Prerelease 1.011C (AI Improvements, Starship/Electric Shuttle Buffs, Misc Other)

[x4000]

Warning:  There are some significant AI shifts in this version, which is likely to make it much harder given the same difficulty level.  So if you are loading older savegames that were close, you might find yourself losing if you are not careful.  Just fair warning!

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1011C.zip

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

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

-Electric Shuttle attack strengths have been doubled, and their health has been increased by almost double, too.

-Force fields are now a new category of their own, separate from the general "heavy defense" category.

-Light starships now have a small bonus against force fields.

-Raid and Leech starships now are immune to force fields, and are thus able to shoot ships under them.  They also have the same small bonus against force fields.

-Flagships, Zinth Starships, and Spire Starships now have much greater bonuses against force fields.

-Core starships now have a huge bonus against force fields.

-The number of simultaneous shots each starship is able to fire has been doubled.

-All starships now have some level of munitions boost ability.

-Starships and other heavy defense items can no longer have their attacks boosted.  This prevents an impulse to strengthen starships by clustering them all together.  They are meant to be an anchor for other smaller groups of ships.

-Shots are now required to stay within their attack range of the target they are being fired at.  This solves several problems, for one allowing the really fast ships to outrun very slow shots, and for two allowing for teleporting ships to escape the range of incoming shorter-range shots without those shots trailing them indefinitely.

-All of the bigger AI ships, like advanced research stations, are now immune to tractor beams and thus EtherJets and Space Tugs.

-Missiles no longer gather scout intel.

-AI ships will now abandon their posts when they target a missile or a starship, which can either help them to kill the target or it can create a backwash of enemy ships flowing to the player planets after a missile/starship has passed through AI planets.

-It is now possible to view any planet at any time, but only the wormholes are visible if you have never scouted the planet and don't have ships there, and an extra fog of war is shown.  If you have scouted the planet before, but you don't have ships currently at that planet, then the resource spots are also shown in addition to the wormholes, but nothing else and the fog of war is still there.

-The way that waves are sent from the AI has been heavily revamped.  Wave timing has been adjusted, and the size of the wave that is sent is now based completely on how long was spent being created.  So sometimes you might get hit with several smaller waves in quicker succession, and other times you might have a long wait between waves but then a really huge influx.

-The AI now builds up periodic cross-planet attacks on difficulties 5 and greater.  These just basically "set free" a certain number of ships above a max threshold at an AI planet, dispersing them into the galaxy to wreak whatever havoc they can.  Depending on how the older game was going, this may turn a lot of old save files into losses if players do not carefully defend themselves.  At difficulty 7, these waves range in strength between 875 and 1680 ships -- of whatever tech level the planet has that built these up.

-The health of all turrets has been doubled at the least, and in some cases increased more than that.

[x4000]

Updated to 1.011C (if you previously downloaded 1.011A, you may well want the balance improvements in C):

-The frequency of AI waves has been dropped by 1/2, to make it more consistent with what it previously was.

-The cross-planet attacks by the AI were previously not visible.  Fixed.

[Revenantus]

Starships

I'm liking the munitions boosting effects on the starships - Great idea!

Not so much the forcefield immunity though - I think that this should remain exclusive to the smaller ships such as infiltrators. My home command station suffered heavy damage twice from Raid Starships - they inflict rather a lot of damage to completely ignore forcefields, though I support them having a damage bonus against them. I'm interested to hear what other players think about this.

Ship suggestion: Arachnid Turret. Now that starships are more powerful I think a specific counter could be useful to the player, especially if Raid starships remain immune to forcefields.

Teleporting

Teleporting ships seem just a little too proficient with regards to defense of the realm. They can travel across my entire domain in an instant. I suggest that teleporting ships should only be able to use wormholes once every 20 seconds or so.

Interface

Missiles should comprise their own selection group. This would prevent me selecting what I thought was purely ships and putting a couple of missiles into free-roaming defender mode - not funny.

Possible Bugs

I experienced a problem that I recall being mentioned before - during a period of heavy activity a large number of my ships took a long time to emerge from a wormhole after entering - this was during a battle involving approximately 5000 ships. I sent 700 ships through a wormhole and they took almost a minute to fully appear on the other side.

Strangely, I attacked an AI's homeworld (AI Progress at 312) and there were literally no AI ships in the system other than command posts, turrets and a few starships defending the home command station. The minimal defensive force may just have been luck, although I destroyed the AI's homeworld far too easily with minimal losses. This was on a game I started on 1.0010 and have continued on 1.0011C. The AI had been alerted to my presence as I had previously located the system using scouts.

