Prerelease 1.014E (Further Starship Balance)

[x4000]

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1014E.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 1.014D:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

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-The health of scout starships has been reduced, as has their speed, and their cost has been increased.  Their primary bonus over other scouts is the fact that they are immune to counterspies and cost no knowledge to unlock, but otherwise they are a lesser value for the metal/crystal.

-The move speed of spire starships has been reduced to 18 from 30, and the move speed of the core starship has been reduced to 22 from 30.  This more reflects their role as the huge aggressors rather than smaller raiders.

-The attack power of spire starships has been doubled, and their attack range has been changed from 3000 to 7000 (to match that of other cruisers, which these are supposedly the apex of).  Their number of attacks has been reduced from 9 to 6, however.

-The attack range of zinth starships has been increased from 1000 to 3000.  Additionally, their number of shots have increased from 9 to 14.

-The attack range of flagships has been increased from 1800 to 4800.  Their attack power has been increased from 7600 to 12000.

-Raid and leech starship attack power has been doubled.

-The metal/crystal cost of light starships has been doubled, as has their attack power.  This makes them a bit more inline with the other starships, though still much cheaper and lighter.

CHANGES FROM PAST PRERELEASES
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-The health of all non-scout starships has been reduced by 35%.

[x4000]

Starship balance has long been one of my bugbears with this game, so if you guys can offer any feedback I would be very appreciative as always.  I don't think starship balance has ever been exactly right, to be perfectly honest, but I think it is getting a lot closer now.

The history:

1. Near the end of alpha, when starships took their current form (they had other ancillary functions throughout much of the rest of alpha, which I won't go into here), they were so overpowered that three spires could take out an entire Mark III enemy world. 

2. I nerfed them, but they were still too powerful for their cost.  My uncle still played almost exclusively with starships.

3. I nerfed them again, and added the anti-starship arachnids to make starships require a touch more micromanagement as a counter for their large cost.  This made the starships almost useless, and a lot of people stopped using them at all.  Useless for players, that is, but not the AI.

4.  Now we are buffing them again, but my first go -- 1.014D -- was too much.  So now some more general twists around in this release, to try and find the balance.

There were a lot of other twists and turns in the past with these, but these milestones were the big markers.  Hopefully we can get this straightened out as a group soon.  The problem with starships is that there are often strange edge cases that make them overpowered, which is why I had erred on the side of making them too weak for the last few months.

[Darkreaver1980]

Is this a bug?

Buildtime for a mk 1 fighter = 7 seconds

Buildtime for a mk 1 bomber = 34 seconds  

Buildtime for a mk 1 cruiser =  37 seconds  

it takes ages now to get ready for any attack.

For me it isnt that fun to look at my base for several minutes till i have 10+ ships. I like the old build times way more.

I'm currently playing with Owen a multiplayer game and since 10+ minutes we are just waiting that some ships are finaly build. Before the changes, i had already my first planet after 10 minutes.

edit: now we play around 20 minutes and i still have under 100 ships. 3 shipyards + boosted with 3 engineer each

the funny thing is that a starship which cost THOUSAND of resources is now build in 5 minutes and a light starship is build in 16 seconds if boosted  

shouldnt it be the other way around? small stuff is manufactured fast and starship should take a while?! A flagship did take over an hour to build, unboosted and now its done in 15 minutes, also unboosted?!

edit 2:

Its realy now more like a waiting game...fight 2 minutes...wait 10+ till you have a small fleet again. Please atleast half the bomber build times, theyre vital for attacking any planets. I can understand that cruisers whould take a bit longer to build because theyre so powerfull

[eRe4s3r]

Just build more shipyards and plan your first resource expansion wisely - you don't need 500 ships to flatten a MK1 world

[Darkreaver1980]

Just build more shipyards and plan your first resource expansion wisely - you don't need 500 ships to flatten a MK1 world

more shipyards dont help much, you need atleast 1 shipyard + 3 engineer to get any ship out. a shipyard without boosting is now allmost worthless . I mean in most RTS a simple unit is build under 10 seconds. And now we have AI War where thousand of ships should battle and a simple bomber takes 34 seconds and still needs 8 seconds to build a mark 1 bomber if you fully boost it  

Oh my god, Bomber MK 3 takes 2 minutes and 14 seconds to build, 34 seconds if you fully boost it...thats it! I'm installing the old version now!


Wish we could have a select able option for the old or new resource system

[Revenantus]

I'm uncertain as to why you claim that more shipyards wouldn't help.

As it stands;
1. The resource costs of Fighters, Bombers and Cruisers are much the same as they have ever been.
2. Resource gather rates have been static for a while.
3. You only produce approximately 60 Metal and Crystal on your home planet.
4. Unassisted spacedocks can utilize 15 of a resource per second. You therefore only need 4 spacedocks to maximize your utilization of a resource. You might potentially have 1 or 2 more spacedocks to utilize the second resource if it's not already being used up.

Given that basic ships are approximately the same cost that they have always been, and it's possible to make use of all the resources at your disposal, it can't actually take longer to build a fleet.

[x4000]

Given that basic ships are approximately the same cost that they have always been, and it's possible to make use of all the resources at your disposal, it can't actually take longer to build a fleet.

And yet, it does.  I'm actually with Darkreaver1980 on this one, I was getting really frustrated with how long it was taking to do stuff in my game last night, and I was having too few ships to really accomplish much.  Not sure what the cause is here, although I did rebalance the costs of cruiers upward a bit and I think that's part of it.

Of course, this may be a factor:

1. Say you have a ship that costs 500 metal and 1000 crystal.
2. Assume that, with enough docks, you can produce the same number of these in the new system as in the old.
3. Note that crystal is only being expended 50% of the time in the new system, which results in build times that are 2x as long.  Or something like that.

