Prerelease 1.014Q (No ship cap cheat, various tweaks and bugfixes)

[x4000]

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1014Q.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 1.014O (P was an internal release):
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

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-The metal/crystal outflows are now averaged over a rolling 10 second period, which makes them more sluggish to react to changes, but also keeps them from jumping around as much.  Pressing the Alt key clears the historical data being averaged in, so it gives you the current actual number immediately (once you let go of Alt -- holding Alt still shows the max values).

-The game no longer starts off with players in negative energy mode.

-Engineers are no longer affected by negative energy balances, which makes it easier to rebuild destroyed reactors, and it makes force fields on right from the start when loading a savegame.

-The AI will now act a bit more aggressively with special forces ships that have encountered (and fired upon) player ships.

-A new way of internally storing the lobby-based options has been added to the game, so that this will be easier to update in the future.

-A new cheat has been added: "more more more"  This cheat lets players ignore the ship build cap for all their ship types.

-Previously, there was a bug when gifting command stations between players, where the planet ownership would go to blank instead of the recipient player.  Fixed.


CHANGES FROM PAST PRERELEASES
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-Fixed a couple of bugs with the ships getting confused and going back and forth on their planets (one related to guards, the other to special forces ships).

-Fixed a bug with ships coming out too far off of their planets when they outnumber the human players.

-Fixed a bug with the game loading the lobby and the actual savegames way too slowly in the last prerelease.

-Engineers that were autoassisting docks in the past prereleases were incredibly indecisive.  Fixed.

[darke]

With the increased wave sizes, I really need higher ship caps on more-then-one-planet start games.

My AI10/8-planet-start game is getting waves of about 1200 ships hitting my planets at about 40 minutes in. At "only" three planets with adjacent warp gates that requires 25ish Mark III tractor turrets each, and there's only a cap of 85 of them, so I imagine that about the 2 hour mark I'm going to have to be using all my I-III turrets just to defend my current set of planets, let alone any other planets I end up emplacing on.

I've found I really can't go down below 3 planets with adjacent gates because the waves go from Too Big, to Waaaaay Too Big.


EDIT: Oh, that reminds me, can I have more fortresses' too? 5 is really not enough. I could do with 5 per planet if you really must have a limit

[Darkreaver1980]

how about scaling the ship cap with the amount of planets you have? like for every planet you get +10% ship cap maximum

[darke]

And on an unrelated note, a reload and replay from a save at 30 minutes resulted in an attack wave of 1800 ships to a planet (and I had nicely prepared a defense for about 1200-1400), at 41 minutes in.

Also apparently Flagships can take out a home planet command station in one shot.

And a third attempt resulted in the discovery that a wave of 600 ships per planet, followed less then a minute later by a wave of 700 ships per planet, is equally painful.

I am, practically speaking, swimming in resources (over 200k of each, plus 400k energy), I just can't seem to get enough thingies to defend with. >.> <.<

[eRe4s3r]

Sorry but, DIF 10 and 8 planets, you are asking to be smashed after all Dif 10 is not supposed to be winnable, its called DOOM for a reason.

but i agree that 10% per planet shipcap and turret cap increase would be nice, but maybe just a general nerf of the waves/cross planet attack....

While i do not agree that DIF 10 should be nerfed at all, i agree with darke that one just does not have enough stuff to put resources in (that contributes to defense). i have all my turrets maxed out and all my ships maxed and still get huge waves getting through

I think we might need some upgradable super fortress where we can put excess resources (maybe 200k of each per upgrade level) which can manage up to 100 ships alone at level 1. And which can be upgraded up to level 10 (which would then be able to handle 1000 ships alone) And that should be capped at 2 or something..

The reason i am not really into higher ship caps is because the game would become unplayable in multiplayer. Use the noshipcap cheat darke I know i do... - But that aside, fortresses are still completely useless

And i can confirm the flagship killing command stations with 1 shot - and while at it, the command stations need much higher HP imo

[x4000]

When one player has multiple starting plants, I'll make it so that they have that many times more on the ship cap.  That's equivalent to a multiplayer game, whereas right now it is not.  I think that will solve the problem here that darke is having, but beyond that I'm not really feeling that higher ship caps in general are going to be needed -- we'll see, lets start with that.

[Admiral]

-Engineers are no longer affected by negative energy balances, which makes it easier to rebuild destroyed reactors, and it makes force fields on right from the start when loading a savegame.

