Prerelease 1.011G (AI Stall Fix, Collision Speed Up, Desync Fix)

[x4000]

Warning 1:  A huge chunk of the innards of the control architecture was rewritten for the prior version.  It is entirely likely there may be bugs relating to this, although only one has been found (and already fixed) so far.

Warning 2:  There are some significant AI shifts in version 1.011A and up, 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/AIWar1011G.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 1.010F:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.010 are attached at the bottom)

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

-There are now protections in place that prevent an accumulation of too many queued messages on the AI thread.

-Previously, if all of the preferred planets were filled up to the point where the AI would not do any more reinforcements, the AI thread would hang and the AI would stall, eventually potentially causing an out of memory exception.  Fixed so that it now properly tries to reinforce to a non-preferred planet, and so that it then just doesn't do reinforcements if that also fails.

-The AI now better handles massive numbers of ships all queuing at the same wormhole.  It no longer causes the ships to fly back and forth if there are too many of them.

-The way that collision detection is determined to be needed is now handled completely differently, and this now results in significant efficiency gains with what should be no difference in how the collisions are determined.

-A couple of new efficiency improvements have been added to the collision logic, which makes the performance even better when there are vast numbers of ships all colliding at once.

CHANGES FROM PAST PRERELEASES
--------------

-A desync related to cross-planet attacks and force fields has been fixed.

[Pandemic]

Wow, I love Shield Bearers now .

Before this patch I was like "Huh, odd name for a ship that bears a shield only for itself...". Imo, this change makes them *much* more useful, and puts them waaay up there on my favorite ships list, next to Parasites .


-Pandemic

[darke]

Needs to be a bit of a delay on the teleporters. The new AI is a little too smart and bamfs it's guys to deep into my area. Not only do my ships not get a hit on the guys, but my turrets around the wormhole of the next planet not get a hit and they ran all the way down the chain to attack the planet at the end in under a second (in that save I've previously posted). Not quite how it's supposed to work really.

[darke]

Other oddities:

I took out a command center and nothing happened. I figured I was just "lucky", or the fact I'd ablated half of the ships off all the various points  with strategic use of the armoured missile had caused it to think it had already moved stuff, or something. So I saved the game, did some stuff (assaulted world, ran around testing the strength of one of the stacks of ships still left; got slaughtered), then loaded the game, and instantly the AI reacted as if I'd just destroyed the command station and started doing it's thing.

I've cleared out a planet. I've killed off all the control points. I've built myself a command center and it's still standing. So why are my resource points spawning random enemies? On a planet I completely control?

[Revenantus]

I've cleared out a planet. I've killed off all the control points. I've built myself a command center and it's still standing. So why are my resource points spawning random enemies? On a planet I completely control?

Have you sent Tachyon emitters to those points to check for the presence of Stealth Command Posts?

[darke]

I've cleared out a planet. I've killed off all the control points. I've built myself a command center and it's still standing. So why are my resource points spawning random enemies? On a planet I completely control?

Have you sent Tachyon emitters to those points to check for the presence of Stealth Command Posts?

As far as I know, the only stealth command posts are the ones on wormholes, and these don't appear to be spawning, nor can they be detected via tachyon beams either. I do recall taking out the posts as well on all spots, and one of them was a special forces base as well that's still respawning despite the fact it's long dead.

I did quickly drag a scout starship around a nearby point though, and the only thing it detected was an etherjet.

[Revenantus]

I've cleared out a planet. I've killed off all the control points. I've built myself a command center and it's still standing. So why are my resource points spawning random enemies? On a planet I completely control?

Have you sent Tachyon emitters to those points to check for the presence of Stealth Command Posts?

As far as I know, the only stealth command posts are the ones on wormholes, and these don't appear to be spawning, nor can they be detected via tachyon beams either. I do recall taking out the posts as well on all spots, and one of them was a special forces base as well that's still respawning despite the fact it's long dead.

I did quickly drag a scout starship around a nearby point though, and the only thing it detected was an etherjet.

Certain AI types do deploy Stealth Command Posts at resource points that must be exposed by tachyon beams. The game used to prevent the player from constructing harvesters if there was a Stealth Command Post hidden on the resource point but perhaps the changes preventing forcefields from pushing harvesters out into open space have caused this.

Given that you've already scouted it, sounds like it could be a new problem however.

