Prerelease 1.201A (Pausing for many ships, economy, more bg art upgrades)

[x4000]

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1201A.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.

Why is this now 1.201 instead of 1.014?  Well, this release is just so huge that I felt it needed to be differentiated with a more major version number shift.  People are going to remember this as the release where the economy became flow-based and got more robust, where the AI tactics became way more intelligent in many ways, and where a ton of interface and graphical improvements came into play, amongst other rebalancing and over a dozen new ship types.  It's a whole new game from 1.013 in some respects when it comes to the advanced strategy, so this is something I felt was important to make really clear with the numbering.

What's new since 1.014V:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

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

-The AI will no longer have capturable energy reactors on its planets.  This can now throw the player's economy off balance, and it's something that was a minor point of confusion for many players, anyway.

-The energy use of ships is now shown in their tooltips.

-Pausing ships now makes them no longer take any energy to run.  Also, putting ships inside transports makes them no longer require energy until they are ejected from the transport.

-All of the mobile military, starship, turret, reactors, heavy defense, and force field ships can now be paused.  Paused ships can still move, and if they have cloaking they will stay cloaked, but otherwise none of their special abilities will function and they will not be able to attack.

-Now that the pause ability has been added for ships, cloaked player ships will once again auto-attack enemy ships.  To do a stealth raid with cloaked ships, simply pause them before taking them into enemy territory, and then unpause them when they are closing in on their target.

-It is now possible to pause the construction of any ship that is being built through placement mode.  Thus if too much is in the process of being built, some of it can be temporarily halted and then later resumed.

-There is now a scrolling effect on the title menu with the star background.

CHANGES FROM PAST PRERELEASES
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-The logic for clearing excess starships was not working correctly in prior releases.  Now it will properly clean up excess starships.

-The "new map seed" button in the lobby has been made much larger.

-It is no longer possible to overdraft energy through ship production.

-It is no longer possible to send the metal or crystal balance negative through manufactory use.  The balances can still go negative from ongoing resource costs of ships like energy reactors, but this is much harder to do (your total outflows from your ongoing resource costs of such buildings would have to exceed your inflows from the entire rest of your economy).

-Engineers will no longer keep assisting ships that are paused.

-The parallax scrolling of the background gas has been improved again, so that it looks more dynamic and volumetric at closer zooms.

NEW ART - Philippe Chabot
--------------
Background Nebulae Updates

[liq3]

Paused ships can't move.

[Revenantus]

Structures do not cause a drain on metal resources when being built - they only use crystal.

EDIT: That was premature, it's a granularity thing - correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that anything that draws a sufficiently small amount of resources is rounded to 0/s. Units such as short range turrets seem to be essentially free.

Nice improvements to the nebulae. The scrolling on the main menu works really nicely, although would it be possible for the nebula to remain consistent throughout navigation of the menu? Each time I leave the settings or load saved game menu it's changed to a different one.

EDIT2: I've just realised that all turrets and many other structures have been free since the granularity changes. Structures like forcefields only incur a crystal cost as the metal cost is rounded to 0.

[eRe4s3r]

I think its 1.20 to get faster to 2.0 ;p 

Otherwise it might well have taken 40 years ;p

[CautiousChaos]

I think I'm missing something.... 

"-Now that the pause ability has been added for ships, cloaked player ships will once again auto-attack enemy ships.  To do a stealth raid with cloaked ships, simply pause them before taking them into enemy territory, and then unpause them when they are closing in on their target."

What does "pause" mean?  This last statement suggests that you "pause" the ship before taking them into enemy territory which implies that you are moving the ship.  So what is a paused, moving ship?  I haven't tried any of this, but it seems like there is going to be more micromanagement in fleets to pause them to reduce energy consumption, them remember to unpause them later when you have more energy reserves and so on.

-cc

[Echo35]

Speaking of Pausing, is there a hot key for it? I just started a game, and its going MUCH better than U. I haven't been horribly wiped out like I stated in my last post. The Economy seems a lot more stable now, so we'll see as the game progresses.

