Prerelease 1.014D (Spider turret, starship buffs, targeting tweak improvements)

[x4000]

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1014D.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 1.013, so you have to already have 1.013 (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 1.014B (C was an internal release):
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

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-The health of flagships, zinth starships, spire starships, and core starships have all been multiplied by 10x.

-The health of scout starships has been multiplied by around 3x.

-The health of raid and leech starships has been multiplied by around 4x.

-A new spider turret has been added.  It is an upgraded version of the sniper turret that does the same amount of damage as the base sniper turret, but which also inflicts engine damage.

-Ships in free-roaming defender mode will now ignore immobile targets unless there are no other targets left in the current system (this prevents ships from getting stuck up against train stations, etc).

-Ships that damage engines will now prefer to auto-target those ships that are presently mobile.

-Ships that damage engines will now switch targets they are autotargeting once they target's engines are disabled.  This makes spider turrets (and spiders in general) much more effective at disabling the movement of enemy ships.

CHANGES FROM PAST PRERELEASES
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-Crystal manufactories were not producing any crystal (but were drawing down metal).

-Removed the energy symbol from hovering over the energy reactors.


NEW ART - Philippe Chabot
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Ship - Spider Turret

[Darkreaver1980]

Great update.

My first reaction from reading: "Multiplied flagship health by 10" was simply LOL  

I mean it was sure that theyre underpowered, but by 10?

Lets see how it plays out, now I'm finaly considering researching flagship right away.

edit: just tryd them out ingame. Flagship has *5 hp and not *10 but still its very powerfull now. Somehow i have the feeling that its lacking damage now. But than, given that the starship will stay longer in battle means that it will also do longer damage overall.

If i think about it. Starburst Missiles would be the ideal counter to starships now, because it takes realy some time to bring down a starship

A quick question: What happens if you just destroy all enemy AI planets around your ones without building a base there? AI wont reinforcment any because you are not near his planets, he cant also start any waves against you?!

[Fiskbit]

I don't know if it's related to the prerelease or not, but I can't delete any units anymore.

Edit: Quitting and reloading fixed it. Huh.

I was also having problems with telling ships to go through a wormhole in FRD mode. They kept ignoring their wormhole orders and going after ships on their current planet.

[darke]

A quick question: What happens if you just destroy all enemy AI planets around your ones without building a base there? AI wont reinforcment any because you are not near his planets, he cant also start any waves against you?!

They spawn at gates at planets with gates adjacent to those and then wander towards your planets (this phrase is an example of why English needs more clause scoping rules <.< >.> ). So you essentially get waves, just without the warning.

[darke]

I think the starships are somewhat overbuffed.

I've got a Spire Starship running around one of my worlds and it's essentially immune to anything I throw at it. It's 30 speed so outruns pretty much all my fleet. Out of the 8 special ships I have, only the Space Planes and Raiders are fast enough to keep up, but they die in one shot and since the Spire has 9x attack they're lucky to get one hit in before they die en-masse. They're immune to sniper turrets, I tried grabbing the spider-turrets then I realised they had infinite energy health...

Plus I threw a couple of lightning missiles at it, but they only do about 5% damage each now. Which is rather a waste of +2AI.

[eRe4s3r]

Well i have to agree - i'd rather see more damage and the previous HP range than more HP, i have 3 spire ships in my current game and a fleet of 2000 ships takes eons to kill them. Considering that those spaceships don't come alone thats really bothersome ... in a sense i guess this makes the research path really worthwhile though

I really love the energy generators ;p Are all things going to be spiced up like that? I am a big fan of this pixel art kind of stuff, so if all things become as awesome detailed as that i am going to be in love with the look ,p

[Darkreaver1980]

Well i have to agree - i'd rather see more damage and the previous HP range than more HP, i have 3 spire ships in my current game and a fleet of 2000 ships takes eons to kill them. Considering that those spaceships don't come alone thats really bothersome ... in a sense i guess this makes the research path really worthwhile though

The previous are hp are WAY (WAAAYYY!) to low It was a absoluty joke

Its much better now than before. I'm allways considering to get starships first in the research because theyre now worth the high cost.

to compare it, a mk I fighter has 58.000 health and cost 100/100

a flagship has 24.000/64.000 and 3.750.000 health. Lets say we want to build fighters for the same cost of a starship. First we need to make the resources equal so we count metal + crystal together, for a fighter its 100+100 = 200 per fighter. flagship would be 24.000+64.000= 88.000. 88.000 / 200 = 440 fighters for one flagship. Lets substract some fighter for converting crystal to metal. so we take 350 fighters.

350 mk I fighter * 58.000 health = 20.300.000 health total.

flagship health = 3.750.000

What does it say now? that if we build only fighters from the resources for one flagship than the fighters would be alot better if we count only the resource cost and the amount of total health. So i dont think that starships have to much health right now. its more the oposite, even the same flagship with 10.000.000 health would be still resource ineffectient.

if we compare attack power 350 fighter * 300 attack = 105.000 attack.

flagship has 10 shots with 7600 damage each = 76.000 So i think its realy fine now.

[Revenantus]

I was also having problems with telling ships to go through a wormhole in FRD mode. They kept ignoring their wormhole orders and going after ships on their current planet.

This is expected behaviour, if ships are ordered to travel across the galaxy in FRD mode they will stop to engage enemy ships on any planets they pass through.

[CautiousChaos]

Yep, I'm more with the camp that the changes in starships might have been drastic.  The significantly reduced cost of light starships makes them just about free and the enormous increase in HP to the flagships makes them just about invulnerable.   Though I do love to build them...
-cc

[Darkreaver1980]

Yep, I'm more with the camp that the changes in starships might have been drastic.  The significantly reduced cost of light starships makes them just about free and the enormous increase in HP to the flagships makes them just about invulnerable.   Though I do love to build them...
-cc

Well, even now starships arent that thought if we just look at the cost to build one. In fact theyr health is still pretty low.See post above

[Revenantus]

I agree that Starships may be slightly too powerful.

There is now a topic for continued discussion of Starship balancing in the Suggestions section - http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,716.0.html.

[x4000]

New version with starship tweaks:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,726.0.html

And with that, I'm pretty much out for today.  I'll catch up with what everybody thinks tonight or tomorrow.  Thanks!

[Fiskbit]

I was also having problems with telling ships to go through a wormhole in FRD mode. They kept ignoring their wormhole orders and going after ships on their current planet.

This is expected behaviour, if ships are ordered to travel across the galaxy in FRD mode they will stop to engage enemy ships on any planets they pass through.

That's expected behavior? It makes it impossible to send ships in FRD to another planet as long as there are enemies on the current planet (although it also looked like they were abandoning their wormhole commands when I was issuing v+ctrl+right click wormhole orders). Thinking about it in terms of attack-move, I guess this makes sense, and I suppose if I have ships coming out of a dock in FRD mode travelling to a gather point across the galaxy I might not mind them attacking enemy ships on the way (assuming my defenses aren't up to par), but feel like I'd get way more utility out of them only getting into these modes when they're done with their wormhole commands. Huh. 

[Revenantus]

Well, I suppose this would be annoying if you really wanted ships to end up on a far off planet in FRD mode as soon as possible, but I actually think that this behaviour makes a lot of sense as it allows me to order a multi-planet cleanup if I wish (and I occasionally do).

[x4000]

Well, I suppose this would be annoying if you really wanted ships to end up on a far off planet in FRD mode as soon as possible, but I actually think that this behaviour makes a lot of sense as it allows me to order a multi-planet cleanup if I wish (and I occasionally do).

Bingo.