I found the problem -- there are cloaked Stealth Command Posts on top of these deposits.  The auto-placement is correct, whereas the manual placement is in error (and I will fix that).  You'll want to send in tachyon drones or scout starships or something to reveal those command posts so that you can kill them.  Very few AI types use the Stealth Command Posts -- looks like you are running up against one of them!

[x4000]

Wow, I love Shield Bearers now .

Before this patch I was like "Huh, odd name for a ship that bears a shield only for itself...". Imo, this change makes them *much* more useful, and puts them waaay up there on my favorite ships list, next to Parasites .

-Pandemic

Awesome, I really like them now, too.  Glad they are a hit.

[x4000]

Needs to be a bit of a delay on the teleporters. The new AI is a little too smart and bamfs it's guys to deep into my area. Not only do my ships not get a hit on the guys, but my turrets around the wormhole of the next planet not get a hit and they ran all the way down the chain to attack the planet at the end in under a second (in that save I've previously posted). Not quite how it's supposed to work really.

Yeah, that's something already on the list.  Although that's for cross-wormholes.  Are you suggesting intra-planet delays, too?

[x4000]

I took out a command center and nothing happened. I figured I was just "lucky", or the fact I'd ablated half of the ships off all the various points  with strategic use of the armoured missile had caused it to think it had already moved stuff, or something. So I saved the game, did some stuff (assaulted world, ran around testing the strength of one of the stacks of ships still left; got slaughtered), then loaded the game, and instantly the AI reacted as if I'd just destroyed the command station and started doing it's thing.

Sigh.  Is there a specific savegame you were using?  The one from before no longer exhibits that behavior for me.

I've cleared out a planet. I've killed off all the control points. I've built myself a command center and it's still standing. So why are my resource points spawning random enemies? On a planet I completely control?

Yeah, could be the stealth command posts.  Or, more likely, the AI is all clogged up and is not aware that those ships got killed.

[darke]

I took out a command center and nothing happened. I figured I was just "lucky", or the fact I'd ablated half of the ships off all the various points  with strategic use of the armoured missile had caused it to think it had already moved stuff, or something. So I saved the game, did some stuff (assaulted world, ran around testing the strength of one of the stacks of ships still left; got slaughtered), then loaded the game, and instantly the AI reacted as if I'd just destroyed the command station and started doing it's thing.

Sigh.  Is there a specific savegame you were using?  The one from before no longer exhibits that behavior for me.

I'll have to go through my save game collection and see if I can replicate it with one of the others. It isn't so much of a problem in this instance, since when the AI did work "as designed" I lost considerably less ships then when it broke and didn't react.

I've cleared out a planet. I've killed off all the control points. I've built myself a command center and it's still standing. So why are my resource points spawning random enemies? On a planet I completely control?

Yeah, could be the stealth command posts.  Or, more likely, the AI is all clogged up and is not aware that those ships got killed.

This was after taking out the entirety of the 4k world, and basically sitting there waiting for my ships to rebuild whilst I tried to scout. So the AI shouldn't really have been doing much at all.

Save game that had the problem is attached (planet Marku, the bottom right group of 20-something ships was a former special forces base that I wiped out, but it re-poped when I moved away), but I've just been speed++ing through it and watching the counts and I haven't noticed them re-poping since loading.

It's possible it's the same thing as that issue where the AI wasn't seeming to react. Though it's a strange one.

Actually... I also remember noticing that it wasn't Autosaving for me during that game where I was having some of these issues too (the first one above where the AI didn't react), but I think it was autosaving after loading that game and when I was getting continual repopulations after killing the bases. Wonder if there's a timer not being initialised properly or something.

I think I shall file it under "computers suck".

[darke]

Actually, check out the metal harvester on the top-right of Marku. The ships I had there to wipe out the continual respawning are in a particularly odd circle, as if there is, or was, something there that pushed them away. Their collision boxes are all overlapping and oddly arrayed.

Anyway, sleep time now.

[x4000]

Actually, check out the metal harvester on the top-right of Marku. The ships I had there to wipe out the continual respawning are in a particularly odd circle, as if there is, or was, something there that pushed them away. Their collision boxes are all overlapping and oddly arrayed.

This was just old collisions left over, it seems -- there was nothing there.  The overlapping was another issue that I will have to look into later on, though.  I think I have an idea of why that happened, but we shall see.

As for the rest of it, there was one glitch in the AI thread that was causing it not to hang, but never to register ships as dead.  So it was still acting as if a bunch of other ships (the command posts and the command stations included) were still there.  Here's a fix for all that:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,506.msg2836.html#msg2836