Prerelease 1.010G (Fixes, Ship Reloading, More Minor Electric Shot Immunity)

[x4000]

The latest prerelease of AI War is now out:  http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1010G.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 1.010F:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.009 are attached at the bottom)

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

-The collision raidus (the bounding circle) was previously twice as large as it needed to be on special forces command posts.  Fixed.

-The AIUnitData is now passed to the AI thread as a class, instead of as a struct, in an attempt to minimize the potential for out of memory exceptions when the game is left in an idle state for many hours.

-The following player ships are now immune to minor electric shots:  constructors, engineers, missiles, colony and transport ships, all resource producers.

-Mark III engineers now have teleportation in addition to their other abilities.

-Making adjustments to the build queue in multiple constructors at once, via clicking the current-queue-item buttons, now works on all of the selected constructors instead of just the first.

-Previously, ships with shot-out engines could not be given movement orders at all.  Fixed.

-Ships that are reloading would previously not seek new targets.  This would cause them to react slowly when in free-roaming defender mode, and also to stop too slowly in attack-move mode sometimes.  Fixed.

[darke]

-The collision raidus (the bounding circle) was previously twice as large as it needed to be on special forces command posts.  Fixed.

Ahh, that explains the massive halo they had.

-The AIUnitData is now passed to the AI thread as a class, instead of as a struct, in an attempt to minimize the potential for out of memory exceptions when the game is left in an idle state for many hours.

Not that I play the game obsessively enough to accidentally leave it paused when I go to sleep, or to work, or anything. >.> <.<

-The following player ships are now immune to minor electric shots:  constructors, engineers, missiles, colony and transport ships, all resource producers.

-Mark III engineers now have teleportation in addition to their other abilities.

*cue assorted yays*

Now for random questions:

The orbital command station upgrades. The only real benefit to them seems to be an extra +9 crystal/metal with each one. No extra health, or shields, or advanced warp detection, just a extra metal/crystal equal to one extra pair or resource points. Are they really worth the 5000 and 8000 knowledge they require you to spend by about half way through the game when you'll start to have that sort of stuff spare enough you can splurge on them? I can't imagine choosing them over, say, Tech III bombers for instance. I'm guessing it's possible that it's just that I'm playing single player I don't see their value, since I get to keep all the planets to myself.

[x4000]

Not that I play the game obsessively enough to accidentally leave it paused when I go to sleep, or to work, or anything. >.> <.<

The orbital command station upgrades. The only real benefit to them seems to be an extra +9 crystal/metal with each one. No extra health, or shields, or advanced warp detection, just a extra metal/crystal equal to one extra pair or resource points. Are they really worth the 5000 and 8000 knowledge they require you to spend by about half way through the game when you'll start to have that sort of stuff spare enough you can splurge on them? I can't imagine choosing them over, say, Tech III bombers for instance. I'm guessing it's possible that it's just that I'm playing single player I don't see their value, since I get to keep all the planets to myself.

You get around 8 of them for that knowledge/crystal.  There will be other (fortified) command stations in the future, but I'm happy with these as they are.  The reason for these ships is for certain games in which you get kind of "stuck" midgame and can't build enough ships because of lack of resources, but have extra knowledge that you don't need because you don't have enough resources to use the ships you'd unlock, etc.  This happens more often in larger multiplayer games, when you might find your team surrounded by lots of big and hostile planets after you take 20 or so planets as a team (meaning, in four player mode, that you only have 5 planets each).

The resources and such do scale with the added players, so the non-home planets have more resources in general, but there are still more limitations than in single player (or even two-player) if things are going poorly.  These command stations provide a way out of that situation, and can be quite the lifesaver in that situation.

Plus, even in a regular game, if you are short on resources these can be immensely worthwhile.  The efficiency reductions on metal/crystal income are applied first to the least-producing ships, so that means that these bigger producers are likely to run at fully efficiency, which is awesome.  I've chosen these over Mark III Bombers in several cases just because that lets me actually build more Mark II and Mark I ships, take over more planets, and then get Mark III Bombers in a position of strength, rather than when I can't really afford to build them.

Not everyone is quite as obsessive with the engineer repairs (cherry picking, etc) as you are, so that tends to be more costly.