Check out the new prerelease (and then I'm out for the day, for real):  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,727.msg4276.html#msg4276

This may lower difficulty a bit, but that's okay because there are certainly plenty of difficulty levels out there.  The difficulty of level 7 has been creeping upwards steadily over the last few months, and this will rebalance everything a bit downwards, while also empowering the player more.  I think it's telling that darke plays on a handicap all the time.  It's more fun to be doing stuff than waiting around, and hopefully these economic changes will favor that.

Also, the AI is only going to be getting harder and more devious, so the difficulty is just going to creep back up again anyway.  In the meantime I want the player to feel empowered rather than frustratingly slow.  Fun factor is something I guard pretty ferociously, on par with the level of strategy.  If the game isn't fun, it doesn't matter how strategic it is, and in the current resource model, balanced as it was, I was getting a bit frustrated myself.  Hopefully the new version is better tuned, but I'll be interested to hear what people think of it.

[Darkreaver1980]

Thank you! *shakes hand* 

i had exact the same feeling...it was just so slow...i couldnt do anything because i needed to wait till some ships are ready. Time to try out the new one

[Kalzarius]

-The move speed of spire starships has been reduced to 18 from 30, and the move speed of the core starship has been reduced to 22 from 30.  This more reflects their role as the huge aggressors rather than smaller raiders.

-The attack power of spire starships has been doubled, and their attack range has been changed from 3000 to 7000 (to match that of other cruisers, which these are supposedly the apex of).  Their number of attacks has been reduced from 9 to 6, however.

-The attack range of zinth starships has been increased from 1000 to 3000.  Additionally, their number of shots have increased from 9 to 14.

Oh man, the 40 hour 1200 AI progress game we have going is so going to hurt with these new starship buffs.  We almost always have at least 25 each of zinth and spire starships on enemy worlds.  On the plus side, at least we'll have a bit more time to deal with them now that they are slower. 

[Admiral]

3. I nerfed them again, and added the anti-starship arachnids to make starships require a touch more micromanagement as a counter for their large cost.  This made the starships almost useless, and a lot of people stopped using them at all.  Useless for players, that is, but not the AI.

I'm all for rebalancing them to become a useful option.

The goal, I feel, should be to make them a useful and competitive option to research prior to unlocking all the Mk III fighter/bomber/cruiser/special ship (or two), without making them so powerful that everyone unlocks them all the time no matter what.

I never used Starships (except the scout which I liked and light starships which I got "for free") in my games after my first as I didn't feel they were useful and would require too much micromanagement. I'd also like FRD engineers prioritize the repair of starships, please.

I look forward to trying them now, when I'm back from vacation (during the 1.015 pre-releases probably).

Cheers!

[Admiral]

Oh man, the 40 hour 1200 AI progress game we have going is so going to hurt with these new starship buffs.  We almost always have at least 25 each of zinth and spire starships on enemy worlds.  On the plus side, at least we'll have a bit more time to deal with them now that they are slower. 

Don't upgrade until you finish the game.

[x4000]

Oh man, the 40 hour 1200 AI progress game we have going is so going to hurt with these new starship buffs.  We almost always have at least 25 each of zinth and spire starships on enemy worlds.  On the plus side, at least we'll have a bit more time to deal with them now that they are slower. 

Don't upgrade until you finish the game.

Of course, I've recently buffed fighter health as well, and you can build starships of your own.  I would think that you might be able to balance it out with that and with lightning missiles.  That's the hope, anyway!

[x4000]

The goal, I feel, should be to make them a useful and competitive option to research prior to unlocking all the Mk III fighter/bomber/cruiser/special ship (or two), without making them so powerful that everyone unlocks them all the time no matter what.

Exactly my thoughts.  And, man, is that a tough thin line to walk.

I never used Starships (except the scout which I liked and light starships which I got "for free") in my games after my first as I didn't feel they were useful and would require too much micromanagement. I'd also like FRD engineers prioritize the repair of starships, please.

I look forward to trying them now, when I'm back from vacation (during the 1.015 pre-releases probably).

Cheers!

The best way to manage repairs of starships is with the mobile repairs stations, since they have specialized space tugs specifcally for starships.  But hopefully these will become more useful in general, yes.

[Haagenti]

This may lower difficulty a bit, but that's okay because there are certainly plenty of difficulty levels out there.  The difficulty of level 7 has been creeping upwards steadily over the last few months.... 

So it isn't me.

I got really flattened at 8.3, and in my current 7.6 game it definitely wasn't easy to get the upper hand (and that was by parasiting my way to a fleet of 1200 cruisers. Now that this has been nerfed, I was wondering whether in my next game I should have to mingle with the "common people" at AI7

[x4000]

This may lower difficulty a bit, but that's okay because there are certainly plenty of difficulty levels out there.  The difficulty of level 7 has been creeping upwards steadily over the last few months.... 

So it isn't me.

I got really flattened at 8.3, and in my current 7.6 game it definitely wasn't easy to get the upper hand (and that was by parasiting my way to a fleet of 1200 cruisers. Now that this has been nerfed, I was wondering whether in my next game I should have to mingle with the "common people" at AI7

No, definitely not you.   This game is a fricking arms race, to be honest.  You guys make suggestions about things to nerf or tactics that you are using to exploit the AI, and then I improve the AI or fix the balance, and suddenly things are a lot harder.  The balance on this game will never be "done" until the AI stops getting smarter (read: when I am no longer working on the game at all, way far into the future on some sad day).  In a symmetrical system the intelligence of the AI would have no effect on balance, but in an asymmetrical setup it has an immense effect.  Kind of interesting, actually, but it makes for a really evolving experience on both sides.