport Ship can be used to partially minimise the inconvenience, but it's a pain to have to shuffle things around like that, and an expensive knowledge upgrade (and would essentially need to be factored into the "desirability" of the teleporting ships when you pick them at the start, or you get them when in game; I still feel like the AI is taunting me when I get a teleporting ship from an Advanced Research Station ).

Maybe if the Advanced Factory could be moved slowly like the Advanced Research Station. It would mean you could actually wander it around a little, but you'd certainly never want it directly on the front lines since it's so insanely fragile. Plus it only produces Tech IV ships, so you still don't have the ability to massively reinforce right near the front line easily like you would if you had mobile Tech I-III ship builders.

My reason for making them immobile is that then you have a must-defend planet where they are.  I'm not sure I want to give that up, you know?  I think what I would rather do is make the Mark IV teleporting ships able to use wormholes.  It would be a really cool advantage for them, and would provide a big incentive to upgrade to them.  In fact, I think I might even also make the Mark III variants teleporting.  I never find myself upgrading them beyond Mark II, otherwise.

Yeah, I thought that was the case. But making the higher level ones warp would be convenient. I don't think I've ever bothered getting even the Tech II upgrades on any teleporting ships due to their relative lack of strategic maneuverability.

I'm not sure quite what the issue is -- you're forgetting to bring along your space tugs between planets?  Since those are all in one column on the planetary sidebar, that's a one-click solution to select them all.  Also, you could just assign the repair station to a control group, and then any tugs it creates should also be in that control group.  Then if you just issue a control group order, away they all go.  On offense, for me the mobile repair stations have been vastly more effective than engineers -- I'm not quite sure what your complaints with them are, beyond having to find multiple ships to send from one planet to the next, rather than just one.

(By the by -- space tugs don't have any allegiance to a particular mobile repair station.  If you have two repair stations on a planet, the space tugs will bring ships back to whichever one is closest at the time.  So you don't have to worry with keeping track of which tugs go with which repair station or whatever).

Hrm... I'll have to give them another try. I just found them much fiddlier to use, then, say a half dozen Tech III engineers. But the last couple of times I've tried to use them I've been going up against the Teleport Turtle AI and the engine disabler spiders (and at the time the tugs were still broken with respect to being able to carry ships with dead engines), so I probably encountered all the worst times to use them in.

Advanced Warp Sensors seem to be a bit on the "why bother?" side as well. I used them a lot when I first started playing, especially on the easier difficulty levels, but once you get to a bit higher skilled they just don't seem to be all that useful. Again, possibly I'm just not playing multiplayer/higher-AI where the waves of ships are huge enough to matter to micro a stack of ships around, but generally my defenses are enough that I can just have a bunch of ships on roaming-attack and they'll swat down whatever was throwing itself against me whether I know the wormhole or not. And if they can't it's usually because the attack was way too powerful to defend against with their small force anyway (usually a couple of starships).

You were the one asking for "candy" ships, I think.  This is the original, from before you had asked.  These sensors predated free-roaming defender mode (and attack-move mode, incidentally), so they were a lot more useful then.  I agree that they are mostly useful in very specific circumstances, or for new players.  That's a big part of the reason for the very low cost.  The very definition of a "candy" tech, I think -- moderate-to-small use, low cost, etc.

Yup, it's just that I can't think of a specific use for it, other then "newbie", or perhaps the rare "who's the joker who attached 8 damned wormholes to this planet!?" planet that for reasons completely diametrical to reason or sanity you decide to take and defend. If it, say, alerted the free-roaming-defender mode ships to swarm to the wormhole in enough time to get there before the ships arrive, that would be enough cool factor for me to grab it occasionally.

And on an unrelated note (and strangely enough something I only just noticed... yeah, quick on the uptake I am ), there's a distinct lack of MLRS III to match up with SRT III. I guess the Missile Turret was part of that upgrade chain previously so that's why it never existed or something.

This is true, the missile turret was part of that upgrade chain.  Of course, I've never been all that regimented about having 3 or 4 levels of all the non-combat ships.  But I think the time may be right for a MLRS Turret III, just because of the changes to the tech chains.  Added to my list!

Yay!

[x4000]

I think someone else mentioned it, and yeah, it's hard to keep conversations straight here at times.   I only really noticed it since I finally managed to get a start with a Special Forces AI (first time in 15 attempts; I still think the need a bit of a nerf at the beginning! ), and it had those Vorticular things. They're pretty nippy, pretty strong, and take down a harvester in, like, two hits.

I'm telling you, it's both because you like planets with lots of hostile wormholes, and because you give them a resource boost.  That's just particularly unhelpful against special forces captains.