[darke]

You get around 8 of them for that knowledge/crystal.  There will be other (fortified) command stations in the future, but I'm happy with these as they are.  The reason for these ships is for certain games in which you get kind of "stuck" midgame and can't build enough ships because of lack of resources, but have extra knowledge that you don't need because you don't have enough resources to use the ships you'd unlock, etc.  This happens more often in larger multiplayer games, when you might find your team surrounded by lots of big and hostile planets after you take 20 or so planets as a team (meaning, in four player mode, that you only have 5 planets each).

The resources and such do scale with the added players, so the non-home planets have more resources in general, but there are still more limitations than in single player (or even two-player) if things are going poorly.  These command stations provide a way out of that situation, and can be quite the lifesaver in that situation.

That makes sense, I figured it was something to do with them being more useful in multiplayer.

Plus, even in a regular game, if you are short on resources these can be immensely worthwhile.  The efficiency reductions on metal/crystal income are applied first to the least-producing ships, so that means that these bigger producers are likely to run at fully efficiency, which is awesome.  I've chosen these over Mark III Bombers in several cases just because that lets me actually build more Mark II and Mark I ships, take over more planets, and then get Mark III Bombers in a position of strength, rather than when I can't really afford to build them.

Not everyone is quite as obsessive with the engineer repairs (cherry picking, etc) as you are, so that tends to be more costly.

Heh. I only tend to be particularly obsessive about it when hammering away at Tech III/IV planets, since otherwise it just takes waaaaaay too long to replenish your forces. With the lower tech planets it's much quicker to take the losses then just rebuild them.

Also, who's the genius that decided to give the Special Forces AI a troop accelerator? On a planet on the only real pathway out of my base? I ended up having to give up on that map since I just couldn't make any headway to get through that map without basically camping and waiting until had near max unit caps before assaulting.

And in other "the AI hates me" news, I found a map with a 9x wormhole starting planet, so of course I picked it. I managed to get defenses up and everything, then found that this the list of the 9 surrounding planets:

Ion Cannon, 2x Force Fields (Tech IV)
Ion Cannon (Tech IV)
Ion Cannon (Tech IV)
Ion Cannon (Tech IV)
Fortress and Force Field (yes, fortress was under the force field)
2x Force Field
1x Force Field
Mined to hell and back
Nothing special

And yeah... I gave up on it.

Planets 80 / Simple Hubs / 1251464844 and Turtle AI + Tank AI (if that makes any difference), in case anyone else is silly enough to want to try it.

[Pandemic]

Two things:

First, the tugs are still acting weird... playing cat and mouse with ships, eventually running some off the map .
Second, I like how you can't repair mobile repair stations anymore, how you have to pull them back so they can regen. However, it won't let the engineers help *build* the mobile repair stations either, which is annoying because they take forever to build, and I have 3 engineers who just can't help .


-Pandemic

[Pandemic]

Ok, Morphing has a gamesave which should show you what I mean... the ships just go all over the place, out of my control, and some even exit the planet's range.

And I got an unhandled exception right after it happened... not sure if it's related . Attached.


-Pandemic


EDIT: Not a bug, but a suggestion: you should be able to tell your tugs which units you want them to grab. For instance, I had a cruiser which was at 94% hp, but had 0% engine. My tugs (33 and 66) flat out refused to pick it up; maybe you should make it so when it's <66 hp or <66 engine damage? Anyway, I couldn't force them to pick it up, so I built a 100% tug. And he just ran around fixing everybody but the cruiser... very annoying.

[x4000]

Heh. I only tend to be particularly obsessive about it when hammering away at Tech III/IV planets, since otherwise it just takes waaaaaay too long to replenish your forces. With the lower tech planets it's much quicker to take the losses then just rebuild them.

I gotcha.  Of course, with enough of the Mark II or Mark III command stations, you might have the same attitude about the Mark III/IV planets, too.

Also, who's the genius that decided to give the Special Forces AI a troop accelerator? On a planet on the only real pathway out of my base? I ended up having to give up on that map since I just couldn't make any headway to get through that map without basically camping and waiting until had near max unit caps before assaulting.

Oh, holy cow.  That's a pretty rough combo, right there.  The AI Troop Accelerators are really rare, so that's quite unlucky.