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah, i am confused as well, i do like that one cause pause any structure now though ;p

But pausing ships seems like it reduces their energy consumption to 0 , but when i can't move my eye bots when paused then that is not.. ehm, good. ;P

I am 3 hours in and have 110 progression - only 2 planets more to squash to unify my front to 1 7planets overall wormhole, that should be the safe-zone, then i will just go raiding as usually ;p

Maybe instead of pause, ships should have a "Cease Attack and Hold Fire" button ?

[Fiskbit]

I've not tried the new prerelease yet, but will get to it soon.

Regarding capturables on AI worlds, I had been thinking last night that the capturables aside from ARS and AF structures are not very useful and are even costly to you, now that energy is expensive. It would be cool if the AI offered versions of these buildings without cost, so you could get starship constructors that don't incur the usual energy costs, reactors that don't cost any resources, etc. It would make those things way more attractive to capture, since whenever I came across them in the game before, I never cared, and now that they cost me something, I'd want to delete them as soon as I get them. I'd consider capturing a world if it had a Mark III reactor on it without the resource cost.

Also, captive human settlements, last I checked, still had their original resource income, which is rather pitiful with all the recent resource changes.


I question whether ships should lose their energy costs when pause, instead just having the immobile structures that have some ongoing purpose (building ships, getting resources, generating power, etc) losing their costs. Especially if the ships can be moved when paused, since then it's really just a 'hold fire' mode. Also, being able to pause incomplete structures is cool, but makes me wish that they had some sort of up-front cost so you can't just spam lots of ships and pause them.

Anyway, looking forward to trying it in a bit. Sounds like good work, as usual.

[x4000]

Paused ships can't move.

Whoops.  That's directly in contrast to what I wanted, that was a mistake.  It was working, then a later change broke it.  Fixed for the next version.

[x4000]

Structures do not cause a drain on metal resources when being built - they only use crystal.

EDIT: That was premature, it's a granularity thing - correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that anything that draws a sufficiently small amount of resources is rounded to 0/s. Units such as short range turrets seem to be essentially free.

EDIT2: I've just realised that all turrets and many other structures have been free since the granularity changes. Structures like forcefields only incur a crystal cost as the metal cost is rounded to 0.

Wow, great catch.  I can't believe I did not notice that myself! 

Nice improvements to the nebulae. The scrolling on the main menu works really nicely, although would it be possible for the nebula to remain consistent throughout navigation of the menu? Each time I leave the settings or load saved game menu it's changed to a different one.

Yeah, Phil's been doing an incredible job with that.  I'll make it keep the same starting nebula, yes -- that's a good idea.

[x4000]

I think its 1.20 to get faster to 2.0 ;p 

Otherwise it might well have taken 40 years ;p

Yeah, no kidding.    That's certainly also a consideration, but I also don't want people having to wonder when the really big changes hit.

[x4000]

I think I'm missing something.... 

"-Now that the pause ability has been added for ships, cloaked player ships will once again auto-attack enemy ships.  To do a stealth raid with cloaked ships, simply pause them before taking them into enemy territory, and then unpause them when they are closing in on their target."

What does "pause" mean?  This last statement suggests that you "pause" the ship before taking them into enemy territory which implies that you are moving the ship.  So what is a paused, moving ship?  I haven't tried any of this, but it seems like there is going to be more micromanagement in fleets to pause them to reduce energy consumption, them remember to unpause them later when you have more energy reserves and so on.

-cc

You know, I think that "pause" is confusing in this context.  This is a good point. Let's call this "no power mode."  You can move them around (supposedly, although that is broken), but all of their other functions are off.  Really this is not intended to add to micromanagement in general, but to give you some options.  Specific uses:

1.  Sometimes you have some extra engineers that you do not need, but they are running around wasting power -- or, worse, assisting docks and wasting metal/energy.  With the NP mode, just shut them down until you next need them -- before you had to delete them or send them to another planet.

2.  Now that cloaked ships autoattack like normal (which is generally really helpful), it is hard to do sneak attacks with them.  In other words, slip them past enemy defenses and only turn on the guns when you get right up to the target you want them to hit.  NP mode lets you do this.

3.  Sometimes your energy levels tank because you lost some key reactors or whatever other big event.  With the pause mode, you can just turn off some unnecessary ships to get back in the swing of things.  Otherwise you'd just have to tough it out with everything disabled until your next reactor was built, or you'd have to delete some stuff.