There really needs to be a checkbox on your command center to automatically start rebuilding harvesters when the planet is clear of enemies for situations like this.

Good point -- added to my list.

Hrm... I'll have to give them another try. I just found them much fiddlier to use, then, say a half dozen Tech III engineers. But the last couple of times I've tried to use them I've been going up against the Teleport Turtle AI and the engine disabler spiders (and at the time the tugs were still broken with respect to being able to carry ships with dead engines), so I probably encountered all the worst times to use them in.

Oh, yeah -- sounds like it.  The main thing was that bug with them not towing stuff that had disabled engines, it sounds like.

Yup, it's just that I can't think of a specific use for it, other then "newbie", or perhaps the rare "who's the joker who attached 8 damned wormholes to this planet!?" planet that for reasons completely diametrical to reason or sanity you decide to take and defend. If it, say, alerted the free-roaming-defender mode ships to swarm to the wormhole in enough time to get there before the ships arrive, that would be enough cool factor for me to grab it occasionally.

Could be... that's a bit more powerful than I want this particular low-level tech to be, though.

[darke]

I think someone else mentioned it, and yeah, it's hard to keep conversations straight here at times.   I only really noticed it since I finally managed to get a start with a Special Forces AI (first time in 15 attempts; I still think the need a bit of a nerf at the beginning! ), and it had those Vorticular things. They're pretty nippy, pretty strong, and take down a harvester in, like, two hits.

I'm telling you, it's both because you like planets with lots of hostile wormholes, and because you give them a resource boost.  That's just particularly unhelpful against special forces captains.

Ah, but this is just with me at +50% resources, and the enemy at +0% (I do learn... slowly ). But yes, I do have a tendency of going, "oooooh, nice shiny planet with lots of wormholes" then getting crushed because I happen to be right in the middle of all their bases. This was a start world with only 3 entrances (it was interestingly placed so I figured why not?) so that's probably why I managed to start it this time.

Was a different start to my usual one, I gave up on the defensive turrets and just built another 3 space docks and set them to crank out ships set to auto-defense. I had to micromanage them a bit, but it worked, which was more then I expected.

Yup, it's just that I can't think of a specific use for it, other then "newbie", or perhaps the rare "who's the joker who attached 8 damned wormholes to this planet!?" planet that for reasons completely diametrical to reason or sanity you decide to take and defend. If it, say, alerted the free-roaming-defender mode ships to swarm to the wormhole in enough time to get there before the ships arrive, that would be enough cool factor for me to grab it occasionally.

Could be... that's a bit more powerful than I want this particular low-level tech to be, though.

Make a Tech II one that does that and have it as a more expensive?

Another quirk: I've got a Tech III AI engineer cloaked somewhere on one of my worlds, it never attacks so it's never going to appear, and trying to hunt it down with a Tachyon Drone seems completely daft. A cheapish (well, not as hideously expensive as a missile anyway) one-shot item that does a some sort of planet-wide tachyon detonation that shows up all cloaked ships (as per the standard tachyon items), your's as well as the enemy, would be useful to track down such things. Good for locating the last few pesky mines after you've taken over a system as well.

[x4000]

Was a different start to my usual one, I gave up on the defensive turrets and just built another 3 space docks and set them to crank out ships set to auto-defense. I had to micromanage them a bit, but it worked, which was more then I expected.

Ah, gotcha -- yeah, I'd imagine that would help change the tide.

Make a Tech II one that does that and have it as a more expensive?

Yeah, that could be cool.  Added to my future-DLC list.  Probably won't be a soon item, but it's on the list to be added eventually.

Another quirk: I've got a Tech III AI engineer cloaked somewhere on one of my worlds, it never attacks so it's never going to appear, and trying to hunt it down with a Tachyon Drone seems completely daft. A cheapish (well, not as hideously expensive as a missile anyway) one-shot item that does a some sort of planet-wide tachyon detonation that shows up all cloaked ships (as per the standard tachyon items), your's as well as the enemy, would be useful to track down such things. Good for locating the last few pesky mines after you've taken over a system as well.

Yeah, they decloak when they are healing something, too, but if you've killed everything that would be healed then that won't help.  This sounds like a great job for a missile.  Added to my sooner-than-later todo list.

[darke]

Yeah, they decloak when they are healing something, too, but if you've killed everything that would be healed then that won't help.  This sounds like a great job for a missile.  Added to my sooner-than-later todo list.

I'm just waiting for you to add something to your later-then-sooner-then-later-but-earlier-then-later-then-later todo list.