Interesting AI behaviours

Throughout the game, AI Raid Starships attacked a number of my systems and systematically destroyed the tachyon emitters whilst leaving everything else for later. This allowed the Stealth Master to send ships through unobstructed - I enjoy noticing the AI engaging in this sort of action, even if it's not entirely intentional.

Other thoughts

When playing with random AI types, the AI's home command station could identify its type via its description. This would be an added bonus of locating a homeworld. Perhaps at some point certain AI types could have unique home command stations. For example some could have cloaks, weapons, or the ability to teleport every so often.

Ship Suggestion: Mobile AI Command Post that bolsters ship reinforcements in its current system, but attempts to flee to other AI controlled systems when threatened.

[darke]

Interface

Missiles should comprise their own selection group. This would prevent me selecting what I thought was purely ships and putting a couple of missiles into free-roaming defender mode - not funny.

Seconded. I just got bitten by this. They used to be their own selection group (along with the other non-attacking things like engineers/scouts/etc), so I went and grabbed a bunch of ships, which also incidentally happened to have a missile in the middle, and group-moved them to attack a target. I was not all that pleased with the explosive power in that instance.

-Missiles no longer gather scout intel.

Nerf! I was enjoying that ability.

-AI ships will now abandon their posts when they target a missile or a starship, which can either help them to kill the target or it can create a backwash of enemy ships flowing to the player planets after a missile/starship has passed through AI planets.

Psychic ability says: This could be a convenient way of emptying most of the ships in a system in convenient byte-sized chunks before moving your force into it. A use for Amoured Missiles now that they don't give any nifty scout intel.

Use of a Lightning missile to blow away the command center is, of course, quicker, but this is somewhat more elegant.

-The health of all turrets has been doubled at the least, and in some cases increased more than that.

W00t.

[CautiousChaos]

Very interesting changes!  One concern I had was with the behavior of AI's to follow missiles.  I see an exploit in the waiting and I think Darke may have said it first - the notion of using missiles as a diversion to segment a powerful AI fleet into bite-sized pieces.  Not sure if this is what was intended, but it seems like it could be exploited by using missiles as bait, albeit expensive bait, to win battles chunk-by-chunk.
-cc

[darke]

I really need to stop giving away my best ideas so that EvilX can nerf them.

[Revenantus]

Perhaps it would be better if the AI ships were to chase the missiles only through the current system, before returning to their command post. I'd also suggest that only approximately half of the AI's ships should leave their command post at once, to prevent it becoming too vulnerable. They'd also somehow have to avoid chasing missiles into large groups of human ships, to prevent the player using the tactic you described to drag AI ships towards their beach head.

Maybe this behaviour is a bit elaborate however.

It could make sense for the AI to have access to a specific missile counter that it builds in response to their repeated use, some sort of Missile Interception Drone, maybe. They would engage missiles as soon as they entered the system, be extremely fast, and do very minor damage to anything other than missiles.

[x4000]

I'm liking the munitions boosting effects on the starships - Great idea!

Awesome, thanks.

Not so much the forcefield immunity though - I think that this should remain exclusive to the smaller ships such as infiltrators. My home command station suffered heavy damage twice from Raid Starships - they inflict rather a lot of damage to completely ignore forcefields, though I support them having a damage bonus against them. I'm interested to hear what other players think about this.

Well, this one is a bit experimental, I definitely agree.  It makes the Raid and Leech starships that much more useful, though -- for players and the AI -- and it also creates a huge incentive to kill those first.  The other starships don't have that ability, but the flagship line is strong against force fields like bombers are.  I felt like this was a good differentiator between the two lines, and two very salivation-worthy reasons to go for one line or the other, but if it's too annoying then we can come up with something else.  I am interested in what others think, though.

Ship suggestion: Arachnid Turret. Now that starships are more powerful I think a specific counter could be useful to the player, especially if Raid starships remain immune to forcefields.

Very cool, added to the future DLC list.

Teleporting ships seem just a little too proficient with regards to defense of the realm. They can travel across my entire domain in an instant. I suggest that teleporting ships should only be able to use wormholes once every 20 seconds or so.

Yeah, something like that might work.  I'm thinking maybe 10 seconds to start, but we'll see what that does.  I'd been thinking something along the similar lines, actually.  Added to the short-term list.