Thank you! I didn't suggest this before as I recalled your desire to make negative energy be a terrible, terminal condition, but I had always wished for it.

Does this mean, though, that there's a cheat: Go negative energy, save and reload, and now your force fields work again somehow?

-A new cheat has been added: "more more more"  This cheat lets players ignore the ship build cap for all their ship types.

Neat! Do you still plan on one that just takes parasites/leeches out of the "ship cap" limitation?

Thanks!

[x4000]

-Engineers are no longer affected by negative energy balances, which makes it easier to rebuild destroyed reactors, and it makes force fields on right from the start when loading a savegame.

Thank you! I didn't suggest this before as I recalled your desire to make negative energy be a terrible, terminal condition, but I had always wished for it.

Does this mean, though, that there's a cheat: Go negative energy, save and reload, and now your force fields work again somehow?

Glad you like it!  But no, there's no cheat with that.  The force fields will only be on for around a second, so unless you do a LOT of saving and reloading, that won't be too helpful.

-A new cheat has been added: "more more more"  This cheat lets players ignore the ship build cap for all their ship types.

Neat! Do you still plan on one that just takes parasites/leeches out of the "ship cap" limitation?

You had asked about that, but I don't know if that's really something worth a whole cheat.  I guess I could -- I finally revamped how the lobby settings are stored under the hood, and global toggles like this are a part of it, so that's much easier to add now.  I take it you'd still prefer that?

[Admiral]

Neat! Do you still plan on one that just takes parasites/leeches out of the "ship cap" limitation?

You had asked about that, but I don't know if that's really something worth a whole cheat.  I guess I could -- I finally revamped how the lobby settings are stored under the hood, and global toggles like this are a part of it, so that's much easier to add now.  I take it you'd still prefer that?

Well... I hate to be asking for something that I am getting the impression only I care about... But I'd prefer to finish my games (at least!) with parasites being uncapped as they have been through 1.013.

I'm starting to feel like a very old timer having started at 1.004 or 5 (don't remember).

Cheers!

[Fiskbit]

Some of us started around 0.922. Back then, we actually had to pull our ships to and from the wormholes, uphill both ways. You guys have it easy nowadays.

[Admiral]

Some of us started around 0.922. Back then, we actually had to pull our ships to and from the wormholes, uphill both ways. You guys have it easy nowadays.

ROFL

[x4000]

Well... I hate to be asking for something that I am getting the impression only I care about... But I'd prefer to finish my games (at least!) with parasites being uncapped as they have been through 1.013.

Added in the next release, then.  No worries.

I'm starting to feel like a very old timer having started at 1.004 or 5 (don't remember).

This comment got me thinking.

[darke]

Well... I hate to be asking for something that I am getting the impression only I care about... But I'd prefer to finish my games (at least!) with parasites being uncapped as they have been through 1.013.

Added in the next release, then.  No worries.

In my small amount of time to play (ugg, busy, only 4 or 5 hours of playtime in the last two weeks...), I also was rather saddend at the loss of my extra parasite ships. Granted they were mostly I/II ships thus more chaff in AI10 games then anything, but I liked having such masses of forces at my disposal. I think that was one of the main reasons I had so much of a problem recently against the massive waves was that I couldn't steal enough ships to compensate with each wave (since at that difficulty level I have to use all my low level ships just to defend, and assault with the higher III's and IV's).

I did mention previously in a thread a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, last time I complained about the parasites being a little too good was that they should parasite based on their level. Mark I parasites have a 100% chance to parasite a I ship, 50% to parasite a II ship, 25% for a III, 12% for a IV, 6% for a V. Parasite II of course would have 100% for I and II, 50% for III, 25% for IV, etc, etc.

If applied to both the AI and the player, it would decrease the acquiring number of high-level ships that, umm, Haagenti (?) was exploiting since you'd already have to have a high level force, or wait a long time to get enough, without loosing the feel of actually playing a zerging race, since now with the population speed increase everyone-and-their-dog feels like they're a Zerg.

Plus it'd mean that the AI usage of the parasite starship wouldn't be so insanely lethal in situations where you might actually have a chance with other starship types.

[x4000]

I think that a lot of the fun of the parasites is being able to capture higher-level stuff, though -- people really start crying foul when I change stuff like that, and I think that would really push some over the edge.