In vaguely related news, I still blame your Queuing Algorithm Of Doom for the Special Forces AI being particularly evil. I finally gave up on my current map after spending the better part of an hour trying to defend a wormhole against a world with 8 Special Forces Bases. I'd previously got in, taken out the Gate, and left it like that because the only other world it was attached to, was only accessible through a wormhole filled with perma-mines, so I couldn't be bothered clearing/securing this world so I left it as was. Turns out this wasn't such a good idea.

I've only just hit over 300 AI Progress, and they were hitting my defenses in the adjacent world with about about 150 Tech II ships every couple of minutes, though the final wave was over 300. All my mines, all my basic force fields (overlapping so if one goes down, I should have time to rebuild another before they destroy everything, 50+ Tech II Short Range Turrets, 30 sniper turrets, MLRS out of my ears... All to defend against one world throwing ships against me.

Eventually they just blew through things before I could recover from the last wave's defense and so I gave up. Was making slow but reasonable progress getting places elsewhere, but this world was just nasty!

Oh, and engineers can't help build forcefields. It does actually say "can't be repaired" not "can't be helped built", but I'm guessing they're close enough.

[x4000]

I'm just waiting for you to add something to your later-then-sooner-then-later-but-earlier-then-later-then-later todo list.

Ha, yeah, I'm sure that will happen eventually.

In vaguely related news, I still blame your Queuing Algorithm Of Doom for the Special Forces AI being particularly evil. I finally gave up on my current map after spending the better part of an hour trying to defend a wormhole against a world with 8 Special Forces Bases. I'd previously got in, taken out the Gate, and left it like that because the only other world it was attached to, was only accessible through a wormhole filled with perma-mines, so I couldn't be bothered clearing/securing this world so I left it as was. Turns out this wasn't such a good idea.

I've only just hit over 300 AI Progress, and they were hitting my defenses in the adjacent world with about about 150 Tech II ships every couple of minutes, though the final wave was over 300. All my mines, all my basic force fields (overlapping so if one goes down, I should have time to rebuild another before they destroy everything, 50+ Tech II Short Range Turrets, 30 sniper turrets, MLRS out of my ears... All to defend against one world throwing ships against me.

Eventually they just blew through things before I could recover from the last wave's defense and so I gave up. Was making slow but reasonable progress getting places elsewhere, but this world was just nasty!

Hmm.  I think you are right, that queing logic has made them way more powerful.  I think I will promote the special forces captain from being an "easier" AI type to being a "harder" one.  They really were quite easy before the queuing algorithm, I promise!

Oh, and engineers can't help build forcefields. It does actually say "can't be repaired" not "can't be helped built", but I'm guessing they're close enough.

Helping a "self building" ship is considered repairing; this is by design.

[darke]

Hmm.  I think you are right, that queing logic has made them way more powerful.  I think I will promote the special forces captain from being an "easier" AI type to being a "harder" one.  They really were quite easy before the queuing algorithm, I promise!

I think it's already a "medium" class, it's just compared to say, the parasite one, or the assassin/bully (in single player games anyway), it's considerably harder.

Also I think the various Turtle classes (Turtle, and Teleport Turtle at least, and I expect Counter Spy as well), are also getting a bit too big of a bonus from the AI Alerted thing at least for the III and IV planets. I had one planet, that I had adjacent to mine for about 2 hours grew from about 300 Tech III ships, to it's current 3643 Tech III ships, plus 21 Core ships. It looks like it's a standard "easier" Turtle, but that's just getting close to impossible to defeat, since I've only got about a maximum of 1500 ships of Tech I to III myself, I struggled enough carving my way through a Tech II planet that had hit 1500 ships.

Speaking of which, I've been meaning to try the Counterspy, but I'm not sure if you've had to alter it due to adding cloaking to all the scout ships. The way I'm reading the description, now it no longer makes advanced scouting almost impossible, but it sounds like it makes scouting almost impossible full stop due to the change.

[x4000]

For the turtle thing, that is a good point.  That's something else that has drifted a bit out of balance with all the changes over the past month.  I'll make a change so that its reinforcements that are from waves will instead be lower-tech, like the incoming waves would have been.

For the CounterSpy, that is true, it will prevent most scouting past planets where there is still a counterspy.  I'm not sorry.   You can still get past them with sufficiently large numbers of scouts, or with a bunch of other cloaked ships bunched in with your scouts to flood the counterspy like you otherwise might an ion cannon.  The point of the counterspy is to make the player play half-blind without a lot of scouting intel, so this has just made it even more effective.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that scout starships are immune to the counter-spy blasts, so that makes them your most viable longer-range scouts in that sort of game...

[Revenantus]

There seems to be a bug affecting counter-spy turrets. I have a number of cloaked scouts parked in an enemy system with a CS turret and they are not being fired upon.

Save game attached, the system in question is Nimond, 2 jumps to the right of my home system.