Missiles should comprise their own selection group. This would prevent me selecting what I thought was purely ships and putting a couple of missiles into free-roaming defender mode - not funny.

As in, they should be not selected like scouts and so forth?  Yeah, that was actually in there until just this release when they lost the scouting ability.   I'll add that back in.

I experienced a problem that I recall being mentioned before - during a period of heavy activity a large number of my ships took a long time to emerge from a wormhole after entering - this was during a battle involving approximately 5000 ships. I sent 700 ships through a wormhole and they took almost a minute to fully appear on the other side.

Yeah, this is due to the collision detection getting slow in those cases.  It's a very fixed pipeline, so when you overload it with ships it takes longer for them to emerge.  The alternative was having the game freeze for a second or two when they pop out.  Now that the game is more efficient in several areas for lower-CPU machines, maybe this is less of an issue.  I'll have to play with it and see what happens.

Strangely, I attacked an AI's homeworld (AI Progress at 312) and there were literally no AI ships in the system other than command posts, turrets and a few starships defending the home command station. The minimal defensive force may just have been luck, although I destroyed the AI's homeworld far too easily with minimal losses. This was on a game I started on 1.0010 and have continued on 1.0011C. The AI had been alerted to my presence as I had previously located the system using scouts.

That is really strange.  Had you been attacked by a lot of core ships in the past?  Maybe the AI had attacked you with all of those ships, or something.  Either way, I'll make sure that cross-planet attacks can't come from the AI home planets...

Throughout the game, AI Raid Starships attacked a number of my systems and systematically destroyed the tachyon emitters whilst leaving everything else for later. This allowed the Stealth Master to send ships through unobstructed - I enjoy noticing the AI engaging in this sort of action, even if it's not entirely intentional.

Very interesting indeed.

When playing with random AI types, the AI's home command station could identify its type via its description. This would be an added bonus of locating a homeworld. Perhaps at some point certain AI types could have unique home command stations. For example some could have cloaks, weapons, or the ability to teleport every so often.

Very cool idea!  I really like that.  The unique home command stations thing will probably come in an expansion, but yes, I had been thinking of stuff like that.  I'll add it to the expansions list so that I don't forget.

Ship Suggestion: Mobile AI Command Post that bolsters ship reinforcements in its current system, but attempts to flee to other AI controlled systems when threatened.

Cool stuff, added to the expansions list.  This one is a bit bigger than a DLC item, I think.

[x4000]

New version:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,473.new.html#new

[Admiral]

-AI ships will now abandon their posts when they target a missile or a starship, which can either help them to kill the target or it can create a backwash of enemy ships flowing to the player planets after a missile/starship has passed through AI planets.

Is this behavior also applicable to scout starships (and/or any other future cloakable starships)?

-It is now possible to view any planet at any time, but only the wormholes are visible if you have never scouted the planet and don't have ships there, and an extra fog of war is shown.  If you have scouted the planet before, but you don't have ships currently at that planet, then the resource spots are also shown in addition to the wormholes, but nothing else and the fog of war is still there.

Yay!

Would you consider showing any unmovable ships? Of course, you'd have to know which were there the last time it were scouted. And, you'd have to display them even if they were destroyed, so maybe too much work.

Can't wait to try this... (Too bad I don't use electric shuttles...)

Cheers!

[Admiral]

Not so much the forcefield immunity though...

Well, this one is a bit experimental, I definitely agree.  It makes the Raid and Leech starships that much more useful, though -- for players and the AI -- and it also creates a huge incentive to kill those first.  The other starships don't have that ability, but the flagship line is strong against force fields like bombers are.  I felt like this was a good differentiator between the two lines, and two very salivation-worthy reasons to go for one line or the other, but if it's too annoying then we can come up with something else.  I am interested in what others think, though.

Just a thought (not having played with the new starship types yet): You could make the shots that penetrate force fields be reduced in power by some fraction, either just like that (so a 10k shot that goes through a force field becomes a 2k shot or whatever ratio you choose) or even siphon off some of the offense also to reduce the force field's strength (again, at whatever ratio EvilX chooses).

Cheers!

[Admiral]

Just a thought

*is glad his head won't get bitten off for not putting this in the suggestions forum*

[darke]

Not so much the forcefield immunity though...