And in other "the AI hates me" news, I found a map with a 9x wormhole starting planet, so of course I picked it. I managed to get defenses up and everything, then found that this the list of the 9 surrounding planets:

Ion Cannon, 2x Force Fields (Tech IV)
Ion Cannon (Tech IV)
Ion Cannon (Tech IV)
Ion Cannon (Tech IV)
Fortress and Force Field (yes, fortress was under the force field)
2x Force Field
1x Force Field
Mined to hell and back
Nothing special

And yeah... I gave up on it.

Planets 80 / Simple Hubs / 1251464844 and Turtle AI + Tank AI (if that makes any difference), in case anyone else is silly enough to want to try it.

Holy hell, that's crazy and funny.  Crazy funny, anyway.  That really made me laugh.   

[x4000]

Second, I like how you can't repair mobile repair stations anymore, how you have to pull them back so they can regen. However, it won't let the engineers help *build* the mobile repair stations either, which is annoying because they take forever to build, and I have 3 engineers who just can't help .

Sorry, for the ships that are non-repairable, they can't be accelerated, either.  The acceleration action is just the repair action, so that's just one of those cases where you have to wait.  I think it's only about a four minute wait, so if you build that and then go do something else, it's no time at all.  It just prevents you from getting one of them at the last second, if you weren't planning on having it already.

Ok, Morphing has a gamesave which should show you what I mean... the ships just go all over the place, out of my control, and some even exit the planet's range.

And I got an unhandled exception right after it happened... not sure if it's related . Attached.

I'm certain that unhandled exception is related -- someone else also posted about the same thing.  I'm looking at that as my very next thing.

EDIT: Not a bug, but a suggestion: you should be able to tell your tugs which units you want them to grab. For instance, I had a cruiser which was at 94% hp, but had 0% engine. My tugs (33 and 66) flat out refused to pick it up; maybe you should make it so when it's <66 hp or <66 engine damage? Anyway, I couldn't force them to pick it up, so I built a 100% tug. And he just ran around fixing everybody but the cruiser... very annoying.

Oh!  I totally forgot to make these value the engine health.  Thanks very much for bringing that up.  Also, great thought on letting space tugs be given specific orders to pick up a ship.  Also added to my list.

[Admiral]

-Making adjustments to the build queue in multiple constructors at once, via clicking the current-queue-item buttons, now works on all of the selected constructors instead of just the first.

How about a longer/deeper construction queue? I'd love to tell my starship constructors to build anything that you can build, but I don't have a deep enough queue.

-Previously, ships with shot-out engines could not be given movement orders at all.  Fixed.

Presumably that will make them go wherever you told them once they are repaired...?

Will a teleporting engineer repair a moving target?

Cheers, and thanks!

[Admiral]

Planets 80 / Simple Hubs / 1251464844 and Turtle AI + Tank AI (if that makes any difference), in case anyone else is silly enough to want to try it.

This definitely belongs on the "Cool Maps" Community Wiki page!

[x4000]

How about a longer/deeper construction queue? I'd love to tell my starship constructors to build anything that you can build, but I don't have a deep enough queue.

Okay, I could add a few more spaces to this.  Well, I guess I may as well bump it all the way up to 16, double the current amount.  It used to have a limit of 5 (just because that's what games like SupCom and AoEIII had), so you would have really hated that before I expanded it -- I found it too limiting, too.

-Previously, ships with shot-out engines could not be given movement orders at all.  Fixed.

Presumably that will make them go wherever you told them once they are repaired...?[/quote]

Yes, exactly.

Will a teleporting engineer repair a moving target?

Yep, it should.  If it doesn't seem to, let me know, but I don't know why it would have any trouble.

[x4000]

Planets 80 / Simple Hubs / 1251464844 and Turtle AI + Tank AI (if that makes any difference), in case anyone else is silly enough to want to try it.

This definitely belongs on the "Cool Maps" Community Wiki page!

I concur!  Can someone else add it?  I'm kind of swamped at the moment, as you might guess from all these active threads.

[Admiral]

Can someone else add it?

Done.

http://arcengames.com/communitywiki/index.php?title=Player-Favorite_Maps

I will also add my favorite map I have found so far - it has a little corner of about 9-12 planets which is completely disconnected from everywhere else except by one wormhole. It makes a nice, safe "home base" start.

[x4000]

Awesome, thanks Admiral!

[x4000]

Fixes to tractor beams:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,223.msg1936.html#msg1936