4.  Conversely, sometimes you lose a bunch of harvesters or what have you and your metal/crystal goes negative.  Or maybe you just need some more resources real quick in general.  Well, those reactors chew up a bunch of resources, so if you want to pause them for a bit you can instead divert those resources elsewhere.

5.  Sometimes you accidentally build too many small things -- turrets or what have you -- and it tanks your metal/crystal rates.  Now you can pause the lower-priority stuff, let the higher-priority stuff finish building, and then unpause and finish the lower stuff when you are ready.

In general, this is meant to give the players some new options, not to require more micromanagement.  In the above cases before, usually the only option was to delete ships, which is frustrating when they cost a lot and take such a long time to rebuild.

[x4000]

Speaking of Pausing, is there a hot key for it?

No, there's not, but that' a really good idea.  Added to my list!

I just started a game, and its going MUCH better than U. I haven't been horribly wiped out like I stated in my last post. The Economy seems a lot more stable now, so we'll see as the game progresses.

Wonderful!  I'm really glad to hear that.  I was hoping that would be the case...

[x4000]

but when i can't move my eye bots when paused then that is not.. ehm, good. ;P

My bad, I specifically told you that would work, and then I went and had a bug that broke it.   I'll have a fix out for that tonight.

I am 3 hours in and have 110 progression - only 2 planets more to squash to unify my front to 1 7planets overall wormhole, that should be the safe-zone, then i will just go raiding as usually ;p

Cool!  I think that sounds just about right for what I would expect, so sounds like the balance is what I would hope and you can still use your usual raiding strategy after that.

Maybe instead of pause, ships should have a "Cease Attack and Hold Fire" button ?

Ah, I didn't see your note before.  But I agree it is confusing.  Since this also applies to non-military ships, though, and has a great many different effects, I think just calling it "no power mode" is simplest overall.

[x4000]

Regarding capturables on AI worlds, I had been thinking last night that the capturables aside from ARS and AF structures are not very useful and are even costly to you, now that energy is expensive. It would be cool if the AI offered versions of these buildings without cost, so you could get starship constructors that don't incur the usual energy costs, reactors that don't cost any resources, etc. It would make those things way more attractive to capture, since whenever I came across them in the game before, I never cared, and now that they cost me something, I'd want to delete them as soon as I get them. I'd consider capturing a world if it had a Mark III reactor on it without the resource cost.

Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines -- that's why the reactors are no longer a capturable.  For the other stuff, if you delete them you at least get back some resources, but I'd have to make all new versions of them in order to have "no power" variants.  Or add yet one more variable to the objects, I guess, but I think I'd rather not here.  The focus in the future with capturables is really going to be unique stuff that you can't get in any other way.

Also, captive human settlements, last I checked, still had their original resource income, which is rather pitiful with all the recent resource changes.

Whoa, yeah, great point.  Will fix for the next prerelease!

I question whether ships should lose their energy costs when pause, instead just having the immobile structures that have some ongoing purpose (building ships, getting resources, generating power, etc) losing their costs.  Especially if the ships can be moved when paused, since then it's really just a 'hold fire' mode.

I think that basically being mobile but otherwise completely nonfunctional is an effective tradeoff for having the energy costs be zero.  And having a "no power mode" as it will now be called, with the ships even visibly going dark, is thematically consistent and potentially strategically useful -- not that I want to encourage that level of micromanagement, but for expert players on the very highest difficulties, it might prove useful.  I think I will also make it disable the shields on ships, though, which makes them more vulnerable to incoming fire.  That is both strategically interesting and thematically consistent, I think (and cloaked ships have no shields anyway, so that won't affect them).

Also, being able to pause incomplete structures is cool, but makes me wish that they had some sort of up-front cost so you can't just spam lots of ships and pause them.

Aww, and I added this just for you, even though I think I told you I couldn't do it (recent other changes to the structure made this a lot more feasible).  I see your point, but I think an up-front cost is counter to the flow-based economy.  I'll just make ships avoid shooting at paused, self-building ships unless there is nothing else around to do.

Anyway, looking forward to trying it in a bit. Sounds like good work, as usual.

Thanks!