Well, this one is a bit experimental, I definitely agree.  It makes the Raid and Leech starships that much more useful, though -- for players and the AI -- and it also creates a huge incentive to kill those first.  The other starships don't have that ability, but the flagship line is strong against force fields like bombers are.  I felt like this was a good differentiator between the two lines, and two very salivation-worthy reasons to go for one line or the other, but if it's too annoying then we can come up with something else.  I am interested in what others think, though.

Just a thought (not having played with the new starship types yet): You could make the shots that penetrate force fields be reduced in power by some fraction, either just like that (so a 10k shot that goes through a force field becomes a 2k shot or whatever ratio you choose) or even siphon off some of the offense also to reduce the force field's strength (again, at whatever ratio EvilX chooses).

Or if we're just worried about the corner cases of things like Command Centers and Ion Cannons and Advanced Research Stations and the like, do a similar thing as with the Teleporting ships, make them semi-immune to their attacks. After all, we're talking *raid* ships, not sieging ships (which the other ship line is like). Having them do less damage to important structures, whilst more damage to annoying structures (and to ships!) is what they're there for.

Knowing the way things work, I'll probably find a corner case for their use to easily take out a command center or something and the aXis Of Evil will have to fix it anyway (much to my disappointment ).

[x4000]

-AI ships will now abandon their posts when they target a missile or a starship, which can either help them to kill the target or it can create a backwash of enemy ships flowing to the player planets after a missile/starship has passed through AI planets.

Is this behavior also applicable to scout starships (and/or any other future cloakable starships)?

Yes, IF they are able to target them.  Aka, if the scout starships become uncloaked or get tagged by tachyon beam emitters.  If not, then the AI is completely unawares.  So most likely you'll just see them stir up a bit of stuff from each wormhole, but nothing more than that.

-It is now possible to view any planet at any time, but only the wormholes are visible if you have never scouted the planet and don't have ships there, and an extra fog of war is shown.  If you have scouted the planet before, but you don't have ships currently at that planet, then the resource spots are also shown in addition to the wormholes, but nothing else and the fog of war is still there.

Yay!

Would you consider showing any unmovable ships? Of course, you'd have to know which were there the last time it were scouted. And, you'd have to display them even if they were destroyed, so maybe too much work.

I thought about doing something like this, but it is an awful lot of data for a game of this scope.  It would actually be not that bad without the "show dead ships" part -- the game keeps track of the second at which each ship was created, as well as the last second that planet was scouted, so I could use that data pretty easily to show immobile ships that were there since at least before the other.

However, currently one big activity in the game is to bring ships into a system to try to find the ion cannon or whatever quickly before your stuff dies, and that would be lost with a system like that.  So that's another negative on this one.  But I really do like the change as it currently is so far, I think it really adds a lot -- thanks for suggesting it!

Can't wait to try this... (Too bad I don't use electric shuttles...)

Haha, well, maybe you'll have a chance to use them now.  You never know what you'll get from the advanced research station, after all.

[x4000]

Not so much the forcefield immunity though...

Well, this one is a bit experimental, I definitely agree.  It makes the Raid and Leech starships that much more useful, though -- for players and the AI -- and it also creates a huge incentive to kill those first.  The other starships don't have that ability, but the flagship line is strong against force fields like bombers are.  I felt like this was a good differentiator between the two lines, and two very salivation-worthy reasons to go for one line or the other, but if it's too annoying then we can come up with something else.  I am interested in what others think, though.

Just a thought (not having played with the new starship types yet): You could make the shots that penetrate force fields be reduced in power by some fraction, either just like that (so a 10k shot that goes through a force field becomes a 2k shot or whatever ratio you choose) or even siphon off some of the offense also to reduce the force field's strength (again, at whatever ratio EvilX chooses).

Or if we're just worried about the corner cases of things like Command Centers and Ion Cannons and Advanced Research Stations and the like, do a similar thing as with the Teleporting ships, make them semi-immune to their attacks. After all, we're talking *raid* ships, not sieging ships (which the other ship line is like). Having them do less damage to important structures, whilst more damage to annoying structures (and to ships!) is what they're there for.

Knowing the way things work, I'll probably find a corner case for their use to easily take out a command center or something and the aXis Of Evil will have to fix it anyway (much to my disappointment ).

You know, I really like that.  I'm going to add this to my short-term list.  Basically nerfing the raid starships against command stations, resource ships, starships, and constructors.  This will make them great against offensive/defensive enemy ships, but not great against the structures being defended.  I really like how specialized that then makes them!